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The Stooges

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The Stooges, also known as Iggy and the Stooges, were an American rock band formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1967 by singer Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander. Playing a raw, primitive style of rock and roll, the band sold few records in their original incarnation and gained a reputation for their confrontational performances, which often involved acts of self-mutilation by Iggy Pop.^[6]

The Stooges
The Stooges performing at the Hammersmith Apollo(2010)
Background information
Also known as	Iggy and the Stooges, Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the Psychedelic Stooges
Origin	Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Genres	Proto-punk garage rock[1] hard rock[2] punk rock[3] avant-punk[4]
Years active	1967–1971 1972–1974 2003–2016[5]
Labels	Elektra Columbia Virgin
Associated acts	MC5 The Iguanas The New Order Minutemen Sonic’s Rendezvous BandDestroy All Monsters
Website	www.iggyandthestoogesmusic.com
Past members	Iggy PopScott AshetonRon AshetonDave AlexanderJames WilliamsonBill CheathamZeke ZettnerJimmy ReccaBob SheffScott ThurstonTornado TurnerSteve MackayMike WattToby Dammit

After releasing two albums—The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970)—the group disbanded briefly, and reformed with a different lineup to release Raw Power (1973) before breaking up again in 1974. The band reunited in 2003 until dissolving in 2016 following the deaths of Scott Asheton and saxophonist Steve Mackay. Ron Asheton participated in the reunion until his death in 2009.

The Stooges are widely regarded as a seminal proto-punk act.^[6][7][8] The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010.^[9] In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked them 78th on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.

HistoryEdit

Formation (1967–68)Edit

Iggy Pop (born James Newell Osterberg) played drums in several Ann Arbor-area bands as a teenager, including the Iguanas and, later, the Prime Movers. The Prime Movers nicknamed Osterberg “Iggy” in reference to his earlier band.^[10]

Osterberg was first inspired to form the Stooges after meeting blues drummer Sam Lay during a visit to Chicago. Upon returning to Detroit, Osterberg sought to create a new form of blues music that was not derivative of historical precedents.  Ron Asheton(guitar) and Scott Asheton (drums) and Dave Alexander (bass guitar) composed the rest of the band, with Osterberg as main singer. Osterberg became interested in Ron Asheton after seeing him perform in the Chosen Few (a covers band), believing “I’ve never met a convincing musician that didn’t look kind of ill and kind of dirty, and Ron had those two things covered!”^[11] The three nicknamed Osterberg “Pop” after a local character whom Osterberg resembled.^[12] Shortly after witnessing an MC5 concert in Ann Arbor, Osterberg began using the stage name Iggy Pop, a name that he has used ever since.

Though the Stooges had formed, Iggy Pop attributes two key motivating influences to move the band forward. The first was seeing the Doors perform at a homecoming dance for the University of Michigan. The second was seeing an all-girls rock band from Princeton, New Jersey called the Untouchable perform. In a 1995 interview with Bust Magazine, he relates:

The band’s 1967 debut was at their communal State Street house on Halloween night, followed by their next live gig, January 1968.^[13] During this early period, the Stooges were originally billed as the “Psychedelic Stooges” at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, and other venues, where they played with the band MC5 and others. At one of their early Grande Ballroom performances, Asheton’s guitar neck separated from the body forcing the band to stop playing during the opening song, “I Wanna Be Your Dog“.

The group’s early sound differed from their later music; critic Edwin Pouncey writes:

First two albums and first breakup (1968–71)Edit

The Stooges soon gained a reputation for their wild, primitive live performances. Pop, especially, became known for his outrageous onstage behavior—smearing his bare chest with hamburger meat and peanut butter, cutting himself with shards of glass, and flashing his genitalia to the audience. Pop is sometimes credited with the invention or popularization of stage diving.

In 1968  Elektra Records sent DJ/publicist Danny Fields to scout the MC5, resulting in contracts for both that band and the Stooges. The contracts were at different pay rates: MC5 $20,000, the Stooges $5,000, as revealed in the 2016 Jim Jarmusch film, Gimme Danger. In 1969, the band released their self-titled debut album; sales were low and it was not well-received by critics at the time.

In 1970, their second album, Fun House, was released, featuring the addition of saxophonist Steve Mackay. On June 13 of that year, television recorded the band at the Cincinnati Pop Festival. While performing the songs “T.V. Eye” and “1970”, Pop leapt into the crowd, where he was hoisted up on people’s hands, and proceeded to smear peanut butter all over his chest. In a broadcast interview at WNUR Northwestern University radio station in Evanston, Illinois in 1984, Stiv Bators of the Lords of the New Church and the Dead Boys confirmed the long-standing rumor that it was he who had provided the peanut butter, having carried a large tub from his home in Youngstown, OH and handing it up to Iggy from the audience.

Fun House was also poorly received by critics and the general public. Alexander was dismissed in August 1970 after arriving at the Goose Lake International Music Festival too drunk to play.^[15] He was replaced by a succession of new bass players, including former roadie Zeke Zettner^[16] and James Recca. Around this time, the band expanded their line-up by adding a second guitar player, roadie Bill Cheatham,^[10] who was eventually replaced by James Williamson, a childhood friend of the Ashetons and Alexander.

By this time, the Stooges, with the notable exception of Ron Asheton,^[10][17] had all become serious heroinusers. The drug was introduced to the band by new manager John Adams.^[10] Their performances became even more unpredictable, and Pop often had trouble standing up on stage due to his extreme drug abuse. Elektra soon eliminated the Stooges from its roster, and the band had a hiatus for several months. The final line-up was Pop, the Asheton brothers, Recca and Williamson.^[10]

The breakup of the Stooges was formally announced on 9 July 1971.^[18]

Raw Power and second breakup (1972–74)Edit

With the band having broken up, Pop met David Bowie on 7 September 1971 at Max’s Kansas City,^[17][18] and the pair instantly became good friends. The next day, on the advice of Bowie, Pop signed a recording contract with pop music manager Tony DeFries‘ company, MainMan. A few months later, Tony DeFries and Pop met Clive Davis from CBS/Columbia Records and got a two-album recording deal.^[18] In March 1972, DeFries brought Pop and Williamson to the UK,^[18] and the pair attempted to reconstitute the Stooges with British musicians, but finding no suitable additions, brought the Asheton brothers back into the band (this “second choice” decision rankled Ron Asheton, as did his change from guitar to bass). This line-up, billed as Iggy & the Stooges, recorded their third album, the influential Raw Power, which was released in 1973.

At the time, the album (which showcased Williamson’s intensely melodic solos and chromatic riffs, in contrast to Asheton’s minimalistic, groove-oriented approach) was criticized by diehard fans who said that Bowie had mixed it poorly (in subsequent years, various unofficial fan recordings were assembled and released as the album Rough Power; in 1997, the album was re-mixed by Iggy Pop and re-released). Although the album sold rather poorly and was regarded as a commercial failure at the time of its release, Raw Power would go on to become one of the cornerstones of early punk rock.

With the addition of a piano player (briefly Bob Sheffand then Scott Thurston^[10]), the Stooges toured for several months, starting in February 1973. Around this time they also made a number of recordings that became known as the Detroit Rehearsal Tapes, including a number of new songs that might have been included on a fourth studio album had the band not been dropped by Columbia soon after the release of Raw Power. In 1973, James Williamson was briefly dismissed due to criticism from the band’s management company (likely pertaining to his tempestuous relationship with Cyrinda Foxe, a close friend of road manager Leee Black Childers); guitarist Tornado Turner replaced him for a single gig (on 15 June 1973 at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, Illinois^[19]), but Williamson soon returned to the group.^[13]

The Stooges disbanded in February 1974 as a result of dwindling professional opportunities; this factor was compounded by Pop’s ever-present heroin addiction and erratic off-stage behavior.^[13] The last half of the band’s last performance of this era (on 9 February 1974 in Detroit, Michigan) was captured and was released later (in 1976) as the live album Metallic K.O. (along with the first half of an earlier show on 6 October 1973 at the same venue). A 1988 expanded release of the album with the title Metallic 2X K.O. included the two halves of each show. In 1998, the album was re-released under the original title with the order of the shows reversed, (mostly) expanded tracks and more complete set-lists.

Members:

• Iggy Pop
• Ron Ashton
• Scott Ashton
• James Williamson
• Dave Alexander

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So messed up, I want you here
In my room, I want you here
Now we’re gonna be face-to-face
And I’ll lay right down in my favorite placeAnd now I want to be your dog
Now I want to be your dog
Now I want to be your dog
Well, come onNow I’m ready to close my eyes
And now I’m ready to close my mind
And now I’m ready to feel your hand
And lose my heart on the burning sandsAnd now I want to be your dog
And now I wanna be your dog
Now I want to be your dog
Well, come onSource: LyricFindSongwriters: Dave Alexander / Iggy Pop / Ron Asheton / Scott AshetonI Wanna Be Your Dog lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, BMG Rights Management

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Francis Schaeffer taught young people at L Abri in Switzerland in the 1950’s till the 1980’s (pictured below)

Francis Schaeffer noted:

They have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.”

Francis Schaeffer pictured

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 “They are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one…
The result is a relativistic value system. A lack of a final meaning to life — that’s first. Why does human life have any value at all, if that is all that reality is? Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die, someday. It may not take the falling of the atom bombs, but someday the world will grow too hot, too cold. That’s what we are told on this other final reality, and someday all you people not only will be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead, and nobody will see the birds fly. And there’s no meaning to life.

As you know, I don’t speak academically, shut off in some scholastic cubicle, as it were. I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.” And I must say, that on the basis of what they are being taught in school, that the final reality is only this material thing, they are not wrong. They’re right! On this other basis there is no meaning to life and not only is there no meaning to life, but there is no value system that is fixed, and we find that the law is based then only on a relativistic basis and that law becomes purely arbitrary.

