Moments like this are reminders for me that the songs and trappings of Christian culture are not the hope of the world—Jesus is! We need to make him known. We need to love and seek to serve the world around us through prayer, through faithful evangelism, and through Christ-like service of those in need. Our goal is not building a more air-tight evangelical bubble. Neither should our goal be hoping that our subculture will burst out into the broader culture to great acclaim.
Instead, our goal should be to proclaim Christ and him crucified to the people we go to the school with, work with, and live next door to. Our goal should be to preach the gospel and live lives worthy of that gospel. Our goal should be to use our gifts in every sector of society so that God is glorified.
Clifford D. May, A Hundred Years of War?:
A hundred years from now, Americans might still be fighting militant Islamists in Iraq and other places. What could be worse than that? A hundred years from now, America and the West could have been defeated by militant Islamists.
Al-Qaeda, Iran’s ruling mullahs, Hezbollah, and others militant jihadis have told us what they are fighting for. The well-known Islamist, Hassan al-Banna, described the movement’s goals succinctly: “to dominate…to impose its laws on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.” He said that in 1928. Who would have believed then that his heirs would acquire the wealth, power, and lethality they enjoy today? Who can say where they may be 100 years from now? Who can say where the West will be? Survival is not an entitlement. Freedom must be earned by every generation.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer my candidates to come equipped without the “High Octane Marxist Cant” option.
Indeed.
[Wave of the phin to Dom.]
Tony Woodlief, “The City Where Nobody Smiles”:
Millions of people visit every year, and I wonder, does a one of them find what he is looking for?
Do they even know what they seek?
Which I suppose can be asked of us all, not just the poor souls sitting numbly in front of those cold machines with the pretty, pretty lights. The answer, I think, is that we are seeking something that will fill the great Empty.
It runs right through the middle of you, this emptiness, and though every good writer has tried to describe it, and though we all know it is there, we are most of us terribly afraid to think about it, which is perhaps why a place like Las Vegas can exist at all.
One of the biggest problems with government intervention in the economy is that politicians usually have neither the knowledge nor the incentives to intervene at the right time.
Bruce Bartlett has pointed out that most government intervention in an economic downturn comes too late. That is, the problem it is trying to solve has already worked itself out and the government intervention can create new problems.
More fundamentally, markets readjust themselves for a reason. That reason is that people pay a price for their misjudgments and mistakes.
Government interventions are usually based on trying to stop them from having to pay that price.
People who went way out on a limb to buy a house that they could not afford are now being pictured as victims of a heartless market or deceptive lenders.
Just a few years ago, people who went out on that limb made money big-time in a skyrocketing housing market. But now that they have been caught in the ups and downs that markets have gone through for centuries, the government is supposed to bail them out.
Solving short-run problems, especially in an election year, often means creating long-run problems. Pumping money into the economy can help many problems, but do not be surprised if it also leads to inflationary pressures and financial repercussions around the world.
In other words, people should bear some personal responsibility for their choices and actions. The government should leave well enough alone. Better yet, perhaps the government would like to admit to some responsibility in the matter, and perhaps rather than bailing out people from their own mistakes, rectify it’s own? (Yeah, I know, fat chance of the latter.)
[Emphasis in the quote added. —R]
Booker T. Washington:
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
“Engadget & Gizmodo are just two immature little kids attempting to reap the benefits of a journalistic profession neither truly understands.”
I couldn’t agree more. And yet I still subscribe to their RSS feeds…
Once again, one of the Founding Fathers sounds rather prescient:
“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.” — John Adams (An Essay on Man’s Lust for Power, 29 August 1763)
[A]nother way I’m convinced He exists and loves us — on the most base of levels — is that He hasn’t simply wiped us off the face of the earth. I don’t struggle with the whole “why does God let bad things happen” — that’s simple to dismiss, and maybe I will here one day. What I’m getting at is that He has such enormous self-control — if I were Him, there would only be a scant few humans left on the planet.
It’s one of two things: He loves as much as He says He does, or He doesn’t give a rat’s behind about us. With much thanks I know wholeheartedly that the latter isn’t true, so once again I’m amazed at how patient God is with us, and how He loves us, though we pain Him so.
The Patriot Post, 08-06 Digest:
Traditionally, however, Wall Street defines a recession as two consecutive quarters of falling Gross Domestic Product. By this definition, even the one-quarter “recession” in 2001 was hardly that. The National Bureau of Economic Research says a recession involves “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,” and Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, which boasts a 60-year track record of successfully predicting recessions, ranked the probability that the U.S. was in a recession in December at 35.5 percent. In January, a mere six percent.
