James Srodes reviews Gordon Wood’s book Empire of Liberty, saying it covers an important part of early American history which is often glossed over. As is usually the case, the truth isn’t pretty. Srodes writes: “The hard truth that emerges from Mr. Wood’s narrative is that many of our most marbleized Founding heroes were frightful snobs who were inept at the mechanics of government, ignoramuses about economic realities and fatally estranged from the very people they sought to lead. None of our first three presidents comes out of the story very well.”
Category Archives: Non-fiction
Inside the Bush White House
More or less–it’s probably closer to being inside of Washington staffer’s office. You have to ask, “What is this, a cruel hoax?” (inside joke, see the article)
“Perelandra turned my life upside down”
Jeanne Damoff writes about Lewis’ gift for telling the truth in fiction:
Lewis does a great job of portraying the woman as intelligent but entirely pure. She entertains the Un-man’s ideas because she’s never had a reason not to listen to anything being said to her. Though Ransom tries to counter all the lies, the woman has no reason to trust one of them over the other. She’s never encountered debate, never required discernment. But occasionally the Un-man pushes too far. When he invites her to “make a story” about living on the Fixed Island–to imagine herself doing the forbidden thing–she says, “If I try to make a story about living on the Fixed Island, I do not know how to make it about Maleldil. For if I make it that He has changed His command, that will not do. And if I make it that we are living there against His command, that is like making the sky all black and the water so that we cannot drink it and the air so that we cannot breathe it. But also, I do not see what is the pleasure of trying to make these things.”
She follows up this post with another called “The post I do not want to write.”
Professionals Thinking Like Sheep
“We like to think of professionals as a cut above the man on the street in terms of their fiduciary responsibility and independence of thought, but sadly it’s often the opposite. Professionals tend to be on average very influenced by social trends and fashions, especially if those fashions influence their ability to continue practicing and be a respected member of the community.”
— Jeffrey Satinover, psychiatrist and author of Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth in World magazine interview last month. Dr. Santinover has come under personal attack for arguing that homosexuality is not genetic and can be overcome. In the interview, he says research articles cited as proof of homosexuality’s permanence completely contradict that assertion. He states, “An objective scientific debate would without question be overwhelmingly won by those who say that homosexuality is primarily environmentally determined.”
Why Are So Many Jews Liberal?
I read about this book first in World Magazine, where Marvin Olasky gives it high marks. Now Seth Lipsky has a longer article on Norman Podhoretz’s book, Why Are Jews Liberals? I wish I could say political conservatives and Bible-believing Christians were completely innocent of the bigotry that encouraged many Jews to embrace what is now liberalism, but I can’t. Even some of our church fathers sinned against God by disdaining Jewish people. But of course, we/they aren’t to blame ultimately.
Lipsky states:
Early in the book he quotes a passage from I.J. Singer’s novel The Brother’s Ashkenazi about Nissan, the son of a rabbi who becomes a disciple of “the prophet Marx” and who, as Singer puts it, “never let his copy of Das Kapital out of his sight and carried it everywhere, as his father had carried his prayer shawl and phylacteries.” Podhoretz comes back to this theme toward the end, quoting G.K. Chesterton as observing: “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” That was not true of the Jewish immigrants who came to America, Podhoretz writes. “Almost all the young intellectuals and political leaders among them had stopped believing in the God of Judaism, but it was not ‘anything’ they now believed, it was Marxism.” And when Marxism failed, Podhoretz writes, the “same process that had made social democracy into an acceptable refuge from orthodox Marxism now began making liberalism into an acceptable refuge from social democracy.”
Don’t Criticize Those Peaceful People
If they want to abuse their women, let them.
Michael Weiss writes, “Misogyny as multiculturalism,” in response to media flak over an academic book on religious abuse and suppression of women. The left in the British press (at least some of them) are afraid of Muslims and will self-censor just to get along. “Cowardice gets dressed up as cultural sensitivity;” Weiss explains, “an eagerness to please semi-literate reactionaries becomes a form of willing internal exile, whereby independence of one’s own mind is held in suspicion, if not thought to be lethal in itself.”
Perilous Realms, by Marjorie Burns
Regular readers here are already aware that I’m a man of many prejudices, so it won’t surprise you to know that I approached Marjorie Burns’ Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth with suspicion. I fully expect any book written by a female academic to be tailored for the Women’s Studies Department—full of anger at men and contempt for the Christian religion.
