Over on JPGB, my thoughts on Incredibles 2:

I2 continues the Pixar/New Disney tradition of goring our cultural sacred cows, but doing it in just the right way so people will take it. In this case, as in some others (see: Frozen) it’s done by giving us a real encounter with the reason people believe in those sacred cows – the other side gets a full airing of its case before the movie pulls the rug out.

Watch out, major mondo spoilers. You have been warned.

My latest on vocational sacraments and work as an “end of grace” at TGR:

The trinitarian revelation – that God is one being who is three holy people who love each other – requires a reformation of all our thinking and practice. The glory of God is not a substance that could be stuffed into a FedEx package. The glory of God is the holy love of the three people who are God – their love for one another, supremely, and by extension their love for all things. God glorifies himself not by sending us packages of a thing called “glory” but by putting this triune holy love into action, first in creation and again in redemption.

This has profound implications for daily work.

Let me know what you think!

I feel especially strongly about this post I just put up on JPGB about retributive and restorative justice:

Unfortunately, people whose goal is not to do justice but to reduce the severity of punishments have hijacked the concept of restoration. We are now trapped in a terminological system in which “restorative justice” means the opposite of “retributive justice.” People think they are helping restore kids when they are actually destroying them.

The really terrifying result of this change is not that it gives unearned rhetorical credibility to advocates of lax discipline. It is the response from the other side.

The overwhelming majority of people can see the destructiveness of lax discipline. They are therefore concluding that “restorative justice” is dangerous and destructive. Therefore they are rejecting restoration as a goal of justice. And when you do that, all that’s left is the limitless cruelty of revenge.

Pay me back by telling me what you think!

There is nothing new in this article, by the recently sworn-in American citizen Charles Cooke, but it is an outstanding summary of vital information (not an argument, really, just accurate information) that almost everyone has forgotten.

Certainly, it would be a good thing if we could assume without much reflection that Congress were jealous of its prerogatives and hostile toward partisan corruption. But if it isn’t, as seems to be the case at the moment, that doesn’t actually change much in practice. The powers the three branches enjoy are written in stone; they do not ebb and flow in response to transient irritations. And, if the branches use them stupidly, the designated backstop is not Santa Claus, but the people.

It does occasionally overstate the case – in light of the supermajority vote requirement, it stretches the truth to say Congress can impeach the president “on a whim” – but not by much.

Drew Catt of EdChoice, where I am a Friedman fellow, interviews me about my involvement with school choice:

Well, you look at EdChoice’s mission statement, which is on the wall in the hallway I just walked down to get to this studio. It’s talking about pursuing school choice, but pursuing school choice as a path to successful lives and a stronger society. I think that, when I was a full-time employee here at this organization, we didn’t have that mission statement. I really appreciate this increased clarity that school choice is not an end in itself. School choice exists in order to provide individuals with a path to success, but it also exists to provide America with a path to a strong future as a country as a whole.

That’s what to me, this is at the heart of the American experiment. That we’re gonna take people seriously in their diversity, but also take community seriously, because schools form in communities and for communities as well as by individual choice. Part of the great challenge is, in the last century the language of community has all been monopolized by people who are against individual choice. So, we’ve put people in this impossible bind where you’re either for individual choice, or you’re for strong communities. Honestly, respecting people’s rights and giving them choice in their lives is the actual only way to hold community together because it allows people to freely associate with each other.

Check it out – you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.