“[R]eapplying the principles and the virtues upon which our country was founded”

A friend of a friend recently finished editing a book, a collection of essays entitled Reinventing the Right: Conservative Voices for the New Millennium.  According to the editors’ introduction, the authors of the essays are not “academicians” or “politicos”, but “students and soldiers, teachers and artists, lawyers and laborers.”  Each essay aims to apply “the tenets of our conservatism to a specific policy area.”  I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but it sounds good.

Salt in the Wound

Polls only mean so much.  How representative is the sample?  Even to the extent that a given opinion, as worded, is genuinely held by a certain fraction of the population, what exactly does that mean, and how deep does it go?  How transient is it?  Etc.

So, as with any poll, however carefully scientifically controlled, however carefully conducted, take these data with a grain of salt.

That said, I was interested to hear this week that President Obama is the “Most Polarizing President Ever”.

“We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. … We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

A blogger (commenting on this news story) calls our attention to a schoolboy who, for the offense of having a creative, inquisitive mind, had his property confiscated and his home searched, and was told that both he and his parents need “counseling”.

“…and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

“The government is just a bunch of stupid idiots with guns.”

Celebrate Good Times

Scott Brown defeated Martha Coakley yesterday in the race for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, 52% to 47%.  If you haven’t been following it, here’s the skinny:

This probably means that Democrats no longer have enough votes (60) to overcome Republicans’ filibuster of the health-care bill in the Senate.  That means that the Democrats’ version of health-care “reform”—already getting less and less likely as time went on, given that they hadn’t passed it before this year, an election year—is probably now dead.  We won.  Thank You, God, and a big thank-you to the people of Massachusetts.

Two Psy’s, Too-shies; Two Cute

I’m reading about shyness and why “so many self-help books sound the same”; this blog entry points us to a Psychology Today blog entry that I thought was pretty interesting.  For example: “The brain is built to firstly minimize danger, before maximizing rewards. This means people tend to naturally err on the side of cautious, even when the opposite would be better.”

Completely unrelatedly, I also loved these photographs of a sleeping cat and a sleeping sheep.

Grunt and Squeal and Squawk with the Animals

My friend Evan pointed out some surprising facts last week.  At least they were surprising to me.  Did you know that PETA has killed thousands of animals?  That is, at least according to this source (and it does cite its sources).*

Here are some more facts:

—According to PETA—this is a quote—“Silk Production Causes Painful Death for Insects”.  Ergo, “Don’t buy silk....”

—Another PETA Web site admonishes us, “don’t buy wool.”  (Evan says, “ask any shepherd what happens to a sheep that doesn’t get sheared for the summer”.)

Cry Havoc

Consider the following.  Alexis de Tocqueville envisioned a future in which

...an immense, tutelary power...takes sole charge of assuring [the people's] enjoyment and of watching over their fate.  It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle.  It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood....  It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs....  The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way.... 

For Once in Your Life, Have Some Dignity

From study materials on the rules of ethics for lawyers:

“The Rules require that a lawyer preserve the decorum of a tribunal by refraining from yelling, table pounding, and flamboyant acts such as scattering papers all over the floor....”

Dishonor upon Dishonor

Mark Steyn has a couple of quick thoughts on what looks like the growing trend of Muslim “honor killings” in the multicultural West—diversity is strength, don’t you know; just one more thread in our rich multicultural tapestry—and, apropos, on yet another double standard in the news media.

The Death of Liberty

In the formerly free West, liberty dies a little at a time.

From the U. K.’s Daily Mail, via Mark Steyn: The British government literally took a couple’s children away from them “over fears they would also become clinically obese”.  First of all, the parents aren’t even that fat; look at the picture.  But even if they were: What?  Since when does the government of a liberal democracy have the power to do that?  It’s tyranny, and it’s cruel.  God be with those parents, and their children.

As Mark Steyn says, one gets the impression that everything (including even children, apparently) is implicitly understood to belong to the state (as in Communism), lent out to the parents only at the state’s pleasure. 

