Make applesauce from the fruit that is already ripening and falling from the tree in the back yard: I think that no prudent man would wager much money on it happening but, eh, I could do this. Sunday, after the landlady has departed along with her dog.
An amusing story related by the composer Sir James MacMillan, published Thursday at this site, which is evidently called 'A Celtic State of Mind', referring to the football, soccer, club in Glasgow, I believe; my vague impression is that this is the club that is traditionally followed by the Irish immigrant and Catholic communities in Scotland. His The Berserking is, MacMillan says, "the only piano concerto in the history of classical music to be inspired by the away-goals rule". No idea what that rule is but the Celtics lost the match or series of matches against a team called Partizan.
It struck me as a vivid illustration of the facility in these parts, in these tribes, for shooting ourselves in the foot in sporting and for that matter in political endeavours.
That sentence looks to me to be attributed to MacMillan but is the only one in a series of quotations without quotation marks so who knows.
The alerts from Google also this morning brought me this essay by Professor Deneen about his current usual subject, 'liberalism has failed'. Newsweek (this is the first time I've read at that outlet in how many years? many) also published a response from Jonah Goldberg, which doubtless can be discovered and read if one is interested. 'Read'; the fact is, I skimmed quickly: I finished his book the other day and think I'm more or less on top of the argument.
... Our politics today has become so unsettled and ferocious because liberalism has failed. It failed not because it fell short of its vision of the isolated and autonomous human person, and the effort to construct a society indifferent to questions of the common good—but because it succeeded in doing so. Like the aristocrats of old, some will fight ferociously to maintain this system against growing discontents by insisting—against the evidence of the senses of the powerless and dispossessed—that they benefit from its corruptions. But like the liberals of old—who several centuries ago called for a fundamental change, but today have become the corrupt oligarchic establishment—the energy and most vital debates are taking place among those looking to construct the foundations of a post-liberal future, and not those telling us all is well if you just limit your gaze to the tony neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.
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