When I returned home on Thursday, frustrated by the voting behavior of my fellow Americans, I found my daughter watching the John Adams series created by HBO.
I concede my daughter, a mere 12 years old, may not be representative of the typical child of her age. I must also admit it makes me proud to be able to say she chose to watch John Adams rather than turn on some ridiculous cable program. While not all pre-teenagers would choose to watch a series chronicling centuries-old events, she gives me hope.
If my 12 year old can appreciate the lessons found in the history of John Adams and the other Founding Fathers than so can other 12 year olds. Read on . . .
Category Archives: Non-fiction
48 Liberals Lies About America
I’ve known for a while that certain people credit Gorbachev with the fall of the Soviet Union, instead of Reagan, so I suppose the sting of that lie has worn off for me. But I was shocked to hear that history textbooks accuse Truman of droping the bomb on Japan in order to thump his chest at the Soviet Union. They call it “atomic diplomancy.” And they say FDR knew Pearl Harbor would be attacked but hushed it up in order to have a reason to go to war. Insanity. These are many more lies are discussed in Larry Schwelkart’s new book, 48 Liberal Lies About American History. Book TV has a video of Mr. Schwelkart’s presentation.
Orwell Takes a Page from Luther
Did Martin Luther lay a foundation for George Orwell?
Luther’s stand against authoritarianism foreshadowed our use of ‘plain reason’ and personal judgement, says Sandison, or empiricism and individualism, as we might say. Luther siezing on St. Paul’s “Prove all things” to defend his position provides ” a motto not only for himself, but for that moral and intellectual movement which was to exert, down to our own day, a major creative influence on the development of Western culture.” [via Books, Inq.]
Being Different
Author Glenn Lucke writes about an upcoming book by Tullian Tchividjian, called Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World By Being Different. The blurbs listed on Amazon.com are a bit stunning. Here are a few:
“With the right balance of reproof and encouragement, critique and construction, Unfashionable displays with succinct, vivid, and engaging clarity the relevance of the gospel over the trivialities that dominate our lives and our churches right now. The message of this book is of ultimate importance and its presentation is compelling.”
–Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor, Westminster Seminary in California and host of The White Horse Inn
“Although the Ancient Israelites were called by God to be a ‘holy nation’ they failed to reach their world because they were so much like it. Today’s church is succumbing to the same error. And this is what makes Tullian Tchividjian’s book Unfashionable so prophetic and such a book for this day. May the church take note– and reach the world!”
–R. Kent Hughes, Sr. Pastor Emeritus, College Church in Wheaton
“It is not easy to stand athwart the tides of the culture and challenge them without sounding either terribly prissy or hopelessly out of date. How can a thoughtful Christian be genuinely contemporary while never succumbing to the merely faddish and temporary? The challenges are enormous–but they are also tied to the most elementary tenets of Christian faithfulness. Tullian Tchividjian is a helpful and engaging guide through these troubled waters.”
–D. A. Carson, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and author of Christ and Culture Revisited
“Tullian masterfully articulates the importance of the ‘both, and’–showing that in order for Christians to make a profound difference in our world we must both gain a full understanding of the Gospel and express it practically in our world.”
–Gabe Lyons, Founder of Q and co-author of UnChristian
When Do I Have Enough?
Over the weekend, I heard an NPR interview with financial guru John Bogle about his upcoming book, Enough. I gather the book expounds on the principles in this graduation ceremony speech by the same name. The business of finances takes from society rather than contributes to it, and if no one in the money management professions has a sense of contentment, when any amount of money is enough, then we will have the types of financial crises we’re having today, financiers leeching off industry and service employees to pad their own wallets. Bogle said:
. . . no matter what career you choose, do your best to hold high its traditional professional values, now swiftly eroding, in which serving the client is always the highest priority. And don’t ignore the greater good of your community, your nation, and your world. After William Penn, “we pass through this world but once, so do now any good you can do, and show now any kindness you can show, for we shall not pass this way again.”
