"The sun will still rise tomorrow. ... Your mortgage will not grow. You will not have skin diseases or rashes, or toads in your beard, sir. The world will just carry on. So don't make this into a big deal. This is fantastic for the people it affects, but for the rest of us, life will go on." Read more
World-class athletes from all over the globe had gathered in a great American city for a storied competition steeped in tradition, harmony and international good will. And then a madman set off a bomb, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred others. That was in 1996. Read more
The Bennetts, Borks and Bauers define virtue almost entirely as the avoidance of vice. And their conception of vice consists of a rather arbitrary list of no-nos. It is not possible, in their view, for the landlady's lodgers to be "good boys" if they also "gamble, curse, drink, drive to endanger and consort with loose women." For these moralists, good people are, by definition, those who do not do these things. Read more
Regardless of who "you" are, you are responsible. But the nature of your responsibility — particularly in the longer term — differs according to the differentiated responsibilities of the various examples above. These differing responsibilities are complementary. They are not — despite the popular American confusion — exclusive. Read more
Two explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. I'm keeping track of events via CNN, which is reporting two killed and as many as 100 people injured in the initial blasts. They're also saying two unexploded devices have been discovered elsewhere in Boston. Read more
"A Scout is kind" and other, less-heartening, scenes from our ongoing moral panic, including: Bible-thumping; "gay sex makes people explode;" mandatory hiring of Satan-worshipers; legislator surprised to learn "religious" and "Christian" are not synonyms; and a response to David Barton's argument for "just" genocide. Read more
Business reporters and politicians use "tax" and "income tax" interchangeably. Thus today is "tax day." This is a reflection of the economic status of most politicians and of big name reporters and their editors. They make enough money to be a part of the top 3/10 of American taxpayers for whom income taxes are a bigger share than payroll taxes, which take a much bigger bite out of the earnings of seven out of 10 of us. Read more
Jeremiah 22:3 -- "Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the alien, the orphan, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. " Read more
Abstinence proponents aren't operating on the same rational basis as our hypothetical soda company. And, unlike a corporation investing in advertising, they're not spending their own money, so they're not terribly concerned if it's wasted. Read more
Throughout his decades-long career, Tim LaHaye has always been three things: an entrepreneur, an evangelist, and a right-wing political activist. If you want to understand LaHaye, the role he played in creating and expanding the religious right, and his ongoing influence on American culture, then you need to appreciate all three of those things and the way they are bound together, inseparably, in LaHaye's long life. Read more
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