“When men cease to aspire to the ideal, the good, to self-restraint — whether in their arts or their lives — they do not just stand still, but actually turn the other way, finding self-fulfillment in self-indulgence, and in an obsession with those three ultimate expressions of the totally self-centred life: sex, violence and insanity” …
Instead of “A Life for an Eye, a Life for a Tooth”
“As a matter of fact, the imitation involved in revenge tends toward more violence, for it tends to repay the violence it avenges ‘with interest.’ It tends to escalate the violence. The ancient injunction, ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ was an attempt to keep revenge from spinning out of control” …
Lenny Bruce Tags It
One of our local adversaries, Nick Gier, had a letter in the paper last night entitled “‘Intolerista,’ and proud of it.” He was referencing a recent article in the Spokane paper, which was, despite Nick’s praise, a fairly decent article. There were some mistakes in it, and of course, Nick seized on those mistakes as …
Without A Bucket
I am currently reading three new books by Peter Leithart — the commentary on Kings, the book on Second Peter, which are both outstanding, and the book Deep Comedy, which promises to be the really fabulous one. I am not very far into them yet, but am certainly far enough in to see that Peter …
Needed: More Wodehousian Treatments of Local Arts Groups
“In a media-driven culture in which status is granted according to progressive tastes, many otherwise conservative folks are only too eager to participate in local arts groups as a hedge against being called philistines. Some take a real interest in art, even apart from the social aspects, such as the wine and Brie parties at …
Trying to Get the Center to Hold
“When a culture’s sacrificial rituals ‘work,’ they transfer the existing rivalrous antagonisms onto one figure against whom all can unite, an act that miraculously dissolves existing tensions and replaces them with a social bond” (Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, p. 88).
True Authority Is Obedient
I have learned far more in Narnia than I can ever begin to explain, and so all I am going to try to do here is give you a small taste of some of the more important lessons I learned there. I hope that readers of these small sketches will be able to do what …
Let Him That Thinks He Stands Take Heed Lest He Paint
“For many artists, ‘it became an acknowledged pastime to ‘shock the burghers’ out of their complacency and to leave them bewildered and bemused’ . . . While this stance may seem heroic, it also contains the seeds of arrogance that helped bring art to its knees—disdain for any other viewer of the art, including patrons …
Rallying Points
“Whether it is a public hanging, a war, or a televised glorification of violence, a culture’s righteous violence will fascinate its onlookers. It will be a spectacle. Regardless of the rhetoric and details of its justification, if a society can heighten that fascination and bring it to a cathartic sacrificial conclusion, then the sacrificial violence …
Which Is Like Calling Grape Kool Aid A Fine Merlot
“. . . crudity is equated with sophistication, just as pornography made for immature minds is labeled ‘adult’ material” (Robert Knight, The Age of Consent, p. 91.).