Almost a million images of New York and its municipal operations have been made public for the first time on the internet.

The city’s Department of Records officially announced the debut of the photo database.

Culled from the Municipal Archives collection of more than 2.2 million images going back to the mid-1800s, the 870,000 photographs feature all manner of city oversight—from stately ports and bridges to grisly gangland killings.

Our key economic failings are in education, health care and retirements — three sectors dominated by political rather than economic action: the K-12 monopoly model of education, Social Security and other retirement entitlements and a hodge-podge of medical programs which meant that even before the enactment of ObamaCare about half of all health-care spending was government spending, a fact that Republicans foolishly ignored when they protested that we had “the best health-care system in the world.” (Note to Republicans: We have great medicine and medical technology; we have a terrible system of paying for health care, and it was terrible before ObamaCare, too.)

These government-dominated systems are inherently defective. Not because the people who run them aren’t smart and well-intentioned — though they are by no means universally smart and well-intentioned — but because it is the nature of political institutions to be insulated from the information-feedback that characterizes marketplace activity.

Simply put, when Coca-Cola introduces New Coke or McDonald’s introduces the McGratin Croquette (shrimp, mashed potatoes and deep-fried macaroni) and hordes of people don’t show up to buy them, those products go away, and if a company makes enough such unwanted products, it goes away, too. But if you live in The Bronx and your local elementary school is terrible, it does not go bankrupt, and you probably don’t have even 20 other options, though there are 900 kinds of shampoo on the shelves. There are many good ways to invest 12% of your income for retirement, but that’s harder to do when you first have to put 12% into a bad investment, Social Security.

The decline or dismantling of these programs will prevent us from pouring a great deal of good money into bad investments. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and related entitlements make up the largest part of federal spending; combine those with national defense and interest on the debt, and you are talking about nearly the entire federal budget — about 81%, with the rest of it comprising that piddling non-defense discretionary spending that President Obama goes on about.

Implementing a new Common Core of unenforceable and utterly ignored standards is not going to fix this difficulty. While the Obama Administration’s ideal of “fewer, higher and clearer” standards sounds like one of the smarter ideas that this man’s administration has come up with, it will not do the job because it addresses the wrong problem. It is not the content of the standards that is the biggest problem with our schools. The problem is that we lack the institutional courage to actually enforce any standards at all.

What American Secondary Schools need to enact is what I’ll call the Tyler Durden reforms. This is based on the line from the novel Fight Club where Tyler Durden teaches his followers that they are not unique and beautiful snowflakes. If we continue to tell our children that they are special and immune from consequence, they will eventually become seduced into holding that ultimately self-defeating belief. This fatal conceit will lead these children to have an overweening sense of entitlement and a minimal skill-set of abilities that any logical employer would want to hire.

Here’s what my proposed Tyler Durden Standards would look like.

1) The People Who Pay the Taxes and Elect The School Board Determine The Standards. The people who pay the piper should call the tune. The local employers who pay the business taxes funding the school system should get a vote in what those graduates know before they show up and start applying for work. Local citizens who pay the property tax should have a voice in how the education of young people impacts the community in which they own the taxed property. Educational standards should be powered down to the same level from which the revenue to operate the schools is taken.

Several GOP state governors have criticized the top-down, command and control structure. Nikki Haley voiced the Federalism concerns that are implicit in proposed reform number one. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell fought to defend the outstanding reputation of his state’s system from being dumbed-down by inclusion in some national borg.

“I don’t want to have a federal bureaucracy monitoring whether or not we are having the right programs in our schools,” said Virginia governor Bob McDonnell recently. “The bottom line is, we don’t need the federal government with the Common Core telling us how to run our schools in Virginia. We’ll use our own system, which is very good. It’s empirically tested.”

About a week ago, Louis Farrakhan gave a sermon that was littered with his usual incendiary language that seems geared to cause division and hatred.  While this speech is only one of many we have come to expect from him, it is always interesting to see the reaction our political and religious leaders have to such words.

The Anti-Defamation League is criticizing Louis Farrakhan for delivering blatantly anti-Semitic statements, using terms such as “Satanic Jews” and the “Synagogue of Satan,” during a speech at a Detroit church last week. The Jewish group is also asking why public figures who attended the Nation of Islam leader’s event have remained silent.