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Francis Schaeffer also observed:

The peak of the drug culture of the hippie movement was well symbolized by the movie Woodstock. Woodstock was a rock festival held in northeastern United States in the summer of 1969. The movie about that rock festival was released in the spring of 1970. Many young people thought that Woodstock was the beginning of a newand wonderful age.

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) himself was soon to become a symbol of the end. Black, extremely talented, inhumanly exploited, he overdosed in September 1970 and drowned in his own vomit, soon after the claim that the culture of which he was a symbol was a new beginning. In the late sixties the ideological hopes based on drug-taking died.

After Woodstock two events “ended the age of innocence,” to use the expression of Rolling Stone magazine. The first occurred at Altamont, California, where the Rolling Stones put on a festival and hired the Hell’s Angels (for several barrels of beer) to police the grounds. Instead, the Hell’s Angels killed people without any cause, and it was a bad scene indeed. But people thought maybe this was a fluke, maybe it was just California! It took a second event to be convincing. On the Isle of Wight, 450,000 people assembled, and it was totally ugly. A number of people from L’Abri were there, and I know a man closely associated with the rock world who knows the organizer of this festival. Everyone agrees that the situation was just plain hideous.

(How Should We Then Live, pp. 209-210)

 In his book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Francis Schaeffer noted:

This emphasis on hallucinogenic drugs brought with it many rock groups–for example, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Incredible String Band, Pink Floyd, and Jimi Hendrix. Most of their work was from 1965-1958. The Beatles’Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) also fits here. This disc is a total unity, not just an isolated series of individual songs, and for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. As a whole, this music was the vehicle to carry the drug culture and the mentality which went with it across frontiers which were almost impassible by other means of communication.

Here is a good review of the episode 016 HSWTL The Age of Non-Reason of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, December 23, 2007:

Together with the advent of the “drug Age” was the increased interest in the West in  the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Schaeffer tells us that: “This grasping for a nonrational meaning to life and values is the central reason that these Eastern religions are so popular in the West today.”  Drugs and Eastern religions came like a flood into the Western world.  They became the way that people chose to find meaning and values in life.  By themselves or together, drugs and Eastern religion became the way that people searched inside themselves for ultimate truth.

Along with drugs and Eastern religions there has been a remarkable increase “of the occult appearing as an upper-story hope.”  As modern man searches for answers it “many moderns would rather have demons than be left with the idea that everything in the universe is only one big machine.”  For many people having the “occult in the upper story of nonreason in the hope of having meaning” is better than leaving the upper story of nonreason empty. For them horror or the macabre are more acceptable than the idea that they are just a machine.

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

The Stooges sang:

Now I’m ready to close my eyes
And now I’m ready to close my mind

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnotes #97 and #98)

A common assumption among liberal scholars is that because the Gospels are theologically motivated writings–which they are–they cannot also be historically accurate. In other words, because Luke, say (when he wrote the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts), was convinced of the deity of Christ, this influenced his work to the point where it ceased to be reliable as a historical account. The assumption that a writing cannot be both historical and theological is false.

The experience of the famous classical archaeologist Sir William Ramsay illustrates this well. When he began his pioneer work of exploration in Asia Minor, he accepted the view then current among the Tubingen scholars of his day that the Book of Acts was written long after the events in Paul’s life and was therefore historically inaccurate. However, his travels and discoveries increasingly forced upon his mind a totally different picture, and he became convinced that Acts was minutely accurate in many details which could be checked.

What is even more interesting is the way “liberal” modern scholars today deal with Ramsay’s discoveries and others like them. In the NEW TESTAMENT : THE HISTORY OF THE INVESTIGATION OF ITS PROBLEMS, the German scholar Werner G. Kummel made no reference at all to Ramsay. This provoked a protest from British and American scholars, whereupon in a subsequent edition Kummel responded. His response was revealing. He made it clear that it was his deliberate intention to leave Ramsay out of his work, since “Ramsay’s apologetic analysis of archaeology [in other words, relating it to the New Testament in a positive way] signified no methodologically essential advance for New Testament research.” This is a quite amazing assertion. Statements like these reveal the philosophic assumptions involved in much liberal scholarship.

A modern classical scholar, A.N.Sherwin-White, says about the Book of Acts: “For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming…Any attempt to reject its basic historicity, even in matters of detail, must not appear absurd. Roman historians have long taken this for granted.”

When we consider the pages of the New Testament, therefore, we must remember what it is we are looking at. The New Testament writers themselves make abundantly clear that they are giving an account of objectively true events.

(Under footnote #98)

Acts is a fairly full account of Paul’s journeys, starting in Pisidian Antioch and ending in Rome itself. The record is quite evidently that of an eyewitness of the events, in part at least. Throughout, however, it is the report of a meticulous historian. The narrative in the Book of Acts takes us back behind the missionary journeys to Paul’s famous conversion on the Damascus Road, and back further through the Day of Pentecost to the time when Jesus finally left His disciples and ascended to be with the Father.

But we must understand that the story begins earlier still, for Acts is quite explicitly the second part of a continuous narrative by the same author, Luke, which reaches back to the birth of Jesus.

Luke 2:1-7 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

2 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all ^[a]the inhabited earth. ^2 [b]This was the first census taken while^[c]Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. ⁴ Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, ⁵ in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. ⁶ While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a ^[d]manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

In the opening sentences of his Gospel, Luke states his reason for writing:

Luke 1:1-4 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things^[a]accomplished among us, ² just as they were handed down to us by those whofrom the beginning ^[b]were eyewitnesses and ^[c]servants of the ^[d]word, ³ it seemed fitting for me as well, having ^[e]investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellentTheophilus; ⁴ so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been ^[f]taught.

In Luke and Acts, therefore, we have something which purports to be an adequate history, something which Theophilus (or anyone) can rely on as its pages are read. This is not the language of “myths and fables,” and archaeological discoveries serve only to confirm this.

For example, it is now known that Luke’s references to the titles of officials encountered along the way are uniformly accurate. This was no mean achievement in those days, for they varied from place to place and from time to time in the same place. They were proconsuls in Corinth and Cyprus, asiarchs at Ephesus, politarches at Thessalonica, and protos or “first man” in Malta. Back in Palestine, Luke was careful to give Herod Antipas the correct title of tetrarch of Galilee. And so one. The details are precise.

The mention of Pontius Pilate as Roman governor of Judea has been confirmed recently by an inscription discovered at Caesarea, which was the Roman capital of that part of the Roman Empire. Although Pilate’s existence has been well known for the past 2000 years by those who have read the Bible, now his governorship has been clearly attested outside the Bible.

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Church and State: The Separation Illusion

Greg Koukl

The goal of First Amendment was to protect religious expression, not restrict it. In the last 50 years, though, “non-establishment” has been redefined as “separation,” effectively amending the Constitution and isolating Christians from the political process.

“Will You Be a Casualty in Their Religious War?” read the headline of an advertisement that almost covered an entire page of the L.A. Times. Underneath were pictures of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Lou Sheldon, along with condemning quotes substantiating their apparent jihad against irreligious secularists.

The text of the advertisement read:

“The radical religious right has declared war on America. It is a war of ideas. A war of conscience. It’s a religious war. This war strikes at the very heart of our Constitution and threatens the freedoms we hold most dear. Freedom to worship as we please and to believe what we want to believe. The freedom to determine for ourselves what religious and moral views our own children are exposed to. The freedom to conduct our lives as we see fit without having our privacy violated. For some time now, the radical religious right has claimed that there is no such thing as church/state separation in our Constitution. They are wrong. Find out why.”

It goes on to promote a book by Robert Boston entitled Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State. [Robert Boston, Why the Religious Right Is Wrong About Separation of Church and State, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993).]

The ad is correct on a couple of points. There is a sense in which the “religious right” is at war, but the battle is not against America, it’s about America. And it is a war of ideas: Is there a legitimate separation of church and state, and what does that mean?

The current understanding of “separation of church and state”–the view that the state is thoroughly secular and not influenced by religious values, especially Christian–was completely foreign to the first 150 years of American political thought. Clearly the Fathers did not try to excise every vestige of Christian religion, Christian thought, and Christian values from all facets of public life. They were friendly to Christianity and encouraged its public practice and expression.

It wasn’t until 1947 that the United States Supreme Court first used the concept of “separation” to isolate government from religion.[The phrase was mentioned once before in the discourse of the Court in the 1878 case of Reynolds v. The United States when Mormons attempted an unsuccessful defense of polygamy based on the non-establishment clause of the First Amendment. The non-establishment clause protected Mormon beliefs, not Mormon practices (e.g., polygamy). This conduct was still proscribed by prevailing morality, specifically Christian morality.] In Everson v. Board of Education, the court lifted a phrase from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist church in Danbury, Connecticut. The Court ruled, “Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another….In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’” [Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S at 15-16 (1947).]

The Infamous Danbury Letter

In the Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court quoted Jefferson’s separation language as a normative guideline for understanding the First Amendment. As David Barton points out, “There’s probably no other instance in America’s history where words spoken by an individual have become the law of the land. Jefferson’s remark now carries more weight in judicial circles than does the writing of any other Founder.” [David Barton, The Myth of Separation, (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press), p. 44.]

Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a member of the Constitutional Convention, and the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Where did it come from?

On January 1, 1802, Jefferson wrote a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, in which he used the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state.” His note was meant to quell the fears of the Danbury congregation who were concerned that a national denomination would be established. Here is the text in question:

I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed. (NY: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984), p. 510, January 1, 1802.]

What did Jefferson have in mind here? Is there an impregnable barrier erected by the founders [Note that the word “founders” is not capitalized here because I’m not referring to the 55 members of the Constitutional Convention, but to the broader group responsible for the passage of the Bill of Rights.] that excludes religious-minded people from the political process, an ideological enmity between church and state?

The First Amendment

In contrast to the present confusion about separation, the First Amendment is startling in its clarity, offering no limit to the impact of religious and moral conviction of individual citizens on public policy. It is worth reading often. Here it is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Please forgive me for stating the obvious: The First Amendment restricts the government, not the people. Jefferson’s wall is a one-way wall. Any religious person, any religious organization, any religious conviction has its place in the public debate. It’s called pluralism in the classic sense.

