Gail Collins, the sane and witty NYTimes woman columnist, has a good analysis of the gender tendencies in the Democratic primaries.

Vis a vis the Clinton/Obama contest, she writes, “Senator Kennedy has been a champion of many issues that women care about. But when he ran unsuccessfully for president in 1980, he was victim of a major-league gender gap. This was an early example of the rule that women will not vote for men who yell.”

She also notes (the first time I’ve seen this in print) that he also has a red face when he yells. How many times have we read or heard Bill Clinton being described as red-faced (understood to mean angry and out of control). Many, many.

Here’s her column, enjoy: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/opinion/07collins.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Gail+Collins&st=nyt&oref=slogin

What’s happening to undersea cables delivering the Internet to the Middle East? Nobody seems to know.

When preaching, St. Augustine often composed imaginary dialogues between himself and a member of his congregation. Here is one that I came across recently, which fits today’s second reading very well: “Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!”

Augustine has been urging his people not to put off their conversion.

>> On every side God’s providence mercifully surrounds you. What’s that you say?

“God promised me forgiveness; he’ll give it when I turn back to him.”

Of course he’ll give it when you turn back to him, but why are you not turning back to him?

“Because whenever I turn back, he will give it.”

Yes, indeed, when you turn back, he will give it, but when is that “when” of yours? Why is it not today? Why not as you listen to me? Why not when you cry out? Why not when you praise? Let my shouting be a helper on your behalf; let your cry be a witness against you. Why not today? Why not now? (Sermon 20, 4; PL 38, 140-41) <<

Perhaps Augustine was remembering how long it took him to decide to be baptized, and his dishonest prayer: “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”

Here’s the Latin:

Undique te circumdedit providentia Dei misericorditer. Quid dicis? Promisit mihi Deus indulgentiam; quando me convertero dabit eam. Plane dabit, quando te converteris; sed quare te non convertis? Quoniam quando me convertero, dabit. Prorsus quando te converteris, dabit; sed ipsum quando quando est? Quare non hodie est, quare non cum tu me audis? quare non cum[Col.0141] clamas? quare non cum laudas? Clamor meus sit adjutor pro te: clamor tuus sit testis contra te. Quare non hodie? quare non modo? (Sermo 20, 4; PL 38, 140-41)

Look, you do business on your fast-days,
you oppress all your workmen;
look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast
and strike the poor man with your fist.

Fasting like yours today
will never make your voice heard on high.
Is that the sort of fast that pleases me,
a truly penitential day for men?

Hanging your head like a reed,
lying down on sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call fasting,
a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the sort of fast that pleases me
– it is the Lord who speaks –
to break unjust fetters and
undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,
and break every yoke,
to share your bread with the hungry,
and shelter the homeless poor,

to clothe the man you see to be naked
and not turn from your own kin?
Then will your light shine like the dawn
and your wound be quickly healed over.

Your integrity will go before you
and the glory of the Lord behind you.
Cry, and the Lord will answer;
call, and he will say, ‘I am here’.

If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry,
and relief to the oppressed,

your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
The Lord will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places.

Isaiah 58:3-11 (NJB)

A provocative headline, to be sure, but I was looking at some exit poll data tonight and noticed how Obama was performing significantly lower among Catholic Democrats than among Democrats generally.  Obviously there are a lot of other factors at work here–race, ethnicity, gender, class, etc.–but the results were still interesting:

All Data from CNN Exit Polls

State/Obama’s Share of Catholic Democrats/Obama’s Total Share of Democrats

NM  37(42)

CA  27(34)

CT  39 (47)

NJ  28 (44)

NY  30 (40)

DE  35 (53)

TN 40(41)

MO 50(49)

MA 33(41)

IL 48 (65)

Again, this is a complicated issue and it’s been clear for some time that it is very hard to speak of a cohesive “Catholic” vote among the electorate.  But the fact that Obama did much more poorly with Catholic Dems relative to all Democrats in states that he won like DE, CT, and even his home state of IL is interesting.

Many are skeptical of the idea that, given the diversity of American Catholics, that there is any distinct message that will appeal to us.  I think that’s probably right.  But I remember back in 2000 and the early years of the Bush Administration how deliberate he was in trying to invoke certain Catholic themes (remember the Dorothy Day reference?).

Any thoughts?  As for me, it’s time I turned in.

