Good morning.
- Jihad Watch asks about effectiveness and the intelligence community.
- Comments on Beowulf from an someone not an expert.
- A Protestant comments on the Pope’s encyclical on hope at Scriptorium Daily. Approvingly.
- I have reproduced this quote from Habermas in a debate (The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion
) on the role of secular vs faith in society:
Does the free secularized state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee? This question expresses a doubt about whether the democratic constitutional state can renew from its own resources the normative presuppositions of its existence, it also expresses the assumption that such a state is dependent on ethical traditions of a local nature.
In the wake of Romney’s speech, in which those highlight the attack on the secular, the debate topic above between the secular philosopher Habermas and the non-secular philosopher Ratzinger might be of interest. At the very least it demonstrates that reasonable and intelligent people can disagree on the answer (yes or no) on this question. Blog neighbors Jason Kuznicki and David Schraub for example attack Romney because he holds a position opposing theirs as being un-American and/or unreasonable. I don’t think that’s the case … especially in the light of the above debate.
- Wealth, Jesus and today’s Christian at Jesus Creed.
- Oklahoma mall shooting and terror.
- Parsing the Christian divisions more finely in the context of the political race.
- Heh.
- Thoughts on the AMT.
- On treating with the yooff of today.
- He’s back!
- Obsidian Wings admits the obvious.
- Mr Greenwald is a partisan hack, e.g., “right-wing blogs such as Powerline and Hugh Hewitt (the ones Bartlett named) eagerly turn themselves into mindless vessels for the GOP message machine”. I’ve met Hugh at GodBlogCon a few years ago … he’s by no means “mindless”. Calling anyone a “mindless vessel” just because you disagree with them, is just stupid.
Drat it, I expressly denied being a Beowulf expert in the post repeatedly. You misrepresent me. People actually wanting such commentary should go to the Unlocked Wordhoard where they will find a much more expert range of opinions. Meanwhile, I have removed the pingback from my comments.
Jonathan,
Don’t be so hasty (as I was in collecting and summarizing these pieces). I’ll make a correction.
The mall story is from Omaha, Nebraksa, not somewhere in Oklahoma.
The mall story is from Omaha, Nebraska, not somewhere in Oklahoma.
It’s not that Hewitt is mindless, it’s that he’s slavish.
Calling anyone a “mindless vessel” just because you disagree with them, is just stupid.
It’s not because he disagrees with Hewitt. Greenwald was referring to the fact that Hewitt et al “mindlessly” regurgitate what they are fed by the GOP machine. In fact, he was alluding to the quote from former Bush White House Communications aide Dan Bartlett: “[Right-wing blogs] regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them.” If that’s not mindless, I don’t know what is.
Greenwald is probably the best left-wing blogger that I know of, btw. I don’t think he’s partisan at all. He criticizes the Dems almost every day.
JA,
Hewitt by your criteria is also not partisan for he as well very very often criticizes those on the right. Actually, in my view both are partisan and that’s not a priori a bad thing. It’s only bad if you represent yourself as non-partisan when you’re not. Neither Mr Greenwald nor Mr Hewitt I think do that.
Hmm. Well, Richard Fernandez, aka Wretchard at the Belmont Club, is the best current events blogger left, right or center out there in my opinion for whatever that’s worth.