The following was originally published for Mother’s Day of 2012.

The scene is often the same during the smoldering lulls of my estivation: groggy-eyed and hair dampened adolescentasaurus emerging from hazy hibernation between plush covers, staggering toward the kitchen, feet cold to the touch, coffee on the quick, mummy dearest from a distant room inquiring as to my goings-on for the day and have I made my bed and have I found a job yet. However much I detest such nagging at such an early hour (noonish), I know the necessity of pokes and prods for me to “get a move on”—another oft-made remark by ma-ma.

Sunday was, as I hope you did not forget, for your mother’s sake, Mother’s Day (Side note for all of you grammar Nazis out there: I too thought, “but surely the apostrophe must come after the ‘s’ because it is a plural possessive.” However, as it turns out, Anna Jarvis, the founder of the day, was adamant that the name hold the apostrophe before the ‘s’ as a singular possessive, that the day be special for each individual person’s own mother, instead of, you know, all those other moms. Though I still believe, for multiple reasons, the post-‘s’ apostrophe to be correct, and I certainly will not discourage anyone from ever wishing my mother a happy Mother’s Day as well). It is a day to celebrate the woman who not only brought you into this world, but most likely kept you in it, at least for some time. Where would we all be without our mothers?

I suppose it’s like another of my mother’s sayings: You’d lose your head if it weren’t attached.

There has been quite a bit in the news of late with regards to the state of mom. Without syndicating the “War on Women” brouhaha in its entirety, I will point to the unwise (if only ultimately, due to how media today operate with sound bites, etc.) words of Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen:

“Guess what: his [Romney's] wife has never really worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kind of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why do we worry about their future.”

Of course, one could come to her defense and claim she meant wealthy mothers who raise their children with the help of a husband have a certain level of privilege that does not require them to make terribly tough day-to-day decisions regarding what kinds of food can she afford to buy her kids and how much or can she clothe them or not or send them to the right school or not or whether she has to get that second or third job or not or can she even afford to or can she even afford not to or can she afford the extra time to read to her children at night or can she visit grandma this weekend or not; the decisions about which of these things will she or will she not be able to do because of her limited means—we’re talking physical, monetary, mental, emotional, et al. Most moms, and it is a sad, though improving situation, do the majority of the house work and child rearing in the family. Being a mom is a tough job, to say the least. Throw a career or even a few part time jobs onto that and/or single status and the job becomes one of the toughest there is, if not the toughest. Being a mom is tough shit, especially when things aren’t going your way.

Being a mom is also pretty damn important. Our kids are our future, after all. So why don’t we (the good ole US of A) institute a national policy of paid paternal leave like they have in most nations? It would help out working mothers, and it would help out families. Not only that, but why don’t we have national parental training programs (our moms are great, but imagine how much greater they would be with some pro-tips before they even started)? The U.S. should extend a hand to moms just like they do for all of us. Maybe we need to even think about stipends for working moms or free college education or real universal health care—stuff that will help shoulder the burden, help eliminate a few worrisome objects from the to-do list.

Many women nowadays continue to try to “have it all”—the successful professional career, the wonderful marriage, the children. Although I may not be one to impart such wisdom (and perhaps even less so on such a topic), I must say from observation that it seems like very, very few—I mean like almost no one—can “have it all.” Some moms work, others stay at home. No mom should be in the business of dragging the other mom down due to that mom’s lifestyle choice. So what if a mom wanted to stay at home and work hard there to raise her kids? So what if another wanted to win the bread as a successful businesswoman? Both are equally viable options. Both people can be great moms. All moms provide something for their children in their own ways. A quick note to moms with regards to that outdoing each other stuff: be highly skeptical of that Time cover. I’m not sure, speaking as a son, that I would be game for that whole attachment parenting business. No, moms who do it aren’t better moms, necessarily (also, if you, as a mom, do follow that school, it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily any worse).

