Safe Haven

 On the one hand, he actively dislikes and is confused by social expectations that others don’t seem to mind. His wealth and position insulate him from the repercussions of his social discomfort and people put off by his lack of conformity. He is very blunt with his close friend Charles Bingley. Bingley definitely moves in social situations easily, and speaks positively about others, both by natural disposition, and by the mores of that culture. In his interactions with Elizabeth Bennet, it’s not hard to imagine that Elizabeth views their interactions as “witty banter,” whilst an autistic Darcy views his replies as explaining her mistaken perceptions of his motivations thoroughly. There are a lot of situations where Darcy clearly indicates that he feels he has to pretend, to “pass” when he clearly doesn’t understand why people expect him to do or to feel certain ways. And if Darcy actually were autistic, he wouldn’t be bothered per se by negative perceptions about him, but he would...

 What people are doing with the heterosexual/homosexual binary is (whether intentionally or not) suggesting that both sides of it are morally the same. One is not better, just different. That’s exactly what the activists were doing. They do it with even stupider words like “cishet” and “fem-presenting.” Activism and jargon, all the way down. And left-Christians rush in to apologize for slights or even violence that—if it happened—don’t happen to the degree that the activists need it to. The streets need to be stained with gay/whatever else blood. Of course, leaving people alone and not being the language police are barely an option. Pete’s sake, Sophie Cunningham is getting called “MAGA Barbie” for being conventionally attractive and daring to suggest that biological men shouldn’t compete in women’s and girls’ sports. Here’s the bad news: I’ll bet you a million dollars that she’s more Left than I am. Not that it matters. Someone white and male will get blamed for the incest between...

I’m tired of seeing “by suicide.” Frankly, I would rather see,  “X committed suicide.” Maybe enough of us know Latin, and that the word literally means killing oneself, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s an effort to deflect responsibility and agency from people. Important people want to do that so they can justify telling us how to live. If we’re all just feeling beasts with no decisional capacity, some class of betters can tell us where to go, what to eat, where to live, and when to die. We can still have context in these tragic cases when someone takes his or her own life. Far be it for me to tell the God of mercy and justice what to do. But it doesn’t just happen; it’s not a disease process, in the strict sense. What do you tell people who are angry in the aftermath? They don’t want to hear that some anthropomorphic Depression took down their loved one. They didn’t contract Ebola or COVID or tuberculosis. They decided—under duress perhaps—that dying was preferable to liv...

 She’s the four-time and reigning MVP, having gone into this season with the all-time leading points per game average of 21.82. She’s above 26 points per game this year. The equivalent of this would be if Michael Jordan bumped his points per game average to 35 in 1997, just because the Bulls needed him to. She’s also an elite rebounder, recovering 9.5 missed shots every game. A’ja Wilson is making over 53 percent of her shots; Caitlin Clark is making 43 percent of hers. Caitlin Clark is now the all time leader in assists per game average, at only 24 years old. She’s also the fastest to make 200 3-point shots in history. She’s basically good for 20 points every game, even if she’s playing poorly, and maybe double that, if she’s playing well. She’s the face of the league, in terms of fans, revenue, merchandise, attention, and all of it. She’s my favorite player, on my favorite team. She’s not the best player. Anything to the contrary is just agitprop. All the above takes into conside...

 Sometimes the mask will slip, and history gives a clean look at an ugly thing, like when Alexander Stephens proclaimed that the Confederacy was fighting for white supremacy. It’s unavoidable; you see it, you can’t unsee it, and how everything shakes out will set a new pattern for how everything will go. When certainty and consensus is achieved, everyone will say that they always agreed with what we’re saying now, though that’s not even close to true. Most people prefer euphemisms in times like these. They’ll literally invent things that never happened, because a hero on the wrong side of a crossroads like this is intolerable. Abortion is like this. It’s ugly, it’s tragic, and it’s actually indefensible. But ordinary people who don’t want to face it will talk about “choice” and “bodily autonomy” and literally anything else, because the nature of the thing is too ugly to face directly.  What is the thing in itself? We’re not saying that choice or bodily autonomy don’t matter in...

 That’s me. [Jesus would be Michael Corleone. Also, he’s definitely not going to kill you whilst you fish.—ed.] It’s an analogy, OK? Plus, if he did happen to say, “He’s got a good heart, but he’s stupid and weak,” I couldn’t possibly argue with that characterization. Puzo and Coppola wrote brilliant screenplays for both films, and I am reading the book now. These two films are among the greatest ever produced, and I think it’s 100 percent true to say that authentic Christianity is in the background. If it weren’t, the famous baptism scene where Michael is taking baptismal vows for Michael Rizzi while the Corleone henchmen kill the other heads of the Five Families on his orders wouldn’t work. It relies on our moral intuition that this is the absolute height of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is also in view at the beginning of the second film, when Senator Cleary, played by regarded character actor G. D. Spradlin, delivers a slur-infused invective against Michael Corleone after playing the ki...

