Beholding the Beauty

Michelle Obama is spearheading a war on obesity. I think obesity has indeed become a problem.  I do not, however, agree with Mrs. Obama that the answer is to  mandate, from the Federal or State level, what we can and can't eat.  That's just more government, more tyranny, more bureaucracy, which means more cost.  It's ultimately not sustainable anyway, and will cause more harm than good. The actual problem runs deep: consumerism, which manifests as gluttony.  We cannot fix that with any government incentive. However, there is another thing that is exacerbating the problem immensely, and we can  fix that legislatively, since it is caused by legislation.  That "thing" is the vast array of obesity-helping products that we consume in rather vast quantities, including (but not limited to) high-fructose corn syrup. Scientists and doctors agree that over-consumption of high-fructose corn syrup is one of the leading causes of obesity.  But why...

I would like to clarify some things about my support for Ron Paul specifically, and the R3VOLUTION in general. I am getting some very disturbing vibes out of the Campaign the last couple of days.  This has prompted some introspection on my part.  So here goes. Ron Paul is both a man and a movement.  But as a movement, the label "Ron Paul" is just that: a label, nothing more.  He happens to be the one leading the charge at the moment. We've known from the beginning that the man is not the movement.  He started it, yes (or rather, preserved it through the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II years).  But the movement is a fundamentally deeper, vaster, and more powerful thing than even he understands, I think. I say this because, although he himself has said many times, "You can't stop an idea who's time has come," his campaign released a statement to the effect of "Ok, now everybody play nice" today. This was, undoubtedly, in response to two v...

I found this post to be quite good. I actually teared up a bit. :) http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/the-intuition-of-narnia/

Well, I was going to write a nice piece on Iran, but I don't think I need to. Lawrence Vance over at lewrockwell.com already did , and I'm not sure how much more I can add. I may still write one of my own, but I'm not sure. Read his piece in the meanwhile. :)

I recently read this article , in which the author vociferously whines about Ron Paul's takeover of her local Republican Party. In the comments, several Ron Paul supporters responded calmly, cogently, and intelligently. For the most part, they were met with ignorant, childish, ad hominem responses. However, I was intrigued by this comment , made in reply to a Dr. Paul supporter. It was one of the few non-Paul-supporter written posts that actually added to the conversation, both in content and form. In summary, he raises the question of Dr. Paul's competency to accomplish his vision, and also about the timeline that the good Congressman has set for doing so. Is he able to? and wouldn't that plunge the world into chaos? My answer to both of these questions is "Yes". However, my answer to the second is continued, "...and he knows it, but he also knows it won't happen on that timeline. But I'm OK with that, and so is he, and here's why....

People nowadays. Seriously! Apparently people have no clue how to actually think through things anymore, and understand subtleties. Everything is knee-jerk reaction to 5 second sound bites and inflaming headlines (the articles for which they obviously don't bother to read, and if they do, the content is so overshadowed by their emotion toward the misleading article they might as well not have read it, for all the rational thinking they do about it). Case in point: http://www.facebook.com/yahoonews/posts/10150646348471037 If you actually read the article and listen to what Dr. Paul says, you see that he is making a clear distinction between the Federal Government vs. the States and the People. He is not against helping your neighbor at all. He is against stealing from some people and borrowing from our enemies in order to inefficiently and stupidly muck things up worse, all in the name of "charity", not to mention upholding the Constitution! In this, he is well i...

After my "epiphany" earlier, it remained only to unpack the details of the simple concept. I started by bringing to mind one of my favorite saints: St. Nina, Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of Georgia. Several things stick out about her life. First of all, would you look at that title! Is that big, or is that big? No Protestant missionary I know of would be considered on par with the Apostles, let a alone given an official title of equality. No Protestant missionary I know of would be considered "Enlightener" of an entire nation. But when you delve into the details of her work, you see that the title is not hubris, and it's not exaggeration either. St. Nina, by the grace of God, became truly worthy of it. More importantly, we begin to see the scale on which evangelism is carried out in the Orthodox Church. Other examples abound, such the work of St. Joseph of Aramathea in England, St. Patrick in Ireland, Sts. Cyril and Methodius among the Slavs...