"O, pray don’t try it!" said Miriam laughing. "If it should turn out that you are less than an angel, you would find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard; and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never come down among us again.” 

This young American girl was an example of the freedom of life which it is possible for a female artist to enjoy at Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to descend into the corrupted atmosphere of the city beneath, as one of her companion doves to fly downward into the street;— all alone, perfectly independent, under her own sole guardianship, unless watched over by the Virgin, whose shrine she tended; doing what she liked without a suspicion or a shadow upon the snowy whiteness of her fame. The customs of artist life bestow such liberty upon the sex, which is elsewhere restricted within so much narrower limits; and it is perhaps an indication that, whenever we admit women to a wider scope of pursuits and professions, we must also remove the shackles of our present conventional rules, which would then become an insufferable restraint on either maid or wife.

Is it an extension of the idea that bathrooms aren’t just functional necessities but spa-like focal points of our sanctuary-like homes? Or has the erosion of privacy in our public lives just made us all more comfortable being overexposed, even at home?

"I think it’s important for you to tell the people why we’re doing all this outreach, because this only works, for example, if young people show up and even if they buy the cheapest plan, they claim their tax credit so it won’t cost them much — 100 bucks a month or so. We’ve got to have them in the pools, because otherwise these projected low costs cannot be held if older people with preexisting conditions are disproportionately represented in any given state. You’ve got to have everybody lined up..."

"What happens is, if you don’t have pools that are a cross-section of society, then people who are already sick or more likely to get sick, they’ll all rush out and buy insurance. People who are healthy, they say, ‘You know what, I won’t bother.’ And you get what’s called adverse selection."

That's already wrong!

2 sides to every issue?!

Ridiculous.

I guess she may mean, there's what's right and however many other things people might think, all those other things are wrong. All those other things constitute one side, the wrong side.

Who thinks like that?! I don't believe that anyone who thinks like that can ever get elected to public office (unless they lie to people along the way).

I've never read "Atlas Shrugged," but I know it's a novel. If Ayn Rand is so dedicated to the truth, why did she write fiction? I assume it's so she could say drastic things with deniability. Those quoted lines are said by some fictional character, right?

Without us, they are corpses and their sole product is poison, not wealth or food, the poison of disintegration that turns men into hordes of scavengers. p. 620.

Somewhere, he thought, there was this boy’s mother.... Had she fed him tainted refuse, he thought, had she mixed poison into his food, it would have been more kind and less fatal. p. 994. 

"Then I saw what was wrong with the world.... Just as the parasites around me were proclaiming their helpless dependence on my mind and were expecting me voluntarily to accept a slavery they had no power to enforce.... so throughout the world and throughout men’s history, in every version and form, from the extortions of loafing relatives to the atrocities of collective countries, it is the good, the able, the men of reason, who act as their own destroyers, who transfuse to evil the blood of their virtue and let evil transmit to them the poison of destruction, thus gaining for evil the power of survival, and for their own values— the impotence of death. I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win— and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" p. 1048

“The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world....

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube.

“You, who are half-rational, half-coward, have been playing a con game with reality, but the victim you have conned is yourself. When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it’s picked up by scoundrels— and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil."

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube. 

I started to imagine Wisconsinites coming back to the building every day, talking about everything, on and on, indefinitely into the future. That man who decided to hold dialogues in the center of the rotunda is a courageous man. But it isn't that hard to be as courageous as he was. In the long run, it's easier to do that than to spend your life intimidated and repressed. That man was showing us how to be free. He was there today, but you — and you and you! — could be there tomorrow, standing your ground, inviting people to talk to you, listening and going back and forth, for the sheer demonstration of the power of human dialogue and the preservation of freedom.

The finding suggests that maintaining grueling chemotherapy and radiation schedules and taking medication as prescribed is easier for people who have help from a spouse compared with single people who must manage the logistics of cancer treatment on their own....

Notably, men with cancer showed a greater benefit from marriage than did women. That doesn’t mean husbands are not supportive of wives....

According to a recently created website and Facebook page, a new business called "The Snuggle House" is coming to Madison's east side on Oct. 1....

