Western Civilisation

The Age of Vaunting Pride and Gnawing Doubt

The title of Dickens novel "Great Expectations" aptly summarizes a dominant theme in Victorian England (and the West in general at that time, for that matter).  There was a widespread, burgeoning belief that nirvana was just ahead.  Much of the optimism was due to advances in technology and science. 

To our jaded eyes, technological advances have become the norm.  Another "breakthrough" has become decidedly deja-vu.  But in the late eighteenth century this was not the case.  Consider Sebastien Mercier's account of the first balloon flight in November 21, 1783:

Letter From America

The Sun Also Sets

By Mark Steyn
March 24, 2012

National Review Online

I was in Australia earlier this month and there, as elsewhere on my recent travels, the consensus among the politicians I met (at least in private) was that Washington lacked the will for meaningful course correction, and that, therefore, the trick was to ensure that, when the behemoth goes over the cliff, you’re not dragged down with it. It is faintly surreal to be sitting in paneled offices lined by formal portraits listening to eminent persons who assume the collapse of the dominant global power is a fait accompli. “I don’t feel America is quite a First World country anymore,” a robustly pro-American Aussie told me, with a sigh of regret.

Well, what does some rinky-dink ’roo-infested didgeridoo mill on the other side of the planet know about anything? Fair enough. But Australia was the only major Western nation not to go into recession after 2008. And in the last decade the U.S. dollar has fallen by half against the Oz buck: That’s to say, in 2002, one greenback bought you a buck-ninety Down Under; now it buys you 95 cents. More of that a bit later.

Patron Saints

Dirty Secrets

The Government education system has its patron saints.  Some have been particularly influential over the past fifty years.  One of the most influential has been American educationalist and philosopher, John Dewey.

He wrote:

Now the change which is coming into our education is the shifting of the centre of gravity.  It is a change, a revolution, not unlike that introduced by Copernicus when the astronomical centre shifted from the earth to the sun.  In this case the child becomes the sun above which the appliances of education revolve; he is the centre about which they are organised.  [Cited in Paul Henderson,  Vying for Our Children: The Ideological Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Auckland: Maxim Institute, 2003),  p.45.]

Child-centred education.  This is why the "experts" oppose National Standards testing so much: it removes the child from the "centre" of the process and makes him subject to an evil, external, harmful hegemon.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Flashing the Laymen

Atheism and Apologetics - Moist Robots
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 28 March 2012

The penultimate chapter of Free Will is on politics, and is only a few pages. All it takes is a few pages to snark at conservatives.

"Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism" (p. 61)

"Living in America, one gets the distinct sense that if certain conservatives were asked why they weren't born with club feet or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments" (p 62).

All of which goes to show that Harris knows as much about conservatism as he does about free will.
We could go off in that direction, but I will refrain. What I want to chortle about in this instance is the fact that Harris is blaming conservatives for doing simply what the space/time continuum is making them do.

More Time, Please

Blasphemy Laws in the UK

Western societies are gradually enacting their version of blasphemy laws.  It is axiomatic that every nation, whatever its creed or governing belief about itself, regards some things as so sacred and holy it punishes the desecration of the same.  For some nations it may be burning or spitting on the flag.  For others it is defaming the gods.  Thus Socrates was condemned and killed.  For others, it is anyone who defames Dear Leader.  The gulag or firing squad awaits. 

Blasphemy laws indict any action which a particular state believes undermines its very foundations.

Living Under the Curse

Ineffectual Laws

In New Zealand the occurrence of adults seeing, yet ignoring, the abuse of children is not uncommon.  There are many, many children living in "blended families"--a pathetic euphemism for broken dysfunctional casual associations of adults where children are an unwanted, unwelcome, unloved appendage.   But children are inevitably demanding: they are dependent, they need help, and they are also sinful themselves.  The resulting dysfunctional household cocktail is to inflict terrible abuse, even torture, upon little ones. 