[Emphasis added. —R]
“It is the madness of folly, to expect mercy from those who have refused to do justice; and even mercy, where conquest is the object, is only a trick of war; the cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.” — Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)
Reference: Thomas Paine: Collected Writings, Foner ed., Library of America (97)
Just seems like something to keep in mind regarding our jihadist enemies…
I never thought I would have to hold a package of frozen peas on my son’s penis. They don’t tell you this may be a possibility in parenting class. It’s all breathing and learning to count to ten and not freaking out when they get a diaper rash. But penis bruises? Nowhere in the manual.
Another nugget from Sheriff Bell:
Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world. She kept on, kept on. Finally told me, said: I dont like the way the country is headed. I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion. And I said well mam I dont think you got any worries about the way the country is headed. The way I see it goin I dont have much doubt but what she’ll be able to have an abortion. I’m goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she’ll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.
Some keen cultural insight, courtesy of Sheriff Bell in Cormac McCarthry’s No Country For Old Men (complete with McCarthy’s trademark non-punctuation):
I read in the papers here a while back some teachers come across a survey that was sent out back in the thirties to a number of schools around the country. Had this questionnaire about what was the problems with teachin in the schools. And they come across these forms, they’d been filled out and sent in from around the country answerin these questions. And the biggest problems they could name was things like talkin in class and runnin in the hallways. Chewin gum. Copyin homework. Things of that nature. So they got one of them forums that was blank and printed up a bunch of em and sent em back out to the same schools. Forty years later. Well, here come the answers back. Rape, arson, murder. Drugs. Suicide. So I think about that. Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I’m gettin old. That it’s one of the symptoms. But my feelin about that is that anybody that cant tell the difference between rapin and murderin people and chewin gum has got a whole lot bigger of a problem than what I’ve got. Forty years is not a long time neither. Maybe the next forty of it will bring some of em out from under the ether. If it aint too late.
[Emphasis added. —R]
Day of Terror: A September 11 Retrospective
“September 11, 2001, was a defining moment in American history. On that terrible day, our nation saw the face of evil as 19 men barbarously attacked us and wantonly murdered people of many races, nationalities, and creeds. On Patriot Day, we remember the innocent victims, and we pay tribute to the valiant firefighters, police officers, emergency personnel and ordinary citizens who risked their lives so others might live. After the attacks on 9/11, America resolved that we would go on the offense against our enemies, and we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor and support them. All Americans honor the selfless men and women of our Armed Forces, the dedicated members of our public safety, law enforcement and intelligence communities, and the thousands of others who work hard each day to protect our country, secure our liberty and prevent future attacks. The spirit of our people is the source of America’s strength, and six years ago, Americans came to the aid of neighbors in need. On Patriot Day, we pray for those who died and for their families. We volunteer to help others and demonstrate the continuing compassion of our citizens. On this solemn occasion, we rededicate ourselves to laying the foundation of peace with confidence in our mission and our free way of life.” —President George W. Bush
“[A]s we approach the sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, there are suggestions that we should begin to forget the worst terrorist incident in America’s history. Recently, a front-page story in The New York Times suggested it is becoming too much of a burden to remember the attack, that nothing new can be said about it and that, perhaps, Sept. 11 ‘fatigue’ may be setting in.
[…]
“9/11 forces us to be serious, not only about those who died and why they died at the hands of religious fanatics, but also so that we won’t forget that it could very well happen again and many of today’s living might end up as yesterday’s dead. That is the purpose of remembering 9/11, not to engage in perpetual mourning. The war goes on and to be reminded of 9/11 serves as the ultimate protection against forgetfulness. Terrorists have not forgotten 9/11. Tape of the Twin Towers is used on jihadist Websites for the purpose of recruiting new ‘martyrs.’
“What’s the matter with some people? Does remembering not only 9/11 but the stakes in this world war interfere too much with our pursuit of money, things and pleasure? Serious times require serious thought and serious action. In our frivolous times, full of trivialities and irrelevancies, to be serious is to abandon self-indulgence for survival, entertainment for the stiffened spine.
[…]
“Not to remember 9/11, is to forget what brought it about.” —Cal Thomas
“Last week The New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who ‘allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.’ And they mean everybody—American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms—everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.
