Rod Dreher

Greetings from Georgetown, where we heard tonight the English public intellectual Philip Blond introduce Red Toryism to an American audience. Blond is an engaging speaker and and real optimist about the possibility of positive political change (at dinner tonight after the speech, it was encouraging for a pessimist like me to hear him speak so vigorously about how world-changing ideas can start small). He's just received a huge launch in this country, courtesy of David Brooks' Friday column. Excerpt:

Blond argues that over the past generation we have witnessed two revolutions, both of which liberated the individual and decimated local associations. First, there was a revolution from the left: a cultural revolution that displaced traditional manners and mores; a legal revolution that emphasized individual rights instead of responsibilities; a welfare revolution in which social workers displaced mutual aide societies and self-organized associations.

Then there was the market revolution from the right. In the age of deregulation, giant chains like Wal-Mart decimated local shop owners. Global financial markets took over small banks, so that the local knowledge of a town banker was replaced by a manic herd of traders thousands of miles away. Unions withered.

The two revolutions talked the language of individual freedom, but they perversely ended up creating greater centralization. They created an atomized, segmented society and then the state had to come in and attempt to repair the damage.

The free-market revolution didn't create the pluralistic decentralized economy. It created a centralized financial monoculture, which requires a gigantic government to audit its activities. The effort to liberate individuals from repressive social constraints didn't produce a flowering of freedom; it weakened families, increased out-of-wedlock births and turned neighbors into strangers. In Britain, you get a country with rising crime, and, as a result, four million security cameras.

Is Red Toryism an idea whose time has come? I'll be on a panel at Georgetown on Friday talking about it. More here later. It was a pleasure tonight, by the way, to meet several readers of this blog, as well as cultural avatars John Schwenkler and James Poulos, the latter of whom has shaved off his steampunk sideburns, alas for us all.

This story on Pope Benedict and the current sex abuse crisis reminds me once again why John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter is an invaluable source in helping us understand what's happening and why. It's a long story, but in it, Allen explains how Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Vatican's office responding to the sex abuse claims), finally came to understand the magnitude of the crisis, and to turn things around from Rome when he became pope.

I can tell you something from my own reporting years ago. Benedict was in as much denial as anybody else in Rome, until 2002, when his fax machine at his Vatican office began disgorging round the clock reports from American dioceses detailing the horrors of the scandal from American bishops' files. A source of mine in the Vatican likened that fax machine to a transatlantic sewer line, disgorging foulness round the clock. It woke Cardinal Ratzinger up -- but John Paul wouldn't let him move against men like the odious Marcial Maciel. It's not an accident that the CDF didn't begin to move against Maciel until John Paul was on his deathbed. Things really did change under Benedict, and it's simply wrong to claim that it's business as usual in Rome. But there's the other shoe now dropping. Here's Allen:

By the time the crisis in Ireland erupted last year, a new Vatican script seemed to be in place. Papal statements of concern were quickly issued, and a summit of Irish bishops and senior Vatican officials was swiftly convened for mid-February. Similarly in Germany, Zollitsch was in the pope's office briefing him on the crisis less than a month after it first blew up.

For anyone who recalled the slow and defensive response to the American situation eight years earlier, the change in Rome seemed almost Copernican.

Therein, however, lies the rub: relatively few people know or care how far the Vatican, or the pope, have come over the past eight years.

Insiders rightly insist that Benedict XVI deserves credit for breaking the wall of silence, and for demonstrating that no abuser will be protected on his watch. Yet for most outsiders, meaning the vast majority of Catholics and virtually everyone else on the planet, all that amounts to a no-brainer that should have been accomplished long ago.

From the beginning, the "sex abuse crisis" has actually been an interlocking set of two problems: the abuse committed by some priests, and the administrative failures of some bishops who should have known better to deal with the problem.

In general, the impact of Benedict's "conversion" has been felt mostly on that first level -- the determination to punish abusers, to adopt stringent policies governing future cases, to reach out to victims and to apologize for the suffering they've endured. So far, Benedict has not adopted any new accountability mechanisms for bishops. Aside from a few instances such as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, few bishops have been asked, or instructed, to resign.

As long as the perception is that the Catholic church has fixed its priests' problem but not its bishops' problem, many people will see that as a job half done.

