In the Shadows of Monticello

Thomas Jefferson's Home is Part of His Story


Monticello, as painted in the Hampton Inn murals by Bob Kirchman and Russ Fisher. The enigmatic dome replaced an earlier full upper story as Jefferson restyled the house.

Myron Magnet has written a series of written portraits of our founding fathers that are significant in that they paint them neither as demigods or demons, but as actual men. That is what they were, ordinary mortals who found themselves at a crossroads of history.

Our founders were men with human weakness and human passion. Thomas Jefferson [click to read] as revealed by Magnet in City Journal is no exception.

Most instructive is Magnet's study of the beliefs and principles that guided Jefferson. Ideals and realities in conflict, to be sure. Jefferson's final great work was to be his University of Virginia... architecturally a study in the pure classical forms. He laid out his 'Academical Village' to reflect an order and vision for an educated Virginia population. The first students would prove to be another lesson in human nature. Still Jefferson began this institution with great optimism. This experiment in the Enlightenment idea of mankind's perfectibility was the crowning achievement of his 'retirement' years.

"But as an intellectual enterprise, the university proved less satisfactory to its creator when it opened the year before he died. The students turned out to be not so much an aristocracy of virtue and talent as a gang of rowdy young men with a taste for drink, gambling, breaking windows, firing guns into the air, and thrashing professors who tried to stop them. The horrified Jefferson came down from his mountain to Charlottesville to reprimand them. Flanked by his dear friends and fellow trustees, James Madison and James Monroe, the frail 82-year-old patriarch drew himself up to his full six foot two, began to speak, and burst into tears." -- Myron Magnet.


My rendering of the Monticello Visitor's Center. designed by Ayers Saint Gross. The rendering by The Kirchman Studio was used for promotion and development purposes. We are pleased to have had a small part in this great project.

Thoughts on Rhetoric and Reason

Madness and Evil... Happen in this Broken World


The view from Twenty Minutes Cliff Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Andrew Klavan [click to read] writes in City Journal: "Judging from his website, I would guess that Jared Lee Loughner suffers from schizophrenia. The man who opened fire with a nine-millimeter Glock in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday was obsessed with mind control and bizarre, incomprehensible theories of currency and government. He read books by Hitler, Marx, Plato, and Orwell, among others. He did not believe in God. By all appearances, his mind was ruined by madness and his soul by evil. In any case, he murdered a nine-year-old child, a federal judge, and four others while wounding at least twelve, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Blue Dog Democrat well liked on both sides of the aisle."

Lynn has More [click to read].

Glenn Reynolds [click to read] in the WSJ. ht/Lynn

Now Look Who's to Blame [click to read]. By Rabbi Dov Fischer in Jewish World Review.

He's a Tea Partier All Right [click to read]. Yankee Phil reports. To hear some people in the MSM, you'd think Loughner was carrying a Gadsden Flag and a pocket Constitution when he was arrested. Look at what was actually in his back yard.

Finally, Here is some clear perspective from Michelle Malkin [click to read]. Ms. Malkin also Remembers the Victims [click to read], including nine year old Christina Greene: "Greene’s family says she was vibrant, excited about life, and she was the “best daughter in the world.”

Born September 11, 2001, Greene was excited about the political process, was on the student government, and went to the Giffords event Saturday to learn more about the political process, family members say.

Greene attended Mesa Verde Elementary School. She was the only girl on the Canyon Del Oro baseball team. She loved the sport, as well as horseback riding and swimming. She wanted to be a veterinarian." -- KIDK/Michelle Malkin


Raven's Roost Overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway.


Glenn's Falls near Vesuvius, Virginia.

'The Journey' in the News in CJ in the News

'Everyday Life in Modern Day Coruscant' Mentioned


Driving along the Pulaski Skyway.

City Journal [click to read] is a publication of the Manhattan Institute. I find a lot of information and inspiration in their articles. The Journey is Mentioned in 'CJ in the News' [click to read] as I make reference to Guy Sormon's article on Asian megacities.

Here are some photos I took the last time I was in New York.


Manhattan Skyline from Upper West Side.


Boats on the Hudson.


Water Tower, Upper West Side.


Lincoln Center Plaza.


Upper West Side building.

Everyday Life in Modern Day Coruscant

Asian Megacities as Political Theatre


What Le Corbusier would have wrought in Paris has become the new reality of Bejing and Shanghai.

