Rays of hope
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to impeach President Trump: or, rather, all but two or three of the House’s Democrats so voted (the different articles of impeachment didn’t receive the same number of favorable votes). The impeachers outnumbered the Republicans, who unanimously voted not to impeach.
It isn’t surprising that this outcome should be so partisan. More surprising is yesterday’s editorial by Mark Galli in Christianity Today: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”
(I’ve been having trouble loading the editorial’s webpage. Much or all of Galli’s text is reproduced, with interspersed commentary, on the blog of the evangelical historian, John Fea.)
I’ve not often been impressed by political declarations, which tend to be self-interested, but this one is tremendous. It’d seem very risky, circulation-wise, for CT to issue such a strong condemnation of Trump and his followers. But, as the editorial makes clear, this position was the only consistent one available to the magazine, given what it had published in 1998 about President Clinton. Short of retraction, it also was the only position allowing the magazine to meet its aspiration of nonpartisanship. (If you criticize a Democrat for doing X, and if a Republican then does X, your only nonpartisan options are to criticize the Republican or else to withdraw your criticism of the Democrat.)
Now that CT has taken an appropriate stand against this perverse regime, perhaps other evangelicals will do so as well.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Today’s other ray of hope is that a hyperloop route between Cleveland and Chicago might be built through South Bend in the not-too-distant future (see this article, and this one).
Details:
Travel time, Cleveland to Chicago: less than 40 minutes.
First year of operation: 2028 (estimate).
New jobs: 900,000 (estimate).
Ticket prices: two-thirds of Amtrak’s (estimate).
Funding: 100% private.
Energy: 100% solar. The expected surplus is to be fed into the grid.
It isn’t surprising that this outcome should be so partisan. More surprising is yesterday’s editorial by Mark Galli in Christianity Today: “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”
(I’ve been having trouble loading the editorial’s webpage. Much or all of Galli’s text is reproduced, with interspersed commentary, on the blog of the evangelical historian, John Fea.)
I’ve not often been impressed by political declarations, which tend to be self-interested, but this one is tremendous. It’d seem very risky, circulation-wise, for CT to issue such a strong condemnation of Trump and his followers. But, as the editorial makes clear, this position was the only consistent one available to the magazine, given what it had published in 1998 about President Clinton. Short of retraction, it also was the only position allowing the magazine to meet its aspiration of nonpartisanship. (If you criticize a Democrat for doing X, and if a Republican then does X, your only nonpartisan options are to criticize the Republican or else to withdraw your criticism of the Democrat.)
Now that CT has taken an appropriate stand against this perverse regime, perhaps other evangelicals will do so as well.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Today’s other ray of hope is that a hyperloop route between Cleveland and Chicago might be built through South Bend in the not-too-distant future (see this article, and this one).
Details:
Travel time, Cleveland to Chicago: less than 40 minutes.
First year of operation: 2028 (estimate).
New jobs: 900,000 (estimate).
Ticket prices: two-thirds of Amtrak’s (estimate).
Funding: 100% private.
Energy: 100% solar. The expected surplus is to be fed into the grid.
