According to Adam Gopnik, at the New Yorker, many of my readers and I hate cathedrals.
Well, he alleges that we oppose “beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains” (not cathedrals, exactly) for the same reason that “seventeenth-century Protestants hated the beautiful Baroque churches of Rome” — as “luxurious symbols of an earthly power they despised.”
Hmmm. Disagreeing with Gopnik is a hate crime?
Americans have more than enough cause to oppose big, intrusive government. We know how it works (often not very well), we know how unfair it is (often quite unjust), and we have a traditional alternative ready at hand (Constitutional liberty).
Cluelessly, Gopnik just sees a pig-headed hatred of government that leads to a hatred of some really nifty things.
He should reconsider. Perhaps what we have is a love of liberty and justice. And that precludes some nifty things from being conjured up in certain ways.
I bet Gopnik agrees. Go back to something like a cathedral. Take Teotihuacan. The Aztecs sure made some impressive buildings. Big public works projects. But for the purposes of blood sacrifice? At the cost of constant imperial warfare and imperial rule?
No.
Same with some dream projects. No doubt taking a billion-dollar train to a trillion-dollar airport would be cool. But I’d rather spend my money in other ways. And is it really right to tax somebody else for my luxuriant transports?
No more than robbing Peter to pay Paul … even to build a cathedral.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Hating Cathedrals”
The perfect illustration of the moral relativism of the lib/prog politician, and of not a few RINOs in office as well.
The end justifies any means, as so well illustrated in the movie Primary Colors, where it matters not what laws or ethics or moral codes have to be broken, so long as the lib/prog ends up “winning”. History is written by the victors, and re-written by the folks that build the presidential libraries. Only a minor annoyance if the actual previously written record disagrees. One can always find someone like National Security advisor Sandy Berger willing to fall on their sword for their personal tyrant.
“What profitith a man if he gain the whole world if he loses his immortal soul in the process” is only a minor annoyance for those lib/progs who have no God or for whom they’ve already rationalized their own actions as being for Camu’s “welfare of humanity”.
Well and succincly put, as always.
This article illustrates why I do not use the word “pragmatic” when I mean “practical”
Pragmatic originally meant following the concept of “the end justifies the means”
Just a pet peeve of mine. Paul unwraps it and exposes it quite well.
Not bad company to be in, being against cathedrals.
“And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.” Exodus 20:25
I didn’t hear any pissing and moaning when the Marshall Plan was spent rebuilding Europe after WW II. Just who do you think built those wonderful railways? Have you ridden Germany’s ICE? Why is the U.S. left out of modern modes of transportation?
Bruce — I wasn’t alive yet when the Marshall Plan was launched. So I think I deserve special dispensation for not having moaned at that time. I do promise to piss and moan a little extra over any wasting of taxpayers during my lifetime just to make up for that.
I keep hoping someone would ask PBS and the rest of the tax takers, if their project really is worth taking bread from the mouths of the babies of the working to finance their wonderful project.
Even government schools take more from the poor than the rest since rental property has higher taxes than others and most of the poor have no other choice than to rent.
For a short time we were part of the working poor, so I know how painful it is to have the government steal your children s food
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Marilyn
Made a big mistake on the earlier post.
I keep hoping someone would ask PBS and the rest of the tax takers, if their project really is worth taking bread from the mouths of the babies of the working poor to finance their wonderful project.
Even government schools take more from the poor than the rest since rental property has higher taxes than others and most of the poor have no other choice than to rent.
For a short time we were part of the working poor, so I know how painful it is to have the government steal your children s food.