The Conversation

The End, this time for good

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:45:00 +0000

UPDATE: It perhaps worth noting, since this corner of the internet still exists, that I later stopped blogging at the Humble Libertarian and have more recently been blogging Casting Out Callicles

Recently Wes of Slaying Dragons and I started a new blog project, The Humble Libertarian. I've been regularly posting over there and intend to continue to do so. There is really no reason for me to continue posting here, since I'm so busy with school and I'm writing at another blog, so just in case anyone is still reading this, I'd love it if you'd check out The Humble Libertarian!

Two Perspectives on Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:00:00 +0000

One asking great questions.

The other making a hilarious statement.

Two Videos you must see

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:23:00 +0000

One hilarious:

You can thank Andy for that one

One Simply True:

Derek Webb - "A Savior on Capitol Hill"

Chesterton on Dogma

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:10:00 +0000

From Heretics by G.K. Chesterton:

Whether the human mind can advance or not, is a question too little discussed, for nothing can be more dangerous than to found our social philosophy on any theory which is debatable but has not been debated. But if we assume, for the sake of argument, that there has been in the past, or will be in the future, such a thing as a growth or improvement of the human mind itself, there still remains a very sharp objection to be raised against the modern version of that improvement. The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

To the Obama Worshipers:

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:51:00 +0000

From Heretics by G.K. Chesterton

Men trust an ordinary man because they trust themselves. But men trust a great man because they do not trust themselves. And hence the worship of great men always appears in times of weakness and cowardice; we never hear of great men until the time when all other men are small.

Chesterton on Humility

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:03:00 +0000

From Heretics by G.K. Chesterton

It is the humble man who does the big things. It is the humble man who does the bold things. It is the humble man who has the sensational sights vouchsafed to him, and this for three obvious reasons: first, that he strains his eyes more than any other men to see them; second, that he is more overwhelmed and uplifted with them when they come; third, that he records them more exactly and sincerely and with less adulteration from his more commonplace and more conceited everyday self. Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected--that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous.

Chesterton on Conviction

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 23:03:00 +0000

From Heretics by G.K. Chesterton:

A man with a definite belief always appears bizarre, because he does not change with the world; he has climbed into a fixed star, and the earth whizzes below him like a zoetrope. Millions of mild black-coated men call themselves sane and sensible merely because they always catch the fashionable insanity, because they are hurried into madness after madness by the maelstrom of the world.

Chesterton on Progess

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:41:00 +0000

From Heretics by G.K. Chesterton:

As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative. We meet every ideal of religion, patriotism, beauty, or brute pleasure with the alternative ideal of progress--that is to say, we meet every proposal of getting something that we know about, with an alternative proposal of getting a great deal more of nobody knows what. Progress, properly understood, has, indeed, a most dignified and legitimate meaning. But as used in opposition to precise moral ideals, it is ludicrous. So far from it being the truth that the ideal of progress is to be set against that of ethical or religious finality, the reverse is the truth. Nobody has any business to use the word "progress" unless he has a definite creed and a cast-iron code of morals. Nobody can be progressive without being doctrinal; I might almost say that nobody can be progressive without being infallible --at any rate, without believing in some infallibility. For progress by its very name indicates a direction; and the moment we are in the least doubtful about the direction, we become in the same degree doubtful about the progress. Never perhaps since the beginning of the world has there been an age that had less right to use the word "progress" than we.

Charles Murray on Oppression

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:28:00 +0000

From In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government by Charles Murray:

Pick your favorite image of private people acting oppressively - a slumlord, perhaps, or white oligarchs in a southern town in Jim Crow days, or some rapacious nineteenth-century monopoly. Now ask: Under what conditions are or were they able to do bad things for a long time without the connivance of the state? Without special laws and regulations being passed on their behalf? Without being allowed by the state to use coercion? I suggest that the longer you consider each specific instance that comes to mind, the more plausible you will find this rule of thumb: it is really very difficult for people - including large associations of people and huge corporations - to do anything very bad, for very long, when they are not buttressed by the threat of physical coercion. Private oppression deprived of access to force withers away rather rapidly.

A Kind Capitalism

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:39:00 +0000

I have a new favorite company: Visual Sound. This week I bought several of their products, and though I already knew these products would be top notch I'd little idea how much I'd respect the company until I started reading through the F.A.Q. on their site. Visual Sound precisely embodies the kind capitalism necessary to make a free society work. They exist to make money by making customers happy. It's that simple.

