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Why It’s Dangerous To Laugh At a Space Force
The idea of a Space Force seems absolutely crazy. We should care less about how absurd it is and more about why anyone would want it. Space Force. Even the words make me laugh. It seems like a farce. Like the moonshot gamble of a desperate administration. Mocking it so tempting. And where did it…
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A Pot Church Isn’t the Stunt. The “Sincerely-Held” Standard Is.
The case of a church of pot testing religious freedom on the sincerely-held standard is absurd. Which says more about the standard than the church. It was bound to happen. A pot church claiming a sincere religious belief. This is precisely the case we all imagined when Justice Samuel Alito penned the majority opinion in…
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Learning to Love – Solving Our Do Unto Others Problem
Many of us get caught in shallow or simplistic arguments about security which don’t match scripture or tradition. Here’s how we can change that. Immigration is always in the zeitgeist. We can’t not talk about it. Some raise it to stoke fear or denigrate our government. But for Christians, immigration is always a pressing political…
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Truly Simple Arguments
In the social media era, separating truth from fiction is hard. Here’s one way you can tell the difference between a real argument and a dishonest one. The difference between a simple argument and a simplistic one is authority. Simplistic arguments try to make complex issues bite-sized. They’re like trading a balanced diet for a…
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Civility
When a fresh outrage comes, we sharpen knives and loosen vocal cords for the usual conversation around civility, asking as always “why can’t we just get along?” as if this were the whole problem. It isn’t. There’s a lot of talk about civility right now. Whether it’s a conversation on Facebook or serving a public…
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Swindled By Authoritarianism
We mistake extremism in belief for political extremism. The rise of authoritarianism isn’t only tied to political division or partisanship. Authoritarianism is an extremism we can find anywhere in politics. Why our fear of division blinds us to the real threat to democracy We’ve taken it as gospel that we’re divided. It seems like we…
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Beyond Despair: Love
There is a common cry of despair in the people of Gaza that sounds so much like West Virginia coal miners and residents of Peoplestown in Atlanta, Georgia. A cry of hopelessness and existential angst we show little willingness to assuage. The global response to the Gaza protests and Israeli gunfire last week has brought…
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Fundamentalism and the Fear of Being Wrong
We keep hearing about how divided we are. That we’re more polarized and uncivil than ever. That we hate each other more. But this isn’t the whole truth. Our division doesn’t come from a common rejection of the common ground. It stems from fundamentalism, which is a fundamentally divisive ideology. Because fundamentalism has to be…