Sommerville’s main point is not the news is dumb, but that we are dumb for paying so much attention to it (11). We have become conditioned to think that the really important stuff of life comes to us in a neat 24-hour news cycle. Worse than that, in our mobile-digital age most of us assume that news is happening every second of every minute of every hour of every day, and if we tune out (or turn off our phones) for more than a few hours (minutes?) we will be rendered out of touch and uninformed. That’s dumb.
The solution is not better news, but less of it. The problem is with the nature of news itself. The news is all about information. It’s about what’s trending now. It rarely concerns itself with the big questions of life. It focuses relentlessly on change, which, as Sommerville points out, gives it an inherent bias against conservatism and religious tradition (50-54, 60-62, 135). Our soundbite/twitter/vine/ticker-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen/countdown-clock/special-report culture of news encourage us to miss the forest of wisdom for the triviality of so many trees. As Malcolm Muggeridge once observed: if he had been a journalist in the Holy Land during Jesus’ ministry he probably would have wasted his time digging through Salome’s memoirs (54).
Don’t say it can’t be done. As the video series at the link shows, Max McLean can do the whole book in one extended swoop. To the delight of an audience.
There’s also a link in the post that goes to a written interview with Mr. McLean.
Americans, almost uniquely in the world, have had reason to consider themselves truly citizens rather than subjects, but that’s changing as the administrative state grows. Angelo M. Codevilla takes a look at the situation in a post at the Library of Law and Liberty.
If you’re wondering why, say, The Little Sisters of the Poor can’t just sign off on a form and let others go along with the HHS mandate for them, read this (“St. Thomas More, The Little Sisters of the Poor & the Casualness of Conscience,” Tod Worner, January 7, 2014, at Patheos). Well, even if you know already why they can’t, you might want to read the post. It’s a good overview, and a good reminder of some of what’s at stake.
This is a well-done article that examines an intersection of church history and the history of science, in the last part of the 16th century, heading into the 17th. The emphasis is on correcting some over-the-top misrepresentations presented in a television show, but it’s well worth a read just in general.
Do you ever ask yourself why you should read a book? Anthony Esolen has, and he thinks Common Core has entirely the wrong attitude. I suspect you’ll agree, once you hear him out.
Suitable For Mixed Company 