 Taylor Swift is suitably liberal, so she’s probably safe from being cancelled by our “betters.” But I remember when they used Kanye’s little protest on behalf of Beyoncé to try to argue that Beyoncé was being overlooked because of her race. Yeah, that lady, who’s won every award known to humanity (basically) and has more money in her couch cushions than I will ever make. And I am not saying that she’s never faced anything heinous. I wouldn’t even try to say that. What I will say is that progressive white women especially will make a cause out of anything or anyone, even if it’s dumb. Kanye West is a mentally unwell Nazi-loving Trump supporter, so they’ll send that little incident down the memory hole, since it’s not useful anymore. But I remember, and I don’t plan on letting certain people forget it conveniently.

 The comedian Neal Brennan has a bit about how Republicans welcome anyone who says they want to be a Republican. Liberals? Not so much. “Hey, I’m liberal, too!” “Really? We’ll see.” Josh Johnson has a similar bit. Both audiences laughed, because they know it’s true.

 When I was about 20, I used to read him on occasion. I was Reformed, and a Federal Vision sympathizer. Of course I was; I didn’t know it, but I was a writer. And if you’re a little bit artsy-fartsy like that, you’re a crypto-Catholic, even if you’re not ready to submit to Rome. It’s legit a kind of Oxford Movement within Reformed theology; that’s what it was; that’s what it is. I was smart enough to know that Western civilization is Catholic civilization. America is a bit anomalous, but let’s be real: the Anglican Communion at the time of the death of St. Thomas More was just the SSPX of its day: Catholics separated from their visible Head on Earth. Anyway, I laughed at a lot at the Wilson snark, because even a lot of liberal Christians at the time acted like President Bush was a Christian Ayatollah. C’mon, man. This dude from Old Money, whose relatives seemingly own a third of New England? Other than the Calvinist Congregationalists, the region is not known for its excess of reli...

 With due respect to Lichtman, external factors are just background most years. If a substantial portion of people think you hate them, criticism of the candidate who sits back and says, “They hate you, see that?” goes precisely nowhere. I could even grant you that the sitting president is like an internet comment section, like Cliff from Cheers without the sneaky smarts.  I would even grant you that staffing a ton of the executive branch with right-wing radio hosts is highly questionable. It’s the exact thing a TV president who is out of his depth would do. But the Democratic Party’s counterpart to Cliff Clavin was…Tim Walz? An alleged football coach who doesn’t know what a “pick six” is? Not to mention that a guy who is father to a Downs Syndrome son sounds foolish defending unfettered abortion rights. If it’s really true that you believe Republican efforts to restrict abortion access have unanticipated bad effects, handle it legislatively. Trump/Vance on abortion are first-...

 “Kamala Harris cares about they/them. Donald Trump cares about you.” A couple things: I won’t cynically say that a politician doesn’t care about anyone; I don’t know that. Heck, I called George W. Bush the “Comforter-In-Chief” (before some jackwagon at USA Today stole it) and I wasn’t kidding. That second sentence I don’t personally believe. I have to work hard to praise the man. But anyway. This was the crowning moment. Whoever wrote this deserves a place teaching in the Obama-Atwater School of Effective Political Destruction. Harris could recite “The New Colossus” whilst weaning a flock of baby bald eagles with Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless The USA” to no effect. It was over. And it was perfectly emblematic. Normal people don’t spend time worrying about being transphobic. It’s essentially a meaningless word, coined yet again by people who talk exclusively to each other. If I promise not to say “progressive academics,” will you send me money? This is distinct, by the way, from...

 22 years ago in an essay, I said that I preferred Bush 43 to be re-elected president, for lots of policy reasons. But on a personal note, the Democrats acted like our country itself was a gulag, and we were all allegedly locked in it. Happy warriors usually win; dour people embarrassed for the very country they intend to govern usually don’t. In the interest of principled criticism, I definitely know that “enhanced interrogation” and the abuse of terrorist militants violates longstanding human rights commitments. In the present day, ICE detentions that ignore judicial orders to obey habeas corpus have a gulag-adjacent quality. Any lawyer advocating for basic human rights can say anything they want. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump; I didn’t appoint Stephen Miller. This is quite apart from illegal immigration, and the probable likelihood that any such people also are violent criminals. In other words, when ICE agents are protecting Americans and guests from monsters along with other ...

