Obama on Academic Freedom

A guy I know over on Facebook posted this video from Now This News. It's from a speech President Obama gave last September. The president makes a good statement to which I think all Americans should be able to agree.

What's interesting to remember by way of background is that as a student in law school, Obama adhered to these principles, inviting people of all points of view--conservative and liberal and so on--to contribute to the prestigious law school journal he edited. (For details on that, I suggest you read The Bridge by David Remnick.)

Obama: We Shouldn't "Coddle" College Students
Obama thinks college students are too "coddled" sometimes
Posted by NowThis Election on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Saturday This and That

Things that caught my eye this past week.

Minnesota's last one-room school house...
...and the woman who's been through a lot who keeps it going. Be sure to read the article and watch the accompanying video.

They may or may not be "tragic" reasons as the article is titled...
...but this lengthy piece gives five plausible explanations as to why the world's largest theme park is abandoned.

The silencing of the American college...
...is free speech taking a hit on America's campuses?

And a self-described "liberal professor"...
...identifies similar concerns.

How a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist built a Facebook community...
...from Cleveland.

Art is created in many ways...
I remember reading Charlie Chaplin's autobiography many years ago. Included was a picture of him dressed as his famous Tramp character, standing on an incomplete movie set, with a caption that said something like, "Building a set without an idea in my head." Chaplin improvised his way through what became a classic.

Chaplin didn't always create like this, as the meticulous scripts for some of his talkies show.

The fact that Chaplin was capable both of improvising like a jazz musician or meticulously planning his work testifies to his greatness as an artist. He could do it all, including musical composition.



This article from Open Culture shows us the elaborate outlines of J.K, Rowling for a portion of her fifth Harry Potter book.

The moral: Compelling art is the result of careful planning. Except when it isn't.

(You can click to enlarge the image below.)

$8.5-trillion isn't chump change...
...and that's how much of our money that the Defense Department can't account for since 1996. With Murray Blum, it makes you wonder, "Who does these books?"

When the Expression of the Bible's Teachings is Vetoed by Political Correctness

R.R. Reno says that's what is happening in academia today.

It isn't just at universities that the stifling atmosphere of political correctness inhibits or condemns the expression of Christian moral judgments about homosexual behavior.

For twenty years now, clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have felt, at the least, uncomfortable in expressing our view that, while we may support full civil rights for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered persons (as I do), we also believe that engaging in sexual behavior outside of heterosexual marriage is contrary to the will of God. We also believe that it's our duty as ministers of the Gospel to acquaint people with all that God has to say about sin, repentance, grace, and forgiveness, including what God has to say about our sexuality. Failure to do so puts the eternal destinies of those God calls us to serve in peril.

To express moral judgments on the godly use of our sexuality though, however clearly rooted in the teachings of Scripture and in two-thousand years of Christian theology, is seen among many, if not most, of my ELCA colleagues as simplistic, out of touch, or bigoted.

One ELCA colleague, hearing me say that I favored civil rights regardless of sexual orientation, asked me, with condescension, how I could say such a thing since I clearly believed gays to be "perverts." It didn't seem to matter to him that I have never said such a thing. But the purveyors of correctness love to ascribe the basest and most inhumane motives to those who don't fall into line. Making people out to be monsters is easier than actually dealing with the merits of the moral arguments they advance.

Given this two-decade history, you can see why I'm skeptical that purveyors of political correctness in the ELCA are going to be content in allowing some congregations and pastors continue to preach and teach in accordance with the Scriptures. My experience suggests that they won't be happy until they've made their unscriptural views on sexuality, sin, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ the only ones that ELCA churches and pastors can teach.

It's time for a new reformation!