Le Corbusier once wrote of his Plan Voisin for Paris: “Since 1922 [for the past 42 years] I have continued to work, in general and in detail, on the problem of Paris. Everything has been made public. The City Council has never contacted me. It calls me ‘Barbarian’!” -- Le Corbusier’s writings, p. 207.

Fast forward to the Twenty-first Century and Shanghai [Le Corbusier on steroids]. It all seems like the realization of the fictional Coruscant from Star Wars... a completely urban environment that stretches as far as the eye can see. The entire planet of Coruscant is one continual city.

Guy Sorman discusses the rise of Asian 'Super Megagopolises' [click to read] in City Journal. Looking at the Mega-model of Shanghai, one could begin to wonder: "can Coruscant be that far off." Sorman points out, however, that Shanghai is largely a political creation...designed to create the impression that China is ready for business with the world. [1.]

Every day the city teems with life and every night the workers necessary to make it function vacate the pristine city. It is like Disney World, where the 'cast members' descend into 'Utilidor,' remove their costumes, and disappear to homes elsewhere.

For Shanhai workers, 'homes elsewhere' often means crowded andsubstandard. Just as China's factories are seldom seen by Westerners,those who maintain the stage for world commerce live in a vastlydifferent world than the one they 'portray' in their 'day jobs.'

Or perhaps, the Death Star in Star Wars is a better analogy. Its scale is way beyond human. It is intended to convey a sense of awe. Might we be looking at the work of some latter day Nimrod, seeking to elevate himself to the heavens?

Sorman points out how the mad rush into the 21st Century has obliterated the traditional spaces of Shanghai and Bejing, which were much more human in size and scate. Again Star Wars comes to mind. Green beautiful planets like Naboo and Alderon risk elimination as the Empire expands its grasp.


This scale model of Shanghai dwarfs the people in the room...


...and calls to mind the fictional city of Coruscant.

In the 'Sixties America sought to 'remake' her major cities. Le Corbusier style housing blocks were constructed to elevate the urban poor. Many of these 'projects' have since been torn down. While we were building them Moscow was building similar blocks of apartments. Today in Moscow, urban youths flock to the rooftops. [2.] Called 'Roofers,' these young people seek the rooftops simply for the openness and the view.

How to Return to the Village
Returning Government to the People in the 'Audience'

Nineteenth Century America was a nation of villages. Great centers of commerce existed, but they were fed by a vibrant countryside. When Thomas Jefferson created his ideal 'Academic Village' to house the University of Virginia he purposefully left one side open to the surrounding agricultural land. From the steps of the Rotunda one could look upon the rolling hills of Albemarle County.

Architect Stanford White convinced the University to fill the void with Old Cabell Hall a long time ago. The recently completed South Lawn attempts to recreate a space leading off into the trees of Charlottesville. The challenge of getting back to the garden is ever before us.

Rooftop Gardens [click to read] offer one method of getting people and open spaces together. Reclaiming existing environments is another. Aging strip malls could be recycled into village centers for the surrounding suburban homes, offering a place residents could walk or bicycle to. Vacant lots and neglected riverfronts can become parks and gardens.


Proposed Renewal of the Crozet Shopping Center.

Suburb bashing has always been a fashionable intellectual pastime.That is one reason I like Robert A. M. Stern. He sees the reasons people seek out single family dwellings of a traditional form. I have a friend who lives on the upper West side and his penthouse with a view of the Hudson is very nice but give me my gardens.People put up with the wretched infrastructure overload and strip centers because the village is still appealing. The residential areas become landscaped oasis for their residents. Kids play outside the house in view of the kitchen window. People visit at the back fence.Moreover the suburbs are seen by their dwellers as affirming opportunity and safety. If people had no emotion for their homes they would be fine with Le Courbusier type high rises but that is simply not the case.The problem is really one of infrastructure and public space [or lack therof]. Strip malls and box stores create a sterile wasteland but they may become the village centers of the future.

Time magazine once featured a piece called 'Repurposing Suburbs' which shows some fine examples of recreating this type of public space. This Crozet project turns a tired strip mall into a village center. One cannot wait for Crozet's redesigner to get his creative hands on some of the new "Town Center" projects which are now just collections of big box stores. Some time ago I drew a concept where the CSX tracks between Staunton and Charlottesville became a light rail line connecting Staunton, Fishersville, Waynesboro, Crozet, Ivy, The University of Virginia Medical Center and Downtown Charlottesville. The result would be a series of village centers and a better utilization of existing infrastructure.

