Brutally Honest

Full Marriage Equality

That's the name of a blog I found this morning with the following as its tag line:

Advocating for the right of consenting adults to share and enjoy love, sex, residence, and marriage without limits on the gender, number, or relation of participants. Full marriage equality is a basic human right.

The about page brings us more:

I argue for full marriage equality. By that I mean that society and all local, state, federal, and international laws, institutions, and programs should recognize any marriage registered by any consenting persons without restrictions on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, caste, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, sexual orientation, creed, religion, or disability - regardless of the biological relation or number of participants. This also includes the right of these persons to share love, sex, and residence with or without marriage.

In some places, laws against polygamy and consanguineous intimacy (consanguinamory) would have to be repealed, overruled, or superseded, just as some places have done with laws against sodomy, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, cohabitation, etc. - and I argue in favor of that in that people have a right to engage in these things and receive equal treatment from their government and society and protection against certain forms of oppression.

Be sure to click on that consanguinamory link.  You'll be more educated.

I know quite the number of folks who see no problem with supporting gay marriage.  I know that they think my opposition to it is archaic, old-fashioned, close-minded... even bigoted.

My question to these people is pretty simple.

Are you also archaic, old-fashioned, close-minded... even bigoted if you aren't supporting full marriage equality?

Carry on.

With props to Greg Wallace at Mere Healing who opines that the slippery slope has just become the gaping abyss.

Christ is risen, Chavez... not so much

Despite Google's in your face attempt to make this day about something else, the fact remains that this is the day commemorating the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the promise of life that resurrection brings to those who believe.

It's not about Chavez, despite the best efforts of the idiots at Google.  It's not about coloring eggs and certainly not about the bunny.  It's about, as today's Collect relays, Him who conquers death and Who unlocks for us the path to eternity.

Alleluia!  He is risen, He is risen indeed.

"The problem with this well-meaning attempt at tolerance is that it is unsustainable."

Stephen White, writing at the Huffington Post (yes, the Huffington Post) with an outstanding piece well worth your time:

Religion, we are told, is an escape -- an attempt to explain away the pain and suffering and impossible contradictions of human life. Religion, we are reminded, is full of stuff we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. Or worse. Religion is something we tell others in order to control them. It's not belief in God, per se, that disturbs our sophisticated, post-modern sensibilities. It's religion; especially of the organized sort. So we're all spiritual, but fewer and fewer of us are religious.

Our culture's complicated relationship with organized religion is closely tied to our culture's complicated relationship with truth. We love our truth, all right, but we treat truth a lot like religion -- it's fine, so long as everyone else keeps their truth to themselves. Tolerance -- which our culture values over all other virtues -- consists in not imposing your truth on someone else.

The problem with this well-meaning attempt at tolerance is that it is unsustainable. It's self-cannibalizing. If there is only your truth and my truth, but no Truth, then there is no common ground upon which to meet one another. Either I'm right, or you are, and since there's no middle ground, the matter is only ever settled when one side wins and the other side loses. A world without truth isn't a world liberated from conflict; it's a world without the possibility of reconciliation.

Pope Benedict's episcopal motto Cooperatores veritatis -- "co-operators of the truth" -- suggests a very different understanding of reality; one in which both faith and reason owe allegiance to the same reality, that is, to truth. And truth, at least as the Catholic Church understands it, is best demonstrated, not by carefully reasoned arguments (though those are important) and certainly not by violence, but by self-giving love. There is nothing more compelling, nothing more true, than sacrificial love.

(The central truth of Christian faith -- God became man in Jesus Christ, through whose suffering and death we are redeemed -- can be summed up like this: God got tired of telling us how to do it, so He decided to come down here and show us.)

It also suggests that Pope Benedict XVI understands a pope's role in the Church as one of leadership, but primarily of service. Among the pope's many titles -- Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of Apostles -- is this, The Servant of the Servants of God. He is only a custodian, a shepherd of Someone Else's flock. The papacy, in other words, was not given him for his sake, but for the sake of the Church's mission.

He's got more.

It's truly an outstanding piece well worth finishing.

What slippery slope?

Oh, I dunno, maybe... this one:

In 1976 the National Council for Civil Liberties, the respectable (and responsible) pressure group now known as Liberty, made a submission to parliament's criminal law revision committee. It caused barely a ripple. "Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult," it read, "result in no identifiable damage … The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage."

