Two songs I tend to listen to back to back

"Highway 61 Revisited," by Bob Dylan:

 

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61”

And "The Story of Isaac," by Leonard Cohen:

The door it opened slowly,
My father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
His blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
And you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
The lake a lady's mirror,
We stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
But it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
He looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
"just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan.

 

Story Of Isaac lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC 

And the only thing that's permanent...

I've been having a bit of a conversation on FB about how our lives change, and it reminded me on one of my favorite songs of all time, written by Johnny Rivers and on his 1971 album Home Grown.  The song is "Permanent Change," and here are the lyrics:

I've been sitting here for days
Thinking of different ways
To change my life so I can start anew
The one thing is not clear
What is this sound I hear?
Is it me or maybe it is you

I see colors everywhere
People who just don't care
Those who think that they can change the world
Looking back on all the years
Of happiness and tears
I've found now there's only thing that's for sure
You only get what you give
The way you die is the way you live
And what you want is not always what you need
cause you might want it today
but tomorrow you'll throw it away
and the only thing that's permanent is change

I see colors everywhere
People who just don't care
Those who think that they can change the world
Looking back on all the years
Of happiness and tears
I've found now there's only thing is for sure
You only get what you give
The way you die is the way you live
And what you want is not always what you need
yeah you might want it today
but tomorrow you'll throw it away
and the only thing that's permanent is change
oh, the only thing that's permanent is change
the only thing that's permanent is change

 

Peace and love, my brothers and sisters.

 

The Greatest Christmas Movie Ever

The original Miracle on 34th Street,  Just sayin'.  (Watching it is our only Christmas ritual.)

More Sunday Photoblogging

Chris Bertram has a lovely, very formal shot of the Natural History Museum in London; I have a not-so-lovey shot of the gallery at the Louvre wherein one can fight one's way to the place where the world's most famous painting hangs behind bullet-proof glass.

How the Scots Created the Modern World

I'm reading Arthur Herman's recent wildly popular book, How the Scots Created the Modern World, and I am, overall enjoying it greatly.  And I should probably finish it before I begin commenting on it.  Except...

It feels very much as if he come to a conclusion--that much of the intellectual foundation for modernity (however one may choose to define it, but let's go with representative, non-authoritarian governments and private-property ownership economies, with a strong commitment to the rule of law) arose in Scotland.  And that the book was written as, well as more than an argument for that conclusion.  More as a campaign speech.  Two examples, one fairly minor, the other, to me, extremely serious.

Minor.  The Scots thinkers about whom he writes clearly did not agree with each other.  Hume's skeptical rationalism and Witherspoon's religious-based appeals to custom and order make strange bedfellows.  Adam Smith's foundation of the wealth of nations in the operation of reasonably free markets does not play well with James Steuart's mercantilism (his Principles of Political Economy was published in 1767, 9 years before Smith's An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations--they were, essentially, contemporaries).  This is, however, somewhat minor.  No period of intellectual ferment--and the late 18th century was that--is a single stream of thought.

Major.  Herman devotes a chapter to the role of Scots who emigrated either from Ulster or from Scotland to America in the foundation of the United States.  He notes their championing of limited government and individual rights.  He also notes that many of them were prominent politically and professionally in the southern colonies.  Oddly, to my mind, there are only two mentions in that chapter of slavery.  One is a reference by one of the people he focuses on, referring to England's restrictions on colonial economic activity as slavery.  The other is a throwaway mention of disputes over slavery during the (1787) Constitutional Convention. 

But is seems obvious to me (as, indeed, it did to a fair number of people in the late 18th century) that in a society as dependent as the U.S., and in particular as dependent as the southern colonies-soon-to-become-states, were on slavery, rhetoric about freedom may ring hollow.  This disconnect between what people like Patrick Henry were saying in the course of their political disputes with England and how they prospered--by owning, and exploiting, slaves--is too stark not to at least address. 

So I don't know where I will come down at the end.  At the moment, there is a serious flaw at the core of the argument, and one that I'm not sure is capable of being remedied.