Tag: Blithe Spirit

The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times

Quotation of the Day…

. . . offered by the excellent Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux proprietor:

… is from pages 11-12 of Hayek’s 1948 collection, Individualism and Economic Order; in particular, it’s from one of Hayek’s most profound and important essays, namely, his December 1945 Finlay Lecture in Dublin, “Individualism: True and False”:

[Adam] Smith’s chief concern was not so much with what man might occasionally         achieve when he was at his best but that he should have as little opportunity as possible to do harm when he was at his worst.

. . . See the rest at Cafe H.

On the day after 9/11 (13), cold water splashed . . .

. . . on our unwillingness to call a spade a spade:

What is so troubling is the ongoing insistence that there is no connection between the attacks of September 11, 2001 and Islam. It isn’t to say that every single Muslim in the world bears responsibility for 9/11.

But if we insist on pretending their [sic]  isn’t a critical mass of Muslims prepared to murder innocent civilians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, in the name of Islam, then we only succeed in insulting our intelligence, thus ensuring that this will continue to happen.

Really now, what else can come of such root-level self-deception?

To be specific:

There is a problem within Islam and the consequences of this problem is the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda and the beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIS and numerous incidents in between. According to the website, the Religion of Peace, there have been 23,795 acts of Islamic terrorism since September 11, 2001.

Which is a lot of terrorism to close your eyes to. Quite a problem for one religion.

Konerko the batting student

In a great NYTimes story about loyalty and unending curiosity.

Wooed by the Orioles after the 2005 season,

Konerko stayed [with the Sox], of course, for five years and $60 million, or $5 million less than the Orioles’ best offer. [His agent’s] final counteroffer was for $90 million . . . a figure so high that it signaled Konerko’s desire to stay.

It was an offer to scare recruiters away.

One reason Konerko stayed, he said, was his strong relationship with the hitting coaches Greg Walker and Mike Gellinger, who indulged Konerko’s wish to learn everything he possibly could about his swing. Walker, who now coaches for Atlanta, once said he spent more time breaking down mechanics with Konerko than he did with all his other hitters combined.

He was a student of the game he was playing, never tiring of working out the secrets of batting.

“We were having a conversation by the cage, oh, I guess this was a couple of months ago, and he was talking me through what he was working on at the time,” [executive vice president Kenny] Williams said. “I said: ‘You know what’s going to happen to you? About two years after you retire, you’re going to call me. You’re going be walking in your house and feel something and you’re going to call me and say, “I got it! I got it! Now I got it figured out!” ’ ”

Williams laughed. What, he was asked, did Konerko say?

“He said, ‘You’re probably right.’ ”

Let’s hear it for dedication to the work at hand.

Beware the extreme Muslim

They’ve done it before, will do it again, won’t stop.

Allah’s animals can’t stop. They won’t stop. Sura 9:5, the verse of the sword, commands them to “slay the idolators wherever you find them, and take them, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” No “pagan” throat is safe: American soldiers, worldly journalists, innocent schoolgirls, Jewish teenage boys and Christian missionaries alike are all targets of Sura 47’s call to “smite the necks” of the unbelievers.

They did not get the message that Islam is a religion of peace.

How priests can save their souls

From Ezekiel 33, the first reading for today:

Thus says the LORD:
You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel;
when you hear me say anything, you shall warn them for me.
If I tell the wicked, “O wicked one, you shall surely die, ”
and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,
the wicked shall die for his guilt.

But if you warn the wicked,
trying to turn him from his way,
and he refuses to turn from his way,
he shall die for his guilt,
but you shall save yourself.

It’s a hard saying, who can endorse it?

It will not be interpreted that way from many pulpits, if from any. Indeed, as with many OT selections, it will be passed over in silence.