The Snuggle House promotes "touch therapy." Similar businesses and "cuddle parties" have promoted group and professional snuggling because of the increase in oxytocin released during the activity which can lead to a feeling of well-being and happiness....

The Snuggle House does not list an address or phone number. A Facebook message seeking additional information on where, when, why and how the Snuggle House will work was not returned on Tuesday.

Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

Wherever or whenever you meet again, at the first opportunity grasp his hand in an earnest, sincere, and affectionate manner, observing at the same time the following important directions, viz.: As you take his bare hand in yours, press your thumb gently, though firmly, between the bones of the thumb and the forefinger of his hand, and at the very instant when you press thus on the blood vessels (which you can before ascertain to pulsate) look him earnestly and lovingly in the eyes, and send all your heart's, mind's, and soul's strength into his organization, and he will be your friend...

1860 Dickens Uncommerc. Traveller in All Year Round 24 Mar. 513/1, I must stuff into my delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into immeasurable dimensions when it has got there.

1908 G. K. Chesterton Man who was Thursday 39 You, my poor fellow, are an anarchist deprived of the help of that law and organization which is so essential to anarchy.

It might be worth noting that the amount of effort required here seems to be significantly more than the effort required to pick a lock, and we're not all saying, "hey, locks are imperfect, it was stupid of the builder to even bother putting them on my house!"

Something is better than nothing, and no security is perfect.

In addition to engaging with people of all ages in classes, workshops and projects, Barry says she looks forward to collaborating with experts across campus — ranging from the sciences to the creative writing program — to further study something she calls the "biological function of the arts." In other words, what makes us long to be able to sing, draw, write, dance or play music even after we've given up on ever being able to do these things well?...

"The metaphor for me is like a restaurant that serves food based on what's in season, what's fresh and around," she says. "If I find that there's an interesting rehearsal going on for a one-man or two-man show or there's some creative project going on campus that I can invite people to do here, I will. People won't always know what they're going to see when they come to the lab — kind of like the chefs that just go to the market in the morning and write the menu based on what they've found."

The terrorists said if any of the kids were alive in the supermarket they could leave. 'Amber made the decision to stand up and say "yes".'... After discovering [that Amber Prior] was of French origin, the men began to plead with her and claimed that the Muslim faith ‘was not a bad one.’

‘He told me I had to change my religion to Islam and said “do you forgive us? Do you forgive us?’, the mother told The Independent. ‘Naturally, I was going to say whatever they wanted and they let us go.’

National Psychology refers to the (real or alleged) distinctive psychological make-up of particular nations, ethnic groups or peoples, and to the comparative study of those characteristics in social psychology, sociology, political science and anthropology.

The assumption of national psychology is that different ethnic groups, or the people living in a national territory, are characterized by a distinctive "mix" of human attitudes, values, emotions, motivation and abilities which is culturally reinforced by language, the family, schooling, the state and the media.

According to the pioneer psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, the attempt to theorize scientifically about national psychology dates from the mid-19th century. Around 1900, national psychology had become an accepted topic of study in the social sciences, at universities in Western Europe and North America....

What is clear is where you don’t draw the line. You don’t draw it where it leaves out two actors who were major TV stars across the decades. Frankly, though Monteith became a target, I’m not sure you include [Jonathan] Winters in a special Emmy memory before Hagman and Klugman, and I say that as a big fan of Winters and someone who didn’t watch “Dallas.”...

In particular, based on how important Hagman was to CBS, thanks to “Dallas,” his exclusion really is inexplicable. More than one person has wondered whether Winters’ link to Robin Williams, whose new CBS series debuts this week, was the reason that Winters got the nod.

Man, this is just an ugly conversation.

6) Remember the Giuliani administration's showdown with the Brooklyn Museum over a portrait of the Virgin Mary that involved elephant dung? A lot of that was Joe Lhota! As deputy mayor, he spearheaded negotiations with the museum, threatening it with eviction and funding cuts. He admitted recently that his legal argument was flawed, saying, "I have a much clearer understanding of the First Amendment now."

