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TJ on Intelligent Design

"I hold, without appeal to revelation, that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. It is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an Ultimate Cause, a Fabricator of all things from matter and motion." --Thomas Jefferson

Eugenics at the Court and the Times

The story was first reported by the New York Times in an interview of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The justice's blithe comments about using abortion to control unwanted segments of the population were shocking, creepy, scandalous, and brazen.

Not surprisingly, her Eugenic-tone created shock-waves just about everywhere--well, just about everywhere except in the mainstream media. As Damian Thompson pointed out in the London Telegraph, "The mainstream media have completely ignored the story about one of the most powerful people in the country essentially endorsing Eugenics.... What the heck is going on here? What are we to make of the media’s complete silence on this issue? They don’t see a little Eugenics between friends as a big deal? They thought it was taken out of context?"

He goes on to assert, "As the large metropolitan newspapers die, they’re wondering why. This is why. You might think the New York Times might want to trumpet its exclusive. But the mindset of that pompous, prickly, boring, self-regarding publication is so overwhelmingly liberal that it didn’t even realise it had a story on its hands."

Of course, none of this is really news. As Linda DeMerle has observed the Left has never abandoned its historically cozy ties to the "scientific racism" of Eugenics pioneers like Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger. It's just the same ol' same ol' repackaged for modern consumption.

Alas, judging by the Sotomayor hearings, we moderns continue to consume it with abandon.

Reading the Classics

Mark Twain once defined a literary classic as “a book which people praise but don’t read.” Fortunately, Joseph Malaby Dent, founder of J. M. Dent & Sons, never took that quip to heart. Over the course of his career he probably did more than any other single individual to inculcate a popular appreciation for the classics—his Everyman’s Library editions, provided excellent translations in durable bindings at extraordinarily cheap prices. Walk into almost any used bookshop in the English speaking world today and there is apt to be a whole section filled with the little volumes that throughout the first half of the twentieth century became synonymous with the literary life.

Born in the old English village of Darlington, he was the tenth child of George Dent, a housepainter. As a youngster, he received elementary instruction at a local grammar school that emphasized little more than basic reading and writing skills. But by the time he was thirteen, he had already entered the workforce as an apprentice to a printer. Shortly thereafter, he turned to bookbinding. A voracious reader, he became especially enamoured with the classics—the ragged old volumes he was most likely called upon to rebind.

In 1867, he moved to London, where he set up his own bookbinding shop. He quickly gained a reputation for fine craftsmanship; indeed, his customers frequently rued the fact that his fine leather bindings put to shame the unattractive Victorian typography of the sheets they bound.

Encouraged by his rather elite clientel, Dent founded his publishing business in 1888. His first production, Charles Lamb's Essays of Elia, was edited by Augustine Birrell and illustrated by Herbert Railton, followed in 1889 by Goldsmith's Poems and Plays. Works by Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Geoffrey Chaucer, Daniel Defoe, Maria Edgeworth, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Lord Tennyson, and W. B. Yeats followed between 1889 and 1894. All of these early editions were expensively produced in limited quantities on handmade paper. Nevertheless, they enjoyed remarkable following among the literary cognoscenti.

In 1893, the bookseller Frederick Evans suggested that Dent publish a series of pocket volumes of William Shakespeare’s plays. Though there did not seem to be much demand for cheap editions of the classics—in fact, sales of the great books had suffered a serious and steady decline throughout the latter half of the Victorian Age—Dent decided to follow the inclinations of his own heart and mind. He established the Temple Shakespeare series in 1894. The series was an almost immediate success. Then in 1904, with years of experience publishing classics at popular prices, Dent began to flesh out his ambitious vision for the Everyman’s Library. It was to be a series of one thousand classics—practically the whole canon of Western Civilization’s great books—sold at an affordable price. Production began in 1906 and more than a hundred and fifty titles were issued by the end of that first year.

Thus it was Dent and his passion for the classics that ensured great literature would be available to the general public in durable editions and at affordable prices.

John Calvin (July 10, 1509-May 27, 1564)

John Calvin (July 10, 1509-May 27, 1564)

Today marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of the pastor, theologian, and social reformer, John Calvin. His father, an attorney, made certain John received the best possible education‹so, he attended the little Brethren of Common Life school in his hometown of Noyon in the Picardy region of France, just about sixty miles north of Paris. Later, he went to study in Orleans and Paris where he first began to explore the ideas of Luther’s nascent Protestant Reformation. He published the first edition of Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536, which propelled him as a thinker and spokesman to the
forefront of Protestantism.

Calvin made his first trip to Geneva that same year while on the way to Strasbourg. He was compelled to stay there (very much against his will) and helped to establish the church until he was asked to leave two years later (for which he was actually quite grateful and delighted).

The next two years spent in Strasbourg pastoring under the tutelage of Martin Bucer were the happiest of his life. But, the city fathers in Geneva had a change of heart and in 1541 they persuaded Calvin to return to the city (much to his own dismay).

The first Sunday he was back in the pulpit, he picked up exactly where he had left off two and a half years earlier--as if nothing had happened in the interval. He remained there the rest of his life. Laboring in the Word over the course of the next twenty-three years, he oversaw a dramatic reformation of the church and city and ultimately, much of the rest of Western Europe.

The transformation was stunning. As a result, liberty, opportunity, advancement, productivity, and innovation touched nearly every aspect of life and culture. Calvin’s Scriptural facility and doctrinal steadfastness ultimately proved to be the genesis for some of the greatest renewals in the modern church including that of the Puritans, the Covenanters, the Pilgrims, the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Foreign Missions Agencies, and the Bible Societies.

But, his impact was not only felt in the church. Indeed, so great was Calvin’s influence that most modern historians (even those who despise his Biblical theology) have had to concede that he was the “virtual founder” of Western freedom and
prosperity.

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