It is often the case that when children are beaten, even to the point of infanticide, the adults co-habiting or associating with the children become tight-lipped. They swear Faustian covenants with each other to hang tight, and not say a word.  Police investigations are stonewalled.  The abusers and murderers are thus not brought to justice.

Media Echo Chambers

No Teeth Left to Lie Through

The Zimmerman case in the US has caught the nation by the throat.  An hispanic neighbourhood watch person has been the victim of vigilante "justice" in the media.  Black politicians and commentators have poured forth hard-to-believe invective against Zimmerman, who allegedly shot a black teenager, without any evidence being presented and heard formally--except that provided by the news media.

The hate-ridden invectives of the unhinged black community, aided and abetted by the liberal white tragi-comic chorus, has been conducted before any trial.

Can Women Be Saved?

It All Depends

It has often been stated that the Gospel of Christ, flowing as a healing stream to Gentiles, brought deliverance and salvation to women in particular.  That proposition, however, has come under sustained attack in recent decades by the Commentariat which attempts to obliterate any, but the most superficial, distinctions and differences between men and women.  The Christian faith has consequently been slurred as misogynistic.  Women becoming like men, functioning like men in society, has been labelled a "liberation" for women. 

But the reality was that  in the early centuries of the Gentile in-gathering women flocked into the Church--for good reason.  The truth of Christ set them free.  In the new society being forged by the Spirit and the Word they moved from a culture where they were subservient and degraded to one of respect and honour. 

David Bentley Hart paints the actual historical picture:

Redemptive Idols

Naive Simplistic Foolish Nostrums

Kim Workman: professing Christian, ex-bureaucrat, Maori, "largessee" of Helen Clark, and all round media "go-to" guy for issues of crime and punishment in New Zealand.

An interesting article on Kim has been published by Whaleoil  on his philosophy of prisons and prison "reform".  (We  disclose at the outset our belief that prisons are blighted institutions, severely compromised in many ways.  However, there is nothing better to take their place right now.  So we had better make the best of it.)  Workman's Christianity has apparently influenced his approach to crime and punishment.  He appears to believe that "loooooove" is the Great Redeemer of mankind.  When people commit crimes against persons or property it is to be condemned; to rehabilitate them, to prevent recidivism they must be loved.  In this Workman is simply not Christian.  According to him:

Making History

Portents

Sometimes its little things which can be significant.  We do not like to make predictions about politics.  After all, a week in politics can be a long time.  A very long time.  But sometimes portents appear of the future.  Take President Obama.  Will he be a shamed one-term president? 

Try this for a little portent: yesterday House Republicans forced a vote in Congress on President Obama's proposed budget.  The result: it was defeated 414-0.

Last year, the Senate voted on Obama's proposed budget back then.  The result: it was defeated 97-0.  And this at the time when US government debt is right up there as a candidate for Public Enemy Number One.

Some constitutional scholars have argued that the essence of power in the presidency is the power to persuade.  If that is correct, Obama must be one of the weakest, most ineffectual US presidents in modern history.

A Deep and Imperturbable Joy

Christianity Versus Ancient Paganism

Christianity proved to be revolutionary to the ancient world partly because it affirmed the creation and the material order as being (originally) holy, just, and good.  The material order was not--at least to Christians--a lower order of being.

(Christianity) was obliged to proclaim, far more radically than any other ancient system of thought, the incorruptible goodness of the world, the original and ultimate beauty of all things, inasmuch as it understood this world to be the direction creation of the omnipotent God of love.

Idiotic Atheists

The Next to Last Rock in the Avalanche

Atheism and Apologetics - Moist Robots
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, 24 March 2012

I don't think I should be too severe in these reviews of Sam Harris' most recent book. When one of the country's leading atheists, the author of The End of Faith, trumpets the end of atheism, this is actually something that Christians should welcome and celebrate. Right? The fact that he doesn't (as of yet) know that he has done this thing is a bagatelle, a trifle. The logic is going to catch up with him soon enough.

