Novelist and neocon Roger L. Simon hasn’t started believing in God again, after a lifetime of atheism.

He’s just beginning to have some doubts.

The doubts rise, not from an experience of God, but from a confrontation with Evil. He writes of his experience at the Durban II conference:

Well, just as there are no atheists in foxholes, maybe no one is an atheist when confronted with what he finally acknowledges to be Evil. If there is Evil, there must be Good, no? And some force governing this game, something that, well, looks over it.

I know I am being irrational here, so I will stop. Being in the presence of Ahmadinejad’s evil, fleeting and haltingly put me in the presence of something else.

Tip: Gene Edward Veith at Cranach.

Publishing update: Looks like the new book will actually be released sometime around May 22.



On Monday, I replaced my desk flag.

It must have been late in 1968, my first semester at Waldorf College, Forest City, Iowa, when I bought a miniature Norwegian flag on a stand-up base for my dorm room desk. It’s been with me ever since, in several states, and in several states of being. But only recently I noticed that, in addition to being kind of limp and faded, it had actually started to show holes, produced not by any kind of friction, but just by the aging of the fabric (nylon, I think).

So I sent away to Ingebretsen’s Scandinavian Shop for a replacement. And I had to discard the old flag.

This makes me sad. Continue reading Flag at half mast →