Monthly Archive: April 2016

The notion that the Ancient Hebrews had a “republic” is more a creation of “Whig” and “Enlightenment” thought than something supported by the biblical record as it was traditionally understood until figures in those later historical periods began re-imagining the theology.

Was the rightness of stopping the Rwandan genocide dependent on whether Rwanda could realistically become a stable democracy after the genocide was stopped? And how could policymakers make that determination, when the stabilization of...

Ms. Trauss’s cause, more or less, is to make life easier for real estate developers by rolling back zoning regulations and environmental rules. Her opponents are a generally older group of progressives who worry that an influx of corporate techies is turning a city that nurtured the Beat Generation into a gilded resort for the rich.

Those groups oppose almost every new development except those reserved for subsidized affordable housing. But for many young professionals who are too rich to qualify for affordable housing, but not rich enough to afford $5,000-a-month rents, this is the problem.

Adding to the strangeness is that the typical San Francisco progressive and the typical mid-20s-to-early-30s member of Ms. Trauss’s group are likely to have identical positions on every liberal touchstone, like same-sex marriage and climate change, and yet they have become bitter enemies on one very big issue: housing.

“We have liberal Democrats, and very liberal Democrats, and yet we are as polarized as the rest of the country,” said Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition.

From: In Cramped and Costly Bay Area, Cries to Build, Baby, Build – The New York Times

Today, the Dallas City Council voted to deny a request by Hinga’s Automotive for a specific use permit. The request came after the city changed the zoning for the mechanic shop and did not offer any compensation for voting to drive it off of its land. Hinga’s Automotive received widespread support, including signatures of more than 82,000 Americans.

In denying the specific use permit, Dallas City Councilman Rickey Callahan, a real estate developer, explained his vote, saying that Dallas needed to use this power and interfere with the rights of people like Hinga Mbogo in order to attract businesses like Starbucks and the Macaroni Grill.

From: Petition update · Dallas Votes to Zone 30-year-old Garage Out of Biz. To Make Way for “Starbucks and Macaroni Grill” · Change.org

We shouldn’t be surprised by this insistence that Bernie invoke the Holocaust: Museums, school curricula, and the culture generally have so diligently cultivated the image of Jews as primarily survivors or victims of the...

Stories have power. They stick to us in a way that facts simply do not. We humans are fairly cavalier with our facts. We dispose of facts when they they bore us, or when we simply decide we don’t care for them, or when they rub up against things we’d prefer to believe in their place. Like the burs that you unwittingly bring home after a long hike, however, stories sink their teeth into us and hold on tight, even when we are unaware they are doing so. And when they do, they carry their truths with them.

Take, for example, the myths of the native American tribes that lived near my hometown of Portland. The Multnomah, Yakama, Klamath, Puyallup, and Klickitat tribes all have remarkably similar stories regarding the Cascade Mountains that run from Washington to Northern California. Specifically, they have stories about Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainer and Mt. Adams. In these myth-stories, the mountains are not natural formations but rather great gods. These stories are not rational to our modern ear, yet they carried truths with them for generations that more rational narratives could not sustain.

From: Religion, Stories, and How We Carry Truths – Blinded Trials II

A Polish prosecutor interrogated a Jewish historian who researched Polish complicity in the Holocaust to determine if he had criminally insulted the nation. Jan Tomasz Gross, a Polish-American professor based at Princeton University, published...