He Really Is Bringing Us Together

I know people from all across the political spectrum. And, I must confess, when my progressive friends touted Pres. Obama as being the one who would bring this country together, I was skeptical. I remained skeptical for what I thought were good reasons until very recently. But a spirit of unity is sweeping through the land and I would be foolish not to acknowledge it.

Absolutely no one I know is in favour of intervening in Syria. And I know some genuine troglodytes on the right and rabid progressives on the left. Not one of them is for it.

God bless you President Obama. It took you seven years but you have pulled us all together.

Good Government Project

Here are some neat photographs from the Depression about the Irwinville Farms project. I used to live and work not fifteen miles from there.

100 Years of London Style

Gary, Indiana

I'm not sure why I find pictures of dying cities so haunting, but I do.

From Boing Boing.

Briar Patch, Don't Throw Me Dep't.

"If the Victorians turned up off our shores and threatened me with a gold standard, 7% taxes, property rights, free trade, the right to bear arms, the restitution of double jeopardy, free association, and the right to remain silent, while at the same time guaranteeing the repeal of civil forfeiture and detention without trial, etc., etc., etc., I would welcome them with open arms."

From here.

What We Need Today

I just came across this Wikipedia entry. Until today I had never heard of this project. These songs need to be remastered and released on CD pronto!

I've heard Burl Ives quite a lot. I've even heard him sing some of these songs. This compilation must be incredible.

Abandoned Places

This is eerie, neat and a bit disturbing. Well worth taking a gander at. The site is safe for work.

Oh This Will End Well

Because catering to dictators and appeasing tyrants always works. The hallmark of a diplomatic clown is when the sole benefit of a deal is that it will make the aggressor feel better.

This day in history

Banastre Tarleton was born today.

Two notes about Francis Marion.

I really dislike the Disney show.

Here in Georgia folks are prone to claiming descent from a Cherokee princess. In South Carolina the same sort make the same claim about Francis Marion. The Cherokee had no royalty, so they didn't have princesses. Francis Marion had no known descendants. Oddly enough, neither did Banastre Tarleton.

On a side note, several people on a mailing list I read were claiming some sort of connection with William Porcher DuBose. What made that amusing was how tenuous and strained their reaching became. I went to high school and college with Dede Dubose, who happens to be his granddaughter. Her brother Billy graduated from Sewanee in 1977 and lives in South Carolina.
That's a legitimate connection, if you will.

Amazing Art

from Samizdata

History Lesson

Maximum PC has put up a neat photo essay about the history of the personal computer.

The other side

As a follow up to my prior post about unintended consequences, there is another side to the question. The workhouses of Dickensian fame were deliberately created to be miserable because their creators were concerned that if they were too comfortable they might result in a class of idle layabouts. Further, and we see this today with prison labour, the tasks that the poor were required to perform were of marginal use.

An Outmoded Passion?

A few days ago, Instapundit linked to an oped in the LA Times discussing patriotism as being passe. It's quite the thing to not believe in American exceptionalism these days.

There's a very famous short story that no one reads anymore that deals with the subject. But of course, people in ages past knew nothing about anything.

I'm a patriot because I have lived in Canada and the Belgium. I love my country because we are unique. We are the only country established in furtherance of a set of principles. And when we have flourished it has been because we adhered to those principles.

But of course, our Founding Fathers knew nothing about anything.

Learning History from the Movies

Today is Dec. 7, the day that this government killed over 80,000 Japanese civilians at Hiroshima in 1941, two days before killing an additional 64,000 Japanese civilians at Nagasaki by dropping nuclear bombs on innocent people.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright

{H/T to the Reformed Pastor}

Of course, we all really know what happened back on December 7, 1941:



Of course the important thing is to do as the following video suggests:

Remember, Remember

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I see no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli'ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

Some crafty tips to help prepare:





and



Finally, some theme music:

London, 1904

This is just nifty



I'd love to see all twelve minutes of film.

Fifty Two Years Ago

The Political History of the West Explained

Warning: naughty language. Read it here. Note the many comparisons to a certain trendy contemporary tv show.

