Of course our little excursion into the slums of blogactionday was not just for our amusement.

We all know there is poverty and we all know that poverty is bad. Go to any playground and sample the opinions of kids on the swing set.

Would you like to be poor, sonny?
No, sir!
And why not?
Because poverty is bad, you silly old coot!

"Raising awareness" of poverty is as productive as the CDC warning us that water is wet. This is nothing more than a pretense of outrage and an opportunity to excrete some ideology. It gives Eric a chance to fulminate against corporate fascists, just so we know where he stands. It gives Makeesha an opportunity to take the blame for poverty, when in fact we all know that if she meant what she said she would sell all that she has and give to the poor. (And then perhaps she would go to prison.) Barney Leith gets a golden opportunity to prooftext, and Tony Jones can once again show that a dirty mouth is evidence of purity of heart.

What, these people never read the Prophets? Plato? Karl Marx? Adam Smith? Milton Friedman?

I say all this because evangelicalism is engaged in somewhat the same heroic and useless pose. Now they get up and read academic papers about the loss of truth or the definition of culture!

Welcome to the dance, guys. Maybe you could help us stack the chairs, take down the streamers and sweep up?

The fact of the matter is, any truth claim you are now prepared to defend will be dismissed as a vestigial superstition, and any appeal to beauty will be laughed at because we've heard your kind of music.

I'm thinking of this as I recall Dalrymple explaining Why Shakespeare Is for All Time. And I am recalling the words of John Milton:

On Shakespear

What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th'shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.

--- John Milton

We are bereft of fancy, incapable of wonder and astonishment and yet we seek the souls of men? Who should believe us?