Enough appears to discuss the same idea as another book two years called The Number. The Number encouraged readers to decide how much they can live with and be content with it. I’m sure it would agree that the world, in Bogle’s words, “never has enough conscience, nor enough tolerance, idealism, justice, compassion, wisdom, humility, self-sacrifice for the greater good, integrity, courtesy, poetry, laughter, and generosity of substance and spirit. . . the great game of life is not about money; it is about doing your best to build the world anew.”
But can a materialist really be content? Can a consumerist ever have enough? When you define yourself by your affluence, when you seek a type of happiness in shopping, collecting, or displaying your purchases to others, how can any arbitrary limit be enough? Contentment with life must come from outside the markets (Matthew 6:25-24, Matthew 10:29-31).
What We Read
Americans appear to read a good bit of fiction, from what we see from the last 15 years of bestsellers as tracked by USA Today.
Thinking Among the Dead
In Scott Huler’s interesting and fun book, No-Man’s Lands: One Man’s Odyssey Through The Odyssey, Huler organizes his experiences around those of Odysseus, beginning with looking for Calypso’s cave, which he did near the end of his travels but which begins Odysseus retelling of his adventure. It’s a good book and should probably be on the list for many book clubs.
At one point in The Odyssey, Odysseus goes to Hell. Huler explained that he understood going to Hell was a one way trip, so he opted for another destination. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 11 of No-Man’s Lands, regarding his rumination among the dead. His location: the Capuchin cemetery within the Church of the Immaculate Conception (Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione).
Off the long hall are five crypts, each filled with artwork made of human bones—delicate traceries of pelvises and vertebrae; nicely proportioned thighbone archways beneath rows of human skulls; ceiling rosettes made of scapulae, collarbones, phalanges. In many crypts, bones—the bones of an estimated four thousand of more Capuchin monks—create niches in which stand, or recline, complete monk skeletons, clothed in those hooded coffee-brown robes.
Decorative art covers the walls and ceilings like the plaster filigree in a Renaissance palace—only it’s all made from bones, all with a focus on the brevity of earthly life. It’s breathtaking. . . . Continue reading Thinking Among the Dead
Conservative Books and Imagination
In City Journal, Harry Stein writes on the future of conservative books:
Outside the new [conservative-minded] imprints, the New York publishing world clearly remains a liberal stronghold, uncomprehending of, when not outright hostile to, conservative ideas—and authors. Mainstream media outlets that conventional publishers rely on to tout books have just as little enthusiasm for conservative titles. And though George W. Bush has been an incredible boon to conspiracy-mongering authors on the left, he’s done the opposite of good for sales at the new imprints, which have faced a much tougher market of late. In fact, there is much evidence suggesting that the rich vein of Coulter-style liberal-bashing polemics that drove so much of conservative publishing’s healthy sales has largely been mined. Amid all this uncertainty, will the new conservative imprints survive?
Whether particular publishing imprints and companies make it in the long run is unimportant to me. Conservative books will find printers, generally speaking. What I’d like to see is a surge in intellectual vigor in conservatives and Christians alike.
Also in City Journal, Andrew Klavan says some of us don’t imagine things very well.
Now you may say that capturing the imagination isn’t the job of our fighting forces. But this is America, remember: we’re a country of the imagination, a living state of mind. We’re not connected to one another by bloodlines or any depth of native memory. We’re the descendants of an idea that every generation has to learn to hold in its collective consciousness. More than in any other country, it matters in America who we think we are and what we believe we’re doing.
City Journal also has some damning material on Obama advocate and revolutionary, Bill Ayers. Sol Stern writes:
Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer. (If you find the metaphor strained, consider that Walter Duranty, the infamous New York Times reporter covering the Soviet Union in the 1930s, did, in fact, depict Stalin as a great land reformer who created happy, productive collective farms.)