Which brings me back around to my mom. My mother and I have a pretty good relationship, I’d say. We chat often. Talk about myriad topics spanning minutia to Middle Eastern literature. She’s always there for me when I need her to be, even if I’m not always being the best son I can be. One of the toughest things about being a mom must be the inherent thanklessness of the job. I sure as hell know I don’t thank my mom enough for what she does, and a good bit of the time (more than I’d care to admit) I probably don’t even act like I’m thankful for what she does. There are those moments, the rough patches—no relationship is perfect (another quote from mom)—when I feel a tingling sense of guilt grow over me for what I’ve done, or failed to do, and I think back to all she has done for me, most of it without even asking for a thank you, or when we get into a fracas over some issue we’ll forget all about in a day or two. I know I will forget to heed my own advice, but try saying thanks to mom every now and again, just out of the blue, maybe when you notice she’s had a knock or two. It’s a great pick-me-up, an unexpected thank you is, better than morning Joe even. Let’s try to let them know we are thankful.

I know Mother’s Day was yesterday, but thank your mom—or any mom, or any mother figure in your life really—for all they do for you, because without them, you wouldn’t be you. As my mother said, there is never a bad day to thank your mom. And mother’s always right.

P.S. No Mother’s Day is complete without the motherlovin’ glory that is the SNL digital short Motherlover:

The post Musings on Mummy appeared first on The Handle.

For those who haven’t heard of it, The New World is essentially Malick’s retelling of the Pocahontas story—but it is so much more than that. The film is gorgeous: shots of natural, unblemished 17^th century Virginia the likes of which I’ve never seen on screen before greet you as America greets the English explorers.

It could have been easy to write the story and completely romanticize the Native Americans while completely vilifying the English, to make a film about the original stain on America (that’s all in there, but it’s not all that’s in there). Instead, The New World seems to me a more complicated, more honest film. The film is largely preoccupied with the romance between Captain John Smith and Pocahontas, but there is enough time spent on the small triumphs and mighty struggles of the English and the native tribes, as individuals and as a whole, that one gets the sense that these are people. Neither the natives nor the colonists feel like caricatures. Both are in a strange situation, both are seeing a new people, a new world, and both are reacting in real, honest human ways.

The great, late Roger Ebert made a similar point in his elegant review of the movie (seriously, if you want to know more about the film before seeing it, or if you have seen it and you want to place the film within a context with better insight into the film, go read Ebert’s review). Pocahontas, who later takes the name Rebecca before marrying John Rolfe, doesn’t just help introduce America to the English. In the end of her story, she is introduced to England: “There are two new worlds in this film, the one the English discover, and the one Pocahontas discovers.” For this reason, the film seems like a dance danced by dancers learning it as they go. Wonder and awe is the state the audience is in, or at least that seems to be what Malick is going for, and rightly so. Both Smith and Pocahontas, the English and the natives, are thrown into a wilderness where they must feel around in child-like wonder at the newness of it all. Without voicing it explicitly, “the naturals”, as the English deem them, ask “what is this civilization, this land and people to the East?” And in silence too, the English ask, “what is this natural world, this untamed wild land?”

The New World, John Smith says in narration, is a place where one can start anew. America brings hope and life and a promise that one can escape their old selves and get a second chance. How essential these themes are still to America.

I am reminded now of a quote by John Anderson (as quoted in a footnote in Bugbee): “Man’s nature is not attained once and for all, but again and again, hauntingly maintained in an eternal present. The meaning of the unknown, the New World, is to be found in that journey taken into it, a journey that discovers again and again that man’s nature is to be reborn.” And through their coming to love one another, John Smith and Pocahontas, and later, John Rolfe and Rebecca, are reborn.

Time and again John Smith, in reflection on his romance in America, says it was like a dream, like a myth, too good to be true. And so it seems at the end of the film when Rebecca retains her commitment to her new life and her new husband, John Rolfe. Perhaps the love Smith and Pocahontas had in America was too good to be true, and perhaps this is Malick’s commentary on the promise of America—is it a dream, a myth, too good to be true?

