Inside the World of Hasidic Judaism

A really great video showing the world of Hasidic Judaism, their customs, clothing and religion, holding strong to their religious values in a secular world.

Pope Francis Makes Secular Media His Messenger

Massacring Christians in Pakistan – Who Cares?

Persecution of Christians in other countries is a serious issue that I wish more people were concerned about. This is a great blog on the subject by “theweeflea.”

TheWeeFlea.com

Massacring Christians – Who Cares?

 Last Sunday we had a wonderful Christian woman speak to us in St Peters who lives and works in Peshawar, Pakistan.   Her love for the Pashtun people and culture shone through, as did her love for Jesus.  They married together beautifully – so much so that the man leading the service was so moved he found it difficult to pray.  Leaving church yesterday morning I received a message from a British Pakistani Christian saying that two suicide bombers had killed over 50 people leaving a church in that very same city – Peshawar.  At first I found it difficult to believe – not least because when I want to check it on the BBC website it was not even mentioned.  In fact I responded to my informant by asking ‘are you sure?’  Sadly he was telling the truth. You can read about it here…

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The Necessary Contradictions Of A Conservative

The Dish

Sorry for missing the Best of the Dish Today deadline last night. I was giving a speech on conservatism at Eastern Michigan University, and the conversation didn’t stop.

I prepped by re-reading parts of my friend Jesse Norman’s terrific book on Edmund Burke: The First Conservative. I was reminded again of how routinely and extravagantly Burke was ridiculed and mocked in his time for his alleged contradictions: supporting the American colonists then unleashing a barrage of brio against the French revolution, a British MP defending the rights of Catholics in Ireland, a patriot obsessed with colonial abuses of power, and an enemy of empire .

He was not a reactionary and yet remained a skeptic of unbridled liberal aspirations to improve society. He was a conservative Whig, and a liberal conservative. It’s that prudential balance – partaking of both traditions in Anglo-American thought and practice, and tacking toward one…

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The Cheneys And The Republicans

The Dish

For quite a while now, the GOP has lived with a rather spectacular contradiction over homosexuality. It was perhaps best summed up by the split between George W Bush and Dick Cheney in 2004 over the federal marriage amendment. Bush backed the amendment – you can read my real-time response that day here – and Cheney didn’t. So on a major issue of social policy – one on which the 2004 election was waged in Ohio – the ticket was split. Well: not so split. Bush – we were led to believe – was not exactly energized on this subject. His wife and daughters all backed marriage equality. In his personal life, Bush wasn’t a hater or a man lacking in empathy. Far from it. But Rove knew the base, and knew what could deliver it. So, with the aid of his then-closeted campaign honcho, Ken Mehlman, Rove won…

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Our Neglect Of The Mentally Ill

The Dish

Austin Gus Deeds was unable to get the help he needed:

The day before he apparently stabbed his father at the family’s home in rural Bath County, the son of Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds underwent a psychiatric evaluation but was not admitted to a hospital, because no bed was available. Deeds was listed in fair condition late Tuesday after his son, Austin, stabbed him in the face and chest, then shot himself in what investigators suspect was an attempted murder and suicide.

Suzy Khimm puts this tragedy in context:

Across the country, the number of psychiatric beds has been steadily declining as hospitals moved away from institutionalizing patients and budget cuts have taken hold. The number of hospital beds in freestanding psychiatric hospitals has dropped 13% between 2002 and 2011, according to the American Hospital Association.

But the need hasn’t declined as quickly, and there haven’t been adequate alternatives to pick up the slack…

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A Couple New Signs I have Kids

A blog by Harsh Reality about having kids that I found hilarious:

I Was at LAX the Day of the Shooting, But I Don’t Want to Talk About It

I think it might make me feel better, though.
Following the Austin Film Festival, I boarded the filled-to-capacity plane to return to L.A. The pilot made an announcement that there was a shooting at LAX, so we might not be taking off right then. Then, they ordered us all off the plane, explaining that the situation was still (forgive the pun) up in the air and how waiting for a flight at the airport was a lot nicer than flying around extra to kill time until it was safe to land in L.A. or to end up having to land us somewhere else.
I grabbed lunch and read a book. I did not have a connecting flight or anyone waiting for me, so to me, personally, there was nothing to get stressed about.
Others weren’t so lucky. A few young women were going to fly in for a wedding that day then fly out the next day. After we were waiting in the airport a while to find out what would happen, they realized that they would no longer have a chance to attend the wedding. They decided to go home.
A few hours later, they boarded us back on the plane, saying the situation at LAX was over. Most of the people from earlier were gone. Most of us sat as the sole passenger in whatever three-person seat we took. The only people who sat next to anyone were, seemingly, those who wanted to, who knew their traveling companions.
I found myself wondering what “kind” of lunatic the shooter was. I figured he was a lunatic, yet another lost soul who for whatever combination of religious-political b.s. thought shooting a bunch of strangers who had never done anything to him was a good thing to do because of whatever type of b.s. was running through his mind and, no doubt, encouraged by the hatemongers of the Internet. Half of us don’t even both to vote.
Yes, I thought “he.” Let’s be honest.
But, I wondered, what particular cause did this guy find was just so important to justify murdering strangers?
With which holy book, if any, did he find justification? What group or groups did he blame?
Let’s be honest. They all blame others.
What political conspiracy did he prescribe to and what groups are victimized by this political conspiracy that most of us so-called “sheep” just don’t believe in because we’re too busy numbing ourselves with reality TV and the NFL to notice that aforementioned group or groups are doing whatever really bad things and how much worse it is going to get if people like him and the other people who read and write the things he agrees with don’t do something to put a stop to it?
As nonplussed as I was in Austin, my stress level rose after we landed at LAX. Some vehicles were being let onto the airport and some vehicles were not. The shuttle bus that connects people like me from the airport to Downtown L.A. to where we can take another train, if need be, to our urban homes, were not coming. No matter how long we all stood there waiting.
I began to wonder if it was as insane an idea as I thought it probably was to just walk off of the airport and keep walking until I could get a bus or a cab or something to get me home.
I started walking. I could not remember the configuration of the airport, if I was just going to walk into a highway or if there would be surface roads and bus stops and businesses. It’s funny how you don’t notice things like that when you don’t need to.
I quickly discovered a mass of humanity with the same idea, but with more luggage than I. (I only was in Austin for a week, and I travel light.) Rolling and hauling their suitcases, carrying or pulling the hands of small children, we all walked, like pilgrims toward a holy site.
Then, I noticed them. Another mass of humanity pulled and carried luggage and children onto the airport, realizing that for them, too, motorized transportation was not going to happen, and that they were going to do what they had to do.
So, now we all know, the shooter was a New World Order paranoid case/Alex Jones fan. That was one possibility I considered. I wondered if he was going to be a leftist Occupy-er or a fanatical Islamist (who were once the predominant terror suspects of the American imagination), but who now share the space in our minds where we keep our fears, along side those who bomb recruiting stations and factories where they test products on animals, men who feel sexually rejected by women and hurt by feminism and those opposed to . . . what? Abortion? Gay rights? Immigration? Gas-guzzling SUV’s? Logging?
Yes, I know about Timothy McVeigh, the Black Panthers, the Manson family, the Weather Underground, Neo-Nazis, the KKK and the other chapters of American terror.
But, I can’t help but feel like we’re entering into another chapter now. Mass shootings and bombings happen in quick succession.
Did anyone in the media even notice that LAX is not far from Santa Monica College, where not too long ago, another shooter with another cache of ammo made the same decision to kill a bunch of innocent strangers because of whatever justifications he made that whoever he was blaming for whatever he was blaming them for deserved to die by his hand?
When did we all get so blase about madmen and massacres?

Bloody Mary

streetsofsalem

Today marks the death day of Queen Mary I, the unfortunate and undisputed first Queen of England, and thus the beginning of the “golden” age of Elizabeth. When I teach the Reformation, as I am doing now, I have to reveal my Protestant bias to my students, but even I can admit that poor Mary Tudor’s reputation has suffered from a hatchet job: she has been “Bloody Mary” from almost her own time and has somehow been transformed into a paranoid, desperate dwarf in ours. She was certainly a pious and intolerant Catholic, but in her time toleration was not an attribute: while almost 300 Protestants were executed during her reign the Chambre Ardent (“Burning Chamber”) of the French King Henri II killed far more. I see her primarily as a victim of circumstances and a woman of her time: the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon…

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Why I still go to the movies