It is difficult today, after the public firestorm unleashed by revelations about Jimmy Savile and the host of child abuse allegations they have triggered, to imagine any mainstream group making anything like such a claim. But if it is shocking to realise how dramatically attitudes to paedophilia have changed in just three decades, it is even more surprising to discover how little agreement there is even now among those who are considered experts on the subject.

A liberal professor of psychology who studied in the late 1970s will see things very differently from someone working in child protection, or with convicted sex offenders. There is, astonishingly, not even a full academic consensus on whether consensual paedophilic relations necessarily cause harm.

So what, then, do we know? A paedophile is someone who has a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children. Savile appears to have been primarily an ephebophile, defined as someone who has a similar preferential attraction to adolescents, though there have been claims one of his victims was aged eight.

But not all paedophiles are child molesters, and vice versa: by no means every paedophile acts on his impulses, and many people who sexually abuse children are not exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to them. In fact, "true" paedophiles are estimated by some experts to account for only 20% of sexual abusers. Nor are paedophiles necessarily violent: no firm links have so far been established between paedophilia and aggressive or psychotic symptoms. Psychologist Glenn Wilson, co-author of The Child-Lovers: a Study of Paedophiles in Society, argues that "The majority of paedophiles, however socially inappropriate, seem to be gentle and rational."

Legal definitions of paedophilia, needless to say, have no truck with such niceties, focusing on the offence, not the offender. The Sex Offenders Act 1997 defined paedophilia as a sexual relationship between an adult over 18 and a child below 16.

There is much more we don't know, including how many paedophiles there are: 1-2% of men is a widely accepted figure, but Sarah Goode, a senior lecturer at the University of Winchester and author of two major 2009 and 2011 sociological studies on paedophilia in society, says the best current estimate – based on possibly flawed science – is that "one in five of all adult men are, to some degree, capable of being sexually aroused by children". Even less is known about female paedophiles, thought to be responsible for maybe 5% of abuse against pre-pubescent children in the UK.

Debate still rages, too, about the clinical definition of paedophilia. Down the years, the American Psychiatric Association'sDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – "the psychiatrist's bible" – has variously classified it as a sexual deviation, a sociopathic condition and a non-psychotic medical disorder. And few agree about what causes it. Is paedophilia innate or acquired?Research at the sexual behaviours clinic of Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health suggests paedophiles' IQs are, on average, 10% lower than those of sex offenders who had abused adults, and that paedophiles are significantly less likely to be right-handed than the rest of the population, suggesting a link to brain development. MRI scans reveal a possible issue with paedophiles' "white matter": the signals connecting different areas of the brain. Paedophiles may be wired differently.

This is radical stuff. But there is a growing conviction, notably in Canada, that paedophilia should probably be classified as a distinct sexual orientation, like heterosexuality or homosexuality. Two eminent researchers testified to that effect to a Canadian parliamentary commission last year, and the Harvard Mental Health Letter of July 2010 stated baldly that paedophilia "is a sexual orientation" and therefore "unlikely to change".

As society continues to place pressure on the acceptance of disordered behaviors as something other than disordered, we really can't be surprised when said same society widens the net as to other behaviors needing to be legitimized.

Yea, that slippery slope.

The more we set God aside, the more we forget Him, the more this sort of thing will come to the forefront and, more threateningly, the more those of us who find problems with it will be ostracized as intolerant, bigoted and out of the main stream.

But you knew that.

Right?

Purify our Hearts (a sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent)

By guest blogger Tim Chesterton

I want to begin this morning by acknowledging to you that I often don’t like the person I am. I find myself getting impatient with people, losing my temper with people, and hurting people in my family and in my circle of acquaintance. I’m very conscious of my laziness and of the many times when I refuse to deny myself and love others in practical ways because it’s so much easier and more enjoyable just to lie on the couch and read a book. These are just two examples of the kind of failures I struggle with every day of my life, and I’m very conscious of them.

I’ve often heard the Gospel summed up in this nicely balanced phrase: ‘God loves us so much that he accepts us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to leave us there!” And in the times when I’ve allowed myself to become lazy and complacent about my Christian life, I really need to hear the ‘God loves you too much to leave you there!” part of the phrase. It reminds me that God wants positive change to happen in my life, and that God’s power is available to help that happen.

