Crawling the web to bring you an interesting assortment:
Joseph Pearce longs for England. (Name drop: I met Pearce once. We were both speaking at a Chesterton Conference in Minnesota. Very pleasant fellow.)
Fr. Jonathan Morris at Fox News Blogs writes about the new gospel:
I'm referring to the article about the “Gospel of Judas.” It offered a dumbed-down, ideology-driven report on the ancient text discovered in Egypt in the 1970's and recently translated into English by the National Geographic Society. The text depicts Judas Iscariot, the traitor, in a good light.
Amy Welborn at Open Book on Benedict and the Gays.
Thomas Sowell talks about immigration. He's sharp. He's also a black man, so if you don't agree with him, you're a racist.
Today, immigrant spokesmen promote grievances, not gratitude, much less patriotism. Moreover, many native-born Americans also promote a sense of separatism and grievance and, through "multi-culturalism," strive to keep immigrants foreign and disaffected.
This is not to say that all or most of the illegal immigrants themselves share this anti-establishment or anti-American bias of many of their spokesmen or supporters. Most are probably here to make a buck and have little time for ideology.
Hispanic activists themselves recognize that many of the immigrants from Mexico -- legal or illegal -- would assimilate into American society in the absence of these activists' efforts to keep them a separate constituency. But these efforts are widespread and unrelenting, a fact that cannot be ignored.
By the way, while watching coverage of recent Gallup polls, it seems the following three statements pretty much sum up the majority of Americans' views:
1. No immigration without assimilation;
2. Help the immigrants that are here, but no amnesty unless they pay their dues (the devil is in the details, but the principle is fair enough);
3. Criminalize further illegal immigration and, in this regard, seal the borders and get a firm grasp on all immigration.
From what I can see, the majority of Americans have a pretty sane view on this matter.