According to the ADL and the Detroit Free Press, those present at the May 17th Fellowship Chapel event included the church’s leader, Rev. Wendell Anthony, who also serves as President of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) and Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson. According to the Detroit Free Press, “Conyers and Watson nodded in agreement during some of Farrakhan’s remarks”; however, the paper did not specify during which parts of the speech they nodded.

The ADL provided the following details about the speech, which included classic anti-Semitic characterizations of Jews’ allegedly being engaged in conspiratorial efforts at world domination (typical of many Farrakhan speeches):

Mr. Conyers has issued a public apology for his attendance and condemned the words of Farrakan.  While that is all well and good, if those words actually offended Mr. Conyers why did he wait a week to issue the statement?  Was his apology motivated by the public attention he received spurring him to issue the obligatory statement and the conviction it displayed simply to make sure he did not get caught the next time?  If Mr. Conyers really wanted to make a statement, he could have stood up and denounced Mr. Farrakan’s words and walked out.  We could even be very generous as to assume Mr. Conyers wanted to hear the entire message in context before making a judgement but do you think he needed a week to “form his thoughts?” 

The occupants in Congress and the White House seem to have forgotten that character matters and actions speak louder than words.  Unfortunately it is not just the politicians that have forgotten.  All too many religious leaders are in the same boat.

Back when I worked as an Operational Tester for Sam’s Army, I was at Ft. Campbell working in my data shed. I took a break to talk to an LTC on my test team. I was talking to him about things he saw over in Iraq.* It stunned the man that Iraqis cared so little about personal safety. They rode around in flatbed trucks with no headgear or seatbelts. They routinely worked in 100 degree + weather with no shirt, no canteens and probably no suntan lotion. He just couldn’t reconcile this with the safety-first risk-averse mentality of the successful Army Staff Officer. These people actually allowed Negative Chance Deviations.**

The soldier I bantered with while my data forms came in from the test range was a great American. He just didn’t realize something that we all seem to be learning now to our demise. Having the resources, time and knowledge to take the risk out of literally everything is a luxury. It is a luxury that we increasingly no longer have. You don’t have to wear shades anymore. The future isn’t bright enough for you to afford that awesome pair of Oakley’s. If Robert J. Samuelson is accurate; we are entering into a new age of risk. He explains below.

We are passing through something more than a period of disappointing economic growth and increasing political polarization. What’s happening is more powerful: the collapse of “entitlement.” By this, I do not mean primarily cuts in specific government benefits, most prominently Social Security, but the demise of a broader mind-set — attitudes and beliefs — that, in one form or another, has gripped Americans since the 1960s. The breakdown of these ideas has rattled us psychologically as well as politically and economically.

Throughout most of history, people have known better than post-modern Americans. Life is tenuous, unfair, unjust, Darwinist and filled with cruel, iniquitous vicissitude. Americans don’t *like* the messages of Old Testament Books such as Ecclesiastes or Job. They particularly wouldn’t like Job if they sat down and gave it a thorough read. I don’t have physical proof that the devil really does “go to and fro in the earth” or that he really “walks up and down it” looking for decent people to screw over. However, in may and divers ways, the life of the average American will get more tenuous and more scary in years to come.

Sojourners wants to buy ads on Pandora to counter FAIR’s hateful rhetoric. Will you chip in $25 or more to help us with this project?

OK, fine, they disagree with the Federation for American Immigration Reform on the issue. Run your ad, make your point, no problem. But that’s not enough for the Sojourners activists. They can’t abide the fact that someone disagrees with them, and actually has the temerity to state that viewpoint in public. Therefore, they must be silenced!

Millions of young people are hearing hateful, anti-immigrant messages on the radio right now.

We must stop this.

Pandora radio recently accepted advertisements from FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), an anti-immigrant hate group as identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Pandora radio has 70 million users listening 1.31 billion hours each month. We need to send Pandora a message: publicly apologize for accepting hate ads, and promise to never accept money from nationally recognized hate groups ever again. [Emphasis in original.]