Notice there are not two distinct provisions here, but one. Non-establishment has no purpose by itself. Freedom of religion is the goal, and non-establishment is the means. The only way to have true freedom of religion is to keep government out of religion’s affairs. This provides for what Steven Monsma calls “positive neutrality.” This view “defines religious freedom in terms of a governmental neutrality toward religion in which no religion is favored over any other, and neither religion nor secularism is favored over each other.” [Stephen Monsma, Positive Neutrality–Letting Religious Freedom Ring, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), p. 203.]

The First Amendment was rewritten twelve times to make clear its intent. The concept set forth in the Bill of Rights is “non-establishment,” not isolation. We should strike the “separation” language from our vocabulary.

A Fatal Flaw

The constant appeal to Jefferson’s Danbury letter by hard core separationists reveals a fatal flaw in their approach. Quoting Jefferson’s opinion only matters if Jefferson’s original intent still applies today. If it doesn’t, then the Danbury citation is irrelevant. If it does, then Jefferson’s full views on the issue have merit in this discussion.

It’s clear, though, that the Everson Court used Jefferson’s words, not his ideas. The separation language itself was not in common use at the time. It does not show up in any notes of the Constitutional Convention or of the Congress responsible for the Bill of Rights or the First Amendment.

What was Jefferson’s intent? To show that the Federal government couldn’t establish a national denomination. That’s all. In another letter, this one to Samuel Miller in 1808, Jefferson expanded on his view:

Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States, as far is it can be in any human authority. [Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, ed. (Washington D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), vol. XI, p. 428, letter on January 23, 1808, quoted in Barton, p. 42.]

This is a stunning revelation for advocates of a Jeffersonian model of separation. According to Jefferson, the Federal Government couldn’t prescribe religious exercise or discipline, but the states could. It wasn’t until 1947 that the Everson Court made the federal provision binding on the states, expressly contrary to Jefferson, though they quoted him for support.

For nearly two centuries state and federal governments have had such a benevolent attitude towards religion in general and Christianity in particular–including the almost universal practice of school prayer–that it would make a 1990s fundamentalist blush.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the very same Congress which enacted the First Amendment, stated the following in Article III: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” Notice that religion and morality were equal with knowledge as proper subjects of public education.

All but three states invoke the name of the almighty God in the preambles to their constitutions. Note these examples:

We the people of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.

We the people of Alabama…invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do ordain and establish…

The people of Connecticut, acknowledging with gratitude the good providence of God, in having permitted them to enjoy a free government…

If Jefferson’s view of non-establishment mattered today, then dozens of court decisions restricting religious freedom would be annulled. The present notion of separation is not conservative, seeking to return to earlier principles, but activist, seeking to redefine–and liberalize–the past.

Separationists’ Achilles Heel

Separationists attempt to take the Constitutional high ground by quoting Jefferson and others like him. They claim that the founders envisioned a high wall of separation. Recent court decisions simply enforce those original intentions.

Is the “religious right” imposing a new standard favoring religion that undermines our basic Constitutional freedoms, as the L.A. Times ad claimed? You can get to the heart of the matter by asking another question: Do these recent legal actions stop something from being added, or do they remove things already there? They remove them.

Courts have removed prayer from school, crèches from the lawns of city halls, and crosses from public parks. Separationists have managed to get personal Bibles off of teachers’ desks, the Ten Commandments out of school rooms, and references to God eliminated from students’ graduation speeches.

This is their Achilles’ heel: Things can only be removed that were already there to begin with. How did they get there? They were allowed by citizens, legislatures, and courts who saw no harm in them, no intolerance, no danger, and no breech of any Constitutional principle for almost 175 years.

This observation tells us two things. First, from the beginning, religious symbols and religious thought were woven into the fabric of government and society with no sense of Constitutional impropriety. This proves that the new court actions are revisionist, an attempt to change the traditional practice, not a return to our historical and Constitutional roots.

Second, conservatives are in a defensive posture, not an offensive one. The “religious right” has not declared war. The war has been declared on an American way of life held dear to many, and they won’t surrender it without a fight.

Separating the Church Right Out of the State

In 1976, I and three others ventured behind the iron curtain in a clandestine operation bringing aid to persecuted Christians in Soviet Bloc countries. On Friday, July 23, we were detained at the border station of Leushen, Moldavia, USSR, because we had Russian Bibles in our possession.

After ransacking our car and personal belongings and strip-searching one of our group, border officials took us inside for questioning by a female interpreter. Where did we get the Bibles? Who were they for? Didn’t we know that such trafficking was illegal? The questions went on for hours.

When we explained the Bibles were for believers in the Soviet Union, she wanted to know their names.

“We planned to look the churches up in the phone directory.”

“We don’t have churches listed in our phone directories.”

We pointed out that in the United States, where there is freedom of religion, all of the churches are listed. Didn’t they have freedom of religion in the Soviet Union?

“Yes,” she assured us, “of course we have freedom of religion, but we have separation of church and state.” This was not the first time we were to hear this cryptic phrase.

The interpreter explained that the government printed all the Bibles needed for Soviet Christians. “We have our department of atheism and spend a large amount of money each year teaching them these things. We don’t allow any other propaganda.”

“But you print Bibles in the USSR?”

“Yes, our believers get all the Bibles they need, but they are given out only through the church and we must have all their names.”

“But you do have religious freedom?”

“Yes, we have religious freedom.”

“And we can’t bring in Bibles?”

“No, we don’t allow that propaganda in our country.”

“The Bible is propaganda?”

“Yes.”

“But you print Bibles in your own country.”

“Yes.”

I was surprised she couldn’t see what was coming. “Then that means you are printing anti-communist propaganda right in your own country.”

Her immediate reply was the cryptic, “But we have separation of church and state.”

This mantra was her blanket reply justifying all government interference with our activities. How were we interfering with separation? What did it actually mean? My partner’s definition was probably the most accurate. “They’re separating the church right out of the state,” he quipped.

As I look back on that incident 20 years ago, I’m struck by the contrast. Today there is more de facto religious liberty in former communist countries than we experience here in the United States. Now it is American courts that chant the mantra of separation to prohibit religious conduct in the public square.

The ACLU, in a letter to California State Senator Newton Russell, objected that “teaching that monogamous, heterosexual intercourse within marriage is a traditional American value is unconstitutional establishment of a religious doctrine in public schools.” [Majorie C. Swartz, Francisco Lobaco, American Civil Liberties Union Legislative Office, April 18, 1988. Copy on file. Note: The courts have not agreed with the ACLU on this point.]

The Supreme Court opens each session with the words, “God save this honorable court.” Yet in June, 1994, the same Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling removing the Ten Commandments from a courtroom. This is rather ironic, considering a bas-relief of Moses holding the tablets of the Old Testament Law broods over the Chief Justice’s seat. Engraved upon the lower half of each entrance door is the same Ten Commandments banished by the court.

Twisted logic like this is “separating the church right out of the state.”

Amending the Constitution is an arduous process. Changes require an appeal by two-thirds of both Houses or by the Legislatures of two-thirds of the states to even get started. Ratification requires a three-fourths majority of either the states’ legislatures or special Constitutional conventions.

That’s what the founders intended. The Constitution’s provisions–including the Bill of Rights–were considered so weighty that only the most united and energetic efforts of the nation could alter it.

Shell Game

Today, de facto Constitutional amendments only require five non-elected citizens–a simple majority of the nine-member Supreme Court.

The High Court wouldn’t dream of simply deleting the Bill of Rights. That would be despotism. Yet they don’t balk at so redefining its meaning that the original disappears, though the words remain the same. Like dupes in a magician’s shell game, the citizens miss the sleight of hand and don’t even know they’ve been robbed.

If the responsibility of all branches of government is to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, ought not those branches preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution that was actually delivered, rather than some fanciful remake? If our Republic is guarded by the Constitution, then we are left defenseless when the words of the Constitution are redefined at will.

The authors of the First Amendment did not seek to expunge every shred of religious sentiment from the public arena. They did just the opposite, decorating their buildings with biblical imagery, punctuating their public discourses with biblical quotes, and grounding their laws on biblical morality.

Christian religion was the cement holding the very foundation stones of the Republic together. That cement is being chipped out, piece by piece, leaving a building without mortar, a stack of bricks ready to topple at the slightest quake.

An “Unconstitutional” President Lincoln

To show how far we’ve declined, I close with the words of President Lincoln in his Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, March 30, 1863:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.*

A hundred years and sixteen Presidents had passed, yet our country’s chief executive could still call his nation to humble repentance without the slightest hint of embarrassment, impropriety, or apology.

By today’s standards, though, the words of one of our greatest Presidents could not be spoken at certain government functions. The very same advice could not be given by a teacher to his junior high class. This alone is enough to show that the popular understanding of separation of church and state is foreign to the Constitution and to the world view that gave it birth.

