"Judge Roy Moore graduated from West Point and then went on into the service, served in Vietnam and then came back and was in law school. All of the ladies, or many of the ladies that he possibly could have married were not available then, they were already married, maybe, somewhere. So he looked in a different direction and always with the [permission of the] parents of younger ladies. By the way, the lady he’s married to now, Ms. Kayla, is a younger woman. He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is good, that’s true, that’s straight and he looked for that.”Audio at the link. The discussion continues, with Benham, under questioning from the show hosts, saying that it is acceptable for a man to "court" a 14-year-old girl if he has her parent's permission.
The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest objects with irrational and extreme values—both positive and negative—which are important for binding groups together.Of course, to the liberal mind, the idea that there's "something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is good, that’s true, that’s straight" just sounds horribly sexist. And I find it hard to believe that liberals don't think about purity too. They just aim their thoughts at the impurity of the older man — the creep — who's going after young girls. His interest in their purity is impure.
The idea that the self is an “illusion” tends to be grounded on the false assumption that if the self is anything at all, it must be a stable inward personal quiddity available to introspection. But of course there is no such thing. The Zen masters are right.Okay, so maybe a blog is a better representation of who you are and what life might be than any other form of expression, but Will's main problem seems to be that you can't do it right if you're doing it for money.
A personal blog, a blog that is really your own, and not a channel of the The Daily Beast or Forbes or The Washington Post or what have you, is an iterated game with the purity of non-commercial social intercourse.What do the Zen masters say about purity? Hei Neng said: "If you cherish the notion of purity and cling to it, you turn purity into falsehood. Purity has neither form nor shape, and when you claim an achievement by establishing a form known as purity... you are purity bound."
What in the world ever happened to the United States of America, folks? Our country is so different from the nation that was founded more than two hundred years ago. I’m absolutely convinced that the reason America went so far and so fast is that our founders were God-fearing men. It was godly from the start. Our founding fathers fled the wickedness of Europe and came to America to build a nation built on principles, morals, and their beliefs in Jesus Christ. They drew upon their faith and biblical ideals to actually construct the framing documents of our great country.That's very close to the end of the book, the third and second to the last paragraphs (before the afterword). (The last paragraph states his resolution to keep "spreading God’s Word... reading Scripture and quotes, carrying his Bible, and blowing duck calls to crowds.")
Look, you’re married to a woman and she doesn’t have AIDS, chlamydia, syphilis, gonorrhea, or any of the rest of them. Here’s the good news: you don’t have it and she doesn’t have it. Guess who is never going to get it if you keep your sex right there? The only way it can be transmitted to you or your spouse is if you go out and disobey what the Almighty says. When it’s one woman and one man, you won’t catch this stuff.Interestingly, homosexuality doesn't even seem to be on Robertson's radar, since a same-sex couple, beginning disease-free and keeping monogamous, would enjoy the same health benefit. If we're to reason about God from looking at where he allows disease to take root — Robertson's idea, not mine — then God blesses gay marriage.
But if you disobey God, His wrath will be poured out upon you. It’s not a coincidence that horrible diseases follow immoral conduct — it’s the consequences that follow when you break God’s laws.This is horrible theology. Robertson isn't inclined to think too deeply as he mixes religion and health. How would he explain children getting cancer? Monogamy may be good religion and, simultaneously, good for your health, but that doesn't establish that good health is evidence that God approves of your behavior. People do not have bad health in proportion to their sinfulness, and one can think of behavior that isn't particularly virtuous that would be good for fending off disease, notably avoiding human contact.
Go read the GQ interview again. It specifically mentions that Phil says he's never read his own autobiography. No doubt it's based on his rather rambling philosophy of things. I don't envy the ghostwriter, though.In fact, I had never read the GQ article in full, so I checked it out. It says:
According to Phil’s autobiography — a ghostwritten book he says he has never read — he spent his days after Tech doing odd jobs and his evenings getting drunk, chasing tail, and swallowing diet pills and black mollies, a form of medicinal speed. In his midtwenties, already married with three sons, a piss-drunk Robertson kicked his family out of the house. “I’m sick of you,” he told his wife, Kay. But Robertson soon realized the error of his ways, begged Kay to come back, and turned over his life to Jesus Christ.So what does this mean that the GQ author says that Robertson says he's never read the book? Assuming Robertson really said that and wasn't lying, I'd guess that it means that Robertson mostly did interviews and provided scraps of writing to the person who put the book text together and that Robertson has never taken the trouble to sit down and read it through. So am I wasting my time taking the text seriously? If Robertson isn't responsible for the text, he's a party to a scam, which doesn't seem too godly.
"Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change," Kelly said. "Jesus was a white man, too. It's like we have, he's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"Well, that's silly, perhaps, but she's got a guest on the show who needs to be prodded with questions. And the assertion that Santa is a historical figure is jocose for adults, a sop for the kids. The question is simply the usual conservative appeal to tradition: Why change anything? There's a reference to the reason for the change: It makes some people "uncomfortable." Is that a good enough reason for changing something we've done for a long time? This is the same way you could bandy about the question whether the Washington Redskins ought to change their name. It's standard fare for the Fox News crowd.
The new pope’s words are likely to have repercussions in a church whose bishops and priests in many countries, including the United States, often appeared to make combating abortion, gay marriage and contraception their top public policy priorities. These teachings are “clear” to him as “a son of the church,” he said, but they have to be taught in a larger context. “The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives."...Interesting to picture the smallness as protecting not purity but mediocrity.
In contrast to Benedict, who sometimes envisioned a smaller but purer church — a “faithful fragment” — Francis envisions the church as a big tent.
“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” he said. “We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.”
"It's like Japanese body pillow girlfriends, but not as creepy, because it's pure."
"This is what killed Timothy Treadwell."
"Wow, that part about writing letters to your future husband, tucking it into a special pocket in the teddy bear and then giving them to him on your wedding day...that squicked me out."
"Does this mean the purity rings are not working?"
Heritage cannot keep up with AEI, Hoover and others on the serious scholarship, so why not get a huge fundraiser, a headline- grabber and household name? DeMint, meanwhile, can vastly increase his earnings (he is among the poorest members of the Senate), enjoy a lavish expense budget and not be bothered with the late hours and constituent complaints that make for a certain drudgery in the Senate. Moreover, he wasn’t doing anything in the Senate for years other than taunting colleagues and trying to stop legislation that failed the purity test (all of it). That in part is a function of a do-nothing Senate, but it was also DeMint’s choice to eschew lawmaking, policy enactment, bridge-building and steady but slow progress in passing a conservative agenda. Ultimately, that’s not very fulfilling, especially if you aren’t paid very well.
With three days of arguments scheduled for this week, the nine justices will need the steely nerves of a clutch free-throw shooter to block out all the noise surrounding a case that has generated perhaps the most intense outside lobbying campaign that the court has ever seen.The article itself is part of that campaign, no?
Proponents of the sweeping 2010 law, working with the White House, have also developed “talking points” to emphasize the potential harm if the law is thrown out, including the reduction in coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and for young adults who wish to remain on their parents’ policies.Yes, it will take an immense amount of nerve to throw out this uniquely momentous law. I don't think they can exclude all the noise. Maybe Thomas can, but none of the others. Maybe Scalia. But the question is whether the pressure against the law feels greater than the pressure for it. It's momentously valuable/momentously destructive. The noise could cancel itself out, leaving the Justices to decide using a purely legal methodology.
“All that other background noise, I never — I don’t listen to all this stuff,” [Clarence Thomas] said. “I don’t read the papers, I don’t watch the evening news.” If justices let outside pressures distract them, he said, “in my opinion, you have no business in the job.”Jesus said: "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." And Paul wrote: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
There is a purity, a simplicity, about the voting-rights fight that is sadly absent from many modern civil-rights battles. This is not about special privileges, or quotas, or even complex mathematical formulae.Why be sad? The straightforward civil-rights battles have been won. Those that are left are questionable. That's good. Unless you define the good in terms of opportunities for Eric Holder to define his legacy.
It's about a basic right of American citizenship, which is being taken from large numbers of people for the most cynical of reasons. [Voter ID] laws are, quite literally, indefensible...Ridiculous! They're completely defensible. The case law is clear that requiring an ID doesn't violate the Constitution. The Supreme Court said so in 2008, in a 6-3 case. Holder still has a chance to use statutory law against the states that are covered by the Voting Rights Act, but to do that he'll have to argue for a broad interpretation of congressional powers, and what's pure and simple about that?
Back in the 1800s... very conservative Christians assumed that Christmas was in fact a pagan holiday and would not celebrate it.Following this analysis, we should approve of the early Christians who fell into the celebration of the Feast of the Sol Invictus. Right?
The founder and first president of my very Evangelical college, Jonathan Blanchard, did not even want to cancel classes on that day....
Yet, Christian ritual is by its very nature adaptive. Unlike in the Torah, there's no liturgical prescriptions, so Christians are able to adapt within a culture, honoring their savior in culturally imbued ways. For our culture, a day of birth is the day we honor especially those we value. So, to honor the day of Christ's birth is to honor this man, to honor indeed the incarnation itself, making it a theological statement.
There's also an issue of theology and culture involved. Do Christians hide from the culture or do they interact with it? How do they interact with it? I very much like the transformative approach, shining light on a culture through culturally understood celebrations.I think your answer to my question needs to be yes. It's the old question of whether religions need to be kept pure and, if so, what counts as pure. Paddy goes on to stress "goodness, love, community, giving, peace, joy," so perhaps he would lean toward purity but define what is within that circle of purity to include a set of virtues that are not limited to Christianity or even to religion.
