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Greetings to all from the Southern of our hemispheres!

Today we have a pair of readings, illustrating the alternately generous and brutal, ultimately xenocidic mindset of 16th century Argentina.

This first excerpt is from the account Voyage to Río de Plata and Paraguay by Ulderico Schmidt, a German soldier and adventurer, published in 1554. Do be patient and read all the way to the end, as it gets rather interesting.

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Legacy of Dissent ed. by Nicolaus Mills

Dissent Magazine is my favorite contemporary political journal (admittedly, of like three that I ever read). It’s avowedly left-wing, so it doesn’t try to be all things to all people (like some). Yet unlike many left-wing magazines, it doesn’t waste your time with choir-preaching conservative-bashing that serves merely to make you feel righteous, rather than advance a discussion (like a few magazines I can think of). Rather, it devotes its energy to liberal self-critique, challenging of orthodoxies, and honest insight into what in the liberal agenda is both moral and practicable.

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Okay, I probably should have known many of these words. But that’s why it’s practice…

ordure: excrement; or, something morally offensive. [Latin horridus]

“That kind of rig, a man’d die settin’ in his own, uh, ordure long before they got around to stretching his neck.” - p13, The Confessions of Nat Turner

chattel: An article of moveable personal property (as distinguished from real estate). [Latin capitalis]

“The point is that you are animate chattel and animate chattel is capable of craft and connivery and wily stealth… Because that’s how come the law provides that animate chattel like you can be tried for a felony, and that’s how come you’re goin’ to be tried next Sattidy.” - pp21-22, The Confessions of Nat Turner

sedulous: persevering, assiduous.

Right now I had this other bitterness to contend with, the knowledge of which for ten weeks I had so sedulously shunned… - p23, The Confessions of Nat Turner

fagot: A bundle of sticks tied together. [Greek phakelos, bundle]

They moved with quick and sprightly motions… piling twigs and sticks and fagots high in their arms against their bodies. - p40, The Confessions of Nat Turner

bruit: a rumor or report; in medicine, an abnormal sounds heard in auscultation [Old French bruir, roar]

“For several years now there has come to my attention wondrous bruit of a remarkable slave, …, who had so surpassed the paltry condition into which he had been cast by destiny that — mirabile dictu — he could swiftly read from a difficult and abstract work in natural philosophy… - p66, The Confessions of Nat Turner

folderol: Foolishness, nonsense

“I do think Boysie’s sermon was most inspiring, don’t you, little Miss Peg?” “Oh Mother, it’s the same old folderol, every year! Just folderol for the darkies! - p104, The Confessions of Nat Turner

gallus: suspenders.

He blinks steadily, and with his other hand he adjusts one gallus on his shoulder… - p149, The Confessions of Nat Turner

Have a merry snowstorm, everybody.

You know a word is a tough one when the first Google result containing the word is the dictionary entry. I wonder if one could assemble a complete list of such words, used primarily in sentences defining or discussing the meaning of the word itself…

Technorati Tags: english-practice

Some English practice for us all:

irenic: Promoting peace; conciliatory.

Among the more irenic critics [of Burnet's flood geology] was Robert Hooke… - The Biblical Flood p69

palistrophe: synonym for chiasmus; A rhetorical inversion of the second of two parallel structures.

British evangelical scholar Gordon Wenham has made a case for the coherence and unity of the flood narrative on the basis of a perceived extended palistrophic or chiastic structure in which the first item matches the final item, the second item corresponds to the penultimate item, and so on, so that the second half of the story is a mirror image of the first half. - The Biblical Flood p238

raiment: Clothing; garments.

The national raiment, in [Vladimir Jabotinsky]’s formulation, had to be unsullied by foreign admixtures and universalistic notions such as socialism. - The Legacy of Dissent p138

tribune: A protector or champion of the people (from Latin tribuna, raised speaking platform)

…since even [Tom Wolfe's character from Bonfire of the Vanities] Kramer’s father “had no interest in left-wing politics,” a reader might suppose that father’s socialism, too, was merely half-remembered and that, in the Kramer family, grandfather, the oppressed immigrant garment worker, was socialism’s truest tribune. - The Legacy of Dissent p212

Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Murakami

This is the first Murakami novel I’ve read, having stalled out on Norwegian Wood a few years ago. It’s a sheer delight, a deeply weird story of an aimless 34-year old freelance writer, his aquaintance from middle school (now a movie star), three call girls, an intensely beautiful teenage psychic, a one-armed American poet who spends his days fixing sandwiches, a failed writer named Hakari Makimuri, and the Sheep Man who inhabits a separate reality.

The novel is what I understand to be a Murakami trope: disaffected thirtysomething, unsure what he’s accomplishing in his life, alienated by his meaningless job “shoveling cultural snow”, and unable to forge true connections to the people around him. He trudges through, distracting himself as best as possible, while wondering if and when things will change. There are a few hopeful sparks amidst a fundamentally disheartening series of events, and in the end it’s only vivid personalities that we have to hold onto.