The SPLC is notorious for branding those who disagree with its leftist ideology “hate groups” (for example, the shooting at the Family Research Council offices in Washington was by a man who said he got the FRC off the SPLC list of “anti-gay hate groups”). Sojourners picks FAIR off the SPLC boogeyman list, brands them a “hate group” (no evidence needed–evidently if you get Sojourners emails, you just know it’s true), and then demands that one of the largest conveyors of Internet radio cover itself in shame, grovel before the hard left for its act of facilitating free speech, and then deny to FAIR the same privilege that Sojourners expects (and would scream to high heaven if it was denied).

Oh, and we must trample on the free market of ideas because–HORRORS!–“young people” might be exposed to notions that Sojourners doesn’t like.

Sojourners: taking its cue from Venezuela since well before Hugo Chavez became a dead parrot.

First, a very quick history of congregational singing.

Before the Reformation, laypersons were not allowed to sing in church. Sacred music was performed by professionals (priests and cantors), played on complex instruments (pipe organs), and sung in an obscure language (Latin).

Reformers gave worship back to the people, in the form of congregational singing. They composed simple tunes with lyrics that people could easily memorize. Some of the tunes came out of local taverns.

A technological advance – the printing press – led to an explosion of congregational singing. The first hymnal was printed in 1532, and soon a few dozen hymns became standards across Christendom. Hymnals slowly grew over the next four centuries. By the mid 20th century every Protestant church had a hymnal of about 1000 songs, 250 of which were regularly sung. In the church of my youth, everyone picked up a hymnal and sang every verse of every song.

About a decade ago, a new technological advance – the computer controlled projection screen – entered America’s sanctuaries. Suddenly churches could project song lyrics for all to see. Hymnals became obsolete. No longer were Christians limited to 1,000 songs handed down by our elders.

At first, churches simply projected the songs everyone knew – hymns and a few simple praise songs that had come out of the Jesus Movement. People sang robustly.

But that began to change about three years ago. Worship leaders brought in new songs each week. They drew from the radio, the Internet, and Worship conferences. Some began composing their own songs, performing them during worship, and selling them on CD after church.

The Muslim Council of Britain rushed out a swift statement, washing its hands of the murder, repudiating utterly any link with Islam: “A barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly,” they said.

The problem, of course, is that it manifestly does have a link with Islam. It may have nothing to do with the MCB understanding of the religion in modern Britain, and doubtless they sincerely believe that ‘No cause justifies this murder’ and that the ‘Vast majority of British Muslims acknowledge armed forces for the work they do world’. But to say it has no basis in Islam is to deny Islamic history, ignore the brutality of the warrior Mohammed, and brush off those inconvenient jihadi-Islamic movements in the modern era who seek to emulate their prophet’s example.

The MCB is also rather selective with its condemnations and justifications. Have they repudiated Palestinian terrorism? Or does that particular cause justify the slaughter of the Fogel family? Have they said anything unequivocal to condemn the Taliban? Have they condemned their co-religionists who rally in the streets of London demanding the overthrow of the Government and Monarchy and the establishment of a Caliphate?

The truth is that those who hacked away at a British soldier yesterday are acting in accordance with a theologically determined logic which can certainly be situated within a sharia view of Islamic culture and understood on the basis of Islamic religious precepts. The killer calmly and rationally quoted Islamic sacred texts: ‘We must fight them as they fight us’ echoes the Qur’an:

Be sure to read everything His Grace has to say on the subject.

“Uh, I don’t have anybody to send out there,” the 911 dispatcher told the woman. “You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away? Do you know if he’s intoxicated or anything?”

From the Daily Mail, where there is more:

My parents met and fell in love in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Dad [Mel Leventhal], was the brilliant lawyer son of a Jewish family who had fled the Holocaust. Mum was the impoverished eighth child of sharecroppers from Georgia. When they married in 1967, inter-racial weddings were still illegal in some states.

My early childhood was very happy although my parents were terribly busy, encouraging me to grow up fast. I was only one when I was sent off to nursery school. I’m told they even made me walk down the street to the school.

When I was eight, my parents divorced. From then on I was shuttled between two worlds -  my father’s very conservative, traditional, wealthy, white suburban community in New York, and my mother’s avant garde multi-racial community in California. I spent two years with each parent -  a bizarre way of doing things.

Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa -  offering herself up as a mother figure.

But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities -  after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.

My mother would always do what she wanted -  for example taking off to Greece for two months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain selfish?
I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me -  a ‘delightful distraction’, but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio -  some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.

