“Pop evangelical sentiments, diffused in their normal gaseous way, are utterly inadequate for resisting the spirit of our age, which wants to seep into the unsuspecting school through every available crack” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 208).
Still Trying to Find a Rock to Throw
This editorial column ran in our local paper last night in response to a front page article that they ran some days before. That article described the release of a book by a local academic as a response to what I have written and said about slavery. So Why Isn’t the Record Straight? Here is …
Art As Death Throes
“For the Enlightenment was to change the world. It is a period in which we today are still living, though at its end. Its aims have been fulfilled” (H.R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, p. 41).
Not Just a Mirror
“Believing as I do that the arts in general are not merely a mirror reflecting social and cultural values, but are, on the contrary, powerful forces which shape and mould the way in which people live and behave (a view, incidentally, held by every major literary critic from Plato to T.S. Eliot), I have examined …
Election Thoughts
For those readers in New Zealand, you can skip over this post. Our election is tomorrow and for those in Idaho, here is a good breakdown. The only places I really differ with Dale is on the gubernatorial race (where I will probably vote for the Libertarian candidate, or maybe Dave Barry), and on one …
Confessing Sin in Narnia
Learning how to say you were wrong about something, and that you are sorry, is one of the most important lessons anyone can learn in his life. It is basically a question of learning how to be genuinely honest. And as such an important lesson, it is not surprising that the Narnia stories are full …
Just Because a Group is in Formation Doesn’t Mean They Know Where They are Going
“Contemporary authors, playwrights and poets thus find themselves in a disconcerting dilemma. If they attempt to delineate an ideal, they are accused snobbery, of being anti-proletarian, illiberal, undemocratic and, in certain instances, racist. Accordingly, all but a dwindling minority have chosen to join the ‘Raskolnikovian’ ranks of iconoclasts, consoling themselves with the thought that they …
An Unholy Hat Trick
“When men cease to aspire to the ideal, the good, to self-restraint — whether in their arts or their lives — they do not just stand still, but actually turn the other way, finding self-fulfillment in self-indulgence, and in an obsession with those three ultimate expressions of the totally self-centred life: sex, violence and insanity” …
Lenny Bruce Tags It
One of our local adversaries, Nick Gier, had a letter in the paper last night entitled “‘Intolerista,’ and proud of it.” He was referencing a recent article in the Spokane paper, which was, despite Nick’s praise, a fairly decent article. There were some mistakes in it, and of course, Nick seized on those mistakes as …
Without A Bucket
I am currently reading three new books by Peter Leithart — the commentary on Kings, the book on Second Peter, which are both outstanding, and the book Deep Comedy, which promises to be the really fabulous one. I am not very far into them yet, but am certainly far enough in to see that Peter …