 There was a lot of social science in my electives then. Political science and economics were a blast, but I filled it all out with enough sociology and religious studies that I nearly had minors in both. Sociology was explicitly Marxist. In fact, a lot of those were taught by European immigrants. The only people more self-righteous than American leftists are European leftists. As you may know, religious studies became essentially religious sociology or cultural anthropology after the rise of the New Left in the late 1960s. Studying dogma and religious texts was left to the benighted believers in their churches and seminaries. I still liked a lot of it, but I was often angry and arrogant then. I got saved in 1997. “Deconstruction” meant Marxist dismissal of white and male certitudes from the modern era, and an assertion that some need for power completely explains every contention. But philosophically, if every truth claim is a grasp for power, that’s emotivism: personal gain or de...

 The Democratic Party isn’t winning the presidency lately. I’m going to put a language warning right here. Sometimes, a vulgar word or words is the clearest way to say something. Donald Trump has been described as a carnival barker. I happen to think that is an insult to carnival barkers. He’s a self-involved amoral beast who was born leading off of third base. The only real difference between Bernie Madoff and Donald Trump is that Madoff went broke. If you have money—even if you borrowed it—you don’t have to be bound by anything, and this man isn’t. That said, I don’t believe a whole bunch of left-wing garbage, and most people don’t. Trump is a bullshitter, when he’s not doing something awful or illegal. But if you think about who votes in America, it’s probably a guy about 55, white, named Steve or Ron or Jim. That’s your median voter. I am not him; Tom Darrow and I are too throughly Christian to be the median voter. Most Americans identify as Christian, but Jim’s not a disciple,...

 I will still say that The Lion King is my favorite film, because it helps me process and heal from losing my father, without completely breaking me. Interstellar just breaks me, and if it weren’t so profoundly Christian, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone I’ve known. I have watched it 5 times, and I will only watch it again if I am sharing it with someone. I don’t hurt myself on purpose, even if pain can be good. Matthew McConaughey may be a funny guy who has done comedy and chick flicks, but when he wanted to avoid being typecast to move into drama, he did it exactly right. He won his Academy Award for Dallas Buyers Club, but Interstellar was the announcement that he would win one. Nobody will ever take the respect that comes with that, and no one should try. It feels sort of cheap to call it “entertainment,” though I suppose it is. My Blu-Ray sits in a box; my streaming copy has never been watched.  What could I possibly say to those actors, without melting into a puddle? ...

 I was going in thinking about Interstellar and Arrival, because those sci-fi films are intentional dramas. And the Nolan brothers write, produce, and direct with the intention of producing an emotional response. If you have seen Interstellar, you know. There’s always a risk of being cheap and mawkish with that effort, but I think both Interstellar and Arrival earn their payoffs with characters we care about and costs that aren’t repaid neatly. This film kind of sets us up for something similar: Hero goes on an apparent suicide mission to save the world. He finds more than he bargained for. He’s reluctant. It jumps around in time to fill in the background. But this film replaces the sorrow with humor and a kind of plucky optimism. It’s not like self-sacrifice is absent; not at all. But “Coop” saves the world FOR his kids, Tom and Murph. In a way, the world IS Tom and Murph. Love drives him. Grace had no one on Earth; he found a purpose in deep space. He didn’t even willingly go. Wh...

 Billy Joel has a hit song called, “Only The Good Die Young.” It’s catchy, but it’s scandalous. If you stop dancing for five seconds, you realize it’s about enticing a young Catholic teen girl to fornicate. I didn’t write it; I am just the messenger. Yeah, Billy, if Catholic girls start much too late, they have good Dads. Anyway, I have noticed that indeed the good do die very young sometimes. You’ve seen it often enough; people who teach you that you’re not grateful enough. People will still decide God is a monster, and I have varying degrees of pity or sympathy, depending on those circumstances. But I understand now. I’m paying attention. Happiness is fleeting here; joy abides, and it is for others. Hand me a Coke or a Mountain Dew, I am happy. Frankly, I will probably arbitrarily decide you’re a good person. Abiding joy goes through me, even if I suffer. Nothing merely human produces abiding joy. You need a relationship with Jesus for that. “It is no longer I who live, but Chris...

 Even in these latter times, tons of safeguards have been added to our penal system, so that instances of capital punishment aren’t seen as barbarism. Doubtless, even some people who in some objective moral sense deserved it were people who reformed their lives—such as they were—and took responsibility for what they did. Let me back up and say that it could never have been intrinsically evil, that is, evil in its very object. Holy Mother Church executed enough notorious murderers that she wasn’t about to impugn her moral authority. By God’s grace, the Catholic Church remains the last best hope for humanity, not only for eternal salvation in Christ, but for a society worth living in. Too many people think even high-level theology and ethics is a Choose Your Own Adventure Book. And that Church discussion is just politics with a longer timescale. I have no time for that, re: capital punishment. We’re even caught between the dignity of the condemned, and the barbarism of their acts. Th...