We, the undersigned national religious groups, urge you to oppose H.R.1797, the “District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” sponsored by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ), which would create a nationwide ban on access to abortion care 20 weeks after fertilization, with no exceptions in cases of rape, incest or fetal anomalies. It explicitly bans later abortion care for a woman whose mental health would threaten her life or her health. We stand united across our faith traditions in opposing this extreme legislation.

This letter will be immediately dismissed on Capitol Hill, since the authors evidently can’t read (there’s no evidence that anyone actually read even the first paragraph of their own letter). The District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, you see, is only for…well, you can guess:

(a) Unlawful Conduct- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, including any legislation of the District of Columbia under authority delegated by Congress, it shall be unlawful for any person to perform an abortion within the District of Columbia, or attempt to do so, unless in conformity with the requirements set forth in subsection (b).

Now, it may be that the signers of the letter (a “broad list of religious organizations,” most of which happen to also be members of the RCRC, the remainder of which are simply the usual suspects) think that the entire United States is encapsulated in the District of Columbia. Or it may be that they think that “District of Columbia” is simply another name for the “United States.” Or it may be that they think there is nothing outside of the District of Columbia that is part of the United States. One way or another, out here in the real world we realize that bills that specify that they are enacting law for the District of Columbia actually only encompass this small piece of land otherwise known as Washington, D.C.

As for their other claims, here is the relevant portion of the legislation:

(2)(A) Except as provided in subparagraph (B), the abortion shall not be performed or attempted, if the probable post-fertilization age, as determined under paragraph (1), of the unborn child is 20 weeks or greater.

(B) Subject to subparagraph (C), subparagraph (A) does not apply if, in reasonable medical judgment, the abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions.

It is true that there is no exception in this for rape or incest. The thinking, I’m certain, is that victims of those two crimes still have the option to have an abortion up to twenty weeks after the crime. That is ample time to have a pregnancy test, make a decision, and have the procedure done. As for fetal abnormalities, they are virtually all detectable before twenty weeks, again permitting time for a decision and action. As for the lack of mental health exceptions, those have always been nothing more than dodges to all abortionists to evade bans that would otherwise be applicable. Any woman can say, “if I have this baby, my life will be ruined,” or some such, at which point the doctor can claim, “mental health exception invoked–patient was clearly suicidal when I saw her.”

As stupid as the first paragraph is, the second is garden variety evil:

Proponents of this bill have cited the Kermit Gosnell case as a reason to push this intrusive policy, but the fact is that the lack of access to safe and affordable abortion care is precisely the circumstance that drove women to an unscrupulous person like Gosnell, as it did to so many women before Roe v. Wade.  The existence of his clinic is a ghastly warning sign of what happens when abortion is so restricted and expensive that a woman in need feels that she has nowhere else to turn.

My response is a variation on the famous Inigo Montoya line from The Princess Bride: “You keep using that argument. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This just apes NARAL and Planned Parenthood, which have said the same idiotic thing. First, there’s a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Philadelphia. Did their prices skyrocket during Gosnell’s reign of terror? Second, his operation was legal the entire time it was open, while the state of Pennsylvania winked at it and ignored complaints about it. Doesn’t sound like overly burdensome regulation was the problem. Third, how exactly would fewer regulations have kept Gosnell from doing his Mengele routine? This argument is not only demonstrably, factually incorrect, it is evil. It turns the truth completely on its head, and does so in the service of the killing of innocents. Old Joe Goebbels would be proud (and no, that’s not a violation of Godwin’s Law, that’s a statement of ethical reality).

Finally, we have the last refuge of a pro-abortion scoundrel–claiming that baby-killing is a religious liberty interest:

Like all Americans, Rep. Franks is free to have and share his own religious beliefs about issues related to pregnancy and parenting. Liberty is an American value. However, H.R.1797 is a clear attempt to impose one particular religious belief on the whole nation, and thus represents a gross violation of the freedom to which every American is entitled by the Constitution. The proper role of government in the United States is not to impose one set of religious views on everyone, but to protect each person’s right and ability to make decisions according to their own beliefs and values.

Yada, yada, yada. What do you want to bet that the IRS wouldn’t think of cramping these clowns’ style?