This comes out in many ways, but my favorite is in their choosing to answer a question about outsourcing.

We made our products through sub-contract assembly factories in the USA in 1995 and 1996, but very nearly went out of business as a result. The cost was very high and the quality control was poor. In 1997, we moved production to Taiwan and had good success there until we moved production again in 2003 to south China. The move to China allowed us to upgrade the components in our pedals without increasing cost.

If you look inside the most expensive boutique pedal or amp, you will see a lot of electronic components... none of which are made in the USA. Resistors, capacitors, diodes, and IC chips are simply not made here anymore. They're all made in Asia. Switchcraft jacks? ... Mexico. Carling switches? ... same thing. How about your iPod? ...China. So, we simply go to the source for all our components and assemble them there, too. This allows us to use superior quality components with superior circuit design, but offer the finished product to you at a fair price. This also enables us to maintain and grow our business in a more streamlined fashion -- rather than getting a larger facility, buying machinery, and charging triple for our products.

They didn't have to put this question up, not to mention answer it this clearly. The plain and simple fact is that it's cheaper to make some things in China and they just say so. I appreciate that. It drives me crazy how people talk about outsourcing as some sort of evil... more on that in my next post.

They Just Don’t Make ‘em Like They Used To

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:47:00 +0000

I recently acquired a vintage guitar amp, a 1979 fender twin reverb. And when dealing with aging things of any kind, it’s important to know a rather simple fact: there’s a difference between vintage and just plain old. But some things are just old. This week at work I’ve been repeatedly been amazed at how landscaping clients want to keep old elements in their yards which they perhaps think are “antique” but are actually just kind of old and gross.

This same distinction is important to maintain in regard to ideas. Often we hold views simply because they’re old. We don’t evaluate them, checking to see that they’re still holding up. In my experience, however, the more common issue with ideas comes when we do the opposite: we write off something that’s actually a beautiful antique as nothing more than an old piece of junk. It’s sad to me that “medieval” is, in everyday language, often used a synonym for “backwards” and “uncivilized”. Now sure, many of the material conditions of the middle ages were not preferable. Much of ancient and medieval thought, however, is sort of like an attic full of antique’s waiting to be discovered. And just like an antique desk or a vintage guitar amp, well-aged ideas remind us that they just don’t make some things like they used to.

Why limited government?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:10:00 +0000

I read this yesterday in Charles Murray's In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government:

Man acting in his private capacity - if restrained from the use of force - is resourceful and benign... while man acting as a public and political creature is resourceful and dangerous.

And this is part of why the only proper role of political man is to restrain private man from the use of force.

Real Music: Arthur Alligood

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:39:00 +0000

Arthur Alligood recently released a new, free EP (which you can find here). After loving Under the Gray, Arthur’s last album, I was pleased to hear that he had released something new. A month or two ago I downloaded the new EP and had mixed feelings. Rather than explain to you how I feel about it, I’ll just share what I said to Arthur in an email, because I think I put it well then:

I love the songs. I love the stripped down feel. The rawness makes sure that the listener gets the full emotional impact of the words and the melodies. At the same time it creates this longing for more production. I hear the simple guitar and vocal and start hearing all these other things in my head. The rise and fall of the guitar and vocal set off the rise and fall of a band in my head. It's the kind of music that makes me wanna go grab my guitar and play along. It leaves me kind of pleasantly dissatisfied. The songs are bigger than their delivery and because we don't get a big delivery we get to hear the full size of the song instead.

So if you love music that hasn’t had all the humanity polished out of it, check out Arthur's free EP.

Truth and Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:58:00 +0000

I read this today in John Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration:

Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received and, I fear never will receive, much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors indeed prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succours. But if truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her.

Is this not especially true for Christians, who claim that the Spirit of God is at work to bring people to Himself? Why is it that we feel the need to use the government to manipulate people's behavior when we've got the power of the Spirit to change people's hearts?

America

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:24:00 +0000

I wrote this Friday, on my way back from Finland:

“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” –Philippians 3:20

It’s the 4th of July. For a variety of reasons, this year I am more convinced than ever that nationalism is a lie. Don’t get me wrong. I love living in America. I love that, despite our constant inching in the other direction, we still have one of the freest markets in the world. To be quite frank, however, there’s a lot of what we call “America” that’s a lie and a fake and that I’ve come to hate with my whole heart.