Our Old Testament reading for this morning, from the prophet Malachi, emphasises this second aspect of the Gospel – the need and possibility of change. The image that Malachi uses is the image of ‘refining’. He says of the Lord, ‘For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fuller’s soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver’ (Malachi 3:2b-3a). I want to explore these words with you this morning.

Malachi probably wrote these words after the Jewish exiles had returned from the Babylonian captivity around 500 B.C. The temple in Jerusalem had been repaired and daily worship was going on, but if you read all four chapters of the little book of Malachi – the last book of the Old Testament - you’ll see that he isn’t happy with the way things are going in the temple. The priests are not living holy lives and they’re not putting their heart and soul into the worship of God, and the people aren’t giving their best to God in sacrifices either – they’re just giving the lambs that are so sick they would have died anyway. So Malachi speaks of the Lord coming to ‘purify the descendents of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness’ (3:3).

We might wonder what this has to do with us today; after all, the Levites were full-time temple ministers, and most of us are not! But we need to remember that in the New Testament we no longer have a physical temple made of stone; rather, the people of Jesus are a living temple. You and me and all Christian people around the world – together we are a temple, a community where God lives and where God is worshipped. So for God to come and purify his temple means that God is at work among us to set right the things that are wrong. And that applies to us as individuals too, because Paul tells us in one of his letters that we are each of us ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’, because the Spirit lives in us. So, yes, the Holy Spirit is going to be constantly at work ‘refining’ his people, both as a community and as individuals. Let’s think about this for a few minutes.

First, let’s ask the question “What does ‘refining’ mean”? The Old Testament prophets often use words of judgement against God’s people. When we hear them, it sometimes sounds as if God’s aim is not to help his people but to smash and destroy them! That’s why this image of refining that Malachi uses here is so helpful. A refiner is attempting to purify molten metal from all its dross in order to create an object of beauty and strength – perhaps a silver cup. In Malachi’s time this would be accomplished by putting the unrefined metal into a pot or furnace and heating it up until all the dirt and impurities were burnt out of it. And there’s another lovely little detail here. A number of Bible scholars say that the refiner would know that the process was complete when the molten metal was so clear that he could see his own face reflected in it.

This illustration of refining provides a very helpful picture for us of the ongoing process of purification in our lives as Christians. The General Confession in the old Book of Common Prayer says, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done”. In other words, God’s work of change in us will have both negative and positive aspects. Negatively, the refiner will be trying to remove our impurities – the ‘things we ought not to have done’. Positively, God will be trying to form the image of Jesus in us – Jesus who shows us by his way of life ‘the things we ought to have done’.

So here’s the challenge for me: Do the members of my family feel like they’re living with Jesus? What about my friends and the people I work with – when they rub shoulders with me from day to day, do they feel somehow as if they’re meeting Jesus in me? And wouldn’t it be great if they did?

This applies on a corporate level as well. Wouldn’t it be great if our culture was continually noticing how Christ-like the Christian Church is? That doesn’t necessarily mean ‘nice’ or ‘inoffensive’, but it does mean becoming a community of self-sacrificial love, consciously modelling its life after the teaching of Jesus. Think about the things that Jesus taught us in the gospels, and then think about the way we live our life as a parish here at St. Margaret’s, and ask yourself the question, ‘Does this look like Jesus? Would new people who come among us notice the way we live together and be reminded of Jesus? Or if they don’t know about him, would they learn about him without ever opening a Bible, just by noticing the way we live as a community?’ Of course, the honest answer is, sometimes yes, and sometimes no! So of course, some refining is in order.

So refining is about the removal of our impurities and the transformation of our lives so that people see the face of Jesus in us. Now, let’s go on to ask ourselves ‘How does this refining take place?’ If I was a lump of silver, complacent in my state of impurity, and if I found myself suddenly picked up by a refiner, thrown into a pot of molten metal and heated up to boiling point until parts of me were burned away, I don’t imagine I would find that to be an entirely comfortable process! And in the same way the process of refining that God is inviting us into as followers of Jesus is often uncomfortable for us – in fact, it challenges us to move out of our comfort zones into new territory with God. Let me share with you just three of the methods God uses to refine us into the image of Jesus.

