“Thus the freedom to ‘be one’s self’ was soon held hostage to the views of others, the world of fashion, and the pressure of social trends. And without a clear sense of the self, the ability to deny the self began to weaken. Standards became blurry, and without a religious framework of meaning to give …
Almost As Rule-Guided As A Sonnet
Forty things that only happen in movies can be found here. Inexplicably, they left out the red wire/green wire moment, but they came close to covering the waterfront here. HT: David Field
Values Instead of Virtues
“Expressive individualism, which grew out of the Romanticism of the late eighteenth century and today has an especial affinity with our therapeutic culture, assumes that all people have a unique core of intuitions and feelings within them that is then coupled with the understanding that they have the inherent right to pursue and express these …
Most Scholars’ Review
“In fact, so many appeals are made to ‘most scholars’ that the young student may be tempted to try to find articles at the library listed under Most Scholars’ Review. Even those Christian colleges that have managed to retain some doctrinal integrity with regard to their Christian commitments have capitulated to the spirit of academic …
The Pagan Pendulum
“Knowing this, we infer that periods of the past must have been much more elevated than our own. This, of course, is a questionable conclusion. What does seem to be the case, however, is that often, as periods succeed each other, some of what takes place is driven by reaction. The Apollonian impulse is often …
Once Carefree
“We have known too many kids, like the younger son in the parable, who have separated themselves from their parents, thrown off the traces, and heard in the lure of the far country . . . the promise of adventure and boundless pleasure. And for so many this has turned to ashes. The grand and …
Focus on the Family, Ralph Reed, World Magazine, Jack Abramoff, and Me
Lord Acton nailed it when he said that power corrupts. James Madison knew that if men were angels they would not need to be governed the way they actually have to be governed. C.S. Lewis made a similar point when he said that he was a democrat, not because each man is a repository of …
Dat Old Debbel Nepotism
One of the features of conservatism in Christendom (to be distinguished from right wing sentiments) is a deep suspicion of the objectivity that modernity pretends to have. Postmodern thinkers have recently emphasized “the particular,” but they have done so as rootless reactionary modernists, as opposed to the earlier critiques of modernity mounted by rooted Christians …
Pagan Tug of War
“This situation has stolen up upon us so quietly that its real nature is largely obscured. I believe that what Camille Paglia, provocatrice extraordinaire, has said with respect to our pop culture is correct. We are witnessing, she asserts, ‘an eruption of the never-defeated paganism of the West.’ Her thesis, which she developed in some …
Designer Religion
“The distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture is not primarily moral or even aesthetic, with the one being invariably superior and the other invariably inferior. Richard Rorty’s post-modern philosophical emptiness consists of essentially the same stuff as Madonna’s post-modern philosophical emptiness, and Carl Roger’s psychological narcissism is essentially reduplicated in such magazines as Self and …