Can Anything Good Come from Nazareth

Touchstone ^ | May 03, 2009 | Anthony Esolen

[tgdunbar]

... Both, that is, are in the grip of the mad worship of "progress," whose goal is always left conveniently vague. Neither party understands that it is good for human beings to do what they can to govern themselves locally, not simply because they will do a better job of it than will distant bureaucrats, but because it is essential to their dignity as human beings that they make law (or custom, more integral to human life and more venerable), rather than, like everlasting adolescents, merely comply with it.

Neither party, in other words, has anything kind to say about Nazareth. I am not saying that it ought to be a matter of indifference for the Christian choosing between a party utterly committed to the Anticulture of Death and a party too stupid to understand what the choice for life implies. All I mean is that if Nazareth isn't going to be saved by mass politics and mass entertainment and the undermining of sexual morality and the mass welfare state that that undermining requires, it sure is not going to be saved by a technocracy that is also perfectly comfortable with perfectly comfortable masses. And yet not only do good things come from Nazareth. The very thing we need most can only come from Nazareth. . . .

[tgdunbar]

all politics is local

[T Minus Four]

..."We cannot be saved by science, and especially not by the signal failure known as social science, because science deals in what, not who, and in generality, not in the particular as such. That's not a criticism of science, only an acknowledgment of its limitations. It cannot save me, because it has nothing to say to me as who I am in myself; it can heal an arm or a leg, only because my arm or my leg resembles the arms and legs of other people.

[TexGuy]

“Hair of the Dog”, Baby

[dfwgator]

Now you’re messin’ with a....

[Migraine]

I think Mario Andretti was from Nazareth...