Cincinnati Endorsement Compendium

Update (November 15th, 2009): The link below doesn’t seem to be working; so, on the off chance that anyone is still looking for the election results, you can find them here instead.

Update (November 3rd, 2009): A local news station offers running tallies of today’s election results.

If you happen to be a Cincinnati voter, and if you’re planning to vote in this fall’s off-year elections (coming up next month, Tuesday, November 3rd, polling places open from 6:30 a.m to 7:30 p.m.), at least if you’re like me, you’re wondering, How am I supposed to choose among all these candidates I don’t know anything about?  If you occasionally listen to the radio or watch TV or read anything even somewhat related to current events, it’s easy to have an opinion every four years or so about the presidency, etc.  Unfortunately, unless a candidate aggressively mails me multiple fliers about himself (which one of them is doing two of them are doing!), I find it more difficult to form an opinion on Mr. Smith J. Smithson of North Avondale, not only because I’ve never heard of him, but also because the areas of public policy he has “positions” on aren’t things like war and abortion but things like how the city should collect unpaid parking fines and whether the public schools should continue “CGCS benchmarking”, which I’ve also never heard of.

Probeklinge

I recently bought a Merkur old-fashioned safety razor from Vintage Blades (I’m not getting anything from either of them, I just thought this was funny), and the “sample blade” came wrapped in helpful advice (“After shave rinse only – do not wipe !”) and friendly assurances in five languages.  My favorite was this one:  “Please try this magnificient [sic] stainless steel razor blade.  You will be enthusiastic !” 

Yes, Marriage Is worth Defending

Even from a Non-Christian Perspective

“Should We Defend Marriage?”

I’m sympathetic to the libertarian argument (made by many, including many Christians) that the state should completely get out of the marriage business.  From this point of view, we can avoid all the rancorous public fights over same-sex marriage, etc. if we can all agree that it’s not the government’s business whether a given couple (or group, in the case of polygamy or “polyamory”) is “married”.

Ultimately, however, I’m inclined to disagree.  Even judging only by non-religious utilitarian criteria, I think the state should recognize—and (if only by recognizing) encourage—marriage. 

Danish-cartoon-controversy Anniversary

On September 30th, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons relating to Mohammed and Islam.  One of the paper’s editors, Flemming Rose, was concerned about freedom of expression and about a growing trend of self-censorship in the West on the subject of Islam.  “That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him,” Rose explained.

The New Propaganda Wing of the Obama Administration

“‘Artists’ as Servants of Power”—In a big conference call with artists on August 10th, one Mike Skolnik explained, “I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA” (the National Endowment for the Arts) to “help bring together the independent artists’ community around the country.”  Why?  Well, “You are the thought leaders.  You are the ones that…tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be into, and what’s cool and what’s not cool.”  Given their cultural power, he wanted to encourage these artists “to support some of the president’s initiatives”.

Two Thoughts on Tabloids

Recently I was in a group discussing a New York Times article about the fruit of John Edwards’s affair.  I was struck by The National Enquirer’s cameo in the article:

Mr. Edwards dismissed an initial report in The National Enquirer in 2007 that he was having an affair, and the matter was largely ignored by the mainstream news media. But in July 2008, The Enquirer published an article with photographs of a clandestine meeting Mr. Edwards had with Ms. Hunter and her daughter in a Los Angeles hotel. Days later, Mr. Edwards acknowledged the affair to “Nightline” on ABC, offering contrition but insisting that the child could not be his because of the timing and brevity of their intimacy.

On Being Indifferent to God

While eating dinner the other day, I asked myself the question I always ask:  Do I want more food?  I thought about it, and concluded that I had probably had enough.  In fact, I thought that eating more at that point might cause me physical discomfort, and might constitute the sin of gluttony.

I wanted to keep eating anyway.

Why You Should Be against This Health-care Reform

This entry is especially addressed to people who haven’t yet heard of any good reason not to be in favor of health-care reform—after all, who’s against reform?  Who’s not in favor of health?—but who are open-minded and who, if presented with credible information indicating that a particular proposal was a bad idea, might change their minds and oppose it.