Of Camels and Frogs

No Lost Causes

Slippery slope arguments are used in reckless abandon by both left and right.  Apparently, the term "slippery slope" was coined by someone in the early nineteenth century.  As some wit observed, talking about "slippery slopes" was dangerous.  Once someone talks about a slippery slope, soon others will, and before you know it we'all be on slippery slopes.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.115.]

Goldberg goes on to warn us of the very real dangers of slippery slopes by reminding us of how many figures of speech in our language are applied to this particular grave danger, such as: the camel got its nose under the tent; the ship sailed; "the horse got out of the barn, and drove the wedge that toppled the first domino, which opened the floodgates, and now all we have left is boiled frog."  Heh. 

One problem with such arguments is that the similes leave out one small matter: human beings are not camels, ships, horses, or thin-edged wedges.

Letter From America (About Allegations Now Proven True)

Seeing No Evil 

It was Daniel Webster who declared, the power to tax is the power to destroy.  Instinctively we know this to be an axiomatic adage.  Taxation is the compulsory expropriation of income and property of citizens by government.  Not all taxation is immoral or bad.  Government is a God-ordained institution, serving a vital, albeit particular purpose.  That purpose can only continue if government is funded.  Expropriation of private property to fund legitimate government activity is lawful, holy, just, and good.

But implicit in the power to tax is the power to destroy citizens.  In particular, governments can declare fiscal war upon those citizens, or races, or groups, or classes it dislikes--not for the purposes of revenue, but for the purposes of destruction and control.  The road to tyranny is readily paved by targeted taxation--and the road is short.

It now appears that the Obama administration has embarked down that road.  Some would call it traditional Chicago politics applied at the Federal Government level.  The Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") has admitted targeting Obama's political opponents during the last election in an attempt to suppress their opposition to the President and his administration.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 14

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. —Psalm 110:1

Devotional:
So, in another place, when, speaking in the name of God, he says, "Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool," he apprises us that though numerous and powerful enemies conspire to assault the Church, yet they are not strong enough to prevail against that immutable decree of God, by which he has constituted his Son an eternal King. Whence it follows that it is impossible for the devil, with all the assistance of the world, ever to destroy the Church, which is founded on the eternal throne of Christ.

Now with respect to its particular use to each individual, this same eternity ought to encourage our hope of a blessed immortality; for we see that whatever is terrestrial and worldly is temporary and perishable.

Therefore, to raise our hope towards heaven, Christ declares that his "kingdom is not of this world." In a word, whenever we hear that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual, excited by this declaration, we ought to penetrate to the hope of a better life, and as we are now protected by the power of Christ, let us expect the full benefit of his grace in the world to come. —Institutes, II, xv, iii

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Kinsey's Dark Secret

A Man For Our Times

The following paragraph introduces Wikipedia's article on Alfred Kinsey:

Alfred Charles Kinsey (June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States, as well as internationally.

So far, so good.  Kinsey has been lionised, celebrated and glorified.  But it appears he was an acutely depraved man.

Letter From the UK (About Education)

Plain Speaking

Education Secretary, Michael Gove has been trying to shake up the education system in the UK.  Naturally there has been plenty of pushback.  However, we cannot help but applaud his no-nonsense confrontation with the "experts" over infantile approaches now being recommended for the teaching of history.  It is salutary that the one ultimately responsible for education in the UK is not afraid to denounce the emperor as having no clothes.  This from The Telegraph:

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 13

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. —Zechariah 4:6

Devotional:
When we now see things in a despairing condition, let this vision come to our minds—that God is sufficiently able by his own power to help us, when there is no aid from any other; for his Spirit will be to us for lamps, for pourers, and for olive trees, so that experience will at length show that we have been preserved in a wonderful manner by his hand alone.

Thus we remember that all our confidence ought to be placed on the favor of God alone; for were it to depend on human aids, there would be nothing certain or sure.

Man As Animal

 Unleashing Sin

One of the abiding lusts of Western pride is the lure of a perfect society brought into being through human ingenuity, planning, and enlightened application.  No matter what problem we face, throw enough resources at it, study it to death, put a management plan in place, and hey presto, the problem will be solved. 

