The Advent or Nativity Fast began Friday, Nov. 15, according to the Orthodox Christian calendar. Everyone, regardless of faith, can profit from considering the purpose behind this fast, which lasts until Christmas Day, the Nativity of Christ. In the spirit of goodwill, and the season, please consider these watchwords: pause, pray, push.

The fast is not a starvation fast, but rather a disciplined daily choice to not purchase or consume foods that at least once were more costly. By refraining from purchasing more expensive or luxury food items, you free up small but meaningful sums each day or week. These sums can then be giving to those in need or less well-off. The two acts, self-denial and giving to others, symbolize Christ’s self-denial and great gift to the world in setting aside glory and coming to dwell among us.

As a purely practical matter, exercising a little dietary self-denial this time of year might well also pay off if you step on the scales in the New Year! Forgo that weekly beer and burger night, or a daily calorie-loaded “coffee” drink, or that tasty chicken sandwich for lunch, or chicken minis for breakfast, plus the waffle fries, and you may find you do not need to let your belt out a notch after Christmas dinner! So, there are both material and spiritual benefits to a little self-denial this time of year.

I don’t watch TV. My wife enjoys it, so I try, sometimes. I’ll sit with her on the couch to watch a program, but I rarely make it halfway through. Fifteen minutes in, I’m up wandering around, or reading something. I just can’t do it. But sometimes I try, and I’m quickly reminded why I can’t.

Last night, she was watching a program called “The Resident.” It’s an “ER” type of show, about young, beautiful, impulsive, passionate, beautiful doctors in training. I watched for at least five minutes. Maybe ten. But then there was an absolutely remarkable scene which reminded me that I had something important that I had to do somewhere. Forgive me if I get some of the back story wrong, but here is how I understand it:

Dr. AJ Austin is a black surgeon who discovers that he was adopted, and arranges to meet his birth parents. His mother, as it turns out, was also a physician. He meets his birth parents in a restaurant. The hipster Dr. Austin, of course, wears his hipster hat indoors, at the table, to demonstrate that he is a caring compassionate urban hipster, or possibly to point out to his mother that he has such horrific table manners that she probably should have raised him herself.

House Democrats had limited the Republicans ability to call witnesses and ask questions. They seem to have the mistaken belief that they can set the ground rules for impeachment at the beginning and that those rules will apply to the entire process.

As chair of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Graham sent a letter to the State Department beginning an investigation into Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

The new generation has been liberating people by imposing pronouns and forced mixed-gender bathrooms. They call anyone who doesn’t hold their perverse views “fascists.” Of course, the new generation doesn’t have a clue what actual fascism is about. One day the totalitarian government without warning rounds people up of a particular ethnic group. They are told they are being sent to work camps or reeducation facilities. In reality, they are going to a prison camp from which there is a good chance they will not come out alive.

Blaming everyone for imaginary racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia in the freest society on earth has been a great joke that the magic woke generation has been playing on everyone in the USA. Now they are going to realize that the human rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution are the only protection in the world from tyrannical regimes bent on murder.

On this Saturday morning, a couple of questions of the kind that come to mind after you’ve spent a little too much time on Netflix on Friday night. Are you listening, @garymcvey or @titustechera?

It use to take a lot of thought and study to be a true conservative. There is a long tradition of high-level debates on the right about the nature of conservatism, about trying to reconcile conflicting ideological components drawn from libertarianism versus cultural conservatism. How much can/should we borrow insights from Schumpeter, Smith, Hayek, Friedman etc?  Must we be purists on free trade or can/should there be tariffs to punish cheating?  Is there any role for government in health care or welfare?  To what extent must we compromise with political, electoral realities to get as much of our shared agenda implemented as possible? Like the rest of the conservative intellectual heritage, ideological divides such as the old anti-communism versus isolationists required some serious historical, economic, philosophical and geopolitical study and thought. 

Fortunately, we no longer have to do any of that intellectual heavy lifting.  Conservatism is now solely about how we react to President Trump’s tweets and then react to each other’s reactions to those tweets.

We are all likely to be victimised in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimisation. It comes from the outside. 

In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimisation. We develop a victim’s mind – a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries.