Every big idea that works is marked by simplicity, by clarity. You can understand it when you hear it, and you can explain it to people. Social Security: Retired workers receive a public pension to help them through old age. Medicare: People over 65 can receive taxpayer-funded health care. Welfare: . . . . Continue Reading »
Brian McClaren is the guru of one of the most recent evangelical theological fads, something called the emerging church. He’s a regular contributor at Sojourners and spent a lot of time last year campaigning for President Obama, trying to convince evangelicals that Obama was actually the . . . . Continue Reading »
All this week, First Things has been hosting an online symposium on on Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate . In case you’ve missed them, here are all six of the entries: » Benedict XVI, Economist by Ivan Kenneally » Is Benedict in Favor of World Government? by Douglas A. Sylva . . . . Continue Reading »
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List , providing perspective for us old timers on how students just entering college see the world. For the Class of 2013: 4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book. 6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup. 8. . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently newspapers reported the death of the Rev. “Ike” Eikerenkoetter, a roguish televangelist who preached a prosperity gospel and sold $19.95 prayer rugs guaranteed to help you pray for money. Because my student digs near Columbia were in a zip code that included parts of Harlem, I . . . . Continue Reading »
At the heart of modern nihilism, for Nietzsche, is the problem presented by the ascendancy of the modern scientific project-the mathematization of matter or the arbitrary formalization of material structure conceals the real chaos of Being. The Kantian split between phenomena and noumena, and the . . . . Continue Reading »
Science fiction novelist John Scalzi lists some of the worst designs in the Star Wars universe : Lightsabers Yes, I know, I want one too. But I tell you what: I want one with a hand guard. Otherwise every lightsaber battle would consist of sabers clashing and then their owners sliding as quickly as . . . . Continue Reading »
Tom Keene is doing a radio/television simulcast tomorrow with a number of contributors to his Bloomberg Book of Master Market Economists. I will do the 7 a.m. . . . . Continue Reading »
As the national convention of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted yesterday in Minneapolis to accept a social statement on human sexuality, tornado-like winds shook the downtown and ripped up the steeple at the ELCA’s Central Lutheran Church next door to the convention center. No . . . . Continue Reading »
The cultural revolution of the Sixties was brewing in the Fifties. Bourgeois hypocrisy was no longer sincere. Discrete winks were on their way to head shaking nods. . . . . Continue Reading »
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