Check out the great NY Times feature “Voices from the Polls” for audio interviews with voters from polling places across the country today.

Update: And while we’re at it, why not offer your own reports from your polling places? What did you see and hear?

On the subject of Lenten observances, one idea that I had about what to do for the next forty days is to try to make my life a little more eco-friendly.  While looking for suggestions, I stumbled across a New York Times article about Ireland’s hatred for plastic bags and a CNS story about a Catholic school in Chicago that is hoping to “set the national standard” for what schools going “green” can accomplish. 

One thought on Ireland’s plastic bags:  I lived in Ireland in 2005 and was shocked the first time I went to the supermarket and was charged for plastic bags at the register along with my biscuits.  I learned my lesson, however, and never went to the market again without my own bag to haul my groceries home.  Seems like Ireland’s plastic bag tax is really paying off.  The market I frequent here in New York has canvas bags available to buy at the register for $5, but I haven’t bought one yet.  I should just bring the bag I used in Ireland to the store with me. 

 The principal of St. Monica’s School in Chicago is committed to teaching his older students the importance of stewardship with the school’s green efforts. 

The stewardship component has a natural tie to Catholic teaching, said the principal, Ray Coleman.
“It’s a perfect connection for us, because we can include the messages of the faith,” he said. “We have to be stewards of God’s earth.”

“Going Green” does sound more to me like a New Year’s resolution than a practice for Lent, but I think that if I am mindful about it and conscious of the reasons behind it, I could make it work.  Suggestions are welcome.  As are thoughts on whether or not this idea should ”count” as a Lenten ritual. 

Here’s a Baptist Press story headlined, “Andy Rooney rebuffs street corner witness.”

This is a rare case when I’m on Andy’s side. Except for the atheism part.

Of Shakespeare Ben Jonson wrote that he had “little Latin and less Greek.” That describes me more or less although my Latin is bit beyond serviceable. A few years ago I took on, as a Lenten exercise, reading the Gospels in Greek. I only managed to get through Mark but this year I am going to tackle John. The best thing about reading the scriptures in another language is that it forces one to slow down and not permit the eye to skim over what one thinks one knows. Sometimes I have done this in the modern languages with my favorite being French because of the wonderful version in the original Bible de Jerusalem. Starting tomorrow It will be John although, as poor as my Greek is, I doubt if I will make it through the whole Gospel. That is ok, however, because I do not see this as a speed reading exercise.

Last Advent I stuck with English and read Isaiah in the version edited by Robert Wilekn with commentaries from the fathers of the church. What inspired me to do that was Ambrose’s suggestion to the new convert, Augustine, that the book of the bible he should start with is Isaiah. Good advice.

Anyone out there in virtual world have other reading plans? 

What are you giving up for Lent? This was the question one often heard back in the day, as they say. Parents would ask it of their children, and a spiritual director might ask you The assumption was that one gave up something during Lent–candy or cookies when we were children; smoking or whiskey when we were adults. I even heard of couples who gave up marital sex for these forty days. This was over and above the official rules for Lent: Only one full meal a day, the other two meals not being allowed together to make a full meal. Meat only once a day. No eating between meals. Sundays, of course, were excepted.

The celebration of Lent, in no small part because there were official rules, was a communal thing. (The “women’s magazines”–Women’s Day and Family Circle–would have cover stories about creative ways to cook fish–clearly aimed at the tens of thousands of Catholics who would be observing the Lenten discipline.) I suppose the emphasis was negative–what are you giving up?–but we were also urged to more positive things–attendance at daily Mass went up significantly during Lent, as well as participation in popular devotions, especially the Stations of the Cross. I don’t remember much about the third element–almsgiving, service of the poor.

Then, after Vatican II, came the relaxation of the Lenten rules. I remember as a young priest telling the people that the Church would no longer be treating them as children, telling them what they had to do for Lent, but would leave it up to their decision what they would do. This greatly oversimplified things, I have long since recognized. I wonder if something wasn’t lost by our in effect doing away with any communal obligations, that is, things that we all did (or didn’t do) together. Does Lent still have the communal religious significance that, say, Ramadan has for Muslims, or Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for Jews? Should it have it?

If there are any remaining doubts that Senator Barack Obama has entered the realm of genuine pop culture phenomenon, this music video should dispell them.

