Weekend Fisher has a great post on the
shortcomings of pop spirituality. It's so nice to hear someone saying out loud what I've been thinking for a long time.
David Akin, on his blog
On the Hill, has been commenting quite a bit on Tom Flanagan's new book
Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power.
This, from Flanagan's "Ten Commandments of Conservative Campaigning" caught my eye:
4. Incrementalism: We have to be willing to make progress in small practical steps. Sweeping visions have a place in intellectual discussions, but they are toxic in practical politics.
I am so glad to see someone on the Canadian right finally articulating this. History teaches us that sweeping changes tend to get rapidly swept out the door. People resist large-scale change, viscerally and actively, unless their present reality is so dire they want out. Many good ideologies make no headway because their proponents perceive accepting incremental change as moral compromise. All or nothing usually leads to nothing.
Talk talk talk has
on-the-fly notes about the Ontario political leaders' debate. Seeing as I missed it, this was helpful to me. A strong anti-McGuinty bias is quite obvious but I guess I can live with that. ;o)
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Tom Flanagan,
Pop Spirituality,
Ontario Election
There is a new book out on the Amish and their culture of forgiveness. Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy was written by three American professors who were much in demand for expert interviews after last year's school shooting in Pennsylvania. I can't recommend it at this point, seeing as I haven't read it yet, (and I doubt that traffic at this blog is sufficient to talk my way into a reviewer's copy) but it looks like a serious effort by people who know what they're talking about on a subject that's worth talking about.