But like I said, this film is layered and nuanced. But above all, it is honest. Some of my favorite parts of the film were when John Smith and Pocahontas taught each other about their respective cultures and languages while playing as children in the serene natural America. In watching them explore their wilderness—whether it be America, Pocahontas, and the Powhatans for Smith, or Smith, Jamestown, England and Rolfe for Pocahontas—I felt a deep connection to the world that is my own wilderness. Every day we encounter new people, new places, new aspects on the old things we already thought we knew. Every day, if our eyes are open, we can see the world anew, and in seeing, renew ourselves.

Like Bugbee says in The Inward Morning: “Our true home is wilderness, even the world of every day.”

The post Being in a New World appeared first on The Handle.

I’m wondering: what’s the difference between the two? What separates America and Britain besides the Atlantic? Are we really as different (or as similar) as people say? What’s it like to be American in England, or a Britain in America? Christian Lorentzen writes in the London Review of Books about these very questions. His opening paragraph:

“I was walking down Great Russell Street a few weeks ago when a young man emerged from a house wearing sandals, khaki trousers, a backwards University of Tennessee baseball cap, and a yellow T-shirt that had FUTURE WORLD LEADERS CONFERENCE emblazoned on it. This, I thought, is why they dislike us: sockless boys from Knoxville asserting their place in the hegemonic order a block from where Marx wrote Das Kapital. Yet to expect an American to morph into an Englishman would be like tossing a lemon into a cranberry bog and asking it to turn maroon. We’d sooner rot.”

Yes, Americans can be obnoxiously self-absorbed and entirely oblivious about their display of narcissism and seemingly cultural ignorance. But I think rather than it being malevolent (though I have met a few immature Americans who insist on parading around proudly as the Ugly American), it comes from a sense of childlike innocence about the world. Americans are, for the most part, pretty isolated from other nations due to our country’s size and geography. This might explain some of the other differences Lorentzen mentions:

“Being an American in London is perfect if you like not getting a straight answer, enjoy being condescended to about your country’s lack of irony, and have a thing about rain and talking about rain. I come to these thoughts by way of Terry Eagleton’s far from unfunny new book Across the Pond: An Englishman’s View of America (out in June). In his introduction Eagleton writes on ‘the usefulness of stereotypes’, which Americans dislike because, in the words of Mr Wentworth in Henry James’s The Europeans, ‘we are all princes here.’ It’s the first in Eagleton’s litany of paradoxes about Americans: ‘Quite how everyone can be special without nobody being so is a problem we can leave to the logicians.’ So it’s hard to go from somewhere where everyone’s special – even if it means being put in a ‘special’ PE class for your lack of co-ordination (as I was) – to a land that has actual princes (even if they are obvious dolts). One way to compensate is to wear a shirt that advertises your status as a FUTURE WORLD LEADER.

Stereotypes tell you a lot about the people who think that way, and Eagleton has clarified much for me about the English. I don’t have to be told that Americans are sentimental, earnest, boastful, narcissistic, inarticulate, inelegant, literal-minded, acquisitive strivers who speak in euphemisms. Some of this stuff I’m glad to be away from even as I remain a boastful, narcissistic striver myself. But it’s good to have some definitions of terms that have perplexed me. ‘The British,’ Eagleton writes, ‘“muddle through”, meaning that they achieve their goals but don’t quite know how, and might just as easily not have done.’ It’s a strange phrase to hear, as I have, from the mouth of a banker, but then I suppose public subsidies are just that sort of thing. And then there’s the weather – something I’ve never paid attention to. ‘The subject,’ Eagleton writes, ‘appeals to the deep-seated fatalism of the British people, since there is no way of stopping a thunderstorm. This … is a secret source of self-lacerating joy among the citizenry. The British rather enjoy feeling helpless, as the Americans do not. The thought that there is absolutely nothing one can do is regarded by some in the United States as defeatist, nihilistic and in some obscure sense unpatriotic. In Britain, it brings with it a strange, luminous, semi-mystical kind of peace.’”

