You are a long-suffering bunch, and this is certainly to be commended. I have been messing around computer-wise for a number of months, and the effects have been clearly visible, some of them mud-fence ugly visible. I wanted to take this moment to praise you, and for not swearing at me in the comments. I …
Love and Loyalty: A Meditation on the Fourth
The other day I tweeted this, and it drew more than the usual number of comments, and I thought I needed to develop it. Here is the tweet. “Feel uncomfortable at a patriotic worship service? Don’t feel superior if you would also feel uncomfortable at a Fourth of July parade.” The comments were mostly generated …
And Free Chocolate Milk for All . . .
The uproar on the left over the Hobby Lobby decision has an explanation. That explanation is that we have allowed our understanding of what is meant by rights and liberties to become badly degraded. In fact, to simplify, the common understanding of rights has gotten into a condition of extreme labefactation. So to speak. The …
Uplift and Sunshine
This article is long enough and ignorant enough to be pretty tedious, but if you want to know how “what passes for journalism these days” is dealing with issues over on what they consider to be the Hard Right, you need look no further. “Throughout Scripture,” Leithart declared in a passage from his 2012 book …
Book of the Month/July 2014
When reviewing a book written by a friend, there are two basic ways the thing could go, one of them very bad. Say that you had been duck hunting for forty years with your very bestest friend, and then, after retiring from his job as CEO of Whatsit, Inc. he gets it into his head …
Time to Go Buy a Glue Gun
When it comes to appointments to the Supremes, there is supposed to be — as all pretend — no litmus test to be applied. There actually is one, however, and the Democrats do a much better job reading the results of said litmus tests. Their appointees turn out true blue, for the most part, while …
Moved and Seconded
There are two problems that contribute to mission drift. Well, there are more than just two, but there are two that represent, as Newton might put it, were he here, opposite and equal errors. One is the error of turning over the reins before the vision is deep in the institutional bones, and to turn …
Contempt for Sharkey Law
The difference between an unbelieving libertarian and an unbelieving leftist is quite simple to grasp. The unbelieving libertarian wants to go to Hell, and the unbelieving leftist wants to do the same thing, but wants me to pay for it. Both need the gospel, and both present a problem for the evangelist. There is a …
Pour Us Another
When your predictions come true in the moral sphere, this makes you less believable, not more. And when all your predictions come true, you are guilty of hate crimes. There were two basic elements of the prophets’ vocation to Israel. One was that of foretelling, and the other was that of forthtelling. The first predicted …
Statist Solutioneering
Wright’s last three chapters were really very good. They were “How to Engage Tomorrow’s World,” “Apocalypse and the Beauty of God,” and “Becoming People of Hope.” What I want to do is make a few brief comments about each, and then make two observations about the book as a whole, and Wright’s influence generally. In …