Every now and again, I stumble across an article that just gets me going. Today was one such day, and this was one such article. Robert Samuelson takes aim at the baby boomers and their entitlement mentality in the Washington Post: As someone born in late 1945, I say this to the 76 million or so subsequent baby boomers and particularly to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, our generation’s leading politicians: Shame on us. We are trying to rob...

In his latest TCS Daily essay, Arnold Kling writes, “As we get wealthier, we also e enhanced physically, cognitively, and morally, leading to a virtuous cycle of improvements to the standard of living.” Does affluence leads to moral progress? I don’t think there’s any necessary connection, and there’s plenty of counter-evidence, not least of which are the moral atrocities of the 20th century. But what about more mundane examples? In today’s WSJ, Kay S. Horowitz writes about the exploits of...

With all this talk of health care reform this year, I couldn’t help but do some digging into the real aspects of the proposals. Ranging from pletely disruptive universal medical care plan from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the socialist-like plan from Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) in the 110th congress, health care is big on the agenda for 2007. I am afraid that if the policies proposed by Schwarzenegger and Kennedy are passed, future generations will witness a detrimental effect...

A part of the pornification of culture is the pornification of technology. G4TV, a cable network owned by Comcast Corp., has been covering the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) from Las Vegas this week and kicks off prime time special coverage tonight at 9pm ET. Of course, hip new gadgets like the iPhone (which actually was debuted at Macworld 2007) aren’t enough to appeal to “the male 18-34 audience and their fascination with video games, the Internet, broadband, ics and animation.”...

Environmental Justice Blog: “If Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today he would be an environmental justice activist.” Perhaps. MLK went to Memphis in 1968 on a mission for black garbage workers demanding equal pay and better work conditions. He was killed before he got there. 15 years later, black activists would stop a hazardous waste landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, often pointed to as the beginning of the environmental justice movement. Are the two related? Sure....

In the great discourse regarding the separation of the sheep and the goats found in Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus refers to the kinds of actions, done in obediential faith that works through love, that demonstrates those who truly love him and those who do not. I have heard a dozen different ways of explaining, or explaining away, these verses over the course of my lifetime. Many consign them to Israel and how we treat the Jews. Others say they must be...

…faith-based health services? Change is unlikely to occur without adequate … representation of munities in positions of influence – be they government bodies, research charities, or NHS trusts” Professor Sheikh says. He concludes that the long-term goal must be “to mainstream the understanding of the importance of religious identity.” But Professor Aneez Esmail from Manchester University argues that whilst it is “reasonable [that] we try to plan and configure our services to take account of needs that may have their...

The question of cultural transformation looms over American Christianity. Should we engage culture? If so, how? In a battle for supremacy over American institutions? Or for the hearts and minds of the people? Reading through a sermon from Augustine, I was struck by a passage that illustrates how transformation of the world begins (and sometimes ends) in the church: …pray as much as you can. Evils abound, and God has willed that evils abound. If only evil people didn’t abound,...

Sorry, gang, I just can’t seem to get away from Hugo Chavez. I must be drawn to idiocy. As I posted yesterday, Hugo Chavez continues his zany antics, saying no one can stop Venezuela’s movement toward socialism. Well, today it is reported that he has bolstered his Marxist position by appealing to the most famous socialist of all: Jesus! You have probably noted the recent forays into what I call religio-politics by folks like Jim Wallis, Barack Obama, and Jimmy...

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, and rightly so. Here’s a bit from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a...