MICHAEL D. writes from Australia:

It is common for royals to visit religious sites overseas. Pakistan and India are members of the Commonwealth and receive frequent visits from various members of the royal family. I recall that when the minor controversy arose over the requirement that the U.S. President wear a headscarf to visit a temple earlier this year, it was pointed out that the Prince of Wales simply leaves his wide-brimmed hat on when entering Sikh or Hindu temples and nobody has ever complained.  (more…)

BARTHOLOMEW writes in this entry:

[T]o say that atheists cannot be conservatives is not to say that atheists cannot ally with conservatives. They can, and I hope they do. It only means that since what animates conservatives–the desire to defend the revealed order of God–cannot animate atheists, the animating core of conservatism and atheism must differ, i.e. they are not the same. (more…)

THE PLIGHT of a woman struggling to find a job anywhere in the world plucks the heartstrings of the feminist journalist. And the woman who has found a job and left her children to be raised by others in some remote Communist village causes these same strings to resound with cheerful hosannas.

Didi Kirsten Tatlow writes in today’s New York Times about the plight of women in China, who still have problems despite the certain guarantees of feminism to remove all problems and who are not yet universally favored over men in China. As is typical of these vacuous  foreign reports on the ongoing oppression of women, there is not the slightest acknowledgement that men and children are human beings who are at least as entitled to happiness as women.

Ms. Tatlow describes one success story: (more…)

FRED OWENS writes:

I saw this story in the Los Angeles Times that bodes well for the future of farming. I have also spent the weekend in Los Angeles, where new companies have sprung up — they will plant a vegetable garden in your yard, if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, and — going further, because this is Los Angeles — they will plant and cultivate the vegetables for you.

Then all you have to do is go into the back yard before dinner and harvest some arugula for your salad.

This service is for persons of affluence, and it’s a good thing — they’re taking the money they would have spent on golf and yachts and put that money into a more wholesome activity — their own back yard for growing food. (more…)

IVAR THE MIDWESTERNER writes:

I offer an anecdote about how, in liberal society, manipulative power masquerades as charitable concern. I teach at a state college somewhere in the United States. As in all such institutions the federal laws governing disability accommodations are in place. According to these laws, so many parking spaces must be allocated for “handicapped commuters,” buildings must be “wheelchair accessible,” hearing-augmentation devices and sign language interpreters must be available for deaf or hearing-impaired students, and so forth. These gestures are humane although they would carry more moral weight were they voluntary rather than mandatory. Nevertheless, who would object to them? (more…)

A ROMAN CATHOLIC church in Avignon, France, has been defaced by urine, excrement and arson in multiple attacks by Muslim youths.  In an interview translated at GalliaWatch, the Archbishop of Avignon, Jean-Pierre Cattenoz, was philosophical about recent developments, which he said marked “a turning point in the religious history of our country.” He predicted that Muslims in France will be in the majority in 30 years. He said: (more…)

FROM The Daily Mail:

Shoeless and wearing a beekeeper-style shawl and hat, the Queen walked across the world’s largest carpet last night as she met Islamic students in Abu Dhabi at the start of her five-day state visit to the Gulf. (more…)

MY HUSBAND disrespectfully refers to any gathering of women as a “cluck-a-thon.” I don’t necessarily approve of his terminology, but I have never really objected either. In fact, I never noticed much until I saw this article from The Australian about “hen parties” among Indian women, who are responding to feminism’s glorfication of the girlfriend and girl power. This is the modern cluck-a-thon run amok.

Also, the new daytime TV show The Talk should be called The Squawk. It’s sad that the clucking of air-headed celebrities has replaced the conversation of normal women sharing their lives together in neighborhoods. This is an alternate reality that can never replace the joy of real squawking. I have never watched daytime television. What if I grew to like any of those people? I couldn’t stand to like people I didn’t know and yet who I saw everyday. I’d rather dislike someone I know than like someone I don’t know.                                                              (more…)

CONSVLTVS writes:

As a novice in the blogosphere, I’m discovering more fascinating conversations every day. I had seen a couple of references to your site, so this morning I stopped by.

