1. Postmodernists take themselves seriously enough already. 2. It might make some sense to speak of the “post-colonial” era if a hundred years or two have gone by since the era in question has assumed room temperature. But until then, you can’t really see it, and ought not pretend as though you can. For all …
Ezra Nehemiah 4
Introduction The task that the returning exiles had was that of rebuilding in the midst of ruin. The work was overwhelming and the challenges huge, and we are very much in a similar position. As we have noted, one of our basic tasks is that of learning from them. The Text: “And when the seventh …
Hip Off the Rack
“The sixties are more than merely the homeland of hip, they are a commercial template for our times, a historical prototype for the construction of cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent. Co-option is something much more complex than the struggle back and forth between capital and youth revolution; it’s also something larger …
Rushdoony on Porn
Back in the eighties I read through a small hill of Rushdoony’s books, profiting greatly from many of them. One that I was never able to get my hands on was his The Politics of Pornography. But it has just been released again by Ross House Books under the new title Noble Savages. The folks …
The Un-Ad
“Bernbach was the first adman to embrace the mass society critique, to appeal directly to the powerful but unmentionable public fears of conformity, of manipulation, of fraud, and of powerlessness, and to sell products by so doing. He invented what we might call anti-advertising: a style which harnessed public mistrust of consumerism-perhaps the most powerful …
What Actually Occurreth
I am not at all enthralled by the critique that postmodernists offer up of modernist hubris, any more than I am entranced by the critique that modernists offer of postmodern incoherence. The fact that postmodern dwarves are shooting at the Calormene modernists is not an occasion for me to throw my hat in the air. …
My Lutheranism, Hitherto Unsuspected
In a recent response to my question, Andrew Sandlin was kind enough to write the following. “By ‘factuality’ in redemptive-historical creedal affirmations I mean that Jesus really lived, died, rose again, and will come again in the air for His own.” In doing this, he has let me know that he not only affirms the …
New Bait, New Hook
“No longer would Americans buy to fit in or impress the Joneses, but to demonstrate that they were wise to the game, to express their revulsion with the artifice and conformity of consumerism. The enthusiastic discovery of the counterculture by the branches of American business studied here marked the consolidation of a new species of …
Cloaks, Capernaum, and Coffee Tables
It is quite true that I have an MA in philosophy, I confess it. But that was many years ago, and I was young and foolish. I am very sorry. Won’t let it happen again. Let’s move on. Let the healing begin! But seriously, to return to my view that “the coffee table is there” …
More Than In Our Private Times
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Great God of the city, the city of Zion, Your foundation stands sure, Your foundation is in the holy mountains. Your city is in the holy mountains. You love the gates of Zion, You love the public worship of Your saints More …