0 thoughts on “For Your Spectation”

  1. Lars, Thanks for your insightful observations and assessment. It reminds me of a difference between Eastern and Western culture that Ravi Zacharias noted in his autobiography, Walking from East to West. He noted that individuals in Western culture draw their identity from their accomplishments while those from the East draw their identity from their relationships. The Westerner is introduced as an Engineer or a Scholar. The Easterner is introduced as the son of So and So.

    I’ve noticed a similar trend in the rural towns of the Upper Midwest where I pastor small country churches. Most of our small farming communities are generationally stable, meaning that the current residents are mostly the descendants of the pioneers who settled these small towns 100 or 150 years ago. While these rural areas export most of their High School Graduates, the only people who move in from the outside tend to be the professionals, such as doctors, lawyers and pastors, who come in to do the work that the locals cannot do without higher education, which few aspire towards.

    For most people this scenario, everyone they know, they’ve known since childhood. Therefore family relationships become more important. You don’t belong unless you too have a grandparent in the local cemetery. When people meet someone new, the first question is who they are related to.

    I say all this to suggest that that kind of relationally oriented culture may be one reason that traditional marriage finds more support in rural than in urban areas.

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  2. I just scanned through the comments under your article at American Spectator. Only one or two comments out of the hundred currently posted speak to your content. The rest come across as jousting windmills, raising red herrings or guilt by association as they rehash the issues they assume are associated with their opponents side of a controversial issue.

    Why do online commentators tend to display so much bad logic? Do the government schools no longer teach logic or rhetoric?

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  4. Sorry, but this reads like a British officer during the Falklands war, discussing how to prevent the British Empire from losing India.

    The traditional family that can over-power the state requires an extended family, living close enough to support each other. Permanent nuclear families may be strong enough to do the job. Temporary nuclear families, which is what we have with the prevalence of divorce, are too weak for the challenge. This is as true of Dave Divorced-three-times-already and Suzy Slut as it is for Herbert and Howard Homosexual.

    For that it is worth, I think the pendulum is about to swing back. But not because of politics. The extended family broke down when people started moving long distances to be where their jobs were. Now, with some many jobs being “work from home, online”, I think the benefits of being close to backup will come to the fore again. Especially if the government becomes too poor to keep some of its promises.

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