We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Election Day: Do not vote today - unless you understand the issues, and have thought it all through. When uninformed and foolish people vote, everyone loses. As we have noted, it's all about whoresStoogespandering for a sinecure desiring to serve you.
Looking behind those health care stats. Mankiw in the NYT. (h/t, Viking). He pokes a hole in all of the scare tactics. What people want is portablility, I think. Of course, everybody wants cheaper too - but not if it means less freedom of choice. Medical treatment is not a commodity, and a physician is not a factory worker.
A good point on the supposed "problem" of income disparity. Cafe Hayek. The numbers are deceptive because women are working more these days, and the stats are based on household income, not individual income.
They are very good. It's a discipline for beginning the day on the right foot.
For example, here is yesterday's:
Monday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary TimeFather Steven Reilly, LC
Luke 14: 12-14 Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He said to the host who invited him, "When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Introductory Prayer:Lord, I thank you for this time together. Speak to my soul; give me the nourishment I need so that I can get through the long day ahead!
Petition:Lord, grant me the grace to put your interests before my self-interest.
1. “You Scratch My Back…” “… And I’ll scratch yours.” Unique is the individual who doesn’t keep at least one eye on his own self-interest at all times. For many, life is about leverage, and good deeds are investments that will reap future profits. In this parable, Jesus invites us to think outside that human box and more in the divine one. God derives no personal benefits through showing us immeasurable love. We can’t, after all, give him anything that he doesn’t already have. Maybe we should be expanding our list of dinner invitations?
2. The Poor, the Crippled, the Lame, the Blind Blessed Mother Teresa lived this Gospel verse in exemplary fashion. The story is told of a dying man, found lying in the street and brought to Missionaries of Charity’s House of the Dying. They gave him dignity that he had never known: “I have lived like a dog all my life. But now I will die like an angel.” Sometimes we also have opportunities to help others in dire need. Sometimes, more often, we can come to the aid of the person who is spiritually poor or crippled. Perhaps it is that person who is always in a foul mood, or that other who once spread a rumor about me. “Blessed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”
3. Self-interest vs. Resurrection Fr. Joe always used to say this about his priesthood: “The pay is lousy, but the retirement benefits are out of this world.” Self-interest is about getting the positive payback here and now. True love and charity do not keep a score card to make sure that “it’s worth it.” No, we are living for eternity. Let’s ask the Lord to give us a better sense of the big picture, to see that those unrequited good deeds are the best ones. So you parents of the world, take heart! Your sacrifices will indeed find their reward, “in the resurrection of the righteous.”
Conversation with Christ: Dear Lord, how often I am thinking, “What’s in it for me?” Help me to reach out to others beyond the limits of my group. Help me to see that you are in every soul, not just the ones that in some way gratify me.
Resolution: I will do an act of charity for someone who doesn’t like me.
Simply put, A Secular Age is a magisterial refutation of what Taylor calls the “subtraction story” of secularization. On this familiar narrative, secularization is simply an effect of the progress of science and rational inquiry. Taylor raises two related objections against it: first, that it misses the essentially moral dimension of the “exclusive humanism” that emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries, and which, in his view, is closely tied to an “ethic of freedom and beneficent order”; second, that the emergence of that humanism is too substantial an achievement to be explained by the subtraction story, which makes it seem as if human beings simply “fell into” conceiving of their moral capacities without reference to god.
Taylor goes further: not only is the discovery of “intra human” sources of benevolence the “charter of modern unbelief”, but religion itself played a significant role in shaping that ethical vision.
Read the whole thing. We have made that point here several times: Western humanism is Christian in its cultural core, but not in its soul.
Why doesn't Maggie's Farm enter those annual "Best Blog" contests that are going on now?
1. We think it's a little silly. 2. We might not win. 3. We have no clue about what blog category we could be in, and there are far better tractor blogs than we are. I reckon we could win, though, in the "Best Commenters" category- but there isn't one.
Don't believe all of the disparaging things that are said about hovering, overly-involved "helicopter parents." Apparently it helps kids get into college. Washington Post. Probably annoys them, too. Whether it really helps them do life is another matter.
I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That’s what freedom is all about. And I think the diversity we have among the states, the system of federalism we have where power is divided between the state and the federal government serves us very, very well.
