Now Rod Dreher, author of Crunchy Cons: The New Conseervative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots, takes up the cause of Issues, Etc.

It’s rather surprising to many of us how this seemingly internecine controversy within the LCMS has attracted such attention from outside our circles. But the “Issues” that come up with this case do indeed have wide currency. And that “Issues” is not only conservative, but “crunchily conservative” in Dreher’s sense is surely significant, and not just for Lutherans.

It isn’t just us old people who are defending “Issues,” but, judging from The Wittenberg Trail social networking site, it is young people who are some its biggest fans and who are lighting up the internet. Those who are savvy on the internet, unlike the officials who cancelled the show seemingly oblivious to internet downloads. Those who consider the interview show, which is at the same time both culturally plugged in and theologically in-your-face, to be not just edifying but also cool.

And you don’t have to make your own granola to see Dreher’s point, that a conservatism exists that is young and counter-cultural, with a great concern–given the current cultural inanities–of returning to “roots.” That would include the roots of the church, which is what “Issues” championed.

UPDATE: Michael Horton on White Horse Inn also weighs in. He interviews the author of that piece in the Wall Street Journal, M. Z. Hemingway. Go to Bring Back Issues to hear what she has to say.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Todd Wilken speaks.

when hope springs eternal in the human breast, as everyone’s team begins in first place. I stayed up late watching the Washington Nationals in their new stadium play the Atlanta Braves. It was a good game that the Nats won in the last inning when Ryan Zimmerman hit a walk off home run. My resolution this year is to try to follow and be for the Nationals, since I now live in the D.C. area and feel a community obligation to support the local team. I’ll still pull for the Milwaukee Brewers, but I will watch Nats games on TV, check their box scores every day, and go to some games if I can get tickets (which, I am told, may not be easy in this first year of a new stadium).

So the floor is now open for optimistic predictions. ESPN pundits were predicting that the Cubs would be in the World Series! Don’t I hear that every year?

I am glad to see that one of my alma maters, Kansas, is in the Final Four. You may notice that I say little about basketball in this blog. One reason is that whenever I watch basketball my team, no matter how highly favored, loses. I can tune in at half time with my team leading by 12 points, but in the final minutes that lead slips away and they lose at the buzzer. I just know from experience that if I had watched the Kansas game, this year’s team to come out of nowhere Davidson would have made that final 3-point shot and won the game. So I AM supporting my team by not watching it play. (I just hope writing about the Jayhawks on this blog will not have a similar effect.)

Yes, we decry the way Communist China (at least I’m not saying “Red China,” tODD) is oppressing the Tibetans, as well as Christians and just about everybody else. But that does not excuse the Tibetan Buddhists who murdered at least 19 innocent people just because they were Chinese. From Eyewitnesses Recount Terrifying Day in Tibet - washingtonpost.com:

It was a heady feeling, being part of a howling pack that had forced police to turn tail and run, some dropping their shields as they fled a barrage of rocks. Then the Tibetans in the crowd slowed and began turning back, grinning and patting one another on the back.

The ebullient mood did not last long. The pack broke into smaller groups, gathering rocks and pulling out knives, looking for the next target.

“There was no more crowd to be part of. It looked like they were turning on everybody,” said Kenwood, 19, describing the scene to reporters last week when he arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal, after 10 days in the Tibetan capital. “It wasn’t about Tibet freedom anymore.”

What he witnessed next was a violent rampage unlike any in decades in Lhasa, a city where Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered temples sit among office buildings and concrete markets built by Chinese bent on developing the remote Himalayan region. Hundreds of mostly young Tibetans broke up into roaming gangs and attacked Chinese passersby and vandalized shops, killing 19 people and injuring more than 600 over two days.

During the riots, looters set fire to a clothing store, burning to death five young employees who were huddled on the second floor. Most police officers kept their distance while the center of Lhasa descended into chaos.