art

In Defense of Extreme Views And Political Compromise

| briansabey

It is commonly believed that the truth is always in the middle. Given any two views or any two disputants or any two accounts of an event, both sides have some of it right and some of it wrong; therefore, both sides need to move towards the center.

While this may be a good rule of thumb when it comes to human disputes—divorces, litigation, discrepancies between two people’s memories, etc., it is nonsense as a rule. It often happens that one side is simply right and the other simply wrong.

More importantly, it is utter nonsense in the realms of thought and creativity. When it comes to world views, thought systems, and artistic schools, to make compromise a rule would merely be to abandon consistency and rigor. Continue reading →

Why the Greatest Director of our Time has Become Unintelligible to Us

| joshsabey

 

Art has been, is, and will always be political and in the most absolute way. We are often under a misconception that artists are rebels with the courage to challenge accepted truths. While I am certain there are artists like this, probably many, these are not the artists we are acquainted with. The rebel-artists we cite—take for example Lin Manuel Miranda—are not struggling with popularity. They are famous not because they have challenged the world with new ideas but because they are a voice through which a generation speaks, or, since a generation is never a monolith, more accurately, a significant portion of a generation. Perhaps it is a new and rising voice, but the popularity of the artist is a sign that the scale is tipping or has already tipped.

Continue reading →

Freedom to force the artist’s hand

| Adam Balinski

***Adam Balinski is a guest contributor and a friend of Brian’s from BYU Law School. This article was first posted on his blog, rethbo.org. Please visit his blog for more respectful, insightful commentary.***

Some people have jumped on what I think is an incoherent bandwagon that creates crazy consumer rights.

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An uncontroversial wedding cake that the baker could’ve declined to decorate for dislike of flowers or the color pink. photo by tracyhunter

Under federal law, public accommodations are places where consumers go to receive a service. Consumers can’t be kept out of or denied services at public accommodations because of their sex or other protected attributes. (It’s true that under many anti-discrimination laws, sexual orientation is not a protected attribute. But it should be. It’s fair to allow people to go and buy regardless of how they self-identify.) Continue reading →