Such approaches may work well when we are dealing with problems arising out of the non-human natural order.  They fail miserably when we are dealing with human beings.  Why?  Precisely because man is not a cipher.  He is not the impersonal product of impersonal natural forces.  He is altogether more wonderful and complex: he is a moral agent made in the image of God.  When sin entered the human race through Adam and spread to all mankind "descending from him by ordinary generation" the wondrous complexity and moral agency of mankind became perverted.  The sophisticated complexity of humanity became a spectacular resource for cunning, duplicity, and evil.  

But modern man has "advanced" to the point where he sees himself as a sophisticated animal, nothing more.

Letter From America (About a Christian Exodus)

The mass exodus of Christians from the Muslim world

By Raymond Ibrahim

Published May 07, 2013

FoxNews.com

A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway.  Millions of Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the other.   We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world, much of which prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian, came into being.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year.”

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 11

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. —Isaiah 53:10

Devotional:
But now we are spared. Consider Jesus Christ the only Son of God: he was imprisoned and we are released; he was condemned and we are acquitted; he was exposed to utter disgrace and we are set up in honour; he descended into the depths of hell and to us the kingdom of Heaven is opened. When we hear all these things, should we still stay asleep, pleasing and flattering ourselves in our vices?

So let us carefully notice the purpose of the Holy Spirit and always ponder this word—that it was God who wished to afflict him.

Laments and Dashed Hopes

Revealing Songs

Songs that the people sing are always revealing, one way or the other.  Consider this hymn the the revolution from Les Miserables:

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing the songs of angry men . . .

Laments are also revealing:

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;

Laments pour forth when hopes are dashed, when longings are shredded.  Consider the following extended lament from one who is a card carrying member of the Commentariat and whose hopes are crumbling before her eyes.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Not Whether But Which, As I Keep Saying 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 06 May 2013

It is not hard to understand the chaos and pandemonium going down around us if you keep certain inescapable realities in the forefront of your mind.

Cornelius Van Til called it epistemological self-consciousness. C.S. Lewis referred to the idea this way in his great novel, That Hideous Strength.

"I mean this," said Dimble, answering the question she had not asked. "If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing.”

Even apparent neutrality. There is never any real neutrality, but there are times when it looks like there might have been. I said that there are such times, but given the times in which we live, it would be better now to say that there were such times.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 9

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the Lord is his treasure. —Isaiah 33:6

Devotional:
"The fear of Jehovah is his treasure." This is a very remarkable passage; and it teaches us that our ingratitude shuts the door against God's blessings, when we disregard the Author of them, and sink into gross and earthly desires; and that all the benefits which we can desire or imagine, even though we actually obtained them, would be of no avail for our salvation if they were not seasoned with the salt of faith and knowledge.

Hence it follows that the Church is not in a healthy condition unless when all its privileges have been preceded by the light of the knowledge of God, and that it flourishes only when all the gifts which God has bestowed upon it are ascribed to him as their Author.

But when the knowledge of God has been taken away, and when just views of God have been extinguished or buried, any kind of prosperity is worse than all calamities. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin's Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Letter From the UK (About US Citizen Surveillance)

The "War on Terror" is Proving to be a War on Citizens

In wartime it is common for civil liberties to erode.  The exigencies of war mean that extraordinary and emergency measures are required to prosecute the conflict.  Often civil liberties are attenuated.  At the very least, the resistance to the state exerting emergency powers over its citizens becomes muted.

Hopefully (and hope is the operative word) at the end of the conflict the greater powers of the state prove to have truly been emergency powers and temporary only.  They are revoked, and civil liberties are restored.  But what happens when the state moves to a permanent state-of-war footing?  George Orwell's dystopian 1984 shows us one consequence: an alleged state of perpetual war was used as a pretext for totalitarian controls over all citizens (in the name of freedom and liberty, naturally).

The United States has been at war now for decades. 