Maybe Americans are all of the things the British see us as. Maybe the British are all of things we see them as. Maybe it’s more ambiguous and up for debate. In my lifetime, I have seen much of America. I believe the above descriptions of America really do tell you more about the describer than what’s being described; there are as many aspects of America as there are Americans. Maybe the British pay attention to certain traits about America because it is exactly those traits that conflict most violently with the traits that are most essential to the British?

Anyway, these are questions I intend to look into when I’m in the old motherland for six weeks. In the meantime, I think it is important to note that America, however influenced by the British, has, with the influx of peoples from all corners of the globe, evolved into a nation with a determinedly different outlook on life from our brothers on the rainy isle.

The post England: Pre-Departure appeared first on The Handle.

This is one of those old questions, one of the ones that the ancients debated and we still haven’t settled: What is literature (poetry, art) for? Plato wrote that poetry was largely immoral, and that in the republic Socrates and his interlocutor were constructing, only moral poetry, poetry that praised heroes and the gods, could be allowed in. Others have argued to the contrary, that poetry (literature) is good and has purpose. Others still have argued differently. Patricia Viera takes a stab at things:

But if literature does not necessarily make you good and is certainly not the only form of entertainment that is good for you, what is it really for? Does literature still matter and, if so, why?

The problem with most arguments in the debate about reading is that they posit literature as an instrument used to achieve a certain goal: either the good of the individual (it is good for you) or the good of society (it makes you good). Leaving aside the issue of deciding whether what makes you good is not, ultimately, good for you, a more fundamental question arises: why does literature need to be defended at all?

The anxiety to justify literature is symptomatic of our age, when all activities should have an easily identifiable objective. The difficulty with literature, as well as with music or the fine arts, is that it has no recognisable purpose or, in Immanuel Kant’s elegant formulation, it embodies “purposiveness without purpose”. Reading certainly has myriad effects, but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how it influences each person and harder still to translate this impact in terms of quantifiable gains.

Literature breaks the continuum of the everyday and makes us stop and think. The linguistic experimentation that is the hallmark of the literary estranges us from the most commonplace of tools, our language, while the fictional elements of novels, plays and poems offer us a glimpse into a reality that is not our own. In doing so, reading affords us an essentially human of experience: the realisation that what is does not necessarily need to be, that things can be different and that another world is possible. The struggle with or the embrace of a work of literature shapes our hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions. Literature matters, ultimately, because it makes us who we are.

And Alan Jacobs responds:

But this defense of literature doesn’t work any better than the ones Viera rejects. “Linguistic experimentation” is not “the hallmark of the literary”; it is a hallmark of some kinds of literature. And if “plays and poems offer us a glimpse into a reality that is not our own,” isn’t it equally true that they often, and powerfully, offer us a glimpse into a reality that is our own, but that we had failed to see or to see clearly? Furthermore, it’s obviously wrong to say that “literature . . . makes us who we are”: at the most one might say that it is one of the many forces — along with family, religion, television, friendships, the late capitalist social order, and so on — that shape who we turn out to be.

I think Jacobs is mainly right here. I think he might be taking Viera’s “experimentation” point a bit literally, in that he means the experimentation of the avant-garde sort. I take it Viera might also have in mind (or at least, I have in mind) experimentation of a very general kind; the experimentation with different diction and different syntax, changing the way a sentence sounds or a passage flows with the current created by the content, is something all writers do to a certain extent. Yes, it happens more and is a major feature of certain literary genres and movements and not others, but everyone experiments by using language in a different way than it is used in ordinary life.

His second point I agree wholeheartedly with. His third is certainly true in a broad sense — of course there are a great many things that help make us the fully fleshed out humans we are, but I’d caution writing off the visceral impact a book or a literary character can have on a person. People have been known to reorient their entire personality due to them developing a particularly strong connection to a character in a book. The reason this happens, the reason literature is so powerful and important to us, must be something like what Viera says in her last paragraph above.