Apparently this was prepared completely at their own initiative.  My only regret is that I am now so out of touch with popular music that I have no idea who any of these people are!

A brief item by “J. C.” in the February 1 issue of the TLS takes note of a new book by Steve Roud, Monday’s Child is Fair of Face, described as a collection of “traditional beliefs about babies.” J.C. comments: “It leaves the impression that babies were traditionally in constant danger”–something often reflected in nursery rhymes. He seems more inclined than Roud is to accept the view that “Ring a ring a roses” comes from the Great Plague of 1666 which helps explain the line “A-choo, A-choo, All fall down.” (I learned it as “Ashes, ashes”, but there seem to be many variants on it.) Then there is “Rock (orig. Hush) a bye baby, with its pessimistic: “When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, Down will come baby, cradle and all.”

Of course, childbirth, infancy and childhood were far more precarious in earlier centuries than they are in the developed West–but think of so many parts of Africa, still. But culturally, these and other evils were not kept from the knowledge of children as commonly as they are today. Life was grittier, dirtier, more pungent. My paternal grandmother sang a Slovak version of the playful “Patty Cake, Patty Cake,” and when we later asked for a translation, we learned that the repeated chorus was “If you fart, it will stink.” And she sang another one that sounds as it were the Slovak equivalent of “Roll me over in the clover.” I doubt that it was only Slovaks who were so earthy.

When we were children, we would love it when my father would put us to bed and give into our pleas, “Tell us a story.” He knew the Beatric Potter stories, and would amuse us with his own variants on them. But one of the stories he occasionally told was Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Match Girl,” which ends with the little girl freezing to death on a bitter cold New Year’s Eve–not exactly the story one might expect a parent to choose in order to send his children off to dreamland. I asked my siblings about this, and one of them suggested, “Maybe he wanted us to be grateful for what we had.”

Slate is excerpting a new book by its military affairs correspondent Fred Kaplan.  It is entitled Daydream Believers.  Among other items, he argued yesterday that the foreign policy debate these days isn’t “Realists versus Neoconservatives, but realists versus fantasists.”

It’s a cute line, but I’m even more interested in Kaplan’s post today. It helps those of us–like myself–who think humanitarian intervention can be justified in some cases make the important distinctions among possible “wars of choice.”

It may be hard to devise an ideological argument for embracing one type of intervention and protesting the other. But it is not so hard to make distinctions on practical grounds. It’s reasonable to base a foreign policy chiefly on traditional concepts of national interest—and still sometimes go out of the way, maybe go to war, in order to help a ravaged people or oust a monstrous tyrant, even when those interests are not directly at stake.

One tangible litmus test for getting involved in such “wars of choice” is whether other powers or international bodies endorse and join the fight. This is not to make a moral pitch for multilateralism, but it is to make a pragmatic case. The purpose behind wars of choice is to enforce international norms. One central fact of our time is that the U.S. government can no longer claim that it embodies these norms—that it holds the right to be judge, jury, and executioner on matters of when, where, and how to enforce them. The U.S. government’s recent actions—the willful disregard of international treaties, the tortures at Abu Ghraib, the illegal “renderings,” in the eyes of some the occupation of Iraq—have undermined America’s authority as a moral or legal arbiter. 

Today’s Boston Globe has a gracious editorial on the Giants’ amazing victory last evening.

Viewers around the world last night got an opportunity to watch good, tough football. The New York Giants, by their gritty defensive play and clutch offensive performance on the final drive, elevated themselves above another great football team, the 2007 New England Patriots.

And the Globe offers an interesting take on the relative civility of the rivalry:

Nor was there any of the nasty New York-Boston talk that tarnishes the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. Perhaps the locations of the two home fields – in East Rutherford, N.J., and Foxborough, Mass. – explains this civility.

How about building the new house of Ruth in Rutherford?

Update:

And this New Yorker revels in Bostonian paranoia (to heck with “civility”):

They were always about history, these 2007-08 Patriots. Most points in history. Most touchdowns in history. First 18-0 team in history. But when it was all over, Bill Belichick’s History Boys were a failure. They did not accomplish their goal. They lost the Super Bowl. They blew a lead in the final minute.

In the end, the new Patriots reminded us of the old Red Sox. Ouch.

