From our Thomas Jefferson Desk on Political Discourse and Civility: In a video just released or noticed, an Obama adviser says Republicans who are resisting the president’s agenda are doing so because they are–well, I won’t type that word here. You know that word repeated too often in the movie Hancock? That’s the word.

Woman in New Zealand is fired for using BOLD, RED, ALL-CAPS in email to co-workers. She has sued and won a wrongful termination verdict. Seems to me a little personal communication would have helped here. Just to fire her after the bosses take an email the wrong way is so mechanical.

In other news, hackers are targeting Christians on Facebook. Watch your privacy settings.

Filmmaker Patrick Courrielche has been doing the rounds lately because he was on a conference call with the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in which the government agency called on us, the artists of our times, “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”

In other words, if we could do a variation on “Yes, We Can” or put together another one of those cool Hope posters on the theme of government-run health care or obeying the Feds without question–all volunteer work, you understand–that’d be great. It’s for the cause, you know.

Now, the NEA is denying it coordinated that call, and of course, it doesn’t see anything wrong with it’s blatant politicization.

It was a strenuous weekend, by my standards. And quite a lot of fun, all in all.

A while back a fellow I know through Viking reenactment alerted me to an event coming up in September in New Ulm, Minnesota. It’s a battle reenactment, in honor of the 2,000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest (something that only happens once a millennium. I did the math). They’re bringing in a bunch of Roman reenactors from various places in the U.S., and they needed something approximating Iron Age Germans. Vikings are close enough for the purposes of the exercise.

You can read about the battle of Teutoburg Forest here, and about Arminius, the German chieftain who made his name there. Whatever it was. We don’t actually know what he called himself, but Martin Luther (who got pretty excited over the story of a German who smashed the Romans) decided his name must have been “Hermann,” and “Hermann the German” he has been, in popular imagination, ever since.

I drove down with a (different) Viking friend, and we managed to show up only about an hour late. (We wanted to avoid Highway 169 because the Renaissance Faire tends to back it up pretty awful on Saturday mornings in season. So we took a roundabout route, and managed to miss every intersection we tried to find. But eventually we made it, mostly by process of elimination.) Continue reading My Roman holiday →

On Big Hollywood, Jeremy D. Boreing writes about America’s founders.

Of the four claims about God and Americans outlined in the Declaration, it was the idea that man was made by God to be free that was the most radical, and which was so pivotal. The British press mocked it openly. It is, however, at the very heart of the founding ideology. If it is God who made men free, then Liberty is not a pragmatic imperative; it is a moral one. Governments that encroach on that liberty are not only violating the preferences of the governed, they are violating the very intention of God for government. For the Founders, this idea would fundamentally redefine the relationship between government and citizen. Man does not exist to be governed; governments exist to protect man’s freedom. Man does not owe government anything, other than what is necessary to aid that government in securing his basic rights. Likewise, government does not owe man anything other than protection from those who would intrude upon his freedom, be it his fellow citizen, foreign enemies, or the government itself.

Jacques Barzun: “Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.” (by way of Books, Inq.)

Yesterday I had all sorts of stuff to blog about. Today I’m pretty dry.

The only unusual thing about my life right now (aside from its usual unusualness) is that I feel pretty good.

Years back, I used to jog. I was never a hard core runner, though there was a time when I might have become one. I’d gotten my running up to four miles at a time, and was enjoying it. Then I blew out my knee (due to my own stupidity), which limited me to two miles a day ever after. And eventually I couldn’t even do that anymore.

After a long hiatus (and gaining back a lot of weight I’d kept at bay for fifteen years), I took up walking a few years back, taking half hour walks instead of twenty minute runs. It was better than nothing, but there was very little pleasure in it, and sloughing off was easy. I didn’t know why.

But lately, out of desperation to improve my condition, I started lifting some very light weights (which I bought back when I was running) while doing the walks.

And lo, I discovered what I’d been missing all these years. I was missing pushing it. I was missing actually having a workout that took effort. Now the burn is back, and I feel better than I have in years.

Sorry to break out of the Lars Walker character you know and have come to expect. I’m sure I’ll be griping about something again soon.

As I understand it, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is required by Congress (Trafficking Victims’ Protection Act (TVPA) of 2005) to list the goods produced by forced labor or child labor and the countries which produced those things. At the end of last year, Congress told the DOL to issue that list by the end of 2009 (William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008). Change.org and Polaris Project are asking us to write the DOL to encourage it to make it’s deadline.

I’d think a list like this would be very difficult to compile, even if you did not have businesses arguing against it (which I assume some lobbyist or two is actually doing). There was an informational meeting held on May 28, 2008. Perhaps now, almost five years later, the DOL is ready to finger the companies and products made in unjust conditions. You can join the effort here.

In news reports and discussion of the death today of Sen. Edward Kennedy, I keep hearing references to the “Kennedy family tragedies.” This might suggest to some people that the death of Sen. Kennedy is also a tragedy. It is not. (Please understand that I don’t mean to suggest it’s not sad. I mean it doesn’t meet either the ancient or the modern definitions of “tragedy.”)

The ancient definition of tragedy was, “The story of the violent and premature death of a great man, which he brings upon himself through some flaw in his character.”

The modern definition is, “An early or untimely death marked by a notable loss of human potential.”

Sen. Kennedy’s life fulfills neither of these criteria.

Sen. Kennedy died at an advanced age, fabulously wealthy and one of the most powerful people in the world. Whatever the indiscretions and sins of his life, he managed to avoid suffering almost any temporal consequences for them.

Almost the diametric opposite of tragedy.

In Britain, you will no longer be “blackballed,” encounter a “black day,” or find anyone’s “right-hand man.” Those words and phrases have been deemed offensive and banned from use by public servants. If you travel to that still beautiful country, get everything in writing because you will not find a “gentleman’s agreement” anywhere. From the article:

Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider children’s spy books, said: “A great deal of our modern language is based on traditions which have now gone but it would be silly — and extremely inconvenient — to replace them all. A ‘white collar worker’, for example, probably doesn’t wear one. An ‘able seaman’, under new regulations, could well be neither. ‘Spanish practices’ can happen all over Europe. We know what these phrases mean and we can find out from where they were derived. Banning them is just unnecessary.”

Unnecessary? Come, come. We all know that when one corrects one’s speech, one corrects one’s heart. If you look good on the outside, you will be good on the inside. Whitewash the sepulcre without, and it is cleansed within. We all know this, so of course it’s necessary.