I hate the American dream, the absurd idea that happiness is nothing more than a smile that comes with a steady income, a house, a car and 2.4 children. I hate the idea that Americans deserve better than others, the idea that Americans ought to have their jobs protected against foreign competition as if Americans have some right that others don’t. I hate the idea that America should police the world as if we know exactly how to fix everyone’s problems. If these are American then I’m no American.

But the last week I spent in Finland I realized how much I missed America. But it wasn’t the materialistic, protectionist, imperialistic America I missed, but the America of freedom. I think I speak for the whole team that I went to Finland with that the one thing lacking in our travels that we missed from the States was customer service. We simply missed being treated well. European airlines in particular are just much less concerned about caring for their customers than American ones. Americans treat customers well, not because Americans are somehow just nicer people, but because American culture still retains something of the culture of freedom it was founded upon. In a free market everyone is dependent on the voluntary cooperation of others. A healthy capitalism fosters a friendly interdependence. But somewhere between a self-indulgent capitalism bent on gluttony and a foolish socialism pursuing the mirage of security, we are gradually losing the free American of mutual dependence and replacing it with an American enslaved on one hand by its freedom and on the other hand by its lack thereof.

The America worth celebrating is rapidly deteriorating. But I’m not trying to be a prophet of doom. America will not fall apart next week or anytime soon. One day though, hopefully many years, decades or centuries from now, America, like everything else we create, will disappear. And that doesn’t worry me. Because on bad days it makes me the servant of the whims of the people and their representatives, and on good days it frees me to voluntarily exchange my service for that of others, but America can never free me from myself, nor enslave me once I’ve been released from my slavery to me.

On a similar topic I strongly recommend Ben Shive’s song, 4th of July, which you can hear at his myspace.

Back from Finland

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 20:37:00 +0000

On Friday I returned from Finland, where I played bass on a worship team that went to lead worship at a meeting of missionaries from the region. The week was a wonderful time of worship and fellowship and more happened than I can tell (if you'd like to hear some of the stories of the trip you should check out Kelly's blog). It was a great experience that stretched me in many ways and reminded me of how small I am and how huge God is. The whole trip was one challenge after another that led me right back to my knees, where I belong.

Finland itself was beautiful (as you can see in the pictures I took), and worship was awesome. I learned a great deal about myself and others. On the plane I had a lot of time to read and think and on the way back especially, as it was July 4th, I had a lot of thoughts running through my jetlagged head (which I will share with you in my next couple of posts). In all this reading and thinking I came to be aware more than ever that I'm made for philosophy. I am made to think and discuss and I realized this week on the flight back how much I've missed reading and writing a lot during the busy first half of my summer. So expect more writing soon, as I try to remain focused through a busy month and a half or so before school.

Are you kidding me?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:58:00 +0000

This is just plain ridiculous. Nationalization of oil refineries? Are you serious? Since when did we become Latin American dictators? This is an affront to liberty. I sincerely hope this just some political posturing intended to stop talk about lifting limits on offshore drilling. If this suggestion is taken seriously then we are in big trouble.

Of course, beyond being an affront to liberty, nationalization isn’t needed. High gas prices, as I pointed out in my last post, are a good thing. They give us a signal that says we have heavy demand and limited supply. There are two solutions to this: increase supply or reduce demand. The latter option has been limited thanks to Congress, who, of course, is prohibiting drilling in all sorts of places that would allow an increase in supply and thus a decrease in prices (all while yelling at oil companies for making prices to high). Second, we can substitute, which we are already doing as we start buying fewer SUV’s and more hybrid vehicles and such. It seems rather silly to me that on one hand Congress wants to talk about spending millions of dollars on subsidies for research on alternative energy, but then they want to remove the most effective incentive in the world for alternative energy research: high gas prices. We’d all be better off if government would simply get out of the way and let the market do what it does best.

The Beauty of High Gas Prices

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:09:00 +0000

Sure, I'm as tired of paying a lot for gas as anyone. Tomorrow I'm driving around 7 hours from here in Nashville to North Carolina and it is not going to be cheap. But as tired as I am of paying high gas prices, I'm even more tired of hearing people complaining about high gas prices. So we need to clear things up.

Gas companies (or any provider of any good or service) should be free to charge whatever they want. It is our choice to buy gas or not. High prices are not unfair. It is our fault we have become so dependent on oil. The beauty of high gas prices is that they send a very important signal. They tell us to drive less, buy more gas-efficient cars, develop new technology, etc. People are already beginning to make adjustments. High prices give us a warning that we want a given commodity too badly. That's something no one seems to understand these days: prices are signals. In the case of gas prices, the signal we need to hear is not "the gas companies are making too much money," but instead "Americans are too dependent on gas."

