“Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.” Thomas Sowell     Read more

    I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir perform this Harry Belafonte/Alan Greene/Malvina Reynolds song on Father’s Day, and it’s put me into a (plainly lasting) nostalgic and wistful mood:   Where are you going, my little one, little one, Where are you going, my baby, my own? Turn around and you’re two, Turn around and you’re four, Turn around and you’re a young girl going out of my door. Turn around, turn around, Turn around and you’re a young... Read more

    I could have been happy, I think, as an English major.  In any case, I’ve been drawn to Thomas Hardy since I was in high school.   So I enjoyed this new version of Far from the Madding Crowd — both for its own sake and for its reminding me of the novel.   My wife liked it as well, but says that she still prefers the 1967 version, with Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terrence Stamp, and Peter Finch.... Read more

    A fascinating article from the Economist entitled “The Present Past” — which I hadn’t seen yet, but to which Doug Ealy kindly called my attention — shows what seems to be, if not lasting effects of the Confederacy, at least the ongoing implications of a distinctively “Southern” mindset and sensibility.   http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21647625-150-years-after-end-civil-war-states-were-once-confederate-remain?fsrc=scn%2Ftw%2Fte%2Fpe%2Fed%2Fthepresentpast   And guess who shows up, by several measures, as a sympathetic fellow traveler?   Utah.   Fascinating.     Read more

    Almost immediately after I posted my previous item on “The vile despot Brigham Young,” I thought of another book that I should have included, one that would give a better idea of Brigham the (good) man:   http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Brigham-Mormon-Heritage-Series/dp/0877475229   And then a reader calling himself Bernardo Gui recommended it, saying of the letters included in the book that “They reveal the inner man, and I came away with greater respect and love for Brother Brigham. For example, he... Read more

      Luke 10:21-24 Compare Matthew 11:25-27; 13:16-17; John 3:35; 7:29; 10:14-15; 13:3; 17:2, 15   For some reason, the Lord doesn’t seem inclined to reveal himself principally to the faculty club at Harvard or through the New York Review of Books.  Instead, he calls people who are ignored or even disdained by the self-anointed cultural elite.  Not just anciently, but today.   I sense a pattern.     Read more

    You may have heard of “word prints” as a way of trying to deal with the issue of Book of Mormon authorship.   Here’s a really interesting “word-print” approach to answering the question whether a disputed centuries-old play entitled Double Falsehood should be considered a long-lost part of the Shakespearean canon:   http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-shakespeare-algorithm?intcid=mod-latest     Read more

    “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” Thomas Sowell     Read more

    As the legal and social climate in the United States becomes more adverse, where not altogether hostile, toward traditional religious values and beliefs, the question of how Christians should respond becomes an urgent one.   The conservative Catholic writer Rod Dreher, for example, has been writing about what he calls the “Benedict option,” which is the idea that those who want to live according traditional morality ought to separate themselves, to some degree, from mainstream society in order to live in “intentional communities.” ... Read more

      Thanks to Allen Hansen for bringing this to my attention.  Born and raised in Israel, he says that his mother saw this rally on her way home from work:   http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.premium-1.662327   I posted an item on the arson attack itself a few days ago:   http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2015/06/arson-guts-israeli-church-where-jesus-fed-5000.html     Read more