Reviews and News:
There’s some interesting Trump art available on Ebay. My favorite is “Trump vs. Zombie Hillary.”
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Stephen B. Presser reviews Michael J. Graetz and Linda Greenhouse’s The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right: “Since the time of Earl Warren, the principal activity of constitutional scholars has been to create theories that either defend the Warren Court (as such notables as Ronald Dworkin, Akhil Amar, and Lawrence Tribe have done), or to explain in exasperation how the Warren Court so horrifically strayed from the rule of law (as done, for example, by Herbert Wechsler, Learned Hand, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia). The Warren Court’s advocates have generally carried the day in the academy and in the press since that Court’s effort to protect the rights of minorities and, generally, to promote the liberal agenda of redistribution and increased equality, fits well with the politics that there prevails. Graetz and Greenhouse do not explicitly engage in this theoretical struggle. They seek rather to change the prevailing understanding of what the Burger Court did or did not accomplish, and in so doing, perhaps subtly to advance the progressive judicial agenda.”
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In London, people are waiting for hours for 30 seconds in a room of illuminated pumpkins. Why?
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Trump sends Art of the Deal ghostwriter a cease-and-desist letter: “Mr. Schwartz said in an interview with MSNBC that the letter demanded that he forfeit all royalties he had earned from the book. ‘It’s nuts and completely indicative of who he is’.”
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David Hockney’s portraits: “Hockney’s portraits are among the most significant works of his career and this suite marks a return to a genre he has set somewhat to one side. While he regularly refuses portrait commissions these pictures are all at his own instigation. None of the sitters knew he wanted to paint them until he asked. Once in his studio he depicted them all on identical 122×91 cm canvases, sitting on the same chair against the same blue background and teal floor (though sometimes he reverses the colours). There are no props, the sitter is the be all and end all.”
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How balloon flight changed 18th-century ideas of landscape.
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Essay of the Day:
In Public Discourse, Andrew T. Walker argues that without religious liberty society will become less civil and democratic:
“Protecting religious dissent is at the foundation of America’s history and constitutional legacy. As Madison and Adams argued, religion is prior to the claims of the state. It provides the grounding for democracy necessary for ordered liberty. And if religion is prior to the state, its importance looms larger than the state’s reach. This understanding wasn’t a secondary feature to America: it was, arguably, its distinguishing feature. Seen in this light, the Constitution didn’t bequeath religious liberty. Rather, religious liberty helped bequeath a penumbra of other rights that are enshrined in our Constitution.”
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“Religious liberty contributes to the diversity of civil society. By its very nature, civil society will be contested territory. Contested debate helps give rise to democratic order, and democratic governance relies on spirited debate. Societies, of which governments are but a reflection, consist of various voices, movements, and ideologies vying for acceptance. In the interest of advancing justice, prophetic difference and prophetic dissent are necessary ingredients if progress is to occur. Allowing citizens the freedom and space to appeal to transcendent duties forces reason to determine what is true or false. From our deepest understanding of truth, we order our lives accordingly, and our lives bear witness to whether our values benefit society. Signaling that Christians aren’t welcome in the public square undermines the public square by robbing it of the religious-ethical system responsible for fostering norms and values that protect individual rights and a humane public morality.
“But another issue at stake in the loss of religious liberty in civil society is the future of participatory democracy. Telling citizens that their religious beliefs about marriage, gender, and sexuality are bigoted and wrong can build a generational cynicism and apathy in them, which causes them to withdraw from a full involvement in liberal democracy that treats citizens equally. It creates another class of victims. Whether voluntary or assigned, creating religious ghettos through a kind of secular dhimmitude is not the American tradition. Where religious liberty empowers participants in civil society, a flattening out of religious values ensures that civil society will atrophy.”
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Image of the Day: Microburst
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Poem: Heinrich Heine, “Shadow Kisses.” Translated by Translated by Terese Coe.
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