*Source: The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. Full text can be viewed here.ARTICLE | TOPICSCHRISTIANITY & CULTUREGreg Koukl

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on Apple Music

Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes his holiness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes another day
Here comes the only way
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes another day
Here comes the only way
Here comes the morning sun
Here comes another one
Here comes loneliness
Here comes the onliness
Here comes loneliness
Here comes your history

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1 of 42 of 4In a Manner of speaking
I just want to say
That I could never forget the way
You told me everythingBy saying nothing
In a manner of speaking
I don’t understand
How love in silence becomes reprimandBut the way that i feel about you
Is beyond words
O give me the words
Give me the wordsThat tell me nothing
O give me the words
Give me the words
That tell me everythingIn a manner of speaking
Semantics won’t do
In this life that we live we live we only make do
And the way that we feelMight have to be sacrified
So in a manner of speaking
I just want to say
That just like you I should find a wayTo tell you everything
By saying nothing.
O give me the words
Give me the wordsThat tell me nothing
O give me the words
Give me the words
Give me the wordsSource: LyricFindSongwriters: Winston TongIn a Manner of Speaking lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

I was born today
There were strangers there
Cut me off
And left me in a chloroformed cellI yelled and I yelled
But nobody cared
First day of school
I lost my front teethBoys beat me up cause
I wasn’t one of them
I fought til I bled
And everyone was scaredYeah everyone was scared
It isn’t my fault
That I’m strange
I wasn’t good at kickballI wasn’t good at girls
I used to make a habit of peeing in my pants
Cause I was scared and I couldn’t dance
And nobody cared but I learnedToday I’m glad to say
I’m just like to rest
Anonyme is best
Anonyme is bestAnd life grows stranger every day
Has anybody dared to be more that dead
It isn’t my faul
That I’m strangeMother died today
Or maybe yesterday
I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know
Got to ask my boss to let me goAt the funeral they expected me to cry
Well I didn’t
I don’t know
I don’t knowEverybody’s staring at me now
What’s gone to their heads
It isn’t my fault
That I’m strangeI’m strange I’m strange I’m strange
I’m the strangerSource: LyricFind

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No tears for the creatures of the night
No tears
No tears for the creatures of the night
No tearsMy eyes are dry
Goodbye
My eyes are dry
GoodbyeI feel so hollow I just don’t understand
Nothing’s turned out like I– like I planned
My head’s exploding
My mouth is dry
I can’t help it if I’ve forgotten how to– cryNo tears for the creatures of the night
No tears
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no
No tears for the creatures of the night
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, no tears
Uh oh, oh no, uh oh, oh no, uh ohMy eyes are dry
Goodbye
My eyes are dry
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
My eyes are drySource: Musixmatch

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Ten musicians fueled by existentialism

JESSE LIVINGSTON | MAY 22, 2013 | 7:30AM

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Music is filled with surprises. For every good-looking rebel working diligently to bring sexy back, there’s a bookish nerd sitting in a dim corner furiously scribbling esoteric poetry in a lyrics journal. Referencing literature is a surefire way to show the world that you’re a sensitive soul with important thoughts. Existentialism is clearly the most badass school of thought because it pits the individual (wearing black) against the absurdity of the uncaring cosmos (also wearing black). Keep reading for a look at ten existential musicians.

5. As I Lay Dying This San Diego Christian metalcore band took their name from William Faulkner’s existential novel of Southern life gone horribly wrong. Considering that Faulkner won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work, it’s somewhat distressing that As I Lay Dying’s lyrics sound like they came straight out of an online Goth poetry generator: “Emptiness running through me/Taking all that I am/Leaving me this blinding mask/Grasping for the wind/Everything I’ve done/Everything I’ve gained/It all means nothing.” On the other hand, frontman Tim Lambesis was recently arrested in an alleged murder-for-hire plot, and that’s something the characters in Faulkner’s novel could really get behind.

4. Tuxedomoon This experimental post-punk band from San Francisco prided themselves on their unique sound that Seattle Weeklydescribed as radiating “a discomfort that hints of existential hives.” The 1970s were chock-full of existential hives. Everyone knows that. The band’s song “Stranger” makes another reference to Camus’ landmark novel with the lines “Mother died today/Or maybe yesterday.” It also ends with the lines “I’m strange/I’m the stranger.” That’s the subtlety of poetic discourse that your high school English teacher used to tell you about.

3. The Yawpers Denver’s own Yawpers are deep into some existentialist reading. In a recent interview, the Yawpers told us about their album Capon Crusade and its not-infrequent references to Sartre and Camus. “They’re depressing as fuck,” said frontman Nate Cook, cutting to the heart of the philosophy. He then added, “Sartre and Camus are really poignant in pointing out just how flawed existence is in general, and sometimes that can be comforting when you’re trying to write some shitty song about getting fucked up because a girl left you.” That’s actually pretty astute. When misfortune befalls you, is it more or less reassuring to imagine that you deserve it? The great gift of the existentialist thinkers may be showing us that sometimes a lack of intrinsic meaning in the universe isn’t such a bad thing.

2. The Cure Robert Smith and company have made a career out of existential dread and despair — so much so that the early effort “Killing an Arab” now seems a little on-the-nose in its description of the pivotal scene from The Stranger. In fact, the song’s matter-of-fact lyrics have caused the band a good deal of grief over the years, as certain parties have tried to co-opt them as some kind of anti-Arab anthem. Re-releases have sported a sticker explaining that the song “decries the existence of all prejudice and consequent violence,” and Smith has taken to changing the lyrics in live performances to “killing another.” One shy English boy against a world of dull-witted savagery: what could be more existential than that?

1. The Eagles Don Henley’s vision of 1970s California as a fiendish hotel filled with earthly temptations takes its tone and setup from Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. “Hell is other people,” says Sartre. Henley adds, “This could be Heaven, or this could be Hell,” implying that maybe they’re one and the same. “Hotel California” is one of those classic songs that deserves every bit of its fame. Listening to it, you feel a palpable desire to be somewhere warm and tropical where the livin’ is easy. You also feel a chill of recognition that you’d soon become bored, listless and depressed playing games with the wealthy and beautiful. “And still those voices are calling from far away.” Thanks, Henley. What an insightful, elegant bummer, man.

Francis Schaeffer taught young people at L Abri in Switzerland in the 1950’s till the 1980’s (pictured below)

Francis Schaeffer noted:

I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.”

Francis Schaeffer pictured

Francis Schaeffer pictured below in 1971 at L Abri

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Dr. Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri Conference, Urbana, 1981

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Tuxedomoon

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Tuxedomoon is an experimental, post-punk, new wave band from San Francisco, California, United States. The band formed in the late 1970s at the beginning of the punk rock movement. Pulling influence from punk and electronic music, the group, originally consisting of Steven Brown (born Steven Allan Brown on August 23, 1952, in Chicago, Illinois) and Blaine L. Reininger, used electronic violins, guitars, screaming vocals and synthesizers to develop a unique “cabaret no-wave” sound. Bassist Peter Principle (Peter Dachert, 1954–2017) joined the band and in 1979 they released the single “No Tears”, which remains a post-punk cult classic. That year they signed to Ralph Records and released their first album, Half-Mute. Eventually, Reininger left the group and Tuxedomoon relocated to Europe, signing to Crammed Discs and releasing Holy Warsin 1985. The band separated in the early 1990s, only to reunite later that decade. They all have remained together since releasing the album Cabin in the Skyin 2004.

Tuxedomoon
Tuxedomoon live in 2007
Background information
Origin	San Francisco, California, United States
Genres	Experimentalpost-punknew wavesynth-punk
Years active	1977–present
Labels	Ralph, Crammed Discs
Website	www.tuxedomoon.co
Members	Blaine L. ReiningerSteven BrownLuc Van LieshoutDavid Haneke
Past members	Peter DachertBruce GeduldigWinston TongGregory CruikshankVictoria LoweMichael BelferPaul ZahlIvan GeorgievNikolas KlauGeorge KakanakisMarcia Barcellos

HistoryEdit

In 1977, Tuxedomoon formed out of The Angels of Light, an artist collective and commune, a group in which Steven Brown was involved.^[1][2][3] He met Blaine L. Reininger in an electronic music class at San Francisco City College. Brown worked with Tommy Tadlock, of the Angels of Light, to create the final project of the class.^[2] Tadlock would go on to be Tuxedomoon’s manager. Reininger and Brown started playing music together at Tadlock’s house. Reininger played electronic violin and guitar. Tadlock assisted with the sound and audio. He also created tools for the band, including a “Treatment Mountain”, which was a pyramid made of plywood which held all of Reininger’s effects pedals.^[4]

They started playing music together in the mid-1970s, when punk rock became popular in the underground music scene. “The only rule was the tacit understanding that anything that sounded like anyone else was taboo”, stated Brown on the band aiming the create music that sounded unlike anything else before.^[2] The vocals were screaming and inspired by punk rock, and the band used any instruments they had around, including saxophonesand a polymoog synthesizer. The band had no drummer. Bassist Peter Principle, performance artistWinston Tong and Bruce Geduldig, a filmmaker, joined the band during concerts. The band created new performances for each concert, creating theatrical performances and being described as “theatrical electronic cabaret”.^[4][5] The band performed frequently with Pere Ubu, The Residents, Devo, and Cabaret Voltaire.^[1]

In 1979 they released the EP No Tears with the single “No Tears”. The title-track is described as “one of the best electro-punk hymns of all times”.^[6]That year they also signed to Ralph Records and released their debut album, Half-Mute, in 1980.^[1]

CareerEdit

1980sEdit

In 1980 the band released their first album, Half-Mute, on Ralph Records. The band toured Europe in 1980 and moved to New York City.^[1][3][7] While in New York, they performed in, and were featured on the soundtrack for the film Downtown 81.^[3] They gained popularity in the Netherlands and Belgium.^[8]They eventually relocated to Brussels.^[3]after spending some months in Rotterdam, playing in Arena, Hal 4 and returned in 1988 to Lantaren/Venster, where they contributed to the Bob Visser movie Plan Delta. Trumpet player Luc van Lieshout joined the band, followed shortly after by Ivan Georgiev.^[3] In 1987, the band performed on the soundtrack for the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire.^[9] Tuxedomoon played in Athens, Greece, for the first time on December 1987, selling out the Pallas Theatre twice in one night.^[6]

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 “They are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one…
The result is a relativistic value system. A lack of a final meaning to life — that’s first. Why does human life have any value at all, if that is all that reality is? Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die, someday. It may not take the falling of the atom bombs, but someday the world will grow too hot, too cold. That’s what we are told on this other final reality, and someday all you people not only will be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead, and nobody will see the birds fly. And there’s no meaning to life.

As you know, I don’t speak academically, shut off in some scholastic cubicle, as it were. I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.” And I must say, that on the basis of what they are being taught in school, that the final reality is only this material thing, they are not wrong. They’re right! On this other basis there is no meaning to life and not only is there no meaning to life, but there is no value system that is fixed, and we find that the law is based then only on a relativistic basis and that law becomes purely arbitrary.