The Perils of Petrocracy. Something good from the Sunday NYT. It begins:
Who holds the world’s oil? You might assume it’s in the hands of big private oil companies like ExxonMobil. But in fact, 77 percent of the world’s oil reserves are held by national oil companies with no private equity, and there are 13 state-owned oil companies with more reserves than Exxon-Mobil.
Tony afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted - like us. More on Tony Snow's speech,at SDA. Another quote from Tony:
Political rhetoric has turned nasty, childish, and very personal, especially on Capitol Hill, and Americans are sick of it. Hotheads seem to be enjoying a false spring of fame. And members of the mainstream press are scratching their heads and asking, “What's going on here? Why are the nation´s newspapers hemorrhaging readers? Why are the television networks losing viewers? Why has cable news suddenly hit still water? What is going on? Don't Americans care about the news?"
Well, of course they do: The problem is, they don't think they´re getting news — and they´re right.
The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today's vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex in places like Paris, St. Bart's, and Phuket.
How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley Davidsons?
And we haven't even touched on the subject of Social Security's civil union life partner, Medicare. It won't take much sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding, and white-water rafting before we all require new hips, knees, elbows, back surgery, pacemakers, and steel plates in our heads. And the expense of these will be as nothing compared to the cost of our pharmacological needs. Remember, we are a generation that knows drugs. From about 1967 until John Belushi died, we created a way of life based almost entirely on drugs. And we can do it again. Except this time, instead of us trying to figure out how to pay for the fun by selling each other nickel bags of pot, you the taxpayer will be picking up the tab. And did I mention that we'll expect to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic every time we have an ache or a pain? Nothing smaller than a Gulfstream G-3, please.
So just give us all the money in the federal, state, and local budget. Forget spending on the military, education, and infrastructure. What with Iraq, falling SAT scores, and that bridge collapse in Minneapolis, it's not like the military, education, and infrastructure are doing very well anyway. Besides, you don't have a choice. We are 80 million strong. That's a number equal to almost two-thirds of the registered voters in the United States. Do what we say or we will ballot you into a socio-economic condition that will make North Korea look like the clubhouse at Pebble Beach.
Since when do Bill and Hillary live together? Not since the White House, I'd wager. Doesn't she have her own townhouse in DC? Why do people talk as if they were actually ever together these days? Anyway, Althouse on Krauthammer on father-son vs. husband-wife connections.
A person who believes so strongly that a problem needs to be remedied that she dedicates substantial time to ... getting other people to fix the problem.
"It’s time for the press to declare themselves either free guardians of the public trust or owned members of a political movement. They can’t be both."
Bird Dog's pictures of downtown New York have gotten me in the mood to post some photos of houses from 'round these parts - the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood of Nashville, to be precise. This 1920s craftsman bungalow is about a good example as any of the style, and looks to have survived without any major changes or alterations (except for the poor decision to paint the stone foundation, and a tasteless iron railing, no doubt added in the 60s). A 1920s home catalog, advertising a similar type of house, had this to say about the plan:
"Nothing so stimulates and elevates a man as for his life companion to believe in him, and in no other way can a man show his appreciation of such confidence and trust as in the earnest endeavor to build her a home of her own. Any woman who has tact, forethought, and patience with her husband need not despair of owning eventually just such a home. . ."
Since we posted Zaccheus today, these comments seem timely. (Tax collectors, in Roman times, were wealthy because they worked on commission, and I suspect that they were viewed the same way we view the IRS.)
I have no argument with that. My experience with people bears it out. I would add, however, that most rich people are pretty good at dealing with people, too. A quote from the piece at Right Wing News:
To put it bluntly, for every Paris Hilton in the world there is a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs who rose to the top because of their brains, hard work and ability to innovate.
This will anger a lot of the class warfare people who are likely union supporters and subscribe to John Edwards' "two Americas" theory, but those people are mostly angry because nobody wants to believe that their lack of fulfillment with their lives is their own fault. It's always easier to blame some invisible, anonymous conspiracy.
I do not happen to believe that wealth=life fulfillment, but for many folks it seems to be a big part of it - and it's a free country. Whole thing here. And my recent related piece, Love the Prosperous.
