This letter to the editor ran in response to some stuff in our local newspaper about Trinity Fest. My comments are interspersed. “Wilson neither honorable nor brave” This is a title calculated to mortally offend the kind of man that Keely Mix takes me to be. And if I were a strutting embodiment of the …
The Closing of the Islamic Mind
“Not even a prime location at the crossroads of the world could supply an antidote to the slow poison of Islamic obscurantism. The Ottoman interlude concealed and postponed the latent tension between the view of world history as the fulfillment of Islam and its triumph everywhere on the one hand, and the reality of the …
That, and Singing Through Your Nose
“The truth is that Dylan, like most of his generation, learned most of his folk music from records . . . But to folkies bewitched by the blues, roughness epitomized authenticity” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, p. 212).
The Knowledge Drunk
“Wine is good when it goes to the heart to cheer it, but when it fumes up into the head it makes it giddy. Knowledge is good when the strength of it gets to the heart to comfort it, there to breed good spirits to strengthen it in the ways of holiness. But when it …
Compared to What?
“The Golden Age of Islam was ‘golden’ only on its own terms” (Serge Trifkovic, The Sword of the Prophet, p. 199).
Audio Reading of Post
Even At Their Saltiest
“Add the guitar-centeredness of the rest of early rock, and you have a significant shift: away from an emotionally expressive vocalism and toward and athletically aggressive instrumentalism. With hindsight, we can see some rather striking sexual connotations in this shift. The controlled vocalism of genuine blues suggest power, intensity, and energy being harnessed—as opposed to …
Smarmy Snakes
“These whispering talebearers have such an art as to cause what they thus speak in secret to sink very deeply into men’s hearts. They profess themselves very sorry for what they tell you, but it is too true, and with a deep sigh they harm their neighbor” (Burroughs, Irenicum, p. 212).
Johnny Appleseed
The following column ran last night in our local newspaper, responding to another set of recycled charges from Nick Gier, which he leveled against us in the paper last week. “Oh, good,” the Moscow community is thinking to itself. “Another round of attacks on Doug Wilson, followed shortly thereafter by his replies. We sure are …
Blame America First?
Blame America First? One of the charges frequently leveled against leftists of various stripes is that they have a natural and instinctive desire to “blame America first” in any discussion of an incident or conflict anywhere in the world. I think it was Jeanne Kirkpatrick who first used the “blame America first crowd” as a …
Raw Hatred
“With the emergence of Zionism in the early twentieth century, the Muslims faced a ‘Jewish problem’ for the first time since Mohammad. This time they faced it from a position of weakness, with the Jews for the first time since the destruction of the Temple poised to reestablish a polity that would be territorial as …