Clarification
"Weaker and robust" is a contradiction in terms, so you will have to guess at what the author meant to convey there, but the rest of it is interesting.
They've Been Killing Us for a Long Time
Today's saint of the day in the Orthodox Church is Martyr Sabbas Strateletes.
Quoting from the Orthodox Ancient Faith website:
Quoting from the Orthodox Ancient Faith website:
Martyr Sabbas Strateletes (“the General”) of Rome, and 70 soldiers with him (272)
April 24, 2019 Length: 0:58
He came from a noble Gothic family. Like St George, he was an officer in the imperial army. He lived a life of great purity, fasted greatly, and often visited imprisoned Christians. Because of this his Christian faith became known, and when he was summoned before the Emperor, he boldly confessed his faith. He was tortured in many ways, but emerged unharmed. Seeing this miracle, seventy of his fellow-soldiers confessed Christ and were beheaded at the Emperor's command. Sabbas himself was condemned to death by drowning, and gave his soul to God in 272.
Defensive Gun Use and the CDC
Indeed, the CDC study, which the federal agency conducted from 1996 to 1998, found there are 2.46 million defensive gun uses in the U.S. each year.... "[The]CDC's results, then, imply that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals," [Klek] writes.
Stoking "Far Right Anger"
The Washington Post warns that the Sri Lanka bombing is stoking "far right anger in the West," where people think -- for some strange reason -- that "Christianity is under attack."
You'd think that people not on the far right could spare a little anger over this.
I find it interesting that they cite this CSIS study of terrorist incidents, finding that most of them have Muslim victims. That's all very well, but in a year and a half this study captured only 28,031 deaths. If there are 100,000 Christians being killed annually worldwide, the problem is one of definitions: which set of murders are making it into the study? Christians may be the most persecuted religious group in the world right now in terms of violence. It may also be the most persecuted faith in nonviolent ways, according to this Pew study.
Maybe we could get some mid-stream, middle-of-the-road, moderate types to join the chorus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue, should it?
You'd think that people not on the far right could spare a little anger over this.
I find it interesting that they cite this CSIS study of terrorist incidents, finding that most of them have Muslim victims. That's all very well, but in a year and a half this study captured only 28,031 deaths. If there are 100,000 Christians being killed annually worldwide, the problem is one of definitions: which set of murders are making it into the study? Christians may be the most persecuted religious group in the world right now in terms of violence. It may also be the most persecuted faith in nonviolent ways, according to this Pew study.
Maybe we could get some mid-stream, middle-of-the-road, moderate types to join the chorus. This shouldn't be a partisan issue, should it?
Forsworn Oathbreakers
What happens if you break an oath in the United States? If you are forsworn of your oath of naturalization, which requires abjuring all foreign allegiance and bearing true allegiance to America instead, is there a process by which your citizenship can be revoked?
If you are forsworn of your oath of office, you can be impeached or recalled, although it rarely happens. We require a lot of oaths of office, but it doesn't seem as if they come with any means of enforcement. I think once honor served as a kind of method of enforcement, as being known as a forsworn oathbreaker would have been seen as shameful enough that few would dare court it. Now, though, that system seems to have failed. What is left?
If you are forsworn of your oath of office, you can be impeached or recalled, although it rarely happens. We require a lot of oaths of office, but it doesn't seem as if they come with any means of enforcement. I think once honor served as a kind of method of enforcement, as being known as a forsworn oathbreaker would have been seen as shameful enough that few would dare court it. Now, though, that system seems to have failed. What is left?
The Martyrs of Easter
In Sri Lanka, bombs targeting churches on Easter have killed more than two hundred. They join around a hundred thousand Christian martyrs a year, which is to say that today's death toll is repeated every single day, on average. You just don't hear about it.
A few days ago Tom was asking whether the Church could offer moral clarity to its members any longer. It cannot, if it cannot stand up for its moral principles. It has not only failed to protect the innocent within its own arms, it has sheltered criminals who preyed upon the weakest children. It has not only failed to protect the faithful abroad, it has barely mentioned them as they are slaughtered every day and every hour around the globe.
Raymond Lull, another martyr, knew what was needed.
A few days ago Tom was asking whether the Church could offer moral clarity to its members any longer. It cannot, if it cannot stand up for its moral principles. It has not only failed to protect the innocent within its own arms, it has sheltered criminals who preyed upon the weakest children. It has not only failed to protect the faithful abroad, it has barely mentioned them as they are slaughtered every day and every hour around the globe.
Raymond Lull, another martyr, knew what was needed.
