Maggie's Farm

As I put my hunting gear away for the summer, I am reminded of a deep truth: When buying hunting trousers, always buy 'em at least an inch bigger in the waist.

I always forget to do this, and then, when I put on layers, I cannot button my pants, which makes me feel like I don't have it all together, which hurts my shooting.

And if it's a Bluebird day, then I can just use suspenders - braces - to keep my trousers up. They remain, I believe, a much under-appreciated item of clothing. Like hats, suspenders need to be brought back into style because it isn't fair that only bankers get to wear them. Bankers wear them for decoration, but their real purpose, of course, is so your trouser waist can be loose enough for comfortable sitting, without falling down.

Image: Nice Filson suspenders, rugged enough to last a lifetime in the woods

John Gray, author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, has an excellent short piece in The Guardian titled The Atheist Delusion. (h/t, Flares)

It's the best short piece I have seen on the religious and faith aspects of atheism and secular humanism. As he says, "Secularisation is in retreat, and the result is the appearance of an evangelical type of atheism not seen since Victorian times... As in the past, this is a type of atheism that mirrors the faith it rejects." A quote:

...the belief that history is a directional process is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism. Secular thinkers such as Grayling reject the idea of providence, but they continue to think humankind is moving towards a universal goal - a civilisation based on science that will eventually encompass the entire species. In pre-Christian Europe, human life was understood as a series of cycles; history was seen as tragic or comic rather than redemptive. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be believed that history had a predetermined goal, which was human salvation. Though they suppress their religious content, secular humanists continue to cling to similar beliefs. One does not want to deny anyone the consolations of a faith, but it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth created by the need for meaning.

Read the whole thing. I think I would like to read Gray's book too.

Roger Kimball on the 60s - Tariq Ali: Fool of '68. A quote:

“Passion,” like “idealism,” is a nostrum that the Left prescribes in order to relieve itself from the burdens of moral accountability. In a subtle essay called “Countercultures,” the political commentator Irving Kristol noted that the counterculture of the 1960s was in part a reaction against a society that had become increasingly secular, routinized, and crassly materialistic. In this respect, too, the counterculture can be understood as part of our Romantic inheritance, a plea for freedom and transcendence in a society increasingly dominated by the secular forces of Enlightenment rationality. Indeed, revolts of this tenor have been a staple of Romanticism since the nineteenth century: Dostoevski’s “underground man,” who seeks refuge from the imperatives of reason in willful arbitrariness, is only one example (a rather grim one) among countless others.

The danger, Kristol notes, is that the counterculture, in its attack on secular materialism, “will bring down—will discredit—human things that are of permanent importance. A spiritual rebellion against the constrictions of secular humanism could end up … in a celebration of irrationalism and a derogation of reason itself.” At a time when the radical tenets of the counterculture have become so thoroughly established and institutionalized in cultural life—when they have, in fact, come more and more to define the tastes, habits, and attitudes of the dominant culture—unmasking illegitimate claims to “liberation” and bogus feats of idealism emerges as a prime critical task.

To an extent scarcely imaginable thirty years ago, we now live in that “moral and cultural universe shaped by the Sixties.” The long march of the cultural revolution of the 1960s has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of all but the most starry-eyed utopians. The great irony is that this victory took place in the midst of a significant drift to the center-Right in electoral politics. The startling and depressing fact is that supposedly conservative victories at the polls have done almost nothing to challenge the dominance of left-wing, emancipationist attitudes and ideas in our culture. On the contrary, in the so-called “culture wars,” conservatives have been conspicuous losers.

Read the whole thing.