“According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one’s death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they’re after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely odd but as one more reason why they’ll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen. But that’s the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he’s retained counsel…[T]hose 9/11 families should know that, if you want your child’s death that morning to have meaning, what matters is not whether you hound Boeing into admitting liability but whether you insist that the movement that murdered your daughter is hunted down and the sustaining ideological virus that led thousands of others to dance up and down in the streets cheering her death is expunged from the earth
[…]
“On this sixth anniversary, as 9/11 retreats into history, many Americans see no war at all.” —Mark Steyn
Tony Woodlief, author of the great Raising Wild Boys Into Men:
Sometimes as a parent you feel like a wall. One side of you is hard chipped stone. The side facing these little ones is smoothed, its cracks spackled as best you can manage. Sometimes your child will run a finger along one of those cracks, and when he does this you know you can go on standing, no matter the weight, until he is strong and ready to beat back the world with his own muscle and bone and faith.
(And why you should be following my Twitter feed, if you’re not already.)
The best thing about using Twitter for chat is you’re never online, and you’re always online. As far as the world is concerned.
John Farnam had this quote in a recent post on his mailing list, and I thought it significant.
In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants will forget the Art of War and the noble zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every corruption will be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty, which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms, is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easy victims to tyranny. —Sam Adams
Overheard by Jeff Harrell earlier today:
Wouldn’t it be great if the people who made the iPhone also made a computer?
Really? Really?!?
So sayeth Jeff Harrell, upon the realization that Ratatouille opens nationwide today as well.
“I wish developing great products was as easy as writing a check. If so, then Microsoft would have great products.” —Steve Jobs, Apple, Inc. shareholders meeting, 2007
“Quemadmoeum gladuis neminem occidit, occidentis telum est.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca, circa 45 AD
Translation: “A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer’s hands.”
Just thought this might be somewhat relevant to political and cultural debates we’re having two thousand years later.
Stef: In fact, if the weather gets better, Jeff and I were thinking of breaking in our new picnic basket tomorrow.
Jeff: Yeah. We have a secret spot, so if you come with us, we’ll have to blindfold you.
Eddie: Yeeeeaaah, well, unless that’s followed by a gunshot, I wouldn’t count on it.
That is why you should be watching ‘Til Death.
From Amy Gruber, on Twitter:
What’s worse than going to a bachelorette party at a male strip club? Going with your mom.
No political slogan or hand-held sign has ever changed someone’s convictions. Protests, shouting, and political battle will only polarize people on an issue. Regardless of which side wins or loses a political struggle, people will continue to believe what they did before. If you want to change your community, your nation and your world, the most effective action you can take is to introduce people to Jesus, and to demonstrate His love and compassion to them. Through His death and resurrection, all of us can be free from the effects of sin, and enjoy unlimited and joyful relationship with God. This is where changed lives come from.
It is a good thing to participate in politics as God leads. Vote your conscience. Respectfully voice your convictions in the political arena. But don’t expect the election of a politician or passage of a law to change people’s minds and hearts, much less their lives. Political power and law rule only through fear of consequence, not love. Let’s make our focus the same as Jesus’. People are transformed when they experience love in relationship with Him.
“In the annals of American history, only a few events are so well-known and so deeply rooted in national remembrance that the mere mention of their date suffices to describe them. Of these occurrences, none could have had more significance for our Nation than December 7, 1941. On that Sunday morning… the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an unprovoked, surprise attack upon units of the Armed Forces of the United States stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
“This attack claimed the lives of 2,403 Americans, wounded 1,178 more, and damaged our naval capabilities in the Pacific. Such destruction seared the memory of a generation and galvanized the will of the American people in a fight to maintain our right to freedom without fear. Every honor is appropriate for the courageous Americans who made the supreme sacrifice for our Nation at Pearl Harbor and in the many battles that followed in World War II. Their sacrifice was for a cause, not for conquest; for a world that would be safe for future generations. Their devotion must never be forgotten.” —Ronald Reagan
The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser—in case you thought optimism was dead. —Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1972- )
[Courtesy of today’s AWAD.]
I don’t need anything else special to remember my wedding anniversary. Circumstances of life dictated that forever shall the day of our wedding be shared with that of the invasion of Normandy, and the enormous sacrifice made there by so many. Yesterday marked the second anniversary of President Reagan’s passing, I can think of no better words to remember D-Day, than those spoken by him on the fortieth anniversary of the invasion:
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young that day and you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here?
We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love. The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force of liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer… You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
This little tale, which appears to be a book for children, is actually a clever evocation of what happens to a corporation when a management consultant is hired by absent, clueless senior management to evaluate its organizational structure and to effect change. Beginning slowly, the Cat proceeds to take everything apart, make a total mess and get everybody in potentially the worst trouble in the world—all at no personal cost to itself. By the time the Cat leaves, it has frightened everybody, and very little has changed except the mind-set of the protagonists, which has been forever disrupted and rattled.
One of things you have to love about Benjamin Franklin was his optimism with regard to those who hold public office.
