Update: Because I don't have time to sort through old blog posts.

I'm not a libertarian anymore. Actually, I'm a lot more liberal (okay, moderate) than I used to be. I guess I'm quite the relativist when it comes to government, economics, culture, etc. I realize the need to discern what is important to a culture and to let them seek that. Sometimes (as I'm finding in Britain) people are willing and even, perhaps, eager to pay high taxes so everyone has access to a good health care system. (Yes, actually it is a very good health system. Don't listen to the conservatives who will tell you that nationalized health care will without exception go down the crapper.)

Anyway, there's a lot to say about my new/evolving economic/political views. But forgive me for my semi-dogmatic previous posts regarding politics. (Dogmatism is so hard to avoid. But I try.) I suppose future blog activity will indicate where I stand these days. Hm. Wait and see.

Righteous Stuff--check it

--Socrates, upon the pronouncement of his death sentence:

"In battle, a man often sees that he may at least escape from death by throwing down his arms and falling on his knees before the pursuer to beg for his life. And there are many other ways of avoiding death in every danger if a man is willing to say and to do anything. But my friends, I think that it is a much harder thing to escape from wickedness than from death, for wickedness is swifter than death. And now I, who am old and slow, have been overtaken by the slower pursuer..."

and later to his friend Crito:

"Could we live, having an evil and corrupted body?"
"Certainly not."
"And will life be worth having, if that higher part of man be depraved, which is improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice? Do we suppose that principle, whatever it may be in man, which has to do with justice and injustice, to be inferior to the body?...Then, my friend, we must not regard what the many say of us: but what he, the one man who has understanding of just and unjust, will say, and what the truth will say."

And one more, from a different source:

"But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

So then, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God."