Then if a knight use not his office, he is contrary to his order and to the beginning of chivalry. *** The office of a knight is to maintain and defend the holy catholic faith by which God the Father sent his Son into the world to take human flesh in the glorious Virgin, our Lady Saint Mary; and for to honor and multiply the faith, suffered in this world many travails, despites, and anguishous death. Then in like wise as our Lord God hath chosen the clerks for to maintain the holy catholic faith with scripture and reasons against the miscreaunts and unbelievers, in like wise God of glory hath chosen knights because that by force of arms they vanquish the miscreaunts, which daily labor for to destroy holy church, and such knights God holdeth them for his friends honored in the world and in that other when they keep and maintain the faith by the which we intend to be saved....The Church has cast away the sword that Jesus came to bring. If it will not pick it up again, only God can save it.
The office of a knight is to maintain and defend women, widows, and orphans, and men diseased and not powerful ne strong. For like as custom and reason is that the greatest and most might help the feeble and less, and that they have recourse to the great; right so is the order of chivalry, because she is great, honorable, and mighty, be in succor and in aid of them that been under him and less mighty and less honored than he is....
The office of a knight is also to search for thieves, robbers, and other wicked folk, for to make them to be punished. For in like wise as the ax is made for to hew and destroy the evil trees, in like wise is the office of a knight established for to punish the trespassers and delinquents.
Ruining Masterpieces to Hurt Feelings
What if we intentionally rebuilt Notre Dame not to restore its beauty, nor even to improve its beauty, but to destroy its beauty because it will really upset conservatives because they love old things? We'll call them the 'alt-right' to make it OK.
Two on the Report
I'm going to minimize this because there's too much of it elsewhere, but here are two unexpected outlets to have filed such pro-Trump pieces.
The New York Times ran an op-ed by one of the editors of American Greatness.
The second is Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, an uneven publication but not generally a friendly one for the administration. He writes that 'Mueller did not merely reject the conspiracy theories, he obliterated them.'
Apologies are indeed in order. None shall be forthcoming, I suppose.
The New York Times ran an op-ed by one of the editors of American Greatness.
The problem is that the Mueller investigation, as Mr. Barr explained, “did not find that the Trump campaign or other Americans colluded in those schemes.”He calls for an apology, but exactly as we knew would happen the Times has simply skipped on to re-fighting whether or not the "obstruction" neither Mueller nor the AG felt fit to charge is an impeachable offense. It'll be as if Russian Collusion was never a topic of discussion; what really matters is the process crime that might have been created into the investigation of whatever-it-was-I-forget.
Mr. Schiff must know this. He must have known it for a long time. But he has persisted in slandering innocent people for personal political gain. His selfishness has led to a level of civil discord and political acrimony not seen since the late 1960s. That is what I call immoral, unethical, unpatriotic and yes, corrupt.
...
And then there is the Kool-Aid brigade. These are the people outside of politics, the people who couldn’t wait to hear what Rachel Maddow had to say, who believed every breathless prediction on cable news that “new revelations could spell the end for Trump,” and who shared these nuggets with a mixture of indignation and ecstasy on social media.
The second is Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, an uneven publication but not generally a friendly one for the administration. He writes that 'Mueller did not merely reject the conspiracy theories, he obliterated them.'
Mueller, in addition to concluding that evidence was insufficient to charge any American with crimes relating to Russian election interference, also stated emphatically in numerous instances that there was no evidence – not merely that there was insufficient evidence to obtain a criminal conviction – that key prongs of this three-year-old conspiracy theory actually happened....I should be rather embarrassed if I had been loudly asserting that someone was a traitor and a spy, only to discover that absolutely no evidence existed to support the theory. It's one thing to have gotten the wager wrong; intelligence work is often about judging that a thing is more likely to be true than not, or even just sufficiently likely to be true to justify taking some steps to guard against it. Here, though, what is being found is that there's literally nothing to support the idea at all -- yet they raced right off the cliff chasing it.
With regard to Facebook ads and Twitter posts from the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, for example, Mueller could not have been more blunt: “The investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly or intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s interference operation” (emphasis added). Note that this exoneration includes not only Trump campaign officials but all Americans...
Regarding one of the most-cited pieces of evidence by Trump/Russia conspiracists – that Russia tried once Trump was nominated to shape his foreign policy posture toward Russia – Mueller concluded that there is simply no evidence to support it...
As for the overarching maximalist conspiracy – that Trump and/or members of his family and campaign were controlled by or working for the Russian government – Mueller concluded that this belief simply lacked the evidence necessary to prosecute anyone for it[.]
