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The young-mans victory over the power of the Devil. Or, Strange and vvonderful news from the city of London; being a full and true relation of a vertuous young-man, who being but fifteen years of age, living in the parish of St. Giles’s, was wonderfully tempted by the Devil, 1693.Houghton Library, Harvard University
[gallery] Stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral on view at the Cloisters
Paine has won.But he has won largely because conservatives have lost heart. With some notable exceptions, most people who call themselves conservative in the present day have little sense of what it might mean to adopt gratitude and appreciation as a mode of orientation toward our experience. Instead, like everyone else, we are concerned with efficiency, problem-solving, and changing the world. We may have qualms about technology, but we no longer resist it. We might wish in the abstract that government policies could be less purposive and more nomocratic, but usually we give up on the rule of law as an ideal and promote policies that encourage our own favored outcomes.
In short, much of modern conservatism provides a vision of a good life that differs little from that advocated by the most energetic progressives. The ends might be different, but the means are the same.
A substantive alternative would require a much more radical reorientation of the modern soul.
[gallery] “Sorry, kid. It’s your job now whether you like it or not. I’m outta here.”
I told her that I was stunned by her grace after the verdict. I told her the verdict greatly angered me. I told her that the idea that someone on that jury thought it plausible there was a gun in the car baffled me. I told her it was appalling to consider the upshot of the verdict—had Michael Dunn simply stopped shooting and only fired the shots that killed Jordan Davis, he might be free today.She said, “It baffles our mind too. Don’t think that we aren’t angry. Don’t think that I am not angry. Forgiving Michael Dunn doesn’t negate what I’m feeling and my anger. And I am allowed to feel that way. But more than that I have a responsibility to God to walk the path He’s laid. In spite of my anger, and my fear that we won’t get the verdict that we want, I am still called by the God I serve to walk this out.”
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.
And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.
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When he wasn’t making groundbreaking sculptures, Rodin was working out ideas on paper with some pretty remarkable drawings. With simple techniques and bold gestures he shows a tender moment between a mother and child:“Maternity,” c. 1880, by Auguste Rodin
Despite the good intentions behind intergovernmental projects like the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and numerous development charities, international aid programmes have so far had a negligible influence on reducing destitution and cannot be relied upon to fill the gap. It seems that destitution will go on indefinitely destroying lives on a massive scale in forgotten corners of the world.Yet there is something we haven’t tried yet, despite its stunning obviousness: giving destitute people money. $1.25 is a very small amount of money. That is why it is the World Bank’s threshold for utter destitution. But the other side of that is that $1.25 is also a trivial piffling amount of money, and the average shortfall per destitute person from that threshold is even smaller. Imagine if the richest 1.2 billion people in the world were twinned with the poorest, and each rich person gave 50 cents per day to their poor twin: destitution would be pretty much eliminated and the rich would hardly even notice the cost.