“Ordinary Americans, frankly, resist such notions as best they can, but they receive little support from the nation’s professional intellectual class, of which the artistic class is only the most demented and most estranged. People in most cultures throughout history, after all, have historically ‘stuck with their own,’ been ‘ethnocentric,’ thought their own culture best. …
Many Counselors
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 93 “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counselors they are established” (Prov. 15:22). Taking this together with other proverbs about business, we know that counsel is not simply a quantitative thing. In a multitude of counselors …
Somebody’s Idea of An Argument
Just finished talking with the cops about an incident last evening. When I came home last night (June 26, 2006), I checked our mailbox by the road before heading up the driveway. The mailbox contained a used condom, or a condom doctored to look as though it had been used. Now there are two basic …
Cool Off the Rack
“Cool required no specialized knowledge. Cool could be bought (but hopefully not cheaply). Cool was hip plus demographics.” [John Seabrook, Nobrow (New York: Vintage Books, 2000), p. 188].
The Tenets of Envy
“In Christian cultures, envy is understood to be one of the seven deadly sins, what Shakespeare identified as a ‘universal wolf.’ But in democratic societies, envy is institutionalized, and the tenets of such envy are diligently taught to the democratic young when they rise up, when they lie down, or when they walk along the …
The Whole Person Comes
The Christian faith is not divided, because Christ is not divided. There is no division here—whether Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, black or white, young or old. Neither is there a division between internal and external. There are those who seek to introduce such distinctions, just as there have been those …
Without Sandpapering It
The Word of God is a hammer, Jeremiah says, that breaks a rock in pieces. It is not a flattering caress. The Scriptures are no Judas kiss. The textures of God’s revelation to sinful man are not smooth and silken vanities. Isaiah the prophet spoke to the proud and arrogant of his day, and used …
The Day of Death
Our knowledge of the greatest journey we will ever undertake is lamentably sketchy. Some of this is obviously because of the nature of the case—death is a great barrier. But at least part of our ignorance is the result of not studying what the Scriptures teach us about this. “For we know that if our …
Mix and Match Identities
“When you say about a painting, a music video, or a pair of jeans, ‘I like this,’ you make some sort of judgment, but it’s not a judgment of quality. In Nobrow, judgments about which brand of jeans to wear are more like judgments of identity than quality. These judgments do not depend on knowledge …
Inescapable Blasphemy Laws
“Every culture has blasphemy laws. They are not always called that, but no society allows citizens to rail against the reigning deity. In our pluralistic times, these blasphemy laws are called ‘hate crimes’ legislation, among other euphemisms, but they are really religious protections to keep the reigning god, demos, from being blasphemed” (The Case for …