One of the demands of any polemical exchange is the demand of naming. In every dispute, both sides always want to define the nature of the dispute. This need to name properly is not optional for the party that is in the right. Everyone has to do it. But when one of the parties is …
Curricular Development
Visionaries, Secular fundamentalists like Duane really crack me up. Evil? What’s that? And when Duane accused me of anti-Semitism, I confessed to you all earlier that I was nonplussed. I was like a congressman who had found a copy of the Constitution. I honestly did not know what he was talking about. But when I …
Hostility and Discrimination
In the alternative universe of some, mere assertion substitutes for argument. An assertion that Christ Church, NSA, and other ministries, should start “obeying the law,” is enough to persuade a certain kind of mind that we must not have been obeying the law. But of course, in a sober kind of universe, this kind of …
Takes the Breath Away
Bob Dylan once said that you don’t have to be a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing. Seeing that there is a concerted campaign of harassment against private education in Moscow is about as difficult as one of those test-your-smarts questions in kids’ magazines. Three triangles and a circle in a row. …
Poking Fun
Dear visionaries, My faults are many and grievous. But I am not guilty of all vices, and one of the places where I do just fine is in not taking offense when someone “pokes fun.” If you stick your head through the canvas in the booth at the county fair, you can’t act surprised when …
What Is Actually Happening
A year or two ago, I bowed out as a participant in the Vision 20/20 discussion group. I had come to the conclusion that pursuing a discussion with the people who were diligently trying (successfully) to turn it into Venom 20/20 was like arguing with the troubled guy trying to squeegee your windshield at a …
The Thick Plottens
The campaign of “diversity cleansing” continues. The two women who filed tax exemption complaints last year against Christ Church and New St. Andrews College have now followed up with similar tax complaints against Logos School and the ministry of Community Christian Ministries (CCM) at the Nuart theater. The complaints now go before the county commissioners …
June Bugs Into Sea Lions
Dear visionaries, It really is good to hear from Susannah from time to time, because it inspires me to write. But she might want to remember the comment of P. G. Wodehouse concerning folks like me. Some minds are like the soup in a poor restaurant — better left unstirred. She says, for example, that …
A Christian View of War
The decision to have a war is a corporate decision; the decision to go to war an individual one. And once a man decides to go to war, of course his individual behavior in combat has corporate ramifications. When the church was in her infancy, the question of war was a simple one. “Blessed be …
Cruel, Not Cowardly
Visionaries, I am sure that part of this is an ethos problem. If I said it, it must be outlandish and subversive of the republic. But nobody in this quarter said anything about medals for bravery or heroism. I believe that men such as this are wicked, and those who do not die in their …