Now there will be no more talk about “greatest ever.” No making fun of Mercury Morris and the still-one-and-only undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins. No more comparisons to the dynasties of Green Bay, Chicago, Pittsburgh, or San Francisco. The muscle-flexing 18-1 Patriots don’t even go down as the best New England team of all time.

“Tonight doesn’t take away from anything we have done over the course of the season,” Tom Brady said late Sunday.

Yes, it does. Take all your pinball victories (remember those long-ago days of 52-7 and 56-10?) and lock them away. The Patriots shredded the NFL record book (and the league rulebook, if you believe Senator Arlen Specter), but they did not accomplish their goal. They did not win the Super Bowl. By their own standards of excellence, this season is a failure – same as 2005, when they were eliminated by the Broncos, and 2006, when the Colts bounced them in the AFC Championship.

For those shamefully disposed to Schadenfreude, read more.

Item one: Fr. Tom Doyle recently penned an open letter to and about Voice of the Faithful–to which VOTF Board Chair Bill Casey responded. The exchange is not exactly a lovefest. I’d post Doyle’s letter here, but it is long. You can read it at Voices in the Desert (scroll to the bottom of the post; the blogmaster has highlighted certain sections of the letter). Casey’s letter can be found in the most recent VOTF newsletter.

Item two: The former archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, is suing to prevent the current archbishop, Diarmuid Martin, from releasing archdiocesan documents related to clergy sexual abuse. So that’s unusual. The Irish Times has the story.

The cardinal claims the documents in question are legally privileged and his lawyers today secured an interim High Court injunction restraining the Commission from examining the documents to decide whether they attract legal privilege and/or a duty of confidentiality.

The proceedings arise from an order by the Commission last December compelling Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, as the current Archbishop of Dublin, to produce to the Commission all documents listed by him in an affidavit of discovery of June 2006. That affidavit listed documents dating from 1975 to 2004 relating to claims of child abuse against a representative sample of 46 priests in the Dublin Archdiocese.

Archbishop Martin delivered the documents in disc format on January 15th last and the Commission had indicated it intended to begin examining the documents from Monday last to decide whether they are, as Cardinal Connell claims, legally privileged or subject to a duty of confidentiality.

The Commission has refused a request from Cardinal Connell’s solicitor not to begin that examination process pending the outcome of the Cardinal’s legal action, Mr Roddy Horan SC, for Cardinal Connell, told the High Court.

John Cooney of the Irish Independent has more on the what the legal dispute means.

(N.B.–Keep the comments civil.)

In today’s NY Times, Charles McGrath has a column about the relationship between genre writing and “literature,” the former being considered very rarely to aspire to or to reach the quality of the latter. Double-standards? Snobbishness? P.D. James is mentioned as one writer whose mysteries might be thought “to transcend the genre,” as I think the obligatory comment goes. In a recent issue of The Tablet, Ms. James has a lovely tribute to Dorothy Sayers (subscription required), who wrote mysteries but also attempted a verse-translation of Dante and published some works of Christian apologetics, too. Ms. James quotes from an amusing satirical piece that Sayers wrote to illustrate the low state of Anglican catechesis. It might apply to RC’s today, too.

Any candidates for genre-transcending authors?

Should we care if it’s “literature” or not?

Random thoughts on the Republican primary this morning…

Observers of the Republican primary have noted how many self-described conservatives within the party are struggling with the idea of John McCain being the party’s standard bearer.  Writing in the Weekly Standard, Benjamin and Jenna Storey suggest that the problem is that the modern conservative movement has become too beholden to libertarian ideology:

Conservatives need to defend free markets not as an ideology but as an aspect of policy that serves the purpose of allowing individual excellence to flourish. A defense of free markets as a means to a good society, rather than as an end in itself, has served us well in the past. The struggle against communism, for example, was not only, or even primarily, about free markets. It was about human dignity and the worth of a political order that allows individuals to live decent and virtuous lives. Freedom of enterprise is a part–but only a part–of that decent political order. The problem with absolute faith in any ideology, including that of the free market, becomes evident with a glance at the flagship publication of the libertarians, Reason magazine. It is no coincidence that Reason publishes hagiographies of Milton Freedman as well as pleas for drug legalization and appreciations of cartoon pornography: economic libertarianism, elevated to the status of inviolable first principle, leads to moral libertarianism.

