Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts

Sunday, October 22, 2017

Kings and Functionaries

One must be careful what one wishes for, not to mention one’s choice of words.

Israel said to the prophet Samuel, “Appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” They were looking for a judge and a defender, someone who would grant them justice against their domestic enemies and take up arms against foreign enemies on their behalf. Instead, in Saul, after an initial honeymoon period, they got a king who judged them arbitrarily, oppressively, selfishly and moodily, and who fought on their behalf with only limited success.

Exactly like all the nations.

Monday, December 08, 2014

Rabbit Language

“Hmm. How to proceed ...”
A Thanksgiving blog post (American, that is — I’m not running that far behind) has me thinking about freedom of speech, the Christian and the giving and taking of offence with respect to how we speak about those in authority.

Christians definitely disagree on this issue. I was in the U.S. last summer and heard them doing it. Naturally they were all doing it politely.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Abomination x 3

In case anyone doubts the relevance of the Old Testament thousands of years after it was written, The Wall Street Journal comments on the implementation of the (un)Affordable Care Act:
“… there have been so many unilateral executive waivers and delays that ObamaCare must be unrecognizable to its drafters, to the extent they ever knew what the law contained.”
as does Solomon, son of David:
“Unequal weights and unequal measures
    are both alike an abomination to the Lord.”
(Proverbs 20:10)

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Do We Get the Leaders We Deserve?

“Every nation gets the government it deserves.”
— Joseph de Maistre, 1811
A similar quote is often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, though little evidence can be offered to substantiate it. Regardless, it is certainly a meme with legs.

Political analysts have a hard time leaving the idea alone. In a post entitled “The Country of the Blind”, Andrew Klavan gives several solid reasons why Barack Obama’s reelection confirms the truth of it, concluding with this zinger:
“No, I don’t think Obama can be held wholly responsible for the nightmare darkness descending on the world in the absence of American leadership. He won the election fair and square. But he won it in the country of the blind.”