Category Archives: Life

Day 16: a picture of someone who inspires you

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Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, a.k.a. King Juan Carlos of Spain. He inspires me greatly.

Spain today is a surprisingly stable constitutional monarchy and a Parliamentary democracy. For forty years, overlapping well into my lifetime, it was a fascist dictatorship. However throughout that time it was officially a monarchy, the king having been overthrown in the 1930s, and Franco carefully groomed the heir to the throne as his personal heir. When Franco died, Juan Carlos took over with all the powers of the former dictator.

Which he then proceeded to give away. Within two years, elections to a new parliament; within seven years, a socialist government, and an attempted coup en route which failed largely because the king publicly announced support for the legitimate powers that be.

It can be argued that even if he had tried to keep the dictatorship, he would have failed; the time for those things had passed in Europe. Spain now would probably be a republic, eventually democratic after a lot more blood and tears. But that happened peacefully and without tears, except for maybe a few on the far right sobbing into their sangria, but who cares.

What a guy.

Day 14: a picture of someone you could never imagine your life without

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Okay, I dodged the bullet a few days ago but now it catches up with me. I simply cannot imagine not being Christian. And believe me, I’ve tried. Too much has happened to me in a strictly subjective, non-predictable or reproducible and hence strictly non-scientific way for it to be otherwise.

Y’see, this is the point the Blessed Dawkins and his ilk simply cannot get. They think all Christians are ultimately credulous fools and if only they could Have the Truth Explained then they would abandon their primitive superstitions and be happy and released. It never occurs to them that our beliefs might actually have been thought through and weighed against the evidence, and that while Dawkins et al argue from theory, we argue from experience.