How pleasant to be able to share a few links again...
Animals
Rich variety of moths, big and small. It may help to look up the actual sizes; photos tend to let each moth fill the space available, when that space may be twenty times the moth's size, or a quarter of it.
Identity
I don't think this man should be in the United States, if that's how he feels, anyway. If he's posting from a Muslim country, organizing a group of American Muslims to emigrate there, that's all right. But let's just say--people around the world risk their lives for a chance to "become American." If you do not like being American, for mercy's sake, get out of this country and let one of those people take your place.
He's right about one thing, though. Although we are meant to be able to take pride in our physical ancestors and enjoy their cultural traditions, religious identity does need to come first. Our allegiance to God, by whatever name we know, is more important than our allegiance to any flag or any nation for which it stands. We should be Christians or Jews or whatever else first, Americans or Canadians or whatever else second.
In every nation's recent history there are always plenty of things to make people exclaim, "My country, right or wrong...when wrong, to be put right." It's not necessary to go back to so-called legacies of slavery or colonialism or blah blah from centuries ago. Within the last ten years we will find much that needs to be put right. This web site has said much in praise of the legislative work of men who are justly honored for what they've done in Richmond and Washington, and yet, although Terry Kilgore, Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and Morgan Griffith, any or all of them, would be in a position to strike down any so-called "right to spray" in the face of clear evidence that poison spraying is being deliberately used to injure human beings, none of the four has stirred a wing or opened a mouth and cheeped. (Yes, that elaborate way of calling them chickenhearted has a Biblical precedent: Isaiah 10:14.) They all have the status and the authority and the support of their constituents that they would need to stand up to Bayer. What they all lack is the fortitude. And, yes, that is an abuse of Americans, against which we can and should draw moral support from our fellow believers in all times and places.
Anyway, whatever you may feel called to work on...as the old bumper sticker motto goes...put your heart where you choose to live, or get your burro out.
Immigration
What shall we do with a lazy immigrant? I don't know, I've never seen one. I've seen the kind that work through unbelievable physical disabilities. I've seen the kind that go to day labor sites and figure they'll learn English on jobs, starting with the kind where people point and shout at them until they figure out how to say things like "We load couches for shipping." Actually, when people aren't feeling desperate and overcrowded and therefore prejudiced, I suspect most immigrants self-select for willingness to work hard and be good neighbors. Daniel J. Mitchell claims to have found evidence that lazy ungrateful immigrants exist, shaped by government handouts, in some parts of Europe.
Magazines
Why blogs are better than commercial magazines! Don't look back!
No comments:
Post a Comment