Afternoon Links — 12.28.10

Our senior editor David Goldman discusses the “two stories within the terrible history of Germany and the Jews .” The first, he writes, “is the story of the German Jews, Europe’s most assimilated community, who contributed to German civic life in vast disproportion to their small numbers. The other story is the meeting of German culture and Jewish religion.”

“Generation X is 11 percent smaller than the Baby Boomers with about nine million fewer people,” not enough to replace the taxes paid by the Baby Boomers , upon which so much public spending seems to have been calculated.

In which case, we need as healthy a society as we can get, and “maybe the way to control health care costs is to encourage Americans to turn to God .” A Gallup Poll found that “even after controlling for other kinds of demographic and geographic variables, Americans who say that religion is an important part of daily life and that they attend religious services weekly also report having much healthier habits than people who self-identify as moderately religious or nonreligious.”

“If giving up revenge and resentment were sufficient to yield forgiveness, then one could forgive simply by forgetting, or through counseling, or by taking the latest version of the  nepenthe pill,” writes a philosopher. “But none of those really seems to qualify as forgiveness properly speaking” because ” forgiveness is neither just a therapeutic technique nor simply self-regarding in its motivation; it is fundamentally a  moral relation between self and other.”

“One day the first principle was feeling a bit down, / his glumdiferous magnificence turned in a frown,” begins Dr. Seuss Does Gnosticism .

Austen Ivereigh reports on an English television production of The Nativity , whose writer began work as an agnostic and now believes the story is true.

Brian Saint-Paul of Inside Catholic explains at least part of the reason towns and states are running out of money .

Ismail Hernandez of the Freedom and Virtue Institute lists the ten premises of modern political discourse .

The cardinal in charge of the Congregation for Divine Worship describes Benedict’s goals .

An Irish writer reflects on the continuing power of childhood carols after hearing on the radio  Once in Royal David’s City sung by a choirboy, while blogger Maclin Horton reflects on the need for a real Christmas to sustain our culture .

Finally, some owners of Border Collies have started renting sheep for them to herd .

Thanks to Mary Ellen Kelly and CatholicCulture.org for links.