There’s a very disturbing story going around, about the UN wanting to take over the Internet (or about many small countries wanting it to).
The EU and the US are united in opposing it, so my guess is it’ll never happen. But you never know. It seems obvious why- petty third-world dictators can control their people so much easier if they have no free access to information.
David Bernstein at The Volokh Conspiracy has posted an exchange between a reader and a Seattle Times columnist on the subject of an Affirmative Action Bake Sale. For those unfamiliar with that concept, you have a bake sale and charge different people different amounts for the same product- so a white male might pay $2 for a cookie and a hispanic female $.25 for the same cookie. It’s meant to highlight the injustice of affirmative action, and it makes lefties really mad.
Bruce Ramsey’s comments are spot on, and do a great job of highlighting the doublespeak that pervades any discussion of such issues today.
2. Your terms, “assail” and “slap in the face” and “direct action” willfully obscure the distinction between words and physical assault. My “assailing” and the College Republicans’ “slap in the face”, both of which suggest physical assault, were in truth WORDS; and the minority students’ “direct action,” which is a term deliberately unclear, was in truth a PHYSICAL ASSAULT. There is a difference. Words are protected by the Constitution; physical assaults are not.
Read the whole thing.
Here’s yet another story about the punishment of those that protect us. This colonel scared an Iraqi policeman into telling him the details of an ambush by pretending to shoot him, firing a gun near his head. The ambush was foiled, but as no good deed can go unpunished in America today, he is now being court-martialed for what he did.
First, of course, this is pretty good proof that the charges of people like Al Jazeera regarding our “occupation” and our “brutal onslaught” are not being honest with us. The fact that we are willing to look into a matter like this, regardless of the outcome, make charges of brutal occupation tactics ring pretty hollow. All that Iraqi policeman got was a good scare, but we’re worried about it.
And second, a point that goes beyond the Iraqi situation or the military: if we’re going to ask people to do jobs as difficult as being in the military, or police, or doctors or anyone who’s got to do difficult and dangerous jobs where people’s lives are on the line, we’ve got to start cutting them some slack. I’m not advocating letting real corruption or incompetence go unaddressed, but every time anyone in a job like this makes a mistake or even just does someting unorthodox like this colonel did, someone’s there waiting to make a political point or a big barrel of money or both at their expense. There’s a lot of leeches out there in our society, and the sooner we realize that all those trial lawyers and politicians looking to score points over something like this, and even so-called “human rights advocates” who will get worked up every time we get a little stern, but turn a blind eye to Hussein or Castro, or even allow themselves to become the puppets of dictators, are just that- leeches. Time to get out the salt.
Den Beste has a great analysis of the leaked Democratic strategy memo, outlining ways of using Senate Intelligence Committee information for political gain. The best part of the article is a comparison to something that happened during the 1944 election, when Republican presidential candidate Dewey decided not to make supposed intelligence failures leading up to Pearl Harbor an issue in the election, for fear of giving the enemy an idea how much of their codes we had broken.
Here’s the money quote:
Dewey was an American first, a Republican second. I wish that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WVa) was an American first, but I am by no means certain. Rockefeller is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Democratic committee staffers appear to have written a document for him describing how to use an investigation into American intelligence regarding Iraqi WMDs to best affect the 2004 election campaign. It’s not clear exactly who wrote it, but Rockefeller acknowledges that it came from his staff, saying that it had not been intended for public release. (I should think not.)
It’s treason, and needs to be called treason. But I hope we’re not surprised. We winked at Clinton betraying his country, selling elections to foreign interests, for eight years. The Democrats are just learning from their hero.
I saw a blog today called Dell Inspiron 600m Stuff. Somebody started a blog for their laptop. “News and Clues for the Dell Inspiron 600m”.
This is what is so great about the Internet. Well, that and Homestar Runner. In my mind, this is the hugest waste of bandwidth imaginable, especially since there’s a bunch of pages already devoted to that subject here.
But of course, that’s because I don’t own a Dell Inspiron 600m. If I did, I probably would want all the information on it I could get, and the less of it that came from Sri Lanka the better. So helpful tips from a fellow Dell enthusiast would probably come in handy.
The Dell Inspiron 600m blog was just started, so as of right now there are no helpful tips or news items about it. I’m sure there will be many interesting tidbits posted there in the future, so keep an eye out, especially if you own one. If you don’t own one, I’d reconsider buying one, because Dell uses child slave labor funded by drug profits funneled through the International Zionist Conspiracy and Big Oil. I know, because I used to work at HP and they told me so.
There’s an interesting exchange over at Joyful Christian about the purpose of prayer. I think it’s important to highlight the subjective effect of prayer- it changes us, not God.
While I don’t fall into the “If we can just accumulate enough prayers, God will change his mind” camp, I do tend to petition God for the same thing repeatedly. In fact, I tend to continue to pray to God for something until the matter has been conclusively resolved one way or the other.