In turn, that unfinished business is what makes the revelations in Germany so potentially damaging. To be sure, one could reasonably insist that Benedict's policies as pope are far more important than whatever happened on his watch in Munich thirty years ago. Yet if other cases of abusers who were reassigned emerge, even fair-minded people with no axe to grind may be tempted to ask: Can Benedict XVI credibly ride herd on bishops for failing to manage the crisis, if his own record as a diocesan leader isn't any better?

Stay tuned. Rome's inability to discipline bishops, or unwillingness to, now must be faced. On the scandal, though, Joseph Ratzinger is not Karol Wojtyla, and is in fact a great improvement in this area. Don't forget that. But again, the job is not finished. Yet.

I'm not going to be able to blog much today, because I'll be busy in Washington, but I wanted to say a final word on the obesity thread. First, I want to thank you who have shared your painful personal stories about struggling with weight. I am deeply impressed (and not in a good way) by how much people's screwed-up attitudes toward food come from childhood, especially from bad relationships with one or more parents. It really does make it clear that overcoming obesity is far more complicated than simply an act of will. I thank you for helping me to understand that. Reflecting on this thread, I also have come to understand that while I absolutely should exercise more and eat less -- again, I am deeply hostile to accepting the belief that I'm a victim of circumstance, and powerless to affect my own weight -- I have nevertheless realized that no matter how thin I might become, I will never be thin enough in my own mind. That's crazy. But there it is.

I also had an epiphany yesterday while looking at a couple of those evil "thinspiration" websites, which promote anorexia. They are truly revolting, in the same sense that the Jersey woman who gorges herself with food in an attempt to gain 1,000 pounds is revolting. But my reaction to the pro-ana women was overwhelmingly one of compassion -- I thought, "Those poor women are in desperate trouble, and they need to be saved, whether they know it or not." Yet that wasn't my response to the morbidly obese Jersey woman, who is surely committing slow suicide in the same way the anorexics are. I did feel sorry for her, but mostly I saw her with disgust. Maybe it's because her eating food struck me as something she does for pleasure (because food is pleasurable); that's not the same as avoiding food. But on second thought, how can anyone who consumes food like the Jersey woman does possibly take real pleasure in it? Or if she does, it's plainly a disordered pleasure; similarly, though I can't imagine starving oneself is pleasurable, the truth is those who suffer from anorexia must, at some level, take masochistic pleasure in hunger. I can see myself -- my gluttonous self, which I can't stand -- in the Jersey woman, and ironically, that ability to identify at some level with her did not lead me to have more compassion for her, but rather to despise her. I repent of that. My inability to see the morbidly obese woman who disgusted me as in the same category as the anorexics who elicited my compassion represents a failure of imagination on my part. So I'm sorry about that, and I appreciate having learned something from this discussion.

Regarding obesity and one's struggle with weight, it sounds corny, but I guess the words of the serenity prayer really do apply: "God grant me the strength to change the things I can, to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference."

So foresees the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report released this week by the U.S. military, at least absent urgent and massive change. The JOE sees American government indebtedness, which is going to get far worse with the entitlements crisis on the near horizon, as putting our national security at serious risk. The report says that not even the most optimistic projections of economic growth can make up for the government's revenue needs in the coming years. Say the military analysts: "Projected revenues from taxation in most plausible economic scenarios are far below that which is necessary to meet current and assumed commitments by the federal government." What's more, the report warns, the deepening trade deficit only makes matters worse. Excerpt:

The foregoing issues of trade imbalance and government debt have historic precedents that bode ill for future force planners. Habsburg Spain defaulted on its debt some 14 times in 150 years and was staggered by high inflation until its overseas empire collapsed. Bourbon France became so beset by debt due to its many wars and extravagances that by 1788 the contributing social stresses resulted in its overthrow by revolution. Interest ate up 44% of the British Government budget during the interwar years 1919-1939, inhibiting its ability to rearm against a resurgent Germany. Unless current trends are reversed, the U.S. will face similar challenges, anticipating an ever-growing percentage of the U.S. government budget going to pay interest on the money borrowed to finance our deficit spending.

Take a look at this country-by-country comparison on current trade balances from the CIA World Factbook. Look at who's No. 1, then observe who's last on the list.

What do you get when you combine a Mac nerd with a foodie? A guy who creates a cheese head of Steve Jobs for his upcoming iPad launch party. Genius. Recipe here.

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