Thoughts Concerning Music

This post was originally published on the blog The Catholic Socratic Forum. It was re-posted here with permission from its author, John. I hope you enjoy!



Live Music vs. Recordings: My Thoughts

Just this past Sunday, I played in a strings ensemble concert. We’re a mixed group; some of us are professionals while some are not. But the magic that all of us created there—for just the space of an hour—was indescribable. We really cast a spell there.

And this magic didn't just happen. We practiced our music until it became magic. We worked it until it became perfect so that we could create something sublime.

But recordings can be played over and over again at the push of a button. Recordings are certainly very convenient and wonderful, and without them we would never be able to listen to old recitals or violin concertos or any other music that we would otherwise be unable to experience.

The things that I am going to say are really just my own thoughts. I am not saying that recordings are bad, but I think that live performances are preferable to recordings. When you go to a concert, you not only get to hear the music as it’s being produced, you see the musicians as they are playing, and form a sort of connection to them. If you are a musician, you are producing the music yourself, which is an even more wonderful thing.

On the other hand, recordings are static. The process has already taken place, and the music is now packaged frozen, just waiting to be microwaved. While this is very convenient, it’s certainly not as good as having it fresh from the garden.  

I have another objection to recordings. They can be an occasion for musicians with little or no playing talent to impress the world, and I’m sure they have. All that anyone has to do to make a spotless recording is to put lots of little bits of music together with the aid of a computer—plus the necessary equipment. (A few people don’t even try to sing anymore. All they have to do is talk into a computer and bend their voice pitch to particular frequencies.) Still, a great many recordings are produced by very talented musicians, and my objection is only that they can be done by people with little or no musical talent; I’m sure they have been. (If I'm wrong about anything in this paragraph, please correct me.)

This entire article is just an attempt to voice my somewhat embryonic thoughts on this subject (thoughts that might not all be right). I must admit that I don’t know much about the ways that live music can be better than recorded music. I also admit that I listen to a great quantity of recorded music all the time; I love it. In fact, I listen to more recordings than live music. Either one is good in its own way, but perhaps our culture makes music too easy, like frozen food.

If you have thoughts on this, please tell me. This is going to be a very interesting topic for discussion.


Photo by Derek Gleeson, via Wikipedia.

It's Over, But Not Really

In chapter eight of the first book of Samuel, the people of Israel cry out to the prophet Samuel to appoint them a king to rule over them, instead of the direct rule of God through His prophet. In an odd twist, God does not refuse the request of the Israelites; rather, He has Samuel appoint Saul as the first king of Israel. Within three generations the kingship of Israel degenerates into a crushing burden on the backs of the Jews, an oppressive regime of over-taxation, corruption, and debauchery unwilling to answer to God's call for change. God had given the people what they wanted: the glamour and pomp of a secular king, the rule of a human being, a "messiah" of sorts to wave his hand and right the wrongs of the people. It did not take long for the humanity of Israel's kings to show its ugly side. In the act of giving the people what they desired, God let them unwittingly enact His own vengeance on them..

This scenario seems all too familiar.

In 2008, America craved a change in its leadership, in its policies, and in its general direction. John McCain, stodgy and inarticulate, was seen as merely the continuation of eight long years of George Bush's perceived presidential ineptitude. America fell hard for Barack Obama, a dynamic and inspiring figure whose freshness and youthful attitude led to McCain's obliteration at the polls. Democratic rule dominated Washington and the Republican party was left for dead. Things would get done, greedy people would be punished, jobs would be created, the environment would be saved from human ravages. It was a new golden age.

Close to four years passed. Obama's administration bypassed, ignored, or downright contradicted established American law on numerous occasions. Guns went to Mexican drug lords on Obama's watch. Diplomats and SEALS died while Washington watched from afar. The economy continued to sputter and struggle. Money applied to green energy companies disappeared in multiple bankruptcies. A corrupt attorney general chose to prosecute peaceful groups opposed to his agenda, whilst leaving other known criminals to live free. The list goes on and on.