The moral vacuity of dogmatic libertarianism is poisonous to public life. By teaching that ‘greed is good,’ strict free-market ideology holds out the promise that private vices can be public virtues. Recent congressional history has laid bare the fallacy of this argument. Republicans who proclaimed from the stump that greed was good turned out to believe it when they got into office, amassing earmarks and bridges to nowhere by means of their newfound powers. Why should we be surprised? To expect them to do otherwise would be to expect that men sometimes risk their self-interest for the sake of the public good, which our economist friends tell us is impossible. Conservatives who forget that the free market is properly a piece of policy rather than an ideological end-in-itself not only obscure the importance of individual virtue, they undermine it.

I tend to agree with the Storeys about libertarianism, whether of the economic or cultural variety.  But I’m not sure this explains all of the opposition to McCain.  After all, one of the counts in the conservative indictment against him is that he is soft on immigration.  Libertarians, however, tend to be more skeptical of efforts to reduce immigration.

While we’re on the subject of McCain, David Brooks (who has clearly been in the tank for Obama for some time now) has an interesting column up about how McCain must retool his campaign for November:

First, the tone of the campaign will have to change. In 2000, McCain was a joyful warrior. He was the guy rollicking through rallies waving a light saber and launching playful verbal assaults on the Bush empire. He was the guy filling his speeches with New Frontier rhetoric and glimpses of hopeful vistas. “I believe we are an unfinished nation,” he used to say.

But the Obama campaign feels more like McCain in 2000 than the current McCain campaign does. Barack Obama outshines McCain right now as the hopeful warrior. Obama is the one insistently calling on audiences to serve a cause greater than self-interest. He’s the one transcending partisanship and telling young people that politics can be the means to a meaningful, purpose-driven life….

Second, McCain will have to clarify his vision for the future. He talks about the struggle with Islamic extremists as the transcendent foreign policy challenge of our time. But there’s a transcendent domestic challenge as well. America is segmenting. The country is dividing along the lines of education, income, religion, lifestyle and giving way to cynicism and mistrust. Government is distanced from the people and growing more corrupt.

In the past, McCain has said that repairing these divisions constitutes “a new patriotic challenge for a new century.” He has hinted at a philosophy that amounts to an American version of One Nation Conservatism. It emphasizes reforming federal institutions, calling on young people to perform national service, promoting economic competitiveness and enhancing social mobility. It is a mixture of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. This governing philosophy has lurked in the background this year, but McCain will have to make it explicit to move a nation.

I think that columns like this reveal why the conventional analysis of Brooks as a “liberal” conservative ultimately doesn’t cut it.  When I lived in Canada, I knew a fair number of people like Brooks.  We sometimes called them “red tories.” They were heirs to an older , more European tradition of conservatism that was worried about the potential of market forces to disrupt traditional patterns of life and undermine a thick understanding of the virtues.

In the years leading up to the 2000 election, an interesting debate emerged within the Republican Party about “national greatness conservatism,” for which The Weekly Standard and John McCain were the standard bearers.  The foreign policy challenges of the last eight years largely submerged that debate.  I wonder if it will reemerge now.

In the current Commonweal, Luke Timothy Johnson revisits the notification of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on aspects of the Christology of Jon Sobrino, S.J.

Johnson’s article, “Human and Divine: Did Jesus Have Faith?”, is a typical example of Johnson’s informed scholarship and openness to dialogue. In many ways his tone and the principles he enunciates remind me of those espoused by the Catholic Common Ground Initiative. He seeks to understand the legitimate concerns that animate different positions.

Such sympathetic reading does not prevent Johnson from taking a stand where he things the positions he discusses are inadequate. Thus, with regard the CDF, he doesn’t hesitate to state:

The CDF places itself in self-conscious continuity with the theological heritage of earlier centuries. It thinks of “faith” primarily in terms of “belief”-that is, as a cognitive more than a volitional response. It privileges ontological categories for expressing Christian confession. It favors traditional formulas that can be treated as axioms from which one can argue deductively. Its understanding of truth tends toward the propositional, and it is suspicious of theological wording that does not replicate the accepted propositions precisely. And although it pays lip service to the critical study of Scripture, its use of the Gospels is resolutely precritical. It reads the New Testament exclusively through the lens of developed doctrine, and uses the New Testament exclusively as a repository of support for doctrinal propositions. In a word, it continues as if nothing in the theological world had changed.