Exhibit 5673 that @deBlasioNYC won't talk about the issues http://t.co/tW1sJTweJU #blahblahblahdeblasio

— Joe Lhota for Mayor (@JoeLhota4Mayor) September 23, 2013

In this hadith, Muhammad defined three issues as pivotal and serious even if used jokingly: Marriage, divorce, and freeing a slave. "This hadith shows intent has no central part in these three matters," said the preacher, who also ruled that a woman who is married cannot depict a character getting married on television.

Monday’s ruling addressed a lawsuit filed by the leftist party Tagammu, which accused the Brotherhood of being a terrorist organization and of “exploiting religion in political slogans.” Laying out its decision, the court reached back to the Brotherhood’s founding in 1928, when Egypt was ruled by a British-backed monarchy, and argued that the organization had always used religion as a cover for its political goals....

The Brotherhood, which began as a social and religious revival movement, was tacitly tolerated for years despite being outlawed, growing into Egypt’s largest philanthropic organization, with a national network of clinics, schools and other charities helping to provide a partial social safety net below the rickety Egyptian state....

Ibrahim Moneir, a Brotherhood official who is still at large, called the ruling “totalitarian.”

"Elif was brilliant at her job and a joy to work with.... She was a friend both in and out of the office, and always had a great sense of humor – recently, her baby belly had been the subject of a number of jokes."

But even under that view (which would raise awkward questions about when his administration is going to end, when the Bush administration ended, and whether Obama's two terms are of equal length), it still isn't one year into his second term. The election was in November, not September.

In matters involving the environment, Ms. Otis said, the community is divided into two camps: “Some are Druids, those who don’t want to change anything, and some are foresters, who can cut the brush back. Jill and Gaile are the Druids.”

Gaile Wakeman, a retired pediatric physical therapist who is 76, concurred. “I don’t want a single tree to be cut.... I don’t give on this. You cannot replace a tree that’s been here 300 years.”...

The other thing residents tend to disagree about is money. And as is true elsewhere in the country, Ms. Otis said, “conservatives are those who do not want to spend money, and liberals do.”

But while these distinctions may resemble those between Republicans and Democrats, Ms. Wakeman noted, Cheesecake members lean to the left politically. “We’re all pretty liberal,” she said. “A Tea Party person would never live here.”

“What will make you a meaningful person in life is two things,” she said. “That you become an interesting person by learning as many new things as you can every single day you live, ... and that you use that knowledge in a way in which you’re giving to people.”

“It really doesn’t matter what kind of work you do,” she added. “... Do things that interest you and excite you and satisfy whatever skills and intellectual challenges you like puzzling over.... Even number crunchers do great things.”

"See, right now, Justice Roberts is still continuing to have federal employee health insurance subsidized by the taxpayer.... And if he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts."

On The Glenn Show, Glenn and Ann check in on Obama a year into his second term. Has his vacillation on Syria and the Fed hurt his credibility? Ann argues that the Larry Summers controversy exposed an anti-science crowd on the left—but maybe a small dose of delusion is healthy. Turning to the end of NYC's stop-and-frisk program, Ann worries that emotions adulterated the public debate. Are liberal gun-control measures breeding a nation of victims? Finally, Glenn criticizes the secrecy of the security state under Obama.

When people sign up for Kinja, they are given their own Web address on the Gawker platform — similar to a Tumblr Web site — which becomes a collection of that person’s comments on stories. Kinja will also enable readers to write headlines and summaries — comments that have graduated from college, if you will — for stories on Gawker and even from other sites. Readers will then be able to use Kinja as a central hub for discussion on these stories, almost like their own chat room protected from the commenting maelstrom.

Along with the updates to the comments service on Monday, Mr. Denton is set to unveil “a manifesto” of sorts that will outline Gawker’s plan to further blur the line between reporters and readers and explain readers’ rights. Among them, there is “the right to experience legible conversations” on the site.

His clean-cut good looks and soaring tenor voice were the perfect vehicle for the uptempo single entitled "Good Morning Starshine" from the pop/rock musical "Hair," which reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July 1969, sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. a month later. Later that fall, a softer, ballad single entitled "Jean" (the theme from the Oscar-winning film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) bested his previous effort by one, reaching #2 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart. Written by longtime beatnik poet Rod McKuen, "Jean" also sold over one million copies, garnering Oliver his second gold disc in as many months.