We celebrate that we are to be good, to live at peace, to sing and laugh and hope together. Christmas, much more than Valentine's Day, is really a celebration of the deepest reality of love. We wish each other love on this day, not sentimentality or cheap romance or egotistical lust, but actual deep, fulfilling, holistic love.
May your day be merry and full of life, full of love. On this day may we taste that fullness of love that is at the heart of God's work in this world, sending his son, to us, for us, with us, among us, seeking us out, because God first loved us.
The [Next] computer would be a cube, Jobs pronounced. He loved that shape. It was perfect and simple. So Rand decided that the logo should be a cube as well, one that was tilted at a 28° angle. When Jobs asked for a number of options to consider, Rand declared that he did not create different options for clients. “I will solve your problem, and you will pay me,” he told Jobs. “You can use what I produce, or not, but I will not do options, and either way you will pay me.”
Jobs admired that kind of thinking, so he made what was quite a gamble. The company would pay an astonishing $100,000 flat fee to get one design. “There was a clarity in our relationship,” Jobs said. “He had a purity as an artist, but he was astute at solving business problems. He had a tough exterior, and had perfected the image of a curmudgeon, but he was a teddy bear inside.” It was one of Jobs’s highest praises: purity as an artist."Steve Jobs," by Walter Isaacson (Kindle Location 3941).
On the topic of politics, this year Wisconsin substantially limited the collective bargaining rights of public employees. There were intense protests against this at the state Capitol in February and March. Do you think public employees should have the right to collectively bargain, or do you see unions as too powerful a force in the public sector?
Overall, unions in America have brought this great country to its knees. The NEA has seen to it that American kids are the dumbest kids ever, the auto industry was raped, and government employees are rip-off artists that demand more than they produce. What's not to despise?
Wisconsin also just passed a law to allow concealed carry of handguns in the state. Do you think concealed carry makes communities safer or less safe?
It doesn't matter what I think. Every study ever conducted concluded that violent crime is reduced and neighborhoods are safest when gun-free zones are eliminated. Who doesn't know this?
Madison has a reputation as a liberal town. Given your own politics, what's your take on Madison? Do you like the city, or is too lefty for your tastes?
I have been rocking and hunting the great state of Wisconsin for over 45 years and connect with the good people of the Badger State. There are great Americans all across Wisconsin, including Madison, and I get along just wonderfully with all of them. People that hate America hate Ted Nugent, and I couldn't be more proud.
Although I am grateful for every one of the new readers who visited this blog in the last week, I am especially surprised and delighted with one new reader in particular who finally decided to drop in. For years she adamantly refused to read my blog or even mention my pseudonym even as she said the most scurrilous things about me. I'm not sure why she resisted coming here for so long unless it was because she was afraid that my writing was so persuasive and reasonable it would shake the very foundations of her carefully constructed world view and set off a dangerous logic loop in her brain that would cause it to short circuit. For many years she remained steadfast in her refusal to let one word of my prose sully the purity of her thoughts. But perhaps the evenings in Madison, Wisconsin, are particularly cold and lonely this time of year and perhaps she had had one too many glasses of wine by 5:30 p.m. on January 8, 2009. And so that evening, as a bitter wind howled outside her window, she checked her Sitemeter to see how many visitors Instapundit had sent her that day and saw yet another link from my site, just sitting there enticingly, beckoning, whispering, "Click me. Click me." Imagine the inner turmoil she experienced as she tried with all her might to resist clicking on the link. Must. Not. Read. Jon. Swift. Then her will power failed her and she could no longer resist, and throwing all caution to the wind, she finally succumbed and clicked that fateful link that whisked her away to my blog. And soon she was reading, feeling that first rush as my prose entered her veins. Who knew it could be so good, she said to herself as one by one the words swept away the cobwebs and the dust in the attic of her cranium, cluttered with crazy theories about breast-bearing feminists, the plots of unfinished books that bored her, deep insights into American Idol episodes and even that dark corner where Bill Clinton waits, crouched lasciviously, ready to betray her all over again. And imagine that moment when her giddy anticipation was finally fulfilled and she came to the first mention of her name, right there, right there in black and light brown, her name in all its glory!: Ann Althouse. So welcome to my modest blog, Ms. Althouse. I wish you had told me you were coming and I would have tidied up the place a bit. I hope you finally found what you were looking for.He emailed to let me know he'd written that. He said:
Thanks for the visit. I hope you enjoyed it and will be coming back soon. But let me know next time when you're coming over and I'll tidy up a bit first.I responded:
That post was awfully needy. Not that I read more than the parts right around my name.He said:
You know, as reflexively mean as you can be sometimes, it's hard not to like you anyway.I responded:
Okay, I gave you a link, since you bowed down to me.He said:
Very funny. Thank you.
Jon SwiftThank you, Jon Swift.
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