And yet, at the end of the day as we all know by now, Barack Obama was not only reelected as president, he was reelected with a rock-solid margin of victory. Mitt Romney did not just lose, Obama won. Big. Again.

I was listening to the radio Tuesday night after the election results came in, and there was all manner of finger-pointing. Some blamed Obama's ground game being more formidable than originally thought, others blamed a Republican candidate who was not as articulate expressing conservative ideals as a Ronald Reagan might have been. And then the funniest and saddest (in my opinion) excuse for the loss came from a Republican operative who blamed everything on Senator wannabes Mourdock and Akin's abortion remarks. The GOP leadership almost immediately began calling for a toned down approach to abortion and social issues in their campaigns, essentially blaming their electoral hemorrhaging on a "misguided" attempt to hold the high moral ground.

Essentially that view is correct. But in expressing that view Republicans have made a diagnosis of themselves that even they do not understand. What the Republican Party does not seem to realize is that this election had little to do with a political process failure, a procedural issue that can be re-calibrated in the next election. They are correct in thinking that the abortion remarks brought down both Mourdock's and Akins' campaigns, and maybe Romney's by extension, but their solution to the problem is their own indictment. Barack Obama won a second term because the people are more willing to put their faith in a man than in a God. Obama won because too many of the people who stand for the sacredness of life, marriage, and sacrifice (the proper building blocks of a society) were not only silent but in many cases complicit. The people of God could easily pass for people of the world, and they voted en masse in the guise of the latter.

Catholics hold the most blame in this regard. A long-standing bulwark against the slaughter of innocent people, the leadership of the Catholic Church has grown soft and complacent. There is a good case to be made that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was in large part responsible for the passage of Obamacare, in their starry-eyed frame of mind after hearing the words "universal healthcare." Catholic priests have failed to adequately express from the pulpit the evil of abortion and its corrupting influence on society's moral structure. The number of Catholics using birth control is statistically indistinguishable from secular society's numbers, despite the fact that chemical and mechanical birth control is expressly forbidden by the Church. Divorce rates are similar. The media and entertainment industries continue to barrel headlong towards a fully homosexually integrated culture, with nary a peep from the same Catholic Church. Far from being the light of the world, let alone the light to the United States, Catholics have devolved into a socially embarrassing version of fundamentalist Christian.

So yes, the Republicans did lose the election in part because of some of their members' remarks about abortion, but not because opposing abortion is a bad platform. Rather, it is because the morals of the American people have evaporated to such a degree that abortion is now a politically losing issue. And to stand for something like the ending of abortion is a career-ending move, so Republicans naturally gravitate towards the mushy lukewarm middle. It is so much easier to compromise one's moral position than to possess a spine and lose.

Democrats in many ways now hold a distinct political advantage. Their party platform is now unambiguous in its support of absolute evils (abortion and the glorification of homosexuality) and people I think gravitate towards absolutes. Especially when those absolutes are as pleasure-seeking and selfish as those the Democrats espouse, and especially in the absence of a strong witness to the truth. Obama's ground game was not merely a GOTV (get out the vote) effort, it was a systematic attempt to create both material and moral dependency on his administration. If you don't believe me, take a look at the following video. This woman is bought and paid for.



The truth is that Obama is an elected official. We the people put him there, maybe not by directly voting for him but quite possibly by not evangelizing the person standing next to us in the grocery checkout line. Obama's corrupt views and morally oppressive policies are a reflection of our lives as citizens. Before we complain that he stands for a tyrannical top-down approach towards the citizens he is meant to govern, we need look no farther than ourselves for the blessing he got to proceed.

So I urge all those people who still refuse to participate in the group-think of secularism to consider two things: number one, realize that we do not have a political problem on our hands, so much as we have a serious moral and social corruption problem; and two, live your life according to the actual dictates of your faith in a visible manner. Especially after this election is no time to hide what we believe, but to make absolutely sure that the truth is on display for the next four years in a way that it hasn't been in this country for many years.