Prophetic and Prescient

Modern Blasphemers

For the past two days we have run pieces by Dr Grégor Puppinck on the planned militant imposition of homosexual ideology in French schools.  This "project" apes similar moves in Spain and Germany.  European institutions are moving rapidly to asset the rights of the state over parents and children, and officially to indoctrinate children into believing homosexuality is normal.  Parents that resist or object conscientously are being punished.  These programmes and moves have largely been endorsed and supported by the European Court of Human Rights.

Why?  On what basis?  Well, children have rights too, don't you know.  They have a right to learn the truth about human sexuality (that it is all a matter of individual preference, choice, freedom, and personal inclination).  The state must protect children from any moral pre-conditioning by anyone--except the state itself.

We have characterised this as "madness".  It is madness because it is self-destructive.

Letter From France (About the Madness of Unbelief) Part II

The fight against gender stereotypes and parental rights: the case in France and other European countries

April 23, 2013
by Grégor Puppinck, Ph.D
Reprinted from Turtle Bay

[In Part I, Dr Puppinck exposed a new "project" about to be introduced in French schools.  This will require the removal of all "gender sterotyping" and an active positive programme to socialise children into believing that there are no distinct male and female roles in parenting and families.  Having two fathers and a "carrier" mother will be framed as normal.  In Part II, below, Dr Puppinck reviews similar initiatives in other European countries--and the outcomes.]


That which French parents now face has already been successfully confronted by Spanish parents.  On the other hand, in Germany, parents have preferred to go immediately to jail (that is; with no opportunity to receive a suspended sentence) rather than send their children to sex education classes.  In Russia, the situation is different, where regional Governments, on the demand of families, have adopted laws which are intended to protect children against LGBT propaganda, but they are faced with strong pressure from European Institutions and lobbies.

IN SPAIN
Mr Peillon’s proposal is very similar to the “Education for Citizenship” courses created and imposed by the former Spanish Government of Mr Zapatero.  This was a project to teach a secular, fairly anti-religious, morality with a strong insistence on gender equality and infantile sexuality (see this presentation video).  The objective of this compulsory and graded class from primary school onwards was to “construct the moral conscience” of children, to develop their “personal identity” and their “emotional and affective education”.

An important part of Spanish society rejected this course.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 9

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. —Ephesians 4:10

Devotional:
Though Christ began to make a more illustrious display of his glory and power at his resurrection, having now laid aside the abject and ignoble condition of this mortal life, and the shame of the cross, yet his ascension into heaven was the real commencement of his reign. This the apostle shows, when he informs us that he "ascended that he might fill all things." Here, in an apparent contradiction, he suggests to us that there is a beautiful harmony, because Christ departed from us, that his departure might be more useful to us than that presence, which, during his continuance on earth, confined itself within the humble mansion of his body....

Catching the Conscience of the Human Rights Commission

 Propaganda Stunt

The following should be an "open and shut" case.  This from the NZ Herald:

A homosexual man is taking the Anglican Bishop of Auckland to the Human Rights Tribunal after being rejected for training as a priest.  A hearing begins today following a complaint from the man, who says he feels discriminated against because of his sexuality.  It is understood the man - who is in a sexual relationship with his partner - has wanted to enter the church's training programme for priests for years.  But after applying to enter after years of study, he was rejected by the Bishop Ross Bay, who approves entrants.

The NZ Bill of Rights provides a carve out for churches and religions from the non-discrimination obligations of the Bill of Rights.  In such cases, the law says conscientious discrimination is just fine.

Letter From France (About The Madness of Unbelief)

"Gender for All" and the Rights of Parents, Part I

The fight against gender stereotypes and parental rights: the case in France and other European countries

Dr Gregor Puppinck

Doctor in Law, Director of the European Centre for Law and Justice.

5^th April 2013.
Republished from Turtle Bay

French parents who wish to pass on certain values to their children will clash in the coming months over the Republic’s education system, which the current Government wishes to reform, particularly in relation to the complementary nature of men and women, of human sexuality and of morality.