 In my last post, I took a shot at Ricky Gervais. Well, not really. More like a shot at atheist-flavored ignorance, which even as an entertainer, he’s pretty visible for. We need to actually speak plainly about what we have recorded in what Christians call the New Testament, or New Covenant. Church people, step out of the shoes of loving Jesus and His Church for one moment. How does the New Testament read or sound on the face of it? Let’s just focus on the four Gospels. That’s where all the stuff allegedly said by Jesus is recorded. Jesus as a liar doesn’t have much evidence behind it; he didn’t lounge in Malta after all the stuff, getting rich after selling purported baptismal water. He got called a blasphemer by his own people, and executed as a disturber of the peace by the Roman Empire. Let’s set aside Jesus’ alleged resurrection and every miracle he did for a moment as well. Jesus being crazy seems to have some evidence behind it. No sensible philosopher I have ever heard woul...

 Atheism has never unjustly killed anyone, apparently. Oh, wait. What’s the body count for Marxism-Leninism? 50 million? Can’t wait to hear how those avowed atheists are actually Christians or something. Meanwhile, even if I arrogated to myself the duty to apologize for every awful thing any theist has ever done, those numbers aren’t even close. If you want to say that you don’t want to attend religious services, or even that most of the believers you’ve met are maladjusted weirdos, just say that. But you can’t just make up stuff that’s easily disproven. Meanwhile, have you ever met an atheist-agnostic who said, “Those Christians don’t really love like Jesus”? If Jesus has no divine authority, there’s no profit in being like Jesus. If you don’t believe Jesus is God, or that a god exists, how do you know anything about Jesus? What we know about Jesus purports to be divinely revealed. See where this is going? I don’t know anyone with more chutzpah than the citizens of historically Ch...

 Recent data gathered together by my internet friend James Heaney suggests that 15 percent of the people you might run into (or more) these days may not actually have permission to be in the United States right now. 15 percent is a lot. When I saw the numbers, I was shocked. Me personally? I don’t care. Every immigrant I’ve ever met seems awesome. But let’s say you weren’t sure at even a minimum level that a group of people were committed to a basic posture of nonviolence, or to treat women equally and justly? What if people bring a culture here that’s nothing like ours? Forget skin color or religion, per se. If people don’t commit to basic American values and attitudes, it wouldn’t take much to cause some serious friction that wouldn’t just go away. You can’t just wish all that away with some nice words about equality. That’s about as gracious as I can be toward President Trump and his purpose for being a politician. The last time we had so many outsiders as a proportion of all of...

 I’m writing this now because today, my schoolmate Marci would have been 46. I remember being totally surprised, because I didn’t know she was struggling, and she is/was one of those people who lived so “loud” that you rebuke yourself for wasting time complaining. Have you ever met someone so joyful that you think they’re nuts? Later, you realize the problem is you. I didn’t see Marci much after we left grade school, but I will tell you a story from that time. We’re sitting in class at Ross Elementary in the Physically Impaired classroom. Most of us were slowly being introduced into the general education setting, with plenty of support. One morning in October of 1989, we were regrettably informed that Ross was going to have a fire drill. Now, all the hours and days in the PI classroom, I don’t remember too many alarms. I daresay we didn’t leave for drills (or hear the alarm) as much as the other students. Because if you know anything about cerebral palsy, that startle response of o...

 It was probably some kind of mistake to teach A Wrinkle in Time to my ninth graders. It was originally written at a middle school level. On the other hand, Meg is in the 9th grade. Calvin is an advanced junior. We could lament the decline of the modern student, since I taught early high school, and L’Engle imagined some sixth graders—perhaps reaching a bit, even in 1960–taking it on. On the other hand, the allusions are so rich that literally any person can be enriched by it. I know I always am. Funny thing about the controversies around the book: I am inclined to think that a certain kind of ideology-motivated teacher loves “banned books” because it allows them to take shots at organized traditional religions, public school skeptics, and other politically “bad” people. This is literally the land of the free; you let me know, if any level of government moves to actually ban or prohibit a book. And no, offending your community on purpose isn’t a blow for freedom, Bob. We used to ca...