It is time to pick a side. Not a party, not a candidate, but a clearly delineated moral side based on absolute truths. Proclaiming the truth will not necessarily win elections in the short run, but it may win hearts. A democracy (or representative republic) is only as good as the people that constitute it, and when the people are corrupt their leaders will necessarily follow. However, the opposite is also true. When enough people come to realize the true scope and evil of abortion, they will demand its censure by law while simultaneously eliminating the demand for it. When enough people come to grips with the fact that homosexuality erodes the core of a healthy and growing society, then the "gay marriage" argument will cease to hold any political water. And so on...

None of these good things will exist, however, if the truth is not shouted from every rooftop regardless of who we think is listening. I think we failed this time around. Let's not fail again.



Photo by Roxanne Jo Mitchell, via Wikipedia.

"Nazis...I Hate These Guys."

Nazis. Nobody likes them. They have to be one of the most hated, reviled, condemned groups on the planet. The takeover of Europe and parts of Russia and Africa by brutal attack, the horrifying mass extermination of the Jews, the extreme authoritarian iron rule of millions of people, and the terror brought down upon the rest of the world have created history's worst possible nightmare group of people. No wonder they are so universally upheld as the benchmark of evil. In short, as an Indiana Jones would say in echoing the world's sentiments: "Nazis... I hate these guys."

Because of this widespread derision and hatred, to be called a Nazi has become a shorthand label of politicians and journalists to aid in the obliteration of the opposition party. Or rather in particular, it has become a favorite mainly of Democrats and their hangers-on in the United States. This election cycle has seen some particularly egregious examples of this reckless name-calling.

So let's explore this name-calling a bit.

Its most direct effect, I would think, is the same effect that shouting "racism" ad nauseam has had in this same presidential race. The words "racism" and "racist" have had their true ugly meanings drained away in the rush to demonize the other side faster than they can demonize you. So to with Nazism. As Larry Elder says in the aforementioned article, "By calling political opponents 'fascists' because of policy disagreements, Democrats trivialize a regime responsible for exterminating 6 million Jews in a war that resulted in the deaths of over 50 million people." "Nazi" becomes equivalent to simply "anyone who disagrees with us," just as the word "racist" becomes an equivalent to "anyone who says otherwise than us."

But I might point out that there is more going on here than simple trivialization. There is also over-simplification and hypocrisy.

It might be instructive to look at who the Nazis really were. The caricature that the modern American draws of Nazis is usually just as silly and stupid as the caricature drawn of them during World War Two by the Allies. The Nazis were real people, with real ideas, with a real effect on history and a real heritage from earlier history. They were not some purely evil force from hell unleashed upon the world in a vacuum. They emerged in a historical context and were, I might add, in large part embraced by the German people as a political and social step forward.

The Nazis were a German political party that really came into their own after the effects of the American stock market crash reverberated around the world,  helping to destabilize Germany's economy for the second time in a decade. Germany was suffering under the crushing load of war reparations imposed upon her by the victorious powers, embarrassed by an emasculated military, and plagued by political instability caused in large part by a strange power vacuum left by the First World War and the subsequent regime change. The time in Germany was ripe for a strong leader to seize the opportunity, and a man named Adolf Hitler did just that. 

Hitler and his party, the National Socialist party (or Nazi, as it was abbreviated), came to power between 1932 and 1933, promising a renewed Germany with a renewed military and most importantly, a renewed sense of purpose. The Nazis came to power in the midst of an economic and social crisis of which they made sure to took full advantage. Certain groups (communists, Jews, and Catholics being examples) were suppressed and harassed for their beliefs or ethnicity. Whole industries were placed under state supervision or outright control. Political power was consolidated, centralized.

War became the new normal for Germany's new regime. Breaking promises, lying to other powers, invading other nations without sufficient reason, imposing harsh regulations, stymieing travel and transport also became the norm. Killing campaigns commenced, in an effort to rid the world of inconvenient or imperfect social groups. And all this in the name of the new ideology. Nazism was a worldview, a cult. Its leaders were dedicated to its survival and perpetuation, and carried out their work with efficiency and brutality.

