Bookworm Room

America’s First Sergeant put up a post that perfectly addresses my last two attempts to figure out Mike McQueary’s inaction.  The first post I wrote looked at McQueary’s alleged youth, which I contrasted with the even youthier youth of a few Medal of Honor recipients who didn’t hesitate to act.  The second (with lots of [...]

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In the wake of the horrific child abuse scandal roiling Penn State, many have been trying to understand how Sandusky’s predatory behavior could have continued unchecked for so long.  The focal point of this “how could this happen” question is the fact that Mike McQueary actually witnessed an assault.  Rather than rearranging Sandusky’s face, McQueary [...]

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When my son was very little, he always asked me, “Are lions bad?”  What he really meant to ask is “Are lions evil?”  I always explained to him that lions aren’t bad, because they don’t make moral decisions.  They are animals, acting according to instinct.  Evil means understanding right or wrong. I’m beginning to think [...]

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For conservatives and libertarians, the movie icons might be High Noon or True Grit.  For Liberals, the defining anthem is John Lennon’s “Imagine“. Why is there such a fundamental gulf between ourselves and Liberals, to the point where we find ourselves simply talking past each other? Can this gulf ever be bridged? I came across [...]

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This is an entirely  hypothetical scenario, because my daughter is only 12, and I’m not planning on her dating for at least another fifteen or twenty years, if not more.  However, the sad fact is that, contrary to my entirely reasonable wishes, the dating scene is going to start in three or four years — [...]

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Two views of moral behavior, one from the source, and one from an English divine: God:  Thou shalt not steal.  (Exodus 20:15) A priest in England:  It is far better for people desperate during the recession to shoplift than turn to ‘prostitution, mugging or burglary’. It is true that, under Jewish law, Jews in extremis [...]

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Yesterday, I noted two sterling examples of physical bravery in the battlefield.  I’d like, today, to pay homage to moral bravery in the face of both verbal and physical attacks.  Despite withering fire from her school and the community, and despite threat physical confrontations, knife threats and property attacks, conservative student Kristen Campbell has stood [...]

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What our kids hear, day in and day out, is moral relativism.  It’s the top note to their lives, whether it comes on TV, in cheesy movies, on the news or, most commonly, at school.  That might not be the only lesson they’re learning, though.  The other lesson, the subliminal one, might be about good [...]

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‘Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.’ — Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. In times past, teachers, parents and moralists frowned upon fiction because it was not considered elevating writing.  It neither taught concrete skills nor high moral lessons.  By the 17th Century, writers started to find a way around that problem [...]

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