By not having a conscript military, the US invests its time and energy on those volunteering to take up military work as a profession. That is not understood as a profession by the other professional classes in America, and those classes tend to devolve military work as 'shooting and killing' only. That does happen, yes, and military conflict requires that the wilingness to counter an enemy with brutal means must be done for survival of one's own forces and to reach the goals of the Nation in such a conflict. Denigration of all other professional classes, but particularly in academia, has lowered the ability of the US population to understand military work and how it works. Without knowing the why it is done the way it is, and how things are achieved not just by killing, nearly an entire generation of Americans are left with very little concept of the utility and necessity of military power.
A reposting of Bruce Thornton's 2004 essay of the above title. A quote:
If Judeo-Christian belief is so central to the ideals that created our government in the first place—if, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights"—then the current anti-Christian fundamentalism strikes at the root of our political order. For if we are, as the secularists tell us, mere material creatures bound to one another only by contractual relations to be dissolved or altered at will, then what will provide the basis for all those selfless actions and emotions that any community depends on for its cohesion, and that keep freedom from degenerating into mere license, the power to do and consume whatever gratifies our selfish will and appetites? Where will fundamental values come from, all those beliefs that bind us into a community, and that we are willing to die and kill for, not because they have been scientifically proven but because we believe passionately that they are right and true and will benefit the greatest number of people?
The secularists have failed to provide an alternative for the religion that they have discarded. Into this vacuum has rushed any number of pseudo-religions, from Marxism to scientism to environmentalism, that are infinitely more irrational and mischievous than traditional Christianity. Yet this secularism is the creed dominating the schools, one more dogmatic, more intolerant of dissent, and more prone to self-righteous hypocrisy—in short, more fundamentalist than the beliefs of most Christians. For those concerned about the dangers of religion to our political life, then, look to these creeds, which are passed off as the fruits of science and reason, rather than to a Christianity that has been banished from the political culture it helped to create.
1Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today." 6So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7All the people saw this and began to mutter, "He has gone to be the guest of a sinner."
8But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."
9Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost."
Photo: A sycamore fig. Not the same tree as our American Sycamore.
Saw the Screwtape Letters today, a 90-minute off-broadway monologue by the subtle and crafty devil Screwtape which includes most of the memorable parts of CS Lewis' book. It is performed, appropriately, in Hell's Kitchen - in Saint Clement's Church.
Hell's Kitchen has come a long way over the past 20 years - what a hopping area which used to be creepy, dark, and semi-abandoned. I'd live there now in a flash. We had an excellent Turkish meal down there at Turkish Cuisine, with decent Turkish wines and Turkish dark beer. I am a big fan of the Turks and of their food - and that yogurt-mint sauce they make which is good on grilled lamb and everything else. It's not too easy to find good Turkish restaurants.
We took a nice stroll through the theater district to get over to the church/theater. On the cross-town shuttle from Grand Central, we met a group of 20 good gals from Ohio who came to NYC on a bus for a two-day shopping spree. They were all carrying these gigantic black vinyl shopping bags they found in Chinatown.
Waterfowl Tomorrow:US Dept of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Svc. JP Linduska, Editor, 1964
Ducks, Geese and Swans of North America Frank Bellrose Stackpole Books, 1976
Flyways - Pioneering Waterfowl Management in North AmericaEdited by AS Hawkins, RC Hanson, HK Nelson, HM Reeves US Dept of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, 1984
Prairie Wetland Ecology Edited by HR Murkin, AG van der Valk, WR Clark Iowa State University Press, 2000
More on the Dems' problems with illegal immigration. 
At Regnum Christi, you can sign up for an emailed 
Why doesn't Maggie's Farm enter those annual "Best Blog" contests that are going on now?
The micro-celebrity and the world of image: 
Take the quiz, if you dare. 
The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today's vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex in places like Paris, St. Bart's, and Phuket. 
From today's 
Bird Dog's pictures of downtown New York have gotten me in the mood to post some photos of houses from 'round these parts - the Belmont-Hillsboro neighborhood of Nashville, to be precise. This 1920s craftsman bungalow is about a good example as any of the style, and looks to have survived without any major changes or alterations (except for the poor decision to paint the stone foundation, and a tasteless iron railing, no doubt added in the 60s). A 1920s home catalog, advertising a similar type of house, had this to say about the plan:
Since we posted Zaccheus today, these comments seem timely. (Tax collectors, in Roman times, were wealthy because they worked on commission, and I suspect that they were viewed the same way we view the IRS.)
Boston Globe discovers relationship between 
Luke 19: 1-10
Waterfowl Tomorrow:US Dept of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Svc.