The volunteer explained to me why this is bad. It turns out that early preventative care costs one-fourth the the expense of treatment. I asked what he meant by “preventative care” and “treatment.” He explained that “preventative care” is abortion. And “treatment” is the live birth of a child. I’m not kidding. Those are his own words. Yes. He was asking my wife to call to the Washington State government to tell our Representative that we support “Women’s Health” (that was the code word), because it’s cheaper for the state to kill children rather than to pay for a live birth.

Well, I recommend if you are in Washington State… No, anyone in any state, call your own state’s representative, and tell them we need to save money a different way. If you need a cash driven argument, tell your representative that the state needs more tax payers. Call your representative and let them know that if the budget needs to be trimmed, Planned Parenthood is a good place to start. Because our Lord made human life, if you’re in Washington, call 1-800-562-6000. If you are in Washington, keep in mind the representative told me he expects a vote to go to the floor in less than two weeks. Act now!

This book walks through the tropes, metaphors, narratives, and cozy nudgings that justify the conscience of the questioning high-schooler or co-ed who wants to make the jump to a more “authentic” gender option, the one the individual was by destiny, or evolution, selected to enjoy. This book explains how to justify yourself to all the gainsayers, and it has wonderful little sections on how to argue with people who believe the Bible’s moral teachings. But what’s really fascinating about it is the strategy. The book walks through explaining how to play the “gay card” and take the moral high-ground in any rhetorically awkward situation a gay or transgendered person might him/her/itself in. That’s what’s so valuable in this book. If you read carefully, and reverse engineer the books advice, you can undermine gay rhetorical strategy, and have a lot of fun in the process. A major plug to St. Anne’s Public House listeners. I heartily recommend you read this!

Usually when one reviews an album one should spend a lot of time listening to that album over and over again. This author confesses that he has not listened to this album over and over again. Some of these songs I’ve heard only once. So with that admission, the review commences.

On a visit to LA last year, while I was staying with a friend who sings opera, I asked him what he thought of Lady Gaga. He said “Brilliant.” I asked whether he meant Gaga as a musician or her music. He said, “It doesn’t matter. Whoever it is managing her is brilliant.”

Stefani Germanotta, the young lady who calls herself Lady Gaga, is worthy of at least some attention.  For the purpose of this review I will assume that she actually is the one coming up with the stuff that she’s doing, and that she’s not a puppet for a bunch of other people who tell her what to do and say. Stefani  understands story, and this is what separates her from many of the other pop stars who tried to imitate Madonna. Madonna’s genius was found in her ability to size up the cultural moment in which she found herself in her youth and to mold who she needed to be to transform one corner of her culture. She understood exactly what she wanted to destroy, and what she wanted to strengthen. Madonna was a postmodern whore, and now, with her tight gums and sagging skin, she’s sort of like a grandmother who was a postmodern whore.  Many have tried to copy her, but those who do don’t understand what she was actually doing.  Madonna was able to redefine female sexuality in terms, not of femininity, but masculinity.

Stefani  is taking this one step further, by defining female sexuality in terms of bisexuality.  Forget that being feminine stuff,. What’s really cool is being bisexual.  In doing so, just like Madonna, she is passing off a bribe to both young men and young women who listen and identify with her music.  The target of high school and college bi-curiosity is young men. Girls get the guys’ attention. And the young men don’t protest. Why should they when their girlfriend is kissing another chick. Maybe they’ll get to join. By making this move Stefani gets to play with reversing gender roles. And this is something the gay community likes. Since presently homosexuals are powerful in media she is able to become a pop-culture champion for them, thus eliciting their support. This again is something similar to what Madonna did.

In Stefani’s latest album, Born This Way, the enemy becomes more obvious.  It is difficult to know whether she fully intends to, but this album takes aim at God, especially the Christian God revealed through Jesus Christ who claims to define morality, and sexual morality specifically. God may be involved in our moral decisions so long as God does not restrict us from pursuing our sexual appetites. Now this theme is as old as bread mold. But Stefani’s primary audience just hit puberty, and this is all new to them. She’s also a skilled musician and songwriter (or at least whoever is her handler, see above) and she has a knack for saying this in a postmodern Madonna meets Liza Mennelli meets Boy-George sort of way. Kinda cool. Her fashion team adorns her with gaudy metaphors, and properly armored she walks through narrative upon narrative, redefining the good in our culture. Brilliant. Brilliant because she knows what she is destroying.

It’s a shame that Christians are not as savvy, especially when Christ did a much better job of using metaphors and narrative to make cultural war on his enemies. The reason why Christians fail at subverting this sort of subversion of Christian morality is that we have truncated the biblical hermeneutic necessary to even understand what Scripture teaches about how to do this stuff.

I know I haven’t passed judgment on the album, but if you read carefully I have both the album and the American Church.

For context please see my earlier post  “A Sparrow Hears a Whisper on Capitol Hill: Inside the Debt Talks.”

