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 …
Inviso-Bricks Unlimited
In Citizens United, the Supreme Court decided in effect that corporations didn’t have to be newspapers or networks in order to have First Amendments protections. This outraged the Left, which adores free speech if it involves stripping nekkid in a Manhattan theater, covering yourself with chocolate syrup and sprinkles, the better to facilitate one’s very …
The Killer Rabbit Phase
I want to say something that is spiraling off the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap, but also need to make a quick comment about the issue itself. Some might assume that I have an inside track or something, because Bergdahl is from a Reformed background, and he is also from southern Idaho, and I am up …
A Point of Personal Privilege
Now that a select committee has been appointed to look into Benghazi — and about time — I thought I would raise a point of personal privilege. This is something I want conservatives to quit saying, and I will explain why in a moment. I want everybody to stop saying “four Americans died.” Because of …
Old Glory, New Breeze
Everything you need to know about the Bundy face-off with the feds you learned in your childhood — that is, if you had the kind of childhood in which you read all the Robin Hood stories. If you want to know the rudiments of what is going on now, just substitute in phrases like “Prince …
Aluminum Deniers
A couple of posts ago, I said that limited government was absolutely dependent upon public virtue. Here’s why. It all goes back to Burke’s “little platoons.” Raw individualism is not the opposite of the collective. It is what makes the collective possible. The collective likes it. The Hive can handle a pothead bee. The collective …
What Mardi Gras Has for Breakfast
This is happening in lots of different areas, so I don’t want to pick on Rand Paul. But for the sake of convenience, let us start with him. He recently called for a “truce” within the Republican Party on “social issues,” but what such a truce would actually amount to is total capitulation on the …
Skootch Around a Bit
After my post on Rand Paul and National Review, I got various responses, and so I want to write about two divergent but representative takes. In effect, one response is that things are better than I think, and the other response is that things are way worse than I think. Because I am Chestertonian in …
Ukraine Your Neck, But Still Can’t See
“And Hiram king of Tyre had supplied Solomon with cedar and cypress timber and gold, as much as he desired, King Solomon gave to Hiram twenty cities in the land of Galilee. But when Hiram came from Tyre to see the cities that Solomon had given him, they did not please him. Therefore he said, …