Again, this sounds a lot like deciding the grass is greener elsewhere because of what others say. I too have an ideal for small town living with front porches where I know my neighbors. I grew up in Jackson, LA both before and after returning from Dubai. Jackson is one town over from St. Francisville, LA, where Rod Dreher has returned home. Jackson is St. Francisville but poorer. There are no cows tied to cinder blocks in front yards in St. Francisville. Our home had a big front porch. We knew our neighbors. There were two main churches in town. Half my family went to the First Baptist Church and the other half went to the Methodist Church right across the street.

It was wonderful. I’m blessed now to have a front porch and rocking chair.

But it was also what we made of it. What these critiques of suburbs miss and what so much of what Anthony Bradley calls the new legalism misses is that our community is what we make of it. This idea that you have to be a radical Christian living in the bad part of town to show your truth faith is just people who’ve never found themselves trying to find themselves in some way they heard a preacher say would be awesome. So they’ve put on their skinny jeans, flannel shirt in summer, North Face vest, and trucker cap and gone off to share the Lord, or their day’s work, or their confession over beer with friends.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

David Crowder, whose music I love, has moved into Cabbagetown — a reviving hipster part of Atlanta. I do not know him and have not met him, though I’d love to have a beer with him. But if you know anything about David Crowder, you’d know he’s a perfect fit for Cabbagetown.

There are, however, a lot of young Christians and others may not be, but in the quest to find the Awesome, they go there too. The hipster preachers say they should go forth there. The youth leader says to do it. Their parents have been telling them all their lives they will be special, brave, and bold. So they go. And they waste their existence. Trying to find the God of Awesome they burn out and accept defeat. Some folks are not cut out to be urban dwellers. Some are not cut out to be rural dwellers. Some are just fine living in the suburbs. It should be to each his own, but the perennial quest of the modern age to find yourself makes it difficult to be still and know God.

We’re so busy trying to find Him, we don’t let Him find us.

Maybe it is just me, but I think a whole lot of people are missing the point.

You don’t have to give up everything in life and march through gang land to find Jesus or be awesome. Being a great husband and father works. Being the best burger flipper at McDonalds or the best insurance salesman or the best carpenter or the best tax collector works too. We have made an idol of the Awesome that demands we constantly quest for it instead of building our own community.

This is a significant point, and it supports the rest of Lee’s speech, so rather than contradicting him, I would sing a slight variation on his melody.  Free-market capitalism is all about community.  Even the most basic transaction involves at least two people.  Commerce is a form of communication, and communication is essential to cooperation.  Voluntary forms of cooperation demand far more intricate communications than central planning.  The statist need only bark a few simple commands, and occasionally give his whip a menacing snap.

If commerce is communication, then prosperity requires the free flow of information.  Wealth is data, and vice versa.  The citizens of a prosperous society know the true value of goods and services.  They are able to sense opportunities for profit, and swiftly assemble groups of investors and workers to exploit them.

In a socialist economy, by contrast, the level of information available to the populace is very poor.  No one knows what anything really costs.  Prices are distorted by controls and subsidies.  Government services are funded with a great, bland, uninformative slush of taxation and borrowing.  Accountability and transparency become bitter jokes.  Individual citizens become so confused about the value of goods and labor that the poor, damned souls may actually start referring to the “gifts” of the State as “free!”  We can only marvel at the sheer foolishness of someone who thinks health care or mandated contraceptives are “free”… and the sinister dishonesty of those who promote such ignorance.

Low taxes, a light regulatory burden, and other policies designed to stimulate commerce result in the ready formation of small businesses.  These local operations tend to have a vested interest in the health of their community.  It’s no coincidence that many of them become sponsors for community events and local public works.  Sure, that’s also good advertising, which might be dismissed as a selfish motive… but advertising is a form of communication.  Also, a healthy community creates conditions in which individuals and organizations voluntarily take actions for the good of all.  That’s the difference between a community and a prison camp.

Another difference is that people can choose to leave a community, because it’s not surrounded by razor-wire fences and guard towers.  The community wants to persuade people to stay.  Persuasion means more communication, more data, more wealth…

As Senator Lee said, wise and just government facilitates honest commerce.  Prosperity does not follow lawless anarchy.  Another way to picture the proper role of government is that reasonable, fairly-enforced laws ensure a pure flow of accurate data through the marketplace.  No one can be robbed, cheated, or defrauded with impunity.  Those crimes are corruptions of the data flow, and they make people reluctant to cooperate with each other.

