“And that was the final irony: that an intellectual establishment that had dedicated itself for thirty-five years to the Nonjudgmental gods of tolerance and open-mindedness should finish as an anti-intellectual cult of intolerance, propped up and held in place by a vast network of cultural prohibitions and quasi-legal injunctions, and distinguished chiefly for its poverty …
Gluggity Gluggity
“‘It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles,’ said Pope: ‘the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out’” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 183.]
A Democratic Downgrade
“The phenomenon was in part merely an unpleasant by-product of mass education: a man who might have done no harm as a head footman a century or two ago can do tremendous harm as an assistant professor or a film critic.” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 183.]
All About Sex
Brian McLaren recently posted some comments on, you guessed it, homosexuality, and, as might be expected, he was strong on the need to be what he was pleased to call “pastoral,” and weak on what was known, in another day and time, as “biblical.” He was asked by a young couple what his church’s position …
Almost As Real As Movie Reviews
“The same might have been said not only of Time itself but of most of the American popular press. All over the land of the free, hip little film critics were celebrating the exhibition of Mr. Ripploh’s lower orifices with the words and phrases they’d memorized while studying for their Master’s degrees. ‘The latest film …
Envying the Dead
“Just so. Mr. Forster was not a Philistine, but he was a stunted man, spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. He was one of those said creatures of the twentieth century who define themselves in terms of their own insufficiencies, and it was his tragedy-and ours, some may think-that he let his unhappiness and his self-reproach lead …
Performative Contradictions
In the whole kerfluffle between modernism and postmodernism, we should take our lead from Paul at Athens. He did not go there in order to determine whether he was closer to the Epicureans or to the Stoics. They had many differences, but at bottom they were both pagan systems of thought with a deep foundational …
You Can Climb Out of a Hole, But You Can’t Dig Out
We live in a day when few people, including many Christians, understand what justice really is. In this series, we are not talking about a conversation between friends, or between a husband and wife. If a wife were to ask her husband if he would mind not interrupting when their youngest daughter is trying to …
Aesthetic Berserkers
[A certain literary critic] “was charging through the corridors of beauty with a literary sledgehammer, taking wild swings at anything that smacked of nobility or purpose” [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 119.]
Preserving the Memory of Art
“Accordingly, while it is not expected of every age that it be capable of producing good art, it is demanded of the literary establishment of every age that it at least keep the memory and the standards of good art always before itself, well polished and clearly labeled. A literary establishment that cannot do this …