As the fellow said, one of things we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history. And this was true on its own terms, back in the day when when history stayed more or less the same. How much more is it the case when we have seen a transformation of history in …
A Five Gallon Bucket of Lamesauce
In my previous post, I said that the great idol of modernity is the state. One perceptive reader on Facebook suggested that rather we should think of the great idol as being that of the individual self — freedom and liberty for me, me, me. I don’t know how to link to a Facebook thread, …
One of Those Walk-the-Children-Around-the-Pole-Ponies
I haven’t done any skylarking about global warming in a while, so let me have a bit of fun in my opening paragraph. Then, after that, I will sober up a bit, and move on to my more serious point, which I do, in fact, have. In 2007, serious scientists were predicting that the Arctic …
So Watch What You’re Doing
“Two lines a quarter of an inch apart on your first anniversary can be three yards apart by your fiftieth” (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 133).
Poking at a Dead Bird with a Shovel
He who defines, wins. He who successfully redefines, wins. And this is why Christians are not faring well in the current battles over homosexuality. We will not reverse this trend without some imaginative warriors. Not only do our adversaries want to redefine marriage, they want to do so because they have already claimed the right …
Making It Flow to the End
In the Syria saga, we are getting a good glimpse of how political decisions are made in a gargantuan democracy, and we are also getting quite a cash payout — worth a great deal to me at any rate — of Ron Paul’s apparently quixotic presidential runs. Let me state the conclusion first. I am …
Marcion After a Couple of Beers
Robert Farrar Capon has gone to be with the Lord (1925-2013), and there are a couple of nice retrospectives here and here. For sheer exuberance in writing, that man had few who could keep up with him. In the great cross country race for the colorful metaphor, he was the kind of runner who could …
Tell At a Glance
“Sometimes constant medical care is necessary, for example, and a nursing home is unavoidable. But all faithful family members should be able to tell at a glance the difference between abandoned and loved, and all outsiders should remember the difference between having all the facts and not having them” (For a Glory and a Covering, …
A Three Car Funeral
Spotify just informed me that Vince Gill had listened to Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” and so naturally, I did too. It had been, what? — thirty years? Maybe more than that. Apart from how Congress votes on Syria, and regardless of what Obama does after that, we are not really in a …
At the Top of the Siege Ladders
“As men and women grow old together, many people’s natural response is pity. Because the elderly can’t ‘keep up’ anymore, they are thought of as society’s stragglers. Sometimes this comes out in exasperation (on the freeway, when we’re behind somebody in geezer drive), and other times in pity, but the root assumption is the same. …