The first method involves a number of activities I’ll gather together under the heading of encounters with God. In 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul says ‘And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit’. I’m reminded of the story in Isaiah chapter six of how the prophet found himself in the presence of the heavenly court, with the Lord on his throne in the centre. Isaiah cries out ‘Oy’ve! I’m a foul-mouthed sinner and I’ve seen the Lord!’ Then one of the angels takes a live coal from the altar, touches Isaiah’s lips with it, and says ‘See, this has touched your lips – you are cleansed and purified from your sin’.

How do we encounter God in a transformational way? It can happen when we come together to worship, to sing his praises, to listen to his word and share the sacrament. It can happen when we pray alone, or when we open up the scriptures. The word of God rebukes us, corrects us, encourages us, and trains us in the new way of life of God’s kingdom. So a willingness to allow the Refiner to do his work in us involves making a commitment to public worship with other Christians and to regular times of prayer and meditation on scripture for ourselves.

A second way in which God refines us into the image of Jesus is through circumstances that call for the development of the virtue we’re trying to cultivate. I’m reminded of the old story of the young boy who went to his grandfather with a problem. “Grandpa, I’m such a skinny little thing! I’d like to have real big muscles! Is there any way you can give them to me?” The grandfather replied, “That’s a difficult one – it might take me a while to think of something. Tell you what, I’ll work hard at trying to think of something if you’ll do something for me?” “What’s that?” the boy asked. “Get busy on my woodpile and chop wood for me”. Well, you’ve guessed what happened! The grandfather kept putting the boy off, and the boy kept chopping, and eventually the muscles he was hoping for started to grow!

I think God puts us through this sort of exercise quite frequently. My Dad has said on a number of occasions that he is a very impatient man, and so every time in his life he has really wanted something, God has made him wait for it! “Well of course”, God might say to us; “how else did you think I was going to help you grow patience?” The King James Version translates the word ‘patience’ as ‘longsuffering’; another friend of mine joked about this, saying “Every time I pray for patience the Lord sends me longsuffering!”

God refines us through encounters with him, and through circumstances that help us to develop the virtues we want to cultivate. A third way, I’m afraid, is through suffering. Suffering often invites us to concentrate on the really important issues in life and shows us that so many of the things we used to value so highly aren’t really that important. For example, someone once said ‘the prospect of an immanent death wonderfully concentrates the mind’. Terminally ill people have frequently told me how clearly they now see their lives, and how much better able they are to let go of less important things and to focus on things that really matter. It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it is nevertheless a truth that if we pray for holiness, God will often answer our prayer by allowing us to experience suffering on the way to that goal.

We’ve thought about encounters with God, circumstances that test us, and suffering. These are all tools that God can use in the refining process in my life and yours. Through it all, the Holy Spirit will be working gently in our hearts to transform us into the image of Jesus. Paul says ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22-23). Sounds like the character of Jesus to me! That’s what the Holy Spirit will be working toward as we go through this refining process. So let’s ask ourselves now – what does this mean for me today?

In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indy and his father are looking for the Holy Grail, the cup Christ used at the Last Supper. In the movie, if you find that cup and drink from it you will have eternal life. But in the movie, what eternal life means is simply ‘living forever without experiencing death’. Now I have to ask myself – do I really want that kind of eternal life? To be as I am now, with all my weaknesses, shortcomings and bad habits – and to have to live with that forever? That sounds like a pretty good definition of hell to me!

So the good news this passage is communicating to me is that I don’t have to be stuck in ‘no progress’ forever. Change is possible, and I’m being invited into a change process. Listen to those words of Paul again: ‘The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Galatians 5:22-23). Wouldn’t it be so much better for my family, my friends, and my work colleagues if those words described me? Wouldn’t it be so much better for me?

Well, how’s it going to happen? Let me give you an example. Those who know me well know that I’m rather anal-retentive about punctuality. I was raised in a punctual home and it was bred into me that being on time for appointments was a way of showing respect for the other people involved. I still think this is true, but of course one of the Devil’s favourite ways of knocking us off course is to take a virtue and push it to extremes, so that we’re good in a bad way! And I think that when I’m dealing with other people, people who haven’t had the same sort of punctual upbringing as I’ve had, it’s possible they may have noticed that the fruit of the Spirit marked ‘patience’ still needs a lot of work in my life!

