Stones Cry Out

1. In favor of theological ambidexterity.
2. More theology and the vampire myth.
3. Fasting?
4. Homosexuality and the church in Finland.
5. Stalin … still ruffling feathers.
6. Signs and signals.
7. Weather and climate.
8. A defense of Mr Polanski defused.
9. The AP ordinal lists and notions of athlete questioned.
10. Avatar discussed.
11. Stimulus and broken windows noted.
12. An economics essay recommended.
13. Mr Obama urges “learn” … lesson to be learned perhaps not the one he intended.

It’s been about a year since I began pursuing an interest in firearms (aka guns) for both recreational and self-defense use. In that time, I’ve been impressed with the variety of opinions people have on the “gun” issue in general, as well as the varied responses I’ve gotten to the mere fact that I now own firearms. People who I thought would have had a positive response to the owning of firearms have reacted negatively, and people who I would have never thought would be interested in shooting have pleasantly surprised me.

In another silly twist to my expectations, I ran into what I consider a worldview paradox, with a few acquaintances at work. One person, upon overhearing a conversation about shooting, anxiously exclaimed, “You have a gun?!”, while another expressed the sentiment that he could see nothing good at all coming from owning a gun. And yet another claimed to be frightened whenever the mere topic was discussed.

However, imagine my surprise when I later overhear this same group discussing some of their favorite movies, the likes of which include Pulp Fiction, No Country for Old Men, and Inglourious Basterds. Further imagine my surprise at their reveling over the violence occurring in these movies!

Of course, upon my questioning, their excuse was that “it’s only a movie” and that they are merely praising the “artistic” merits of the films.

Nope. I don’t buy such nonsense, and I consider their stance to be hypocritical. In the meantime, they can have their cinematic artistry… I’ll stick with the reality of my Glock.

We had many Christmas music albums growing up.  Every time the Firestone or Goodyear companies put one out, or another compilation hit the stores, my dad (a self-described "Christmas-aholic") would get it.  The first one home each evening would put a stack of LPs on the record player spindle and get it started.

We knew each version of the songs, which song by which artist followed which (we’d start singing or humming the next cut immediately after the previous one finished), and we even knew where to expect a skip in the record.  The pops and crackles became as much a part of the song as the singer, the arrangement and the lyrics were.

We had our favorites, and we also laughed at some of the awful renditions.  (You haven’t lived until you’ve suffered through John Wayne singing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day".  We love it just for how awful it is.)  One of my dad’s favorite secular Christmas songs from our LP collection is this little-known song done by Bing Crosby, "The Secret of Christmas".  He liked it so much that I remember one afternoon he sat us down in the living room and had us write down the lyrics (one kids listened to the first line and started writing what he heard while the next kid was listening to the second line, etc.).  For a secular song, it really does a wonderful job of driving home the point that Christmas is not just a December 25th thing, and that one of the secrets of Christmas is not just smoothing things over at the end of the year, but it’s what you do the other 364 days that really matters. 

Now, as a Christian, I have my own thoughts on how best to do this (and with who’s help I am able), but Christian or not, this is a song for everyone, and a message for us all. 

It’s not the glow you feel when snow appears.
It’s not the Christmas card you’ve sent for years.
Not the joyful sound when sleigh bells ring,
Or the merry songs children sing.

That little gift you send on Christmas Day,
Will not bring back the friend you’ve turned away,
So may I suggest the secret of Christmas
Is not the things you do at Christmas time,
But the Christmas things you do all year through.

I found out recently that this song was done in a movie ("Say One For Me", 1959).  This is a YouTube clip from the movie with Bing singing the tune.  It’s not the version that was on our LP, but I like the video for this one better. 

The Secret of Christmas

(The LP version is also on YouTube, as well as many other versions including those by Ella Fitzgerald, Julie Andrews, and a fantastic acapella version where one guy sings all 4 parts.)

And, for those of you who know my dad, this is one of the reasons he’ll tell you "Merry Christmas" just about anytime;   Christ came to redeem the whole year.

Merry Christmas!

Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a piece on the slant of the White House’ Christmas decor. From the Times,

But Washington is a city that likes its traditions, and Ms. Rogers has raised a few eyebrows by trying to bend them. When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a “non-religious Christmas” — hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.