Frank W. Hoffmann, in Arts and Entertainment Fads, described McKuen's poetry as "tailor-made for the 1960s [...] poetry with a verse that drawled in country cadences from one shapeless line to the next, carrying the rusticated innocence of a Carl Sandburg thickened by the treacle of a man who preferred to prettify the world before he described it."

Philosopher and social critic Robert C. Solomon described McKuen's poetry as "sweet kitsch," and, at the height of his popularity in 1969, Newsweek magazine called him "the King of Kitsch."

Writer and literary critic Nora Ephron said, "[F]or the most part, McKuen's poems are superficial and platitudinous and frequently silly." Pulitzer Prize-winning US Poet Laureate Karl Shapiro said, "It is irrelevant to speak of McKuen as a poet."

My love and me as we sing our
Early morning singin' song

Jean, Jean, roses are red
All the leaves have gone green
And the clouds are so low
You can touch them, and so
Come out to the meadow, Jean
Jean, Jean, you're young and alive
Come out of your half-dreamed dream
And run, if you will, to the top of the hill
Open your arms, bonnie Jean
Till the sheep in the valley come home my way

And all of the leaves have gone green
While the hills are ablaze with the moon's yellow haze
Come into my arms, bonnie Jean
Jean, you're young and alive!!

Come out of your half-dreamed dream
And run, if you will to the top of the hill
Come into my arms, bonnie Jean

Ain’t no reason to go in a wagon to town
Ain’t no reason to go to the fair
Ain’t no reason to go up, ain’t no reason to go down
Ain’t no reason to go anywhere

This is the deadliest attack against Christians in our country,” said Irfan Jamil,  bishop of the eastern city of Lahore.

The bishop in Peshawar, Sarfarz Hemphray...  blamed the government and security agencies for failing to protect the country's Christians.  “If the government shows will, it can control this terrorism... We have been asking authorities to enhance security, but they haven't paid any heed."

In recent [Supreme Court] opinions, [Chief Justice John] Roberts has said the government may not try to "level the playing field" between candidates or prevent well-funded candidates from using their financial advantage to dominate the airwaves. The only justification for limiting contributions, the court has said, is to prevent "corruption or the appearance of corruption."...

"This is a limit on how many candidates you support, not on how much you give them," said James Bopp Jr., an attorney for the Republican National Committee. He cites the case of McCutcheon, an Alabama man who gave a total of $33,000 to various Republican candidates for Congress last year and wanted to give $21,000 more. He was stopped by the legal limit on total contributions to candidates, which now stands at $48,600.

McCutcheon "holds firm convictions on the proper role of government" and "opposes numerous and ill-conceived and overreaching laws," he told the court, and he wants more "federal officeholders who share his beliefs."

[W]e had (once again) food in the shape of our initials. It was creamy and light, though the monogrammed letters made us feel uncomfortably Trump-like.

Charlton Heston has been in that pod for however many years — a long time — and he’s got a cigar stub in his mouth. They land on this new planet, and he lights this cigar stub. They’re walking through the desert, and it looks like the entire planet is going to be like this — a horrible desert. Someone calls to him, and says, “Quick, come here!” and he throws the cigar butt on the ground. And I thought: if that’s your last cigar — and he’s got like a good two inches left — are you really going to throw it out just because someone called your name? I got so hung up on that. I thought about it for the rest of the movie. I couldn’t believe anyone had let that pass. If someone had said, “Come here!” and they were holding a box of cigars, I could understand him throwing it down. But they weren’t.

"They came and said: 'If you are Muslim, stand up. We've come to rescue you," said Elijah Lamau.

He said the Muslims left with their hands up, and then the gunmen shot two people.

The correspondent in Nairobi for the Economist, Daniel Howden told the BBC he spoke to one man with a Christian first name but a Muslim-sounding surname who managed to escape the attackers by putting his thumb over his first name on his ID.

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Earlier this week, the court heard a recording of the phone conversation she had with her mother hours after her arrest.

