Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

I guess the good news is that I will never suffer the fate of Terry Schiavo.  As long as I am sitting upright, my daughter will consider me not only alive and well, but capable of doing the shopping. "Gee Mom, I'm sorry you feel bad.  Is there anything here I could make you for dinner?" Sorry.  I just wanted to see how it sounded. - Karen Hall of "Some Have Hats"

As it is, creation is good not because that's the way God put it together, but because the God who put it together is good. When "God looked at everything He had made," He didn't declare it very good, as though establishing a sort of divine positive law; "He found it very good." But if it's the goodness (in fact, the perfection) of the Creator that determines how we ought to respond to creation, it's by no means incidental to how we ought to respond to sub-creation that the sub-creators are imperfectly good...We give God the benefit of the doubt, so to speak, regarding mosquitoes and such, not because He is the Creator, but because He is all good. Nothing similar follows for sub-creators. - Tom of Disputations

In the overall Western experience, state controlled education is the exception. In ancient times that exception was Sparta. It was also an early precedent for anti-family ideology. As classical scholar E. B. Castle says: "In Sparta and Athens... we are confronted with two highly contrasted educational ideals which can be easily recognized in educational practice today" (Ancient Education and Today). To put this in context, consider what the Greek chronicler Plutarch tells about the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus (c. 800 BC):

Lycurgus was of a persuasion that children were not so much the property of their parents as of the whole commonwealth.... [N]or was it lawful, indeed, for the father himself to breed up the children after his own fancy; but as soon as they were seven years old they were to be enrolled in certain companies and classes, where they all lived under the same order and discipline, doing their exercises and taking their play together.

Lycurgus wanted to control education so strictly as to regulate marriage. Children were subject to harsh discipline and exercise. Eugenics (and homosexuality) was even more arduously pursued in Sparta than the rest of pagan Greece. Spartan women were scorned by other nations for their aggressive, unfeminine behavior, while boys learned to be deceitful and ruthless to outsiders, even as they displayed automaton-like loyalty to their own. Presaging militaristic Prussia and Hitler's Reich, Spartans lived only for the state which, in turn, existed only for war. In key respects, the structure of Sparta's totalitarian education is indistinguishable from the aims of the left-liberal establishment. - Matthew M. Anger via Jim Curley

It is hubristic--pretending to know with some certain what objective artistic merit is. I've seen Zippy throw the term around and then actively support the burning of all Picassos; I've come to suspect that he has no better idea than I do of what this objectivity looks like.- Steven Riddle

The problem with the article (and with much radtrad anti-semitism) is that it never actually defines 'Jew' or 'Jewish': thus it can label revolutionary leaders as 'Jewish Bolsheviks', although not one of the Communist leaders were anything but contemptuous of their ancestral religion. It's precisely the same approach (which I grew up with, actually, being born to non-practising Jewish parents) which leads modern Jews to see Hitler and his party as 'Christian'. It never distinguishes between background and belief, between ethnicity and practice. - commenter on Mark Shea's blog, via Terrence Berres

From the point of view of Christians, the Jews are indeed the chosen people, and Gnostics hate that because they hate history. History is free, meaning that it is the arena of human freedom and responsibility. Creation is a free act of God, and being created in the image of God is being created in freedom, and one has to freely accept that freedom & the responsibility that goes with it. Gnostics, like pagans generally, believe that freedom is irrational and history is meaningless. They can't stand the idea that God is free, that he has freely chosen the Jews, that through them he has taught us that human responsibilty matters- in fact, that everything matters. Gnostics (and a great modern example is Yale University's Harold Bloom- Omens of the Millenium) cannot accept that the evil in the world comes from free human actions under the judgment of God. Their attitude is: It's not my fault- it's the Demi-urge's fault, it's the government's fault, it's that people are not enlightened, etc. So they seek one of two solutions: either they escape from history through various mystical practices, or they attempt to stifle freedom by the imposition of some kind of totalitarianism. - emailer to Jonah Goldberg of "The Corner"

His prose, and the mind-numbingly solipsistic 'vision' it manifests, is such that only an adolescent could love it...I mean, just consider - Emerson found the Unitarians too restrictive, too traditionalist, too authoritarian. I think that's all we need to know. - Tom of Endlessly Rocking

I can't help but love Ann Coulter...Please. Don't splutter at me that she's a reckless bomb thrower. Of course she is! So was Lenny Bruce, who famously remarked of LBJ "Where's Lee Harvey Oswald when you need him?" But you know what? Bruce could be funny and perceptive, as when he remarked that the Catholic Church is the only "The Church". And Coulter's damn funny and perceptive too. Which is why she drives her ideological opponents crazy. Do I look to her for political wisdom and guidance? Of course not! But I do look at her as a fine political satirist and usually find myself laughing at her remarks, even when I know they are not what you would call accurate policy statements. - Mark Shea

I discovered a toad in the yard the other day and the kids took a great liking to him. Gus captured him from the vicinity of the lawn mower and brought him to Terri's garden. He stayed there all night and was "invited" to swim in the kiddie pool the next day. He absolutely loved this and we were completely captivated by his athletic prowess. We found a nice little log (complete with tasty bugs) to float in the kiddie pool and he was in froggie heaven....We named him Blog. - blogger at "Studeo"

I learned from watching this [St. Ignatius] movie -- told in a completely linear fashion -- that my problem in structuring the same store becomes quite vivid when dramatized.  The first third of the story makes for great drama.  And then he gets holy. Wonderful for the world.  Bad for drama.  And the reason that no one has ever made a good movie about the life of St. Ignatius.  Imagine the ad campaign:  "You'll be on the edge of your seat as Ignatius writes the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus!"  Almost as exciting to watch as the year he spent in a cave.  But that's my problem, not yours.  Set the Tivo and make sure you have some microwave movie popcorn on hand.  The last 2/3 of this movie is not boring.....if you think of it as a comedy. In its defense, Sr. Anne has always said that she felt that even though it was thoroughly bad and corny, there must be something of St. Ignatius' spirit in this silly movie, because of the way it had moved her -- in spite of itself -- when she saw it for the first time. - Karen Hall on 1951 movie, "Loyola, the Soldier Saint"

Update: Zippy responds to being quoted above:

And although when I suggested the Picasso bonfire I was being ironic in the face of an aesthetic all-or-nothingism, his more vulgar works probably really should be burned.