Stories Society Tells Itself

Christendom's Blood

A dominant narrative, propagated by secular humanists and the Commentariat, is that the historical Christian church has been a notoriously bloody institution.  Moreover, it took the Age of Enlightenment to push the church back into cultural irrelevance so that the blood-letting would stop.

Swirls of cynicism should be layered upon this narrative, since it was the Enlightenment's Voltaire himself who declaimed history as "a trick the living play upon the dead".  In other words, modern narratives of the past inevitably serve the end of contemporary propaganda.  It's how one becomes accredited and a celebrated historian after all.It's for this reason, since we live in a world dominated by the Modern and Post-Modern Commentariat, that we tend to have a more-then-passing interest in iconoclastic historians that challenge the prevailing narratives of our day.

Clearly there have been times in the history of the West where the Christian church was guilty of shedding blood, bearing the power of the sword illegitimately and evilly.  But the question begged is whether such behaviour was characteristic or uncharacteristic, intrinsic to the history of the Christian church or an aberration.

David Bentley Hart argues that whilst such blood-letting did occur at the hands of the church, it was uncharacteristic.  It only occurred at such times as when the state, civil governments, were increasing and centralising their power.

Letter From America (On Saudi Arabia)

Destroy All the Churches

National Review Online

By Clifford D. May

March 22, 2012 

Imagine if Pat Robertson called for the demolition of all the mosques in America. It would be front-page news. It would be on every network and cable-news program. There would be a demand for Christians to denounce him, and denounce him they would — in the harshest terms. The president of the United States and other world leaders would weigh in, too. Rightly so.

So why is it that when Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, declares that it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula,” the major media do not see this as even worth reporting? And no one, to the best of my knowledge, has noted that he said this to the members of a terrorist group.

Alien Planet

Back Yard Plunder

Every so often people reveal the state of their hearts and minds with comments that "prove far too much".  Sometimes folk betray their origins.  They appear to be from distant planets: we are left wondering how they made it to this planet in the first place, and hoping that the return journey occurs soon.

Here is a spokesman for the Consumer New Zealand--Hamish Wilson.  He is quoted commenting upon pre-pay electricity plan, where consumers pay in advance for power.  Hamish gravely warns us that such plans are "unfair".  In Mr Wilson's bizarre world-view, power companies are one vast criminal enterprise. Get this:

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Sam Harris, Moist Robot

Atheism and Apologetics - Moist Robots
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 19 March 2012

So then, Sam Harris has a new little book out, and for such a small book (66 pages), it promises to be a lot of fun. I say this because the book appears to be filled with epistemological obliviousness, cover to cover. The name of the book is Free Will, released by Free Press (heh) in 2012.

"Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have" (p. 5).

Ooo! That was naughty. Shall we tell teacher? No, let's see if we can handle this ourselves.

Happy Warriors

The Joy of Battle

One characteristic of Christian warriors is that they are happy, upbeat.  This is so despite being often faced with overwhelming odds.  

One explanation for this strange state of affairs would come readily to hand for Unbelievers.  Many in our post-Christian world think being a Christian either reflects a simpleton-like mindlessness or a psychological malfunction to begin with--so being happy in the face of overwhelming odds would evidence the fundamental stupidity of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ in the first place. 

Despite the ravages of sin in our culture and a putative re-entry into the West by the Devil, Christians know that such things cannot last.

Letter From Australia

Spring Storms

Many outcomes are possible across the "Arab Spring"

Noel Weeks.
Republished from AP: Australia's Reformed Evangelical Periodical

Anybody who thinks history is irrelevant should follow closely the events consuming many Arab countries at the moment and the attitudes of Western governments and commentators to those events. It can be argued that the West is seeing the events in terms of its own dominant theory of history and ignoring the alternate possibilities.

The Western hailing of the turmoil as a “Spring” flows from reading the movements as democratic with all that connotes in the Western mind: free, progressive, secular. In turn that flows from a theory that sees democracy as the inevitable direction of history. The Arab world is following us in demanding freedom and rights.

A little knowledge of history, especially of history as experienced by Arab peoples, might allow other possibilities.