Apologies are indeed in order. None shall be forthcoming, I suppose.
Here's some good news
Middlebury College besmirched its own honor by canceling an appearance by Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko, for the usual tiresome SJW snowflake reasons, and some alarming new ones, including concerns that faculty would retaliate against students who showed insufficient wokeness. Then a small miracle happened: a professor agreed to host the proscribed speaker for a small class if all of his students agreed by secret ballot. A number of other students got wind of it and attended as well. A free discussion followed in which skeptical students heard Mr. Legutko out and argued with him respectfully.
“During the days of communist totalitarianism, scholars from the West traveled to Eastern Bloc nations to give underground lectures and seminars,” said Keegan Callanan, who directs the Alexander Hamilton Forum and invited the Polish politician. “On Wednesday, Mr. Legutko returned the favor.”
Quit doing your charity wrong
More and more confirmations coming that I had my finger on the pulse on Monday: the Yellow Jackets are rioting in rage over the generosity of bad rich people to the Notre Dame rebuilding effort instead of the Yellow Jacket priorities. The argument took longer to surface than I predicted, but the devolution into street violence was faster.
Feeling confused, might confirm prior positions, idk
Trying to remember what collusion looks like. Wait, are we still using that word?
Good Friday
If you go into a church on Good Friday -- a Catholic one, anyway -- the altar is bare, and all is draped in darkness. God is dead.
The old royalist saying was, "The king is dead: Long live the king." But this isn't quite that, although that mimicks this as well as a mortal human royalty can mimic the true royalty of the divine.
God is dead. Long live... God. Not another God, or a different God, but the same God who decided to pass through death as a kind of experience of his creation. As a way of becoming closer to his creatures. We make much of the suffering, but it is still a kind of play. It is a play he chose, for reasons of his own, a play meant to cheer us. It might even make us merry, to think of the cheating of death and the stealing of the sting of sins.
It is the darkest day of the liturgical year. Revel in it.
The old royalist saying was, "The king is dead: Long live the king." But this isn't quite that, although that mimicks this as well as a mortal human royalty can mimic the true royalty of the divine.
God is dead. Long live... God. Not another God, or a different God, but the same God who decided to pass through death as a kind of experience of his creation. As a way of becoming closer to his creatures. We make much of the suffering, but it is still a kind of play. It is a play he chose, for reasons of his own, a play meant to cheer us. It might even make us merry, to think of the cheating of death and the stealing of the sting of sins.
It is the darkest day of the liturgical year. Revel in it.
We just want to dip our beak
Well, it's a small encouragement that it took four or five days instead of four of five hours, but the WaPo does deliver. (The link, however, is to HotAir, no worries.) "If you can afford to help the Cathedral, stop telling us you can't afford to solve the 'social emergency.'" Never give to support the things that are important to you! Always give to support the things that are important to me! And above all, never ask ME to give.
March Through the Institutions
This finding is plausible in my experience.
It's from a fairly prestigious journal, too, and that is encouraging. It is good that they are not so far gone that they cannot admit the problem -- or perhaps they are beginning to come around to the recovery phase, and are now able to admit that they have a problem.
It's from a fairly prestigious journal, too, and that is encouraging. It is good that they are not so far gone that they cannot admit the problem -- or perhaps they are beginning to come around to the recovery phase, and are now able to admit that they have a problem.
A Short Film on the Green New Deal
Narrated by Ms. Occasio-Cortez.
If you want to get to the positive argument, you can skip the first 3:27. Those are just idle fantasies about glorious diversity, plus a recap of how her opponents are all evil liars motivated solely by money.
After that, it turns out... well, see for yourself. Apparently there's just as much money to be made planting mangroves as in petro-engineering.
If you want to get to the positive argument, you can skip the first 3:27. Those are just idle fantasies about glorious diversity, plus a recap of how her opponents are all evil liars motivated solely by money.
After that, it turns out... well, see for yourself. Apparently there's just as much money to be made planting mangroves as in petro-engineering.
First Things: "Why I Became Muslim"
An interesting essay by Jacob Williams, an Englishman who turned from Anglicanism to Islam. Here, below the fold, is the introduction:
Understood, Congressman
So, if elected, your plan is not to seize guns from "law-abiding citizens," because your plan is first to turn us into felons. Got it.
There are insurmountable Constitutional as well as practical and legal problems with this approach, but at least I know for sure just where you stand.
Now go away. A man who would run on a pledge to convert tens of millions of law-abiding citizens into felons, for the express purpose of voiding a Constitutional right, is unfit for any office of public trust.
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