The Last Time We Split

I read a quotation from this on the House of Bishops and Deputies mailing list. Here is a taster. The entirety is well worth the read.

BRETHREN OF THE CLERGY AND LAITY:

We meet, to-day, under circumstances very unlike any which have ever surrounded us since our connection as Bishop and people. Hitherto we have assembled as an Ecclesiastical Council, with no cares resting upon our hearts save those which concerned the Church of Christ. To-day we feel most painfully, in addition to these, the sorrow which arises from the severed ties of friendship and of country. Hitherto peace has ever smiled upon our meetings with her bright face of prosperity and security. To-day the whole land is resounding with the preparation for war--war with those who, until a few months since, were our countrymen and our brethren. Hitherto our Church has moved undisturbed through all the storms which have agitated the civil State. To-day a stern necessity is laid upon us to examine relations which we fondly hoped would be indestructible. May God's Holy Spirit shed more abundantly than ever upon us the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, and may we receive grace to put away from us all pride, prejudice, and passion, and to consult together as the children of the God of Love and disciples of the Prince of Peace.

As an ordinary rule, the Church of Christ has but little to do with political events, and our own branch of that Church has most scrupulously avoided all entanglement with parties and their unceasing conflicts. She has ever inculcated the Apostolic rule that "the powers which be are ordained of God," and has enjoined upon her members the Christian duties of reverence for established authority, and of obedience to law and order. Even up to this moment, through all the angry discussions, and excited passions of the last seventy years, she has never, in any of her numerous synodical conventions, taken any part in the sectional movements which have agitated and convulsed the Union. Although the ablest laymen of the country, many of them politicians, warmly engaged in the current strife of the day, have held seats in her councils, they have invariably abstained, while in Ecclesiastical session, from all interference with politics, and have ever confined themselves to the legitimate business of the Church, the advancement of "Peace on earth, good will towards men." Whatever may have been their private opinions, they have carefully held them in abeyance, while engaged in the councils of the Church. This wise and Christian conduct has made the Episcopal Church a wonder and a glory in the land, and while most of the other Christian bodies of the late United States have been engaged in strife and bitter contention, and have many of them long since severed all christian union and communion, our Church has never permitted these distracting questions to enter within her consecrated walls. Amid the present confusion and distraction of the country, she can lift up clean hands and a pure heart and appeal to the God of Heaven that she has had no part nor lot, as a Church, in producing the strife which is rapidly marching to dip its feet in blood.

But while, as a Church, she has had no share in producing the condition of things which exists around her, she is nevertheless involved in that condition, and cannot, by any means, be made independent of it. Every member of the Church is a member likewise of the Commonwealth, unless, as Hooker says in the 8th book of his Ecclesiastical Polity, "the name of the Church be restrained in a Christian Commonwealth to the Clergy, excluding all the residue of believers." And being members at the same time of the Church and of the Commonwealth, the circumstances and relations of the one must affect the circumstances and relations of the other. 'Tis true that "under dominion of infidels" as in the times of the primitive Church, "the Church of Christ and their Commonwealth were two societies independent," but in that case a state of antagonism existed between Christianity and Paganism, which absolutely forbad any mutual dependency between them. But when the Commonwealth, as in our times, is, if not professedly, at least practically, Christian, it is almost impossible to draw any line which can separate the relations of the Church from the relations of the Commonwealth. The actions of the Commonwealth being the actions of the citizens of that Commonwealth, and those citizens making up the body of the Church and forming its Legislature, there must be, inevitably, a mutual relationship and dependency. It can not be got rid of, without abolishing the whole framework of constitutional and canonical law which binds the Protestant Episcopal Church of this country.

Reflection on GAFCON

The Global Anglican Future Conference is going on in Jerusalem. Many people, most of whom are smarter and better educated than I am, have commented at great length about it.

The question I keep asking myself about the future of my church is "What would Athanasius do?" The problem is that his situation was not exactly on all fours with ours. On a related topic, Deacon Phil asks the valuable question of "who are the schismatics?"

At this point, I really wish there was a handy desert nearby to which I could retire for some meditation. As it is, a long car drive will have to substitute for an anchorite pillar.