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Here is a good review of the episode 016 HSWTL The Age of Non-Reason of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE?, December 23, 2007:

Together with the advent of the “drug Age” was the increased interest in the West in  the religious experience of Hinduism and Buddhism. Schaeffer tells us that: “This grasping for a nonrational meaning to life and values is the central reason that these Eastern religions are so popular in the West today.”  Drugs and Eastern religions came like a flood into the Western world.  They became the way that people chose to find meaning and values in life.  By themselves or together, drugs and Eastern religion became the way that people searched inside themselves for ultimate truth.

Along with drugs and Eastern religions there has been a remarkable increase “of the occult appearing as an upper-story hope.”  As modern man searches for answers it “many moderns would rather have demons than be left with the idea that everything in the universe is only one big machine.”  For many people having the “occult in the upper story of nonreason in the hope of having meaning” is better than leaving the upper story of nonreason empty. For them horror or the macabre are more acceptable than the idea that they are just a machine.

Francis Schaeffer has correctly argued:

The universe was created by an infinite personal God and He brought it into existence by spoken word and made man in His own image. When man tries to reduce [philosophically in a materialistic point of view] himself to less than this [less than being made in the image of God] he will always fail and he will always be willing to make these impossible leaps into the area of nonreason even though they don’t give an answer simply because that isn’t what he is. He himself testifies that this infinite personal God, the God of the Old and New Testament is there. 

Instead of making a leap into the area of nonreason the better choice would be to investigate the claims that the Bible is a historically accurate book and that God created the universe and reached out to humankind with the Bible. Below is a piece of that evidence given by Francis Schaeffer concerning the accuracy of the Bible.

TRUTH AND HISTORY (chapter 5 of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?, under footnote #94)

We now take a jump back in time to the middle of the ninth century before Christ, that is, about 850 B.C. Most people have heard of Jezebel. She was the wife of Ahab, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel. Her wickedness has become so proverbial that we talk about someone as a “Jezebel.” She urged her husband to have Naboth killed, simply because Ahab had expressed his liking for a piece of land owned by Naboth, who would not sell it. The Bible tells us also that she introduced into Israel the worship of her homeland, the Baal worship of Tyre. This led to the opposition of Elijah the Prophet and to the famous conflict on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the priests of Baal.

Here again one finds archaeological confirmations of what the Bible says. Take for example: “As for the other events of Ahab’s reign, including all he did, the palace he built and inlaid with ivory, and the cities he fortified, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Israel?” (I Kings 22:39).

This is a very brief reference in the Bible to events which must have taken a long time: building projects which probably spanned decades. Archaeological excavations at the site of Samaria, the capital, reveal something of the former splendor of the royal citadel. Remnants of the “ivory house” were found and attracted special attention (Palestinian Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem). This appears to have been a treasure pavilion in which the walls and furnishings had been adorned with colored ivory work set with inlays giving a brilliant too, with the denunciations revealed by the prophet Amos:

“I will tear down the winter house along with the summer house; the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed and the mansions will be demolished,” declares the Lord. (Amos 3:15)

Other archaeological confirmation exists for the time of Ahab. Excavations at Hazor and Megiddo have given evidence of the the extent of fortifications carried out by Ahab. At Megiddo, in particular, Ahab’s works were very extensive including a large series of stables formerly assigned to Solomon’s time.

On the political front, Ahab had to contend with danger from the Aramacaus king of Syria who besieged Samaria, Ahab’s capital. Ben-hadad’s existence is attested by a stela (a column with writing on it) which has been discovered with his name written on it (Melquart Stela, Aleppo Museum, Syria). Again, a detail of history given in the Bible is shown to be correct.

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Woody Allen On Bergman

Woody Allen On Bergman

Woody Allen Show

Essay on Woody Allen films

Match point Trailer

Match point

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Crimes and misdemeanors

Part 2

Part 3

Woody commenting on Midnight in Paris

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ebruary 14, 2016

Letty Aronson, c/o New York, New York 10001

Dear Mrs. Aronson,

Today is VALENTINE’S DAY and after watching several Woody Allen movies that deal with the issue of love I was prompted to write you. Last month my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.orgwent over  1,000,000 views. When I look back I noticed that over 1/3 of that total came from my top 8 posts and half of them were on the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. As you know Gil Pender is caught in this cold Godless world but he finds himself falling in love with Adriana and it causes a tension in the film as he looks for a “golden age.”I have asked myself many times why the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is generating so many hits on my blog several years after it came out in Theaters? I believe the answer is because it touches on some very deep issues that everyone feels. Woody doesn’t  believe in the Bible or in the idea that we were created by God and put here for a purpose, but  Ecclesiastes 3:11 says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and  that changes everything. Mark Twain himself felt this tension too.

Mark Twain with family in Bermuda.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS  has a plot line that shows this tension in Gil Pender’s life because he believes the universe is “cold,violent, and meaningless,” but then he falls in love!!!

You may remember some of this dialogue from MIDNIGHT IN PARIS:

HEMINGWAY:You like Mark Twain?

GIL PENDER: I’m actually a huge Mark Twain fan. I think you can even make the case that all modern American literature comes from Huckleberry Finn.-

Ernest Hemingway actually lived in Piggott, Arkansas when he wrote some of his best works and Mark Twain was from neighboring Missouri.

Also in the film we find this exchange:

ADRIANA: I can never decide whether Paris is more beautiful by day or by night.

GIL PENDER: No, you can’t. You couldn’t pick one. I mean,I can give you a checkmate argument for each side.You know, I sometimes think,”How’s anyone gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony or a sculpture that can compete with a great city?”You can’t, ’cause, like,you look around, every…every street, every boulevard is its own special art form.And when you think that in the cold,violent, meaningless universe,that Paris exists, these lights…I mean, come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune,but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafe’s, people drinking, and singing…I mean, for all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.

(You got to remember that the character Gil Pender that Owen Wilson was playing was speaking the words that Woody Allen wrote!!!)

God created us so we can’t deny that we are created for a purpose and when a person falls truly in love with another person then they have a hard time maintaining  this we are only just a product of evolution and our lives have no lasting significance.

Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”

Mark Twain admitted:

It is the strangest thing, that the world is not full of books that scoff at the pitiful world, and the useless universe and the vile and contemptible race–books that laugh at the whole paltry scheme and deride it…Why don’t I write such a book? Because I have a family. There is no other reason.
– Notebook #29, 10 November 1895

The Clemens family from left to right: Clara, Livy, Jean, Sam, and Susy. Photo courtesy of the The Mark Twain House

Francis Schaeffer noted in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT:

So just as all men love even if they say love does not exist, and all men have moral motions even though they say moral motions do not exit, so all men act as though they there is a correlation between the external and the internal world, even if they have no basis for that correlation…Let me draw the parallel again. Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love. Men say there are no moral motions, everything is behavioristic, but they all have moral motions. Even in the more profound area of epistemology, no matter what a man says he believes, actually–every moment of his life–he is acting as though Christianity were true, and it is only the Christian system that tells him why he can, must, and does act the way he does (Chapter 4, HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT ).

In his book CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS Norman L. Geisler commented on the above Schaeffer quote by observing:

So, if a view is true, it should be livable [as Schaeffer pointed out].

Our concept of worldview comes from the German word WELTANSHAUUNG, which means a WORLD and LIFE view. So a comprehensive worldview in this sense should be something that not only accords with good reasons and fits the facts, but it should be one that fulfills our spiritual need as well. In short, it should SATISFY both the head and the heart. Of course, one should not bypass the head on the way to the heart. Hence, we have an extended discussion of the rational and factual basis for one’s acceptance of a worldview. But once we do this, then we should not stop at the head and never reach the heart. As Pascal said, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”  (Emphasis mine in this paragraph) (Taken from Chapter 10)

If one accepts Christianity as truth is it because that person is going with the heart feelings and left his head behind? Mark Twain wrote, “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.” Twain was convinced the Bible was filled with errors. I give Twain credit for choosing the right issue. It really does come down to if the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate or not. There is evidence indicating that the Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted. Charles Darwin himself longed for evidence to come forward from the area of  Biblical Archaeology  but so much has  advanced  since Darwin wrote these words in the 19th century! Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject and if you like you could just google these subjects: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription.13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.

I want to thank you and Woody for tackling the big issues in life and without you both my blog would have never existed!!!! Thank you again for your time and I know how busy you are.

Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221

Francis and Edith Schaeffer pictured above

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Big time director Woody Allen and wife Soon-Yi Previn along with daughters Bechet and Manzie Tio were at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, CA on June 15th, 2012.

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Adriana and Gil Pender in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

Pauline and Ernest on their wedding day. Hemingway

Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Piggott, Arkansas

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Hemingway and his three sons pictured above.

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Big time director Woody Allen and wife Soon-Yi Previn along with daughters Bechet and Manzie Tio were at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, CA on June 15th, 2012.

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Midnight in Paris trailer

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The mass media turned Picasso into a celebrity, and the public deprived him of privacy and wanted to know his every step, but his later art was given very little attention and was regarded as no more than the hobby of an aging genius who could do nothing but talk about himself in his pictures. Picasso’s late works are an expression of his final refusal to fit into categories. He did whatever he wanted in art and did not arouse a word of criticism.

With his adaptation of “Las Meninas” by Velászquez and his experiments with Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, was Picasso still trying to discover something new, or was he just laughing at the public, its stupidity and its inability to see the obvious.

A number of elements had become characteristic in his art of this period: Picasso’s use of simplified imagery, the way he let the unpainted canvas shine through, his emphatic use of lines, and the vagueness of the subject. In 1956, the artist would comment, referring to some schoolchildren: “When I was as old as these children, I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.”

In the last years of his life, painting became an obsession with Picasso, and he would date each picture with absolute precision, thus creating a vast amount of similar paintings — as if attempting to crystallize individual moments of time, but knowing that, in the end, everything would be in vain.

The movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS offers many of the same themes we see in Ecclesiastes. The second post looked at the question: WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT?

In the third post in this series we discover in Ecclesiastes that man UNDER THE SUN finds himself caught in the never ending cycle of birth and death. The SURREALISTS make a leap into the area of nonreason in order to get out of this cycle and that is why the scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel works so well!!!! These surrealists look to the area of their dreams to find a meaning for their lives and their break with reality is  only because they know that they can’t find a rational meaning in life without God in the picture.

The fourth post looks at the solution of WINE, WOMEN AND SONG and the fifth and sixth posts look at the solution T.S.Eliotfound in the Christian Faith and how he left his fragmented message of pessimism behind. In the seventh post the SURREALISTS say that time and chance is all we have but how can that explain love or art and the hunger for God? The eighth  post looks at the subject of DEATH both in Ecclesiastes and MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. In the ninth post we look at the nihilistic worldview of Woody Allen and why he keeps putting suicides into his films.

In the tenth post I show how Woody Allen pokes fun at the brilliant thinkers of this world and how King Solomon did the same thing 3000 years ago. In the eleventh post I point out how many of Woody Allen’s liberal political views come a lack of understanding of the sinful nature of man and where it originated. In the twelfth post I look at the mannishness of man and vacuum in his heart that can only be satisfied by a relationship with God.

In the thirteenth post we look at the life of Ernest Hemingway as pictured in MIDNIGHT AND PARIS and relate it to the change of outlook he had on life as the years passed. In the fourteenth post we look at Hemingway’s idea of Paris being a movable  feast. The fifteenth and sixteenth posts both compare Hemingway’s statement, “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know…”  with Ecclesiastes 2:18 “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” The seventeenth post looks at these words Woody Allen put into Hemingway’s mouth,  “We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all.”

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Hemingway and Gil Pender talk about their literary idol Mark Twain and the eighteenth post is summed up nicely by Kris Hemphill‘swords, “Both Twain and [King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes] voice questions our souls long to have answered: Where does one find enduring meaning, life purpose, and sustainable joy, and why do so few seem to find it? The nineteenth post looks at the tension felt both in the life of Gil Pender (written by Woody Allen) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and in Mark Twain’s life and that is when an atheist says he wants to scoff at the idea THAT WE WERE PUT HERE FOR A PURPOSE but he must stay face the reality of  Ecclesiastes 3:11 that says “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” and  THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING! Therefore, the secular view that there is no such thing as love or purpose looks implausible. The twentieth post examines how Mark Twain discovered just like King Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes that there is no explanation  for the suffering and injustice that occurs in life UNDER THE SUN. Solomon actually brought God back into the picture in the last chapter and he looked  ABOVE THE SUN for the books to be balanced and for the tears to be wiped away.

The twenty-first post looks at the words of King Solomon, Woody Allen and Mark Twain that without God in the picture our lives UNDER THE SUN will accomplish nothing that lasts. Thetwenty-second post looks at King Solomon’s experiment 3000 years that proved that luxuries can’t bring satisfaction to one’s life but we have seen this proven over and over through the ages. Mark Twain lampooned the rich in his book “The Gilded Age” and he discussed  get rich quick fever, but Sam Clemens loved money and the comfort and luxuries it could buy. Likewise Scott Fitzgerald  was very successful in the 1920’s after his publication of THE GREAT GATSBY and lived a lavish lifestyle until his death in 1940 as a result of alcoholism.

In the twenty-third post we look at Mark Twain’s statement that people should either commit suicide or stay drunk if they are “demonstrably wise” and want to “keep their reasoning faculties.” We actually see this play out in the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS with the character Zelda Fitzgerald. In the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth posts I look at Mark Twain and the issue of racism. In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS we see the difference between the attitudes concerning race in 1925 Paris and the rest of the world.

The twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth posts are summing up Mark Twain. In the 29th post we ask did MIDNIGHT IN PARIS accurately portray Hemingway’s personality and outlook on life? and in the 30th post the life and views of Hemingway are summed up.

In the 31st post we will observe that just like Solomon Picasso slept with many women. Solomon actually slept with  over 1000 women ( Eccl 2:8, I Kings 11:3), and both men ended their lives bitter against all women and in the 32nd post we look at what happened to these former lovers of Picasso. In the 33rd post we see that Picasso  deliberately painted his secular  worldview of fragmentation on his canvas but he could not live with the loss of humanness and he reverted back at crucial points and painted those he loved with all his genius and with all their humanness!!! In the 34th post  we notice that both Solomon in Ecclesiastes and Picasso in his painting had an obsession with the issue of their impending death!!!

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Related posts:

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 7 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part F, SURREALISTS AND THE IDEA OF ABSURDITY AND CHANCE)

December 23, 2015 – 4:15 am

Woody Allen believes that we live in a cold, violent and meaningless universe and it seems that his main character (Gil Pender, played by Owen Wilson) in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS shares that view. Pender’s meeting with the Surrealists is by far the best scene in the movie because they are ones who can […]

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 6 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part E, A FURTHER LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 16, 2015 – 4:56 am

In the last post I pointed out how King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and that Bertrand Russell, and T.S. Eliot and  other modern writers had agreed with Solomon’s view. However, T.S. Eliot had found a solution to this problem and put his faith in […]

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 5 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part D, A LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 9, 2015 – 4:41 am

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his  house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]

“Woody Wednesda

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Best of Both Worlds: An Interview with Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman reminisces about his career as an economist and his lifetime “avocation” as a spokesman for freedom.

Brian Doherty from the June 1995 issue – view article in the Digital Edition

Milton Friedman needs little introduction. His career as one of the world’s preeminent economists and advocates of freedom has won him many accolades, best-selling books, and a Nobel Prize.

It has also brought him much satisfaction. Now, in what he is acutely conscious are probably the last years of his life, he and his wife and longtime writing partner Rose Friedman are working on their memoirs.

I met Friedman in January in his elegant high-rise San Francisco condo, with an absorbing view of both the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay. His study is filled, but not cluttered, with his own books and economics reference works. While some Great Men in his position in life might refuse nuisances like interviewers entirely, Friedman is friendly and mostly forthcoming, speaking with the slow assurance of a lifelong professor and teacher very comfortable with explaining things. He welcomed me cordially but with a distinct set of limits, both in time and in subject matter. He has a large project to finish, and not much time to finish it in; and he refuses to psychoanalyze himself, largely avoids indulging in discussion of personalities, and wants to save some stories for his memoirs.

Friedman is used to discussing policy, but except for his assessment of the new Congress’s potential, we wandered far afield into reminiscence; assessment of his intellectual development; and his thoughts on the history, significance, and successes of the intellectual movement for freedom that he has served so staunchly.

Reason: You’ve long advocated many of the ideas the new Congress is pushing, such as balanced budget amendments and flat taxes. Do you think Congress will make your dreams come true?

Milton Friedman: I’m skeptical. The talk is good. But I expected so much out of the Reagan administration and was disappointed. I’m a great admirer of Ronald Reagan himself, and I suspect he would have gotten much more done if it hadn’t been for the Cold War and the problem of Nicaragua and El Salvador.

But nonetheless, there’s no doubt that while he talked about cutting down the size of government, he did not succeed. He did slow it down—you’ve got to give him credit for some achievements. But not the massive reduction that he hoped for and planned for. That makes me hesitant now.

Congress wants to talk in this direction. Would they really want to move in that direction? The most important reform would be term limits, six-year limits. Because from an economic point of view, one of the worst features of our system is that you have a new tax law every year or every two years. However bad the tax law is, if you didn’t change it for five years it would do less harm. Why do you keep changing it? Because that’s the most effective way to raise campaign funds. Lobbyists will pay you to put loopholes in; they will pay you to take them out.

If you can get a flat tax with no exemptions or deductions—the Armey plan I suppose would be fine—its main advantage would not be the greater equity of a flat tax or less interference in private incentives. It would be to end this business of changing the whole tax system every few years and keeping prosperous these hordes of tax lawyers.

Reason: You were involved in the development of the withholding tax when you were doing tax work for the government in 1941–43?

Friedman: I was an employee at the Treasury Department. We were in a wartime situation. How do you raise the enormous amount of taxes you need for wartime? We were all in favor of cutting inflation. I wasn’t as sophisticated about how to do it then as I would be now, but there’s no doubt that one of the ways to avoid inflation was to finance as large a fraction of current spending with tax money as possible.

In World War I, a very small fraction of the total war expenditure was financed by taxes, so we had a doubling of prices during the war and after the war. At the outbreak of World War II, the Treasury was determined not to make the same mistake again.

You could not do that during wartime or peacetime without withholding. And so people at the Treasury tax research department, where I was working, investigated various methods of withholding. I was one of the small technical group that worked on developing it.

One of the major opponents of the idea was the IRS. Because every organization knows that the only way you can do anything is the way they’ve always been doing it. This was something new, and they kept telling us how impossible it was. It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task. I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it’s a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941–43, all of us were concentrating on the war.

I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn’t found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.

Reason: You’ve also had some history of advising candidates and presidents. How did you get involved in the Goldwater campaign?

Friedman: Through Bill Baroody at the American Enterprise Institute. The American Enterprise Institute was originally the American Enterprise Association, and had established a board of academic advisers to advise them on their publications. I had been a member of that I think since its inception, and Baroody arranged sometime in the early ’60s a number of dinners at his house at which Goldwater was present. Baroody was the brain trust for Goldwater. I was also at some of those dinners, so I got to meet Goldwater. And then when the campaign came along, Baroody asked me to serve as economic adviser. I didn’t go on the campaign trail. I sat at home and wrote memos.

Reason: Were you impressed with Goldwater’s acumen?

Friedman: It depends on what you mean by acumen. There’s no doubt whatsoever that he’s a man of principle and strong character. His IQ is perfectly reasonable but it’s not outstanding among the various politicians I’ve met, and that shows why IQ is not a good measure. The highest IQ was Richard Nixon’s and he was a terrible president

While I was never a governmental official, I was a member of an economic advisory group that Nixon appointed of which Arthur Burns was chairman. I saw Nixon from time to time when he was president, until he imposed price controls. I saw him only once after that.

Reason: Did you stop giving him advice?

Friedman: I kept giving him advice from Newsweek, but not personally.

Reason: Do you have a clear memory of how your political philosophy formed? Was it any specific teacher you encountered, book you read, or experience?

Friedman: I’m sure it was a combination of all of those. I was exposed as an undergraduate at Rutgers to two very strong influences: Homer Jones, who was a student of Frank Knight’s from Chicago, and Arthur Burns. They both had a considerable influence on me as an undergraduate in my thinking and my writing.

But it would be hard to say what philosophy that left me with. One of the things I regretted all my life is that when I graduated from Rutgers and came home, I wrote out a statement of my beliefs. I put that away in a drawer somewhere in my mother’s home and I’ve never been able to find the damn thing! I’d love to have it! So I can’t really tell you what I believed at that time.

But obviously my ideas were not very well formed. I was an innocent youngster and what I was impressed by, of course, was the Great Depression, and the belief that somehow or another there ought to be something that can prevent any such thing from happening.

Thanks to Homer, I was offered a scholarship at the University of Chicago and I went to Chicago and studied with Frank Knight, Jacob Viner, Henry Schultz, and so on. The atmosphere in Chicago in 1932 was very lively and active and encouraging. Of course, I got a very good grounding in economic theory and statistics as well.

Next year, I managed to get a fellowship to Columbia. I spent a year at Columbia mainly to study with Harold Hotelling, who was a mathematical economist and statistician.

Then I went back to Chicago for one year and was a research assistant to Henry Schultz. There were a group of students in Chicago who were very, very important. George Stigler, Allen Wallis, Rose Director, and myself. We ate almost every lunch and dinner together. We spent all the time discussing economics, both economic theory and economic policy. And we were very close for the rest of our lives. George died about two years ago. Allen, I’m glad to say, is still alive.

In the 1930s, both Rose and I at separate times went to Washington and worked on the New Deal, but we were technical statisticians and economists, not anything that had any policy role.

Throughout my career, I spent most of my time on technical economics. This policy stuff has been a strict avocation. If you really want to engage in policy activity, don’t make that your vocation. Make it your avocation. Get a job. Get a secure base of income. Otherwise, you’re going to get corrupted and destroyed. How are you going to get support? You’re only going to get support from people who are ideologically motivated. And you’re not going to be as free as you think you’re going to be.

One of the most important things in my career is that I always had a major vocation which was not policy. I don’t regard what I’ve done in the field of monetary policy as on the same level as what I’ve done about trying to get rid of the draft or legalizing drugs. One is a technical byproduct of scientific work, and so that’s the only sense in which my vocation has affected my policy. But by having a good firm position in the academic world, I was perfectly free to be my own person in the world of policy. I didn’t have to worry about losing my job. I didn’t have to worry about being persecuted.

I think you’ll make a mistake if you’re going to spend your life as a policy wonk. I’ve seen some of my students who have done this. And some of them are fine, and some of them, especially those who have gone to Washington and stayed, are not.

Reason: How did you come to enter the world of policy writing?

Friedman: What really got me started in policy and what led to Capitalism and Freedom was, in an indirect way, the Mont Pelerin Society. The first Mont Pelerin Society meeting was in 1947 in Switzerland. Hayek arranged it. It was his idea.

Mont Pelerin was the first time that I came into contact with people like Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and the European contingent of that time. That widened my perspective about issues and policy.

The Mont Pelerin Society was people who were deeply concerned about issues. It was people with whom you shared a basic common belief, who at home were isolated. Its great contribution was that it provided a week when people like that could get together and open their hearts and minds and not have to worry about whether somebody was going to stick a knife in their back—especially for people in countries where they were isolated.

The reason the Society ever happened was that Hayek had written The Road to Serfdom, which attracted the attention of the Volker Foundation, and it was the Volker Foundation that financed the American participation in the Mont Pelerin Society. A Swiss group financed the Swiss and European participation.

In the middle ’50s, the Volker Foundation undertook a program of summer institutes for junior academics who were favorably inclined toward a free-market point of view or were interested in such issues. Capitalism and Freedom was based on a series of lectures that I gave at one of those seminars. Those seminars forced me to systematize my thoughts and present them in a coherent way. And they also provided a very good audience because the people who were there were lively, outspoken, didn’t hesitate to criticize. It was a very good audience. There was a lot of free time as well for discussions outside of the formal seminar. And I learned a great deal, not only from the students who were there, but also the fellow lecturers.

And then my wife, Rose, took the transcribed tapes of the lectures and reworked them and that’s what became Capitalism and Freedom.

Reason: Did you have any hesitation about publishing that book?

Friedman: None whatsoever. Why should I have had any hesitation? Remember, I was a tenured professor.

Another thing that helped form my policy orientation was when Hayek came to Chicago in 1950. He attracted quite a number of very able students, Sam Peltzman, Ron Hamowy, Ralph Raico, Shirley Letwin. There were quite a group of them. Hayek drew very high quality people. I was an adviser to their New Individualist Review and contributed articles to it. They were a very lively group that had organized discussion sessions and so on, which was part of the atmosphere.

I was persuaded at that time in the early 1960s that we were on the verge of developing a strong libertarian movement. These were libertarians, all of them, though Hayek would not have labeled himself a libertarian. As you know, he always avoided the termconservative, too. He would call himself an Old Whig. The others would have called themselves libertarians.

That’s how I was able to develop my own ideas. What shaped them was the interaction with all these other people at lunches and dinners and lectures.

Ayn Rand was receiving increasing attention at that time. I believed a big upsurge in the libertarian philosophy and views was pending. And to some extent it was. You had the Randian group, and the Murray Rothbard group. But the developing libertarian movement was repressed by the Vietnam War and what it led to. You’ve only got room for one big movement at a time.

Reason: Why do you think you had more initial success as a public proselytizer—you had a regular column inNewsweek—than other prominent libertarians?

Friedman: I really don’t know how to answer that. I was basically trained in economic science. I was interested in the history of thought and where it came from. I thought I was going back to some fundamentals rather than creating anything new. Ayn Rand had no use for the past. She was going to invent the world anew. She was an utterly intolerant and dogmatic person who did a great deal of good. But I could never feel comfortable with her. I don’t mean with her personally—I never met her personally. I’m only talking about her writings.

Rothbard was a very different character. I had some contact with Murray early on, but very little contact with him overall. That’s primarily because I deliberately kept from getting involved in the Libertarian Party affairs; partly because I always thought Murray, like Rand, was a cult builder, and a dogmatist. Partly because whenever he’s had the chance he’s been nasty to me and my work. I don’t mind that but I didn’t have to mix with him. And so there is no ideological reason why I kept separate from him, really a personal reason.

Reason: In seeing yourself as harkening back to 19th-century liberalism, you never became a system-builder like Rand or Rothbard….

Friedman: Exactly. I’d rather use the term liberal than libertarian.

Reason: I see you occasionally use the word libertarian.

Friedman: Oh, I do.

Reason: As a concession to accepted usage?

Friedman: That’s right. Because now liberal is so misinterpreted. So I am a Republican with a capital “r” and a libertarian with a small “l.” I have a party membership as a Republican, not because they have any principles, but because that’s the way I am the most useful and have most influence. My philosophy is clearly libertarian.

However, libertarian is not a self-defining term. There are many varieties of libertarians. There’s a zero-government libertarian, an anarchist. There’s a limited-government libertarianism. They share a lot in terms of their fundamental values. If you trace them to their ultimate roots, they are different. It doesn’t matter in practice, because we both want to work in the same direction.

I would like to be a zero-government libertarian.

Reason: Why aren’t you?

Friedman: Because I don’t think it’s a feasible social structure. I look over history, and outside of perhaps Iceland, where else can you find any historical examples of that kind of a system developing?

Reason: One could argue the same thing about minimal-state libertarianism: that historically it seems to not be stable.

Friedman: I agree. I wrote an article once arguing that a free society is an unstable equilibrium. Fundamentally, I’m of the opinion that it is. Though we want to try to keep that unstable equilibrium as long as we can! The United States from 1780 to 1929 is not a bad example of a limited-government libertarianism that lasted for a long time.

Reason: Is feeling like part of a larger movement important to you? Would you have been able to do the work you did had you not felt part of a community of like-minded scholars?

Friedman: I’ve been very fortunate in being part of two communities of scholars: the community of economists on the one hand, and the community of libertarians on the other. And that combination has been very productive so far as I’m concerned, but I can’t really tell you why. One thing is that it’s very hard for somebody on his own to be sure that he’s thought of all the angles. Discussion among people helps an enormous amount. And particularly able, good people.

If you have a person isolated in an environment unfriendly to his ideas and thoughts, he tends to turn bitter and self-directed. But the same person with three or four other people around—it doesn’t have to be a lot of people—will be in a wholly different position since he will receive support from the others.

You remind me of one incident where in a sense the two worlds interacted. Back in the 1960s, my daughter was an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr, and I was invited by Haverford, I think it was, to spend three days giving talks on mathematical economics. Absolutely no policy involved, pure mathematical economics. And because my daughter was at Bryn Mawr, I agreed.

After I had agreed, they asked if I would also be willing to give a chapel talk on political matters. I said sure and I gave a title, something having to do with freedom. Then I discovered that chapel at Haverford was compulsory. I wrote to the president and said that I was very much disturbed at giving a talk on freedom to a compulsory audience.

When it was time to go to the chapel, I asked the president, “How do they count attendance?” And he said, “At the beginning of the hour there are people going around in the balcony and looking down. Everybody has an assigned seat, and they count.”