 These two concepts are kind of opposite each other when thinking about God. Immanence is the nearness of God; the closeness of God to humanity, as we seek purpose and fulfillment. Transcendence is the idea that God is wholly Other, above what he made, and some would say, uninvolved with creatures and the world. The Greeks absolutely believed this. You’re going to hit a wall with Greek philosophy, strictly speaking, for this reason. If the Church had not “baptized” Plato and Aristotle, it’s possible they get forgotten. Joseph Ratzinger, AKA Pope Benedict XVI, essentially says that the Incarnation is this nearness of God. Mankind’s reason vainly reaches as high as it can go, but God in Christ came down. This is who the unknown, unseen God is. Or, as he put it and St. John recorded it, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” Our culture is quite messed up, but we’re so used to what Jesus actually did that we mock it in entertainment. The “Buddy Christ” statue from the film D...

 If memory serves, her birthday was March 1. And if I have my years right, she died in 2018, just before she would have turned 93. I saw her a few months before she died. When I think about being a Kettinger, she’s who I think of, along with my father and his siblings, both here, and in the hereafter. One of my brothers is not known for his churchgoing, but he read a Scripture at the Funeral Mass. Nailed it. I have never nailed anything like that in my life. It’s a bit hard to describe my career in simple terms, but if someone described me as a professional Bible reader, I couldn’t deny it. I still couldn’t have done it as well as my brother did that day. At some point, the faithful were invited to sing “On Eagles’ Wings.” I’ve always loved it, but now it’s forever associated with all the love I received from my grandmother, and the courageous life she lived. A dear friend said that he caught the priest rolling his eyes when the hymn started, but he sang it with gusto, like he wrot...

 I happen to believe that the fundamental principle of the Reformation, consistently applied, leads all the way to naturalism-atheism. Private judgment, encapsulated in Sola Scriptura. Blessedly, most people have no interest in severing every possible connection between themselves and the Catholic Church, if they are Christians. And as I work with Barthian Butler, and we talk about how to do ministry together, Sola Scriptura means practically, “We’re gonna mine this divinely inspired written word for everything it has,” not, “Let’s go evangelize the Catholics, before the Whore of Babylon leads them into Hell.” Dr. Cross is right, though: if your lexical tools and your hermeneutical method make it near-impossible to consider full communion with the Catholic Church, those things of themselves lead away from reunion, by the nature of the case. I bring this up with the haze from my recent arguments just beginning to clear. Remember Rachel Held Evans? (Eternal rest…) And she deserved so...

 I should probably be afraid of Italians with mustaches. Or men that wear sleeveless shirts and drive Camaros. I was beaten severely and verbally abused mere minutes after I heard Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” on the radio. No one would blame me, if I never wanted to hear it again. (It’s fine. A delightful song. Don’t worry. I’m happy. See what I did there?) If by some tragedy I started killing Italian men with mustaches who drove Camaros, a profiler would probably dig that up. Someone might even argue that I deserve some consideration, in light of my trauma. But I don’t have the right to generalize my trauma to those others. To use a lesser example, I don’t have the right to slander Italian guys with mustaches in general. My last blog post was probably overstated, as was the Facebook post that prompted it. To the extent that the overstatement was unwarranted, I acknowledge that, and regret the error. A lot of darkness can hide behind a pleasing facade. Beyond finding ou...

 And look, I’m not married. I’ve never been married. I have no children. I didn’t choose that; things just worked out that way. If you must know, I haven’t had sexual intercourse either. I probably should say “coitus,” so I am not arguing with some progressive activist about what “sexual intercourse” means. But I figured out from influencer videos or something what a “dead bedroom” was. Unless a couple mutually agrees that they don’t want to have sex/coitus anymore (hopefully to pray and serve) this is usually bad. I’ve known enough couples that it’s probably an indicator of trouble, especially for couples who are still able to have children. Is it really that wild to at least hope that Mr. and Mrs. Vance love each other? That a fourth child yet born at least might indicate that they enjoy each other?  Children are definitely not responsible for their parents’ happiness. That’s absolutely true. But wouldn’t any child hope their parents were happy, when they came into being? As...

 When I actually started college, the year started with “19.” When I returned to the big university, the son of a president had just defeated Al Gore, Jr. to have the privilege of becoming president himself. The inauguration was a few days into the new semester. About 9 months later, some radical monsters hijacked some airplanes and changed the world forever. I knew this kid from the dorm—I’m sorry, “residence hall”—who thought I was intriguing because I was profoundly disabled but a fire-breathing conservative Republican. He needed to find out how in the Sam Hill that could possibly happen. And he had that verbal dexterity that you find among liberal college kids. I’m the kid who correctly read the word “acrylic” when I was 9 on some intelligence test. My uncle handed me The Fountainhead at around the same time. Don’t get it twisted: As a Christian and Catholic theologian today, I could and would grind Ayn Rand’s whole philosophy to dust. But I was 13 when I actually finished Anth...

