{"id":1666599,"date":"2022-09-30T11:47:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-30T15:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1666599"},"modified":"2022-09-30T11:49:26","modified_gmt":"2022-09-30T15:49:26","slug":"lizzo-twerking-with-madisons-flute-is-the-antithesis-of-civilizational-excellence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lizzo-twerking-with-madisons-flute-is-the-antithesis-of-civilizational-excellence\/","title":{"rendered":"Lizzo Twerking With Madison\u2019s Flute Is The Antithesis Of Civilizational Excellence"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flizzo-twerking-with-madisons-flute-is-the-antithesis-of-civilizational-excellence%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1666599&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>James Madison, the new world\u2019s great political mind, appeared coincident in history with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the old world\u2019s great artistic mind. Of the entire founding class, it is Madison, born three months after the declared start of music\u2019s high classical period, who lived most contemporaneously alongside mankind\u2019s greatest artistic achievements.<\/p>\n<p>Not entirely unreasonable then, that Madison would come to develop a taste for fine art and culture \u2014 a taste which developed then flourished not least by way of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.monticello.org\/research-education\/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia\/james-madison\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">enduring relationship<\/a> with his political ally and predecessor in office, Thomas Jefferson.<\/p>\n<p>Fitting too, that the Madison household remains renowned for perhaps the greatest artistic rescue mission in American history: On August 24, 1814, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mountvernon.org\/george-washington\/artwork\/dolley-madison-comes-to-the-rescue\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Dolley Madison coordinated the urgent removal of the White House copy of Gilbert Stuart\u2019s Lansdowne Portrait<\/a>, on the same day that British forces bore down upon the Capitol, eventually setting fire to the executive mansion.<\/p>\n<p>Ordering the iconic painting of George Washington to be smashed out of its frame as British troops approached, the first lady later had the canvas stored incognito in a friend\u2019s farmhouse, before safely returning it to a rebuilt 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n<p>An exhilarating vignette for sure, but the Madisons\u2019 love for art was no fickle adventure.<\/p>\n<p>Like so many ill-understood aspects of life in centuries past, the Madisonian-Jeffersonian preference for elegance, restraint, balance, and formal structure (in a word: <em>Beauty<\/em>), reflects not the petty indulgences of a haughty elite, but rather, a patriotic aspiration to civilizational excellence.<\/p>\n<h2>Civilizational Excellence in Decline<\/h2>\n<p>That ambition stands in stark juxtaposition to the crude morass into which our fourth president\u2019s antique crystal flute was thrust as a stage prop at <a href=\"https:\/\/fox59.com\/news\/national-world\/lizzo-plays-james-madisons-never-used-crystal-flute-at-dc-concert\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Lizzo\u2019s Washington D.C. show<\/a>, Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like playing out of a wine glass b-tch, so be patient\u201d, she remonstrated, flippantly hauling the priceless antique onto the stage, clad in a leotard, and clawing at the ancient keys with inch-long alienesque nails.<\/p>\n<p>But of course, there was no music to it. Just a solitary farted-out \u201cC#,\u201d a trill from \u201cB,\u201d and of course, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/thesierrafox\/status\/1574965436789104642\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the accompanying twerking<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the twerking, it seems, we always find the very antithesis of that aforementioned civilizational excellence. Not just the act itself, which to be sure, is a special variety of 21st-century personal vulgarity, but in the collective response it provokes.<\/p>\n<p>It is the twerk that seems to evince in any crowd a manifest succumbing to the worst angels of our natures. The brainless shrieks of approval, the demented adulation for an unveiled sexuality not content with mere liberality, but further possessed of a flippant, aggressive, and unapologetically performative disposition.<\/p>\n<p>And all the more to applaud you see, because James Madison \u2013 James <em>Madison! \u2013 <\/em>bore symbolic witness to the madness.<\/p>\n<p>Can she really do that in the presence of the founding fathers?<\/p>\n<p>Of course she can. And the prepossessed audacity to exhibit that behavior \u2014 the banality, the crudity, the do-what-I-wantity \u2014 whilst in that hallowed presence, is the whole point of the exercise.<\/p>\n<p>For this is the culture that delights in the desecration of the sacred. The desecration that is sometimes unthinkingly casual, but often deliberately profane.<\/p>\n<p>Lizzo\u2019s may have been one or the other. It was hard to tell. But in either case, shame finds no home in the heart of the exponent. To be a celebrity, it seems, is to be one who must exploit their own fame in the ironic usurpation of the consecrated past.<\/p>\n<p>A friend asked me last night: \u201cI wonder what would have happened if she smashed that priceless founding-era antique on stage? Would the audience have cared?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, some would have. But the answer in respect of the aggregate is a firm \u201cNo.\u201d It is a firm \u201cno\u201d because a crowd that would recognize the tragedy of such a loss is a crowd that would never have tolerated the irreverence of the spectacle in the first place. And that is a much larger problem than whatever Lizzo spat into a microphone Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<h2>We Must Rediscover Reverence<\/h2>\n<p>So the work must start with the crowd. It must start with finding amongst the masses. First, a reverence for <em>something, <\/em>then building that into reverence for many things. Reverence for things like real art, real music, and real culture. Reverence for the fine things that serve as inoculations against the crude things. Reverence for civilizational excellence, over civilizational depravity.<\/p>\n<p>Lizzo\u2019s real name is Melissa Vivianne Jefferson. The flute she played was a <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.loc.gov\/loc\/2018\/10\/the-mystery-of-james-madisons-crystal-flute\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gift to Madison from acclaimed 19th-century Parisian manufacturer Claude Laurent<\/a>, on the occasion of the fourth president\u2019s second inauguration. Its custodian is the Library of Congress. And of course, her concert took place in the nation\u2019s capital.<\/p>\n<p>So Jefferson played Madison\u2019s flute, from Adams\u2019 library, in Washington\u2019s city. There\u2019s an undeniable poetry to it, it was of the tragic variety.<\/p>\n<p>Our first four presidents would surely stand in horrified witness at how their almighty cultural ambitions today stand poisoned by the grotty burlesque of modern celebrity.<\/p>\n<p>The antidote to that poison lies in the rediscovery of cultural reverence \u2013 in the re-consecration of the sacred.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Ben Crocker is an Australian conductor, scholar, and writer, currently serving as Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation scholar, in Washington DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Madison, the new world\u2019s great political mind, appeared coincident in history with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the old world\u2019s great artistic mind. Of the entire founding class, it is Madison,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1405,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1666599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1666599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1666599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1666599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1666599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1666599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}