A “non-religious Christmas”? Wouldn’t that be like having a Red Sox celebration in the middle of New York City? Hmmm. From FreeDictionary.com, we have, for the word “Christmas”,

1. A Christian feast commemorating the birth of Jesus.
2. December 25, the day on which this feast is celebrated.
3. Christmastide.
[Middle English Cristemas, from Old English Cristes mæsse, Christ’s festival : Christ; see Christ + mæsse, festival; see Mass.]

Christian? Birth of Jesus? Christ? Mass? Certainly seems to be a whole lotta religion going on there.

Well, it seems that Desiree Rogers wasn’t kidding as, per Breitbart, none other than Chairman Mao made it onto a White House Christmas Holiday Tree (as an ornament). And, to top it off (the story, not the tree), the Obama family will not be attending church this Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

Change… you can believe in.

Even as the ObamaCare vote is delivered to us on Christmas Eve, HotAir provides a list of the payoffs… payoffs for votes, that is. From Investors.com,

Sen. Mary Landrieu was the new “Louisiana Purchase.” Sen. Ben Nelson got the federal government to pick up his state’s future Medicaid tab. Maybe we should just put Senate votes up on eBay.

Take the time to peruse the entire greedy list.

Understand, though, that this is simply politics as usual, and not the bipartisan change we were promised.

HT: VerumSerum

From ABC,

With Iran seemingly rejecting the end-of-year deadline for making diplomatic progress with the West, and the Chinese government continuing to voice opposition to imposing additional sanctions in the United Nations Security Council against the rogue regime, the Obama administration has been preparing other possible additional ways of sanctioning Iran for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, ABC News has learned.

Other possible additional sanctions?

Oh yes, we’ve seen the effectiveness of those, throughout history, haven’t we?

It seems to me that, for diplomacy to truly function properly, all parties involved must desire it so. But, perhaps I’m too linear in my approach…

Mr Turk makes an interesting point in the conversation about ecumenical conversations, although I’m not entirely sure it’s the point he wants to make. A week or so ago he offered that those of other denominations, specifically the Roman and Easter churches were right with God only if they (accidentally) held to a Evangelical belief/approach to the Gospel. I think this point of view is held far more often by most people in every church/denomination. That is to say that any Christian church X thinks that members of church Y are in the soteriological pink inasmuch as those members in church Y (accidentally) hold to beliefs that are held in church X. That is, Mr Turk as an Evangelical thinks that the Catholic and Orthodox are saved if they hold an Evangelical understanding of the Gospel and those in the Roman hold that the Evangelical and Eastern are likewise correct when and where they (accidentally) hold to the Roman understanding of Gospel. And so on. Now I had been under the impression that I was “above the fray” in this regard. But on reflection, I am not. Read the rest of this entry

1. Considering Stalin.
2. News on sex and age.
3. In light of Avatar, consider the “evil corporation” myth, it doesn’t hold up.
4. Bishops and the OCA.
5. An Orthodox priest reads some teen genre chic-lit.
6. The Byzantine grand strategy.
7. Filibuster and a question.
8. Another really big lie and the Admin.
9. Mr Fernandez notes a few conflicts. There was a civil war in Greece too, and Greece is in fact part of Europe.
10. In the context of healthcare a Medicare question.
11. Being Christian in Turkey.

1. Some Christmas verse …
2. and some thoughts on the nativity.
3. One the dearth of excellence in public schools.
4. Maybe he’s talking about spam?
5. Memory eternal, our Bishop died.
6. Post-colonial theology.
7. Why wouldn’t the lie of the year be “hope/change?”
8. Building blocks.
9. Copenhagen and the blame game.
10. CRU repercussions continue … here too.
11. Moral hazard.
12. Drugs, numbers, and slavery … to finance climate change?

That was then…

"The big step by extremists will be an attempt to eliminate the filibuster."–former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 29, 2005

…and this is now.

"We need to take on the way the Senate works. The filibuster, and the need for 60 votes to end debate, aren’t in the Constitution. . . . So it’s time to revise the rules."–former Enron adviser Krugman, New York Times, Dec. 18, 2009

Which James Taranto labels "his first-ever accurate prediction."  I’d call it evidence of how heavy a role politics plays into Krugman’s thoughts on economics.  He’s more political pundit than economist.

