Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice” --  A Defense of Humilities, The Defendant, 1901,  G.K. Chesterton Small “o” orthodox Christians of a certain age will be familiar with the cardinal virtues. They are: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice – all under attack by a secular culture that, judging by Hollywood or Washington DC standards, appears to have won the battle. But, never fear, the four cardinal virtues form the breastplate of a church against which, its founder once proclaimed, the gates of Hell shall not prevail. The Cardinal virtues, St. Augustine tells us, better enable us to pursue the good life: “To live well is nothing other than to love God with all one's heart, with all one's soul and with all one's efforts; from this,  it comes about that love is kept whole and uncorrupted (through temperance). No misfortune can disturb it (and this is fortitude). It obeys only [God] (a...

Somewhere along the line, national and state Democrats discovered that most Americans do not cotton to extremists. For this reason, progressives in the state of Connecticut – nearly all politically active Democrats -- have taken to calling “extremists” those who oppose some of their more radical political positions. V. I. Lenin, an extremist of the first water, knew that if you effectively labeled an opponent or an idea, you did not have to argue with either. If you have successfully identified in the public mind as an extremist anyone who disagrees with you on a political or social point, you need not address his nuanced arguments. You need not bother to confront his arguments at all; the mud you throw – knowing full well that some of it will stick – will be sufficient to convince a majority of people that your position is superior to his, because you are superior to him: He is an extremist, and you are not. In cases such as these, arguments are won not through debate or the pr...

Robert Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of Connecticut's Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of The Hartford Courant's Place Board of Contributors. His columns appear frequently on the paper’s op-ed pages. The Liberal Arts at UConn are, as elsewhere in academia, very liberal. Mr. Thorson is certain he knows how the rest of us will know when gas prices are “high enough.” The attentive reader will notice that Mr. Thorson did not write “too high” but used the formulation “high enough.” That is because Mr. Thorson ardently believes that gas prices in Connecticut, now cresting above $4 and heading towards $5, are not as high as they should be. The price of gas will be high enough, Mr. Thorson advised in a column published on May 5, 2011 , when: “… drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops would not be lined with mostly oversized vehicles carrying mostly oversized people toward food energy. “…the carpool lanes on local interstate...

Religious people – people who actually practice their faith – may be forgiving for being somewhat bewildered by the suit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Enfield, possibly because they know that their religion is only indirectly connected to places where religious services are held. A real atheist like Christopher Hitchens might approve of the ACLU suit, which seeks to prevent students in Enfield from attending graduation services at First Cathedral in Bloomfield, for its nuisance value alone. But he probably would reject as an outdated medieval superstition the unstated claim that gives moral unction to the suit. What harm could possibly come to an atheist or agnostic who attends a graduation, purely a secular activity, in a building in which religious services have been held? Buildings are not sacred objects; still less are they professors giving off notions that might ensnare the non-religious. A building of brick and mortar is not an idea....