Here’s an interesting cluster of factoids. You know the general perception that conservatives are hard-hearted and stingy, right? And how liberals are overflowing with largesse? The comeback in debate is usually that their largesse is largely limited to other people’s money, but we now have more than a gut feeling. Turns out there is some …
The Savior Is Not From Boise
As homosexual marriage is gaining acceptance (in some places), we discover that polygamists are hard on the heels of the homosexual activists. Those who are interested in clear-sighted statement of the implications should read Charles Krauthammer here. There is absolutely no basis for jettisoning the conventional notion that marriage needs to be between members of …
Barracks?
Oh, great. Now I have to interrupt my hectic day to quash some more scuttlebutt. How’s a guy supposed to install an Al Qaida training camp on his acreage with all these irresponsible rumors flying about? Comes now one of the solons of Vision 20/20, who weighed in on the subject of our little development …
Voyeurism Broadcasting Network (VBN)
“We are, of course, only doing what television and the movies have made legitimate. They have tilted the scales away from privacy toward exposure, away from bodily modesty toward public nakedness, away from the thought that grief and pain should be private and toward ‘the canonization of the intruding investigative reporter.’” [David Wells, Losing Our …
The Empty Space Above It All
“However, we have imposed a severe penalty on ourselves in the process: a terrifying sense that while all we have left is the self, the self unfortunately does not amount to too much. The passion of believing and the passion of being have now been replaced by the empty stare, the ironic posture.” [David Wells, …
I Just Can’t Outwit These Guys
I would start off by saying that it is hard to type while you are wheezing, except that I am used to it, and so I am not wheezing. The news of a private venture I am involved in has hit Vision 20/20 and the fevered speculation there is almost one hundred percent wrong, as …
Redemption In A Bottle
“It is hard to miss the redemptive themes in the many dreamy scenes of sensuality that we have so often seen in perfume advertisements, scenes that waft across the viewing public with the promise of bodily regeneration, even renewed sexual attraction, if one simply purchases the product.” [David Wells, Losing Our Virtue (Grand Rapids, MI: …
The Lure
“Advertising, which is a large part of our public world, has learned how to dip its bucket into the well of our inner desires and fantasies; it projects those desires and images as part of its merchandising prowess” [David Wells, Losing Our Virtue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 109]
Souls Without Gravity
“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