Yes

Morality, as a collection of absolutely binding laws by which our actions ought to be governed, belongs essentially, in an objective sense, to the practical sphere. And if we have once acknowledged the authority of this concept of duty. . .there can be no conflict between politics, as an applied branch of right, and morality, as a theoretical branch of right.

[Kant, Perpetual Peace, "On the Disagreement Between Morals and Politics in Relation to Perpetual Peace."]

Not technically true, but illustrative:

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Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter-girl took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:

1. Teaching Math in the 1950s:

• A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

2. Teaching Math in the 1960s:

• A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math in the 1970s:

• A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math in the 1980s:

• A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math in the 1990s:

• A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if you feel like crying, it’s ok.)

6. Teaching Math in 2008:

• Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?

Preaching to the choir, but a nonetheless intriguing and sobering (though not surprising) look at Obama’s campaign tactics.

This is an apparent report on Obama’s trip to Iraq — his first ever. Obviously, it is important not to attempt to dig up dirt on a candidate and fling up our arms at the outrage, but if this is true (an opinion given by Andrea Mitchell of NBC, a liberal reporter), then this is not reporting, but simply propaganda. Clips selected by Obama’s own campaign. And for its subsequent airing, a media coronation:

From The Island of the Day Before:

To be sure, the artists of the courts of Europe, who built grottoes encrusted with lapis lazuli, fountains operated by secret pumps, had not inspired nature in her invention of the lands of those seas; any more than it was the nature of the Unknown Pole that inspired those artists. The fact is, Roberto said to himself, both Art and Nature are fond of machination, and that is simply what the atoms themselves do when they aggregate in this way or in another. Is there any more artificed wonder than the tortoise, work of a goldsmith of thousands and thousands of years past, who fashioned this Achilles’ shield patiently nielloed, imprisoning a serpent with its feet?

At home, he continued his musing, everything that is vegetal life has the fragility of a leaf with its veins and of the flower that lasts the space of a morning; whereas here the vegetal is like leather, a thick and oily matter, a scaly sheath prepared to resist the rays of mad suns. Every leaf — in these lands were the wild inhabitants surely do not know the art of metals or of clays — could become instrument, blade, goblet, spatula, and the petals of the flowers are of lacquer. Everything vegetal here is strong, while everything animal is weak, to judge by the birds I have seen spun from varicolored glass, while at home we have the strength of the horse, the stubborn sturdiness of the ox. . . .

And what of fruits? At home the complexion of the apple, ruddy with health, denotes its friendly taste, whereas the livid mushroom betrays its hidden venom. Here, on the contrary, as I saw yesterday and during the voyage of the Amaryllis, there is the witty play of opposites: the mortuary white of one fruit guarantees vivid sweetness, whereas the more russet fruits may secrete lethal philters.

With the spyglass he studied the shore and glimpsed between land and sea some climbing roots that seemed to leap towards the open sky, and clumps of oblong fruits that revealed their treacly ripeness by appearing as unripe berries. And he recognized on some other palms coconuts yellow as summer melons, whereas he knew they would proclaim their maturity by turning the color of dead earth.

So to live in this terrestrial Beyond — he had to remember, if he was to come to terms with its nature — he should proceed in the direction opposite to his instinct, for instinct was probably a discovery of the first giants, who tried to adapt themselves to the nature of the other side of the globe. Believing the most natural nature was that to which they had become adapted, they thought nature naturally born to adapt herself to them. Hence they were sure the sun was small, as it seemed to them, whereas certain leaves of grass were immense, if they looked at them through eyes close to the ground.

To live in the Antipodes, then, means reconstructing instinct, knowing how to make a marvel nature and nature a marvel, to learn how unstable the world is, which in one half follows certain laws, and in the other half the opposite of those laws.

He heard again the birds waking, over there, and — unlike the first day — he realized how artful those songs sounded if compared to the chirping of his native land: whistles, gurgles, crackles, grumblings, cluckings, whimperings, muffled musket shots, whole chromatic scales of pecking; and sometimes he heard something like a croaking of frogs squatting among the leaves of the trees, in Homeric parley.

The spyglass allowed him to see spindles, feathery bullets, black shudders or other shudders of indistinct hue, who flung themselves from a taller tree aiming at the ground with the insanity of an Icarus eager to hasten his own destruction. Suddenly it seemed to him even that one tree, perhaps a kumquat from China, shot one of its fruits into the air, a skein of bright crocus that quickly vanished from the round eye of the glass. . . .

Gore says:

“The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk.”

As unbelievable as it is, he was not recording a summer blockbuster movie trailer. He means that global warming will, of course, destroy us.

He also says:

“I don’t remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously.”