And, with regard Sobrino’s view, he writes:

the CDF can find a legitimate (if minor) complaint at Sobrino’s description of Jesus as “a believer like ourselves,” for Paul makes clear that it is through Jesus’ “yes” that we are empowered to say “yes” in obedient faith to God: “therefore, the Amen from us goes through him to God for glory” (2 Cor 1:20). For Paul and for Hebrews, it is not that Jesus “has faith just like ours,” but rather that, through the power of his spirit, we can “have faith like that of Jesus” (Rom 3:26). Jesus is the model of faith, but more than that, he is the “pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12:2), the unique Son who accomplished what we could not on our own, because he was fully defined by the words with which he came into the world: “I have come to do your will, O God” (Heb 10:7).

On one point, however, I think Johnson nods. Regarding the (admittedly) challenging dogmatic principle of the “communicatio idiomatum,” he says:

The residual power of monophysitism is found in the peculiar principle called communicatio idiomatum (“exchange of characteristics”), which serves to compromise the “unmixedness” of the two natures in Christ by asserting the legitimacy of ascribing the characteristics of one nature to the other. But while all would recognize the value of asserting that Mary is the “Mother of God”-the first and most important instance of the principle-it is, in fact, a principle that can be dangerous when used carelessly, as it would be, for example, if one asserted, without careful qualification, that God was born in Nazareth or that Jesus created heaven and earth. Is such language appropriate to the exuberance of prayer and piety? Yes. But sober theological discourse requires greater circumspection.

Though one may hear in various quarters that the principle asserts that one may ascribe “the characteristics of one nature to the other” (in Johnson’s words), this is a faulty understanding of the principle. Rather, it contends that one may ascribe the properties of each nature to the one ontological person who is both divine and human. But the natures remain distinct even in their hypostatic union — as Chalcedon insists.

There is much more matter for considered reflection in this fine article: the latest occasion for gratitude to the judicious Johnson.

What’s not to like about The New Yorker’s Joan Acocella? First, the very name sings. Second, the lady knows dance: her ballet reviews and criticisms are splendid. Third, her book reviews are sharp, even provocative. I called attention some months back to her review of a new translation of Dante’s Paradiso. Now she’s considering an earthly paradiso: David Levering Lewis’s God’s Crucible:Islam and the Making of Europe, 570 to 1215.

In Mr. Lewis’s view, the Muslims’ civilizing habits easily trump the brutish Franks. Ms Acocella gives Lewis his say in a quite extended review (James Wood, take note!), but then opines:

If, as Edward Said wrote, the old history books were covertly ideological, the current ones tend to be overtly ideological, as each new generation of scholars rides in to rescue supposedly worthy peoples who were wronged by earlier scholarship and, in their time, by axe-wielding conquerors. But all these peoples, or all the ones in Lewis’s book, were conquerors. If the Christians took Spain from the Muslims, the Muslims had taken it from the Visigoths, who had appropriated it from the Romans, who had seized it from the Carthaginians, who had thrown out the Phoenicians. Lewis does not pretend that the Muslims were not conquerors; he simply justifies their conquest on the ground of their belief in convivencia, a pressing matter today. I can foresee a time when another matter important to us, the threat of ecological catastrophe, will prompt a historian to write a book in praise of the early Europeans whom Lewis finds so inferior to the Muslims. The Franks lived in uncleared forests, while the Muslims built fine cities, with palaces and aqueducts? All the better for the earth. The Franks were fond of incest? Endogamy keeps societies small, prevents the growth of rapacious nation-states. The same goes for the Franks’ largely barter economy. Trade such as the Muslims practiced—far-flung and transacted with money—leads to consolidation. That’s how we got global corporations.Each new problem in our history engenders a revision of past history. Many of today’s historians acknowledge this, and argue that their books, if politicized, are simply more honest about that than the politicized books of the past. This pessimism about the possibility of finding a stable truth may be realistic, but it seems to sanction, even encourage, special pleading—of which “God’s Crucible,” for all its virtues, is an example.

I haven’t read the book, and would be interested in the reactions of any who have. What about “politicization,” “ideology,” and “special pleading?” Are they endemic to historical writing — with invocation of “truth” only a pious veil or an asymptotic mirage (whew!)? Any advocates for “endogamy is beautiful?”