Legitimately Barring Books
World’s Emily Belz points to a protest over a high school library which would not take certain donated books. “Librarians had banned [so to speak – phil] their collection of books against homosexuality. While the teens argued this was intolerance of their views of homosexuality, the librarians said the books did not meet their standards for donated books which require recommendations from two positive reviews from professional journals.” I don’t know if these books are worth fighting for. The protesters were apparently informed only by Focus on the Family info sheets, not by scanning the books themselves. But a commenter, Michelle, gave good insight on reviewing books for schools. She said:
This is what drives me crazy about those who listen to Focus on the Family but don’t do their own research. There may be legitimate reasons to add books, or even to ban some books, but when you show up waving papers and talking about resources you’ve never examined, you look silly and you do damage. Continue reading Legitimately Barring Books
Frederick Douglass: Reading Fosters Freedom
This seems appropriate for this week. It’s an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom.
The frequent hearing of my mistress reading the Bible — for she often read aloud when her husband was absent — soon awakened my curiosity in respect to this mystery of reading, and roused in me the desire to learn. Having no fear of my kind mistress before my eyes, (she had then given me no reason to fear,) I frankly asked her to teach me to read; and, without hesitation, the dear woman began the task, and very soon, by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and could spell words of three or four letters.
My mistress seemed almost as proud of my progress, as if I had been her own child; and, supposing that her husband would be as well pleased, she made no secret of what she was doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly told him of the aptness of her pupil, of her intention to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty which she felt it to teach me, at least to read the Bible.
Here arose the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the precursor of drenching rains and chilling blasts. Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his spouse, and, probably for the first time, he unfolded to her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar rules necessary to be observed by masters and mistresses, in the management of their human chattels. Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her instruction; telling her, in the first place, that the thing itself was unlawful; that it was also unsafe, and could only lead to mischief.
To use his own words, further, he said, “if you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell;” “he should know nothing but the will of his master, and learn to obey it.” “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world;” “if you teach that nigger — speaking of myself — how to read the bible, there will be no keeping him;” “it would forever unfit him for the duties of a slave;” and “as to himself, learning would do him no good, but probably, a great deal of harm — making him disconsolate and unhappy.” “If you learn him how to read, he’ll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he’ll be running away with himself.” Such was the tenor of Master Hugh’s oracular exposition of the true philosophy of training a human chattel ; and it must be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and the requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it had been my lot to listen.
Mrs. Auld evidently felt the force of his remarks; and, like an obedient wife, began to shape her course in the direction indicated by her husband. The effect of his words, on me, was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sentences — cold and harsh — sunk deep into my heart, and stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispelling a painful mystery, against which my youthful understanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to wit : the white man’s power to perpetuate the enslavement of the black man. “Very well,” thought I ; “knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.” I instinctively assented to the proposition . . .
Seized with a determination to learn to read, at any cost, I hit upon many expedients to accomplish the desired end. The plea which I mainly adopted, and the one by which I was most successful, was that of using my young white playmates, with whom I met in the street, as teachers. I used to carry, almost constantly, a copy of Webster’s spelling book in my pocket; and, when sent of errands, or when play time was allowed me, I would step, with my young friends, aside, and take a lesson in spelling. I generally paid my tuition fee to the boys, with bread, which I also carried in my pocket. For a single biscuit, any of my hungry little comrades would give me a lesson more valuable to me than bread. Not every one, however, demanded this consideration, for there were those who took pleasure in teaching me, whenever I had a chance to be taught by them. I am strongly tempted to give the names of two or three of those little boys, as a slight testimonial of the gratitude and affection I bear them, but prudence forbids ; not that it would injure me, but it might, possibly, embarrass them ; for it is almost an unpardonable offense to do any thing, directly or indirectly, to promote a slave’s freedom, in a slave state.
Of course–not to restate the obvious–reading the Bible is particularly beneficial to fostering freedom.