As I have mentioned before, we must be extremely careful about our language when we debate one another on any issue. So often, an argument is won, lost, or irredeemably confused because of a definition. If truths can be unlocked in careful definition, so can lies be reified in careless ones.

Read more on There’s Poverty and then there’s Poverty…

The recent blogpost by my colleague Jordan Ballor discusses an op-ed written by law professor Stanley Fish. I am more familiar with Stanley Fish from his days as a literary theorist, and perhaps a quick review of a younger Fish will contribute to the conversation.

Read more on The School of Fish…

A week ago Stanley Fish, a law professor at Florida International University, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times about the principles of constitutional interpretation, especially as represented by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Read more on Textual Interpretation…

In this interview for Crosswalk.com, Acton Institute senior fellow Marvin Olasky talks about his book, The Religions Next Door. Olasky says, in part, on the importance for Christians to learn about other religions,

Read more on Olasky on World Religions…

Are you a blogger? Then you are invited to take the MIT Weblog Survey of 2005.

One of the free downloads offered today in the iTunes music store (click here to access it via iTunes) is an interview with Jack and Meg White of the White Stripes. They were guests of Terry Gross on Fresh Air on June 9, 2005 and spoke about their new album, Get Behind Me Satan.

Read more on Get Behind Me Satan…

St. Thomas More sans stubble

The legitimization of so-called same-sex marriage in Spanish law has not surprisingly elicited a strong response from Christians around the world. This particular disagreement is often cast by proponents of change as a matter of Religion trying to encroach on Politics. However, I always flinch when the Church/State dichotmy is used to suggest that we can exist in one of these realms individually and absolutely, as if neither realm influences the other. On this topic, Rocco Buttliglione notes a particular point of unity between State and Religion: the person.

Read more on The Unity of Faith and Politics, More or Less…

In reading Is the Market Moral? (Brookings Institution Press, 2003), I have come across a passage containing what I suspect is a common misconception about markets.

"Unlike the market, which values people according to their resources and the productivity they bring to the market, Christian teachings on poverty ascribe value to a group that has no resources."

The problematic premise implicit in this statement is that ‘the market’ somehow bestows value and that the value it bestows is somehow absolute. But the ‘market’ is not a willful being; the market is a term for the free association of willful beings, namely persons. In the market — a particular sphere of human interaction — the involved persons do recognize certain types of value in other persons based on what those persons offer in that sphere. But recognition (or lack of it) of a person’s ‘value’ in a given sphere is not an absolute value judgment. The ontological value of the human person is inherent. But ‘market value’ is not the same as ‘ontological value’. The confusion comes with the word value: same word; different concepts.

Read more on Watch Your Language…

“Winning isn’t everything.” Whatever happened to this slice of wisdom? In Columbus, Ohio, a team of baseball players has been ejected from their league for being “too good”! (Read the story here). The parents of the teams being slaughtered by the better team complained that losing was seriously detrimental to their kids’ self-esteem. Therefore, the league decided to reward the hard work of the winning team with expulsion. Winning isn’t everything, but apparently, losing is.

Read more on Take Your Ball and Go Home…

At today’s Get Fuzzy.