Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 112
December 12, 2016
CIA says Russia helped Trump
The CIA says that Russia deliberately interfered in the American election in order to help elect DonalTrump. Russian hackers broke into e-mails of both the Democratic and the Republican national committees, but turned over only the Democratic batch to Wikileaks. The correspondence between Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta and various Democratic operatives proved highly [Read More...]
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A nation of suburbs
Big cities seem to get most of the attention. People debate their merits compared with small towns and the rural life. Suburbs don’t get the same respect. But according to a report from the Urban Land Institute, 79% of the American population live in suburbs. That includes 85% of the nation’s children and 75% of Millennials. [Read More...]
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December 9, 2016
Thomas Oden, ex-liberal theologian turned classical Christian, has died
Thomas Oden has died. A prominent liberal theologian who replaced pastoral care with psychotherapy, Oden converted to classical, historical Christianity when he read the church fathers. An Oklahoman (whose life in many ways paralleled mine), Oden gave us the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, insightful work on postmodernism, and much more. Please read my review [Read More...]
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Trump’s appointments & WWE connections
Donald Trump’s choices for his cabinet and other high-level positions in his administration are interesting, to say the least. He is stacking defense-related positions with generals, well-qualified to be sure, but this has some worried about the tradition of civilian control of the military. He is awarding some loyalists but also including some Republican establishment figures, [Read More...]
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The triumphs of nationalism
The victory of Donald Trump–along with other political insurgencies in England, France, Italy, and other countries–was a triumph of nationalism. It was not a triumph of conservatism, though conservatism went along for the ride and is generally hospitable to nationalism. But the new political force is, above all, a rejection of globalism in favor of [Read More...]
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December 8, 2016
The Christmas wars throughout history
A new book by Gerry Bowler entitled Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday points out that the “Christmas wars”–the conflict between secular and religious observances of Christmas–have been going on throughout the history of Christianity. The Bishop of Amasea complained in 400 A.D. about how Christmas presents [Read More...]
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Person of the Year
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year is Donald Trump. Of course it was. Who else could it be? One of our end-of-the-year customs here at the Cranach blog–along with making predictions and checking last year’s predictions–is to make our own proposals for Person of the Year. Trump is clearly, in the words of Time’s criteria, [Read More...]
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Ancient scientists helping modern scientists
Contrary to the stereotypes about ancient and medieval knowledge and totally contradicting Mark Twain’s depiction in Connecticut Yankee of King Arthur’s court panicking over an eclipse, the scientists of yore were keen observers of the heavens. They kept meticulous records of things like eclipses and analyzed them mathematically. Now astronomers from 2016 A.D. are using data recorded by the Babylonians [Read More...]
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December 7, 2016
From “the most humiliating year in our history” to victory
Today is the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Daily Oklahoman has a fascinating and moving feature looking not only at the coverage of that event but of its anniversary through the war years and beyond. We often forget that the first year of the war we were losing. The editorial [Read More...]
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Vocation in Hacksaw Ridge
Notice how many movies are about vocation. For example, consider Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson’s movie about Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector who won the Medal of Honor. A medic, he rescued 75 wounded servicemen in the Battle of Okinawa. I haven’t seen the film yet, but a review in World Magazine by Sophia Lee [Read More...]
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