• Guess who's coming to dinner: Daniel Moore of Newton Falls, Ohio, was told he'd have a surprise guest, who turned out to be none other than Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook and clearly a man who can learn from his mistakes because he wanted to talk to Democrats who had voted for Donald Trump instead of their party's lackluster presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who may have been everywhere but learned precious little en route.
• Science, like history, is always a work in progress, but the Democrats' know-nothings were out in strength over the weekend claiming to know everything about climate change, mainly that man is responsible for it rather than the age-old weather cycle. Old-timers can remember being told to prepare for a coming ice age, but those predictions proved as fallacious as global warming may. Only time will tell. But thus much is clear: There are fashions in scientific thinking just as there are in clothes, hairdos, and political commentary like the one you're reading now.
• The spacecraft Cassini is sending back pictures from the frozen rings of Saturn, and they're astoundingly beautiful, confirming that the Creator didn't make anything without its own use and beauty if only Man the Voyager will look for it, this time in our own milky galaxy.
• There's something new, namely hope, in long and bitterly divided Venezuela, where an emerging middle class has been battling the followers of President/Dictator Nicolas Maduro for what seems like forever. But now some of the Venezuelans who used to compose the mobs El Presidente sicced on his opposition are starting to realize they've been used as foils to ward off the Maximum Leader's critics--and they've been seen crossing over to the opposition they used to bully. Can it be? Of course it can. Public opinion may be fickle but it isn't blind. As an American liberator named A. Lincoln told us more than a century ago: "In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions."
• Arkansas, this in-between state made up of pieces left over after its neighbors to the east and west, north and south, got dibs on the real estate surrounding us, has miraculously emerged as a state with a character and identity all its own. Let us hold on to it and allow no one to disgrace it, especially ourselves. Whether the governor at the time is an Orval Faubus or a Winthrop Rockefeller, let us keep in mind that We the People chose him--for good or ill. Just as we chose Asa Hutchinson, may he always listen to the better angels of his nature and ours.
There's something unique about this state (and every state) of the American Union, and it's worth knowing so we and our posterity can set the right value on it, cleaving to the best and abjuring the worst as God gives us the discernment to tell the difference--and the courage to stand for it. In the words of the old hymn:
Dare to be a Daniel,
Dare to stand alone!
Dare to have a purpose firm!
Dare to make it known . . .
And this state is known--for good or ill, right or wrong, better or worse, but seldom if ever for staying neutral in a time of moral crisis. That's a sin for which Dante damned the in-betweeners, deeming them unworthy even to enter hell, but doomed forever to wait outside. Just as they chose to wait in life to see whether the forces of good or evil, right or wrong, wise or foolish, would prevail before joining the winners. These, the perpetually neutral, still wait--and deserve to.
Editorial on 05/06/2017