What's so good about Good Friday?

What's so good about Good Friday?

Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator shares a meditation on Jesus' death, which is marked today some 2,000 years after it happened.

Here's the crux:

...we have one thing onto which we can hold, one thing that is no fairy tale but is indisputable, historical fact. What we have is the evidence of 1,980 years. We have the fact that something happened of such weight and power, something so convincing and life-altering, that 11 male disciples and several women were able, by their witness alone, to convince first dozens and then hundreds and then the vast majority of Western civilization (and eventually large swaths of Oriental and African civilization as well) that what they had seen and experienced was very real, very potent, and profoundly redemptive. Jesus of Nazareth commanded no armies and conquered no territory. Jesus' followers had no political power, no physical might, no means of mass communication, and no particularly obvious claim to credibility. Yet they, those rejoicing but burdened few, who saw the empty tomb and the risen Christ, somehow became imbued with such charisma and spirit, such aura and such powers of persuasion, that they convinced those who heard them that their odd tale of a risen Christ was believable. Their handiwork, the handiwork of poor fishermen and laborers who became preachers and healers, is an incontrovertible fact of history. Their ministry happened. With the help of one Saul of Tarsus, who originally tried to wipe them out, their ministry grew. It grew, and it raised an entire civilization from the ashes.

Read the whole thing here. It's well done. Happy Easter.

How about those tomato sandwiches...

While I usually don't agree with her politics, Leah Ward Sears, former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, strikes me as someone with much grace and class.

She has a column in today's Wall Street Journal here (subscription required) discussing times where as a black woman she's been confused with "the help" at various social functions around the state.

Often, liberals use stories of bias and prejudice to rally support for their political agenda.

But Sears says she's learned that it's better in the Deep South to smile and change the subject to tomato sandwiches. What grace.

Another thing I like about Sears is that since retiring last year she's talked a lot about the importance of preserving the family unit, especially in the black family. Sadly, it's not something a lot of liberals like to discuss (more fun to blame whites, Bush, lack of socialism).

As we truck along toward bankruptcy and moral decay on Obama and Pelosi's Big Government Express, Daniel Henninger sounds an optimistic note in the Wall Street Journal on Good Friday:

My reading of the American public is that they have moved past "concerns." Somewhere inside the programmatic details of ObamaCare and the methods that the president, Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Reid used to pass it, something went terribly wrong. Just as something has gone terribly wrong inside the governments of states like California, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts.

The 10th Amendment tumult does not mean anyone is going to secede. It doesn't mean "nullification" is coming back. We are not going to refight the Civil War or the Voting Rights Act. Richard Russell isn't rising from his Georgia grave.

It means that the current edition of the Democratic Party has disconnected itself from the average American's sense of political modesty. The party's members and theorists now defend expanding government authority with the same arrogance that brought Progressive Era reforms down upon untethered industrial interests.

In such times, this country has an honored tradition of changing direction. That time may be arriving.

Faced with corporate writedowns in response to the reality of Congress's new health plan, an apoplectic Congressman Henry Waxman commanded his economic vassals to appear before him in Washington.

Faced with a challenge to his vision last week, President Obama laughingly replied to these people: "Go for it."

They will.

Read the whole thing here.

I hope he's right. What do you think. Can the nation recover its constitutional framework, or have we passed the point of no return?