Riu riu, chiu is a villancico (a Spanish courtly song form emulating rustic dances) printed in a 1556 Venetian collection.

Eric Fischl, The Old Man’s Boat and the Old Man’s Dog, 1982. –Our time’s version of The Raft of the Medusa.

Charles Hill identifies our time, the age of Decadence, as the period of time lying between the decline and the fall of a great civilization.

Toynbee [predicted] that the creative minority behind great civilizations will, as the civilization begins to decline, transform itself into a dominant minority that takes on the vulgar and promiscuous behaviors of society’s low-life. So in the post-Cold War period America’s “cultural elite”… adopted distinctly coarse attitudes and practices. A Vice Presidential case in point: When the wife of Senator and later Vice President Gore attacked the violence and misogyny of some rock and most rap lyrics, she was scolded by most of her social and political peers. Why were four-letter words, formerly seen by the upper-middle class as déclassé, now appearing in glossy upscale magazines? How had “the hooker look” become a fashion trend among nice girls from the American suburbs? How had multiple body piercings and tattoos, which a few decades ago marked only sailors and motorcycle gang thugs, become trendy?

Toynbee would have shrugged and said simply that we are witnessing the self-proletarianization of the American dominant minority. Happens all the time. Yet there is reason to suspect that the primary cause of this vulgarization may rather be the adoption of a broad cultural style that enhances the elite’s power. In a polity that has been shedding its Founding Fathers-designed barriers against Athenian-style direct democracy, the power elite ever more requires the protective camouflage of proletarian class superiority. Flaunting coarse conduct and a combat boots dress code adds heft to the elite’s domination. So in place of the classically tripartite elements of the soul—reason, desire and spirit, according to the parable of Leontias in Plato’s Republic, or in earlier America, self-reliance, Christian-Roman virtues and patriotism—a new triad emerges: claims on government, vulgar behavior and a yearning for relief from world leadership.

This vast societal transformation might be called “The Great Virtue Shift.” Almost every act regarded in the mid-20th century as a vice was, by the opening of the 21st century, considered a virtue.Almost every act regarded in the mid-20th century as a vice was, by the opening of the 21st century, considered a virtue. As gambling, obscenity, pornography, drugs, divorce, homosexuality, abortion and sneering disaffection became The New Virtue, government at all levels began to move in on the action, starting with casinos and currently involving, in several states and the District of Columbia, an officially approved and bureaucratically managed narcotics trade.

The Great Virtue Shift has produced among its practitioners the appearance of profound moral concern, caring and legislated activism on behalf of the neediest cases and most immiserated populations at home and around the world. To this may be added the panoply of social agenda issues designed to ignite resentment and righteous indignation among the new “proletarian” elite. All this works to satisfy the cultural elite’s desire to feel morally superior about itself regarding collective moral issues of large magnitude even as they, as individuals, engage in outsized self-indulgent personal behavior. This is Reinhold Niebuhr’s “moral man and immoral society” turned on its head, where hedonism takes cover beneath a superficial global moralism.

The virtue shift has been paralleled by a governmental shift. As gifted politicians have sensed the changing psychology and national character of the country, they have learned to constantly scan the political horizon to identify each special interest group, make the necessary promises and then move to satisfy each group’s claim on government largesse, or its demand for deeper government intervention to enforce adherence to each group’s behavioral choices. Throughout most of American history people were preoccupied with how to prevent government from becoming corrupt. In our time, governments have discovered how to corrupt the people. It then follows that the more corrupted the people become, the more numerous the laws must be, thus further aggrandizing government’s indispensability.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Vanderleun.

Sippi lives in Rumford, Maine, where they have serious winters and he’s not yearning for places without seasons where it never snows.

[C]old as a concept is not as bad as many make it. It is a fact, here. It will be below zero, day and night, for three days in a row. It will be ten, fifteen, maybe push twenty below zero at night. Winter is not fooling around anymore. So what.

Winter is a full time job in Maine, E. B. White said. But he lived Downeast, where it’s warm compared to here. But he understood. You have to look it straight in the face, and deal with it. You can’t go out in your socks and scrape the frost from your windshield with a credit card. I’ve made over 500 fires already, and I’ve only used one match, once, to do it. You have to prepare yourself for winter. It reminds you that you’re mortal, and that there are seasons, and those seasons have meaning. It shows you that your life will pass you by if you’re not careful. Winter is useful that way.

I see a great number of people talking about how they’re going to deal with a coming apocalypse. They’re going to hoard this and grow that. They’re going to be the Omega Man crossed with Johnny Appleseed. Forgive me, but life is plenty hard here, and I can’t help but notice you’re not moving in next door to me before the apocalypse. I doubt you will the day after. If winter is too much for you, I doubt you’re prepared for an army of zombie Robespierres or whatever it is you’re planning for.

I can’t say I like the winter. I’ve always been cold. Poor people are often cold, and I have been poor in my life. I’m not a fool and I don’t like misery. But I respect the winter here. It’s a worthy adversary, and so, goddamn it, am I. Bring it on.

More Praetorius.

Leonidas, Thermopylae monument.

Five good lines.

WFSB:

Hundreds of Connecticut residents lined up Monday to make sure their weapons will be legal in the new year.

The state’s new gun laws are supposed to protect the families of Connecticut, but some said the laws are only causing problems for law abiding citizens.

People started lining up at the State Department of Public Safety in Middletown early Monday morning. The line wrapped around the building and people were registering up until the building closed at 4:30 p.m.

The controversial, wide-ranging gun control law was passed in Connecticut in April after the mass shooting inside Sandy Hook Elementary where 20 children and six adults lost their lives.

Now anything the state considers to be an assault weapon or magazine holding more than 10 rounds needs to be registered by Wednesday or it will be illegal in the new year.

If an assault weapon bought before April is not registered by Tuesday, owners will have to sell it to a gun dealer, render it permanently inoperable, or turn it in to law enforcement.

“If you get caught with a banned assault weapon after tomorrow night then you’re going to be prosecuted as a felon,” said Mike Lawlor, who is the governor’s undersecretary for criminal justice.

I am so happy not to be living in that state anymore.

Roman painting of a rook perched on a vase.

Hat tip to Ratak Monodosico.

Hat tip to the Dish.

Steve Bodio reports that the famous Rigby gunmaking company has resumed London operations and is in possession of the original company records.

He writes:

I have owned one once, a “.275”. So did Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell, who shot many elephants with that “tiny”, actually moderate, caliber. And Jim Corbett (man -eating tigers), and Eleanor O’Connor [Mrs. Jack O’Connor] (mostly edible horned things).

I used to own one, too. Mine was one of the earliest made, produced on an Oberndorf Mauser Model of 1898 action and sold October 27th of 1898 to Major Blunt, complete with case, cleaning equipment, and ammunition.

.275 Rigby, formerly owned by Major Blunt and me.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Times Cairo Bureau Chief and Mideast Correspondent David D. Kirkpatrick said so on Twitter on December 30th:

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Doug Ross graphically speculates on just what that New York Times embedded reporter would have been doing on that fatal evening.