Random Summer Post

Lots going on, but not much to talk about.

I had a great “getting things done” day around the house yesterday. I checked off a long list of to-do’s that needed to get done.

I’m reading Simply Christian by N. T. Wright. As is usual for Wright, it’s good. I’d love to get a curious pre-Christian’s opinion about it. Anybody know one who would be interested enough to read a book by the Bishop of Durham?

I saw Nacho Libre with Riddle on Friday night. There are plenty of quotes in there for everybody. My favorite: They don’t think I know a butt-load of crap about the gospel, but I do. I may put this one on my blog header.

Here’s a nice quote from Crunchy Cons that explains what the author means by “Crunchy Conservatives.”

There is an older, less-ideological tradition, a sensibility that comes out in people I call crunchy conservatives. We are are conservatives by conviction and temperament, and usually vote Republican, but we’re “crunchy”–as in the slang for “earthy”–because we stand alongside a number of of lefties who don’t buy in to the consumerist and individualist mainstream of American life. It seems to crunchy cons that most Americans are so busy bargain-shopping and bed-hopping, or talking about their shopping and screwing selves, that they’re missing the point of life. Sex and commerce are find things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones along. A life led collecting thing and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it’s not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat the soul, and crunchy cons believe that both must be resisted in our personal and communal lives. Mainstream liberalism and conservatism, as the agrarian essayist Wendell Berry said, are “perfectly useless” to combat the forces of contemporary American society that are pulling families and communities apart. Berry says that most liberals won’t take a stand against anything that limits sexual autonomy, and most conservatives won’t oppose anything that limits economic freedom.

If you like that quote, read the book. You won’t agree with everything he says, but you’ll do a lot of thinking and soul-searching.

Cruncy Cons, Nacho Libre, Wendell Berry,