This is an extended talk given by David Gibbs, lawyer to Terri Schiavo and eyewittness to her malady, and ultimately her death.
Moral issues
Why the art world is a disaster
New Criterion | Roger Kimball | June 2007
It is now that we begin to encounter the fevered quest for novelty at any price, it is now that we see insincere and superficial cynicism and deliberate conscious bluff; we meet, in a word, the calculated exploitation of this art as a means of destroying all order. The mercenary swindle multiples a hundredfold, as does the deceit of men themselves deceived and the brazen self-portraiture of vileness.
—Hans Sedlmayr, Art in Crisis
Some of what she said was technical, and you would have had to be a welder to appreciate it; the rest was aesthetic or generally philosophical, and to appreciate it you would have had to be an imbecile. —Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution
Last month, a friend telephoned and urged me to travel to Bard College to see “Wrestle,” the inaugural exhibition mounted to celebrate the opening of “CCS Bard Hessel Museum,” a 17,000-square-foot addition to the college art museum. It sounded, my friend said, spectacularly awful. She’d just had a call from her husband, a Bard alum, who had zipped through the exhibition while doing some work at the college. Huge images of body parts—yes, those body parts—floating on the walls of a darkened room, minatory videos of men doing things—yes, those things—to each other, or to themselves, all of it presented in the most pretentious fashion possible. It really was something … special.
Jim Wallis: Polarizer or Unifier?
Townhall.com Janice Shaw Crouse April 17, 2007
Jim Wallis has devoted his whole career to trying to force the round peg of leftist ideology into the square hole of biblical orthodoxy. When he wrote his “vision” designed to “transcend” the ideologies of the religious left and right, he ended up further polarizing instead of unifying the two evangelical movements. He rails against the “political language” of the right as well as the tendency of conservative evangelicals, in his opinion, to claim their use of scripture as authoritative. In so doing, Wallis hoists himself on his own petard.
“Eco-justice” nonsense — NCC takes bold lead
Acton’s Jordan Ballor jumps on the NCC’s silly “eco-justice” objections to bottled water
Knight’s religion crusade
The IRD criticism of the NCC (discussed here earlier) is getting some good discussion at the Get Religion blog.
Boeing and the Aviation Market
Ed. I like the airline and computer business and watch it. Here’s an interesting article on Boeing.
Townhall.com George Will January 18, 2007
CHICAGO — After an excellent year, Boeing is counting its blessings, which include its competitor. They also include an anticipated doubling of the commercial aviation market in the next 20 years, which will require 27,000 new planes costing $2.6 trillion.
Desperate Arrangements
Forbes Richard C. Morais January 29, 2007
The demand for transplants can’t be met by altruistic organ banks, so Internet brokers are stepping into the breach. It’s not a pretty picture.
From his modest ranch home in the hills of Sun Valley, Calif., filled with didgeridoos picked up in Australia and German shepherd puppies, James Cohan, 66, sells organ transplant brokering services to the desperate. His customers face certain death if their diseased organs aren’t quickly swapped out. They find him on the Internet; his stated fee–$140,000 for a kidney and $290,000 for a heart, liver or lung–includes hospital and surgeon charges, and flights and accommodation for a fellow traveler, such as a nurse or spouse.
Welfare Reform is Working
Acton Institute Anthony B. Bradley August 23, 2006
[ … ]
The facts tell a powerful story: When the poor are invited to live as people with dignity, within structures of liberty, they will usually do so. Since the 1996 reforms child poverty has plummeted. Some 1.6 million fewer children live in poverty today than in 1995.
California Bill Is ‘Sexual-Agenda Bomb,’ Group Says
Townhall.com Randy Hall April 7, 2006
Legislation approved Wednesday by the California Senate Judiciary Committee is “a sexual-agenda bomb dressed up as a child-caring Easter egg,” a conservative group charged.
SB 1437, which would amend the state’s education code by adding the words “gender” and “sexual orientation” to its anti-discrimination policy, would force school districts to “teach school children as young as kindergarten to accept and embrace transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality in all its forms,” according to Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF).
. . . more
Even the poor are losing in Venezuela
Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship is destroying property rights across the country. We’ve noted in the past how it’s happened in the countryside, at sugar farms, on nature reserves, among the large and small corporations, and in apartment and office buildings. But these aren’t the only places – the destruction of property rights also is happening in the poorest neighborhoods.
In an unexpectedly good article, Alex Holland, a writer at Venezuelanalysis, a Chavista propaganda organ, unwittingly describes how even poor shantytown dwellerss with desperate need for title-deed ownership are being badly affected by collectivization, which is destroying the weak property rights these urban poor once had. The writer explains the horrible dynamic with perfect clarity and honesty and then ineptly defends it, making the Marxist propaganda easy for us to gloss over. Evidently, the facts on the ground were just too big for this writer.