Aaron D. Wolf
Pharmaceutical Holiday
Can you imagine the FDA approving a drug that, say, increased the risk of blood clots, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, breast cancer, and migraines for women? And fathom, if you will, the absurd notion that such a drug could be approved for the treatment of something that isn’t even a disease, a genetic abnormality, or a mental disorder but the very way that God designed women’s bodies to work.
Let’s Cheat on Our Taxes
As I write, April 15 is still fresh in the mind, and the sting of death remains, combining the current pangs of tax extraction with the promise of a greater burden to come, thanks to the Barackification of heathcare.
So imagine my delight when I read in a back issue of a leading Christian magazine (call it Evangelicalism Now) that, come next April 15, I should just flip off Uncle Sam and cheat on my taxes.
Down With Islamists
Ali Mir of the USC Muslim Student Union is upset about the media’s usage of such terms as Islamist and extremist. (They are “blah, blah, blah.”) This bothers him because these words “play to readers assumptions” and fail to “challeng[e] their prejudices.” And that’s unfair, considering he is “unable to find examples of similar stock-phrases referring to Christianity . . . that carry the implications of something inherently negative or dangerous . . . ” (I’m sure you’ve never read anything negative about “fundamentalist Christians” in the aforementioned media.)
He then goes on to rely on Princeton’s “WordNet” for a definition of Islamist, which, by his standards, is pretty innocuous—the term only refers to someone who is knowledgable about Islam and probably believes that stuff! (Ali Mir is an Islamist!)
This is disingenuous at best. Islamism and Islamist have a long history. Islamism used to be a synonym for Mohammedanism, before both gave way to Islam. Then the term resurfaced in connection with modern political movements that had a basis in Islam.
But more to the point, the mainstream media now uses such terms while falling all over itself in an effort to keep from identifying the followers of Muhammad (in word and deed) as vanilla “Muslims.” So perhaps what Ali Mir wants is for the media to stop identifying killers who cry “Allahu Akbar!” with Islam in any way, shape, or form.
If I Could Turn Back Time
Here’s the bottom line of today’s SCOTUS decision regarding the incorporation of the Second Amendment, which amounts to an explicit rejection of traditional federalism on the part of the conservative majority. (Full disclosure: I’m of the Hestonian “cold, dead hands” persuasion.) Writing for the majority, Justice Alito admits the original intent of the Bill of Rights: “The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, originally applied only to the Federal Government.” The Marshall Court “firmly rejected the proposition that the first eight Amendments operate as limitations on the States, holding that they apply only to the Federal Government.” Then comes the “big but” of American history: “The constitutional Amendments adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War fundamentally altered our country’s federal system.”
So the nut of the opinion is, in essence, what’s done is done. To those who would insist that original intent (of the authors of the Bill of Rights, or the legislators who voted on it, or especially the states who ratified it) matters, Justice Alito offers what might be called the DeLorean Defense or the Flux Capacitor Exception:
There is nothing new in the argument that, in order to respect federalism and allow useful state experimentation, a federal constitutional right should not be fully binding on the States. This argument was made repeatedly and eloquently by Members of this Court who rejected the concept of incorporation and urged retention of the two- track approach to incorporation. . . . Time and again, however, those pleas failed. Unless we turn back the clock or adopt a special incorporation test applicable only to the Second Amendment, municipal respondents’ argument must be rejected. Under our precedents, if a Bill of Rights guarantee is fundamental from an American perspective, then, unless stare decisis counsels otherwise, that guarantee is fully binding on the States . . .
You and I may appreciate the practical outcomes of today’s ruling, but the whole affair calls to mind something the late Mark Winchell wrote for Chronicles in November 2005 (“Reattacking Leviathan: Starving the Beast”):
Unfortunately, hoping for the appointment of “conservative” judges is not enough. By their very nature, judicial conservatives show an exaggerated deference for settled law (the principle of stare decisis). What is needed to restore the original federalist balance is the sort of counterrevolutionary judicial activism that we are not likely to see. At a more fundamental level, it is ludicrous for the states to allow their sovereignty to be defined by lifetime appointees of the central government.
Healthcare Reformer
The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either.
In the large urban centers, the poor were getting poorer, while the rich were getting richer. The wealthy—even in the churches—were given to elaborate and expensive entertainments.
Too Good To Be Untrue
The amoeba. You remember it from biology class; it’s your long-lost relative. Don’t believe it? Well, you’re probably one of those pro-life Christian homeschooling losers. You don’t play nice with others. You are socially maladjusted.
“Amoeba are essentially everywhere and have probably existed . . . long before the appearance of macroscopic animals,” says the science department at the University of Edinburgh. “Throughout our entire existence therefore, we have lived in intimate association with amoebae. It is consequently no surprise that some amoeba have adapted to take advantage of us.”
The Art of Spanking
So, thanks again
for the love in the cradle
and all of the changes that kept me dry.
And thanks again
for the love at our table
and tannin’ my bottom when I told you a lie . . .
It’s a tear-jerker of a song, and the only thing that rescues Ricky Skaggs’ “Thanks Again” from excessive sentimentality is the fact that every word of it is true. But then again, it was a tear-jerker of a story that I was reading when that song started playing in my head.
Christmas With the Devil
“The true meaning of Christmas gets lost when we believe contrary worldviews,” the prisoner writes. “Our beliefs determine our views in a world where absolutes are fading away.” The prisoner is dictating this for his newsletter.
A Tender Unitarian Christmas II: Yankees and Jews Slapping Norwegians
I like Garrison Keillor. There, I said it. Not everyone on the Chronicles staff agrees. But that is not the point of this yuletide tale.
Tiller, Roeder, Richert, and Luther
. . . We interrupt this broadcast to celebrate(!) a Lutheran-Catholic lovefest . . .
Recently, there has been a blogosphere brouhaha over questions pertaining to the murder of late-term abortionist scoundrel George Tiller. Our executive editor Scott P. Richert has made compelling arguments against Tiller’s murder at his Catholicism GuideSite on About.com. And yet Scott, who is rightly described by his friendly debate opponents at Takimag.com as a “devout Catholic,” has not made arguments that are what one (I speak as a Lutheran) would call “uniquely Catholic”—except for his citation of Aquinas and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which of course are wildly papist. (And imagine that, at Catholicism.About.com!)