City Journal's writers draw conflicting conclusions. Houston is touted as encouraging its middle class while Gotham offers limited options. Dense urban areas do tend to create energy efficiency. The trick is to see opportunities to improve the communities we have already created.That would certainly involve offering condominiums and a pedestrian friendly center to suburban communities and reclaiming all those wonderful old low density neighborhoods of our cities.

There is more to solving this problem than finding architectural solutions. Redemption too, must begin on a human scale. In a future post I will explore the role of 'New Monasticism' and activists like Star Parker in this aspect of redemptive work in our culture.

Next: Counterpoint to Coruscant [click to read].
___________________________________________________

The Persisting Problem of Evil

The Modern World Still Struggles With an Old Problem

Theodore Dalrymple [click to read] in City Journal discusses the age-old problem.

"The Enlightenment held out the hope that with enough of this “proper study,” man would come to know himself sufficiently to eliminate the evil and suffering that had always beset his existence. Man would obtain something like a Newtonian knowledge not only of the universe but of himself, with all the predictive and mechanical advantages that such understanding had brought in the study of inanimate nature."


Flowers and a note at Rock Point Overlook remember Tim Davis, who died from injuries that resulted from a violent attack on him and a coworker. They were sitting at the overlook watching the sunset when a man attacked them with a shotgun.

Dennis Prager [click to read] in Jewish World Review has some clear observations about the direction the world seems to be heading.

If you follow Glenn Beck you know that post-Christian thought, guided by Socialist ideas, says that "mankind is evolving toward something better." The problem is that the path is quite bloody. My question to those who hold to that view is: "What happens if you are wrong?"

Prager says: "One of the many beliefs — i.e., non-empirically based doctrines — of the post-Christian West has been that moral progress is the human norm, especially so with the demise of religion. In a secular world, the self-described enlightened thinking goes, superstition is replaced by reason, and reason leads to the moral good."

Indeed, what if you have only succeeded in removing that which mitigates the evil that resides in the human heart? Prager's Observations [click to read] go hand in hand with those of Alvin Schmidt [click to read], who documents the positive effect of faith on human affairs through history. Prager deals honestly with those evils that have been done in the name of religion, and those that have been done in the name of G-dless regimes. Prager continues:

"Of course, it turned out that the post-Christian West produced considerably more evil than the Christian world had. No mass cruelty in the name of Christianity approximated the vastness of the cruelty unleashed by secular doctrines and regimes in the post-Christian world. The argument against religion that more people have been killed in the name of religion than by any other doctrine is false propaganda on behalf of secularism and Leftism."

As society has embraced a reletivistic approach to truth, the horrors we have seen in our own sphere have increased as well. Could Seung-hui Cho, Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Ralph Leon Jackson and George Huguely been saved from comitting the horrible things they did? The question is an honest one... it deserves an honest answer. The stakes are too high.

When Bob Childress [click to read] brought his ministry to Southwestern Virginia, he found a community wallowing in fatalistic despair. Disputes and murders were common and Childress brought faith to bear in the situations he encountered there. The legacy he left was one of faith and healing.

An Apalling Lack of Curiosity

Why Doesn’t Anyone Care... The Unread Soviet Archives?


Tanks in Red Square.

A Hidden History of Evil [click to read] by Claire Berlinski in City Journal.

"We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriatethose who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead."

I grew up during the Cuban Missle Crisis. The possibility of an all out nuclear attack caused me to consider Eternal realities at a very young age. Eventually that consideration would lead me to faith.

At that point in history evil was very real and clearly discernable. Today so many thinking people seem to just not want to know. Stalin's destruction of ten million lives just doesn't seem to matter anymore. Flying over Siberia on the way to Japan, I remembered that Korean Airlines flight 007 had been shot down for straying into Soviet airspace years before. I probably was the only person on the airplane who made the connection. Most of my fellow passengers napped or watched movies as I stared out the plane window at the frozen wasteland where dissidents were exiled to.

Today the American President is all too quick to find fault with our own country and all too oblivious to the evil outside our borders. We dare not ignore the honest study of history!

