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Greatest Hits ~ Baroque
By George Frideric Handel, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Antonio Vivaldi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Jean-Joseph Mouret, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Johann Pachelbel, Henry Purcell, Tomaso Albinoni, Alessandro Marcello, Jeremiah Clarke, New York Sinfonietta, Philadelphia Orchestra, Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Hartmut Haenchen, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Raymond Leppard, Richard Kapp, Max Goberman, Eugene Ormandy, Vladimir Goischmann, Glenn Gould, Carolyn Watkinson, Teiko Maehashi, La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy, William Bennett
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The Iraq......war: what [was] it good for?
Plenty, as Bret Stephens argues in this perspicacious analysis. For the hyperlink-averse, here is an excerpt:
Perhaps it's worth considering what we have gained now that Iraq looks like a winner.
Here's a partial list: Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still
believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced
at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an
already crumbling sanctions regime. The U.S. would be faced with not
one, but two, major adversaries in the Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be
living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as
murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse. And the
U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.
Instead, we now have a government that does not
threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to
again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab
world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and
asserting its interests.
We have a defeat for al Qaeda. Critics carp that had
there been no invasion, there never would have been al Qaeda in Iraq.
Maybe. As it is, thousands of jihadists are dead, al Qaeda has been
defeated on its self-declared "central battlefield," and the movement
is largely discredited on the Arab street and even within Islamist
circles.
We also have -- if still only prospectively -- an Arab
bulwark against Iran's encroachments in the region. But that depends on
whether we simply withdraw from Iraq, or join it in a lasting security
partnership. Also, who knew that Francis Fukuyama (of The End of History fame) was so pusillanimous?
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| Krauthammer's "The Audacity of Vanity"I would be very remiss indeed if I did not feature a link to this excellent editorial by the great Charles Krauthammer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! 
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| Uncle Sam's QuizMSNBC claims that it has “picked some of the tougher questions that'll be used by immigration officers” on the “new version of the U.S. citizenship test” slated for implementation this fall. Maybe so, but the selected questions are still not very difficult: I scored 100% (yes, on the first attempt; no, without looking things up). Of course, since I was overseas for most of my upbringing, I didn’t get the “benefit” of going through the US public school system. 
If you’re interested in taking the quiz yourself, click here.
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| Of Worship and IdolsThis
month’s issue of Tabletalk contains a
compelling article by Rev. Terry Johnson which addresses head-on some of the
controversies surrounding “worship” practices in many modern
churches. I am including a snippet of it
below; for those of you who are interested, the entire article can be found here. It’s short and
well-worth the read—in the first part, he demonstrates why our theology of the Lord’s
Supper should inform our celebration of it far more than our personal
preferences, and in the second he soberly warns against thoughtless acceptance
of novel worship practices...no matter how trendy.
Enjoy!
“By definition worship must be about God, not
my amusement. Here is where disagreement exists: stages, theater-lighting,
bands, dancers, dramatists, hand-held microphones, all up front, the service
performed on behalf of an audience relaxing in theater-style seating. Is this adiaphora? Normally, issues of seating, lighting,
placement of musicians, style of platform might have qualified as things
indifferent, just as the elevation and adoration of the host might have been
considered adiaphora. But a line has been crossed in our generation. Much of what passes
for worship today is nothing more than lightly baptized entertainment....” | | |
| From Joseph Epstein’s Weekly
Standard article
about America’s
“Kindergarchy”—or the new order created by the preferred parenting style of modern folks: So often in my
literature classes students told me what they "felt" about a novel,
or a particular character in a novel. I tried, ever so gently, to tell them
that no one cared what they felt.... Despite
what their parents had been telling them from the very outset of their lives,
they were not significant. Significance has to be earned, and it is earned only
through achievement. The article itself is quite long and makes too many good points
for me to try to summarize them. You can read it here. Thoughts? ***
On a completely different note, my friend Caleb has an
excellent post
about Sex and the City and real
American sexual mores. With that, I’ll quit posting links. | | |
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