That being said, his is a fascinating spiritual biography. I found the narratives about his early childhood to be particularly enthralling—make sure you read it all. And here’s the T19 thread on his decision as well.

1.Childhood

In a small Lutheran (Evangelische) church located in the city square of Schwenningen am Neckar in the Black Forest Region of post-war Germany, I received the Sacrament of Baptism as an infant in 1948. I was the son of refugees, displaced persons;  my father Arnold Liias, an Estonian but conscripted into the German army during the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, had been taken from his native Estonia as a wounded soldier, an amputee from a gangrenous leg wound; my mother Ingeborg Schneider at nineteen had been separated from her home and family in East Germany and fled westward away from the Soviet invasion and occupation at the very end of the war.

The poverty and chaos of post-war Germany forced them to apply for emigration and in the winter of 1951-52, my parents and I now with as well my younger brother, their second child, arrived in the United States and were settled into a displaced person camp in Western Massachusetts. My father moved alone to Boston to find work and a new home. Months later we were taken into the Rectory of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown. An old bachelor priest, the Rev. Wolcott Cutler, had filled his home - a large five story brownstone situated on the square of the Bunker Hill Monument- with refugees. Though most remained for short periods of time,  we lived in that Rectory for the next ten years, becoming caretakers of the building and even, in the case of my father, the sexton at the church.

Mr. Cutler (as he was called- a deeply committed low churchman he would have been offended to be called Father Cutler)was an extraordinary saintly pastor and a most fascinating character. Though from a rich Boston Brahmin family, he had devoted his entire ordained ministry to inner city work among the poor. He was seen as the Pastor of all of Charlestown, though 90% of the community was Irish Catholic.  He was a zealous activist for peace and justice; the author and publisher of a Christian pacifist journal; an avid naturalist; a historical preservationist; and a most accomplished photographer of urban life. His glass slides are still one of the treasures of the Archives of the Boston Public Library. Mr. Cutler had a profound influence on me as a child; my mother used to tell me that even as a small boy I said that I wanted to be like Mr. Cutler when I grew up. The call to ordained ministry was there as far back as I can consciously remember. Childhood fantasy games often included playing church and of course I was the priest distributing communion.

In 1962, Mr. Cutler retired and a new priest, Fr. Brian Kelly with wife and children arrived. At this point we were required to leave the Rectory, and my parents through intense and diligent work-my father a machinist during the day and my mother working night shifts packing ice cream at Hood’s milk factory-were able to fulfill the American dream and purchase their own home, though just a few blocks away from the Rectory.

Charlestown as already noted was an Irish Catholic working class neighborhood and considered the toughest neighborhood of Boston.  My family and I were not infrequently verbally abused and even on occasion physically abused with stone throwing and gang beatings for being “protestants and naziis.” In the pre-Vatican II sensibilities of the time I was constantly told by my childhood friends that I was going to Hell, spoken often not with gladness but poignant sadness. They were truly sorry for me.  Fr. Kelly-note the title change-was a high churchman; and I remember distinctly the day in Sunday School when he instructed us that we were not Protestants but Catholics; but we were not Roman Catholics, we were Anglo-catholics. Well this was the best news I had ever heard. I was a Catholic too! Perhaps that epiphany was the seed of this journey now.

St. John’s Episcopal Church was the center of my life. Besides being a refuge where we as immigrants were accepted and loved, a kind of extended family, it also was the formative spiritual community of my childhood and adolescence. We had a boys choir –a then common but now rare feature of Anglicanism; I was the lead soprano until my voice cracked somewhere around 14. There was a church Boy Scout Troop, which provided recreation, fellowship, and camping trips out of the city. In high school we had a very active Young People’s Fellowship, of which I was president and because of which I had my first preaching opportunity on Youth Sunday. (The sermon is lost to history). Seminarians from the Episcopal Theological School provided youth leadership, and one in particular, Fr. James Hagen, still to this day a very close friend, solidified my vocation. Already as a senior in high school I met with my Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Anson Stokes . “ Jurgen you’ll make a wonderful priest; now when you go to college, don’t major in religion.  You’ll get plenty of that in Seminary.” He shook my hand and I was a postulant!

