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Worth Quoting

From Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism
War:  What is it good for?  No one ever answered Edwin Starr's question.  Well, Edwin, I'll tell you what it's good for.  It's good for taxes; it's good for day care; it's good for year-round schooling; it's good for the metric system; it's good for daylight saving time; it's good for the Interstate Highway System; it's good for divorce; it's good for school consolidation and the space program and the IRS.  In short, it's good for nothing that a genuine conservative might cherish.
And:
I am going on here, piling quote upon quote, because war effaces and perverts everything that traditionalist conservatives profess.  Every damn thing, from motherhood to the country church.  And yet postwar conservatives, and especially the scowling ninnies of the Bush Right, revere war above all other values.  It trumps the First Amendment; it razes the home; it decks the decalogue.  And they don't care.

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Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                   ...

Gaudete, dammit!

     I was not at my home church for mass this morning (not that I feel like I have a home church since becoming Popish), but nevertheless my mood was buoyant.  After all, how could it not be.  Here we were standing as brothers and sisters commemorating one of the top five greatest events in the history of reality: the Incarnation.  Yet looking out and listening to the participation of my Roman brothers and sisters, one would think that something less than mundane had happened.  Something BORING, even.  We gathered to remember the God of the universe condescending to take on human dress and all we can do is half-heartedly sing and mumble ancient creeds that people died for?  I remained buoyant despite the lack of mutual awe.      Annie Dillard said waggishly that when people go to church they ought to be wearing crash helmets.  Do they really know who or what they are summoning?  Something more terrible, me...