They are the object of the ire of establishment lefties and neocons alike: As pervasive as “traitor” accusations were during the Trump presidency, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has elevated this "treason” mania to never-before-seen heights. Everyone and anyone who questions or deviates in any way from the prevailing bipartisan consensus is accused of being …
The Real Reason Space Colonization Will Fail
Werner Herzog has his idea: It is a utopia, and you do not need to be a scientist or expert researcher [to understand what will pass]. You just sit back, twiddle your thumbs, enjoy your beer, and wait until it fails. [Space colonization] will fail. My explanation is a little more mundane in explanation, if …
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Book Review: Richard Niebuhr’s The Social Sources of Denominationalism
It's another pet peeve of mine: Americans can't bring themselves to discuss the effects of class differentiation in the life of the church, let alone the life of the nation. They'll talk about just about every other type of differentiation, especially those related to race or gender. But class? Off the table. That applies to …
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Energy Puritans Enable Enemies of Democracies — Science Matters
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (Reuters) Western media has stirred up a puritanical revulsion against carbon-based energy, resulting in calls for prohibition of fossil fuels. Leaders in western democracies responded with regulations and constraints punishing companies either producing energy or operating supply infrastructure. This empowers market dominance by sovereign energy […]Energy …
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Anglican Tidbit: Bulletin for the First Sunday in Lent
In another installment of this series of "Bulletins from Bethesda," here is the First Sunday in Lent, 1967. There are quite a few interesting observations to be made about this bulletin: As was the case at the time, the Holy Communion was celebrated consistently at 0800. This was the appointed (second) Sunday for the Holy …
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Penitential Rite, from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
It's needed now: One thing that always struck me about this and so many other penitential rites in the Anglican liturgy (like this one) is that God always is ready to forgive and have us back. That's missing in many of the moral systems that are being imposed on us these days.
The Hidden Life of Jesus Until His Baptism
This section of the Elevations concentrates on Jesus’ growing up years, and specifically the one incident that is recorded in the Gospel: his visit to Jerusalem, his separation from his parents, his time in the Temple with the Jewish sages, and his reunion with his parents. The weeks are as follows: The hidden life of …
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My Canadian Sheeple Problem
Justin Trudeau's brutal suppression of the truckers' protest in Ottawa--and it upholding by the Canadian Parliament--has for me one silver lining. It's solved a long-running mystery concerning a long time commenter (troll, really) of this blog and then my Twitter account, one David Lloyd-Jones of Toronto. For four years, from 2013 to 2017, we went …
The liberal order is already dead — Unherd
In the summer of 1990, I stood where the wall had been and wondered at what had happened to Europe. I wasn’t alone: the rest of the city, the rest of…The liberal order is already dead
Those Un-Aspirational Americans
Or, as the New York Times magazine put it, anti-ambitional: But those top-line numbers obscure a muddier truth. After the latest employment numbers were released in February (which seemed to show remarkable job growth and an unemployment rate of 4 percent), one B.L.S. economist took to his Substack to call it the “most complicated job …
Positive Infinity 