Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 228
August 12, 2015
Millennials make political gestures, but don’t vote
Only a small percentage of the Millennial generation vote, according to a new study. That’s not to say they aren’t interested in politics. But they tend to express that interest by doing things like putting rainbows on their FaceBook pages and making other online gestures rather than actually voting. Political views become identity markers, like [Read More...]
August 11, 2015
A book that teaches kids about church
My daughter, Dcs. Mary Moerbe, has published another children’s book: Whisper, Whisper: Learning about Church. It teaches children, aged 4 and younger, what is going on in the worship service (with special reference to the liturgy) and helps them participate in it. The book uses a rhyming text for the children and wonderful art by [Read More...]
Who really played the music
If you grew up in the 1960′s or 1970′s, if you love the music of that time, and if you listen to the oldies stations to this very day, you have got to see the documentary The Wrecking Crew. (Shot back in 2008 but just released this year, the film is available for instant view [Read More...]
Criticism leads to revision of AP History Exam
The last version of the Advanced Placement History exam, which allows high schoolers to test out of college courses–as well as the material required to prepare for it–bought into the leftist revisionist history movement, portraying American history mainly in terms of how oppressive it was. (See this and this.) Conservative parents and academics pushed back. [Read More...]
August 10, 2015
Luther on politicians
The conventional wisdom is that Luther taught total submission to government authorities. But you’ve got to read what he actually wrote about those government authorities. Dr. Matthew Phillips usefully quotes from Luther’s most important treatise on earthly government and the Two Kingdoms, in which he makes the Tea Partiers sound mild. From Dr. Matthew Phillips, [Read More...]
Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Mx.?
Our culture has arrived at a transgender moment. “The end of gender is near,” says Robin Givens, the Washington Post fashion critic. Menswear designers are on a mission to eradicate it. Some are going full bore, wielding lace shirts and floppy, grandma blouses like cultural grenades. Others are taking a stealth approach, quietly chiseling away [Read More...]
Getting Trump out of the running
How about this as a narrative for getting Donald Trump out of the Republican presidential race? Trump as a Democratic mole? That could be an interpretation of the report that the iconoclastic mogul had a phone call with Bill Clinton just before entering the race. According to four Trump aides and one Clinton aides, Bill “encouraged [Read More...]
August 7, 2015
Christianity is not spiritual, it’s physical
In an interview with Nadia Bolz-Weber, the ELCA “pastrix,” when asked about those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious,” turns the terms around, saying that Christianity–what with the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Sacraments–is not so much spiritual as physical. From Jesse James DeConto, “For All the Sinners and Saints: An Interview [Read More...]
The government gets involved in private sector salaries
The government, through the Securities & Exchange Commission, has passed a regulation requiring that all publicly-trade companies have to publish the ratio between how much the chief executives get paid as compared to their average worker. On the other end of the pay scale, a number of Democrats are pushing for and some local governments [Read More...]
Debate post mortem
So, in the aftermath of the first Republican presidential primary debates, what do you think? Questions for discussion and contemplation after the jump.Can we say that anyone “won” the debate? Who was helped and who was hurt? Do you see any second tier candidates jumping up into the top tier? Do you see any in [Read More...]
