As unseemly as it is for officials to be assigning blame (invariably to other officials) before the rescues are even complete, it is happening anyway. We will have plenty of time to sort it all out, but the charges are flying early. The observer should keep in mind that in this debacle there are probably …
Thoughts on New Orleans
The events of the last week on the Gulf Coast have been a gradually unfolding, slow motion disaster. Every day appears to be worse, along with each new day causing the realization to sink in deeper — this is the kind of natural disaster that has not occurred in our nation within living memory. But …
Going South and North At the Same Time
In his wonderful book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton points out the tendency non-believers have to throw any available rock at the Christian faith, never mind that the rocks might not all be consistent with each other. He points out that infidels, for example, say that Christianity disparages women and children, but then they turn around to …
Prejudice Is A Two-Way Street
I submitted the piece below to the Daily News as a response to a Town Crier column that ran last night. In his Town Crier piece last Wednesday, Clifton Anderson granted that “in America, Wilson has the right to his own opinions, of course.” And precisely because this is an op-ed page in America, I …
Bad Science and Bad Manners
While rescue efforts in New Orleans are still ongoing, various liberals are starting to emerge with “gotcha!” observations on the source of the disaster — global warming, the U.S. backing out of the Kyoto treaty, and so on. Even if they had a point (instead of being dramatically wrong), they ought to have a better …
Execution of Homosexuals?
I recently received a letter from a lady on the other side of Moscow’s own little version of the national cultural divide. We had been scheduled to meet, and she was writing to cancel that meeting. According to the letter, the thing that concerned her was something that had to be addressed (by me) before …
Hot Work
The wind was contrary and the two ships had difficult making their way back to Jamestown. An expected two or three days turned into four. But late on the third day, the lookout far above the decks of the Susquehanna, cried out, “Ship ahoy!” Capt. Monroe had been pacing the quarter deck impatiently, and he …
He Who Says A, Must Say B
Bear with me a moment. I would like to sketch the outlines of an argument showing how a denial of Calvinism will lead (over time) to the canons of political correctness. But before doing that, allow me to define both terms. By Calvinism I mean the doctrine of God’s exhaustive sovereignty. By political correctness, I …
Finally, a Retraction
A week ago last Friday, the Idaho Statesman ran an article by Nick Gier, in which he intimated that we were neo-Nazis, and from which, since that time, he has tried to distance himself. Some nameless individual at the Statesman caught the drift of Gier’s argument (!) and made it explicit in the headline. When …
For Love of the Code, Part Deux
One of my on-going volunteer interlocutors has pointed out that the section of the Idaho Code I cited a post or so ago (requiring Bible reading in public schools) is a four-decades old dead duck, legally speaking. She points out that it was passed in 1963 and declared unconstitutional in 1964. She did not add, …