But do you know what is really happening in those times when I’m forced to wait for other people? Really happening, in God’s school of character development? I’ll tell you – God is putting me into a situation where I have an opportunity to develop some patience muscles. I have a choice; I can pass up the opportunity and rant and rave a bit. Or I can choose to keep my cool and practice the discipline of enjoying God’s gift of a bit of extra free time in my day. The choice is up to me!

So let me close by asking you to consider two things. First, think of your experience of worship with other Christians, as well as your private times of reading the Bible and praying. Have you noticed that God is using those times to invite you into the change process? Have you noticed that God will use the scripture readings to point out to you areas of transformation that are especially necessary for you in your life right now? And have you noticed that you sometimes find an inner strength to be more Christ-like, a strength you didn’t notice before? If so – welcome to the refining process! Stick with it, and see where the adventure leads you!

Secondly, what difficult circumstances in your life right now – whether suffering you’re going through, or just general circumstances that stretch you – what difficult circumstances in your life are actually God’s invitation to you to grow in Christ-likeness? Is it a difficult person God has put in your life? Is it something you’d like right now that you’re having to wait for? Is it a prayer that hasn’t been answered as fast as you thought it would be?

Remember: God loves us so much that he accepts us just as we are, weaknesses and all – but he loves us far too much to leave us there. This morning God is gently inviting us into this process of being refined from all impurities until he can see the image of Jesus clearly in us – and until the people around us can see it too. So this morning let’s commit ourselves afresh to co-operating with God in this process of being refined into the image of Jesus.

Cross-posted to Faith, Folk, and Charity

 

"A civilization sowing the wind and about to reap the whirlwind"

Fr. Lemieux is talking about societal breakdown:

It has been a week of anarchy in the world—mob violence, murder, chaos. While the political way ahead in Egypt, Libya, Iran, Syria is far from clear, and the proper response of US and Canadian governments is far from clear, I hope we can all at least join together in fervent prayer for peace in these and in all parts of the world. Lord have mercy on us.

We do see in this situation, however, the true value and indeed necessity of social order, rule of law, basic structures of police, military, court systems, and the constitutional framework into which all these fit. When this collapses, when law is violated and the structures that enforce the law co-opted to serve the political ends of whoever is exerting power of office today, then anarchy is upon us.

And with anarchy, eventually the violence of the mob. And this is not some far away (yet all too close) Middle Eastern phenomenon. Lawlessness and mob violence are growing in North America, too. When people in power ignore the laws of the land for political expediency, when the rich and the powerful seem to be exempt from the petty rules that govern the rest of us, when the rules and regulations themselves appear to breed like Tribbles, each new set of regulations born pregnant with the next batch, so that it is probable that both you and I are breaking some law or other right now… when the law is broken, in other words, it is only a matter of time before people take to the streets in sheer anarchic revolt.

Underneath the political issues is a moral and spiritual question. Namely, are we as a society concerned with forming people to be good human beings, or merely good units of production? Are we as a society concerned with passing on the virtues of justice, equity, self-sacrifice, concern for the common good… or are we content with reducing people to the level of cattle to be herded, exploited, and kept happy with ample feed?

I know—I’m starting to rant here. Sorry about that. (It’s been a while since I’ve ranted, hasn’t it?) But a society that has no concern for the moral fiber of its citizens is a society on its way out. A nation, a civilization that throws pornography and light entertainment, cheap food and drink at its people, while seeing them fundamentally as ‘human resources,’ sources of capital and labor, is a civilization sowing the wind and about to reap the whirlwind.

Basically, if you treat people as sub-human, don’t be surprised when they behave sub-humanly. And when the music stops, the money starts to run out, the food and drink is a bit scarcer… well, a people who have never heard of, let alone been formed in, an ethos of justice and shared sacrifice and concern for the common good may not take this too easily. Today there are mobs in Egypt and Libya… tomorrow or the day after it could be well be Ottawa, Toronto, New York, Washington.

He's not done... and he finishes with an action plan of sorts.

I'm thinking you ought to finish with him.

It'd be wise.

