The Perfect Enemy

Suppose you wanted to create a perfect enemy. An enemy so vile that its evil would be recognized by almost everyone. An enemy that would inspire people to come together in order to ensure its defeat.

To be more specific: suppose you were a screenwriter with the assignment of creating a suitable villain-organization for a major motion picture. The marketing plan for this movie suggests that it will be marketed primarily to a certain demographic and that, hence, your villain-organization should be particularly appalling to members of that demographic. The demographic in question consists of people who are affluent, highly educated (college with at least some postgraduate education), not particularly religious, and who consider themselves politically liberal or “progressive.” The plot of the movie demands that the audience must see the necessity for Americans–of many beliefs, occupations, and social backgrounds–to come together in order to defeat the enemy.

Oh, and one other thing. The year in which you are given this assignment is 1999.

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Seems Only Fair

Reuters: Saudi offer for Moscow mosque, Orthodox call for church in Arabia

(via Jim Miller)

The Longing for a Messiah

Update:   If the links below the  jump haven’t sufficiently creeped you out, here’s another example a friend sent:   the Obama Votive candle.

Teaching   eighteenth and nineteenth century writers,  I  wonder about  the “Awakenings” of   the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Looking back, we see the passion they generated. Edwards says in a letter that

This town never was so full of love, nor so full of joy, nor so full of distress as it has lately been.   Some persons have had those longing desires after Jesus Christ, that have been to that degree as to take away their strength and very much to weaken them, and make them faint.   Many have been overcome with a sense of the dying love of Christ, so that the home of the body has been ready to fail under it.  

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Thérèse of Lisieux

Today is her feast day, perhaps the biggest day in Lex’s personal liturgical calendar.

St. Therese

God bless America. St. Thérèse pray for us.

Is This a Hoax?

The major news agencies are doing their best to find something to use to smear Gov. Palin. I think they have finally slid into that dark and moist abyss called madness.

This news article relates how some YouTube video the author came across shows Palin being blessed in her church before she tossed her hat in the ring to become Governor. A bishop visiting from Kenya asked that she be protected from witchcraft.

Okay, so what? I mean, what does this have to do with anything at all?

The reporter who wrote the story seems to think they have a major scoop, though. You see, Gov. Palin was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church when she was an infant!

I can’t make this stuff up if I tried, folks.