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Your predictions for 2012

December 30, 2011 By Gene Veith

Now it’s time for you to predict what will happen in 2012! See the accompanying post that looks back on last year’s predictions for how the contest works. Don’t worry. We are not enforcing the Deuteronomy 18:22 rule. Anyway, we aren’t asking for prophecy, just predictions. The more specific the prediction the more remarkable it will be if it comes true, and the more likely you will be a winner. (Highly generalized prediction: “Politics will continue to be polarizing as… Read more

What history was made in 2011?

December 30, 2011 By Gene Veith

34 Comments

Here are the top news stories of 2011 according to the Associated Press: 1. Bin Laden’s death 2. Disasters in Japan 3. The Arab Spring 4. EU fiscal crisis 5. U.S. economy 6. Penn State scandal 7. Gadhafi’s fall 8. U.S. Congress 9. Occupy protests 10. Congresswoman Giffords shooting Other contenders: the death of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, Hurricane Irene, tornados in he Midwest and Southeastern U.S., the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy I think we… Read more

Ron Paul’s baggage

December 29, 2011 By Gene Veith

190 Comments

As a Virginian, my only choices in the Republican primary are Mitt Romney and Ron Paul–the other candidates having failed to get on the ballot–so I am studying these candidates closely. There would be a certain coolness factor in voting for Paul. But I’ve got to figure out what I think about his newsletters of a couple of decades ago, with their racist and anti-semitic vibe, as well as his associations with the off-the-wall right. I know some of you… Read more

Good news on the crime rate

December 29, 2011 By Gene Veith

52 Comments

Not everything in our society is going from bad to worse. Over the last decade, we have seen a dramatic drop in the crime rate, and it keeps getting better. Charles Lane gives some details: The most important social trend of the past 20 years is as positive as it is underappreciated: the United States’ plunging crime rate. Between 1991 and 2010, the homicide rate in the United States fell 51 percent, from 9.8 per 100,000 residents to 4.8 per… Read more

Football as the collision of Hobbes & Locke

December 29, 2011 By Gene Veith

40 Comments

Gerard Baker of England has become a convert to American football. He explains why: In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don’t mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered… Read more

What’s wrong with Santorum?

December 28, 2011 By Gene Veith

80 Comments

Nothing, as far as I can see, from a conservative point of view. He is under no suspicion of being a closet liberal. He is a devout Christian, a Catholic but one who seem evangelical. He agrees with the social conservative agenda. He has been a champion of the pro-life cause. He has no skeletons in his closet, as far as I know. He is also intelligent and articulate. And yet Christian conservatives–who have been floundering for a candidate–have not… Read more

“How Luther went viral”

December 28, 2011 By Gene Veith

8 Comments

The Economist tells how Luther, in effect, used social media: Although they were written in Latin, the “95 Theses” caused an immediate stir, first within academic circles in Wittenberg and then farther afield. In December 1517 printed editions of the theses, in the form of pamphlets and broadsheets, appeared simultaneously in Leipzig, Nuremberg and Basel, paid for by Luther’s friends to whom he had sent copies. German translations, which could be read by a wider public than Latin-speaking academics and… Read more

Postmodernism & pedophilia

December 28, 2011 By Gene Veith

82 Comments

Anne Hendershott traces a significant stream of postmodernist scholarship over the last decade that amounts to an academic defense of pedophilia. After all, so say these scholars, both childhood and sexual morality are nothing more than social constructions. A sample, though you’ll want to read the whole thing: The publication of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex [2003] promised readers a “radical, refreshing, and long overdue reassessment of how we think and act about children’s and… Read more

A blogging hero?

December 27, 2011 By Gene Veith

76 Comments

I don’t like to blow my own horn. I don’t even like to call attention to when someone else is blowing it. Still, since you readers and commenters are a big part of what makes this blog work, I can’t resist passing this along. Tim Challies has a BIG blog, with like a million-reads-per-month. Whenever he links to something I post, my readership statistics shoot up into the stratosphere. So it’s gratifying that he listed me as one of his seven… Read more

Newt wasn’t married after all!

December 27, 2011 By Gene Veith

83 Comments

Newt Gingrich is on his third marriage, but the Roman Catholic church, which does not believe in divorce, has granted him at least one and maybe two annulments! According to canon law, annulled marriages were never marriages at all. So if there was no marriage, there was no adultery, no divorces, and Newt is a once-married paragon of family values. From the New York Times: In 1980, Mr. Gingrich left his wife of nearly 20 years, the former Jackie Battley,… Read more