Wonderful Matters

Yesterday in my newspaper was a report about some hostages being roughed up by some mean dudes in some mall incident. Sounded like there was a bit of physical violence involved, but I don't think anyone was killed. Thing is, I'd just finished a book by Harvard professor Steven Pinker that said we've got less violence going on all around right now. Hmm. I'd also heard a report about the total abortion numbers last year. Over 300,000. Simply doing the math, that's just under 1,000 babies being torn from their mother's wombs every day . I can't believe there isn't a little bit of violence involved there. But... I thought there was supposed to be less violence? At the end of the year I'd heard a news report that Chicago reached 500 homocides in its city for 2012. They made it sound like that number was a bad thing. Meanwhile New York's was a relatively low 400-something. They made it sound like that was a good thing, because it wasn't as ...

Just have to plop up here a quick post on an article right there in the big mainstream McPaper, USA Today . A university professor has a column in which he asks, "Are we living in the Hunger Games?" I wrote at length about the film The Hunger Games as a profound metaphor for very real contemporary human sacrifice. Yes, human sacrifice happens all the time by everyone not living by the self-sacrificial principles of Jesus Christ. It isn't always in the physical violence people do to one another but in the spiritual and emotional violence they do. The reason so many refuse to accept this truth is that it is so hard to discern in the lives of everyone who does it, which it seems is just about everyone. Here the author elucidates how evident this is. He will certainly get points from those shouting about how inequitable all things economic are in this country. He will get more points from those who want to screech about how much power too few people have to exploit other...

It was announced today that a federal judge dismissed California's constitutional prohibition against same-sex marriage, and today a lot of people wanted to talk about it. It is so juicy because it is one of the more prominent battles in the incessantly raging Culture War, but most of what I hear being said is woefully uninformed, naive, or flatly foolish. For two people to engage in a homosexual act is just as execrable as two people married to others having intercourse, or a person and a sheep committing bestiality, or any number of other sexually immoral activities. In that sense, then it makes perfect sense for the law to step in and regulate these behaviors, most notably for our day, homosexual acts. After all, as it says in the first letter of Paul to Timothy, "that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts,...

Mark Levin is a talk-show host I sometimes listen to because I really like his bulldog attitude towards all things foolish. His popular book Liberty and Tyranny is a being read voraciously by the conservative set. Levin frequently offers a typical rationale for his entertaining rants, and it pretty much comes down to this. "The Constitution says so!" (Or "The Constitution doesn't say so!" as the case may be) Quite a few loyal Americanists feed on The Document for their political sustenance, and that is perfectly fine for those who like cruising in the hyperviolent crusade against other threatening savages. Americanist liberty means those other guys can't dick with them and the constitutionally authorized force of the law should make that happen. Tyranny to the Americanist is when those other guys get the upper hand and they get to rail against them with the most enthusiastic revulsion. I address this a bit more in my webzine's home page, and s...

The price of gold has reached a record $1,000 an ounce, and I wonder what precisely is it that made a shiny yellow rock increase in value by that much? Did we suddenly discover it has some cancer-fighting agent within its compound? Are people somehow more compelled to ask you to the dance floor if you're wearing it? Has its heretofore unmarketed capacity to do the laundry and mop the floor while you lounge by the pool been finally realized? Well, not really. The only reason is because the value of the dollar is slipping and hordes of people (ah, no word is more apt here than "hoard") believe they can somehow protect the meaning of their value by getting and holding shiny yellow rocks. Yeah. Wow. That'll do it. I seem to vaguely recall a story about a king--name of Mitchell or Michael, not that but a bit more odd--for some reason I'm thinking of a muffler repair shop, but, what do I know... But hey! What about the Constitution?! Ah yes, that treasured sacred docume...

My latest reading has been Unruly Americans by Woody Holton, a fine narrative about what was really happening among Americans that led them to assemble the U.S. Constitution. It doesn't come near Rulers of Evil for elucidating the core reasons America was formed, but it's pretty good at filling in much of the peripheral stuff. What strikes me as I read is how deeply tormented were the very souls of sensitive individuals subject to rank value disassessment -- the way the World assigns value using institutionally sanctioned deceit. Taxpayers loathing bondholders, bondholders loathing currency holders, currency holders loathing tax collectors. Lots and lots of loathing among people who claimed to be followers of Christ. It can shake you up if you don't grasp the perfectly rational reasons the bearers of Cain's legacy do what they do. It's been going on for eons and eons and eons. This past Saturday The Los Angeles Times' Tom Petruno wrote "A Good Time to Rea...

My family and I recently spent a week in Walt Disney World, and there is enough Catholicist Nation fodder there for a writing episode at another time. I will admit much of it is quite fun, and after we returned from a six-day binge we had to detox. I popped in a wonderful film, The Incredibles , something my children have seen a half-a-dozen times but I’d only seen once, back when it was in the theaters. As I watched it I was intrigued by its similarity to Watchmen , which I’d webzined on last month. I have to believe Brad Bird, the guy who put The Incredibles together, had to have been very familiar with Watchmen , because the Pixar film is a virtual children’s version of the classic graphic novel. At one point in The Incredibles the superheroes are outlawed because they are saving people who don’t want to be saved. What do you think about this idea? I ask my Government students this discussion question: “We all have a right not to be beat up for no reason. But what do you think if ...