LocalCommentary.com
David Rodeback's Blog

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Parenting, Social Security, and Pope John Paul II

One of the spots on the Web which I most enjoy reading is The Ornery American - hence the link under the heading "Favorites" to the right. Orson Scott Card is not the only columnist there, but he is the one I read most and enjoy most.

Here are three pieces worth reading. Two are by Card: a longer and better essay than my own on the late Pope John Paul II, "Why I Miss Karol Wojtyla," and a very lucid essay on parenting with a spine, "I Give You My Permission."

Here, at the same site, a guest writer named Mike Talley expresses some intriguing thoughts about Iraq: "Oh Crap, My Intelligence Sucks!" His writing isn't as vigorous or (technically) as clean as Card's, but some of the thoughts bear thinking. For example, what if Saddam really did not have any weapons of mass destruction, but thought he did - because his own scientists and generals were telling him so? Perhaps they feared what would happen to them if they told Saddam they no longer had the capability of producing them, so they pretended. It might not be an outlandish deception in a totalitarian climate. Or it might be; you decide.

Copyright 2005 by David Rodeback.
All rights reserved.
Permission is given to publish this article elsewhere on the Web or via e-mail only under these conditions: The article is published intact and unchanged, and is properly credited to the author; and a visible link is included to the article's page at LocalCommentary.com.