From First Things, the following quote from Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue,

At its most basic level, conservatism is a respect for history and tradition, including traditional moral principles. I do not believe I am more moral, certainly no better, than anyone else, and conservatives who act “holier than thou” turn my stomach. So do some elite liberals. But I do believe in a few timeless and unchanging truths, and chief among those is that man is fallen. The world is not perfect, and politicians will never make it so. This, above all, is what informs my pragmatic approach to politics.

From The Telegraph, a poem by Al Gore,

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea
Neptune’s bones dissolve

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning’s celebration

Unknown creatures
Take their leave, unmourned
Horsemen ready their stirrups

Passion seeks heroes and friends
The bell of the city
On the hill is rung

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools

And to think that Al Gore almost became President of the United States.

The phrase, “dodging a bullet” quickly comes to mind.

Dan Perrin at RedState laments the very real possibility that Harry Reid has his 60 votes for health care "reform".

Word is rampant among the Senate leadership, as well as is being reported by the Wall Street Journal, that Senator Reid has got to 60 votes on cloture on the Senate ObamaCare bill.

The question of whether we live in a country ruled by leaders who refuse to listen, but do what they believe is in their own interest, has been answered.

Conservatives hate this bill. Progressives and liberals hate it too. The public is solidly against it.

But it does not matter, apparently. The implications of a country in open revolt against this bill and the elite in the Democratic party giving the public the finger are profound.

The Daily Kos and FireDogLakes of the net could not produce a single Democratic Senator or Independent to vote no. Conservatives could not produce a single Democratic Senate vote against cloture. Neither could the general public. Perhaps the left can still get one of their own to kill this nightmare. Is there not a single Dem Senator who will stand with the public, or is this merely a quaint notion we used to have about our country — that the system responds to the public?

And they have 60 votes for a bill that hasn’t even been CBO-scored yet.  The vote hasn’t come yet, so there’s still time for some reasonable Democrats to become unable to stomach the massive price tag for this.  In the meantime…

The world will understand America has changed. Our country is now run by elites who are printing money, debasing our currency to throw at massive new spending and deficit creating programs — and actually believe they are both moral and politically smart. Just 19% of the public believes this plan will not increase the deficit.

What comes next is very discomforting to think about. But we have now crossed that line from what our country was into something else, and that something else has nothing whatsoever with the country being a Republic. There will be a reckoning for this, and it will not be pleasant — not for anyone.

(Emphasis in original.)  We’ve lost a lot of ground in the slippery slope of elitist rule.

In the U.K., it seems that gifted students are being ignored by their teachers, lest they fall into the trap of promoting elitism. Per The Daily Mail,

Many teachers are not convinced of the importance of providing more challenging tasks for their gifted and talented pupils.

Bright youngsters told inspectors they were forced to ask for harder work. Others were resentful at being dragooned into ‘mentoring’ weaker pupils.

…

Teachers feared that a focus on the brightest pupils would ‘undermine the school’s efforts to improve the attainment and progress of all other groups of pupils’.

I find it interesting that the students interviewed expressed frustration at not only the fact that they aren’t getting more challenging tasks, but at also being forced to mentor their weaker (read: less adept) counterparts. Indeed, one has to wonder, if students are being  asked to mentor other students, exactly what are the functions and responsibilities of teachers in U.K. schools?

Yet, I can’t help but conclude that such nonsense is but an outgrowth of a socialist mentality. Socialism, per Wikipedia, may include,

…the view that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital and derives its wealth through exploitation, creates an unequal society, does not provide equal opportunities for everyone to maximise their potentialities and does not utilise technology and resources to their maximum potential nor in the interests of the public.

I’ve noticed some common threads, among those with whom I’ve debated the actions of our current administration: For one, they think that we (whether referring to the U.S. or the world) need to work together for the common good. Also, evil capitalistic greed is what has driven us to the unequal state we now find ourselves in, as a society. And, we should expect the government to be the means with which to provide and regulate the so called common good.

Do you remember this statement?

It’s not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success, too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.

– candidate Barack Obama

When not reading from his carefully prepared text, Obama tends to reveal himself a bit more clearly. Notice that he thinks we need to make sure that other people behind a successful person (aka less gifted students vs. gifted students) get their chance for success. He also thinks that when the wealth is spread around (aka gifted students forced to mentor less gifted students) it is good for everybody.

As I see it, the problem with socialistic dreaming is that it promotes the notion that human depravity can be ultimately conquered by humans themselves.

The entire course of human history has shown us otherwise.