I've been listening to the thoughtful artists on Humble Beast records a lot lately...
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Robert Reich connects the dots in the US economy in 2.5 minutes
University professor — and former US Secretary of Labor — Robert Reich connects the dots in the US economy in two and a half minutes .
Friday, June 10, 2011
Martin Marty on Torture, Then + Now
Torture, including torture by Americans: Who could have predicted that this would be a live topic here in the twenty-first century? We know how to associate torture with the accused and accusing other, with Inquisitors and witch hunters five centuries ago, or with far-away twentieth century totalitarian regimes and religious terrorists. But today the theological, humanistic, and tactical themes connected with torture have appeared close to home, giving new significance to those distant times, places, and events.
Accordingly, a very distinguished historian, Princeton 's expert on the Renaissance, is speaking up. Not known for ideology or pamphleteering, Anthony Grafton takes pains not to oversell the relevance of his subjects. He favors patient historical work and writes in a moderate mode. Recently he looked up from his Renaissance research to see how things are going today. Alert to contemporary controversies and mildly allusive about events in America, he stops short of issuing indictments. Grafton seems to be writing in the haze of "where there's smoke there's fire," but clearly sees enough to issue cautionary words.
His article in the November 5th [2007] New Republic, entitled "Say Anything," refers to what he has learned from the transcripts of those Inquisitors and witch-hunters. He knows enough to say enough about the practical ineffectiveness of torture. Americans, we were always told, do not torture for a number of reasons: Torture violates our moral codes, including those based on religious notions that humans are made in the image of God; religious leadership is almost unanimously against torture, and America is a religious nation; for us to torture is to enter a dangerous game, since if we torture we have no moral claim to demand that "the other," our enemies, should not torture our people when they are captured; and we are a practical people and like to work with things that work. Grafton concentrates on this last piece, the ineffectiveness of torture.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Bible Believers
And that's when Virginia understood: These people didn't believe the Bible; they believed what they believed about the Bible.Discuss
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
President Obama at the 2011 Easter Prayer Breakfast
To all the faith leaders and the distinguished guests that are here today, welcome to our second annual -- I’m going to make it annual, why not? (Laughter and applause.) Our second Easter Prayer Breakfast. The Easter Egg Roll, that’s well established. (Laughter.) The Prayer Breakfast we started last year, in part because it gave me a good excuse to bring together people who have been such extraordinary influences in my life and such great friends. And it gives me a chance to meet and make some new friends here in the White House.
I wanted to host this breakfast for a simple reason -– because as busy as we are, as many tasks as pile up, during this season, we are reminded that there’s something about the resurrection -- something about the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ, that puts everything else in perspective.
We all live in the hustle and bustle of our work. And everybody in this room has weighty responsibilities, from leading churches and denominations, to helping to administer important government programs, to shaping our culture in various ways. And I admit that my plate has been full as well. (Laughter.) The inbox keeps on accumulating. (Laughter.)
Monday, April 25, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Plato | Benefactors of One Another
You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.
— Plato, The Republic, Book VII
Friday, March 11, 2011
Newt Gingrich's Confession | A Rewrite by Lawrence O'Donnell
This, I think, is the kind of thing the young man in the post called Unlinked is reacting to...
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Unlinked | Will American Millennials Reboot Marriage and Parenting?
This week, the Pew Research Center reported on the attitudes of 18-29 year-old Americans toward parenting and marriage. In a nutshell, the study found that being good parents is more important to a majority of these Americans than having a successful marriage. You can read the report for yourself.
Not in the report is what I thought I caught … whispered between the lines … floating on the wind...
Not in the report is what I thought I caught … whispered between the lines … floating on the wind...
I wrote it down as I heard it, but maybe it was only in my mind….
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
"Do as You Would Be Done By" | One More from Professor Lewis
I have said that we should never get a Christian society unless most of us became Christian individuals. That does not mean, of course, that we can put off doing anything about society until some imaginary date in the far future. It means that we must begin both jobs at once—(1) the job of seeing how ‘Do as you would be done by’ can be applied in detail to modern society, and (2) the job of becoming the sort of people who really would apply it if we saw how.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001 edition, p. 88
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)