The “On Faith” page of The Washington Post has published a short commentary from me on the new atheism. Here.
Doctor, You’re Cutting Too Deep. You’re Scratching the Table.
One of the temptations that comes to people who learn how to see and identify “deep structures” in a narrative — adeptly twirling chiasms they have found, or anticipataory foreshadowing motifs, or whatnot — is that they sometimes lose their ability to read what is right there on the page. They know that the Mississippi …
The Case Against Distance Learning
But before anyone gets riled at the title, allow me a few caveats first. The first is that a strong element of distance learning is essential to every form of real education. Every university library is full of distance learning packets called books. When I read Augustine or Calvin, this is because back in the …
The Disease of Pragmatism
On this subject of higher education in the liberal arts, there is much to develop in every direction. And by “develop,” I mean “shoot at.” It is what our military calls a target rich environment. What is a liberal arts education for? Why go to college? Why pay big bucks to go to college? What …
The Free Safety of Orthodoxy Considered as a Tub of Pudge
Chapter 7 of Franke’s book is where an astute defensive coordinator starts to get a good idea where the wide receiver is going to run his route. But since our free safety of orthodoxy has spent way too much time at KFC and is a tub of pudge, it begins to look as though we …
The Coming Tax Revolt
Tax revolts are funny things. The powers that be are lulled into complacency, for increased taxation is inevitable, for do we all not know that progress is inevitable, and so the grinding business of governmental coercion as usual must continue on unabated? But this is like the man who was striving to live to be …
Behemoth State U and Leviathan State
The perennial temptation of ersatz conservatives is to tell the progressives that what they are proposing cannot possibly work, and that if implemented it will ruin us all. And then, when the progressives (so called because they are progressing toward the Abyss) succeed in driving their proposals through, conservatives line up for the next election …
The Plague of Salt Water
The EPA, under the adroit leadership of Saruman, has now declared CO2 to be a pollutant. As the Staples Singers taught us so many years ago — “put your hand on your mouth when you cough, that’ll help the solution.” And after these Hilaritards have regulated all us CO2 emitters into the ground, they will …
Regardless of Real Amounts
There is no real understanding of modern politics possible that does not take into full account the deep and pervasive presence of envy. And such a broad cultural understanding will not come about until there is a reformation in the church, and my current suspicion is that it will have to be the kind of …
Laugh Like a Developmentally-Challenged Hyena
One of the things a lot of people need to learn how to do is make political determinations, whenever possible, based on the undisputed out-in-the-open facts. This is possible a lot more than is pretended otherwise. The alternative is to try to make determinations based on the contested behind-the-scenes-facts, and this is an invitation to …