When healers are replaced with bureaucrats

… it can become ridiculously hard to get help.

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Common knowledge isn’t all that common

From Ignorance to Mastery at The Common Room looks at the surprising ignorance of some folks caught in the social safety net.  

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The collapse of solitude and community in our time

Anthony Esolen has a few wise and wonderful things to say about solitude, community, love, truth, and friendship, in “Solitude and Political Friendship” (Public Discourse, December 2, 2011). hat tip: James M. Kushiner, at Mere Comments

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Bertin goes searching for clues

A couple of chapters from Not Exactly Allies: 46 – BERTIN GOES SEARCHING FOR CLUES A few days later, Bertin Nason decided he was tired of sitting around hoping someone came up with information on the Arab boy’s murder, or on undercover communists of a latter-day mutant variety, or on the ambusher Jean Blondet, or [...]

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Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, revisited

From Mr. Smith and The Ides of March, by Robinson O’Brien-Bours: While both Clooney’s and Capra’s films depict a political system rife with corruption, there is a hugely important difference between the two. Clooney’s dark and pessimistic tale brings no closure to it, and no hope; one leaves the theater with a bitter sense of [...]

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7 Quick Takes Friday (Updated)

1. Does anyone know which Bible translation(s) the American Founding Fathers were using? It’s my understanding that the Pilgrims used the Geneva Bible (which I’m reading on Kindle in a 1587 edition), but it occurs to me that (off the top of my head) I don’t know what the Founders were hauling with them to [...]

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A little art history (and why so much of it today is ugly)

From “Life Imitates Art: Redeeming Pop Culture” (Chuck Colson, Breakpoint Commentary, September 22, 1999): …Up until the Enlightenment, art was seen as a way of expressing profound truths. Not necessarily literal truth; yet even symbols and metaphors reflect something true about reality—like portraying angels with wings or saints with halos. Beauty itself was seen as [...]

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What makes something right or wrong?

It matters what you base your ethics on.

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Reagan being honored in Europe

Statues are being unveiled and streets renamed.

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John Quincy Adams: on the rule of right

From July 4, 1837, a look at the novelty and morality of American government.

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