A new study by the National Endowment for the Arts has found a big decline in reading among young people. I lament this decline of reading actual books, but I disagree that young people are not reading at all, as if literacy is becoming obsolete. Every time someone logs onto the internet he or she has to read. Without reading, there can be no Facebook socializing. Text-messaging requires reading. Arguably more letter-writing and letter-reading is going on than ever before in the form of e-mail correspondence.

The problem is that online reading tends to be in little bites. Books require–and create–long attention spans, with long chains of reasoning and sustained acts of the imagination. The new media encourages that kind of minimalistic condensation of discourse exemplified in the kind of spelling used in txt mgs typed on a tiny screen with your thumbs.

But reading is not going to go away. And reading books cannot go away for Christians, since they know the God who communicates Himself to us not through visions or experiences or feelings but precisely through a Book.

I flew over Atlanta a couple of weeks ago and looked down on lakes shrinking and going dry. Atlanta has as little as 80 days of water left. Smaller places in Georgia are already trucking in water, but that is hardly an option for a huge metropolis. Not just Georgia, but other areas in the south, including here in Virginia, are facing a water crisis. So is the southwest, parts of the midwest, and countries around the world. Read this. Part of the problem has been an absence of hurricanes! The governor of Georgia is leading prayers for rain. Good for him, despite wide-spread mockery. But what will happen if the faucets run dry?

So Hilary Clinton’s camp is spreading rumors that they know of some scandal about Barack Obama. But they are saying that out of their magnanimity they will not say what it is.

Now just dissect that. The Clintonistas are managing to spread a rumor designed to weaken the public’s confidence in Obama. But since they “are not saying what it is,” they do not have to prove anything. They are slandering him without having to come up with anything against him. And their malice is hidden in a facade of doing good.

Obama says to bring it out, that he has absolutely nothing to hide. Whereupon the Clintonistas are blaming him for over-reacting, saying that his angry reaction proves his political inexperience. This Catch-22 political tactic is low, contemptible, and Machiavellian, an example of what we can expect from this candidate and–very likely–this future administration.