A Thinking Reed

  • Alison on sin, wrath and the “deathlessness” of God

    I’ve been reading James Alison’s The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin Through Easter Eyes, and he has an interesting take on the relation between forgiveness, sin, and the wrath of God. Alison, as readers may know, is a follower of Rene Girard’s theory of mimetic violence and uses it as a key to understand…

  • Wednesday punk – Refused, “New Noise”

    Just for fun, here’s the Swedish punk band Refused from their nearly flawless 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come: Between this and the death metal, you have to ask: what are the Swedes of all people so pissed off about?

  • The evangelical crack-up: not all it’s cracked up to be

    An honest-to-goodness evangelical pours some cold water on David Kirkpatrick’s NY Times Magazine piece on the splintering of political evangelicalism. (via Jeremy) I’ve seen a number of outlets assume that evangelical dissatisfaction with Bush and the GOP must be dissatisfaction from the Left. While younger evangelicals may indeed have a newfound concern for issues like…

  • Moneybags Paul

    Ron Paul raised $4.2 million in Internet contributions in a 24-hour period yesterday as part of a concerted fundraising campaign. Wow! Paul’s total deposed Mitt Romney as the single-day fundraising record holder in the Republican presidential field. When it comes to sums amassed in one day, Paul now ranks only behind Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton,…

  • Worse than Gonzales?

    Via Gaius, John Nichols says that Mukasey is just that. And it’s not just the waterboarding issue, bad as that is, but his general perspective on executive power and privilege: “Mukasey Is (Much) Worse Than Gonzales.” Makes one long for the halcyon days of John Ashcroft.

  • A food bill, not a farm bill

    Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) writes about the unprecedented amount of attention the farm bill has been getting this year from environmental, health, and international development groups. Unfortunately, he says, the traditional interest groups have largely managed to craft a bill to their liking. They did this by adding on some programs as sops to…

  • Flew’s conversion – greatly exaggerated?

    I blogged last week about a new book published by British philosopher and atheist-turned-deist Antony Flew which supposedly details his newfound belief in God (or at least a god of some kind). Now, via Ross Douthat, I see there’s some legitimate reason to think that Flew, apparently in declining health and mental acuity, may have…

  • One more presidential candidate selector

    This one has neat graphics showing the candidates’ little heads rise or decline in status as you answer the questions. My top three were (unsurprisingly) Gravel, Paul, and Kucinich. Is it worrisome that the people with whom I agree the most are also the most personally, ahem, eccentric?

  • Greener markets?

    Gristmill ran a rejoinder to the post I linked to last week advocating a localized, greener economy. The author, Ryan Avent, takes issue with the “buy local” mantra, arguing that local economies would reduce standards of living and that international trade and markets are compatible with reducing our ecological footprint. I’m not confident in my…

  • Will on congressional spinelessness

    Also from today’s Post, George Will has a terrific column on how Congress has abdicated its responsibility for decisions to go to war: “Congress’s Unused War Powers.”