milk and honey avatar

milk and honey

Beauty now begins the final movement

Malcolm Guite:

The Anointing at Bethany

Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus  
So close the candles flare with their soft breath  
And kindle heart and soul to flame within us  
Lit by these mysteries of life and death.  
For beauty now begins the final movement  
In quietness and intimate encounter  
The alabaster jar of precious ointment  
Is broken open for the world’s true lover,  

The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
With all the yearning such a fragrance brings, 
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances, 
Here at the very centre of all things, 
Here at the meeting place of love and loss 
We all foresee, and see beyond the cross.

Tariff Talk

To the extent they can reasonably figure it out*, I’d like to see sellers include a separate line item on invoices that shows the portion of the price attributable to tariffs. Knowledge is powerful.

*They can acknowledge it’s an estimate.

These Days, “Conservatives” Aren’t.
Jonah Goldberg:

The market system is man-made, just as gardens are. But it is not the product of any individual will. It is a crowdsourced network of institutions, constructed over generations of trial and error, learned best practices, and the accumulation of common law and legislation alike. …

It is only when someone tears down or batters these Chestertonian fences all around us that we discover those fences are there for a reason. … That’s where we are now. One man is singlehandedly taking a plow to the garden because he is confident that he knows better than, almost literally, everyone. And his defenders have few, if any, serious arguments in his defense beyond “trust him.”

RIP, the Great Clem Burke

He was the driving drummer who powered Blondie in the ’70s. Just appreciate his work here:

Fascism and the Rule of Law Can Run on Parallel Tracks

As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that system—which he called the “normative state”—remains in place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What happens, Fraenkel explained, is insidious. Rather than completely eliminating the normative state, the Nazi regime slowly created a parallel zone in which “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees” reigned freely.
. . .

The trick was to find a way to keep the law going for Christian Germans who supported or at least tolerated the Nazis, while ruthlessly executing the führer’s directives against the state’s enemies, real and perceived. Capitalism could jog nicely alongside the brutal suppression of democracy, and even genocide.

America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State

THFC’s Vision Thing

Ange must go (regrettably). But, for pity’s sake, Levy, hire a manager still committed to attacking! (Preferably one who also improves a midfield that neither serves the forward players nor protects the defense, which has been Spurs’ undoing this year, imo.) @frjon, thoughts? ⚽️