Jacobs again:

It is not possible to come up with an adequate “defense of literature,” because “literature” doesn’t exist: too many wildly different kinds of plays and stories and poems and songs fall under that useless rubric. Defenses of specific works, or specific authors, or even specific ways of reading specific works or authors, might be possible and useful; but nothing broader than that.

I have to disagree here. Literature most certainly exists. Of course, many have argued about what constitutes literature, which works can be called literature and which cannot. Which genres and forms can fit under the term and which cannot. But a debate over the schema or criteria of something does not mean there is no something. The rubric may be useless or it may not even exist, but we should know what one means when they say ‘literature’, at least generally (certainly in this context). Jacobs, too decides to defend literature, he just wants to do it on a case by case, work by work basis. He does not seem to want to defend the art form as much as he does certain artworks; nevertheless, he still wants to defend something about art (e.g. a certain form regarding such and such a genre, a certain definition of beauty for a certain art form, etc.).

In the end, I say that even Jacobs’ view is wrong. Viera, despite her later contradictions, hit on the point in her first excerpted paragraph: Why does literature (poetry, art) even need defending? All true artistic endeavors are attempts at true expression in some form. Art is an outpouring of consciousness, is a means humans use to capture the magic, the invisible, the unexplainable, of our connections to each other and the world. Art is not just an outgrowth of ourselves or of life, art is life itself. Art is not good because we learn facts or truths or about emotions or people, art is not good because it makes us more moral, and art is not good because it can change who I am in some fundamental way. Art is good because life and living are good. There is no “can literature be defended.” Literature does not have to be defended. To have to defend an artistic practice would be to have to defend living itself.

I’m reminded of that scene from Dead Poets Society — Poetry (literature, art, the list goes on…) is surely what living is all about, if there is to be any all about at all:

The post Defend Literature? appeared first on The Handle.

The death penalty has not be an issue addressed much in public debate recently, as seemingly more important issues like the economy and healthcare have taken center stage.  This fact is understandable; but think to yourself for a second what comes to your mind when the word America is spoken.  For me, the ideas of freedom, inalienable rights, protection from the government, and liberty are the thoughts that come to mind.  It’s safe to say that these concepts are some of the basic fundamentals of our Republic.

Now, right after this train of thought, consider that the U.S. government ranked 4^th in executing its own citizens in the world last year, and the outcome seems stark.  The notion that a free and democratic people have the right to kill their own citizens is startling. As a Republican who believes in small and accountable government, but more so as an American who values the ability to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the institution of government-sponsored executions deeply troubles me and should be a part of the national dialogue on the size and scope of government.  Americans champion the rights and freedoms endowed to us and protected by the government; but a government that can take those freedoms away by execution, can do far worse to the liberty of its citizens.

The post The Death Penalty Paradox appeared first on The Handle.

 Debt and Deficits

The President’s budget and the Republican budget both bring the deficit down. But the difference between the two signifies the “crisis” that each party believes the country is currently facing. The Republican plan assumes that we are facing a “debt crisis,” so it makes harsh cuts to social programs and investments to achieve less debt. In contrast, the White House’s plan focuses on the “jobs crisis.” In other words, it assumes (correctly) that the primary problem with the US economy is a lack of jobs, so it allows for smaller cuts combined with greater tax revenue to provide more employment.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post neatly explains these contrasting goals:

Both budgets bring the deficit down to more-than-manageable levels. Republicans, of course, are looking to eliminate the deficit entirely. But the White House brings the deficit down to 1.7 percent of GDP. Achieving that goal would mean America’s debt load would be falling as a percentage of GDP, which is the measure most economists look to to see if our finances are stable.

The Republican budget argues that its cuts aren’t so much a choice as a necessity. “Unless we change course,” reads the introduction, “we will have a debt crisis.” But that’s incomplete. The truth of the Republican budget is that it’s only necessary if you refuse to raise taxes and if you insist on balancing the budget within 10 years.

