Ho-kay. I write these general posts rather than just replying to a comment when I think the topic needs to be shared fully. So here goes, once again, with this whole idea of a Christian’s and a citizen’s obligation to respect authority.
As Ed, my estimable bro-in-law pointed out, “Obey them that have the rule over you” does not contravene “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Yet another post inspired by a Facebook comment. So . . . I’ve put up a couple of articles about the whole Greg Gianforte mess, in which comments are made that now the pro-Trump right is trying to justify the behavior of the newest Republican member of Congress. The violence and vulgarity of the Trump campaign is now spawning further violence and vulgarity. Rush Limbaugh calls Gianforte “manly and brutish.” Laura Ingraham says that the reporter should have been manly enough to fight back. And on and on. What vile, nauseating balderdash!
Periodically I ask myself why I’m continuing to spend the time I do on reading and posting others’ articles or writing my own. After all, most of the time I’m just preaching to the choir, and, as I often say to my husband, no one’s paying me to do this! So why bother? And, as a followup question, Would I be doing this if Hillary Clinton had won?
Back in May, in fact, exactly a year ago tomorrow, Andrew Sullivan wrote an article in New York Magazine titled “Democracies End when They Are Too Democratic,” with the subtitle “America Has Never Been So Ripe for tyranny.” It was a long and erudite piece that was hailed in some circles as a masterpiece, one of the most important articles to be written about the election season thus far. His thesis, as far as I was able to determine, was that when a country becomes splintered into special-interest groups and there is no national unity behind the values of the country that a strongman,
Here we are on the day before the 100th day of the Trump Presidency (or Der Einhundert Tage, as Jonah Goldberg calls it, or perhaps Les Cent Jours, in honor of Trump’s advocacy for Marine Le Pen, or even Один hundnred дней in honor of his [perhaps now somewhat-moderated] affection for all things Putin.)
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that we have a President who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and who admits it. It’s just completely mind-boggling. He didn’t realize it would be so hard, he says in the now-infamous Reuters interview.
Despite, or more likely because of, the many words written and spoken about the subject of President Trump’s border wall there’s been a lot of confusion and inconsistent thinking.
What if we could bring together both sides in this? I know it seems impossible, but if we combine Aristotle’s interest in understanding a thing by knowing what it’s for, and a determination to find a win-win solution, we can do it!
Periodically I take a look over at the right-wing ranters such as Breitbart, Limbaugh, Ingraham, and Savage Nation, the website of Michael Savage, who, as I never tire of pointing out, is really named Michael Weiner. (Hey, it’s a perfectly respectable name. So why doesn’t he use it?) Just want to see what’s shakin’. I don’t go onto InfoWars with Alex Jones, though. There are limits to my gag reflex. (But do listen to The Federalist Radio Hour episode linked at the end of this post,