My blog has been silent for a while. First was the end of the semester rush, as papers, exams, and deadline piled on. Winter break then took me to Maine and Quebec, where I learned to ski (barely) at a marvelous resort east of Quebec City: Mont Sainte Anne. Soon afterwards I caught a nasty bug. While trying over the past few weeks to throw it I’ve been working feverishly finishing up my part of six chapters in a forthcoming book Beyond the Burning Times. In it, along with a reasonable evangelical Philip Johnson (the Australian, NOT the ‘intelligent design’ loon) I explore Pagan and Christian views on a number of major theological issues: spirituality, the Divine, Nature, humans and the Divine, the nature of spiritual authority, and religion and the culture wars. It will be published by the British Christian publishing house Lion Hudson. My work is going well, but many other things have been set aside to get it done. Johnson’s web site is here. A good write up of him is here – scroll down.

Which is not to say that I haven’t done anything else. I’ve also been working at understanding the almost complete intellectual and moral collapse of the conservative and classical liberal movement in this country. People I knew for years as strident critics of government began acting like Gauleiters, and as the evidence of their hypocrisy mounted, so did their self-imposed blindness.

This morning one of the news blogs I check pretty regularly, Balloon Juice, had two excellent posts, one by its founder, John Cole, and the other by ‘Tim F.’ a moderate liberal he asked to join him some time ago. Balloon Juice was started by John Cole, who at the time was a committed conservative Republican, but one who possesses the personal integrity to love his country and human decency more than either his party or his ego. His blog records the growing disillusionment of an honorable man discovering he has fallen in with a band of thieves and worse.

I heartily recommend their two posts, here and here. And Tim F. has a funny Austin Powers add-on. Most fitting for our macho right…