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Thoughts and Ideas: December 2014

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Saturday, December 13, 2014. Thoughts on the torture report. One of the biggest news stories from this week was the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture. Since the entire 6,000 page report is classified, reporting has focused on the 525 portion of the executive summary. For a good overview see the Wiki. Two quick points before we get to the heart of the matter. In addition to correcting various falsehoods of the Bush Administration, the CIA and many media pawns, the report...

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Thoughts and Ideas: Beating the Left

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Monday, March 30, 2015. Rod Dreher has an excellent write-up. On the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the state of Indiana, as well as the hysterical reaction thereto. Most of his analysis is spot on, though I think his strategy in the fight for religious liberty is wildly inadequate. But before I get to that, I'll offer a brief summary. It's also of interest that a bill that Clinton signed into law roughly two decades ago is now evidence of rank bigotry of the worst sort. Dreher l...

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Thoughts and Ideas: Family and State

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Saturday, May 16, 2015. We that are Christians believe that the family has a divine sanction. But any reasonable pagan, if he will work it out, will discover that the family existed before the State and has prior rights; that the State only exists as a collection of families, and that its sole function is to safeguard the rights of each and all of them." - G. K. Chesterton, G. K.'s Weekly. Jan 3, 1935 (quoted in Joseph Pearce, Race with the Devil. But Chesterton's quote is insightful for another reason&#...

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Thoughts and Ideas: June 2015

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Wednesday, June 10, 2015. Learning from English Catholics. 8220;What was it like to live each day in the hope for an end to the “patriotic” religious hatred that forced every citizen to choose between loyalty to country and fidelity to faith? 8221; Dena Hunt, Treason. Like her father, Queen Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with Catholicism. She made martyrs of some, especially the priests, like the famous St. Edmund Campion. She also sought to cut off the people from their religion. 8220;By the end of the ...

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Thoughts and Ideas: Different worlds

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Wednesday, May 06, 2015. I stumbled upon an older piece from Alan Jacobs, titled Lena Dunham’s Inviolable Self. Jacobs contrasts the value system of the novelist Jane Austen with that of Lena Dunham, the creator and star of HBO's show Girls. Is of this kind: For instance, one might say that the good of protecting naive young people from catastrophic moral harm (Austen’s prime concern) conflicts with the good of freely pursuing erotic pleasure. Austenians like to point out the disastrous consequences of t...

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Thoughts and Ideas: November 2014

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Monday, November 10, 2014. Whenever there is an adjective added to an important value-based noun, there's an agenda." - Dennis Prager. Social justice is to justice as gay marriage is to marriage. In normal speech, the adjective only modifies the noun; in these instances, it obliterates it. Which is to say, justice is unimportant, only equality of wealth matters. Even here, it is unlikely that the social justice warrior will sell his belongings and give them to a less fortunate denizen of the third wo...

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Thoughts and Ideas: October 2014

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Saturday, October 18, 2014. The reactions to such an explanation were revealing. Conservative Christians, both Catholic and non-Catholic alike, seemed to understand implicitly. But those who did not share our philosophy about sex and marriage seemed befuddled. It's important to note here that living together before marriage is not, absolutely speaking, sinful. Fornication is sinful; living together is a good example of a near occasion of sin. I bring all this up in light of the 2014 Synod of Bishops whic...

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Thoughts and Ideas: On journalism

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Wednesday, April 08, 2015. Three recent stories highlight the decline of journalism in our time, and its replacement with something entirely different: advocacy. First, the hullabaloo over the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the state of Indiana, which I have already written about. Note the manner in which the law was characterized by the press, not only in editorials, but in what passed for news. Are awarded to science-fiction and fantasy writers. Last year, Larry Correia. Of Monster...

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Thoughts and Ideas: Silence dissenters

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Saturday, May 02, 2015. I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America. Vol I, Chapter XV. Does that not describe the defenders of traditional marriage? And will this not become truer still when the Supreme Court commands that gay marriage shall be the law of the land? I'll have more to say on the matter later. But one last point: the best case for traditional marriage will be made by our ...

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Thoughts and Ideas: Identity as Everything

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Monday, March 16, 2015. From the sordid xojane, a creature called K. T. Bradford throws down a challenge. What if I only read stories by a certain type of author? Instead of reading everything, I would only look at stories by women or people of color or LGBT writers. Essentially: no straight, cis, white males. Editorial note: cis is a nonsense term meant to identify, and thereby disparage, those who are not confused about their sex.). Because every time I tried to get through a magazine, I would come acr...