A couple of posts ago, I said that limited government was absolutely dependent upon public virtue. Here’s why. It all goes back to Burke’s “little platoons.” Raw individualism is not the opposite of the collective. It is what makes the collective possible. The collective likes it. The Hive can handle a pothead bee. The collective …
Sanctuary and Parish
I have written before on the ideal relationship of church and kingdom, comparing it to the church at the center of town, and life in the kingdom fanning out into the parish from that center. Word and sacrament are at the center, and they shape and form the lives of believers outside the sanctuary, but …
The Next Big Thing
Those who pay attention to the progress of their sanctification have long noticed the optical illusion of spiritual regress. By the end of his life, after decades of faithful service to Christ, the apostle Paul saw himself by that time as the chief of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). The more you learn, the more you …
A World of Admin
In my previous post about coercion, in which I did not have very much good to say about it, I mentioned that oppression and injustice is able to work because of its respectability. Lewis made a very similar point in the preface to Screwtape. “I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of “Admin.” …
Answering Some Ire Fire
One of my recent points, and one that drew some ire fire, was my contention that liberalism is inherently and tyrannically coercive, and that liberals, by advocating the programs of liberalism, are thereby advocating coercion. Not being an anarchist, I believe that some forms of coercion are good and necessary, but because I also believe …
Getting Lost in the Deep Weed
I have written before on the sinfulness of recreational marijuana use. In an appendix to Future Men, entitled “Liberty and Marijuana,” I argued that the one use for alcohol that is prohibited in Scripture is a condition remarkably similar to the effects of marijuana — and to the extent that there is a distinction between …
7 Thoughts On Becoming a Better Hater
My resolution for the new year to become a better hater. But I suppose this requires at least some explanation before itemizing the ways I propose for improving on our hatreds. “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. …
The West Is Dead. Long Live the West.
The other day I read Robert Capon complaining about a kitchen knife that was as dull as dialectical materialism. Marx got his version of that from Hegel, modified it so as to make the commies responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, thus making the consequences of dialectical materialism anything but dull. Hegel — …
Although the Drummer Boy is Optional
Chesterton says somewhere that the modern world has insisted on exiling the Savior, but has done so from the midst of the story of the Gadarene demoniac. The upshot of this means that our naked public square has been purged of any reference to Jesus, but we are now left with the devils and with …
Lord of the Secular
In order to understand the meaning of our life together in public, we have to come to grips with a series of distinctions. This is something that Americans used to understand very well, so much so that it is still deep in our DNA. But decades of progressivist propaganda — ladled over the tops of …