When I got up to talk, I spoke up to the people in the balcony and said that those who were counting attendance, please let me know when they’re through because I don’t like the idea of speaking about freedom to a compulsory audience. I’m going to sit down and give the people who want to leave the chance to leave. And I did. Now, the students hadn’t really thought that I was going to do it and when I did, about one or two people got up to leave and the rest of them booed them because obviously, I was talking on their level. As a result, I’ve seldom had a student audience who were so completely on my side as that group, even though the political atmosphere at Haverford was very much to the left. That’s one of the greatest coups I’ve ever had as a public speaker.

Reason: Do you think you’ve become more radically libertarian in your political views over the years?

Friedman: The difference between me and people like Murray Rothbard is that, though I want to know what my ideal is, I think I also have to be willing to discuss changes that are less than ideal so long as they point me in that direction. So while I’d like to abolish the Fed, I’ve written many pages on how the Fed, if it does exist, should be run.

Murray used to berate me for my stand on education vouchers. I would like to see the government out of the education business entirely. In that area, I have become more extreme, not because of any change of philosophy, but because of a change in my knowledge of the factual situation and history.

I used to argue that I could justify compulsory schooling on the ground of external effects. But then I discovered from work that E.G. West and others did, that before compulsory schooling something over 90 percent of people got schooled. The big distinction you have to make is between marginal benefit and average benefit. The marginal benefit from having 91 percent of people in school rather than 90 percent does not justify making it compulsory. But if in the absence of compulsory education, only 50 percent would be literate, then I can regard it as appropriate.

Some issues are open and shut. Tariffs, property rights. No, not property rights, because you have to define property rights. But education is not open and shut. In Capitalism and Freedom we came out on the side of favoring compulsory schooling and in Free To Choose we came out against it. So I have become more radical in that sense. Murray used to call me a statist because I was willing to have government money involved. But I see the voucher as a step in moving away from a government system to a private system. Now maybe I’m wrong, maybe it wouldn’t have that effect, but that’s the reason I favor it.

Reason: Would you agree with the proposition that you have been the most successful and important proselytizer for libertarianism?

Friedman: I don’t think that I’ve had the most influence. I think the most influential person was Hayek. The effect of The Road to Serfdom was really critical. In another area, Bill Buckley has certainly been very important on national policy.

Buckley’s not a libertarian. But he’s also not a socialist. And if you look at the political scene, his National Review has had a tremendous influence in providing a base for collaboration between the libertarians on the one side and the free-market conservatives on the other. That was epitomized in its most obvious form by Frank Meyer when he was with National Review. They’ve helped that coalition to form and hold together and have influence; Bill Buckley played an enormously important role.

I might have more public influence than ideologues like Rand or Murray Rothbard, the libertarians in that strict sense. And I believe that the reason is because they have been so intolerant.

Reason: You wrote an essay in Liberty about the intolerance of Rand and Ludwig von Mises. You say you never met Rand….

Friedman: I was never to my knowledge in the same place as she was; I was in Chicago, she was in New York. I’m sure if I had been in New York, I would have met her. It was not because of any objection on my part. I think she was a fascinating woman and had a great influence. As I always have said, she had an extremely good influence on all those who did not become Randians. But if they became Randians, they were hopeless.

Reason: But you knew Mises personally. Did you see the intolerance that you find in his method also in his personal behavior?

Friedman: No question. The story I remember best happened at the initial Mont Pelerin meeting when he got up and said, “You’re all a bunch of socialists.” We were discussing the distribution of income, and whether you should have progressive income taxes. Some of the people there were expressing the view that there could be a justification for it.

Another occasion which is equally telling: Fritz Machlup was a student of Mises’s, one of his most faithful disciples. At one of the Mont Pelerin meetings, Fritz gave a talk in which I think he questioned the idea of a gold standard; he came out in favor of floating exchange rates. Mises was so mad he wouldn’t speak to him for three years. Some people had to come around and bring them together again. It’s hard to understand; you can get some understanding of it by taking into account how people like Mises were persecuted in their lives.

Reason: You don’t link yourself openly to certain aspects of the libertarian political movement….

Friedman: Well, you have to be more specific. Being very specific, I have not wanted to join the Libertarian Party simply because I have accumulated good working relationships with people in the Republican Party, and I think I can be more effective by being a Republican. That’s the only reason. There are no other cases in which I have had any problem with the libertarian movement.

Reason: You certainly have a respectability and presence that most people and organizations labeled libertarian don’t have….

Friedman: That’s because of one thing only: I won the Nobel Prize. What, are you kidding yourself?

Reason: Your status preceded your winning the Nobel.

Friedman: I did have some of it, yes. It’s because I have a firm root in something other than ideology. Because I was firmly based in a scientific academic discipline. I wasn’t simply a preacher or an ideologue or an unconnected philosopher.

But I think the libertarian movement is doing fine. I think that REASON magazine has been remarkably good; it has been very effective. It takes many kinds of people to make a movement. And one of the most important things are publications. In any activity you have manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers; and all three are essential and necessary. There are only a relatively small number of manufacturers of ideas. But there can be a very large number of wholesalers and retailers.

As I look around me I’m impressed by the fact that there’s increasing attention paid to libertarian ideas. If you look at the picture now, compared with 30 years ago, there’s no comparison. Now you’ve got much more. As far as journals are concerned, then we had the Foundation for Economic Education’s Freeman; for a while we had the New Individualist Review in Chicago, but that was about it. Bill Buckley established National Review, which is in a different corner.

(Page 6 of 7)

But look at the situation today. You have REASON magazine, you have Liberty magazine. You’ve got all of this stuff that spouts out from the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a half dozen other think tanks. In fact, I think there are too damn many think tanks now.

Reason: Why do you say there are too many?

Friedman: You don’t have the talent for it.

Reason: Do you consider yourself in the libertarian mainstream on foreign policy issues?

Friedman: I don’t believe that the libertarian philosophy dictates a foreign policy. In particular I don’t think you can derive isolationism from libertarianism. I’m anti-interventionist, but I’m not an isolationist. I don’t believe we ought to go without armaments. I’m sure we spend more money on armaments than we need to; that’s a different question.

I don’t believe that you can derive from libertarian views the notion that a nation has to bare itself to the outside without defense, or that a strong volunteer force would arise and defend the nation.

Reason: What did you think about the Gulf War?

Friedman: I always had misgivings about the Gulf War, but I never came to a firm decision. It was more nearly justified than other recent foreign interventions, and yet I was persuaded that the major argument used to support it was fallacious.

After all, if Iraq took over the oil, it would have to do something with it. If they don’t want to eat it, they’d have to sell it. I don’t think the price of oil would have been much affected. The more important consideration was the balance of power with Iran and Iraq. I have mixed feelings about that war; I wouldn’t be willing to write a brief on either side.

Reason: What would you regard as your most important accomplishment?

Friedman: It depends on what you mean. I wrote an essay on methodology in 1953. It was published in my book Essays on Positive Economics. I had been working on it for years before that, so it goes way back to the middle ’40s. It started to generate a lot of comments, but I decided I would rather do economics than talk about how economics are done. So I made a distinct point of not replying to any criticism of that essay. And I think that’s why it’s so commented on.

That methodology article has probably been reprinted more often and referred to more often than anything else I’ve written, though I would by no means regard it as the most important thing I’ve ever done.

In terms of sheer technical quality there’s no doubt in my mind that the best thing I ever did was The Theory of the Consumption Function which, from a scientific point of view, is a carry on from the methodology article. I regard the theory of the consumption function as a demonstration of applying the methodology I explained there. But also it has a neatness about it and a specific theorem which has generated an enormous amount of work since then. When things like that originally come out, the status quo says, “Oh, that’s a bunch of nonsense, we can’t possibly work with that,” but give it time. And by now it’s part of conventional economics.

In the realm of policy, I regard eliminating the draft as my most important accomplishment.

Reason: Have you retired from economics?

Friedman: Well, not from economics, but from that kind of work. There’s been a tremendous advance in specialization in economics, particularly in the econometrics area. I was just looking at recent working papers published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. These are clearly built on work of mine, going back to the 1970s. But there’s been a new development in econometrics that I haven’t kept up with. The techniques they’ve adopted here are all different from ours. I’m not an expert in them anymore; I really couldn’t deal with this material on the level on which they are dealing with it, although I can understand the thrust of what they’re doing.

I’m not making any pretense of trying to do any more basic, fundamental economics work. I believe that almost all important contributions of a scientist are made in the first 10 years after he enters the discipline. Not the first 10 years of his professional life; he may shift from one discipline to another. And I’ve been impressed as I’ve been going over my memoirs, that my basic contributions all have their roots in the early years of my work. I was reading over some preliminary professional papers in the 1950s, and I could see there the whole future of the next 30 years of work that I did; it was all outlined in there.

You add things to it, you change it, but the fundamental ideas come early. The 1940s–’60s was when I did my most important economic work, even though it wasn’t all published then.

(Page 7 of 7)

Reason: I read an article recently in the Washington Monthly that repeated all the silly ideas about inflation that you’ve been fighting your whole career. Are battles like this ever won?

Friedman: No. All battles are perpetual. You go back in the literature of economics, and you’ll find the same kind of silly statements 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And you’ll find the same sensible statements the other way.

Reason: Are those kind of mistakes still made among professional economists?

Friedman: If you look at the views of the profession as a whole, no. There’s a great deal of agreement among economists, contrary to what people may think. You won’t find much difference of opinion on the proposition that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs. You won’t find much difference of opinion on the desirability of free trade. And you won’t find any difference of opinion on the idea that you cannot have inflation without monetary expansion. There’s no doubt that there’s very widespread agreement about those simple ideas.

Reason: How do you make that consensus spread to the general public?

Friedman: You just have to keep on trying to do it. There’s no short cut. There’s no way in which you’re going to end the discussion, because new generations arise; every group has the same crazy ideas. I get a great many letters from people who think that the way to solve budget problems and fiscal problems is to simply print money and pay off the debt. And there’s almost no way of making those people realize just what a bunch of nonsense that is.

I’m inclined to think that there’s no field so rife with cranks as currency and money, but I’m sure there are other fields that are just as bad. I’m just ignorant of them.

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