Something I've Been Thinking About

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Sat, 31 May 2008 02:38:00 +0000

The other day I had a conversation with some friends about entertainment and faith. Among many other things we discussed humor and laughter and in doing so began to realize just how negative and sarcastic most humor is these days. You don't realize how scary it is until you realize the way the this brand of humor effects our ways of thinking about other human beings. I read a blog post today that I think effectively exposes the underlying mindset of a lot of our culture's humor:

The irony of ironic detachment is this: it creates the illusion that we are in control, but in fact it puts us in a position to be controlled. The guy who’s laughing at all the fools around him will do anything to avoid being laughed at himself.

Read the rest here

Poetic Paradise: Paradise Lost

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Sun, 25 May 2008 23:37:00 +0000

Recently I’ve started reading Milton’s Paradise Lost, my goal being to always be reading some piece of fiction in addition to all the non-fiction I read. I was flipping through a shelf of old books from I don’t even know where (maybe me or my brother got it for high school, I dunno) and ran across this and figured it was worth reading. Even more-so than I expected, Milton is wonderful. Granted I’m only a little bit into the text, so there is little I can say about overall thematic content. The language however, is beautiful, and there are occasional hints of thematic content in like these lines, whose description of the devil speaks so powerfully of God:

So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay
Chain’d on the burning Lake, nor ever thence
Had ris’n or heav’d his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enrag’d might see
How all his malice serv’d but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown
On Man by him seduc’t, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour’d.

I can’t wait to dig in further and write more here about what I continue to get from Milton.

God and Government

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

In a few weeks I’m attending a seminar hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies. Last week I received a package in the mail with info about the seminar as well as a free copy of The Libertarian Reader. Frankly I’m usually not a fan of anthologies like this that take bits out of the contexts of larger works, which are worthy of reading in themselves. Despite my general frustration with such compilations, however, there is one thing I do appreciate about this anthology: its first excerpt is 1 Samuel 8, a passage which, though I love, I often forget. God warned us a few thousand years ago about what government would do to us if we looked to it for hope and not to Him!

A Kind Capitalism

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

I work for a small landscaping company and last week we had a particularly rewarding job. We had to clean up a yard that was an absolute mess, in order to prepare it to go on the market to be sold. The job itself was a blast to do, because the clean up went so well. The place started off a huge, complicated mess and came out looking pretty awesome. But the best part of the job was seeing the thankfulness of the customer. At work I'm constantly amazed by the gratitude of our clients. They are paying us to what we're doing. We're just doing our jobs. But the trick is, we do these jobs like human beings. We do them with excellence, with purpose, with personality, and customers appreciate that. This appreciation is the fruit of the free market and the only thing that allows the free market to work. The free market works best when economic encounters are also social encounters.

Consumerism is the greatest danger to capitalism. For capitalism to work, people must strive to be a part of producing meaningful things, not merely to make money for the sake of buying pleasing things. The vaguely Existentialist lie that your work has nothing to do with who you really are may kill us all, because rather than being our work, we have become our play. People like to paint the past, especially the '50s, as a time when people were obsessed with work and didn't really live, as if now we've discovered what living really is. Actually, we've abandoned life altogether for the sake of pleasure and made our work little more than a means to the end of leisure. All we want these days is the weekends. Sure, we're in no danger of workaholism. We've traded workaholism for playaholism. And when this takes place, our view of the people we encounter changes. Customers and employers become means to the end of our pleasure. And no society can survive with this mindset.

Now some people call this mindset of others being means to one's own ends "capitalism." That's a lie. This mindset is opposed at its very core to capitalism and when it takes root in a free market it will destroy that market and replace it with a constantly increasing amount of government intervention. Such is the history of the United States. For when other people become mere means to my ends, then there's no reason why I shouldn't use government to force them to act toward my ends. It's easier to lobby government to help me than to compete in freedom. Capitalism is built on the principle that others are not a means to my ends, and thus ought to be free to compete with me to produce the best things we can for use by the people around us.