They are of the People, and return again to mix with the People, having no more durable preeminence than the different Grains of Sand in an Hourglass. Such an Assembly cannot easily become dangerous to Liberty. They are the Servants of the People, sent together to do the People’s Business, and promote the public Welfare; their Powers must be sufficient, or their Duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable Appointments, but a mere Payment of daily Wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their Expences; so that, having no Chance for great Places, and enormous Salaries or Pensions, as in some Countries, there is no triguing or bribing for Elections.
—letter to George Whatley, 23 May 1785
Reference: Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 1108.
[Via the Patriot Post.]
Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates — but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation’s war heroes?
This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley’s home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.
“It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed — that is, an extension of the revenue.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21
(Of course, any talk of instituting a national sales tax has to go hand-in-hand with repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and the end of the income tax.)
Jack Good, mathematician:
“My Windows 98 computer tells lies and often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human would be called neurotic.”
“Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.”
— Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1784)
[I]t was not until Oct. 14, six days after Israel had communicated its willingness to help the earthquake victims “in any way possible,” that it finally received a formal response. Yes, aid from Israel would be welcome, provided it was laundered through a third party. “We have established the president’s relief fund, and everyone is free to contribute to it,” a government spokeswoman coolly acknowledged. “If Israel was to contribute — that’s fine, we would accept it.” Israel could help save Pakistani lives, in other words, as long as it wasn’t too public about doing so. There mustn’t be any embarrassing images of planes with Israeli markings offloading relief supplies at Islamabad’s airport.
Two decades of research produced a consensus among social scientists of both left and right that family structure has a serious impact on children, even when controlling for income, race, and other variables. In other words, we are not talking about a problem of race but about a problem of family formation or, rather, the lack of it. The best outcomes for children—whether in academic performance, avoidance of crime and drugs, or financial and economic success—are almost invariably produced by married biological parents. The worst results are by never-married women.
[…]
The upshot of these studies is that America is confronted by a form of poverty that money alone can’t cure. Many of us think social breakdown is a result of racism and poverty. Yes, they are factors, but study after study shows that alterations in norms and values are at the heart of economic and behavioral troubles. That’s why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don’t have kids in your teens, and get married.
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson
“[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.” — Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
“[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore…never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.” —Thomas Jefferson
The term you’re looking for here is “rolling over in his grave.”
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” —Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)
[With thanks to Israel R. for the e-mail.]
I have a new reason to develop a more positive attitude.
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” — Herm Albright, author, quoted in the St. Paul Pioneer Press
“The idea is that crap is crap and we’re not going to distinguish between the degrees.” —ATPM Publisher Michael Tsai, to one of our writers on the subject of review ratings
I love this line.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London:
This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.
That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded in London.
“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” —Charles Beard
“In person Mr. Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media” — Gerard Baker, U.S. editor of the London Times, after meeting last week in the Oval Office with President Bush. (Via Political Diary.)
“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” —John Adams
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: the prescience exhibited by the Founding Fathers never ceases to amaze me.
Politicians of all stripes, take note:
“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.” —Thomas Jefferson
Well, we might as well go for the trifecta:
Yesterday we wondered what David French’s “brilliant answer” was when a Cornell Law School job interviewer asked him, how, in light of his evangelical background, “is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?” French e-mailed us with the answer:
I was surprised and pleased to see that you quoted from my talk to the American Enterprise Institute regarding intellectual diversity (or the lack thereof) and censorship on campus. I noted that you want to know my “absolutely brilliant answer” to the improper interview question. Before I tell you, I just want to make clear that the “absolutely brilliant” comment was made tongue-in-cheek in the speech and was played for laughs. I’m not really quite so full of myself. The truth is that I was fortunate to get the job perhaps in spite of my answer. I responded to the interviewer with the following statement:
“I believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of whether I agree with their personal conduct or beliefs. I will treat all my students well, but I can’t guarantee that they will treat me well when they learn that I’m a dreaded ‘Christian conservative.’”
She responded with a long silence and then said, “I never thought of things from that perspective.”
There are lot of perspectives from which those who run our institutions of higher learning have never thought of things.
As seen on the Laura Ingraham web site this morning:
“At this point I would rather have a right-wing Christian decide my fate than an ACLU member.”
— Eleanor Smith, a disabled, self-described liberal agnostic lesbian
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” —Thomas Jefferson
I figured since so many people out there like to poke fun at George W.’s verbal blunders, turnabout was fair play:
“My vision is to make the most diverse state on earth, and we have people from every planet on the earth in this state.” —Gray Davis, California governor, at a press conference; quoted in Time magazine, Vol. 162, No. 13, September 29, 2003, p. 15