Here’s a provocative series title, “A Book You’ll Actually Read.” It’s a series of short theology books by Mark Driscoll, trying to make tough issues easier to understand.
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Teacher Blogs
Reading for the Fourth
Interesting how the Fourth of July comes around the same time every year.
Veteran newspaper man Frank Wilson talks about saving, if possible, newspapers. He says if newspapers are meant to keep We, the People, informed, then it isn’t terrible for that service to move to another medium.
In which I ramble on freedom and liberty
What does freedom mean to you? How do you define it? What does it connote? Think about that.
Now, what does liberty mean? Is it the same as freedom? Does it connote different things to you?
I ask in part because we sing an anthem with the line “with liberty in law,” and I doubt many people could describe what that means. Well, now that I look it up, many of us may not be singing that part of the song. It’s in that beautiful second verse which has a lot of objectionable material. Turn the children away from the screen for the following:
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
Are we looking for liberty in law from our public servants? Do we want our government working for us by using other taxpayers’ money for programs we can’t afford or by allowing us to keep what money we can earn to use properly for ourselves and our communities?
I used Google to search barackobama.com for the words freedom and liberty. Freedom: 29,000 hits. Liberty: 14,500. Change brought in 1,080,000 of course. The candidate said, “When anti-choice protesters blocked the opening of an Illinois Planned Parenthood clinic in a community where affordable health care is in short supply, I was the only candidate for President who spoke out against it. And I will continue to defend this right by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president.”
For johnmccain.com, freedom came in at 1,290, liberty, 305 (the change buzzword, 8,710). Here, the other candidate said, “Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture.”
(Oddly enough, the numbers for Obama’s site jumped from tens and hundreds this afternoon to ten thousands and millions this evening. – ed.)
Which of these men are really talking about defending the responsible freedoms of Americans, of getting government out of the way of the people while defending justice and promoting mercy? That’s liberty in law, isn’t it?
You can tell me to shut up now.
The Declaration
Bill Bryson says Thomas Jefferson didn’t conceive the verbiage for the Declaration of Independence on his own, if that were possible. George Mason appears to have helped a good bit.
Adult-Child Differences
H.S. Key complains about Americans who need to grow up.
We want to discover our inner child. We wear shirts that say “Runs with scissors” and “Eats glue.” We sit in great big Starbucks chairs with our shoes off and our legs Indian-style, like Kindergartners on growth hormone. I can’t stand it. Those kinds of things are the subjects of this book, called The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West.
I’m sympathetic to a point. I would love to heard someone say, “Vulgarity is to common people. That’s what they word means. We aren’t common people.” Or better, “My dad is my hero. When he bought me my first hat, I knew I was becoming a man.” But I don’t know that the hand-wringing in this book (or post for that matter) is all that it could be. As some of the commenters mention, there will always be extremists among us–weird parents with no morality. Because we hear about them doesn’t mean they represent most of us.
But all of that is beside the point. The real point is that more people should read BwB and The Art of Manliness for maturity and health. Can anyone question that?
Hawthorne on Lincoln
Nathaniel Hawthorne met Abraham Lincoln once upon a time:
There is no describing his lengthy awkwardness, nor the uncouthness of his movement. … He was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. . . . The whole physiognomy is as coarse a one as you would meet anywhere in the length and breadth of the States; but, withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened by a kindly though serious look out of his eyes.
Speaking of Hawthorne, I have an interview from Audible.com with authors Orson Scott Card and Ben Bova in which they fall into talking about American literacy. They said public schools failed to teach a love for reading by forcing children to read hard, bad writing and telling them the books they might like to read are inferior quality. Card said Hawthorne was never a good writer and shouldn’t be forced on unsuspecting students as good literature. He took a shot at Moby Dick too, which is just sacrilegious.
Perhaps he’s feeling a bit spunky due to the movie production and comic book series of Ender’s Game. Nah, he probably feels this spunky all the time.
Still Life
Coffee and Poetry by Marc Iserman of Somerset, England.
History of Independence Day
Here’s an interesting article on some of the history of Independence Day. Take a look at the quiz at the foot this article called “The Strange History of American Independence.” It isn’t at all strange (insert semicolon) half of the question are on July 4 births and deaths, but for trivia geeks, it’s interesting. I’m pleased to say I got the Crossing the Delaware question right. I know some of that story.
Hrd Nws Slls
If your local newspaper reported accurately (within reason) on events and people in your community/metropolis/region with a little on the nation and the internation, in other words, hard news, would you subscribe? Read why the future of newspapers is worrisome.