“Mary Shelley, at this point in our narrative, did not understand all this, but by the time she had finished writing Frankenstein she did not see things Shelley’s way, either. She had by that time experienced the sadistic consequences of her sexual profligacy. Frankenstein was her attempt to make sense out of the conflict between …
Should Be Obvious
“The difference between Osama bin Laden and Eric Rudolph is the difference between aberrant acts and aberrant teachings. Any human being with a belief system can do abominable things. But abominable acts are more likely to come in greater numbers and frequency when they are encouraged and perpetuated by religious texts and those who teach …
Porn As Revolution
“The revolutionaries simply put to their own use the libido that Versailles had unleashed. Sade, who more explicitly than any other in France described and reveled in the link between pornography and political revolution, was not an aberration of eighteenth-century French culture, but the culmination of the French predilection for pornography” (E. Michael Jones, Monsters …
Facts Be Stubborn
Turns out that fewer than half of scientists who have published on climate change in the last few years believe that there is something to the global warming hooey. Looky here. Turns out that the icebergs may not be melting, and that the totali-science that some are trying to practice these days may be melting. …
An Earlier 9-11
“Finally, they besieged Vienna again, only to be turned back by Poland’s King Jan III Sobieski and thirty thousand Polish hussars on a day that marks the high point of Muslim expansion in Europe: September 11, 1683” (Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), p. 157).
Horror as Cultural Guilt
“The fact that the creator of the horror genre is celebrated as a proponent of sexual liberation indicates that our culture still does not understand horror. If our culture could make up its mind about sexual liberation, it would not need horror. It would either embrace sexual license wholeheartedly, as Mary’s husband did, or repudiate …
Heaven Forbid
“However strange it may seem to Westerners, the much-publicized virgins promised to Islamic martyrs in Paradise is no myth or distortion of Islamic theology. Muhammad painted a picture of a frankly material and lushly sensual Paradise for his followers—containing everything a seventh-century Arabian desert-dweller could possibly dream of: gold and fine material things, fruits, wine, …
Self-Authenticating Ultimacy
“Hence the late-romantic tendency to insist on a total separation between the aesthetic and the moral; and finally the modernist tendency to grant art the ultimate legitimacy and authority that were previously reserved for morality” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 389).
Taking Temp Work to Extremes
“Shi’ite Islam, the dominant form of Islam in Iran, also allows for ‘temporary wives.’ This is a provision for men to gain female companionship on a short-term basis. In a temporary marriage, or mut’a, the couple signs a marriage agreement that is ordinary in every respect except that it carries a time limit. One tradition …
Let’s Do the Lurch
“. . . it is hard not to see a dance floor as a paddock for musical philistines” (Martha Bayles, Hole in our Soul, pp. 383).