Tolerance

Jul42019 by jrcowles7 Comments

Jesus, Jefferson, and Jingoism

"Life" Issues, community, conflict, conservatism, Consitution, critical judgment, culture, declaration of independence, Ethics, fourth of july, Religion, Spirituality, Tolerance

I am re-publishing this "Skeptic's" column today because, if anything, it is even more relevant today than when it first appeared. I am also re-publishing it because, when I originally published it, politics used to be ... you know ... both fun and funny. So for a few moments, we can share a trip down Memory Lane to a time of comparative innocence. Well, we are in that time of year again – July in general, and the Fourth in particular -- when we all make the obligatory pilgrimage to the First Church of American Exceptionalism, also known colloquially and variously as "the back yard" or "the deck" or "the patio", where we celebrate the Sacrament of Opportunistic Patriotism with beer instead of wine, with burgers instead of unleavened bread, on an outdoor barbecue grill instead of an alta

Mar72019 by jrcowlesNo Comments

“Not With A Bang But A Whimper” — The Glamp Of The Saints

Abrahamic Traditions, activism, autonomy, awareness, bible, bigotry, book review, Challenge, Change, Character of God, Christianity, Church, citizenship, conflict, conservatism, constitution, contemplation, courage, Creation, critical judgment, culture, Current Events, Discernment, election year, Enlightenment, Fascism, Fear, Food, hate, Hospitality, Human Condition, hunger, Ideology, immigration, injustice, Jean Raspail, Minorities, multiculturalism, Nihilism, Pain and Suffering, postmodernism, progressive politics, racism, Refugee's, Religion, resentment, Secularity, T. S. Eliot, The Camp of the Saints, Tolerance, Trump, Uncategorized, violence, Welcoming the other

Glamping ... And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison, and will go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and will gather them together for the battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth and encompassed the camp of the saints, and the beloved city. -- Revelation chapter 20:7-9a It is unfortunate that the most prescient book ever written about the present mass migration of immigrants from the Third World to the First, especially to the US from Mexico and Central America and to Europe from the Levant, is out of print and therefore unavailable: Jean Raspail’s eerily prophetic The Camp of the Saints (hereafter Camp). (The Amazon link says simply t

Jan312019 by jrcowlesNo Comments

Jumping The Brexit Shark

"Life" Issues, activism, autonomy, awareness, betrayal, bigotry, Brexit, Change, citizenship, civics, community, conflict, conservatism, critical judgment, culture, Current Events, Economy, Equality, EU, Fear, hate, history, Ideology, inclusive, Islam, movement, multiculturalism, Muslims, political rhetoric, polyvocality, postmodernism, racism, Religion, Secularity, social justice, Tolerance, Uncategorized, Welcoming the other

For the last several weeks, I have been following the news out of the UK about the Parliament’s vote on PM Theresa May’s foredoomed plan for Brexit, including one installment of “Prime Minister’s questions,” which, for obvious reasons, centered on the still-falling debris from the May government’s unprecedented 230-vote blow-up of Mrs. May's Brexit deal. It had all the tragic dignity of, say, Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy: you know what is going to happen, but for that very reason, you simply cannot bring yourself to avert your gaze. I was all the more horrified because, knowing the Parliament vote was imminent and that it would be followed by the 29 March deadline imposed by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, I had begun some weeks before to read about the European Union (EU), Brexit, and