- From Ad Orientem: Weigel, the church and the marriage business. He is partly right though for the wrong reasons. It is the state that should get out of the “marriage” business and instead adopt a uniform code regulating civil unions. Marriage would then be a purely religious institution. This would effectively pull the “fairness” rug out from under the gay mafia and ensure that the state could not meddle in church doctrine. Libertarianism: we can all get along. Trouble is the left isn’t interested in fairness but power.
- From LRC: Oswald was an American agent. Learned this theory long ago in my former life as a newspaperman and believe it. No idea who killed President Kennedy (likely a coup, with Mafia help; Johnson and the Kennedys hated each other) and why (never mind I would have voted Republican in ’60) but ONI and the CIA recruited Oswald in the Marines. Phony defector.
- The Episcopalians vs. the Diocese of South Carolina. They have the rights to govern themselves (rewrite their doctrine) and defend their property but they don’t follow their own rules.
- From NLM: Universality, noble accessibility and a pop culture that will save the world. When you think ‘church or Christians trying to use pop culture’ you may have cringed like me, thinking of ‘Christian pop’ (‘contemporary Christian music’). Few things are more pathetic than a church trying to be cool. But the point here seems to be one of the great Thomas Day’s: good church music is both orthodox and very singable. He tell the story of the janitor who could sing along with chant. The Anglican processional and recessional hymns at my Sunday Sung Mass are another example: Derek: kids get it. Like in my career: dumb people trying to sound important use stilted show-off words; ‘sixth-grade level’ isn’t bad. It’s readable, it actually communicates, and it’s really elegant unlike idiot prose, which I spent most of my time in newsrooms trying to weed out. (Now I write for smart people who have varying language barriers.)
- From TAC: Gaza: background and context.
- From Daniel Larison: Does the GOP have a ‘libertarian problem’? Not really.
- At Sailer’s: Me on that ‘French model date’ State Farm commercial, why Hispanics aren’t the Next Big Thing in American politics (and why Republican pandering to them never works) and Ted Cruz. I like ‘I have blah-blah insurance so person, come help!’ (‘Six people ahead of us, Jimmy!’)
Don't apologize for things you didn't do, to people who don't believe in forgiveness or redemption.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
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Unfortunately, no we can't all get along. Insurance, pensions, descent and distribution, adoptions all assure that when the State redefines marriage, everyone will have to acquiesce in the legal legitimacy of same-sex unions whether they want to or not. The libertarian hand-waving over this issue is ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteThe worse news in all of this is that in my perception the entire society (of the United States . . . of Western culture) is starting to go along with this. Government re-definition of marriage is troubling enough but essentially correctable with a change in government, even revolution, but when the society begins to accept this deformation of matrimony, then fighting it is even more difficult. Having government get out of the marriage business in favor of individual choice doesn't solve a thing, not that I favor government's social engineering in this regard . . . in almost any regard.
DeleteJim C.
One other thing . . . from the George Weigel article:
Delete" If, however, the Church is forced to take this step after “gay marriage” is the law of the land, Catholics will be pilloried as bad losers who’ve picked up their marbles and fled the game—and any witness-value to the Church’s withdrawal from the civil marriage business will be lost."
Let them pillory the Church! I think the leadership in particular, the bishops, are afraid to be called bad names. Instead of this pious nonsense of saying that we have to bring Christ (or the Gospel) to the world--which of course we must do--these high priests and their "staff" [priests and deacons] ought to be calling-out the (Catholic) people, Catholic politicians, and the state & local governments regarding their immorality in specific social matters including the social engineering going on. It's not really "only" about immigration reform. And who really gives a **** what CBS News things of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular? Wait a minute . . . we already know!
Re: Oswald- Oswald was such a screwball that it's hard to say much about his motivations with any certainty,* but as much as LBJ was a creep, I've always found it a little more plausible to think that Oswald (assuming he was not just a lone wacko) may have been acting under Fidel Castro's orders, in retaliation for the 600 or so CIA-backed assassination attempts against The Bearded One. LBJ hated the Kennedys, but I find it hard to believe that the master of political backscratching, quid pro quo, and backroom deals could have that kind of shameless disloyalty in him. Sure, he was a crook, but Johnson was the kind of crook who honored his bargains. Besides, the CIA has never really been all that competent at that cloak-and-dagger stuff- the commies were always 10 times better. I'd be a lot more inclined to blame the CIA if Kennedy had lived and Connally had died. If Oswald was really meant as a fake defector, there's no reason the KGB couldn't have subsequently turned him, or done a thousand other things.
ReplyDeleteOf course, this kind of confusion is the very nature of that whole covert, cloak-and-dagger world. Movies about spy stuff are usually both less outlandish and more interesting than real life, because movies are under the unfortunate disadvantage of having to make sense to the audience. If Oswald was involved in any larger conspiracy, it's just as plausible to think that he was involved in two or three conspiracies, playing both sides against the middle while envisioning himself as some brilliant puppetmaster. The real lesson (assuming Oswald was working for somebody or somebodies up the food chain) is that Kennedy thought all that James Bond stuff was really, really neat-o, then he got himself elbow-deep in it and it blew back and killed him.
*(This is generally true of spies, who, far from being suave James Bond-types, are usually narcissistic sociopaths driven by envy and ego who tend to be remembered by their co-workers as weird misfits).
Excuse me, that should have read "more outlandish and less interesting than real life".
ReplyDelete