Besides, this Bland, the master-at-arms, was no vulgar, dirty knave. In him—to modify Burke’s phrase—vice seemed, but only seemed, to lose half its seeming evil by losing all its apparent grossness. (Melville, White Jacket) No doubt…
Browsing Category Religion
Extreme Thinking Errors: Tough-Love Christian Boarding Schools and the Indiana Department of Child Services
The following is a revised version of an article which appeared at the Common Errant in July 2012. I have re-written it for my upcoming book, Hoosier School Heist, which will be released in December. …
A Gospel Truth
It’s nothing new, but we must keep these things in front of us…recall when we found out that the US Military had infused (was it already) Christian War Theology as a way to influence (brainwash)…
The Money Virtue As American Rational Religion
The most virtuous and honest character in Dickens’ Hard Times, Stephen Blackpool, often confronts the confusion, ambiguity, paradox, and unfairness of “interests” with an aggrieved and exasperated cry that “it’s all such a muddle.” Even…
The Child of the Marketplace Metaphor
Since the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, organized in covenants as a joint stock company, imagined themselves a mystic brotherhood reborn in the body of Christ, American history has progressed under the sway of two, conflicting…
Training in Belief and Reason
On the a.m. dog-walk I listened to a podcast regarding, primarily, the “will to believe.” (“Psychological Anthropology” on Entitled Opinions) The author/academic (Tanya Luhrmann) interviewed has written at least two titles on modes of belief,…
Teaching as CIA Cover–Gülen Charter Schools, Dan Burton, and State Secrets
The following continues Doug Martin’s look into the Gülen charter school movement, which began with Islam and the Free Market of Privatized Education: “Friending” the Gülen Charter Schools. Besides noting U.S. charter school connections to…
You Can Make or You Can Sing
I said yesterday something that I thought was quite pithy if not something assured or useful: the brain is a kind of quantum reckoning, always and forever eluding investigation; the body seems rather to adhere…
Master and Commander: Can a Mormon Be Man Enough for the Murder Machine?
Today I opened my morning paper to discover a very large headline in the “Neighbors/Religion” section (we don’t have time to discuss this formatting decision, focus!): “Would Monroe County vote for a Mormon?” This was…
Politics + Interest = Liberty?
Can you discover your own mind in the below from George Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. I’m pretty sure we’re all in there somewhere. From Chapter 51 of Middlemarch. Politics and self-interest in 1871 and…