What happened to our minds? Here’s one way of thinking about yourself: you are a big bag of ideas. You carry around billions of them, of every sort, from spiritual to dietary to political to artistic. You have an idea about coffee, about Thai food, about the best time to get up in the morning,..
Without meaning we are all just brutes. By “meaning” I’m referring to a broad set of mythologies and shared cultural values that collectively drive both individuals and their nations. Societies with shared cultural reference points, like Japan, (family honor, fear of shame, thriftiness, self-denial, bravery) tend to be the kind that can turn a mountain..
The feed just keeps getting more and more weird. One minute we witness Rachel Maddow, unable to control her tears, in what seems like a genuinely felt lamentation about Trump’s 2018 “tender age shelters” for children of illegal immigrants, and the next minute Jeffrey Marsh is playing a gross fake-girl as he celebrates the idea that..
The Purity Thing Again.. Mike Pence is ever-anxious to let you know he’s made a difficult moral decision. He rarely fails to remind his audience he is Christian first, American second, and Republican third. Brimming over with that brand of paraded piety that earned him 0.1% of the primary vote, Mike furls his brow and..
Cowardice I have reason to believe we are all natural cowards, that it takes training and education and moral conviction to overcome our natural state. Even if you ask experienced combat veterans about fear, they will tell you that only the truly insane are without it. Those who are considered “brave” are the ones who..
Rahab, Oppenheimer, Epps (One of these things is not like the others..) I once met an old Marine who served in Okinawa during World War II. He told horrendous stories of machine gun nests opening up every 75 feet, and American GIs tied to stakes and turned into Swiss Cheese for the amusement of Japanese..
Having been a combatant in more family and political squabbles than I dare count, I am finally beginning to understand Patrick Henry’s powerful lament about the trickery of “hope” itself. At the outset, here, make no mistake: I believe Christian “hope” is a good thing — because the hope there is based on solid ground. ..
Oh, Zion! Dear Zion! I have a lush novel planned–full of carnivals and music and beautiful girls slow dancing with their young men on moonlit patios. In the broader landscape described here, kindly old men will give sing-song sermons full of teary-eyed spiritual assurance. It will all be set to a big, swelling chorus, and..
Projecting Virtue Where None Exists Ponder an absurd exchange. You are having dinner with a contract killer. You know he’s a contract killer, because he’s made a point of making sure you know. He’s whipped out his cell phone to show you actual video of this carnage taking place. He has more than one example…
Disclaimers Honoring what is left of the Fourth Amendment, I should say, at the outset there is nothing wrong with the right sort of privacy — good fences build good neighbors, don’t make love at the garden gate, keep your Stasi wiretaps out of my phone calls — all of that. No one should be..
