A perfect morning: Finally the sun came out (where be my summer? Newport doesn't exactly have my version of Beach Weather, eithe) and I got in a beautiful walk, then got to sit on my balcony and pick from a veritable buffet of excellent books: Leon Kass's The Hungry Soul, Robert Altar's The David Story, and maybe some of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism that I have been perusing over dinner lately.
No summaries yet, but I do highly recommend the Kass book already. Especially the chapter on table manners and conversation. People. You know who you are.
And in the Fascism last night, I came across this: "Utopia clearly reflected the influence of Georges Sorel's syndicalism on Mussolini's thinking...Sorel was deeply influenced by the Pragmatism of William James, who pioneered the notion that all one needs is the 'will to believe.' It was James' benign hope to make room for religion in a burgeoning age of science simply by arguing that any religion that worked for the believer was not merely valid but 'true'...
Aaaah! Dad, you were right. William James was the intellectual starting point for some pretty bad progressivism. Well, at least I wasn't totally won over, either.
Some inspiring links:
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