Exposing the Hypocrisy Beneath

"You First" Tax

We at Contra Celsum are proposing a new kind of tax.  We realise it's a bit different, but we believe it's way past time.

It is called the "You First" tax.  The radical component is that the You First tax will not just be targeted at legal persons-- whether corporations, groups, or individuals.  The principle of individually targeted tax law is well established.  Penalty taxes, for example, are applied only to those people who are late in paying their dues.

The radical and refreshing aspect of the new tax is that it focuses only upon those people advocating redistribution of income and wealth.

City Folk

A Cowboy Named Bud

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW advances toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses, and YSL® tie leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, who obviously is a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell® notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultrahigh-resolution photo.

The Biggest Fool in Christendom

The Jimmy Carter Hermeneutic

Mr James Carter unfortunately reads the Bible with his own autonomy firmly in place.  Clearly the Lord Himself must bow and conform to the ratiocinations of the former President.  Whether Mr Carter has ever been converted will finally be revealed on the Great Day.  But, whether he has or not, his understanding of the Scripture is offensive and shameful.  It is also puerile.

Here is one example of the "Carter Hermeneutic":

"Kangaroo Cuddle"

Touch of love a lifesaver for struggling newborn

 

By Hana Garrett-Walker

NZ Herald

Friday Mar 16, 2012

As Kate Ogg hugged the body of her prematurely-born son to say goodbye after being told he had died, something unexpected happened.  Little Jamie, at only 27 weeks' gestation and weighing less than 1kg, started breathing. . . .

In March 2010, doctors at Sydney Hospital fought for 20 minutes to save Jamie's life when he and his sister were born too early. But they pronounced him dead and he was passed to Mrs Ogg, who placed him on her bare chest to say goodbye.  "We didn't want him to hear us crying while he was dying, we wanted him to hear our voices so we started talking to him quietly, telling him his name and that he had a sister," Mrs Ogg said.
"Next thing he's gasping more regularly and starting to move and cry."

Strict Islamic Orthodoxy

 By Their Fruit You Shall Know Them

A murderous Islamic shoots down Jewish schoolchildren in Toulouse. He also murders French paratroopers.  He calls a radio station to boast of his crimes and expresses regret that he has not done "more". 

The supine western media, always fearful of Islam's long reach against them (death threats, etc.) quickly move to assure us all that killing is not part of Islam.

Willing Dupes: The West's Framing of Arabia Ludicruous

The Arabs, Fifty Years Ago

Life magazine misread the Arab world in 1962.
March 7, 2012 12:00 A.M.
By Daniel Pipes
National Review Online

‘Once mellowed and mouldering, the far-flung civilization of the Arabs is being swept today by invigorating winds of change. A fruitful kind of disorder is replacing the old fixed patterns of life.” Those contemporary-sounding words were published in 1962, in a glossy, picture-laden, 160-page book titled The Arab World.

The volume boasts three virtues that make it worth a review a precise half-century later. First, the editors of Life magazine, then the outstanding American weekly, produced it, implying cultural centrality. Second, a retired senior State Department official, George V. Allen, wrote the introduction, pointing to the book’s establishment credentials. Third, Desmond Stewart (1924–1981), an acclaimed British journalist, historian, and novelist, wrote the text.

The Arab World emphatically represents an artefact from another era. While not entirely sugar-coating his subject matter, Stewart offers a benign, gauzy, patronizing approach that would gag even the most euphemistic writers today.

Modernist Myths

 Sweet and Sour Reasoning

Rationalists constantly mock Believers as being anti-rational.  It is a dishonest slur--on two levels.  At one level the slur represents a confusion of categories as happens when one confuses medicine with poison.  Both alike are pharmacological, but with entirely different outcomes.  Rationalists believe in a particularly noxious kind of reason--that human reason is the ground of all truth and the highest and final court of appeal. Rationalists believe in human reason as master.  Christians believe in human reason as helpful servant. 