So I’m delighted to report that this book, written by a female English professor at Portland State University, was a very pleasant surprise in almost every way.
Burns notes that many scholars have traced the Norse and Anglo-Saxon themes in The Lord of the Rings. But she is convinced that Tolkien also drew (less openly, because of the fashions of his day) on Celtic myth and folklore as well. She examines all of Tolkien’s fantastic works (not only The Hobbit and the Trilogy, but the Silmarillion and the later gathered works) and points out (quite convincingly, it seems to me as a non-expert) Celtic parallels that may be nearly as important as the Norse. (Tolkien, she explains, loved Wales but did not care for Ireland. Also, there was a general opinion that Celtic matters were in some sense effeminate, lacking the practicality and fatalism of the Viking world-view. [Reviewer’s note: When you think of it, Tolkien and Lewis were an odd pair of friends—a Catholic Englishman and a Protestant Irishman.])
Gender issues are certainly in Burns’ mind as she examines the accusation that Tolkien’s work, with its vast majority of active males and small minority of (generally) passive females, is a mark of misogyny. But she stands up for him in what I’d call a courageous way. For one thing, she thinks that Tolkien (based on the prejudice mentioned above) had the Celts in mind, and therefore a sort of vital femininity, in his portrayal of the Elves. She also makes much of the manner in which males frequently assume traditionally feminine roles in the books—cooking, nurturing, housekeeping, nursing, etc.
She also spends much time refuting the accusation that Tolkien’s characters are cardboard, either all good or all evil. She not only points to the weaknesses, frailties and near runs with temptation that the good characters display. She also notes the way Tolkien “doubles” his characters—each good character being matched with an evil one. Thus, while Gandalf clearly embodies many of the more positive characteristics of the Norse god Odin, Sauron (who, like Odin, has one eye) displays the god’s wicked traits.
Burns ends the book with a short chapter outlining three questions about the books, and giving her own answers. These answers are blessedly free of radical feminism or condescension towards Tolkien’s Christian faith. In fact, she seems to appreciate the significance of the doctrine of the Incarnation.
So I enjoyed the book very much, and recommend it.
Sink That Sub!
According to biographer Terry Mort, Ernest Hemingway hated war, but knew one had to win once they were committed to a fight. So while part of a civilian patrol between the coasts of the U.S. and Cuba, the author would watch for submarines and plan to hit them with hand grenades when he saw one.
Christ-Centered Worship
“Christ-Centered Worship calls people to go beyond ‘contemporary worship’ without being polemical in spirit. It takes historic worship traditions very seriously but uses the gospel itself as the way to critique and design orders of worship. It is full, balanced, and extremely practical. This will now be the first book I give people–or turn to myself–on the practice of understanding, planning, and leading in corporate worship.”–Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church; author of The Reason for God
This Labor Day, Read About Suicide
Cal Thomas praises “a must-read for people who are sick of the way government operates.” It’s Martin L. Gross’ book National Suicide: How Washington Is Destroying the American Dream from A to Z. This isn’t about health care or terrorism. It’s about politicians and the system they have worked up in Washington D.C. that has little to do with serving the public.
The current administration has a projected budget deficit of $9 trillion over ten years. I can only assume that’s because very few congressmen use calculators when considering budget proposals. Do any living congressmen ask about current revenues or unreasonable tax burdens for legitimate reasons, not political points? Do they care about the limitations put on them by the constitution?
Thomas describes some of the problems recorded in National Suicide:
The Alternative Minimum Tax, which he says is “based on an accounting lie,” will cost taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years. America, he writes, spends $700 billion a year on various welfare programs, amounting to $65,000 for each poor family of four, yet we still have the poor with us. Both political parties, Gross charges, secretly encourage illegal immigration (the Democrats for votes, the Republicans for cheap labor) and then reward the immigrants’ children with automatic U.S. citizenship.
Care to guess how many government programs deal with “disappearing rural areas”? 89, 200, 500? It’s much higher than that.
Before the next election, we may want to think through what has brought us to the point of national suicide and ask ourselves who we can trust to serve the country with humility, loving mercy, and acting justly.