 For my entire life, the quickest way to be a “moderate Republican” according to the media is to support abortion. That’s it. Now, in the 21st century, it’s “gay/trans rights” as well, or something similar. No interesting economic theories or ideas will do it. Even though bloody Ronald Reagan himself nearly got 60 percent of the public to vote for him, he can’t be a moderate. The only time you hear about a “conservative Democrat” is when the media doesn’t like that person. They probably think that businesses should earn profits to some degree. If you do that, the mainstream media will treat you like the bad guys in FernGully. Religion and traditional views of human sexuality are interrelated, but there is no causal relationship between the two. A big problem for Democrats is that faithful believers perceive them to be hostile to traditional religion. I guess they don’t mind religion, as long as the candidates go to Rainbow Sparkles Open-Minded Community Church. Which, I don’t care;...

 I’m the biggest fan in a certain sense, because my brain and heart is a startlingly impressive catalog of (mostly) American popular music. I could have been a DJ. I haven’t heard everything by any means, but I’ve heard a lot. Even some of you who proverbially live under a pop culture rock [Bryan Cross.—ed.] may have heard of our actual leader, Empress of The Free World, Taylor Swift. What many do not know is that she is named after a notable musician of much older vintage, James Taylor. I’ll just say that probably his fans and fans of Bob Dylan could duke it out for the question of who is America’s greatest living songwriter. Mr. Taylor in fact is so influential that a young boy growing up in Oklahoma put on his records (and others) and dreamed of being a singer. When the boy made good, he changed music forever, selling over 200 million LPs in about 10 years, and taking the “Country” radio format from a niche to outright competing with the biggest stars in rock history. We know th...

 I’ve got a buddy, Jeremy Tate, trying to displace the ACT and maybe the whole College Board, with the Classical Learning Test. Let’s be blunt: it’s marketed toward college bound classically educated and homeschooled students whose families believe that the public school curriculum is deficient and ideological. Let me say that a perceived ideological bias is one argument, and perceived deficiencies in curriculum are another argument. But in the unfortunate ideological sorting that happens today, that gets conflated by almost everyone. If I’m honest, some sharp kid could have figured out that I’ve been a partisan, but also all over the place. They might have figured out that I probably would agree more with Zora Neale Hurston than Toni Morrison. Maybe. I never told them what they should think, but I was a really open book, myself. They might have thought it odd that I talked about sacrifice and communal meals as important rituals in world religions, as seen in The Odyssey. I don’t c...

 I saw a clip once recently of Jordan Peterson, talking about teaching. He said something like, “Teaching is not primarily about the transmission of knowledge; it’s about setting the intellectual frame, and dramatizing the act of learning.” And he’s right. If I could communicate on some level that what we’re learning is meaningful and important to me, that’s when I was most effective. I might be wrong in some respects about teaching primary students, but the goal for even them is eventually self-directed learning, with the ultimate meaning of the information determined by the students. I taught emerging young adults, and Peterson teaches young adults in university. A computer can correct a factual mistake, programmed correctly. A teacher tells the story of why the facts and data matter. It need not mean the same thing to the students as it does to the teacher, but if you tell them, “What you make of it is up to you,” and they believe you, you’re going to have enormously motivated s...

 I’ll try to be nice. Shouldn’t be that hard. I don’t think I’ve had any persistently negative thoughts about her. She’s beautiful. She is. I hadn’t fully decided to abstain from voting for president until very late that year she became the Democratic nominee, and I’ll just admit that I never minded seeing her on the TV. I’m just girl crazy, and that’s never going to change. I have been completely in love with three women in my life (possibly four) whilst having those feelings returned in some respect. Two out of the three were Black, or from the Indian subcontinent. Harris is both at once. I imagine that twenty years ago, she had most men tripping all over themselves. Mr. Emhoff has learned some grace for these guys (and probably some women) because unless Michelle Obama walks in, he’s the envy of the room. She seemed nervous on a national stage to me. I do think that potentially becoming the second Black president and the first woman president adds a special pressure that we coul...

 A friend from high school just celebrated 26 years. The husband has a great name: Jason. [You are the most self-involved person on Earth.—ed.] I know, right? My friends are close to being grandparents, at least some of them, and I feel a certain sadness about not being in the game, as it were. But this is your frequent reminder that great and cool people don’t find their person sometimes. So-called “inter-abled” relationships are really hard. I know. I honestly think That One Time didn’t work because of the intersection of disability, employment discrimination, and ableism. Do I think ableism and discrimination had something to do with losing my job as a teacher? Yes. Yes, I do. I won’t tell you who I worked for, but it rhymes with “Chesterfield County School District.” I’ve got your social media policy right here, you clowns. Anyway, Jesus said of marriage, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Luke 16:18) Of course, some Christians use the l...