Obama’s budget is meant to expose those premises: It’s a demonstration of how more modest spending cuts, when added to new revenues, can stabilize the debt while leaving room for new investments. In other words, the federal government can do most of the things it’s doing now, and more. Deep cuts aren’t a necessity so much as a choice.

Concessions and Compromises

In a typical display of his desire for bipartisanship, the President used his 2014 budget as an opportunity to achieve a budget deal with Republicans. To the dismay of his liberal base, he even included cuts to Social Security as a major concession to the Republican agenda. As noble as this plan is, it suffers from the same flaw that his other attempts succumbed to: the modern Republican Party is opposed to anything offered by the President. Despite the inclusion of major concessions and compromises, Republican leaders quickly dismissed the proposal.

The New York Times editorial board elaborates on this unfortunate phenomenon:

President Obama knew full well that many Democrats and liberals would be sharply critical of his decision to propose reducing the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, one of the centerpieces of his 2014 budget, which was released on Wednesday. In fact, he was counting on it. He wanted to show that he was willing to antagonize his supporters to get a budget compromise, putting Republicans on the spot to do the same.

Naturally, Republicans refused. Curbing the rise of Social Security benefits and raising Medicare premiums for higher-income people were two of the highest priorities for Republican leaders just a few months ago. Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, said last fall that if Mr. Obama proposed them, he would consider allowing tax revenue to go up.

But, on Wednesday, when the president actually did so, Mr. McConnell dismissed the budget as unserious. Not a single Congressional Republican could be found to consider a budget that combines twice as much in spending cuts as it raises in tax revenues….It is clear that the incessant demands by Republicans for entitlement cuts were always hollow.

Plans and Priorities

Budgets continually prove to be one of the best means of determining the true priorities of a party or candidate. This is true due to one simple fact: it is much easier to deceive using rhetoric than it is to deceive using numbers. For a reminder of that fact, please refer to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. A simple comparison of the President’s budget with the Republican alternative offered by Paul Ryan earlier this year demonstrates that the White House plan prioritizes many progressive goals even with the concessions to the Republican agenda.

Matthew Yglesias, Slate’s business and economics correspondent, offers three important differences between the two budgets’ priorities:

Rich vs. poor: In a way this is cliché, but it’s also quite important. Paul Ryan balances the budget without increasing taxes or reducing military spending or cutting Social Security or cutting Medicare benefits for people aged 55 and older primarily by cutting spending on poor people. Food stamps? Cut. Medicaid? Cut. Pell Grants? Cut. If the idea of the program is to bolster the living standards of the least fortunate, the GOP budget cuts it. By contrast, Obama expands Medicaid, increases EITC and Child Tax Credits, makes the Opportunity Tax Credit permanent, and spares the poor from the cuts involved in adoping the chained CPI. How does he do it? Well, he does it in several ways, but one big part of the story is reducing tax deductions for rich people. Ryan, by contrast, reduces deductions across the board in order to lower rates on the rich.

Young vs. old: Ryan’s budget is a masterpiece of coalition politics, managing to cut spending a lot while minimizing cuts in spending on people who are old today—i.e., on Republicans. Obama’s budget, by contrast, doubles down on the kind of Medicare “savings” found in the Affordable Care Act and creates headroom for a large expansion of pre-K services. Ryan keeps the sequestration cuts to education, and Obama reverses them.

Jobs vs. austerity: The Obama administration’s rhetoric has long since abandoned the concept of stimulus, but yet again we have a budget proposal for some meaningful short-term economic stimulus in the form of a $50 billion infrastructure program. Perhaps more importantly, the Obama budget would replace sequestration with alternative deficit reduction that’s phased-in in a more sensible way. The House budget, by contrast, is immediate austerity. I think it’s difficult to gauge the real Federal Reserve policy response function and thus the ultimate impact of this difference, but, broadly speaking, the direction of change is knowable—Obama’s budget would mean more job growth over the next 12-18 months.

The post Lessons from the President’s Budget appeared first on The Handle.