2.College and Seminary

In 1965, I went off to college.  I had been recruited by Harvard College but when my mother said I would live at home if I went to Harvard, I swiftly accepted the full scholarship I had been given by Amherst and moved to the Pioneer Valley.  My secondary education had been at the Boston Latin School, the oldest and one of the finest public schools in the U.S.  Six years of Latin and three years of Greek in high school and an interest in archaeology (as my backup career if I were rejected for ordination) directed me to choose Classics as my major (though in my Senior year at Amherst I added Psychology as a second major). Again perhaps there is providence in all my Latin as I journey to Rome.

The greatest providence of college, however, was the meeting on the very first day of Freshman year of a young lady from Smith College named Gloria Gehshan. She would become my wife.  Adding the five years of courtship to our 41 years of marriage, we have been together most of our 64 years of life.

This was the turbulent 60’s and the days of student revolution: political, social, sexual, and spiritual. In high school I had already become somewhat of an activist in the civil rights movement. At Amherst I joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the premier New Left organization, and was very engaged in organizing teach- ins, demonstrations, and marches against the Vietnam War. This activism for peace and justice was for me an expression of my faith and Christians like Merton, the Berrigans, Dorothy Day and of course Martin Luther King Jr. were, in their writings, sermons, and witness my heroes. But the underside of this era was also part of my life; sexual promiscuity, drugs, growing cynicism. By the time I arrived at seminary, the Episcopal Theological School, in Cambridge, in the fall of 1969, I was burned out from my efforts to change society; the world it turned out was a much more intransigent place than my idealistic activism understood.  I found myself in a deep depression.

Spirituality had not been a very significant part of my Christian life, but my depression created a quest for inner resources. Though dabbling in Eastern religions and new age philosophies, Jungian Psychology became my new religion. Carl Jung, the great Swiss Psychiatrist, unlike Freud his mentor, was sympathetic to religion and believed in God. I was consumed with reading his works, going to lectures of the Jungian society, and doing dream work with a Jungian therapist. In my last year of seminary I became an Intern at an Episcopal Church on the North Shore of Boston working under a priest who himself was an avid disciple of Jung.  One peculiar feature of this priest and this parish was an interest in Spiritual Healing. Having been well indoctrinated with a biblical hermeneutic of Bultmanian demythologization where all the healing miracles of Jesus had been discarded, I was not sure what these folk thought they were doing, but I dutifully participated in the weekly Healing Eucharist which was followed by a Bible Study and Prayer Group. Though a Senior in seminary I had never participated in a bible study or prayer group before much less a healing service! But these Wednesday morning gatherings became utterly transformational: spiritually, theologically, pastorally. For the first time I began to “experience” the reality of God and the power of prayer. It was the beginning of a conversion to God the Holy Spirit.

3. My Conversion as a Young Priest

I was ordained Deacon at the end of that academic year in June 1972 and began my curacy at a large suburban Episcopal parish in Winchester, Mass.  Though the ethos of that parish was decidedly liberal protestant, I will be eternally grateful to the Rector John Bishop who was a wonderful mentor to me in learning the craft of being a good parish priest. He invited me to share in the full scope of parochial work: leading worship, preaching regularly, editing the weekly newsletter, pastoral visitation, leading a large and vibrant youth group, bringing high school students every week into an inner city church to tutor, teaching adult education and much more. I loved my work; I had no question that this was my divinely ordained vocation and I was, by worldly standards, popular and successful.  But God was doing an even more important work within me.

I continued my explorations in the Holy Spirit.  The charismatic movement was at that time making its appearance in the Episcopal Church.  9 o’clock in the Morning by Dennis Bennett, Gathered for Power by Graham Pulkingham and Miracle in Darien by Terry Fullam were narrations of priests and parishes totally transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit.  I went on occasion to Charismatic Prayer meetings in local Roman Catholic churches. I attended “Renewal” conferences around the country. ”Spiritual Renewal” was the new buzz word in the church; Cursillo, Faith Alive, Marriage Encounter, the Charismatic Movement-all were efforts to bring new life to the church in the face of what was beginning to become evident- decline and decrease in the Episcopal church. The heady days of church growth and expansion of the 50’s and 60’s were over. I was drawn to these movements, not just for the church’s sake, but for the sake of my own very thirsty soul.

