Marvin Olasky's blog

A Valentine’s Day goodbye

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 10:20:40 -0500

It’s Valentine’s Day, so what better day to give a present to my fans (you in the balcony, I see you) and my critics.

Changing Africa, one village at a time

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:21:35 -0500

CHISAMBA, Zambia — It’s 7:15 Monday morning in a cement-block house near this country’s major highway, the paved, two-lane Great North Road. Supervisor Peter Phiri, who helped to build that road during the 1990s, is speaking to 40 employees starting their workweek in a country where AIDS, unemployment and corruption are all rampant. They sit on planks held up by cement blocks in the building their own hands constructed.

Is Huckabee conservative?

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:26:42 -0500

Some GOP conservatives worry that a President Mike Huckabee would be like George W. Bush in domestic policy, not using his constitutional power to restrain government spending; and like Jimmy Carter in foreign policy, not using military power to restrain anti-American forces.

Wanted: Sam Adams Republicans

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:10:51 -0500

Humorous Mike Huckabee has become the sum of all fears for many members of the GOP establishment. Some of the attacks arise out of plain old Christophobia, and Huckabee can’t do much about that. But some come from concern that he’s a Christian-only candidate: On these matters he can take lessons from Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry.

Thank vs. Thank You

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:07:32 -0500

Many of us are giving thanks this holiday, but are we thanking God, thanking our friends or throwing into the air an undirected thanks?

Darwinism — Too old-fashioned to be true

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:10:06 -0400

New York Times columnist John Tierney recently offered a materialist version of “intelligent design”: All of us are actually characters in a computer simulation devised by some technologically advanced future civilization.

Darwinism — Too old-fashioned to be true

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:50:02 -0400

Leaping before we looked: The Clinton administration’s Bosnian failure

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:12:04 -0400

With Hillary Clinton surging in the polls and Democrats knifing Bush’s foreign policy and praising Bill Clinton’s, it’s time for a reality check on a supposed triumph: Team Clinton oversimplified a complex situation in Bosnia and ended up aiding and abetting Muslim extremists.

Two Cheers for the Bush Administration and Religious Freedom

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:31:55 -0400

Reasons to be sad about the Bush administration abound. But here's a happy note: Team Bush has repaired its mistake on religious freedom that I and many others complained about last month.

Tolerate Polygamy, Purge Theology

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:43:26 -0400

No one tolerates everything. Some who tolerate the murder of unborn children abhor the killing of some animals. One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

Appeasement vs. firmness

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 11:24:50 -0400

Sometimes we find guts in strange places, and cowardice where there should be strength.

Last month’s largest cowardice report came from The Netherlands, where a Catholic bishop said that Christian-Muslim animosity could be reduced through one simple measure: “Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?”

Fields of drama: Shakespeare rules

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:20:36 -0400

“They’ll walk out to the bleachers, sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. ... The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: It’s a part of our past.”

Rove: Re-imagining politics but not governance

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:26:46 -0400

Last week, when Karl Christian Rove, born on Christmas in 1950, announced that he was ending his White House life, pundits eager to punch back had the best of all possible worlds: They could write the summing-up lines characteristic of an obituary without the constraints of courtesy to the deceased. The New York Times was typical in referring to Rove’s “infamously bare-knuckled political tactics.”

Gays and Bible-believing churches

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 16:14:52 -0400

Should biblical churches host gay-glorifying funerals? Should evangelical politics move leftward? Many news organs give us one answer: Yes!

Why the Bush Administration communicates poorly

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:12:17 -0400

Democratic presidential candidates in their Tuesday night debate were ragging, as usual, on “cool hand” George W. Bush’s “failure to communicate,” but I don’t think they get why the president, an intelligent fellow, does a poor job of explaining his actions.