The sluggish economy, combined with the failure of the political class, has does more than put people out of work. Another result is that for the time being, the two dominant sentiments among the population are no longer liberal and conservative, but leftist and nativist.
The lesson of recent history – in every realm from politics to popular culture -- is that you can push the boundaries of the sayable just by saying it, and you can push the boundaries of the doable just by doing it.
Unfortunately, the barbarians have been quicker to learn the lesson.
With so many candidates, the Republican fora couldn’t possibly be structured like debates – and they aren’t. Some have compared them to joint news conferences. I think they are more like free-style wrestling tournaments, in which performance is judged according to the criteria of spectacle. Who made the best pivots? Who pulled the cleverest sucker punches? Who got the other guy to slip?
The history of Christian antisemitism was not only a dreadful injustice, but also a catastrophe for the diplomacy of theism. It has convinced large numbers of contemporary Jews that they have safer allies among atheists, who deplore their God and despise them as “Zionists and racists,” than among Christians, who really believe that the True God spoke to them.
The new Hungarian ambassador to the Court of St. Peter, Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen, who wrote a dissertation on Thomism, comments in an interview about why Thomistic philosophy disappeared for a while in the twentieth century:
Suppose someone suddenly gets sick, pulls off the road, and witnesses a three-car pile-up that he would have been involved in otherwise. Would he betray confirmation bias if he concluded that his guardian angel had assisted him?
I would advise any young Christians who are considering a career in government, irrespective of branch, at any level, from low to high, that before any other study they read the first six chapters of the Book of Daniel: Thoughtfully, very carefully, and in the context of the Exile.
Concerning climate change, here is another lesson, which has stuck with me ever since the days when I thought I wanted to be a mathematical modeler in another field.
You can always build a model that predicts everything that has already happened. That doesn't mean you can predict what is going to happen.
An acquaintance tells me that in his part of the world, which would normally be warm this time of year, the weather is unusually cold.
If it’s shivery where you are, this may amuse you: The next time someone comments on the cold, quietly murmur “Climate change,” then watch for the reaction.