In the dust-up following the release of video clips of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s rants, there has been a lot media attention, and the chattering classes have been . . . well, chattering. As I have reflected on this, it occurred to me that I wanted to comment on several reasons why the general indignation …
A Chilling Effect
Well, today Obama denounced remarks made by his incendiary preacher, and I must say I view this with a measure of alarm. Speaking for incendiary preachers everywhere, what kind of message does this send? What sort of chilling effect might it create? If a member of my congregation ever ran for president . . . …
Fox News Indignation
A lot of attention in this last news cycle is being rendered to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Obama. Apparently there have been cameras running when he unleashed some of his loonier sentiments, to wit, that the United States government has been actively trying to kill black people by inventing the AIDS virus. This …
Yahweh for Sunshine and Baal for Rain
There are really two basic questions when it comes to questions of theocracy. The first is erroneously thought to be a genuine question — whether or not we should have a theocracy, whether there will be a god who rules over any given culture. The fact that this is even believed to be a coherent …
Supreme Virtue Cheating
Hillary Clinton has come out in opposition to “do-overs” in Michigan and Florida. At the same time, she now wants the first-time voting in those states to count. This, even though she and the other candidates had agreed not to compete in those states (because they had violated DNC rules by moving their primaries to …
Why We Should Rather Not Become An Obama-Nation
Whether we like it or not, our understanding of Scripture (or lack of understanding) is a central part of our public policy debates. There will be more on this in an upcoming discussion of N.T. Wright’s unfortunate backing away from some of the central public ramifications of the faith, which he did in the aftermath …
Free Chocolate Milk for Everybody!
I have just been listening to Hillary’s and Obama’s speeches (I know, I know), and decided that I just needed to modify an observation of H.L. Mencken’s, to wit, that it appears to many that America is a giant milch cow with 300 million teats. This is a tad more reserved than a comment from …
Regulatory Fascism
One more comment needs to be made about Jonah Goldberg’s very fine book, Liberal Fascism. In order to follow the argument here, it is necessary to make a fundamental distinction that very few in modern political discourse are able to make — because of the prevalence of fascist assumptions — and that distinction is the …
Just Enough Oxygen for One
I want to begin a short series of comments, keyed off of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism. As Goldberg demonstrates repeatedly, fascism was a phenomenon of the left, and the ones who were fascinated by it in this country were what we call progressives. Simplifying only just a little bit, the differences between communism and …
A Name for Your Next Son
I am just now finishing up one of the most satisfying books I have read in a long time — Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. I will be posting further comments on the book in the future, but for now it should suffice to say that anyone who is in the slightest degree interested in the …