What a treasure! The graphics are beautiful. More importantly, the content is first rate. You are making essentially the same case on sexual relations as I, though you have been doing it much longer. (My first blog entry was just last August.)

Where I think we differ is in religion. I was intrigued by your recent post, The Murky Waters of Atheism. I agree with every point you made against atheism, for instance that since atheism cannot point to an ultimate moral order in the universe any moral assertions made by atheists are on the order of preferences. More, I see some kind of religion as essentially inevitable for human society, and among the world’s religions most have operated to the benefit of their adherents. Still, I remain a nonbeliever.

Why? It is simply that I have no faith. (more…)

Alan Roebuck writes:

Thank you for hosting the discussion (which can be found here and here) on Calvinism. It’s a big subject, and I hope you don’t mind a somewhat lengthy e-mail in response to what’s been said so far. 

First, some general comments, then my responses to some readers’ comments.  (more…)

  DUE to illness and the holiday, I have not been able to post for two days or respond to e-mails. But I hope to do so later today or tomorrow.

KRISTOR writes in this post about Calvinist predestination:

The analogy to which Alan refers, of God setting up the action of the play “behind the scenes,” while we merely recite the lines, meanwhile laboring under the illusion that they are ours, seems to me to fail. If the players can do nothing more than recite the lines they have been given by the director or playwright, then despite their delusions to the contrary, the lines are not theirs at all. If they say, “I hate God,” they do so as tools only, mere robots or puppets, and no more. (more…)

ALAN ROEBUCK writes:

There has been some discussion of Calvinism at your site.  As a Calvinist myself, I’d like to add some explanation. 

Christian apologist Greg Koukl has provided a very useful insight. He says “Calvinism describes what’s going on behind the scenes.”  Behind the scenes, God predestines. But “on stage,” as it were, we don’t feel predestined. We have free will, in the ordinary sense of the word, and this was defined best by Jonathan Edwards: Free will is the ability to choose what we want to choose. And we clearly have the ability to choose what we want to choose. So we have free will, in this sense.  (more…)

THE DISCUSSION continues here on whether atheists can coherently argue for morality or tradition. In the following response to a reader, Kristor makes an excellent point. It is a point that was made by others, but Kristor fully demonstrates its validity. In sum, there is no such thing as an atheist conservative. In fact, there is no such thing as an atheist liberal. Yes, people can call themselves by these labels. But they are employing oxymorons.  The conservative atheist cannot champion moral or political convictions anymore than the atheist liberal can.

Or, let’s say they can champion values, but only by contradicting themselves. As Kristor argues, “You can’t have moral convictions of any kind and be a thoroughgoing atheist. If you have such convictions, you are not really an atheist, in the sense that you are not really carrying your atheism into practice.”

Here are Kristor’s full comments.  (more…)

FITZGERALD writes:

Here’s a great comment from an article at The Spearhead:

“You make laws that allow women to be irresponsible, a greater portion of them will be irresponsible. …

I have met way too many women who have made complete trainwrecks out of their lives, and tried (and often succeeded) at pulling as many men down with them along the way (usually out of imagined spite – based on fictional musings of oppressions past).”

My brother is seeing this first hand. His wife of 12 years is divorcing him for a litany of perceived offenses.  He’s not an abuser of women or substances, just an average Joe Beta male. (more…)

MY TEENAGE SON AND I accompanied my elderly parents to the orchestra last week. We sat behind a young woman of about 20 years of age whom I will call Jessica. Jessica had long luxurious blonde hair and large, expensive sunglasses that were propped on her head. She wore leggings and boots. Her handbag was an enormous leather tote, so large it might easily accomodate two severed heads if things should ever come to that, and her nails were professionally manicured with a frosty tint.

Jessica was at this performance of one of the world’s premier orchestras to complete an assignment for a college class on music appreciation or history. We knew this because we saw her berating someone who appeared to be an instructor before the concert. The instructor was reluctant to give Jessica the written assignment sheet because she mistakenly thought Jessica did not have a ticket. Jessica procured the assignment after aggressively reciting her rights. (more…)

  CLINT HILL, the Secret Service agent assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy, movingly describes his impressions of her in The New York Times.