Nothing tends to materialise man, and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind, more than extreme division of labour.
De Toqueville, quoted in Master of Many Trades, a paean to polymaths and an indictment of monopathy.
Wesley McNair’s poem at The Writer’s Almanac, The Book of A, reminds me of what might be a fitting epitaph for my inner polymath some day, should a more suitable and pious sentiment not occur to me: “Dang! Just when I almost had things figured out!”
As this unpopular policy we call Obamacare begins to crumble from the weight of its own incompetent over-reach and mendacity, the opportunity may soon arise for policy reform, but if other voices do not have alternative plans already designed, thought-through and set for discussion when an urgent solution is called for, there will be no option left in the political imagination but a single-payer program—managed by these same incompetents—and a nation full of frightened, uninsured people willing to turn to it.
(Elizabeth Scalia) Will anyone – Republican, Democrat, Libertarian – rise to the challenge?
Wow! This Employer mandate lawsuit may have the longest legs of all. Michigan Right to Life, whose raison d’etre is opposition to abortion, has 33 employees and thus is required to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortions. Professor Friedman’s “another nonprofit” seems excessively understated for a change.
Sniff. This is so touching! From the digital dust jacket of “Courage for the Journey: Wisdom from the Broken Road“:
Wendy Weikal-Beauchat is the proud survivor of many of life’s broken roads. From divorce, to business implosion, to significant health issues, she has been there and done that. She cherishes each scar as a souvenir of her many travels down the Broken Road ….
That’s a pretty unrepentant euphemism for “embezzled $3 million from her law clients and was disbarred for it 9 months ago.” (H/T Katherine C. Pearson)
Maybe she’s trying to make money for restitution? Or her adorable daughters?
[E]vangelicals have two wings, one devoted to that mystical ascent of faith and the other toward the rational exposition of the faith. These two wings are the revivalist and confessionalist ends of the movement and they rarely beat in rhythm.
(Dale Coulter) This is a brief, interesting article, but it occurred to me the other day that the truly distinctive and shared feature of evangelicalism is a vanishingly thin ecclesiology.
Whether you’re in the right feeling camp or the right doctrine camp, you probably agree that the church is nothing more than an aid to the Lone Ranger individual attaining right feeling or right doctrine. And that delusion, I think, is largely missing from the Protestant mainstream, Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
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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 