Try the Great Depression. Or the 1974 Franklin National Failure with Nixon, Watergate, and Vietnam. Try the 1982 Penn Square Failure with Business Week’s proclamation of “The Death of Equities.” Or the 1984 Continental Illinois Failure. In 1988, there was the First Republic Bank Failure and in 1991 the Bank of New England Failure. Even more obviously, try World War I, or World War II, or the Vietnam War, or December of 1980 under Carter when interest rates were at 21.5%. Yes. Not so good for mortgages. Right now, as a comparison, rates are at 2%.

Because Gore doesn’t “remember,” he never took history class, obviously. Yet he knows all about global warming and that the planet is going to die. And got a Nobel Prize for it.

Then, he delivers a zinger:

“It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil 10 years from now.”

Actually, that’s not really true. The actual oil that would be drilled right now, those drops extracted from the ground today, wouldn’t hit the markets for 5-10 years, true. But it would affect oil prices for the better, make no mistake. The price of gas and oil is largely based upon consumer and investor sentiment; when investors know that steps have been taken to increase our supply, sentiment improves. Even if that oil won’t be ready for awhile. At least it will be ready. And at least we aren’t as beholden to suppliers outside the country. So as for “dysfunctional” and “perverse,” not really.

What is a bit dysfunctional, however, is his conclusion:

“The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 a gallon gasoline.”

The last I checked, Americans didn’t really have an option to put anything other than gas in their tank. A bit of ethanol here and there, and a few hybrid cars you can fit two people into, and that’s it. Renewable resources and alternative energy are great, and they’ll be the new thing in awhile, as they should be, but for now, it’s oil and gas. And because it’s oil and gas now, it’s also time for more drilling.

Gore only tells half the truth, which makes the “truth” he tells false.

This post tends to beat a dead horse a bit, but it is true. The globe is not warming. Neither are we in peril. “I’d bet my life on it,” as Prince Humperdink says.

There is an agenda behind it, however, and that agenda is money. That agenda is what makes a reality the inexplicable fact that the nation is more up in arms about apparent temperature rises (that aren’t rising) than about national safety. The farce won’t last.

Commentator and broadcaster Tony Snow announced that he had colon cancer in 2005. Following surgery and chemo-therapy, Snow joined the Bush administration in April 2006 as press secretary. Unfortunately, on March 23 Snow, 51, a husband and father of three, announced that the cancer had recurred, with tumors found in his abdomen—leading to surgery in April, followed by more chemotherapy. Snow went back to work in the White House Briefing Room on May 30, but resigned August 31. CT asked Snow what spiritual lessons he has been learning through the ordeal.

Blessings arrive in unexpected packages—in my case, cancer.

Those of us with potentially fatal diseases—and there are millions in America today—find ourselves in the odd position of coping with our mortality while trying to fathom God’s will. Although it would be the height of presumption to declare with confidence What It All Means, Scripture provides powerful hints and consolations.

The first is that we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to answer the why questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can’t someone else get sick? We can’t answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer.

I don’t know why I have cancer, and I don’t much care. It is what it is—a plain and indisputable fact. Yet even while staring into a mirror darkly, great and stunning truths begin to take shape. Our maladies define a central feature of our existence: We are fallen. We are imperfect. Our bodies give out.

Keep reading article . . . .

During informal debate or argument, it is rare to persuade anyone of a new viewpoint. This is because of the notion that change of belief indicates defeat. Further, to change one’s viewpoint feels akin to a change in identity.

As an easy example, political demonstration serves as spectacle only. While its participants would presumably maintain that they wish to enact change through their protests, that change rarely, if ever, occurs. Rather, it serves only to solidify currently-held belief, whether for or against the demonstrators’. It does not serve to change opinion. This is because of the nature of the argument: demonstrations merely assert. Most often, these assertions are blunt. Because beliefs are formed either through rationale processes or through experience, standalone assertions are inadequate at best; at worst, they are emotionally inflammatory. Thus the solidification of current belief only.

More commonly, informal discussion of a moral or political (or sports) topic, even with legitimate rationale, typically ends where it began. While rationale (and not mere assertion) creates a certain level of respect among the players, it does not serve to persuade. Sometimes this is the fault of the logic used; more often, it is a fault of the pride involved.

With any belief, there is a sense that it is The Right belief out of all possible options. Often, one can offer a few reasons why he holds this belief. But then there always arises those questions surrounding that belief that he is unable to answer. Nonetheless, that Sense of the Rightness of the belief remains; regardless of incoming counterarguments, he is not swayed. He does not wish to concede defeat, of course, and neither does he feel comfortable changing a belief that is tied to his sense of identity. These two irrational defenses serve to ensure that he never loses an argument. After all, if one of those unanswerable counterarguments comes up, he can always side-step the question and say, “We can agree to disagree,” or “I just don’t know. I still think. . .”

Being persuaded never indicates failure. Failure is rather an unwillingness to truly argue. Proper discussion and argument involve pursuing opposing possibilities as potentially valid, following them to their last conclusions, to ensure that your original belief is still worth having.

“Come, let us reason together” is thankfully unequal to “Come, let us assert our opinions at each other.”