 It sure seems like Caitlin Clark enjoys playing for her coach (White) and the others on the Fever. There are “family” vibes around all of them. I see the superstars supporting the role players, and vice versa. Stephanie White is now 55-28 overall, since taking over going into the 2025 season. They were 1 (!) win from the WNBA Finals, without Clark and 5 other key players. Understand what this means: Caitlin Clark is a cross between Michael Jordan, and John Stockton. She’s shooting only about 25 percent from 3 point range. If she shot it at 40 percent, she’d score 40 points a game, AND lead the league in assists. Like it or not, she’s the face of the league, even when she isn’t playing particularly well. Some of the fanboys and fangirls need to relax. She can’t play every minute, even if she wanted to. She’s an elite scorer, but she doesn’t have to be. She’s surrounded by players who can score. That’s why she’s the assist leader! Kelsey Mitchell is a top 5 scorer in the league, and...

 My head is swimming with a lot today. I started the commentary on St. Mark’s Gospel today. It’s also my sister Alyse’s (June 11, 1989-April 5, 2023) birthday. It’s the first day of the FIFA World Cup. I’ve got my all-time Spotify playlist playing as I compose this. Taylor Swift’s “betty” is playing right now. I hope she had fun at the Knicks game last night. I’m rooting for the Spurs, but credit to the Knicks for that epic comeback. Did I speak profanity whilst observing ESPN’s GameCast on my phone? Yes. There are no lies on the blog; I speak Swear better than I would like. I had Roger Federer on my mind, because I love him, at least as much as I can love a stranger whose odd sporting skill and character I appreciate. Back in 2015, ESPN created a title screen/highlight package with a dance-pop song called “Something New” by the duo Axwell + Ingrosso. Every time I hear it, I think of Roger, doing Roger things. It made my Spotify playlist, too. I’ll still never be able to express to...

 The reverse statement is of course pithy Calvinism, and it’s pithy nonsense. Maybe going soft on human sexuality is just easier; you can consign anyone you don’t like to Hell anyway. You can’t really appeal to an unavoidable moral law, irrespective of religion, or any flavor of virtue ethics, in this scenario. The erstwhile interlocutors love it, because they can consign any position they don’t like as coming from religion, properly speaking, and appeal to liberty or something similar. The progressives are still Puritans, sans Jesus. The problem was never religion; it’s fanaticism untempered by Divine Love or truth.

 Now, Steven Deacon Greydanus is going backwards, from mistreating people he disagrees with politically, to publishing pro-homosexuality propaganda. Then again, everything is political now. It’s not enough to disapprove of Donald Trump’s personal conduct; we apparently have to disapprove of Supreme Court decisions that left-wingers don’t like. More to the point, the alleged mistreatment of sexual minorities is either fabricated, or exaggerated. We don’t have to join in various celebrations just to affirm our commitment to nonviolence and basic human respect, because well-adjusted people can respect others without necessarily agreeing with them. Maladjusted people need endless affirmation, because the voice of conscience is so loud. It’s funny that so many worry about what “conservatives” will do with government power, but they don’t seem like they are as afraid of words, debate, and disagreement. Hmmm. Coercion is the last refuge of cowards. Speaking of cowards, that’s what I call ...

 The people with the tough, hard exterior are just scared. Scared to love, and scared to be loved. I can see right through them. Kids are like this, too. Growing into adolescence, you can’t show fear, or vulnerability, or need. Especially boys. The only trouble is, if you do enough bad things pretending to be hard, you become that. If you don’t break out of that, you’ll hurt yourself and others—maybe badly—and wonder how it all went so wrong. I taught a kid like this once. He probably should have graduated the other day. We’ll call him “Matt.” I should say, I attempted to teach him. No fooling, he tormented me. When you’re young, testing boundaries is part of the deal. But in strong families, with luck, you get to test your own boundaries while you grow up. If not, they test them on the green and profoundly disabled teacher. This sad story wasn’t my fault, objectively. I know that. But I still think about that kid. I question everything I said and did. On the other hand, the next t...

 I’m up way too late tonight, because I started adding pop culture stuff to my Facebook profile. Among my ten favorite films are two starring this man: Hook (1991) and What Dreams May Come (1998). I didn’t even add Dead Poets Society (1989) or his Oscar-winning performance in Good Will Hunting (1997) and I don’t much like the two leads who wrote the script: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Robin kept that movie from being youthful self-congratulatory nonsense. Will sucks, and Affleck’s character is pointless. If I didn’t resonate with the trauma and the love story, I might have hated it. Robin has absolutely iconic films that I haven’t seen. But anyone who thinks he’s just a comedic actor isn’t paying attention. Dude is one of the best actors, period. And he gave us himself without playing himself. It’s cliche and mainstream to love him, and his death saw an outpouring of emotion that felt weird, even for an admirer like me. But really, he was deeply human in the best way. I hope the Ju...