An Economic Agenda for the GOP:

Free Markets, Not Big Business...

Luigi Zingales and the 100mpg Carburator

Luigi Zingales in City Journal [click to read].

In the 1970's, at the height of the gas crisis, there was an urban myth circulating about the 100mpg carburator. It went something like this: Someone had invented an ultra-efficient fuel/air mixer but industry interests had bought the patent, assuring the device would never see the light of day.

The myth persisted with the story that the prototype device had accidently been installed on a production vehicle and was thus discovered. The unknowing purchaser enjoyed passing by the gas station for months on end. When he went back to the dealer for scheduled maintenance they tried to swap it for a regular carburator but the savvy customer caught them and kept the device.

The basis for the myth is the American's inherent trust of large entities, be it big government or big business. Mr. Zingales makes a helpful, and healthy distinction between being "pro-market" and being"pro-business."

In this blog I've chronicled the story of Preston Tucker's innovative automobile and how his company was brought down by established interests. "Pro-business" can sometimes default into the worst kind of protectionism. Mr. Zingales offers a clear thinking approach to this problem that Conservatives would do well to heed.

Futurama III

New York's Tomorrow from City Journal


Glass towers in Manhattan.

During the height of the Dinkins administration, when conventional wisdom saw a bleak future for Gotham, City Journal published a special issue discussing creative solutions for the problems. Years later Rudy Guliani would stand to address the Manhattan Institute [publishers of City Journal] and show them his well-worn copy. He credited the quarterly for providing him with the inspiration for many of his well-known reforms.

Now City Journal steps up to the plate again as financial crisis threatens to derail many of New York's gains.

New York's Tomorrow [click to read] is a collection of hopeful essays grounded in reality. It should be required reading for policy makers everywhere.

In “New York’s Tomorrow,” you’ll find no shortage of bold, visionary ideas, from rezoning New York City to tort reform in New York State to building the power plants that drive the economy to enacting a Taxpayer Bill of Rights. All could help New York stay afloat and even flourish in the wake of the financial meltdown.

Does that get your attention? States like Virginia could avoid many missteps by heeding the collected wisdom of New York's Tomorrow. VDOT [click to read] might actually find in the study of more complex transit systems the wisdom to cut expenses while providing MORE service to the customer, the motoring taxpayer.

General Motors may be bankrupt, but the Manhattan Institute has a wealth of ideas to enrich our discussion of things future.

Delusions of Virtue

Theodore Dalrymple is one of my favorite writers. As I was ruminating over the ethical considerations of some fictitious situations a very real one was brought to mind by This Article in City Journal. Not unlike Marty McFly, we see real-life persons trying to reinvent the past to favor their perception of their own virtue. Dalrymple states: "...the human mind is a subtle instrument, quite capable of uttering untruths by mechanisms other than lying. Sometimes we cannot distinguish among the possibilities." Thus he makes a case that people who might claim to have been named for a famous mountaineer before he ever scaled Everest, or inventing the internet must be seen in light of the modern concept of 'virtue.' Dr. Dalrymple describes what he calls the "...modern psychopathological symptom: The Delusion of Honesty. A delusional belief is impervious to reason or evidence. In societies like Britain and the United States, once steeped in Judeo-Christian culture, such convictions become common when a belief in Original Sin finds itself replaced by a belief in Original Virtue—particularly one’s own." Now that's profound!

Does such a world, in fact, look ever increasingly for mathematical models [such as Google algorithms] to assure that everyone's self-held belief directed actions don't collide. Sort of like a moral sequence of traffic signals. In the end, a post-Christian society such as Europe must discard the notion of some overall guiding virtue for a pragmatic set of traffic rules.

No doubt, many 'reworkings' of the past to favor one's own view of virtue are harmless. Still the Marxist assigns himself virtue but see's the entreprenuer throughout history as an evil force to be reckoned with. The 'movers and shakers' are his 'oppressors.' This is where reinvention of the past becomes very dark as a science. At some point a broad-brush judgement will impune everyone who is not like me. The Marxist may try to re-write the algorithm to always distrust the entrepenuer, whom he sees as an 'exploiter,' forgetting that it was risk-takers like Edison who brought us modern convenience which we all take for granted. The concept of 'Original Virtue' seems to have many exceptions!