At the Heart of Liberty is the Right to Encounter and Know the Truth!

Be holy. Be perfect. Be children of your heavenly father. The spirit of God dwells in you. You are the temple of God… The various liturgical readings this week come together around a common thread concerning the necessary holiness of the Spirit-filled disciple, and of how that holiness is manifest as a reflection of the loving-kindness of God. Can the sudden mad rush to post-human or trans-human existence we find Western civilization engulfed in be enlightened by reflection on this call of God to be holy/perfect/complete? 7th Week in Ordinary Time,...

Free Speech and the Peaceful Public Order

I arrived home from my sister Mary’s funeral Saturday evening, and saw that Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and several other people had been shot during some kind of meet-and-greet in her congressional district. I’d never heard of Giffords, but was discouraged that such a thing would happen – it’s hard enough just given our political process to get good people to run for public office, and it was of course a terrible tragedy for the people involved. It seemed to me that it had been a long time since something like that had happened. As I read t...

End of the Road for the Tax? errr, Penalty? errr,Tax? errr, Penalty?

Quote of the Day for Monday, December 13th, 2010: Judge Henry E. Hudson, from page 38 of his ruling today invalidating ObamaCare’s "individual purchase mandate" provision: On careful review, this Court must conclude that Section 1502 of the Patient Prevention Affordable Care Act–specifically the Minimum Coverage Provision–exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power. While a provision mandating that its subjects purchase healthcare “insurance” does represent an egregious accretion of state power, and a large nail in the co...

Only If Liberty Is Beautiful… Can It Really Be Worth the Courageous Risk of Life

Quote of the Day for Monday, December 6th, 2010: With the Thanksgiving holiday still lingering in the air, I found this excellent article on the continuing value of America’s Puritan forebears over at the always worthwhile First Principles Journal site. Written by Peter Augustine Lawler, it is entitled: Praising the Puritans: Because the Puritan conception of political freedom wasn’t based on the apolitical, selfish, rights-obsessed, and duty negligent Lockean individual, it both not only demanded virtuous civic participation but also connected political...

One of the Deadliest Enemies to Liberty that Has Ever Been Devised

Quote of the Day for Monday, Nov. 22nd, 2010: A double-quote day. First, in honor of John F. Kennedy on the 47th anniversary of his assassination: A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. Second, J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937) testifying before the joint Senate Committee on Education and Labor, and House Committee on Education, February 25, 1926, on the proposed establishment of a Department of Education, specifically here addressing the alleged benefits of national...