Armistice Day / St. Martin's Day

Today is Armistice Day, a day for celebrating the only thing worth celebrating about war: when it's over.

Today's a good day to go read about The Christmas Truce.  Maybe even view Joyeux Noël.

More great viewing today is this amazing cartoon from 1939: Peace on Earth.  Or its 1955 remake, Good Will to Men.  Perhaps those who lived through the disastrous great wars of the twentieth century did not worship warfare as we are sometimes led to believe.

Today is also St. Martin's Day, honoring Martin of Tours, who refused to continue to fight in Caesar's army after he became a Christian.  Martin later opposed execution as a punishment for heresy, rightly recognizing that Christians could not support using the state to punish religious error.

Checks and balances

There are no genuine checks and balances in the American political system.  The only genuine check and balance would be "I don't have to give you my check if I do not agree with your agenda."  Since in the American system, the minority are forced to comply with the agenda of the majority, if only for a few years, there is no check and balance on government power, and as we have seen for over two hundred years, it grows without limit.

Imagine a world where nobody had to pay for a war they did not approve of.

Kim Davis

This whole thing is just ridiculous.  A clerk refuses to issue marriage licenses and instead of realizing that nobody should have the power to issue marriage licenses and eliminating her office, we make a good example out of her.

Because punishment is more fun than fixing the problem!

Also, notice that once again we have a bigger government telling a little government what to do.  That means that when the bigger government starts to oppress you (whoever you are, gay, straight, Christian, or whatever), the government that is closer to you will not be able to protect your rights.  Everybody ought to be afraid of that, and people on one side of the continent ought to quit telling people on the other side of the continent what to do.