President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.
On Sunday I attended a worship service at which the air was heavy with a sense of loss. But I saw the church being the church at its best.
In the wake of the Newtown shooting, political will is growing to do something about guns. People are moved to act—and we must act.
Megan McArdle thinks that gun-control measures wouldn't accomplish much but that training kids to run at a shooter instead of away might. That's a weird payoff at the end of a 4,500-word post, but it's not as offensive as Charlotte Allen's argument.
In the whirlwind of words that have followed the Newtown tragedy, one prominent religious voice has been Max Lucado, a Texas pastor and best-selling author. CNN’s Belief Blog interviewed him for its first response to the trauma. The Huffington Post ran a Christmas prayer from him during these dark days. And Lucado’s words are being quoted by folks like Jim Denison at the Christian Post.
Those of us in violence-plagued neighborhoods look forward to winter's reprieve. Our teenagers understand Advent waiting all too well.