Society
Items on national and international social issues and reforms
What Do Evangelicals Do with Power?
Fri 01 Feb 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David W. Miller
Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, by D. Michael Lindsay, Oxford University Press (2007).
Some books have the good fortune of being well timed and well written. Faith in the Halls of Power is one of those books. For those familiar with or maybe even a part of the American evangelical world, little in this book will surprise you, though its depth and breadth will impress you. For those who are not familiar with or a part of the American evangelical world, you might find the contents both jarring and comforting.
It is jarring, because Lindsay documents well the deep and successful engagement by evangelicals in the elite leadership ranks of virtually all strategically important spheres of modern society, including politics, the academy, the corporate world, and the arts. It is comforting, because most of the evangelicals Lindsay describes belie the negative stereotypical image of evangelicals held by many progressives, liberals, mainliners, and secularists. Lindsay’s evangelicals are not the narrow-minded, judgmental, backward, bellicose voices sometimes caricatured by today’s cultural elites. Rather, they are smart, savvy, and worldly, participating in and quietly trying to change the system from within, not withdrawing from the world or merely casting stones from the sidelines.
Justice and Civility in the Immigration Debates
Fri 18 Jan 2008 • Responses: 3 • by Luder Whitlock
Meanness adds no value to the decision-making process. It often wounds those targeted by it and such wounds can quickly metastasize into lasting hostility and alienation.
America is a nation of immigrants. Our schools, offices, and neighborhoods now host many ethnic groups with some school districts having more than fifty language groups. My own ancestry, rooted in multiple Northern European countries, bears testimony as well.
Given that, why has immigration become such a hot political issue recently? In some senses it is not new; the previous century saw several immigration flare-ups. Today terrorism, triggering a concern for national security, is undoubtedly a factor, as are the millions of Hispanics who have entered the country illegally and continue to flood across our southwestern border.
Those Hard-Worked Chinese Ideologists
Fri 11 Jan 2008 by David Aikman
Poor Chinese Communist leaders! It’s not enough to rise to the top of the largest political party in the world, the Communist Party of China (66 million members in 2002) and rule the world’s most populous nation (1.3 billion). Chinese Communist leaders seem predestined to become brilliant ideological innovators in the opaque mists of Marxism.
‘Christian America, this is YOUR Columbine’
Fri 21 Dec 2007 • Responses: 2 • by David Aikman
Isn’t this a hate crime?
There is something very perplexing in the mainstream media response to the shootings at a Youth With A Mission center in Arvada, Colorado, and New Life Church in Colorado Springs, seventy miles away. The shooter, Matthew Murray, 24, initially murdered two staffers at the Youth With A Mission training base in Arvada, Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, shortly after midnight on December 10. Several hours later, he drove seventy miles to the large Colorado Springs church and murdered two more victims, young sisters, Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, before being shot at by a female security guard, falling to the ground, and then shooting himself.
Two Virtues of Western Culture
Mon 03 Dec 2007 • Responses: 3 • by Roger Scruton
Irony, Sacrifice, and the Transmission of Culture
Roger Scruton, in a speech first presented to the Trustees of The Trinity Forum, draws engagingly from his autobiographical experiences to help us explore the purpose of education and the formative role of faith in fostering two virtues in Western culture that make it worth celebrating and preserving.
In the Interest of Character
Fri 28 Sep 2007 by Gary Moore
I was as surprised as others by the recent larger-than-expected reduction in short-term interest rates by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Frankly, about the only good I can see in it is that it was an admirable attempt on the part of the new chairman, Ben Bernanke, to bail-out Alan Greenspan’s sinking reputation among even those speculators he’s encouraged during recent years.
Who Are We Today?
Wed 12 Sep 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
The Mystery of Personal—and National—Character
Senior Fellow Bill McClay reflects on the American national character, both historically and at the present moment. We can guess at, but we cannot really know, a person’s—or a nation’s—character until it is put to a real test. What will emerge may surprise us.
The World of Total Work
Thu 06 Sep 2007 by Dan Russ
Leisure: The Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, Translated by Gerard Malsbary with an introduction by Roger Scruton (St. Augustine’s Press [1948] 1998), $12.
Work is consuming our lives and—Josef Pieper would say—our humanity. I have recently observed cases of two disturbing instances of what Pieper calls the “world of total work.” The first is among friends and colleagues who are wired for vacations. By this I mean that they either choose or are expected to take their cell phones and laptops with them on vacations. They do so either because they are concerned about what their superiors or colleagues would think if they ignored the demands of the office, or because they fear missing something or someone that might be crucial to their professional lives. Indeed, a friend recently observed that as she and her husband take their annual pilgrimage to the shore, each year the beaches and coffee shops are increasingly filled with people on cell phones and laptops, doing business.
Stupidocracy at Work
Fri 24 Aug 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
The case of the seven-year-old “terrorist” shows how bureaucracy plus technology plus fear are killing common sense.
Ever since 9/11, one of the main agencies working at the task of defending ordinary Americans against acts of terrorism has been the Transportation Security Administration. The good folks at this agency are the ones who ensure that, when you proceed through airport security checks, you clutch your toothpaste (no more than three ounces), shampoo, and shaving cream in a clear plastic bag as though you were a colostomy patient.
In the rush to protect America’s air travel after 9/11, a lot of folks were hired who—we might say—were “common-sense-challenged.” There were stories of elderly ladies being taken aside and body-searched, of Members of Congress misidentified as possible terrorists, and even of people who looked “Middle Eastern” (whatever that means) being taken off planes. A high proportion of those hired by the TSA seemed to be immigrants with minimal command of English, which of course does wonders for the average American traveler’s sense of security.
Linking Liberties
Mon 13 Aug 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
Economics and Religion
Dr. Theodore Roosevelt Malloch explains recent data that show a connection between countries with good religious liberty and high economic liberty—and prosperity. Competition is a factor, but so is “spiritual capital.”