'I didn't kill nobody,' Mee said. '…I set everything up. It all went wrong, Mom. It [expletive] just went downhill after everything happened, Mom.'

[T]wo Mark 39 hydrogen bombs... fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Too much brewer's yeast in the 61-year-old's gut meant that whenever he ate starch, it sparked a chemical reaction leading to fermentation....

"He would get drunk out of the blue," said Barbara Cordell, dean of nursing at Panola College in Texas. "On a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just any time. His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Stanley Kubrick originally intended that when the film does its famous match-cut from prehistoric bone-weapon to orbiting satellite that the latter and the 3 additional satellites seen would be established as orbiting nuclear weapons by a voice-over narrator talking about nuclear stalemate. Further, Kubrick intended that the Star Child at the end of the film would detonate the weapons at the end of the film. Over time, Kubrick decided that this would create too many associations with his previous film Dr. Strangelove and he decided not to make it so obvious that they were “war machines.” 

These injections are the latest in a long list of extreme beauty procedures in this beauty-obsessed country. Other extreme self-improvement methods include fasting pacts among friends, vomit-inducing syrup, and most recently the sewing of a plastic patch onto the tongue, which renders the consumption of solid food extremely painful....

Launched in 2009 by Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Nikolas Chugay, the patch is secured to the tongue with six stitches in a $2,000 procedure that takes just ten minutes.

Several justices questioned whether the public could separate Mr. Sicari’s position as a judge from roles he has played on the ABC hidden camera show “What Would You Do?” in which he has portrayed homophobic and racist characters. That quandary played a central role in the ruling on Thursday, as the justices noted that someone tuning into the show might not know that actors were used in the sketches. They applied the same standard for Mr. Sicari’s stand-up performances.

“In the course of his routines, Sicari has demeaned certain people based on national origin and religion and has revealed his political leanings,” according to the court’s opinion. “The court cannot ignore the distinct possibility that a person who has heard a routine founded on humor disparaging certain ethnic groups and religions will not be able to readily accept that the judge before whom he or she appears can maintain the objectivity and impartiality that must govern all municipal court proceedings.”

The 230-to-189 vote set in motion a fiscal confrontation whose outcome is anything but clear....

Just one Republican crossed party lines to vote against the bill, Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia, who represents a very military dependent district and wants to end the sequestration spending cuts. The only Democrats to vote in favor were Representatives Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina.

Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed. The church cannot be herself without the woman and her role. The woman is essential for the church. Mary, a woman, is more important than the bishops. I say this because we must not confuse the function with the dignity. We must therefore investigate further the role of women in the church. We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions. The challenge today is this: to think about the specific place of women also in those places where the authority of the church is exercised for various areas of the church.

... another scenario looks like this: young citizens motivated by left-leaning passions run into a brick wall again and again and again trying to turn their convictions into power. The defining story of our next political era becomes not a New New Left but a corrosive disillusionment that drives the country into ever deeper sloughs of apathy.

What if, in other words, the harbinger election didn’t take place in New York...

... but in Colorado—where a hyper-ideological, insurrectionist, corporate-money-soaked minority... recalled two progressive legislatures for daring to favor background checks for gun purchases even though Coloradans want background checks by a margin of 68 to 27 percent.

Beinart wants to think big. So let’s think big. Given a precedent like that, the result of our current trends might not be more socialism, but once more a stark showdown between socialism and barbarism. Apathy and social misery might make fertile ground for some charismatic demagogue, preaching scapegoating and a narrative of violent redemption…

"It is the gesture of Matthew that strikes me: he holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’ Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff." Then the pope whispers in Latin: "I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance."

So what I think is that Franzen really ought to just come online and talk with everybody. Let some of us have it, too, if he thinks we deserve it. If he believes that Americans could be doing a better job politically, or as artists or intellectuals or students or teachers, the Internet is the place for making that case now. Yes, there are many bad things about the Internet, but serious criticism is alive and well there. Or here, rather. There are thousands upon thousands of passionate constituencies online—political, social, literary—many of them eager for the participation of as many principled, serious artists as care to come out and talk. Come on in, Mr. Franzen! The water’s fine.