Ron Paul and subsidiarity

Jonathan Kay on the U.S. healthcare debate that's slightly disorienting to Canadians. He says Ron Paul has:

a single theme: that the health needs of needy Americans can be met at the local level — through charity hospitals, voluntary collectives, and religious organizations

Paul saw it work in the 1960's. Kay says it wouldn't now; we've come to expect:

teams of specialists and capital-intensive high-tech diagnostic equipment that are far beyond the means of the sort of neighborhood health clinics and charities that Ron Paul sentimentalizes.  

So -- is subsidiarity incompatible with the best possible care for everyone? That isn't a rhetorical question. I'm really wondering about it.

Ethical oil and original sin

Father de Souza asks:

. . . . how is a mine in a remote part of Canada’s northern emptiness more despoiling than a large auto plant on the shores of Lake Ontario in Canada’s most densely populated region?

By the assumption that the wilderness is more deserving, less guilty, more worthy of protection, than the people. Yet those who feel this way tend, unlike Father de Souza, to disbelieve in original sin.

I'm thankful for small things

She wore green, anyway.

Oh well then, that settles that!

 David Blankenhorn:

The population as a whole remains deeply divided, but most of our national elites, as well as most younger Americans, favor gay marriage. 

 Endorsements by the ruling class and a bunch of people half my age -- that'll change my mind when nothing else will. In the next sentence, to be fair, he says their view "may be wrong on the merits". But it "matters". Possibly wrong + "matters" = right enough not to argue with anymore?

Today's bit of absurdity

Mr. Moore Gets Run Over by Court Card Characters in Touring Cars

New Word: Jellybesque

(Google says: "Did you mean jelly bisque?" No, and I don't want to think about a jelly soup with chunks of jelly in it, not even as a dessert.)

Jellybesque comes to us from Barbara Kay, as she smacks down a fellow grandmother. It refers to:

Charles Dickens’ ineffable creation, Mrs. Jellyby, in his novel, Bleak House. Mrs. Jellyby’s sentimental thoughts are always half a world away with the poor children in Africa, while her own dirty, neglected children must shift for themselves in her chaotic household.

You know the kind. Sad movies make them cry -- but they themselves make their children cry. At the dinner table. At least once a week.

Things to ask yourself . . .

. . . before you leave a "this is boring" comment on any online article.

(No, it hasn't happened here. Yet.)

(And don't worry, I'm not going to appeal to empathy or charity or anything.)

1. What does it say about me that I had time to read a 350-word article of absolutely no interest to me?
2. What are the chances that my comment, which says nothing specifically about the content of the article, will be mistaken for spam and just deleted?
3. Could I write a more interesting article on a subject I didn't choose myself?
4. Could I write a more boring article, perhaps simply by describing my day?
5. What exactly am I trying to accomplish? If it's "annoying someone", am I possibly already doing that IRL?

From Chesterton's Heretics:

"We should really be much more interested in Mr. Moore if he were not quite so interested in himself. We feel as if we were being shown through a gallery of really fine pictures, into each of which, by some useless and discordant convention, the artist had represented the same figure in the same attitude. "The Grand Canal with a Distant View of Mr. Moore," "Effect of Mr. Moore through a Scotch Mist,' 'Mr. Moore by Firelight,' 'Ruins of Mr. Moore by Moonlight,' and so on seems to be the endless series." 

Now, I have no idea what that Mr. Moore looked like, but to the left and above is a possibility, which bears a resemblance to a similar Mr. Moore.

And here's my attempt at "The Grand Canal with a Distant View of Mr. Moore" -- thank you, Wikipedia.

Fragment of a real conversation

". . . that jerk she's dating online."

"Are they going to get married online? No, that's too much of a commitment -- they'll just live together online."

Martha and Mary

In case you were wondering about the cause nine-year-old Martha was raising money for (and is again, by popular demand), yes, it's that Mary.

To recap, Martha blogged daily ratings of her school cafeteria's hot lunches (as we call them over here) based on important things like taste, healthfulness, and presence or absence of human hair. Some powers-that-be told her to quit; supposedly the school cooks "feared for their jobs". Of course this just pulled in more support for her, and she overshot her fundraising goal rather dramatically.

(Fries by Jean Scheijen)

He who finds a worthy wife

More's Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation veers off at one point into a discussion of what to do if someone is convinced God wants him to kill himself. (In the 16th century they didn't have the luxury of making an amateur diagnosis of schizophrenia, though surely "demonic possession" was tossed around more freely.)

In a lighter moment during this, More tells the "common tale" of a woodcarver who decided he should die on Good Friday, just like Jesus. His wife obligingly said she'd crucify him on a large cross he'd been working on -- oh, but first he should be whipped and crowned with thorns. He agreed. So she tied him to a post and "left not off beating, with holy exhortation to suffer, so much and so long that ere ever she left work and unbound him (praying nevertheless, that she might put on his head, and drive well down, a crown of thorns that she had wrought for him and brought him), he said he thought this was enough for that year."

When next Good Friday came, "then was his desire past; he longed to follow Christ no further."