Category: Contemporaries

Unfair and Self Destructive

I didn’t vote for Obama- I’m going to be upfront on that, but this trend:“The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama” is not just politics. It is about preservation of the USA. All of us. Our economic health is not partisan and it isn’t even a divide between immigrant and citizen. We ought to hold the fire under those who are the problem. We ought to all be part of the solution. Pressure AIG, surely bring pressure to bear on the executives who ought to go be pariahs until they are ashamed enough to do what is right: return their obscene bonuses. Or something.

But don’t turn this into a political circus… and don’t get on the wrong side of it.

You know there was an old story in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, it took place during a time of deep winter and blinding blizzards, when two young men risked their lives to get grain for their starving community. They understood the risk to be for their neighbors and family’s survival. The grocer who sponsored their undertaking decided that he was going to grasp this as his own personal windfall and hiked the price unconscionably high to the starving townsfolk. Just because he could. They risked their lives, he reaped the profits…for himself.

The irate reaction included the promised threat that for those who survived, there would be no patronizing this unethical man’s business. He was forced to back down -at least in the story. There is a certain strength in the voice and the power of the people so long as they keep their focus right. And it is this focus on the greedy individuals who have slaughtered our economy and its pensions and benefits for themselves… and continue to eat well off the carcass. Not President Obama.

Conservatives, don’t play the fool, stop making partisan hay while the barns burn down.

Cogent Comment Upon Our Culture

A post which should be read in entirety due to its perfectly balanced form and thought, the blog ‘Ancient Hebrew Poetry‘ explains “Why I am an atheist“.

What our culture is given to believe of itself mirrored back in a declaration of what is actually so, John F. Hobbins gives reflection outside of the usual rhetoric in a topic whose countenance seems so set in our acquaintance with it that we are tempted to gloss over the implications for ourselves.

I see excellent things, like science and politics, made into a surrogate religion, and denatured in the process.

Where others see progress in green awareness, I see intense hypocrisy. Where others see progress in the tendency of the latte crowd to be pacifist, I see a ‘live and let die’ philosophy. Among those who have thrown religion aside as if it were an ill-fitting jacket, or simply no longer in fashion, I note a continued hunger for transcendentals that might give life meaning.

With John, I too profess, “I do not believe in the gods of this age.”

via the ever genuine and sensitive eclexia

The 2008 EO/Wheatstone Academy Symposium – the evangelical outpost

The 2008 EO/Wheatstone Academy Symposium – the evangelical outpost

Joe Carter has put an interesting question to the Christian blogging community:

If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

Do our choices of media forms allow the message to remain Christian? Or are the tools with which we communicate at odds with the message of the Gospel?

I intend to think a bit about this and write my response before the deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, April 25th. I would love it if you could join in on this with me and other bloggers. Joe is offering prizes, but the discussion itself seems reward enough. Blog fodder, you know;)

Reading Gagdad Bob

Gagdad Bob is hard for me to understand, arresting with a good delivery of truth, but still takes me time to get through his style of prose to understand what he is saying. Don’t let that stop you from reading one of the very best explanations I have found for why the Western system of freedom and democratic government is based quite squarely within and derived from the Protestant form of Christian beliefs. In Cosmopathology and the Descent of the Left, Bob makes sense of the nonsensical fact that the Left aligns itself self-destructively with Islamo-fascism. And further how it can choose causes which so evidently destroy true freedom, while needing and purportedly cherishing that freedom.

One of the reasons his post is so effective is because he comes from a completely different direction than our accustomed style of thinking. Breaks through the reinforced strongholds of our usual opinion-formed arguments.

Rusty Talks Branding: how to avoid getting seared by the hot iron

At New Covenant, Rusty has some interesting posts on the topic of “branding”, a perennial interest of mine.

New Covenant: Branding: how to avoid getting seared by the hot iron
Consumer Reports [says about]…the impact of “branding” on actual spending,

” For parents, all this brand chatter might not be welcome news, as brand talk leads to requests for specific products. While teens referencing brands isn’t really new, what is new is the fact that advertising is coming at them from more sources than ever and is often more fluidly integrated into their entertainment. With the increasing proliferation of viral marketing, it seems that teen exposure to and discussion of brands can only increase.”

Then gives his own report on his frugal spending success :::applause:::

The thought it gave me was that we need to develop and relay to our children the concept of making our own “brand”. Why borrow someone else’s brand exclusively? We are not the sum of the Abercombie and Fitch or the Ford or the Lexus…. we are more than Whole Foods, Ralph Lauren, or Tide. Those are just things we use, and sometimes if we are very smart we can learn to make substitution or find alternative resources for building our own brand: honest, frugal, wise, kind, generous, …lots of the cachet that money by itself does not buy, but lifestyle accrues.

Does the brand sold as a bill of goods to your kids fit the brand of your family, or of your children’s own goals?

What defines you?
… and your personal message?