This week’s selected media, August 10, 2025: The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs, Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley
This week I finished:
The Marvelous Pigness of Pigs: Respecting and Caring for All God’s Creation, by Joel Salatin: I spoke with a pastor last month. When I shared about my disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid and leadership work on the environment, he recommended this book.
I hadn’t heard about Joel Salatin. I found many videos by and about him online. He seemed a mix of passionate, kooky, and craving attention. I didn’t put a high priority on the book, but having finished it, I’m more than glad to have finished it.
Salatin is gung-ho Christian and mentions Jesus, quotes the Bible, etc nearly every page, which I guess I’ve gotten used to after listening to every word in the Bible, hosting many religious people on the podcast, Christian and otherwise, and finishing Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, and watching many documentaries on him, Corrie Ten Boom, etc.
What appealed to me most is the value of hands-on practical experience. This guy didn’t just read a few books on farming theory. He’s lived it his whole life. What he writes makes more sense and is more practicable than nearly anything from any environmentalist, anti-environmentalist, sustainability advocate, or sustainability opposer I’ve heard of, because he’s speaking with experience.
The evidence is clarifying for me that hands-on practical experience unifies people more than anything, and its absence creates more misunderstanding and confusion than nearly anyone realizes.
Debate: Baldwin vs. Buckley, featuring James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr: According to the site: “The one-hour special program features a debate between Negro author James Baldwin and leading American conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., at the Cambridge Union, Cambridge University, England. The two men argue the motion, “The American Dream: Is it at the expense of the American Negro?” Mr. Baldwin takes the affirmative position, while Mr. Buckley opposes the motion.”
I loved watching this video. It’s from 1963. I can hardly imagine a debate between two intellectuals and nothing else beyond a brief introduction would make it on TV, just a debate, people talking, albeit famous people.
I understand that Buckley is widely regarded as a skilled orator, but the audience voted heavily for Baldwin’s position, though they didn’t measure before and after to show the change.
I found it engaging and informative. I recommend it. It’s only an hour.
Still, they don’t understand what caused racism. Baldwin talks about it being imposed by whites and Europeans, but doesn’t examine how it came to them. He implies the started it out of the blue, as best I can tell.
Retry later