Listen to the Lion

Andrew Sullivan gets the vapors

Andrew Sullivan is certainly one of the best and most interesting bloggers out there, but I have been irked about the way he writes about traditional (that is, Bible-believing) Christians, especially as it pertains to the "gay marriage" issue and the role of Christian faith in American public life.

His post today about President Bush being quoted as saying he doesn't "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord" is the latest case of either Sullivan's tin ear or his petulance.

Surely Sullivan knows that Bush is merely employing a figure of speech to describe how he feels that his faith is an essential part of how he copes with the tremendously difficult job of being an effective president.

For Sullivan to suggest that Bush is trying to "restrict the presidency to a particular religious faith" is just silly. Sullivan, not the President, should be doing the retracting.

Europe's retreat from itself

Early in 2004, I read a great little book by Robert Kagan called Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. The book's opening is, I think, true and timely:

"It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power-the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power-American and European perspectives are diverging."

As the century progresses, America and the rest of the West (with the United Kingdom vacillating between the two camps) will have rival approaches on how to confront present (Islamofascist states and terrorists) and future threats to Judeo-Christian civilization.

A recent essay by George Weigel explains why.

AKUS on NPR

A nice, short profile on Alison Krauss and Union Station, with sound clips from their excellent new CD, from NPR's Morning Edition is here.

20 best albums of 2004

My year-end list for NRO is here.

W's playlist

I've known for a while that George and Laura are Van Morrison fans, and the caption of the picture below (just click on the pic for a larger view) from his second Time Man of the Year issue is a nice confirmation of that. Would love to see Van play the inaugural.