The Taubira marriage law reform proposal should be considered in conjunction with another fundamental project of the current Government: the “reform of the education system of the Republic,” presently being discussed by the National Assembly.  This law project on the “reform of the education system of the Republic” pledges, among other provisions, to introduce an obligatory new secular morality and civic education, in order to fight against gender stereotypes from the youngest age possible.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 8

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. —Psalm 78:4

Devotional:
Although your piety, noble lady, is much better known by certain proofs in the country which you inhabit, you have made it known to us also, by the pledges you have confided to us. For in not hesitating to send your children far from you and into an almost unknown country, that they might better imbibe the pure doctrine of Christ, you have clearly shown how precious a virtuous and pious education is in your eyes: Lively indeed must that zeal be, which forces you to forget and divest yourself for a season of that softness of tender affection which is naturally implanted in the heart of mothers, till you see your sons imbued with the uncorrupted faith of Christ, when you shall welcome their return with a more joyful mind than if they had never been separated from your embraces and your sight.

The Kool Aid Tastes Bitter

Thankful for Spineless Hypocrites

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935) is one of the most celebrated jurists ever to sit on the benches of the United States Supreme Court.  He was an atheist.  He had little respect for human life in an abstract sense.  Accordingly, he could write as follows to a correspondent:

I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.  [Holmes to Frederick Pollock, August 30, 1929, in Richard A. Posner, ed., The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 108.]

Consistent with this particular religious commitment, Holmes advocated forced sterilisation and eugenics.  the following citation is taken from Conservapedia: 

Letter From Australia (About Profligate Privileges)

No dragons live in PM’s perilous fiscal fantasy 

Miranda Devine
Tuesday, April 30, 2013  
The Daily Telegraph

‘IMAGINE a wage earner, John, employed in the same job throughout the last 20 years.  “For a period in 2003 to 2007 every year his employer gave him a sizeable bonus. He was grateful but in his bones knew it wouldn’t last. The bonuses did stop and John was told his income would rise by around five per cent each year over the years to come. That’s the basis for his financial plans.

“Now, very late, John has been told he won’t get those promised increases for the next few years but his income will get back up after that to where he was promised it would be. What is John’s rational reaction?”

This was Julia Gillard’s patronising attempt to explain her government’s latest budget crisis. In a speech this week the Prime Minister used “John” to explain why it’s the fault of everyone but her feckless spendthrift government that there will be a $12 billion revenue shortfall in the year she promised a surplus.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 7

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them. —Revelation 14:13

Devotional:
But what advantage, you will say, is it to me to have had a son of so much promise, since he has been torn away from me in the first flower of his youth? As if, indeed, Christ had not merited, by his death, the supreme dominion over the living and the dead! And if we belong to him (as we ought) why may he not exercise over us the power of life and of death? However brief, therefore, either in your opinion or in mine, the life of your son may have been, it ought to satisfy us that he has finished the course which the Lord has marked out for him.

A Man of Principle

A Politician Not For Turning

Most politicians are seen as venal and self-serving.  They will do anything, say anything to get their name and their "brand" in the public's mind.  But not the mercurial Winston Peters.  Here is a politician of different stamp, not only with deep convictions, but one willing to pursue and investigate wrongs, exposing the corruption and evil actions of his own class. 

We have long admired his campaign against selling 8,000 hectares of (not-so-prime-farmland-at-the-time) to Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin last year. Land is precious to New Zealand, argues Mr Peters.  We should not be selling it off to foreigners.  Peters has the evidence to prove his point.  He has personally tramped over every hectare of the Shanghai Pengxin farms at not inconsiderable personal cost.  He has seen what has happened to the land.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Book of the Month/May 2013 

Book Review
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, 02 May 2013

This was truly a refreshing book. Every liberal pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. Moreover, and this is the crucial thing, every evangelical pastor needs to get and read it as part of the process of becoming evangelical. We have gotten to the point where we think we know what certain words mean because they are much in use, but it is high time we clicked the refresh button.

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 6

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Unto Timothy, my own son in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. —I Timothy 1:2

Devotional:
Let this be well understood, that when God receives us into his love, there is nothing that moves him to this but our wretchedness and miserable state; yes, the mercy of God, in that he pities us and has compassion on us, shows that there is on our part a wretchedness and misery to be pitied, so that the one answers to the other.

