If you’re not signed up for my newsletter, the Constitutional Vanguard (it’s free, you know!), then you’ll have to click here for my Sunday afternoon thoughts on why we should repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. (Spoiler alert: I’m kidding. Sort of.) There is a bonus digression about why Josh Hawley is a fraud, but you’ll have to sign up or click through for that. This excerpt is the intro to the argument about why repealing Section 230 might be a good idea after all:

You may have noticed that 2020 was kind of a bad year. Not only was there a worldwide pandemic that so far has cost us over two million lives across the globe, but at the same time, people seem to have gone crazy in large numbers. First we had (in addition to many peaceful protests) many violent riots over the death of George Floyd during the summer — riots which in some places have not yet calmed down. Again: while most of the protesting was indeed peaceful, a notable subset of “protests” were what Big Media likes to call “mostly peaceful” — in other words, what normal people call incredibly violent. A police station was burned to the ground in Minneapolis. So-called “autonomous zones” of anarchy were carved out in cities like Portland, with the tacit approval of city leadership, and people were murdered inside them. And then, as if to assure us that 2021 will be no better, we had the aforementioned spectacle of an utterly insane horde of thousands of maniacs at the Capitol less than two weeks ago. When is the last time we saw so much mental illness on open display in one twelve-month span of time?

I’m sure this is not a tremendously original thought, but my own personal theory is that social media lies at the heart of this insanity.

If we can kill social media by repealing the one law that makes it possible, maybe that’s a good idea!!!1!

Read the whole thing here. And don’t forget to sign up at the same link!

It is the second Sunday after the Epiphany. The title of today’s cantata is “Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen” (I live, my heart, for your pleasure):

Today’s Gospel reading is John 1:43-51:

The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”

The text of today’s cantata is available here and contains these words:

Arise, my heart, the Lord’s day
has driven off the night of fear:
Christ, who lay in the grave,
has not remained in death.
From now on I am truly comforted,
Jesus has redeemed the world.

Happy listening! Soli Deo gloria.