Ah, what is a political commentator to do? The presidential campaign has not even gotten to the stage of the first voting in Iowa yet, and the whole thing is already a parade of fifteen or more clown cars. What am I supposed to do? I look into my tool chest, and I am already …
Compared to What?
I rise to a brief defense of — however odd that may seem — the suburbs. From early Levittown to the vast tracts of McMansions, the suburbs have routinely drawn the contempt of all the cool kids. It is an old story. In the hardscrabble escape from grinding poverty, the first generation that never knew …
Audio Reading of Post
Trump, Cruz, and New York Values
Look. It is a commonplace among us, or ought to be, that drivers ed classes in New York teach the students to drive with their knees so that they can give other drivers the bird using both hands. At least that’s what I heard. And this relates, as I am sure you recognize, to an …
How It Usually Isn’t
Political Freak Outs
As we close in on the first actual voting in Iowa, with actual voters, now just a few weeks away, I would like to register a few cautions. I have addressed the limitations of polling before, but here want to say something about the use made of them by the chattering classes. Keep in mind …
Misbehaving With Pronouns
So let us now write about pronouns. The cultural pressure is mounting, and will soon become a fiery wall of persecution. Well, it won’t be that intense, but it will be intense enough to roll right over our Christian intelligentsia, whose lifetime pocket promise verse appears to be “ye have not yet resisted unto blood.” …
Pro-Life Basics
Introduction Faithful Christians are necessarily pro-life, by definition. But having an instinctive knowledge that God’s gift of life should be respected is not necessarily the same thing as being equipped to explain from the Bible why this is so, or being able to answer some of the standard objections that may be raised. 1. What …
The Wrong Rights
Our Constitution concludes with a Bill of Rights, but these rights are of a particular nature — and are friends of real liberty. But within the last several generations, another set of ostensible rights, with a completely different nature, have crept into our public discourse. These rights, these entitlements, are enemies of liberty. Not only …
What Everybody Says
You May Not Cut Nature
One of the reasons I go on about the regeneration thing is because I believe that many other crucial things ride on it. If we don’t keep the necessity of the new birth in the forefront of our minds, we will in short order find ourselves unable to answer the arguments and demands of those …