Michael Vick tortured dogs and watched them fight for pleasure and money. This is not only against the law, but morally disturbing. Michael Vick has served jail time for his bad behavior and now is coming out.

Some people feel Vick has not been punished enough and perhaps they are correct, but the reasoning behind the anti-Vick arguments is sometimes quite disturbing. In a league where dead beat dads, drunk drivers, drug abusers, and wife beaters still play, it would be odd to deny him the right to practice his profession for his particular crimes.

Saying this does not justify what he did, but does try to put it into perspective.

What Vick did was wrong, but it is not so obviously wrong that his practices have been universally condemned in all places at all times. Fathering many children and failing to support them has been (nearly) universally condemned, because of the vast societal implications, but animal cruelty was harder to see. It would be odd for the NFL to consider the first transgression against being a “role model” forgivable, but the second meriting banishment for life.

Every once in a while I get an email from a friend facing failure. He or she will tell me of sins they have committed or bad things that happened that have taken them from “promising” to “could have been.” A marriage that began with romance has ended in divorce. A grad school career that started with the excitement of the acceptance letter has petered out in mediocrity. A friendship that started in excitement has died in acrimony.

It is bad news when you are, in the words of William Shatner, “never were” instead of “has been.”

How do you go on living when you haven’t lived up to your promise?

This is a question I have faced myself and there is no easy answer to it. It is hard to accept failure, especially when my own faults and sins have scarred me. I know the truth of the old saying, “a bird with a broken pinion never flies as high again.”

Every few years somebody announces that Christianity in America is doomed. This time the excuse is a survey that does show a small decline in Christian self-identification, but that this decline has pretty much stopped. A one percent decline in just under a decade in Christian self-identification in a survey with a margin of error of half a percent is hailed as the latest piece of evidence.

When extremist secularists are not paranoid of an imminent American theocracy, whether because someone is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic or saying the Pledge, they veer into triumphalism, because “all” the smart people or young people (take your pick) are going their way. Of course, religious gloom mongers benefit by overplaying the fears of traditional Christians and joining extreme secularists in seeing the end of the religious world as we have known it.

President Obama, through presidential fiat, decided experimenting on potential human beings will expand. Without study and by proclamation, the President has created a monstrous policy that has no precedent in American history.

It is more radical than what was allowed under Bill Clinton or George Bush. President Obama has given no reasons why such a new course is reasonable other than his statement that it is reasonable. Because President Obama is a reasonable sounding man it is difficult to realize how radical his idea is.

An embryo is a human being or, at the very least, is a potential human being. We shall now kill that embryo by experimenting on it in the hope that it might help the rest of us. Obama’s medicine first will do harm to a growing human with the dream that such experiments might do some good for a dying one.

I have underestimated President Obama.

Today he announced that we can experiment on human beings and even create new humans for our experimentation.

The good news is that he made this decision based only on science. Politics, vile nasty politics, had nothing to do with his decision.

Evidently President Obama has discovered a way to derive ethics from science! This is amazing and only confirms the main stream media sense that President Obama is a Special Person.

Most thinkers have believed that from “is” or “can” (”It is the case that people want to do x” or “It is the case that we can do x”) it was hard or impossible to get “ought,” but Obama has done it!

We can experiment on humans so we should! We want to experiment on humans so we should!

Moral men have a duty to help their neighbors, but nobody has the right to force other people to help.

Jesus told a story of a Good Samaritan who crossed difficult social and cultural barriers to provide relief to an injured man. This is a good model for our own behavior. We should help the hurting neighbor even if he is a pariah in our community. The mortgage broker who has lost his job is also my neighbor and, when he is hurting and repentant, should receive pity, charity, and care—not just sermons about his errors.

Moral behavior is most valuable when it is not easy to do. The temptation is to avoid doing our moral duty by ignoring it or passing off the dirty work to somebody else.

The Scroogish Samaritan ignores his moral duty to help his neighbor. He assumes everybody should care only for self and destroys common culture by his selfishness. The Statist Samaritan forces everybody else to help the injured man and so gains a cheap feeling of virtue, but undermines any real virtue.

There is no taxation without discrimination. The power to govern is the power to discriminate between the just and the unjust, the good and the evil.

Ideologues forget this since they confuse their beliefs with obvious truths. Every organization ever created discriminates when it decides on its mission and what it will not do. Not everyone can join or not everyone is paid who joins. Some things are valuable and other things are vices in the organizational culture.

We must do this, but we must be as modest as possible when imposing our beliefs on those who disagree. It is not just that we might be wrong and so do an injustice in the name of our beliefs, but that any use of force is dangerous even when we are right.

This is especially true of a government in a republic. Our government is not based on anointing balm or a sacred text, but on the consent of the governed.

President Obama and Pope Benedict XVI’s respective jobs require them to deal with fools on a regular basis. There is no safe way to handle fools, as their folly tends to redound on the person who tries to help them.

Who is a fool? The fool is not simply wrong, but believes a falsehood with obstinate fury that is destructive to himself and to his neighbor. It is not that he thinks he is right, but that he never considers that he might be wrong and has no hesitations in imposing his folly on others. The fool is wrong, arrogant, and malevolent.

Jesus is right that we should not label any man a fool quickly or in anger. It is a serious charge that does verbal violence to another human being and so puts us in danger. It is easy to dismiss alternative points of view by hastily labeling it as foolishness. Calling unpleasant ideas foolish hastily is itself the act of a fool!

President Obama will take the oath of office on a Bible as is customary. There will be prayers at the swearing in as has always been done and he will ask for God’s help in doing so. He is right to do so.

His actions are only controversial amongst the sad souls who are so sheltered and delicate that the actual costumes and beliefs of the nation shock them out of their bubble. Of course, one tries to be polite, but they are very easily offended. The mere sight of a Christmas crèche on public land can ruin their day. Since we are not willing to flush traditional American patriotic songs from our ceremonies, it really will be impossible to do.

Should we stop singing God Bless America? Should America stop asking God to shed His grace on us? Will the Battle Hymn get rid of the “hallelujah?”