I was speaking with a friend the other day about some of the economic muddles that our sorry republic is currently being pelted with, and he said something like, “But isn’t it true that our health care system is broken?” Well, yes and no. Big chunks of it, like Medicare, are not so much broken …
What’s Wrong With Rights?
A judge in France recently declared that access to the Internet was a basic human right. This is simply the ad absurdum of a lot of political chatter these days, what with rights to affordable housing, the right to health care, the right to a living wage, and so on. Rights sound so noble, so …
Bronze Tint Notwithstanding
You know, technically, there wasn’t anything wrong with what she said — at least not in the sound byte part. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” I too would …
Capernaum Had No Gay Pride Parades
It used to be possible to say that the issue of homosexuality was one on which few believing Christians were confused. However, there was still a problem, and it led to our current cultural impasse. Over the years, much of the strength of Christian opposition to homosexuality has been instinctive and cultural, rather than a …
You Only Wind Up Driving the Porcelain Bus
“But of course, alcohol had few romantic possibilities. It wasn’t exotic, and everyone, practically, took it. To be a mere drunk was not compatible with the Romantics’ thirst for world-significant angst” (Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, p. 83).
As Wisconsin is to Cheese
The art of understanding politics does not depend primarily on having read an exhaustive stack of investigative books. Investigative books are as full of lies as the politicians themselves are, and if we have read any we should make our decisions on which to believe on the basis of other criteria. As Dennis Miller once …
A Sermon for the President
Ascension Sunday 2009 This Lord’s Day is Ascension Sunday, the day we have set apart to commemorate the exaltation of Jesus Christ to the right hand of the Ancient of Days. This was the day upon which He was given universal and complete authority over all nations and kings, when He was given all rule …
Destruo Ergo Sum
“There is one other romantic attraction of opiates: and that is to the antinomian turn of mind. This turn of mind has become much more common with the general rise of self-importance, which is a corollary of democracy: and in an age of celebrity, everyone feels obliged to leave his mark on the world, or …
The Jitney Gods of Washington
As the Obama saga gets weirder and weirder, Christians shouldn’t forget to interpret all the news in the fundamental terms of who we want to be our god, and who wants to be the embodiment of that god. Worship is always the key to everything. And it is not the “key to everything” because we …
Which Is Where We Get Stoned Goobers
“Romantic claptrap invests intoxication by opiates with a philosophical significance beyond mere self-indulgence . . . It elevates feeling and intuition above knowledge and thought in the pantheon of human desiderata. It invests the personal pettiness of addiction with the aura of titanic and tormenting struggles against mighty forces, while at the same time implying …