"A plausible diagnosis of what's happening to us as a freedom-loving nation"

Fr. Powell, dare I say, after re-reading William Barrett's Irrational Man, has nailed it:

Barrett traces the roots of the West's existential crisis and identifies nihilism* as the source of our deepest personal and cultural anxieties.  B.O.'s 2008 campaign directly addressed these anxieties with an appeal to superficial Hope & Change.  And we bought it.  Well, most of us did anyway.

 

I'm not suggesting that you read Barrett as a matter of political science but as a plausible diagnosis of what's happening to us as a freedom-loving nation and God-fearing culture.

 

Many of the political developments in the last half-century arose out of our collective fear of personal annihilation (physical and spiritual), a need for security now that we've sequestered God away from the public square.  The academy's assault on the intelligibility of truth and the rise of the National Security Nanny State push us further and further along the road to serfdom.

 

I'm not suggesting that philosophical existentialism gives us a solution to our cultural anxieties.  Far from it.  Historically, existentialism served as a diagnostic tool not a treatment regime.  

 

The only well-documented treatment for the crippling fear of nothingness is God.  While the Nanny State has always failed--will always fail--God does not and cannot fail. 

If you disagree, do so in the comments and expound.

Please.

If you don't, then perhaps like me, you're asking yourself, what am I doing to pursue God with more vigor?

Hillary asked for it, Hillary got it (UPDATED)

This from the Herald Sun yesterday:

Hillary Clinton says Libya's Muammar Gaddafi must be killed or captured

Speaking to students at the University of Tripoli, Clinton said: "The most important thing to do right now is to make sure that Gaddafi and his regime are finally prevented from disrupting the new Libya.

"But we hope he can be captured or killed soon, so you don't have to fear him any longer.

"Then you have to move forward," she said, urging the students not to waste time "trying to settle scores of the past."

This from Reuters today:

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi died of wounds suffered on Thursday as fighters battling to complete an eight-month-old uprising against his rule overran his hometown Sirte, Libya's interim rulers said.

His killing, which came swiftly after his capture near Sirte, is the most dramatic single development in the Arab Spring revolts that have unseated rulers in Egypt and Tunisia and threatened the grip on power of the leaders of Syria and Yemen.

"He (Gaddafi) was also hit in his head," National Transitional Council official Abdel Majid Mlegta told Reuters. "There was a lot of firing against his group and he died."

Don't mess with Hillary.

UPDATE: And now she's joking about it:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared a laugh with a television news reporter moments after hearing deposed Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi had been killed.

"We came, we saw, he died," she joked when told of news reports of Qaddafi's death by an aide in between formal interviews.

 

 

"What is a daily reality in Britain will soon be America’s reality"

The Anchoress is reviewing Mark Steyn's After America and she's not filled with happy thoughts:

Pondering the fact that in Wales, Northern Ireland and parts of Northern England the state accounts for up to 78 percent of the economy, Steyn wonders, “whywouldn’t you take it out on the state?”

The chapter may be specific to the United Kingdom, but Steyn is very clear: what is a daily reality in Britain will soon be America’s reality, too, unless the country reverses its embrace of the social and economic policies that are bankrupting Europe and bringing its society to its collective knees.

It’s not like we cannot see this for ourselves. As we view security videos of “flash mobs”—unconcerned about either safety or prosecution—descending en masseupon a convenience stores and fast-food outlets and helping themselves to whatever they like, a future of anarchy is not too difficult to imagine. Already, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis are imposing or attempting to enforce curfews for young people who have figured out that if they co-ordinate their activities and don’t linger, their sheer numbers are enough to empower a petty criminality that will go unprosecuted. From there, a Molotov cocktail through a window is not such a great leap.

But Steyn is not writing solely about the social unrest and the hooliganism that so often comes with economic distress. After America warns that an over-regulated, bureaucracy-laden society, dissuaded from conceiving and achieving great things because too much has come between an idea and its execution, is a society dumbing down and numbing-up, growing not just stagnant, but inert, like Chesterton’s “dead thing” that “can go with the stream,” while “only a living thing can go against it.”

She's not done.  Finish with her and be moved to pick up a copy of Steyn's book.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Dream Rangers!

By BroKen, from The Anchoress through American Digest:

May your ride take you to the One who makes dreams real.