Kathryn Jean Lopez is a Woman of Mystery. Among these mysteries are how on earth did she ever get a job, and also, what idiocy is she complaining about now -- was the lotion not placed correctly in the basket again?
Immiseration
I use that word a lot (I did in my syndicated column this week). I should probably find more adjectives, but it really does capture so much of the misery of the hour on matters of family, and relations between men and women, and the lack of flourishing among so many around us.
This is someone who has been paid as an "editor." This is also someone who thinks that "immeseration" is an adjective, and who is probably only allowed to get away with "lack of flourishing" because she was told at gunpoint that "flourishment" is not a word.
Remember: the National Review is a place for Intellectual Conservatism.
Her syndicated column is, as it happens, scrumptious. Oh, wait. I meant that "it is full of scrumptiousnessitude."
There was a young man — 23 at most — quietly saying his morning prayers on Capitol Hill on the third day of 2013, and it seemed for a moment like an injection of the warmest ray of light in the midst of a blistering cold spell.
Only the most dreadlfully abject junkies get high off sunlight, but then I guess if you're suffering from chilblains, you wouldn't be too upset at the odd "blistering cold" locution. Or too enthused about some poor young fella desperately emploring Jesus to make him not gay.
He walked into St. Peter’s Church on the House side of Capitol Hill shortly after I did for a bipartisan, ecumenical prayer service that marked the beginning of the 113th Congress. The last days of the 112th had been a bit . . . hellish. And so to see John Boehner sitting up front and then Nancy Pelosi being whisked in by the Secret Service — one could be tempted to be cynical. Was this all a show? If it was for real, it was a portrait of civility. Leading the prayers were not just the priests who welcomed all to the Catholic parish a few stones’ throws away from the Capitol building but also Protestants, the Jewish Eric Cantor, the Muslim Keith Ellison.
Can someone amongst our readership please fact check this? How many stones need be thrown here? Yes, yes, you can go first.
Blah blah... OK, here we go:
We’re not dreaming the way we used to. The generation that went to outer space has grandkids who may not be leaving their parents’ basements anytime soon.
NRO CALLS FOR MASSIVE GOVERNMENT SPACE PROJECT.
They’re not getting married. And even if they do get married, they are crippled by ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be in the 21st century, and many of them are deprived of religion, which has been known to help us to figure out how to live joyfully.
I was born an Irish Catholic. My wife is an Irish Catholic. We know from "ridiculous expectations as to who men and women are and should be." We "live joyfully" mostly because we jettisoned the "Catholicism."
The idea that "Catholicism makes most Catholics happy"... well, I'd like to see the research on that one.
Blah blah.
Grace is amazing, as the hymn tells us.
Fuck you.
Get a load of this:
And despite our bad decisions or indifferences or despairing of politics, there are men and women of principle. Among them is the Green family, which runs the Hobby Lobby arts-and-crafts chain. They run their business in a way that they believe will be conducive to the family and faith lives of their employees. They are refusing to comply with the infamous Health and Human Services mandate because they are evangelicals who are opposed to abortion, and they are consequently now in defiance of the law. Whether America knows it or not, they are fighting for freedom itself with their defiance and their witness to trying to live lives of integrity. To be “free” includes not complying with a culture that has become complacent about its immiseration.
"To be free" means that you get to make your own choices as regards to the insurance you are provided as a condition of your employment. For Lopez, "freedom" means the right of employers to control the consciences of their employees.
I didn’t interrupt that kid who was praying to ask him, but I hope his prayer was that men and women in elected office are inspired by the likes of the Greens, instead of viewing them as backward anomalies whose view of religious liberty belongs in the past.
I hope the lot of you repulsive authoritarian creeps gets shat on by a Heavenly Elephant.