“The concentration and death camps of the twentieth century, wherever they exist, under whatever regime, are Hell made immanent. They are the transference of Hell from below the earth to its surface. They are the deliberate enactment of a long, precise imagining.” (George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, p. 54).
Smooth Words, Hard Hearts
We live in an era which places a high value on hardness of heart. We can tell this by our love of soft teaching. Of course this is not how we describe it inwardly. In speaking to ourselves, when we generally have a most appreciative audience, we have great affection for smooth words, words which …
Intensity as Sanctity
“Romantic ideals of love, notably the stress on incest, dramatize the belief that sexual extremism, the cultivation of the pathological, can restore personal existence to a full pitch of reality and somehow negate the gray world of middle-class fact . . . The artist becomes hero . . .” (George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle, p. …
Classified Among the Vertebrates
My response to Sam Harris’ book Letter to a Christian Nation has now been released. Information on ordering it can be found here. This response of mine is entitled Letter from a Christian Citizen, and we are really excited about it. When I have the press release for the book, I will post it here. …
Nancy Wilson’s New Blog
I am very pleased to announce that my wife, Nancy Wilson, has started a blog called Femina, which can be found here. The look of the blog will change over time (probably in the very near future), but she is getting started now with a standard template. She has a lot of material that she …
Cradle of Liberty
American Christians are very active participants in the American character, for both good and ill. There is no real need to rehearse the blessings which come from this because we are all probably more aware of our virtues than we need to be. But one of the problems we have is the tendency to moralize …
Ecochondriacs
“By the end of this century, the demographically doomed Italians and Spaniards will be so few in number there won’t be enough Continental environmentalists left to man the local Greenpeace office. The Belgian climate-change lobbyist will be on the endangered species list with the Himalayan snow leopard. And, from an American point of view, the …
Audio Reading of Post
The Uber-Goober
“In Nietzsche, the ethic of transgression has been stripped of scenes of explicit sexual torture and destruction and raised to an alluring intellectual Valhalla of lyric philosophy. We have no evidence that Nietzsche ever read the divine marquis. Nevertheless, the philosopher of the Overman offers a modified product with enhanced appeal for some: Sade without …
Worth a Look
This is an absolutely amazing bit of juggling. As my father-in-law says, “Who has more fun than people?” HT: David Field
General Abraham
While their benefits have no doubt been many, church pageants have also had the unfortunate result of making us think that biblical characters did little more than stand around in their bathrobes. The first time someone graduates from such images to an “actual read” through the Old Testament, the effect can be more than a …