I’ve often wondered if this was the way it was supposed to work. After all, when Paul described praying to have the “thorn” (whatever it was) removed, he said he asked three times and in context it seems like he thought that quite a lot. Of course, Paul also records that God spoke to him directly on the subject so maybe he just stopped praying because God had given him a definitive answer in a more direct way than I’m used.
I chime in:
There’s a lot in the Bible about the subjective purpose of prayer- that is, we pray to change ourselves, to submit our will to God as much as to change any events.
Matt. 6:5-13- The heathen think they’ll be heard if they repeat themselves over and over, but God knows what we need already. So we pray, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, before we pray for anything else.
So, the question of how often we ought to pray for things is perhaps not the most important question. The more important question is, what are we trying to accomplish? If we understand the main change needs to happen with us, we’ll pray as much as we need to, and since we’ll never be perfect, we’ll never stop praying.
Greg Easterbrook is no theologian.
In this article, he tries to argue that Jesus’ words to the rich young ruler were intended to move us away from organized religion:
Some thinkers–me, for example –have argued that this passage is among several indicating Jesus did not intend to start a new faith, but to move the world beyond religion per se. Set that question aside and simply note that the Six Commandments could be posted in a government building without raising legal issues.
The only thing wrong with this is all of it. Jesus didn’t stop here, and neither does the story. What’s the rest of the passage say?
20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions.
23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Ah, the Kingdom of Heaven, identified in lots of other places in Matthew as the exclusive province of those who follow Christ, and him alone.
Many interpreters, myself included, read the second half of Jesus’ exhortation, the part about giving up his riches (something not asked of anyone else in the Bible) as Jesus pointing him to those other four commandments, the ones about worshiping God and him alone. The riches were this man’s idol. The man could do all the easy external stuff, but he couldn’t give up his idols. I imagine Gregg Easterbrook can’t either- his idol of humanism.
But then, he won’t be the first to have tried to cut the law like a suit to fit him, or to go away sorrowfully when confronted with the real Gospel.
I’ve been informed that the picture of Katie as a ladybug was broken, before. I’ve fixed the link and repost it here in all of its sugary cuteness.
The Enduring Community by Brian Habig and Les Newsom is a book on the subject of the Church. It discusses what the church is, why it exists, and why it’s important. It addresses the very commonly heard sentiments today about church, like “I don’t need church, I can worship God anywhere” or, “Churches are just full of hypocrites” or things like that that we who work in churches or who value churches hear all the time.
The Enduring Community addresses these questions and issues without condemnation or just dismissing the sentiments expressed, but recognizing the false teaching that gives rise to such sentiment. Habig and Newsom take us to Scripture to see how the church is defined by Jesus and the Apostles both in their teachings and their practices. We then see those applied to the issues that face our churches today, which are not really different than the issues the church has always faced.
Habig and Newsom addresses some issues which are often difficult to explain to the modern believer, such as the need for church membership and the importance of the right administration of the sacraments. The touchy subject of discipline is also raised. And all of this is addressed in a very accessible yet firm manner. They discuss why these issues are important; why the church needs these things to be what the church is supposed to be, without resorting simply to statements like “the church has always done it” or “the Bible says so”.
On the subject of church discipline, for example, he says:
…The inertia in the Church will always tend toward disintegration. The mark of the Church of discipline is therefore not only a theological necessity but a practical necessity as well. We need the Church, yes; but we need the Church together, involved in each other’s lives, engaging in each other’s business. Only this humility of community can set in motion the perpetual equipping of the saints and coversion of the lost for which the church exists. Without church discipline, there is no Church. (p. 105)
The Enduring Community did not convince me of anything that I was not already convinced of. But it helped me a great in equipping me with ways of talking about these subjects with others, and it energized my belief in the importance of these things. It helped me understand that many of these issues were about more than bare submission to authority, more than “we should do it because God said so”, althouth that ought to be reason enough for us. It reinforced in my mind the importance of considering the purpose of the church and the nature of the church, and how ignoring the Scriptural requirements for how a church ought to look and to function undercut and destroy the purpose of the church in the believer’s life. A big recommendation for this book for anyone struggling with these issues themselves, either in their own minds or in discussions with others around them.
Nat Hentoff, not exactly a Bush sock puppet, has a rousing article in favor of Charles Pickering (in the Village Voice of all places!), one of the judicial nominations currently being filibustered by the Democrats.
I write this final column on Charles Pickering because, in some 50 years as a reporter, I have seldom seen such reckless, unfair, and repeated attacks on a person—not only by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee but also by organizations that gather financial contributions because of their proclaimed dedication to civil rights, civil liberties, and honest research. (People for the American Way, Alliance for Justice, et al.)
Read the whole thing. Thanks to Instapundit for the link.
