o1mnikent

“I, like every American I’m speaking with, we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health-care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy, helping the — it’s got to be all about job creation, too, shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health-care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans. And trade, we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive, scary thing. But one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today, we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.”

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

…There are certain attributes our faith assigns to God—omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. We human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate.
Marilynne Robinson on predestination, in her newest novel, Home

Human Or Animal Faces Associated With At Least 90 Percent Of Cars By One-third Of Population

indexed: Busy, busy, busy.

In 1960, the Lynden city council sponsored a community-wide project which (among other things) surveyed the entire town to gauge the status of how individuals in the community relate to one another. Here are some of the dozens of questions and a few of the anonymous responses from Project United: Lynden Community Study (1960-1961):

How easy is it to move between social layers?

“Very difficult. Your name and religion prevent moving.”

“Not hard at all if a person gets out and tries to infiltrate.”

“Social layer [is] determined by religion, profession, and birth (family ties), [there is] no [social] mobility.”

“It is rather hard for newcomers to become a part of the social groups…nationality and family are what make [newcomers] acceptable in the CRC.”

“The only social layers are imposed by the church…”

Are there any factions or cliques in this community who generally disagree with each other, or who have conflicting ideas on how things should be done?

“There are factions that are critical of other groups mostly because of ignorance.”

What are some things you dislike about this community?

“All of this [explitive] foolishness over nationality and pressure from churches…”

“I love our community. Most conflicts are due to misinformation and prejudices…It’s deplorable.”

“The feeling of the Dutch that they are God’s chosen few.”

“It’s narrowmindedness about some things.”

“The Dutchmen are clannish…”

“The narrowmindedness…How the church can make everything impossible…”

Such is the attitude which has informed community dialogue about all of the non-controversies, from the Saloon controversy in 1905, to Harold Kooy and his renigade grocery store on the outskirts of town (now the Fairway Center), to the current controversy over roundabouts, the Sunday liquor ban, and the casino.

Incidentally, I also learned that the Ku Klux Klan had a notable presence in Lynden in the 1920s and 30s. Not because of the African Americans, though (there weren’t any). Apparently the locals felt the need to reassert their nativism in the wake of the arrival of the newcomers–the Dutch.