With such an oddball cast, there’s much not to relate to, but I identify with this brief passage, with the protagonist on a quasi-date with the teenage psychic:

I bought Yuki a chocolate from the snack bar as we waited for the movie to start. She broke off a piece for me. When I told her it’d been a year since I’d last eaten chocolate, she couldn’t believe it.
“Don’t you like chocolate?”
“It’s not a matter of like or dislike,” I said. “I guess I’m just not interested in it.”
“Interested? You are weird. Whoever heard of not liking chocolate? That’s abnormal.”
“No, it’s not. Some things are like that. Do you like the Dalai Lama?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s not a ‘what,’ it’s a ‘who.’ He’s the top priest of Tibet.”
“How would I know?”
“Well, then do you like the Panama Canal?”
“Yes, no, I don’t care.”
“Okay, how about the International Date Line? Or pi? Or the Anti-Trust Act? Or the Jurassic Period? Or the Senegalese national anthem? Do you like or dislike November 8, 1987?”

I love lists of marginally related entities.

The Biblical Flood by Davis A. Young

Davis Young is a geology professor at Wheaton College, a small Christian college in Michigan. He uses Noah’s flood as a lens to examine how Christian thinkers have considered extrabiblical evidence in their understanding of both scripture and the natural world.

The essential points of contention in regards to the flood are:

• Whether the flood was geographically universal, covering the entire globe, or local, limited to Mesopotamia.
• Whether the flood was anthropologically universal, destroying the entire human population other than the 8 ark-riders, or local, meaning that there are living humans not descended from Noah.
• Whether the flood required extensive miracles, such as the wholesale creation and later destruction of the flood waters ex nihilo, or whether its proximate causes were mostly or entirely natural.

A brief synopsis:

1. Early Church fathers did not hesitate to cite extrabiblical knowledge in support of their interpretation of Scripture. For example, Augustine referred to the existence of marine fossils in the mountains, and the prevalence of flood traditions in many cultures as positive evidence for a universal deluge.
2. Young argues that an appeal to extrabiblical knowledge is absolutely appropriate, because God created both Scripture and the natural world, and hence prima facie there cannot be any contradiction between the two. Any apparent contradiction is due to either incorrect interpretation of Scripture, or erroneous science.
3. Many writers strove to explain how the flood and ark could work without resorting to miracles. Note that this is a rather different exercise than seeking evidence of the deluge itself; a miraculous deluge might still be expected to leave evidence that we could discover. For example, James Hutton explained the global deluge by positing an enormous subterranean abyss, which an earthquake unleashed. Edmund Halley (yes that one) suggested that a passing comet might have caused a great tidal wave to wash across first one side of the globe, then the other. An entire field of “arkeology” (my favorite word of the month!) grew around the calculation of the size of the ark, the arrangement of the animals within, and the logistics of transporting, feeding, and returning the animals. Johannes Buteo, a Catholic mathematician, calculated in 1554 that a year’s supply of hay for the ruminants would occupy 146,000 cubic cubits, filling the second deck of the ark. The world’s larger animals would occupy a space equivalent to 120 cows; the reptiles could wrap themselves around rafters and beams. In 1675, Athanasius Kircher estimated that 4,562.5 sheep would be required to feed the carnivores.
4. Over time, scientific evidence piled up that challenged the traditional interpretation of the flood. The discovery of the Americas & Australia, with animals unique to each, now required long and tortuous journeys for the critters to and from the ark. In the nineteenth century, the discovery of dinosaur fossils presented a challenge to the space requirements of the ark. And in the twentieth century, modern dating techniques establish a human presence in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago — well before the posited historical flood — calling into question the anthropological universality of the flood.
5. Young notes that many writers adjusted their interpretation of the scripture of the flood in response to this new evidence:
   • The critical school of scriptural analysis accepts that there was a historical flood in Sumeria in around 2,500 B.C., an event incorporated into the epic of Gilgamesh, and later into the Hebrew Bible.
   • Modern Evangelical commentators have for the most part pressed the case for a universal flood on both textual and scientific grounds. Scripturally, a geographically or anthropologically local flood poses problems for the promise of God to Noah never again to flood the Earth. A variety of Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist and other Christian scholars have appealed to scientific uncertainty about the distant past, or embraced fringe science (such as using frozen mammoths as evidence of a catastrophic deluge), to assert that extrabiblical evidence can support, or at least not contradict, the traditional interpretations.
   • Young himself, with a vocal minority of Christian scientists, believes that the text describes a disrupting event in Mesopotamian civilization, in order to make vital theological points about human depravity, faith, and obedience.

