Saturday, November 29, 2014

Happy liturgical new year's eve

I am going to get liturgically wasted, maybe hold hands during the Our Father or something. Woohoo!

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Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Culture Wars and the death of civil society

Moreover, the energy inspiring those clubs, associations, corporations, and movements was generated in what we today would call the “private sector”—outside of government. (If we followed Walter Williams’ suggested and used the term “government schools,” for what we call “public schools,” we could rethink the whole concept. ) What a robust civil society entailed was the existence of a great deal of free space in which people, alone or in groups, were free to act, or not to act. In the New York state of the mid-19th century, the “perfectionist” community in Oneida was tolerated for quite some time, despite its embrace of free love or “complex marriage,” as the group’s members called it, which most New Yorkers frowned upon. (By the time the larger populace found a way to shut down the experiment, it was beginning to fail on its own.)

Contrast the openness of the America of Tocqueville’s day with the story above. A couple has religious scruples about gay marriage. They cannot in good conscience allow their property to be used to label “marriage” something they view as nothing of the sort. Why is that the government’s business? Moreover, once it becomes the government’s business, it politicizes what used to be the free sphere of private action and choice.

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Saturday, November 22, 2014

Jimmy's Corner

A fine establishment where you can get a drink and it's New York, and you can hear people talking. Very refreshing.

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Thursday, November 20, 2014

Free speach is only acceptable if it is the right speach

I would’ve thought that the one place in Britain where you could agree to disagree amicably would be Oxford University. But I was wrong. For instance, I’ve discovered that you’re only allowed to debate abortion there if a) you’re a woman and b) you’re all for it. Any other approach to the subject is liable to attract a mob….
One hopes that at some point we stop paying for people to spend four years in an echo chamber being told how great they are.

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Thursday, November 13, 2014

Secure Messaging Scorecard

Handy for those who want to chat without the gov't listening in on you.

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Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Dignity is what you make of it

Brittany Maynard bought into the lie of far too many in our age: that hers would be a "sensible and admirable" death with dignity.

What, and my Mom didn't die with dignity? Just because she didn't choose to avoid the loss of her hair, the pain, the suffering, the crumbling of her insides?

Saying that Brittany Maynard chose to "die with dignity" insults every person who's ever fought to live through cancer or any illness, and lost that fight. It implies that my Mom was less than dignified in her death.

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Be for something, not against something

Especially in the culture wars.
There are only two apostles who follow Christ as far as the High Priest's courtyard, and only one who goes all the way to the foot of the cross. Keep in mind, these 12, they are Christ's hand-picked men. When the only Begotten Son of God, infinitely wise, reader of men's hearts, was able to choose the cream of the crop to be the original priests in his church, these are the men He chose. This was the night of their ordination, when Christ has prayed for them and interceded for them and sweated blood for them. This is as good as good as it gets. If you are ever alarmed by the state of the church, remember: this was how she was on the night of her birth.

Now, some of the people in the church today are heroically faithful, persevering in hope, willing to follow Christ to Calvary and to stand there, keeping vigil beside Him as He dies. I have nothing to say to those people, because they are better than me. I am a somewhat befuddled ex-Culture Warrior. I drew my sword. I lopped off some ears. I became angry and discouraged when I realized that this was not what Christ wanted of me, and I have certainly made my denials. I'm Peter. Anyone who is engaged in the Culture Wars is Peter.
Don't be Peter.

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Thursday, November 06, 2014

The first 386 memory manager has been rediscovered

I find this endlessly interesting. You, probably not so much.

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