Quote of the Day

From Mark Steyn in April's issue of Imprimis:

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government "security," large numbers of people vote to dump freedom every time—the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, and a ton of other stuff. It's ridiculous for grown men and women to say: I want to be able to choose from hundreds of cereals at the supermarket, thousands of movies from Netflix, millions of songs to play on my iPod—but I want the government to choose for me when it comes to my health care. A nation that demands the government take care of all the grown-up stuff is a nation turning into the world's wrinkliest adolescent, free only to choose its record collection.

Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College, is always a good read, and it's free! Click here to subscribe.

"The tragedy of bad ideas"

Don't miss Andrew Klavan on The Stoning of Soraya M. Here's a peek:

The events now unfolding in Iran, some 23 years after Soraya's death, provide the answer. The movie's detailed and unflinching depiction of a world and a worldview make "The Stoning of Soraya M." a different kind of tragedy, what you might call a tragedy of culture or a tragedy of bad ideas.

The tragedy of bad ideas unfolds from a moral flaw in a worldview or philosophy as inevitably as classical tragedy unfolds from a flaw in individual character. Tragedies of bad ideas are the most common, pervasive and destructive man-made mass disasters. Yet our thinking class has become powerless to oppose them or even recognize them for what they are.

The reason is that too many of our intellectuals are themselves ensnared in a bad idea. That idea is multiculturalism -- the notion that no system or government is inherently better than any other, that the rules of morality are just a doctrine written by history's winners. Thus there are no enduring human truths, only "narratives" by which almost any beastliness can be explained away if committed by a people with a claim to having been victimized by a dominant culture.

The Stoning of Soraya M is a movie I don't necessarily want to see because of the horror of the story line, but I'm compelled to see and hope that it will be in a movie theater here in Hawaii at some point.

Just a Little Helpful Hint

Don't go spend a day on the beach the weekend before your annual visit to the dermatologist. He won't be happy with you. And, yes, this pale Scots-Irish girl is very careful to wear sunscreen, but sometimes she misses spots.

So What's the Difference?

Back in March I mentioned North Korea's intention to launch a missile that could reach Hawaii, and I lamented this response of the Obama administration:

Appearing on "FOX News Sunday," Gates said North Korea "probably will" fire the missile, prompting host Chris Wallace to ask: "And there's nothing we can do about it?"

"No," Gates answered, adding, "I would say we're not prepared to do anything about it."

Last week, Admiral Timothy Keating, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said the U.S. is "fully prepared" to shoot down the missile. But Gates said such a response is unlikely.

"I think if we had an aberrant missile, one that was headed for Hawaii, that looked like it was headed for Hawaii or something like that, we might consider it," Gates said. "But I don't think we have any plans to do anything like that at this point."

So what's the difference this time? Why send an anti-missile system to Hawaii and deploy the SBX radar (the humongous golf ball that is usually anchored in Pearl Harbor) this time when the SBX stayed in port last time?

I have less and less confidence in this administration, and I started out with virtually none.

Last Weekend

Last weekend, PalmPilot and I got away to Waikiki and stayed at the historic Moana Surfider hotel. I loved this view from the rocking chairs on the front porch. The people-watching from this shady porch is some of the best ever, and the architecture isn't bad, either.

Hmmmmmmm.

North Korea may fire a missile at Hawaii on July 4th:

North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.

Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii's main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.

I sure hope those intelligence analysts are right!

A Prayer Request

One of my very first blog friends, Patrick the Paragraph Farmer, is asking for prayers for his daughter who was seriously injured in a car accident yesterday. Please pray for Jane.

Quote of the Day

Doug Wilson on ABC's full-on promotion of President Obama's government health care plan:

But overlooked in all this is the sad fact that the sickness that afflicts ABC News will not be helped by any amount of health care reform whatever. For alas, they are sick with love.

Do read the whole thing.

Ha!

From the Anchoress:

Barack Obama is imperious Lady Catherine DeBurgh, and the press is the oafish, intellectually vapid, incurious Mr. Collins, bowing and agreeing, and silencing himself for the sake of her bare acceptance.

There's lots more there, too, so read the whole thing.

Quote of the Day

From Robert Harris's Pompeii:

Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the centre of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer -- it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us -- we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little -- a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behaviour, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was Nature, sweeping toward him -- unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent -- and he saw in Her fires the futility of human pretensions.

Quote of the Day

It's near and dear to my heart, and it's at JollyBlogger.

Quote of the Day

From J.I. Packer's Knowing God:(italics in original)

In paganism, man propitiates his gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and, indeed, of bribery. In Christianity, however, God propitiates his wrath by his own action. He set forth Jesus Christ, says Paul, to be a propitiation; he sent his Son, says John, to be the propitiation for our sins. It was not man, to whom God was hostile, who took the initiative to make God friendly, nor was it Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, who took the initiative to turn his Father's wrath against us into love. The idea that the kind Son changed the mind of his unkind Father by offering himself in place of sinful man is no part of the gospel message -- it is a sub-Christian, indeed an anti-Christian, idea, for it denies the unity of will in the Father and the Son and so in reality falls back into polytheism, asking us to believe in two different gods. Bu the Bible rules this out absolutely by insisting that it was God himself who took the initiative in quenching his own wrath against those whom, despite their ill-desert, he loved and had chosen to save.

I Like This Place

And I don't mean Hawaii, although I certainly do love it (especially after my drive to Costco today on which I nearly ran off the road because the ocean was the most vivid blue/green I've ever seen). I do mean the particular place I've arrived in my thinking about homeschooling. Over the weekend I read a really lame attack on homeschooling that I won't bother linking, but it set off a little storm in the blogosphere and got some folks upset, or at least annoyed. Once upon a time I would have spent way too much time composing a post to refute it, but not this time. As I read the post and all the comments and followed the links to rebuttals, I realized that it matters very little to me what others, especially ill-informed others, think about my and PalmPilot's decision to homeschool our children.

This is what I know: God has entrusted to me and PalmPilot two precious children. Using the wisdom that He provides, we believe that for our family and our children, educating them primarily at home (through a variety of means) is the best way for us to nurture and equip them to be wise, mature, discerning, productive, godly adults. He has provided for us in such a way that I have been able to devote most of my time to this calling, and it is a good fit for our family. He has given me a passion for this calling, as well.

While I do believe that all parents need to be vigilant about our freedoms to educate our children as we see fit, I don't think we need to give a lot of time and attention to every opinion. There will always be people who think all homeschoolers are geeks or that all public school kids are hoodlums or that all private school kids are snobs. I'm responsible for my two children. And I'm fine with that.

Yeah, I like this place.