I just finished a fascinating book on the disintegration of French culture and national life, but one of the most striking things about the book was a comment the author (Denis Boyles) made in passing on the last page. “I was once a college teacher, and as those who teach know, the politics of the …
More Out of the Nail Can
As we sort through the propriety of using satiric speech, there is first the doctrinal or theological aspect of it (what does the Bible require of us?), and after this is the practical or pastoral aspect. I would like to key off several important comments posted under my recent post on The Nail Can of …
Outstanding!
As a result of a reporter setting up an interview with me, I found out that The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, as part of their sponsorship of banned books week, has listed Southern Slavery As It Was as one of the books that was “challenged” by the censorious this last year. Their little …
The Nail Can of Bitterness
Once a British politician was running for office, and he was confronted by a heckler who shouted out that he would not vote for him if he were the archangel Gabriel. “Ah,” the politician replied. “But if I were the archangel Gabriel, you would not be in my constituency.” Now they were both speaking “negatively” …
A Back Eddy in the Moscow Everglades
Let me begin by inviting the uninterested to just skip this one, a post on one particular backwater eddy in the swamp that has become the Moscow Everglades. At the same time, some may be interested in this feature of our ongoing “rage for diversity” campaign because it is part of the reason that some …
Issuing Some Hot Denials
Let me begin by noting that Bill London is not now (nor has he ever been) on the Christ Church payroll. Neither I personally, or any of my relatives, or agents hired by me, have been paying Bill ready money in order to get him to write what he has been writing about us in …
Survey Reveals Downtown Moscow Parking Myth
Everyone knows that we have a parking problem downtown. But the problem is that we don’t always get the ideal parking space we wanted, which is not exactly the same thing as not getting a good parking place. As the agitation of a few against New St. Andrews College continues, one of the staple arguments …
Love and Loyalty
When you are in a conflict with a group of people over the course of several years, at some point you come to realize what kind of thing sets them off. Of course, as we have been dealing with the intoleristas in Moscow, it would be an excusable mistake for someone to argue that anything …
Going South and North At the Same Time
In his wonderful book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton points out the tendency non-believers have to throw any available rock at the Christian faith, never mind that the rocks might not all be consistent with each other. He points out that infidels, for example, say that Christianity disparages women and children, but then they turn around to …
Prejudice Is A Two-Way Street
I submitted the piece below to the Daily News as a response to a Town Crier column that ran last night. In his Town Crier piece last Wednesday, Clifton Anderson granted that “in America, Wilson has the right to his own opinions, of course.” And precisely because this is an op-ed page in America, I …