At another level the slur seeks to conceal a dirty secret (one which makes rationalism self-contradictory and at root irrational): rationalism is grounded upon a foundation which cannot itself be verified by human reason.  Try establishing rationally the premise that human reason is the ground of all truth, without arguing in a vicious circle (that is, irrationally). 

Here is David Hart's exposition of the matter.

Letter From the UK

Get the Cabinet to Patrol the Roads of Afghanistan

Peter Hitchens
Mail Online

If The Prime Minister and his colleagues think it is so important to have a British presence in Afghanistan, and they claim to, then they are the only people in the country who know why that is. So I suggest that they are given driving lessons in Warrior vehicles, or backpacks for foot patrols, and sent out into the roads and fields of Helmand Province, allowing soldiers, who are much more valuable than politicians, better-trained, smarter and immeasurably more honest, to go home.

We have been through so many idiotic justifications for this war that I thought the government had run out of them.  We all remember Dr Comrade Baron John Reid’s claim (at the start of this witless deployment) that our soldiers were going there as a sort of social work brigade and would leave without a shot being fired, which has ever since served to show that these people’s heads are as empty as their salaries are big.

Letter From the US (About Canada)

Steady Gradualism Can Deliver

An article published in National Review Online by John O'Sullivan compared three conservative political leaders in the Anglo-world: Tony Abbott (Australia), David Cameron (UK) and Stephen Harper (Canada).  The author's point was to highlight how he sees Cameron's stint as Prime Minister to be a disaster for the UK and for conservatism.  Cameron shapes up as Labour Double Lite.

What we found more interesting--since we in New Zealand are familiar with the usually charming eccentricities of Tony Abbott and somewhat aware of the insipid nature of Cameron's leadership--is the account of Stephen Harper in Canada.  The progress Harper has made and his accomplishments are all the more significant since Canada was well on the way to becoming an Orwellian state: a holiday camp for Western secular liberals. 

So, let's hear some good news:

Letter From America

Fleeting Glimpses of Harsh Truth

When governments arrogate to themselves powers and responsibilities not bestowed upon them by Almighty God, disaster is around the corner.  Since in our generation states in the West have arrogated to themselves powers upon powers, and dominions upon dominions calamity draws near.  Those who sow to the wind reap the whirlwind.

Every so often in frustration over the perpetual failures and contingent evils produces discouraged individuals who run up the white flag and call for capitulation.  In such brief moments, truth in its awful clarity shines through.  But then the clouds quickly shut it out.  Here is Victor Davis Hanson's Letter From America which represents for a brief moment just such an awful clarity.

What's Yours is Mine

For the Good of the Game

The moral outrage in New Zealand against ticket scalping is hard to fathom.  Upon what ethical principles might it rest? 

A chap goes into a local dairy and buys a pack of Rothmans.  He goes home, puts it on Trade Me and sells the pack to someone in Whanganui  for twice what he paid (where cigarettes have been totally banned due to a local member's Bill sponsored by Tariana Turia).  In the world of commerce its called arbitrage.  Everyone claps the chap on the back and calls him smart, insightful, and enterprising.    The same chap lines up to buy a ticket to a rugby test match, goes home, sells it on Trade Me for ten times the price, and he is called a scab, a thief, and an animal.  Right?  Right!

So, what gives?

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

A Cistern for the Water

Theology - Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 08 March 2012

My friend Toby Sumpter, no enemy of robust liturgy, recently posted the following on Facebook. "When people come to our church 'for the liturgy' I think I will begin asking how frequently they use porn, yell at their wife, or tell lies." On a related note, Mark Galli, author of Beyond Smells and Bells, noted that "it should not surprise us that the litugry is also one of the best places to hide from God" (p. 11). (I will interact more with Galli's book in another venue.)

When liturgists debate, there is a lot to talk about, and many fields of study to cover -- theology, history, aesthetics, and so on. I have certain decided convictions in all such debates, and am happy to participate in them. But there is one thing needful as a prerequisite to everything else, and this one thing is necessary to keep all the subsequent debate from being entirely beside the point.