Political Freak Outs
As we close in on the first actual voting in Iowa, with actual voters, now just a few weeks away, I would like to register a few cautions. I have addressed the limitations of polling before, but here want to say something about the use made of them by the chattering classes. Keep in mind …
Misbehaving With Pronouns
So let us now write about pronouns. The cultural pressure is mounting, and will soon become a fiery wall of persecution. Well, it won’t be that intense, but it will be intense enough to roll right over our Christian intelligentsia, whose lifetime pocket promise verse appears to be “ye have not yet resisted unto blood.” …
Review: Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect
Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect by Paul Anthony Rahe My rating: 4 of 5 stars Rahe is fantastically learned, and writes cogently and well. The material is dense, but well worth wading through. If you want to know the historical lineage of our drift into administrative despotism, this is …
Pro-Life Basics
Introduction Faithful Christians are necessarily pro-life, by definition. But having an instinctive knowledge that God’s gift of life should be respected is not necessarily the same thing as being equipped to explain from the Bible why this is so, or being able to answer some of the standard objections that may be raised. 1. What …
The Wrong Rights
Our Constitution concludes with a Bill of Rights, but these rights are of a particular nature — and are friends of real liberty. But within the last several generations, another set of ostensible rights, with a completely different nature, have crept into our public discourse. These rights, these entitlements, are enemies of liberty. Not only …
What Everybody Says
You May Not Cut Nature
One of the reasons I go on about the regeneration thing is because I believe that many other crucial things ride on it. If we don’t keep the necessity of the new birth in the forefront of our minds, we will in short order find ourselves unable to answer the arguments and demands of those …
Another Brick in the Wall
So then, the problem with ignorance is that when you don’t know, you frequently don’t know what it is you don’t know. A common trope among our leaders and pontificators is found in the phrase “the greatest national security threat we face is . . .” followed whatever it is they want us to be …
American Jesus
So I have written about American exceptionalism before, and so let me begin with a quick review of my take in the first paragraph. Taken one way, the notion is just ten more pounds of idolatrous silliness. Every great nation at the top of its game — and there have been lots — knows how …