1. Liberals are for full employment. Conservatives are not. Rich Yeselson recalls how conservatives crushed Upton Sinclair’s call for a full-employment policy in California. Giving the unemployed jobs was then, as now, viewed with contempt as just another “hand-out” to the undeserving moochers. That’s what makes Rep. Steve King’s call to punish the unemployed, like children who refuse to do their chores, so vile. Don’t do your chores and we’ll send you to bed without supper. But it doesn’t matter if you’re begging to be given chores, we have no chores for you to do — and therefore you must be punished. Steve King really is an evil little wart.
2. Conservatives do not understand what “consent” means or why it matters.
3. Matthew Hagee, like his father John Hagee, is a prominent white evangelical in Texas. But he sure ain’t no Baptist: “Now when individuals say, ‘I believe there’s a separation of church and state,'” Hagee says, “I would give them this response. I would like to see what God’s opinion of your position is when you meet him in eternity.” Roger Williams, apparently, is in Hell, because only theocrats can go to Heaven.
4. Any discussion of Joss Whedon, theology and Paul Ricouer wins a link from me. But Julie Clawson misses one key point Mike Ryan makes in seconding Joss’ comment on “that thing in Temple of Doom where they revisit the shooting trick” — Temple of Doom is a prequel. We can remember the scene in the first movie, but Indy can’t, because for him the scene in the first movie hasn’t happened yet.
5. Religion News Service has a good round-up of ethicists and/or experts on the idea of military intervention in Syria’s civil war. Here’s Stanley Hauerwas, because these days if you want to understand the just-war tradition, you have to ask a pacifist:
The language of intervention and no-intervention is meaningless. America has hundreds of military bases around the world. We’ve intervened. The question is what are the limits of American intervention? Right now there doesn’t seem to be any.
6. Conservatives do not understand what “consent” means or why it matters. (Trigger warning on that link.)
7. Happy Birthday Lewis Black (video is, of course, NSFW):
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