Gordon Crovitz at the Wall Street Journal obviously would differ somewhat with the Felix Salmon’s assessment of new general solicitation rules for raising capital, which I quoted recently:
Last year, Congress and the White House managed to agree on a law to lessen the regulatory burden on startup companies so they can get outside capital more easily. But when the Securities and Exchange Commission finished the supposed deregulation last week, startups and their angel investors discovered they face more regulation, not less. It must be so long since Washington tried to deregulate something that it’s forgotten how.
In other words, Crovitz thinks startups will be too scared of hitting a trip-wire to invite us to gamble on them, and the promise of new ways to squander money will prove illusory.
Rod Dreher explains why he’ll not return to Roman Catholicism:
[T]he supposed heartless rigor of the John Paul/Benedict church was not only a mirage, but rather the lack of moral rigor and spiritual seriousness in the life of the American church was a contributing factor to the loss of my own Catholic faith.
(Rod Dreher) That’s from a Time magazine piece. In his blog he adds:
If I had the essay to write over, I would have added these lines:
To be sure, the primary reason I’m not for turning back to Rome is because I do not believe Catholic doctrine any longer. Even if I thought Francis was the second coming of John the Baptist, I couldn’t rejoin a church in whose ecclesiological claims I have ceased to believe. The point here is simply that the aspect of Francis’s papal ministry that the world sees as a feature is, for people like me, a bug.
Anyway, read the whole thing.
Jamey Bennett, whose story is much different than mine, and probably than Rod Dreher’s, nevertheless identifies ten cogent reasons to become Orthodox. My favorite line:
I was talking to my good friend Ken Petty, a Calvinist, who related a conversation to me that he had with an evangelical leader. This leader described Eastern theology as having been
“stagnant for the last thousand years.”
I laughed and asked him,
“And this is a problem, how?”
You say “stagnant,” I say “stable.”
Purdue’s new football coach wanted to keep his players out of jail. He lost that one, too, times two.
Unfortunately, store security took back the stolen tie bars so they couldn’t even check into Chez Taxpayer nattily attired.
I don’t know why they wanted tie bars anyway, with a string of losses and not so much as one tie.
[T]he members of Mr. Cowen’s new underclass would accept their lot without much complaint, certainly without revolting against it. Even though they had no prospects for escape, they would enjoy cheap food and cheap fun, and that would be enough to pacify them.
If this were Swiftian satire, Mr. Cowen could retire the Best Deadpan Award. But it isn’t. It’s a prediction coupled with the injunction that resistance is futile. There’s nothing we can do, says Mr. Cowen, to avert a future in which 10% to 15% of Americans enjoy fantastically wealthy and interesting lives while the rest slog along without hope of a better life, tranquilized by free Internet and canned beans.
Bread and circuses is not the policy of a republic, but rather of an empire entering moral senescence.
(Wall Street Journal review of Tyler Cowen’s Average is Over.)
Whether by accident or design, Mr. Cowen’s book represents a fundamental challenge. To government-hating, market-worshiping conservatives, it poses a question: If this is the consequence of your creed, are you prepared to endorse it? To liberals and progressives: What are you going to do about it? And to all of us: Is this a country you would want to live in?
I know I wouldn’t.
I’ve seen the future—and it doesn’t work.
To be a woman … simply means to become biologically more like a man. To do this, a woman’s innate and natural potential to procreate, nurture, and bear a new human life must be stripped away and handed over to science and technology. Only when all human beings do not bear children will a genuine equality be more closely approached ….
Whether by accident or design, this kind of thinking represents a fundamental challenge. To defenders of abortion in the name of equality, it poses a question: If this is the consequence of your creed, are you prepared to endorse it? To liberals and progressives: What are you going to do to nip it in the bud? Does equality really mean erasing difference?
And get this:
In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
Is that not crazy?
(Discussing a poll on Jewish religious identity: “The first major survey of American Jews in more than 10 years finds a significant rise in those who are not religious, marry outside the faith and are not raising their children Jewish — resulting in rapid assimilation that is sweeping through every branch of Judaism except the Orthodox.”)
No, Rod, I don’t think being a Christian Jew (or Messianic Jew) is crazy. I don’t think such a person would be dishonest in saying they’re Jewish. But were I a Jew who practiced Judaism ardently, I probably would see it as an ominous sign of assimilation. The Christian Jew’s grandchildren aren’t very likely to identify as Jewish even in an ethnic sense, I suppose.
What’s crazy forbidden in historic Christian terms is Judaizing, and it continues being a temptation both for Jewish converts to Evangelicalism and to Dispensationalist philosemites (the kinds of folks who fake a Seder for Easter).
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“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 