I guess everyone who cares about our civilization needs to read Thomas Bertonneau’s new essays on the students in his literature classes. This is frightening for anybody who is going to have to navigate through this new illiterate world we have built.
I found these essays referenced in a World Magazine overview article.
At last year’s Do Hard Things conference, we were told that the enforced and invented concept of “youth” or “teenagerhood” was ruining our chances of using those years productively. Now Newt seems to have attended the Do Hard Things conference! He writes it up well in Business Week. Thanks Bill for the link!
It’s unbelievable, but up to 1987 I was a Palestinian sympathizer. Years of being exposed to poor biblical interpretation (which was meant to justify the nation of Israel), and years of Israeli excesses had convinced me that the Palestinians had a true moral outrage. They really were oppressed. The beginning of the end of my blindness came in 1987 with the first Intifada. I realized that there was a true amoral hate among Palestinians, one that could never be solved by the removal of oppression. The Christian Palestinians have mostly fled or been run out of town, leaving the remainder as nothing but an arm of international Muslim terrorism. This article by Charles Krauthammer reminded me how one-sidedly WRONG the Palestinian cause is.
John Derbyshire, with whom I never really agree, sums it up best:
I’m sour about the GOP too. What did it all get us, those 8 years of pandering and spending? If GWB had turned his face against new entitlements, closed the borders, deported the illegals, held the line on calls to loosen mortgage-lending standards, starved the Department of Education, and declined those invitations to mosque functions, would the GOP be in any worse shape now?
Wow. I haven’t seen it written up quite this well in a long time.
http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html
Even so, McCain hasn’t earned, and doesn’t deserve, any defense. But I’ve said before, and I’ll say it right here again:
Republicans are corrupt when they betray and don’t live up to their principles. Democrats are corrupt when they are true to and live by their principles.
That is the big difference. And, though Republicans are in disarray because of their corruption and inconsistency, we now have a slick and capable Democrat who (for the first time in forever) will be willing, and will have a Congress that is willing, to live up to those principles. God help our nation.
I suppose I should not be surprised by reports of ruthless editing in Wikipedia to exclude certain points of view, but I guess I really was surprised. Sometimes I get taken in by all the geeky goodness of freely shared information, and I somehow think that neutrality and free debate will be the result. Alas, the reality of fallen human nature always intrudes. Wikipedia still has a lot of good information, but let’s not fool ourselves about the neutrality of it.
HT: Challies.com
This is what I’ve been saying for longer than Peggy Noonan, but she says it so much better than me.
The mainstream media, bless their ugly, leftist hearts. The elites who couldn’t care less about your safety, if a terrorist’s safety is in danger. National Review’s website runs a great article today about the kind of people we’re up against.
I know I’m beating a drum, but here it is again: The political problems in this country, humanly speaking, are between Washington and the people, not between Demopublicans and Republicrats. See Peggy Noonan’s new article.
I want to clarify that there is no political problem that is not really a heart problem with hearts not connected to Christ. Only one Kingdom is really important, and this isn’t it. But just as it’s sad to see poorly coded software, a badly built building, or an ugly city, it’s even more sad to see a nation being thrown away. As custodians of this earth, we should do better.