Wisdom requires us to ignore most provocations.
David Warren, The Wisdom of Sheep
Wisdom requires us to ignore most provocations.
David Warren, The Wisdom of Sheep
… Anyone who suggests … that America must come first, above all else, is not merely wrong he is quite literally an infidel. He has abandoned faith at the altar of his American idol. Not only will such an infidel commit horrific crimes in the nation’s name, if called to do so as part of his “patriotic duty,” he will be betraying his nation even in the act of serving it. He will be helping to transform his nation into something unworthy of his or anyone’s respect.
Joseph Pearce, Uncle Sam’s Good Servant But God’s First
Without culture and its attendant explanation through story and ritual, what is left instead is “the quest for well-being,” where intellectuals “serve the public not in order to elevate it but to satisfy the need for novelty.” One need only look at the current adulation of TED talks or Silicon Valley to see confirmation of his prediction.
Gerald Russello, The Nonconformist, a review of Augusto Del Noce’s The Age of Secularization
Having announced a Presidential run, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard puts some distance between herself and the Democrat voices that keep telling me I’d better not vote for them if I value first-class citizenship:
Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states that there “shall be no religious test” for any seeking to serve in public office.
No American should be told that his or her public service is unwelcome because “the dogma lives loudly within you” as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said to Amy Coney Barrett during her confirmation hearings in 2017 to serve as U.S. Circuit Court judge in the 7th Circuit.
While I absolutely believe in the separation of church and state as a necessity to the health of our nation, no American should be asked to renounce his or her faith or membership in a faith-based, service organization in order to hold public office.
The party that worked so hard to convince people that Catholics and Knights of Columbus like Al Smith and John F. Kennedy could be both good Catholics and good public servants shows an alarming disregard of its own history in making such attacks today.
We must call this out for what it is – religious bigotry. This is true not just when such prejudice is anti-Catholic, but also when it is anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Hindu, or anti-Protestant, or any other religion.
(Emphasis added)
How time flies! I had no idea QB Drew Brees was turning 40 today. (H/T Wall Street Journal article on Brees and Tom Brady, soon 41, are still in the playoff race. (Yes, I don’t football, but Brees is a Purdue grad and still prominent here.)
Most of the things that get me upset fall into two categories: 1) minor indignities of daily life that quickly pass, such as getting cut off in traffic, or 2) macro events that I cannot plausibly effect. The former tend to be self-correcting. The latter will turn me into a cortisol factory if I let them.
…
The point is to avoid getting perpetually stressed out over things I can’t do anything about. It’s not that I don’t care, but I try to focus my engagement where I do think I can make something of a difference, even if small scale …
Our circle of concern should be bigger than our circle of influence, because that’s how we grow. We expand our influence into new areas this way. But if our circle of concern is too much bigger than our circle of influence, then we end up distracted from focusing on the things we can do something about or the things we are actually primarily responsible for. What’s worse, because we can’t do anything about the things that are inside our circle of concern but outside of our circle of influence, we get eaten up with useless worry, etc. This is the zone of negative energy where our cortisol levels spike up and our effectiveness decreases and our health can even be jeopardized.
Aaron Renn, The Masculinist 29. This newsletter is only available by email, not RSS, but there is an archive and a form for subscribing.
Caveat emptor. I probably disagree with Renn about 1/3 of the time on his “masculinity” ideas, but he’s a sort of (Evangelical Protestant) complement to Jordan Peterson, and you don’t have to wade through hours of YouTube videos.
Don’t worry about finding yourself. If you try to acquire the virtues, your self will take care of itself.
J Budziszewski, How to Be Full and Exact. The whole blog today, on reading and writing, is excellent.
We are always being told to replace something natural with some artificial pill or product that is going to improve our health, and it almost always turns out to be a mistake because we didn’t know enough. Multivitamins can’t replace fruits and vegetables, and vitamin D supplements are clearly no substitute for natural sunlight.
Rowan Jacobsen, Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? H/T Christopher Chelpka
Should you say ‘please’ to an AI?.
Not a bad question, but Michael Martin in Transfiguration asked more fundamental questions about AI.
Church cancelled for weather. Didn’t want y’all to think I’d gone pagan posting on Sunday morning.
I think we exceeded the 5” forecast.
Began reading 📚Peter Nasmyth, Georgia: In the Mountains of Poetry, anticipating a trip 🗺there in May.
Finished Cicero, How to Grow Old. It was pretty short. 📚
“The Muslims worship a different God” strikes me as a modern form of henotheism. Disambiguate, please (if you must say this at all).
Began reading Cicero, How to Grow Old. (It’s not as simple as “don’t die.”) 📚
Finished Michael Martin, Transfigurations: Notes Toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. 📚
Lee Friedlander’s Intimate Portraits of His Wife, Through Sixty Years of Marriage. Recommended.
… reasoned discourse has been tweeted out of existence …
Andrew Sullivan. I missed him over his Christmas holiday.
We spend too much time on “he hit me first!” and too little asking why we care. Why would anyone be willing to shut down the government over something as dumb as the wall?
Clearly, President Trump is doing it because Ann Coulter and her brethren will throw a snit if he doesn’t. But why are they so gung-ho about the wall rather than pushing for an immigration policy that would, I dunno, work?
Megan McArdle. Why does anybody really care what Ann Coulter says? She lost her mind or her soul on 9/11, when her friend Barbara (?) Olsen went down inside Flight 93. Formerly funny, she’s now all toxic, all the time (last time I checked).
More:
Underneath the cries of a crisis at the border, and man’s inhumanity to man, it boils down to this: Team Trump wants to build the wall because Democrats will hate it, and Democrats will hate it because Trump built it. Common sense can’t penetrate this perfect, closed circle of mutual loathing.
So: Maybe we’ve all lost our minds.
The Washington Post asks what’s the last song you want to hear before you die? Maybe it’s just “recency” urging itself on me, but the Sanctus from Duruflé’s Requiem would be hard to top.
How wonderful it is for the soul when—after so many struggles with lust, ambition, strife, quarreling and other passions—these battles are at last ended and it can return . . . to live within itself …
Cicero, quoted from How to Grow old by Jim Michaels
[T]he Dutch prosecutor is considering prosecuting Christians for signing a statement of their Christian beliefs, under the aegis of an article in the Dutch Constitution that prohibits, inter alia, discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief.
Makes sense to me!
“Grievance studies” is an entirely bogus discipline and its “scholars” are aggrieved at being exposed.