Culture
The Empire Supports John Yoo
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Darth Vader recently agreed to make an appearance in support of Mr. Yoo, the Bush-era lawyer who wrote the memorandum justifying the use of torture.
Empathy
Economic Dislocation
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I recently sold my home. It was the first home to sell in my neighborhood in 6 months. Now my realtor tells me there are amazing deals on the market, homes that are selling for 200,000 or 300,000 less than they were a couple of years ago. She tells me that virtually all the houses on the market are foreclosures and that great deals are available. It’s not quite as bad as she describes but the housing report for July shows that just over 26% of homes sold in the Bay Area were foreclosures and that nearly 20% of all the homes sold were underwater.
Christianity
The Prince of Peace is not the God of War
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For those who follow the Christian tradition, Christmas is a time of hope and promise in the unlikely person of a child. It is a time of celebrating the birth of the one spoken of by the prophet Isaiah and heralded by Handel as the “Prince of Peace.” Yet religion and war have become so grotesquely interconnected that we can scarcely tell them apart. Indeed, to suggest that war is antithetical to the message of Jesus is to risk accusations of treason, heresy or both. Most people are unaware that for the first few hundred years of the Church, Christians were total pacifists.