Letter to the Editor: In Defend the Meta, I like your illustration of the “levels” of presuppositions that when “stacked” upon each other create a worldview. These are helpful ...
Because Copping a Pose Takes Less Work
”The idea that artists must take an oppositional stance toward mainstream society is hardly new. It has its origins in 18th-century Romanticism, a movement that went on to dominate the artistic imagination throughout the 19th century.”
Nation of Rebels, p. 16
The Discipline Starts Elsewhere
“Your emotional state might feel like disciplining when you should not, or it might feel like not disciplining when you should, so you cannot base discipline on the state of your emotions. In order to teach obedience, your disciplining must be itself obedient and disciplined”
Defend the Meta
Introduction: So while I was on vacation, another skirmish broke out between David French and some of French’s critics, and so I thought that it would not be out of place if I entered the discussion, kind of, with some day-late-ten-dollar-over observations. I say kind of because I am not going to get into any …
Unlike those Sold-Out Hippiecrits
“So where did the idea of ‘alternative’ come from? The idea that you had to be unpopular to order to be authentic?”
Nation of Rebels, p. 14.
Adjust Your Batting Average
“Remember that God gave Adam and Eve a perfect garden: there was a world full of yes, and there was only one no. Minimize the number of no’s in your home. This is another way of saying that you should pick your battles carefully as parents. Suppose that over the space of a month, you have issued a hundred commands, and the kids have been constantly disobeying them. It would be far better for you to reduce those hundred commands to ten commands, and enforce every one of those ten, than to keep it at a hundred and enforce a fifth of the time”
And We Don’t Even Know the Answer to That
A Culture Wars False Flag
“If anything, consumer capitalism has emerged from decades of countercultural rebellion much stronger than it was before”
Nation of Rebels, p. 8
Covering the Waterfront
“I remember when I was a child, my father delivered three rules to me. Not only that, I remember where I was standing in the front yard when he delivered them to me, and I remember the fond and affectionate demeanor with which he delivered it (he had his fist in front of my face). His three principles were 1) no disobedience, 2) no lying, and 3) no disrespecting your mother. Now, what is not covered by that?”
Dealing with Nuisance Lust
This post originally ran September 6, 2010. Note: this is an imaginary Christian couple, assembled as a composite from various counseling situations. Dear Tony, Thanks for the email and the follow-up phone call. I am glad you decided to get help with this, and I am glad that you and Suzanne are talking about it. A …