I’m entirely wooed by Young’s argument that if one believes God created both scripture and the natural world, there can be no threat in understanding both as thoroughly as possible. The appeal to fringe creation science by some evangelicals puts their faith on less firm ground, by making it seem that any alternate understanding of the worldly evidence would overthrow their religious understanding. As Augustine himself wrote:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars… about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics… Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books.

I came away from the book intensely curious what Jewish scholars have written about the historical reality and nature of Noah’s flood. In fact, I found it rather curious that Young didn’t consider their writings at all, since they’ve presumably been pondering this for at least a thousand years longer than Christians. Will report back if I learn anything.

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino

Truly delightful. Fanciful, sparkling sketches inspired by the sublime and ridiculous stories that modern cosmology has to tell. Nothing more need be said, except that All At One Point (listen to it read!), a wistful reminiscence of Mrs. Mrs. Ph(i)Nk from back when everyone was in the same place before the Big Bang, sustained my longest smile in ages.

The Nazi Seizure of Power by William Sheridan Allen

A very merry Christmastime to all. Nothing better than a cozy week of snowshoeing and fireplaces to get some reading done…

In the small [Bavarian] town of Northeim, the National Socialist Party rose from winning 5% of the vote in 1930 to over 60% in 1933. Once they achieved democratic victory, the Nazis promptly dismantled the free press, absorbed civil societies, crushed opposition parties, and cancelled elections. Allen seeks to explain how and why the Nazis swept to power so suddenly and thoroughly.

Northeim was a typical country town of about 10,000, with about one-third of the (male) population civil servants, one-third industrial workers or unskilled laborers, and the remainder a mixture of professionals, farmers, and merchants. Unemployment peaked at a moderate 10%, even at the height of the Depression. Around 130 residents (1%) were Jewish, mostly thoroughly assimilated shop owners. A relatively small number (~ 8%) were Catholic, with the rest Lutheran. The character of the place was solid “Red State”, if you will — industrious, tightly-knit, patriotic, militaristic.

Prior to the Nazi rise, the electoral picture was roughly this:

• a solid 25% of the electorate supported the Democratic Socialists, to whom [AUTH] is clearly sympathetic. They were the only party that was committed to democracy and the Weimar Republic to the bitter end, and their support scarcely wavered over the years.
• A small but noisy fraction (~ 5%) supported the Communists, whose effects were primarily to frighten the middle class and prevent the Socialists from moving further to the center. A sizable chunk of the Communists would eventually support the Nazis, either out of spite of the Socialists, an attraction to radical revolution of any stripe, or the belief that it would hasten the true communist revolution.
• The majority of the electorate was split between several conservative parties: the Nationalists, the Catholic Center, and the People’s Party. It was from these rather staid parties that the Nazis would win the bulk of their support.

Much of the middle of the book is simply a chronicle of rallies, speeches, and marches held by the various parties. This part is rather boring and seems to miss the point — I rather doubt the Nazis won simply because they held four rallies with three brass bands each in April of 1932. Rather, the victory was primarily ideological and strategic:

• First of all, the patriotic, militaristic character of the town was shrewdly exploited by the Nazis, who took every opportunity to wave the flag, point to the Imperial Army as the true soul of the nation, and identify the Nazi cause with a rejuvenated military.
• Both from tradition and for fear of Communist encroachment, the Democratic Socialists espoused Marxist rhetoric (though they were centrist in practice). This alienated the sizable middle class of the town and made a centrist governing coalition impossible. The Nazis crafted their message to be primarily anti-Marxist, stirring up fears of violent revolution by anticlerical fanatics.
• As unemployment rose, the right-wing parties stymied every effort of the Socialists to reduce unemployment with public works projects. Though unemployment was never very high, the unemployed were very visible, waiting for the dole and at the soup kitchen. Thus fear of a worsening economy tilted sentiment away from the ineffective Socialists and conservatives, toward the parties that were agitating for decisive action, i.e. the Nazis (and to a lesser extent Communists).
• Violent clashes between militia groups on the left and right (the Socialist Reichsbanner and the SA Brownshirts) further polarized the situation. Once blood had been spilled, prospects for a centrist governing coalition evaporated, and conservative fears of Bolshevik violence escalated. Soon the thuggery of the Nazis seemed to be only “safe” course to prevent Communism.
• Finally, the tradition and commitment to democratic principles was simply not well established. Hence neither the electorate nor the right-wing parties flinched when Nazi rhetoric made clear their desire to stamp out dissent and bring strong, “uniting” leadership to the country.

It is at the end of the book that the simple failure of democratic society is made clear. As the Nazis consolidated power, they began shutting down both the left-wing and right-wing independent newspapers. One would like to think that in countries with well-rooted democratic traditions, this would bring such a hue and cry that the experiment would end there. Instead, the conservatives acquiesced utterly. Then the Socialist party was banned, and again the conservatives did not object; when the conservative parties themselves were banned, people were upset but the train was already off the tracks. Martin Niemoller indeed.