The basic question in politics is this: what is our warrant for making people do things? George Washington once noted that government rests upon force. In the last analysis, however you want to describe it, government makes some people do what they don’t want to do. The point of traction in government is therefore coercion. …
My Kayak of Consistency
There are two basic streams of conservatism, and I have the misfortunate to belong to both of them. This means that as I am going down this particular river, whenever I get to the rapids, my kayak of consistency gets bounced around a bit. It can be done, but it requires some fancy paddle work, …
Gay Marriage as Failure to Launch
If the Bible teaches, as it does, that the woman is the glory of the man, what follows from this? Among others things, we find an answer to one of the central challenges of our culture wars — by which I mean the cultural infantilism of homosexual marriage. “the woman is the glory of the …
Absolutely Anything
An assassination has occurred in Arizona. A Democratic congresswoman has been shot, and is still struggling for her life. A federal judge is dead, along with some other people. The perpetrator initially appears to fit the profile of a conspiracy nut — his favorite books include Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, and Siddhartha. I found …
Books n’ Songs 2010
Now that 2010 just has just a day or two left in it, I thought it would be a safe time to list my top ten books and songs for the year. But I need to qualify this. These are not necessarily books or songs that were published or released this year. This was simply …
The Queen of Sheba and Disheartened Anabaptists
First, before we can do business, we have to set aside a number of popular assumptions garnered from various hymns, sermons, and Far Side cartoons. The New Jerusalem is not a figure of Heaven, the final eternal state, but is rather a glorious image of the Christian Church. This is explicit in a number of …
Dawn Treader
Okay, so let me bring everybody up to speed on cinematic Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was okay, Prince Caspian was just a couple of notches this side of terrible, and Nancy and I went to see Dawn Treader last night. Let me tell you about it, shall I? The Narnia movies …
Some Turtles Have to Fly With the Shell
One of the foundation stones of a mere Christendom has to be a root and branch rejection of Darwinism. The reason for this is not hard to ascertain — Darwinism is one of the chief cornerstones of the secular state. We are acquainted with the standard liberal metaphor of the Constitution as a “living document,” …
Lusts and Labels
One of the characteristics of lust is that it hates to be constrained. This applies as much to political lusts as to sexual desire, and it explains a great deal about the dishonesty of the progressive mentality. How many times, when you have asked someone a specific question about some important issue, have you been …
Shut Up in His Lazar House
So I have made a great deal out of the Great Commission, where Jesus tells His apostles to disciple the nations. I have noted that the direct object of that verb is the ethne, the people, the tribe, the whole unit. This means the question has arisen whether I am overlooking the explanatory participles following …