“How many viewing hours will be devoted to contests like American Idol, in which seemingly every single person in the country is lining up to become famous?” (Jake Halpern, Fame Junkies, p. xxii).
The Common Denominator
“When men fall away from the Lord, they do so for all kinds of reasons — money, career, a woman, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. But when women fall away from the Lord, invariably there is a man involved” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 75).
Gritty and Raw
[A sympathetic literary portrayal of opiate addiction allows a writer] “to demonstrate a personal knowledge of the lower depths, which has increasingly become a requirement for an imaginative writer to be taken seriously, at least in literary circles. We do not live in an auspicious age for the likes of Jane Austen or Henry James: …
What Marriage Is
Sexual activity without a covenant is not a marriage, and a marriage ceremony without sexual activity is no marriage. Marriage is covenanted sex with attendant covenantal responsibilities” (Her Hand in Marriage, p. 73).
Snippet from a Work in Process
“If someone is disposed to argue this particular point with me, they could win that argument by making a list of all the denominations that have begun to ordain women in the last generation, and show me how this was followed by an explosion of moral chastity, purity, and fidelity. Looking for flourishing chastity in …
Doilies on the Davenport
I have the book Young, Restless and Reformed on order, but have not yet read it. Comes now Peter Masters with a review of that book right here, and he says some things in the course of his review that I have to respond to. I am not saying anything about the book, mind you, …
The Authenticity Jive
“Moreover, there is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness and virtue” (Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, p. 88).
You Only Wind Up Driving the Porcelain Bus
“But of course, alcohol had few romantic possibilities. It wasn’t exotic, and everyone, practically, took it. To be a mere drunk was not compatible with the Romantics’ thirst for world-significant angst” (Dalrymple, Romancing Opiates, p. 83).
Destruo Ergo Sum
“There is one other romantic attraction of opiates: and that is to the antinomian turn of mind. This turn of mind has become much more common with the general rise of self-importance, which is a corollary of democracy: and in an age of celebrity, everyone feels obliged to leave his mark on the world, or …
Which Is Where We Get Stoned Goobers
“Romantic claptrap invests intoxication by opiates with a philosophical significance beyond mere self-indulgence . . . It elevates feeling and intuition above knowledge and thought in the pantheon of human desiderata. It invests the personal pettiness of addiction with the aura of titanic and tormenting struggles against mighty forces, while at the same time implying …