As we get word that the IRS has harassed a number of pro-life groups, including at least one alleged demand that a pro-life group not picket Planned Parenthood, check out this statistic: In 2012, the IRS requested additional information from 90 percent of returns claiming the adoption tax credit and went on to actually audit 69 percent. More details from the Taxpayer Advocate Service:

“During the 2012 filing season, 90 percent of returns claiming the refundable adoption credit were subject to additional review to determine if an examination was necessary. The most common reasons were income and a lack of documentation.

“■ Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.

“■ Of the completed adoption tax credit audits, over 55 percent ended with no change in the tax owed or refund due in fiscal year 2012. The median refund amount involved in these audits is over $15,000 and the median adjusted gross income (AGI) of the taxpayers involved is about 64,000. The average adoption credit correspondence audit currently takes 126 days, causing a lengthy delay for taxpayers waiting for refunds.”

While many returns had missing or incomplete information (more on that in a moment), what was the outcome of this massive audit campaign? Not much:

“Despite Congress’ express intent to target the credit to low and middle income families, the IRS created income-based rules that were responsible for over one-third of all additional reviews in FY2012.

“■ Of the $668.1 million in adoption credit claims in tax year (TY) 2011 as a result of adoption credit audits, the IRS only disallowed $11 million — or one and one-half percent — in adoption credit claims. However, the IRS has also had to pay out $2.1 million in interest in TY 2011 to taxpayers whose refunds were held past the 45-day period allowed by law.”

So Congress implemented a tax credit to facilitate adoption – a process that is so extraordinarily expensive that it is out of reach for many middle-class families — and the IRS responded by implementing an audit campaign that delayed much-needed tax refunds to the very families that needed them the most. Oh, and the return on its investment in this harassment? Slightly more than 1 percent.

This is the same agency, remember, that demanded that pro-life organizations pledge not to picket Planned Parenthood in order to receive tax exemptions to which they were otherwise entitled. See a pattern emerging here?

The fact is that the IRS doesn’t audit 69% of any other group that I’ve ever heard of, with the possible exception of those who put down “Mafia capo” as their occupation. They can’t–their pool of “customers” is simply too large. That being the case, they choose individuals, groups, and businesses at random, using certain broad criteria. For them to audit this many people who claim a particular credit is their way of saying they don’t like said credit, Congress and the people it represents be damned, and is going to make it painful for anyone who has the temerity to actually try to claim it.

This is just one more piece of evidence that points to what I now consider an inescapable conclusion: the tax code should be re-written and drastically simplified, and the IRS done away with. No government agency should have the kind of power that it has over the American people.

(Via Hot Air.)

Setting aside the search for truth [since obviously I’ve already determined my beliefs on theological truth] I certainly use different categories in a congregational search, since I’m Reformed in theology and sacramental in expression. Those two things are very important to me. Another category that I have used is rather subjective and that is “do I wish to hang out with these people and ally myself with them?”  That is a significant question and I strongly suspect that many people unconsciously make their congregational choices—all other things being equal—based on that one criterium.

What about you? How do you make determinations about congregational choices?

Word on the street is that a portion of the congregation at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Douglas, Georgia, left and formed a new Anglican church with the rector resigning.  All but two of the vestry left as well.

England is one of the few exceptions to the lack of records. Wide areas of England have excellent and very complete records going back at least to the Domesday Book, and in some cases earlier than the Book’s 1087 date. Those records confirm that the murder rate was very high, in most cases greater than 50 per 100,000 population, and in some cases higher than 200 per 100,000 population.

Before 1500, the following graphic is based on surviving records of murder trials, and on records of murder after 1500. Since the table covers a continent, with many countries and widely varying conditions and murder rates, the blue represents the minimum murder rate for a given year, the red the maximum murder rate for the year. Many of the peaks are associated with some identifiable event; the peak around 1060 marking famine and political unrest in Northern Europe at that time.

Guns became cheap enough for wealthy peasants to own in the late 1300′s, and cheap enough for most peasants to own by 1500. The decline in murder rates as guns became more common is a dramatic one ...

From Fox News, where there is more:

When Marine Sgt. Ross Gundlach served as a dog handler in Afghanistan, he told the yellow lab who was his constant companion that he’d look her up when he returned home.

“I promised her if we made it out of alive, I’d do whatever it took to find her,” Gundlach said.