Genuine patriotism is not surprised or derailed by flaws, sins or wickedness in the object of our love. Sentimental patriotism, by contrast, treats love of country the same way a maudlin Hallmark card writer would treat, after three beers, love of mother. Mothers Day becomes a high, holy, and sacred thing — a sanctifying thing, …
To a Chair in the Basement
Allow me first to draw your attention to this fine post, with which I largely agree. But then, if I may, I would like to ladle some generous helpings of my own brown gravy complications over top the roast beef of our agreement. So to speak. This is another way of saying that I agree, …
Down the Sinkhole
The issue before us now is not whether Snowden is an admirable and trustworthy character. The thing we should care about is whether the people pursuing him are trustworthy, and the manifest answer is that they are not. The issue is not whether the countries that Snowden has popped into are bastions of liberty — …
But I Don’t Want Internal Safeguards . . .
Once we established the supposedly constitutional right to abortion, grounded in the right to privacy, it was just a matter of time before the genuine right to privacy came apart in our hands. A nation that does not know what privacy is can hardly protect it. You can’t guard what you can’t define. The NSA …
Memorial Day and Radical Discipleship
Let’s begin by acknowledging that nominal allegiance to Jesus Christ is good for nothing, and that Christian In Name Only is no better than any other kind of -INO. The demands of Jesus Christ are total, and this means that radical discipleship is the only option open to those who want to walk in obedience. …
Actual Thugs
It is not too soon to begin referring to the Obama regime as scandal-ridden. But what does this mean? I was amazed at Obama’s first election, amazed that more people didn’t see through him. His gauzy promises, his tip-tilted nose, his serene arrogance, were all a sight for the prescient gobsmacked to behold. And then …
Principles of War in Culture War
Principles that govern every form of conflict are constant in all possible scenarioes. The need for mobility, surprise, etc. will never fade away. But weapons and tactics are not constant — rocks, bows, guns, triremes, torpedoes, etc. vary from era to era, and war to war. Electronic countermeasures played no role whatever in the battle …
A Deeply Flawed Human Being
One of the first things a reformer has got to get used to is the experience of being despised and unpopular. Societies do awful things (that which needs to be reformed) because they want to, and the reformer is the one beckoning them to a state of affairs that they don’t much want. “You shall …
Backpacks From the Sky
When you get to the crazy part, it is important to remember that nothing will make much sense. If sin made any real sense, it wouldn’t be sin. If being struck with a judicial stupor and blindness helped you see better, it wouldn’t be a judicial blindness. As I write this, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is …
The Payroll of the Bilderbergers
The Boston bombing brings the whole question of terrorism front and center again, and so it is worthwhile to discuss what the point of terrorism is, considered as a tactic. In the case of the Boston horror, we do not yet know which direction the tactic was pushing, but we should make a point of …