Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Supporting Trump and summoning the White Witch

Gina Dalfonzo, a former writer for Charles Colson's Breakpoint, claims that Christians who support Trump are doing what Nikabrik was doing in summoning the White Witch to defeat the Telmarines.

Here. 

Friday, August 24, 2018

Five Views of Meaning Without God

Can there be meaning in life without God? Here. 

A voice from the past

Egil Krogh, one of the conspirators, speaks regretfully of the Ellsberg break-in, an attempt to punish free speech during the Nixon administration. He wondered if these lessons from the past were lost on the Bush administration.

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Hate speech laws

I am inclined to oppose hate speech laws.  laws like that would put Trump in jail for sure, and it would be a Pandora's box we would never be able to close.

What if?

Trump says he would retain his support if he were to go to Fifth Avenue and shoot people. But what if he were to sign an amnesty bill, or a single payer health plan.

Trump has no conservative principles, even though he gets conservative results. So if it were ever in his interests to do these things, (for example, facing a Democratic Congress about to impeach him), he might say "Look, I do deals. My VP, he's got conservative principles, so he will veto everything you try to put through. I don't have such principles, so for heaven's sake don't impeach me. 

Thursday, August 16, 2018

I always think I'm right. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

People sometimes criticize others because they "always think they're right. But don't we always think we're right? If we don't think we're right, we change our minds. Then, we think we are right about that.

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

"The media" is a myth

Why do conservatives think there is a liberal media when most of their information about the news comes from sources with a conservative point of view? Doesn't it make more sense to say that there are liberal media sources and conservative ones? Many years ago, at least all television news came from three networks, and so if you thought all the broadcasters there were conservative, you still got your news from there and had to work to find a conservative perspective. (Except in Phoenix, where the newspaper was known for its right-wing stance). But now? To say that "the media" is liberal is to deny that Fox, Drudge, and Breitbart are part of the media. But they are part of the media. The fact is that today people can choose the political perspective from which their news comes. Which, I think, explains the polarized nature of the political arena today.

"The media" is a myth. No one political perspective controls all the sources of news and information.

Hey, whatever happened to the falsification challenge

Peter Atkins' atheism certainly fails it.

Could Trump end up signing a single payer bill?

Nunes seems to think it essential that Republicans be re-elected to majorities in both houses of Congress, because Mueller won't exonerate the President, so we have to. Nunes has done everything possible to limit inquiry into the President's conduct with Russia and to attack the propriety of the Mueller investigation with questions about FISA warrants, etc. If the Dems win the majority in the House, then he loses the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee falls to the aggressive Democrat Adam Schiff, who wants to do a thorough investigation of the Russia scandal along the lines of the Senate Watergate Hearings under Sam Ervin in the 1970s, which revealed the White House Tapes, included John Dean's harmful testimony against Nixon, and eventually resulted in the Nixon's resignation to prevent inevitable impeachment and removal. If that happens, Nunes says on the tape that everything will be lost. I take it this means impeachment, or if not, maybe Nunes fears that Trump, facing a Democratic Congress, instead of just vetoing everything they put through, decides that he is the ultimate dealmaker, and so to prevent impeachment, maybe he will sign some things the Democrats want on immigration or health care. Who knows, maybe even single payer. After all, Trump's conservative convictions are questionable, even if the actions of his administration are conservative. Maybe he thinks the Democrats won't impeach him if he makes a deal with them, because they know that Pence is a much more principled conservative and would never sign Democratic bills.

Nixon went to China. Clinton signed welfare reform. Trump.....

I mean it would repeal and replace Obamacare, now wouldn't it. 

Monday, August 06, 2018

What the laws say


This is what our laws say about foreign influence in elections. It says that foreign governments and foreign nationals cannot provide anything of value to American election campaigns, and campaigns cannot solicit or receive anything of value from foreign nationals and foreign governments. It doesn't matter whether it swung the election or not. Trump's tweet that people do this all the time and it's perfectly legal either shows massive legal ignorance, or is a bald-faced lie.

Thursday, August 02, 2018

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea is still in print

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea is going into its 11th printing, nearly 15 years after its original publication in September of 2003. IV Press has told me that this brings the number of copies in print to 10.882. But I'm still a one-hit wonder as far s monographs are concerned, and am of course no match for Patterson and Clinton.

Here. 

BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM.PH
Who ought to hold claim to the more dangerous idea--Charles Darwin or C. S. Lewis? Daniel Dennett argued for Darwin in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Touchstone Books, 1996). In this book Victor Reppert champions C. S. Lewis. Darwinists attempt to use science to show that our world and its inhabitants can...