Today, the character of Captain America is all the more silly in an age when the national narrative which this character represents is in question. For that reason, this movie was a great opportunity. In fact, it seem that movie goers were hoping the filmmakers would take that opportunity, since Captain America: The First Avenger beat out Harry Potter’s last movie, which set the box office record for most money made on opening weekend.

I’ve heard people talk about how we need to change Hollywood, and get a certain message in the theaters, etc. But when people talk this way, the betray that they do not understand why people go to see movies: to be entertained by having their values reflected back to them in a way that vindicates them. Captain America is at least an initial financial success because many people in this nation still believe the national narrative. Nevertheless, the film misses something. If Christopher Nolan had made this film, I think he could have hit it. Nolan took the Batman cycle and turned it into a profound and very entertaining meditation on the relationship between justice and evil. Captain America is not a bad movie, but it’s not Nolanesque.

During this same time, outside the Capitol, Planned Parenthood, a “grassroots” groups representing the local works of DC, and other groups were holding “actions.” The local groups had piles of signs, pig masks, and a megaphone with the letters “SEIU” written on the side. I saw all of this equipment in a pile outside Rayburn congressional office building on Thursday. Inside one Republican office were three large ladies representing government employees from the Congressman’s state, explaining why they needed him to vote to continue to fund their federal jobs. I watched them out of the corner of my eye for several minutes, and as they exchanged glances while the talked with one of the Congressman’s staffers, it was obvious that they felt very powerful and important in that office, and they were exercising their power. Why are all these organizations coming to DC on the eve of the vote to raise the debt ceiling? Hmm…. I wonder.

If the Republican vote to raise the debt ceiling without something like a balanced budget Constitutional amendment, then the voters that handed control of the House to the Republicans will loose their faith in those they elected. Why don’t the Republicans see this? Some do, I’m sure. But ultimately it’s because our leaders lack a source of value greater than maintaining or gaining political power, and fear of man is a great trap.

The failure of our civil leaders presents an awesome opportunity for the Church. That’s why we have produced a new issue on Socialism and the Church, which is complete and will becoming to our website soon….

A couple years ago I saw an interview with the man who created the toys that would become “the Transformers.” He explained that he created the toys to instill values in kids. He wanted them to understand that liberty and freedom were worth fighting for, which is why Optimus is such a father figure in the Transformers mythology. He created the toys at a time when America was seen as a protector of the world. It’s no accident that Optimus Prime is Red and Blue, and in the interview the Japanese man explains why appreciated America. Soon I’ll post on kids cartoons, but let me give one short teaser: kids cartoons should maintain an antithesis between good and evil that is clear, an antithesis that even extends to art design. Transformers did this effectively. American culture at that point still respected the value of an antithesis between good and evil to some degree, and marketing efforts of toy companies had to reflect that cultural wisdom.

But not so today. In an ironic ceremony, after the release of the last Transformers film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (which was terrible), this old Japanese man passed the Tranformers’ torch to Michael Bay, a movie director with no kids, who shoots Victoria Secret commercials.

But this latest Transformers movie is closer to the spirit of the original Transformers cartoon than either of the other two films. It’s clear that the filmmakers are aware of the political tensions in the country right now, and they handle them in curious ways. If you feel the country is being taken over by utilitarian socialists, or even if you favor illegal immigration, there’s something in this film for you. The filmmakers have done a good job making this film feel like it fulfills the other two films, but nothing like Toy Story 3, the model of how to end a trilogy. Warning: this is a Michael Bay movie; I can’t endorse every scene. But if you liked the original cartoons, then you will probably like much of this film.

One of the best features of the Kindle is it’s ability to display PDFs. There are a number of out of print books or books that are published by non-profit organizations like the Ludwig von Mises Institute that can be downloaded for free in PDF format and then read on the Kindle, which is much easier on the eyes than a notebook screen. But also, this ease of digital publishing means that authors can now publish their work much more directly than they could have a decade ago, or even a century ago. I don’t like that it’s harder to write in the margins. Someone told me recently that I could, but still. Nevertheless, I like the Kindle.

As a character, Thor in the movie is a gentleman, a masculine man who shows honor and respect to the woman he loves. I’m confident many women left the theater thinking, “Why aren’t there more guys like that?” Thor is a morally clean film, with almost nothing objectionable, that honors many real virtues. Perhaps the hunger for films that honor good things is one reason why, in a few short weeks, Thor has made half a billion dollars.

I guess I can agree with all of that. But the film opening suggests that the real God of this world is/are the gods of the Norse myths, which means that, in the terms of the film, the Christian story of the world isn’t the real story. Now, I won’t make a big deal about this, because I don’t think that’s the point of the movie. This film was not trying to intentionally attack Christendom, at least it seemed that way to me. But given that little leap of fiction, the film tells the story of how the son of Oden–the son of the god–falls in love with a human girl. In terms of its theology, Thor is more of a Mormon story than a Christian one. It doesn’t seem to me that Branagh is intending this. He seems to be telling the Thor story through the cultural typology of the Western Canon, but when you put old paganism together with Christian theology, well, I’ve already made my point.