Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 406

Boy Scouts accept gay members

The Boy Scouts of America voted to accept gay members.  The ban against homosexual scout masters and other adult leaders remains in place.  According to gay ideology, sexual identity is innate, not formed, so it makes sense to  speak of homosexual children. From Reuters: The Boy Scouts of America voted on Thursday to lift a [...]

The most popular country in the world

What a difference 68 years makes!  The most popular country in the world is Germany.  Japan is 4th.  The United States of America is #8, barely beating out China.  Details and  complete rankings after the jump. From CNBC: Europe’s largest economy, Germany, which has been criticized for not doing enough to help struggling euro zone [...]

Why relativism leads to totalitarianism

I’d like to spin off from our reflection a comment Lars Walker made, as we blogged about yesterday in the post The Bible and Liberty: As Paul Johnson notes in Modern Times, moral relativism always leads to Totalitarianism. Because in a morally relative age, power alone can settle any question. Now that we are in [...]

Family and Secularization

Christian scholar Mary Eberstadt has a new book entitled How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization. From the editorial description at Amazon: In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the [...]

Terrorist murder updates

Officials have learned that the dead Boston Marathon bomber was involved in an earlier triple homicide.  His accomplice in that murder confessed under questioning but attacked interrogators with a knife, whereupon he was killed.  In the meantime, two men in London assaulted and beheaded an off-duty soldier while shouting jihadist slogans.  They filmed themselves and [...]

IRS official takes the 5th

Lois Lerner, the IRS officer who first disclosed that the agency had been targeting conservative organizations, invoked the 5th Amendment’–”I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might incriminate myself”–in refusing to say anything at a Congressional investigation. From the New York Times: The Internal Revenue Service official who first disclosed that the agency [...]

The Bible and Liberty

In the course of recounting an online argument, novelist Lars Walker gives an excellent account of how the Bible gave ordinary men and women the conceptual ability to question their rulers, thus, in his words, turning them “from subjects to citizens.” From the American Spectator: I’ve written before in this space about the 18th-19th century [...]

Immigration deal reached

The Senate reached a bipartisan deal on immigration reform.  The measure must now go to the House, where we will see if the Republican agreement holds.  Details after the jump. From the Associated Press: In addition to creating a pathway to citizenship for 11.5 million immigrants living illegally in the country, the legislation creates a [...]

Food as the new rock ‘n’ roll

Odd and questionable–but unintentionally amusing–cultural commentary from Chris Richards in the Washington Post: Over the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of the foodie class and decline of the record industry. Are the two related? When did we start talking about new food trucks instead of new bands?. . . . Today’s gastronomical adventures provide [...]

Tornado destroys Moore, OK. Again.

Growing up in Oklahoma, in tornado alley, I remember hearing that tornadoes, like lightning, never strike the same place twice.  Well, that’s not true.  In 1999, Moore, Oklahoma–a big suburb between Oklahoma City and Norman–was struck by a monster tornado, an F-5, one so big scientists had to alter the scale, killing 44 people and [...]