 My opposition to voluntary pregnancy termination (commonly known as abortion) goes like this: All human beings—irrespective of their ability or inability to defend themselves—have an inviolable dignity. It is morally unacceptable to murder a living human being. (Indeed, it’s reprehensible to desecrate the body of a human being who has died.) Murder is the unjust taking of a human life. Voluntary pregnancy termination is the taking of a human life at an early stage of development. Murder is always wrong. Some argue that a living human being is only a person when they are older, such as when they can speak and think. One argument mistakenly claims that an embryo or fetus cannot feel pain, and thus, it is claimed that killing them would be morally acceptable. But to accept this would violate the first premise. Taking the life of a human being at any early stage of development, such as the zygotic or embryonic stage, is particularly unacceptable because they are defenseless. Aggressio...

 I can actually imagine the kind of person who worries that that America’s putative conservative political party will usher in some crazy religious nutters. The avowed Christians around Donald Trump are not like your Grandma. I might have said they haven’t had a normal day since Halloween, 1985, but they probably don’t celebrate Halloween. We can imagine those people; they are depicted on TV a lot, fairly and not. I saw a clip of the stand-up comedian Danny Jolles talking about “bros” the other day. [Bros? Oh. Like, not the guys who call everything “sportsball” to seem cool to their wussy academic friends. Gotcha.—ed.] He said a funny thing, insulting maybe, meant for that “wussy” audience: “Bros are like the dogs of people.” Loudly announcing themselves, potentially annoying, but really just want to make friends. After mentioning that genuinely evil, dangerous bros exist, he noted that a “good bro” refers to Roe v. Wade approvingly. And maybe Danny Jolles is the kind of liberal co...

 The infamous Juror #3 was played by Lee J. Cobb, and of course his intransigence was driven by his distance from his son. He saw his son in the defendant. He got called a sadist by Henry Fonda’s Juror #8, and he did a fair amount of yelling. But in the end, I’m pretty sympathetic. The real bigot is Juror #10. He goes on a big rant, and gets shunned by all the others. Ed Begley. He had to be a heck of an actor. The anger ranges from subtle to explosive. I think the lesson is that anyone can seem normal when they aren’t pressed.

 The basis for all the case law that we think of as “human rights” is natural law, and revealed Christianity.  [Sarcasm on] It’s cool on the worldwide Left to think of “human rights” as pertaining to sexuality, as long as it’s abnormal, or involving the intentional killing of preborn people in the womb. Wars are always bad, especially when engaged in by the United States. Actually, wars started in response to the “evil” hegemony of the United States are good, obviously. [Sarcasm off] Somewhat inconveniently, the only time sexual minorities are actually erased are in countries that happen to be enemies of the United States. Forgive me, but I think the idea of Christians being the problem is patently absurd. Domestic politics is absurd, silly, and even destructive. But you know, we can ignore people who say crazy things. Then again, doing politics might involve hearing things that sound crazy, but are actually not. Doesn’t it seem clear that people stay in bubbles where they nev...

 I had some pretty rough days as a child. Most people don’t know. Whenever I could, I would escape to my room and watch PBS. Because in St. Louis where I grew up, Channel 9 comes in the best, even today. It’s a moral intuition that told me Fred Rogers was safe. Don’t bother me about his views on homosexuality; by the time I get to Heaven, the Lord has already talked it over with him. [Did you just baldly assert that Fred Rogers is in Heaven?—ed.] Yep. Feeling pretty safe about that one. But if he needs my prayers to make it all the way Home, he’s got them. Pete’s sake, I feel like he’s a friend of my Dad, at the very least. He’s been dead 23 years, and he still seems present. I know I’m not the only one. I’ll elaborate my conflicted views about public television and radio later. Suffice it to say that I really don’t know if I would be here, without Mr. Rogers.

 There’s a pretty woman who gives sex advice for a company called “Yoxly.” I’ve seen the reels on Facebook. I have no need for sex advice, but you know, good-looking women are good for marketing. I’ve noticed one weird thing: the worst-case scenario in all these reels is pregnancy. The worst thing next to that is unprotected sex. Or, as normal people call it, “sex.” I know objectively that not everyone is Catholic. I also know that a Catholic life is a difficult life, at least with willpower alone. I also know that the purveyors of the zeitgeist are absolute freaks. Seriously, what is wrong with you people?