The Fourth of July is next week, and a number of us are going to set off fireworks — and, if the past is to be trusted, we will set off some really good ones. But what are we celebrating? One of the things my grandchildren have been put up to during the fireworks are …
And It Appears To Have Worked
“A deviant from a Leninist (and even Marxist) point of view, Gramsci formulated in his Prison Notebooks the doctrine that those who want to change society must change man’s consciousness, and that in order to accomplish this they must first control the institutions by which that consciousness is formed: schools, universities, churches, and, perhaps above …
What’s Wrong With Civil Rights
“There is a vast difference between the way Christians and humanists define ‘civil rights.’ For a Christian rights tend to be negatively defined. For a humanist they are positively stated. For example, a Christian approach can be seen in such common law rights as the right to trial by jury or habeas corpus. A humanist …
The Politics of Sodomy
Let us begin by addressing the real sin of Sodom. But what could possibly be meant by “the real sin of Sodom?” Isn’t it obvious? The sin of homosexual behavior draws its name from Sodom. What could be more obvious? And given the corruption of the times, shouldn’t we be suspicious of any attempt to …
The Crowbar of Events
“One might expect that a minimal level of rationality would require artists seeking a ‘meaningful’ alternative society to judge it by the same standards by which they judge their own. But this, alas, is one of their most consistent failings. They judge our society by the flaws and inadequacies they see all about them. But …
Schools for Show Poodles
“Far from teaching children to learn the nature of the world and how to occupy an appropriate station in it, they are what my daughter Rachel helpfully called classical schools for ‘show poodles.’ These schools make it easy for critics who oppose a truly superior Christian education (which necessarily includes the inculcation of humility) to …
Is Christianity Right Wing?
As the crisis in our nation deepens, we must recognize the culpable role of the Church in bringing this crisis about. Because we have not been people of the Word, the result has been no prophetic ministry to the world. As things get worse, the confusion in the Christian world only appears to be deepening, …
When Artists Abandoned the People
“The simple fact is that, until the French Enlightenment, Romantic movement, and the American and French Revolutions of the eighteenth century, the artist saw himself as a celebrant of this society and all its values, which to him—if not to aesthetes of today—were noble and heroic.” [Richard Grenier, Capturing The Culture (Washington, DC: Ethics and …
An Apology for Feminine Modesty
The sin of immodesty is not a light matter. Nor is it a problem that can be isolated to this or that individual. We are God’s covenant people, and we worship Him together. We live together. Modesty in Christian women is therefore a very obvious indicator of whether or not a Christian people understand who …
Every Century But This, Every Country But His Own
“Ordinary Americans, frankly, resist such notions as best they can, but they receive little support from the nation’s professional intellectual class, of which the artistic class is only the most demented and most estranged. People in most cultures throughout history, after all, have historically ‘stuck with their own,’ been ‘ethnocentric,’ thought their own culture best. …