There was a colorful and learned Judge in Mississippi named Sweat. His nickname was “Soggy.” He served in the legislature, as a Judge, and as a law professor, where one of his assistants was the author John Grisham.
Here, Grisham introduces and reads then-candidate Sweat’s speech in the 1950s when asked his stand on Whiskey, Mississippi then being dry but considering doing something different.
They don’t make ’em like that any more. (H/T Rod Dreher)
Hobby Lobby got its injunction against the “Employer [contraceptive and abortifacient] Mandate” of the Affordable Care Act.
I’m happy with the outcome, but very uneasy with the ramifications, beyond “Hobby Lobby got its injunction,” of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that corporations can have rights to the free exercise of religion. The Federal District Court was troubled, too, but complied.
What a strange world we’re living in:
- Christian business owners, like pagan business owners, incorporate, the primary purpose of which is to limit their personal liability for corporate debts and defalcations. Let me be blunt: this means someone else bears most of the loss while the business owner reaps net-after-tax rewards.
- This “corporate form” is the key to a lot of reckless economic activity and some of our economic “busts” — yes, and a lot of its booms, too.
- The Supreme Court, recognizing that key role, says that corporations – artificial persons – have some if not all constitutional rights of natural persons.
- Because prior governments tried to control wages and prices in war time, employers got the bright idea of attracting employees with free health insurance that was outside the wage freeze but deductible as a business expense.
- Americans like free stuff and employer-provided health insurance became a mania, then an expectation. Let me be blunt again: Americans become servile wage slaves because it’s convenient and, at least for a while, it left them with leisure they could fill with TV to create a simulacrum of human life. Now leisure is up for grabs, as are the full-time, family-wage jobs that provide free health insurance (but that’s a somewhat different, somewhat overlapping story).
- The Obama Administration knows no bounds in its pandering to voters with hands out for goodies, and therefore tells all employers that certain cheap sexual lifestyle drugs (sex is the new TV, the new simulacrum of human life) are “preventive healthcare” and employers with health plans must provide them.
- Christian corporate owners have some concerns either about the subset of sexual lifestyle drugs that cause very early abortion (or, in some cases, about all of the sexual lifestyle drugs) and make a peek-a-boo cameo reappearance from, behind the corporate veil< to cry “foul!”.
- Federal Circuit Court decides that free exercise of religion is, at least in some cases, one of the constitutional rights a corporation can enjoy.
Voilà! Hobby Lobby! Stay tuned!
What do you get when you cross Mother Theresa with Princess Diana?
St. Elizabeth the New Martyr, that’s what.
Glamorous, granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, daughter of Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, and older sister to Alexandra, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, she married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, governor of Moscow and uncle to Tsar Nicholas II.
A Lutheran by upbringing, Elizabeth fell in love with her husband’s faith and voluntarily converted to the Orthodox Church a few year following their marriage. She was struck by Orthodoxy’s rich spiritual beauty and inner richness in contrast to the spiritual poverty of Protestantism.
On her conversion, she wrote, “Above all, one’s conscience must be pure and true… many will – I know – scream about (it), yet I feel it brings me closer to God… You tell me that the outer brilliance of the church charmed me – no – the service, the service, the outer signs are only to remind us of the inner things .”
She was now the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feordorovna of Russia and living in a palace of the Kremlin. In Imperial Russia she was surrounded by a life of extravagant social events but found them oppressive because of their frivolity. She was devoted to her work of philanthropy to help the poor and needy of Moscow. This was expected of her and for it she received little notice for it from the public.
The Grand Duchess was right in the middle of the revolutions in Russia leading to the overthrow of the Tsar in October of 1917. In the Revolution of 1905 Grand Duke Sergei was assassinated by a revolutionist’s bomb. The night before the funeral she visited her husband’s killer in jail.There she offered her forgiveness to him and promised to appeal to the Tsar on his behalf if he would repent of the murder.
…
A few years following her husband’s death, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feordorovna sold her luxurious possessions including her collection of jewels and extravagant clothes and became a nun. She founded and became Abbess of the convent of Sts. Mary and Martha in Moscow where she not only built a chapel for prayer but also a hospital, pharmacy, and an orphanage. She devoted the rest of her life to prayer and fasting, and to helping the sick, poor, and needy reaching out to the worst slums in Moscow.
With plenty of advance warning of the revolution afoot, she could have fled, but stayed and was murdered by the Bolsheviks hours after the rest of the royal family was murdered. The following is an account by one of the executioners :
“At last we arrived at the mine. The shaft was not very deep and, as it turned out, had a ledge on one side that was not covered by water. First we led Grand Duchess Elizabeth (Ella) up to the mine. After throwing her down the shaft, we heard her struggling in the water for some time. We pushed the nun lay-sister Barbara down after her. We again heard the splashing of water and then the two women’s voices. It became clear that, having dragged herself out of the water, the Grand Duchess had also pulled her lay-sister out. But, having no other alternative, we had to throw in all the men also.
None of them, it seems, drowned, or choked in the water and after a short time we were able to hear all their voices again.Then I threw in a grenade. It exploded and everything was quiet. But not for long. We decided to wait a little to check whether they had perished. After a short while we heard talking and a barely audible groan. I threw another grenade. And what do you think – from beneath the ground we heard singing! I was seized with horror. They were singing the prayer: ‘Lord, save your people!’ We had no more grenades, yet it was impossible to leave the deed unfinished. We decided to fill the shaft with dry brushwood and set it alight. Their hymns still rose up through the thick smoke for some time yet .”
(Princess Di, Mother Theresa and St. Elizabeth; olde timey photos included if you doubt)
Her icon is in my prayer corner, where I (too rarely) ask her intercessions for fulfillment of a particular longing.
* * * * *
“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 