{"id":13274,"date":"2013-01-25T19:21:28","date_gmt":"2013-01-26T00:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=13274"},"modified":"2013-01-25T19:21:28","modified_gmt":"2013-01-26T00:21:28","slug":"smart-people-saying-smart-things-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/01\/25\/smart-people-saying-smart-things-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart people saying smart things"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Irin Carmon: \u201cNotre Dame\u2019s real dead woman\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

We all have heard by now how denial and institutional culture contributed to Jerry Sandusky\u2019s ability to continue assaulting young boys for years, under cover of the Penn State football program. But once that was exposed, it was rightly considered an unambiguous evil. But the sexual assault of women can and is often explained away \u2014 including the Notre Dame donor who justified his continued support \u2026 by saying that Seeberg had been sexually aggressive, that \u201cshe was all over the boy.\u201d In other words, it\u2019s not just the players who are banding together around their brothers whether they\u2019re rapists or not; it\u2019s the adults around them who are turning a blind eye because they consider other things are more important. And they\u2019re willing to believe anything except that these nice boys can be rapists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tim Murphy: \u201cPreppers Are Getting Ready for the Barackalypse\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Humans have been preparing for the worst for millennia, but modern Americans have turned it into an art form. At the dawn of the Atomic Age, suburbanites scrambled to build backyard shelters and the government stockpiled food in anticipation of the day after. The spiraling inflation of the 1970s brought with it a spike in gold sales and backwoods land purchases. During the Clinton years, camo-clad survivalists prepared for the black-helicopter invasion, and Y2K briefly made prepperism mainstream. But perhaps the best salesman for the notion that we\u2019re on the verge of financial, technological, and political collapse has been the current occupant of the Oval Office. Stevens says of the president, \u201cHe is the leading promoter of this without even knowing it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Larry Alan Burns: \u201cThe conservative case for an assault weapons ban\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don\u2019t let people who already have them keep them. Don\u2019t let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don\u2019t care whether it\u2019s called gun control or a gun ban. I\u2019m for it.<\/p>\n

I say all of this as a gun owner. I say it as a conservative who was appointed to the federal bench by a Republican president. I say it as someone who prefers Fox News to MSNBC, and National Review Online to the Daily Kos. I say it as someone who thinks the Supreme Court got it right in District of Columbia vs. Heller, when it held that the 2nd Amendment gives us the right to possess guns for self-defense. (That\u2019s why I have mine.) I say it as someone who, generally speaking, is not a big fan of the regulatory state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James W. McCarty III: \u201cTheology for the Miserable Ones: Reflections on Les Miserables\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

He was wronged by his community. And, while the community didn\u2019t repay him for that wrong, the bishop, in a mediating position, did. Valjean doesn\u2019t just receive mercy from the bishop. He finally receives justice. He receives compensation for the countless injustices he has endured.<\/p>\n

After this act of restorative justice Valjean is able to go revitalize a city by running a socially responsible business and governing that city with a vision of the social good that includes mercy and care for neighbors. And then,<\/em> when faced with the injustice he inadvertently committed against Fantine, he spends the rest of his life making right what he helped to make wrong. This is not just a supererogatory act. It is not some act from a saint. It is Valjean\u2019s application of his understanding of what justice demands. Justice demands restoration in whatever way it is possible.<\/p>\n

In short, when watching Les Mis<\/em> don\u2019t stop, as Christians are wont to do, at mercy and grace. The bishop didn\u2019t stop there and neither did Valjean.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irin Carmon on why Notre Dame seems more upset with an imaginary dead girlfriend than the death of a real girl; Tim Murphy talks with the “preppers,” who see Obama as the embodiment of doomsday; conservative judge Larry Alan Burns makes his case for an assault weapons ban; and James W. McCarthy III says “Les Miserables” doesn’t stop with mercy and grace, and we shouldn’t either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-13274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-smart"],"yoast_head":"\nSmart people saying smart things<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Irin Carmon on why Notre Dame seems more upset with an imaginary dead girlfriend than the death of a real girl; Tim Murphy talks with the "preppers," who see Obama as the embodiment of doomsday; conservative judge Larry Alan Burns makes his case for an assault weapons ban; and James W. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Smart people saying smart things","description":"Irin Carmon on why Notre Dame seems more upset with an imaginary dead girlfriend than the death of a real girl; Tim Murphy talks with the \"preppers,\" who see Obama as the embodiment of doomsday; conservative judge Larry Alan Burns makes his case for an assault weapons ban; and James W. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}