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David French According to this narrative, the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 was the seminal domestic event that inspired Christian conservatism. It represented a deadly corruption of our Constitution in service of a culture of sexual convenience in which human life was subordinate to sexual pleasure.
The response of the Christian right was both political and personal. That approach could be boiled down to a single sentence: Elect people of good personal character who will defend human life and religious liberty.
We went on that trip, and all we got was this lousy Trump.
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Beauty now begins the final movement Malcolm Guite:
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.
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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.”
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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
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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? ⚽️
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Speak Up Some view Cory Booker as a guy who pulls stunts, but I urge you to watch the end of his 25-hour Senate oration and be inspired and activated to resist the harm Trump & Co. are inflicting: Good trouble.
One way to make a point is to join a “Hands Off” protest in your area this weekend.
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Still, Possibly Not as Wrinkled as the Mature Auden Fragment of a human face aged over one million years discovered
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The Vocabulary of the Heart Six years after my dad died, three after my mom died, and this year, when my first two grandchildren are born, this resonates. Frederick Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart.
Each time members of the tribe die, the self we were with them dies too, which is to say that the kind of words we spoke only to them, were only to them, and the kind they spoke only to us are spoken no longer. But if outwardly our language is thus impoverished, inwardly it is enriched because when members of the tribe die, the words they were are added to the vocabulary of the heart, where we have more than just ears for hearing them. And each time a member of the tribe is born, a new word comes into being, and nothing is ever the same again.
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