Author: J. Arthur Bloom

J. Arthur Bloom is the blog's editor, opinion editor of the Daily Caller, and an occasional contributor to the Umlaut. He was formerly associate editor of the American Conservative and a music reviewer at Tiny Mix Tapes, and graduated from William and Mary in 2011. He lives in Washington, DC, and can be found, far too often, on Twitter.

Political influence, in Virginia and ‘all creation, U.S.A.’

Bob McDonnell, governor before today’s Clinton satrap, became the first chief executive of Virginia to be convicted of a crime last week, being found guilty on 11 of 14 corruption-related charges. Now he faces prison time for his connections to Jonnie Williams, the now-retired CEO of Star Scientific, a chemical company operating somewhere close to the line between pharmaceuticals, supplements, and various other things — they were among the first to develop dissolvable tobacco lozenges (here is a picture of Lindsay Lohan at the launch party for them).

According one of the better articles on the relationship, by Peter Galuszka, that was actually an attempt to shore up the business in the midst of a patent battle with R.J. Reynolds, regarding what is claimed to be a way to process tobacco to be less carcinogenic when smoked, the invention of which reportedly involved Williams microwaving tobacco in his kitchen.

Needless to say, he’s an adaptable man, and much as George Washington switched to wheat when he proved to be an inept tobacco planter, at the time the scandal broke Star Scientific was marketing a new product said to be in part for smoking cessation, which is currently tied up by the FDA.

It behooves someone in an industry that straddles so many different types of regulatory regime to have powerful friends. When besieged rich people get political, sometimes bad things happen.

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Sacred Harp 89: ‘The Church’s Desolation’

Well may Thy servants mourn, my God,
The Church’s desolation;
The state of Zion calls aloud
For grief and lamentation.
Once she was all alive to Thee
And thousands were converted,
But now a sad reverse we see,
Her glory is departed.

And has religion left the Church
Without a trace behind her?
Where shall I go, where shall I search,
That I once more may find her?
Adieu, ye proud, ye light and gay,
I’ll seek the brokenhearted,
Who weep when they of Zion say,
Her glory is departed.

Some few, like good Elijah stand,
While thousands have revolted,
In earnest for the heav’nly land
They never yet have halted.
With such religion doth remain,
For they are not perverted;
Oh may they all through men regain
The glory that’s departed.

The end of the cult of Buckley

What to think of a magazine that feels it necessary to defend Phil Robertson but not Pat Buchanan?

That first tweet strikes me as probably correct, but it’s worth breaking down a bit.

In his defense, the CIA had great taste in journalism back in the day. Read this piece by Carl Bernstein if you doubt it:

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the oldSaturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. The general outlines of what happened are indisputable; the specifics are harder to come by. CIA sources hint that a particular journalist was trafficking all over Eastern Europe for the Agency; the journalist says no, he just had lunch with the station chief. CIA sources say flatly that a well‑known ABC correspondent worked for the Agency through 1973; they refuse to identify him. A high‑level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the New York Times provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966; he does not know who they were, or who in the newspaper’s management made the arrangements.

On the one hand, I suppose working with the CIA is better than, say, Claud Cockburn’s counter-espionage work in Spain on behalf of the Soviets. On the other hand, when a news media that lathers up the American people into scares about domestic extremism leads to a situation like Ruby Ridge, there is no functional difference, right down to the execution. The SPLC is a kind of counter-espionage organ, in other words.

(Ask yourself, if the CIA were to get involved in journalism today, which publications do you think it would be working with? Maybe one with unusually good access to foreign, often dangerous locations, posturing as subversive while actually helping to solidify American cultural imperialism? Fits the profile…)

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Patrick Deneen discovers ultracalvinism

Uh oh:

… post-Protestant “religious” secularity is the established religion of, and increasingly indistinguishable from, liberalism as a political, cultural, and social form of human organization. It was once believed by many that liberalism was a neutral political order within which a variety of beliefs could flourish—among them, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, etc. But what is clear both as an intellectual and theological matter as well as an observable fact from many current cultural battlefields is that what Smith describes more broadly as a “sacred project” is increasingly intolerant of competitor religions, and stridently seeks their effectual elimination by “liberal” means. It does so not in the name of some amorphous and tolerant “secularism,” but in the name of the new, and increasingly established, State religion of America. What we call “secularism” isn’t simply unbelief—it is a system of belief with distinctive “theology” without God and this-worldly eschatological hope, and it demands obeisance or the judgment of blasphemy and condemnation.

Where have we heard this before?

The “ultracalvinist hypothesis” is the proposition that the present-day belief system commonly called “progressive,” “multiculturalist,” “universalist,” “liberal,” “politically correct,” etc, is actually best considered as a sect of Christianity.

Specifically, ultracalvinism (which I have also described here and here) is the primary surviving descendant of the American mainline Protestant tradition, which has been the dominant belief system of the United States since its founding. It should be no surprise that it continues in this role, or that since the US’s victory in the last planetary war it has spread worldwide.

Ultracalvinism is an ecumenical syncretism of the mainline, not traceable to any one sectarian label. But its historical roots are easy to track with the tag Unitarian. The meaning of this word has mutated considerably in the last 200 years, but at any point since the 1830s it is found attached to the most prestigious people and ideas in the US, and since 1945 in the world.

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Atomic Country Gospel

In lieu of a Sacred Harp post this week, this really needs to be plugged.

They’re a terrifying sight as they fly on day and night
It’s a warning that we’d better mend our ways
You’d better pray to the Lord when you see those flying saucers
It may be the coming of the Judgment Day

They were at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and old Pasco
Working in a downpour of rain
In that zero hour seeking out some heavenly power
While the Star Spangled Banner was being played

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