But for Christians, and especially for Catholic Christians, who share the faith of the miners themselves, this was a profoundly Christian event, understandable both in its details and its overall scope only in Christian terms. It was a teaching moment, rich in theological references. It was a kind of parable, worth considering as an Advent reflection, with its strong movement from darkness to light.
What makes George Bailey one of the most inspiring, emotionally complex characters in modern popular culture is that he continually chooses the needs of his family and community over his own self-interested ambitions and desires—and suffers immensely and repeatedly for his sacrifices.
Capra’s underlying message is thus radically subversive: It is by serving our fellow man, even to the point of subordinating our dreams and ambitions, that we achieve both true greatness and lasting happiness.
Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them -- which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.
To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible. Whatever the practical source, the end result is the same. You are privileged to enter a time—four years!—during which your main job is to listen to lectures, attend seminars, go to labs, and read books.
I have a fantasy of air travel, and it goes like this: I cab to the airport with my pre-printed boarding pass in hand, go through an efficiently moving security line and get to the gate just as the flight is starting to board.
The genius of a Catholic education is to anchor the yearnings, the brilliance and the glory of the human mind in the greatness of God. Man has no security outside the guarantees of God’s love. If we deny Him, we deny ourselves. If we do not know Him, we cannot know ourselves.
Bad times, hard times -- this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.
...a new struggle between two competing visions of the country's future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise -- limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution.
Free enterprise brings happiness; redistribution does not. The reason is that only free enterprise brings earned success. Earned success involves the ability to create value honestly -- not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn't mean making money in and of itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek value through innovation, hard work and passion. Earned success is what parents feel when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, what artists feel when they create something of beauty.
Thus my optimism, encouraged by my experience on the Great Plains. Most of us do not want to live in the political equivalent of a housing project administered by remote bureaucrats. Nor do we want to live in the political equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange where every dimension of civic life has a selling price. And because we don’t, if we are reasonably vigilant and energetic, odds are we won’t.
Petroski reminds us, quite rightly, that while scientists may ring the warning when it comes to potential disasters, "warnings are not solutions -- nor are they necessarily a death knell. It will be the optimistic engineers who hear the warnings not as doomsday scenarios but as calls to tackle significant problems."
For many years Betty worked for Joe Herrmann’s, Inc. (Saf-T-Gas) and later served as secretary to the president of Saint Leo College. Betty was married to Stephen C. Herrmann in 1968. They lived in Atlanta, GA for 24 years before retiring to Blanton in 1991, where they grew citrus, owning and maintaining a tangerine grove. Betty was widowed in 2001. She was kind to animals and fed wild birds. Betty will be dearly missed by all who knew her.
