Author: John W Gillis

Religion & Society

"Santa may you help me with my family?"

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, December 15th, 2010: From a USA TODAY article today by Donna Leinwand, discussing “Dear Santa” letters received this year at the main NCY Post Office: A single mother of a girl, 8, and a boy, 2, wrote that she recently lost her job. "I am unable to buy my children toys and clothes," she said. "Santa may you help me with my family?" It’s not that I lack sympathy for this young woman, or imagine this was anything less than a desperate act, but should we really be less than dumbstruck ourselves at the noti...

Politics & Economics

Can You Imagine the Reaction?

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, December 14th, 2010: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, on CBS, trying to explain in terms a clearly bewildered Bob Schieffer might relate to, why the legal concept of Obamacare’s individual insurance mandate might not be so smurfy: Imagine if this bill were, that in order to protect our communities and for homeland security, every American had to buy a gun – can you imagine the reaction across the country to that? Do you think? (fyi: I refuse to backlink to the source, because CBS video performance is so pathet...

Politics & Economics

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

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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...

Learning

Mandating Two More Years of Vapid Futility?

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, December 12th, 2010: Boston Globe staff writer James Vaznis reporting on the latest round of hand-wringing concerning the performance of urban public school districts in the state: Within Boston, the state identified 40 percent of eighth-graders at risk of not earning a high school diploma with their classmates in 2014. But that estimate may be low, Boston public school officials said. The district’s graduation-tracking system, which, unlike the state’s, examines several years of data and grades, indicated that just 19 percen...

Religion & Society

"I don’t think any other woman is mentioned"

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Quote of the Day for Saturday, December 11th, 2010: Catherine Lawless, lecturer in the history of art at the University of Limerick, discussing her paper relating the legends around St. Ismeria, supposed maternal great-grandmother of Jesus, in a recent Discovery News piece: “I don’t think any other woman is mentioned” as Mary’s grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discovery News. “Mary’s patrilineal lineage is the only one given.” Perhaps I’m guilty here of shooting fish in a bar...

Politics & Economics

Those Pesky Babies Are Threatening to Get In the Way, Again

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Quote of the Day for Friday, December 10th, 2010: Indiana Governor, and prospective 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, on the propriety of the Indiana state legislature advancing some pro-life legislation: “As long as it doesn’t get in the way of the really crucial (objectives) — keeping Indiana in the black, improving our economy and bringing big reform to things like education. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of that, there’s plenty of time and capacity.” I rolled my eyes and felt discouraged when Daniels made a comment several...

Scripture

Not the Sort of Divinity One Would Sketch

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, December 9th, 2010: Mark T. Coppenger, from the article The Perennial Challenge to Inerrancy in the Fall 2010 issue of Southern Seminary Magazine: Whenever I read that someone like Freud or Feuerbach says that God’s a comforting figment or projection of our imagination, I wonder if they’ve ever read the Bible. For our God is not prone to indulge earthly conceits and agendas. Rather, He is insulting, intrusive, inconvenient and insistent – not the sort of divinity one would sketch if left to his own devices. Amen to that! I’...

Culture & Philosophy

On the Need to Call Evil Good

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, December 8th, 2010: Robert R. Reilly, concluding a smart essay originally published by the National Review in November 1996, entitled “Culture of Vice”, which discusses the psychological origins of moral disorders that threaten whole cultures: Controversies about life, generation, and death are decisive for the fate of any civilization. A society can withstand any number of persons who try to advance their own moral disorders as public policy. But it cannot survive once it adopts the justification for those moral disorders...

Politics & Economics

Sarah Palin as Cultural Metaphor

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Quote of the day for Tuesday, December 7th, 2010: Timothy Dalrymple, posting at Patheos yesterday on the meaning and underlying cause of what he calls “Palin Enragement Syndrome”: [M]uch of the opposition to Palin is not political. It is deeply and thoroughly cultural. Sarah Palin is Miss Jesusland, the living emblem and foremost representative of an America that progressive elites had hoped had been swept into the dustbin of history. One definition of culture is “the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group.” Palin represents t...

Culture & Philosophy

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

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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...