It's About Time Someone Said "I'm Wrong"

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:30:00 +0000

Ok, so I've got to preface this by saying that generally speaking I can't stand Mike Huckabee's politics. He doesn't care about freedom and he has a very wrong view of the proper relationship between the church and society. However, after reading this article, I gained a little bit of respect for the man. I'm not talking about the point the article. I couldn't care less what Huckabee and McCain think about one another. The important part to me was a bit at the end of the article, describing Huckabee apologizing for a comment he made about Barack Obama. "It wasn't the first dumb thing I've ever said," said Huckabee, "And ... it won't be the last dumb thing I've ever said." While I'd love to make a smart-aleck comment about how the vast majority of what Huckabee has ever said is dumb, at the moment I'd rather dwell on how this statement was not. It is rare that anyone has the nerve simply so say that something they said or did was just plain stupid. Huckabee didn't backpedal, he didn't downplay what he said. He simply said he was wrong. More politicians should have that kind of nerve.

Me, Philosophy, and the Modern World

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:34:00 +0000

Yesterday we had the first philologoi meeting of the summer. Philologoi is a weekly philosophy discussion group at Belmont. This was the first meeting of the summer, and being a summer group, we were small and were able to have an unusually fruitful discussion. We started talking about the relationship between philosophy and science, but ended up discussing the relationship between philosophy and all of modern culture and its various practices, from medicine, to public relations, to business, to politics. We began by deciding rather quickly that philosophy and science, as well as philosophy and just about everything else, should not be as distant as they often are. When we began to discuss ways to integrate them, however, we came to an extremely important question that really got me thinking: to what extent does allowing philosophy (and specifically ethics) to work with other practices require philosophy to not merely suggest ways of amending a given practice, but to reject the practice altogether. Take for example, where ethics meets business. Sure, a business ethics course might help practically, for example, by suggesting better accounting practices and the like, which improve honesty and accountability, but perhaps if philosophy were to seriously engage with most businesses it would demand a radical reworking of the entire way we think about and do public relations and advertising. Perhaps this is why philosophy is so separated from modern life, because it demands we change it so. Maybe the modern world is to far gone for philosophy to do it any good.

But maybe not. This whole discussion got me thinking. You see, my career goals are precisely to bring philosophy into one of the most ethically broken practices of modern life: politics. I intend to spend my life teaching political theory, taking philosophical thinking to a realm which is desperately devoid of it. In beginning to do so as a student I find myself in precisely the dilemma we discussed about other practices. I find that I can’t simply offer little ‘band aids’, as one professor kept referring to them, to improve politics. Sure, I want to make students think more clearly, think about the ethical implications of their positions and decisions, etc. But when it comes down to it, if I am really going to bring philosophy to the world of politics, I can’t help but call for a radical rethinking of the way our culture thinks about politics. When I call for politicians to act more ethically I’m not concerned about campaign reform or anything so simple. I’m concerned that maybe, just maybe, the vast majority of our government’s actions are little more than legal violence, whose guns are hidden behind laws, as if somehow their being laws, or perhaps their being laws sanctioned by a majority somehow exempts them from moral questioning. And maybe just maybe, we should stop arguing over which group of people to point our laws at, and consider when it’s ok to use the force of law in the first place. But this isn’t just a quick fix, a philosophical band aid for the short term. It requires a complete rejection of the current brand of politics.

So, what am I to do? The answer, as is so often the case, is simple but not easy: I can do what depends on me. I refuse to believe that the present state of things is beyond help, but I also refuse to offer band aids to the current set of practices we live in. I refuse, above all, to be a blind, raving lunatic of a philosopher who yells at the top of his lungs that the world will end unless we change things now. I want to be as reasonable, calm, kind, and undemanding as I can. At the end of the day, I can’t expect to change the whole world. When philosophy expects the world to listen and shape up it will never actually engage that world. But if it softens the effect of its questions, philosophy’s engagement will become meaningless. It’s really hard to tell when it’s my fault that no one’s listening, and when it’s someone else for refusing to listen.

I guess I’ve failed in my chief goal in writing about this: to convince myself that this dilemma is not so difficult. But maybe I’ve at least convinced myself, and hopefully you, that no matter how hard it is, this dilemma is not one we can ignore.

Mad Skills

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Bryan) — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:06:00 +0000

I just got back from seeing Beau Bristow play a show. I know Beau through a church small group, so I knew he was an awesome person, but I had no clue how awesome a musician he was. I was extremely impressed by his guitar playing, and that's not a compliment I throw around lightly. Heck, he even made me appreciate the sound of a Taylor guitar, and I hate Taylors. I picked up his new EP, and the half I listened to on the way home was great too. Check him out at myspace.com/beaubristow.