Note well, then, do we want him to love us? Then we must begin at this end, namely with a feeling that we are wretched creatures, that we are castaways and damned.

Diabolical Alternatives

In Chains, Everywhere

The ethic of freedom has become the engine of oppression.  At first blush, this seems nonsense.  How could the ideal of being free from compulsion, constraint, and restraint become the instrumental cause of force, compulsion, and oppression?  Unless we work this out, freedom is a dangerous concept.

Let's start with Jean Jacques Rousseau--one of the more pathetic figures in Western annals.  He famously proclaimed that man was born free, but is everywhere in chains.  The image is powerful.  We know what  being in chains means.  We have seen dogs on a leash or chained.  We have seen them leap forward only to crash to the ground as the chain restrains.  Rousseau's idea intuitively conveys the idea of human enslavement; freedom is being released from constraints.  But for Rousseau, freedom meant being released from constraints of any sort. 

If you were to come into your neighbour's house and he asked you to remove your shoes, Rousseau would have us believe that chains were rattling.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

Broken Loose 

Culture and Politics - Sex and Culture
Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, 29 April 2013

We live in a bad neighborhood, meaning this world of ours, and so this means that we have two kinds of problems. The first would be, naturally, the bad dudes roaming the neighborhood. The second problem would be those endearing but exasperating naifs living inside the house with us, who persist in leaving invitational lights on and doors unlocked. One problem is direct, and the other is indirect. One problem is assault and the other problem is failure to take the real possibility of a real assault into account.

So here is the the unlocked door. It is what W.W. Bartley called the "retreat to commitment."

Calvin's Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

May 4

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. —Luke 11:8

Devotional:
In our supplications, let us have a real and permanent sense of our need, and seriously considering our necessity of all that we ask, let us join with the petitions themselves a serious and ardent desire of obtaining them. For multitudes carelessly recite a form of prayer, as though they were discharging a task imposed on them by God; and though they confess that this is a remedy necessary for their calamities, since it would be certain destruction to be destitute of the Divine aid which they implore, yet that they perform this duty merely in compliance with custom, is evident from the coldness of their hearts, and their inattention to the nature of their petitions. They are led to this by some general and confused sense of their necessity, which nevertheless does not excite them to implore a relief for their great need as a case of present urgency.

Now what can we imagine more odious to God than this hypocrisy, when any man prays for the pardon of sins, who at the same time thinks he is not a sinner, or at least does not think that he is a sinner? What open mockery of God himself!

Exposing Pre-Commitments

A Moment of Rare Honesty

Every so often an Unbeliever comes along who shows he is aware of his assumptions and pre-commitments.  It does not happen very often.  The cry of our age is, "Just the facts, ma'am."  We just focus upon facts and follow wherever they take us.  The problem with this is that our presuppositions have already determined what will be accepted as fact, and what will be discarded.

For example, the Christian is predisposed to accept the existence of the God revealed in the Scriptures.  Therefore, His revelation of Himself is factual, objectively and eternally so.  It is true truth.  The Unbeliever is predisposed to deny the existence of God.  Therefore, he regards the Bible as anti-factual or non-factual or mythical.  The Unbeliever's presuppositions have already determined not only what the facts will be but also how and where they will be discovered or learnt. So Unbelief is plagued by two self-deceits.  The first is that it believes it has no fundamental suppositions or presuppositions.  The second is that it believes Unbelief is objective: it follows the facts wherever the facts lead.

Letter From America (About the Skull)

           

The Collapsing of the American Skull  

The parameters in which we allow ourselves to think about vital issues shrink remorselessly.

By Mark Steyn 

 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE    

www.nationalreview.com 

One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the subject honestly. Take the brothers Tsarnaev, the incendiary end of a Chechen family that in very short time has settled aunts, uncles, sisters, and more across the map of North America from Massachusetts to New Jersey to my own home town of Toronto. Maybe your town has a Tsarnaev, too: There seems to be no shortage of them, except, oddly, back in Chechnya.