Author: John W Gillis

Politics & Economics

A Vote with Meaning in Massachusetts?

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It’s quite a night for politics in the Bay State tonight. The polls closed about half an hour ago on the first competitive race for a national office that I can remember in my lifetime. My sense is that, before this night is over,  Republican State Senator Scott Brown will have knocked off once heavily favored Mass Attorney General Democrat Martha Coakley for the open U.S. Senate seat that had been held by Ted Kennedy since I was a two-year old. It has been a lot of fun over the past few weeks to feel the momentum building for Brown’s candidacy in t...

Politics & Economics

Idealism Unencumbered by Reality: Obamacare, pt.2 (Universality & Reality)

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In the on-going debate over how to improve the American healthcare and healthcare delivery systems, the professed intent of most of the players has been to increase “access” or “coverage,” by extending benefits to people who currently do not have such access. Ostensibly, this is because “access” and/or “coverage” is priced out of reach for these folks, on account of some combination of raw poverty, and unavailability of employer-provided/subsidized health insurance, which is the vehicle through which most non-elderly Americans access the healthcare syste...

Politics & Economics

Idealism Unencumbered by Reality: Obamacare, pt.1

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George Orwell, in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” said: “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” There is no more apt description of the political discourse that has defined the “healthcare” issue in this country over the past year. Now that we’ve seen what the Democratic leadership has proposed for legislation, would it be out of line to suggest that someone might owe Joe Wilson an apology? Of course, it was almost impossible to know ...

Bible Study Tools

WORDsearch 9 Released: Initial Impressions

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WORDsearch 9 was released Monday, roughly two years after the release of version 8. This is the third release of WORDsearch developed on the Bible Explorer platform for CROSS eBooks. Long-time WORDsearch users who have been waiting for a return of the search results management genius of the old Ref List will not find what they’re looking for, but some significant improvements have been made to version 8 nonetheless. The biggest improvement, by far, was a complete reworking of the window syncing mechanism. In the two previous iterations of WS, as in...

Politics & Economics

Eat the Rich?

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So, a majority of people in the country, at least according to this poll, want somebody else to pay for the looming health care program – you know, like those rich people,  who are most likely rich because they’re cheats, anyway. Why am I not surprised? Isn’t this just the perfect embodiment – and inevitable end-result – of modernism’s rejection of personal responsibility in favor of paternalistic political super-structures? I suppose I exaggerate though; the actual end-results of these left wing muggings of the rich have not...

Learning

Modern Scholar series (part IV)

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Being “between courses” has afforded me the opportunity to dip back into Recorded Books’ Modern Scholar series of lectures on audio CD. I started listening to these a couple years ago, finding the entries by Thomas Madden to be especially worthwhile listening. Aside from Madden’s, I have to admit that I’ve found the rest of the series hit or miss, but I wanted to give a shout-out to Professor Fred E. Baumann for his entry, Visions of Utopia: Philosophy and the Perfect Society. This might come across as a backhanded compliment, but I was impressed by the ...

Politics & Economics

“Tear Down this Wall!”

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Very interesting short piece linked here from the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section yesterday by Ronald Reagan’s former chief speech writer, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what a dreadful threat Soviet communism posed to human freedom on many levels – not to mention world peace – and how remarkable it was that the whole odious scheme came crashing down with such a whimper. The power of words, the power of conviction, the power of resoluteness, the power of truth̷...

Misc

A Quiet Note of Thanks

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One of those days when the realization slaps me that we just don’t get do-overs in life… I heard during the prayers of the faithful this morning that Tony Melchiorri had died, and was buried last week. Tony was a Natick cop for many years, and a man I came to know, after a certain fashion, during my teenage years in town. He was always a good guy. I think it’s fair to say that Tony spent a good deal of his life trying to protect the local kids from their own stupidity – with admittedly mixed results. But thanks for trying, Tony. R...

Media & Culture

Jonathan Sperry and the Messaging of Faith

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I took the family to see The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry last weekend. This is an independent “family” movie by Christian director Rich Christiano, with an explicitly Christian message and worldview. The movie had been vigorously promoted locally by some good friends of mine, who were obviously excited to see something in the theater that was not only not antithetical to Christianity, but which explicitly promotes Christian faith. I understand the urge to try to gain a foothold for decency in all kinds of public arenas, but I had a hard time getting excit...