So I come back to the question of American politicians accusing one another of being Nazis, and I must make a series of blunt observations, the first of which is this: If Democratic politicians were the least bit self-reflective, and I think some of them are, then they would realize that in practice their own party platform embraces many of the things that they accuse Republicans of believing. In other words, many things that are perennial favorites of the Democratic Party were things the Nazis espoused .

One would be the use of a crisis in order to enact government-empowering legislation against the citizenry. I can hold up numerous examples of mass shootings being used as political fodder for anti-gun lobbyists, bank failures and economic collapse as an excuse to take over various industries (most notably the Dodd-Frank legislation, the Auto Industry "bailout," and Obamacare), and intimidation of various groups for opposing said legislation (e.g. the HHS contraception and abortion mandate targeted against the Catholic Church, the media harassment of the Tea Party.) Also, I could note here the disinterest of the Obama administration in prosecuting groups like the New Black Panthers, who exist to harass and intimidate especially at voting places. Lastly, but certainly not least, I could mention not only that the Democratic Party has always been the friend of legalized and permissive abortion, but that they have now officially enshrined it in their party platform. Yes, the extermination of a particular social group, the unborn and somehow unfit to live, is now on the Democratic Party agenda.

And all this in the name of "progress."

However, this observation should not be understood apart from my second observation, which is that if Republican politicians were also the least bit self-reflective, which some of them must be, then they would also realize that in practice their policies and attitudes also reflect some favorites of the Nazi Party as well. They are far from innocent on this front.

I could mention the insatiable appetite for war among many Republican politicians and presidents, cleverly wrapped in the tenuous guise of patriotism and idealism.  Under Republican leadership, American interference and intervention in two major countries in the Middle East has cost thousands of lives on both sides and earned us the hatred of many in the overseas Muslim community. The Republican blank-check approach of support to Israel has kept relations between the Israelis and the rest of the Middle East frosty at best, leaving Israel in a perpetual state of war of defense against her neighbors. Republicans are constantly clamoring for intervention in states like Libya as well, a country which has very little to do with anything connected to America except for oil.

Let's not forget the associated evil of torture here, which is widely accepted as an effective technique of questioning amongst Republican lawmakers but disguised under cutesy politically-correct terms like 'enhanced interrogation,' plus laws like the Patriot Act which seek to invade the privacy of American citizens for the sake of supposed protection.

I could also mention the rampant nationalism present in so many a Republican speech concerning the state of our economy and the perception of our nation in the eyes of the world. How often have Republican politicians looked down on the rest of the world as being beneath America, simply because other nations do not necessarily hold dear the same values we do, or follow the same constitutional system? We are told that America is the "greatest nation in the history of the world." Why? And does this give us the excuse to trample the rest of the world when it does not bend to our whims? 

Add the Republican obsession with big business and you have a decent picture of the problem. Somehow, conservative Republican lawmakers believe that big government could not possibly be good, while at the same time proposing that big business could not possibly be bad. Big government bureaucracy = bad, big business bureaucracy = perfectly fine. Dependence on government for one's livelihood is evil, depending on big business for one's livelihood is good. In other words, it is fine to be dictated to, just not by the usual suspects.

All of these policies and attitudes are posited by each side as coming from deeply felt philosophical or moral sources. They are policies and attitudes based on ideals that do not necessarily have their grounding in truth.

American government, at the moment anyways, tends almost inevitably either Republican or Democrat. In such a divided system, compromise is usually the key, and yet compromise has led so many times to the worst of both ideological worlds. Am I calling either side Nazi? No. But I am calling on them to look at what these positions accomplish in the end. As of this moment, we have both legalized abortion and unnecessary foreign wars, overly-centralized government and  excessive dependence on both government and business. Democratic and Republican ideas, both enshrined in law and policy side by side.

It would seem that by its own moral inertia, our country is sliding its way to a situation similar to Hitler's Germany. While America will probably never find or elect such a powerful crusader for the kind of violence and hatred that Adolf Hitler enflamed, America by compromise between two such lacking ideologies and between competing groups of power-hungry politicians, has created its own lukewarm version of the same.