By Gina Dalfonzo|Published Date: February 05, 2010
This excellent political analysis by Jeff Bergner touches only briefly on matters of faith. Still, I think it's a good read for Christians. Bergner challenges his readers to rethink the conventional "Narrative" of American history and politics, and that inspires us to think about where our rights, freedoms, and responsibilities really come from. Hint: Not from government.
The Narrative . . . identifies the means to be employed by the virtuous. The federal government is the instrument for achieving the promise of equality. If, along the way, this government and its agents of progress should evolve into a separate political class, this is understandable; indeed, it is the more or less inevitable result of the progressives’ role as the vanguard of virtue. In this way, virtue comes to be seen as concentrated, ironically, in the very institution in which the Founders feared that the corrupting effects of power might take root.
William Saletan of Slate observes that we're in a "war between the worlds": the world of reality and the world of virtual reality. The frightening thing is that some of the casualties in this war are not virtual casualties. They're real ones.
The compromise [Uganda] had accepted, which the president [Yoweri Museveni] presented as reconciliation, was actually something more complex and less sturdy. It was as if, having found themselves unable to forgive, his people had concentrated on forgetting, and when they’d failed at forgetting, they’d chosen to believe what they wanted to believe. So long as nothing disturbed their conception of the past or exposed them to scrutiny, the nation could continue its halting procession along Museveni’s chosen path. To the president’s way of thinking, therefore, justice was a threat to progress, not because it promised verdicts and punishments, but because it forced people to remember.
The other day I was watching Fox, where Brooklyn lawmaker Felix Ortiz was explaining his effort to pass a law banning New York restaurants from adding salt to the food they prepare. Ortiz said his law would save lives.
Today is the Feast of Saint Patrick, the saint for whom my parents named me. To many, this day calls to mind raucous celebrations and drinking. And certainly a good amount of such revelry takes place. However, in our home, as in most Irish homes, it is a holy day celebrated by attending Mass and saying prayers of thanksgiving for the life of a man whose faithful dedication to Christ led him to return to the pagan land in which he had been enslaved to proclaim the Gospel.
