Society
Items on national and international social issues and reforms
Fighting Wars During Peace-Time
Mon 02 Apr 2007 • Responses: 1 • by David Aikman
Britain’s magazine The Economist once made an interesting point about democracies and fighting wars. “Democracies,” the magazine said—and I offer a paraphrase rather than quote precisely—“find it difficult to fight wars during peace-time.” The point is a subtle one. Essentially, it is that democratic societies are seldom prepared to engage in sustained war-fighting if they do not believe that their county is really at war.
Newton, Wilberforce, and the Spirituality of Abolition
Fri 23 Mar 2007 by Jonathan Aitken
Wilberforce’s friendship with John Newton was the major momentum behind abolition (Part 2 of 2)
Wilberforce has come down in history as something of a lone-ranger humanitarian, but Jonathan Aitken, executive director of the Trinity Forum in Europe and author of a new biography of John Newton, sets the record straight by looking at newly published diaries and letters of Newton that throw additional light on what was at one point Wilberforce’s great secret—his evangelical faith. Second of two parts.
What’s Left of Secularization?
Thu 15 Mar 2007 by William Edgar
Social scientists are telling a different story today about the role of faith in public life
Senior Fellow William Edgar looks at the traditional story Western social scientists have been telling about the inevitable decline of religion in public life—and the way this view has been challenged over the past few years.
The Problem with the News
Wed 21 Feb 2007 • Responses: 5 • by David Aikman
“A picture of humanity that is relentlessly colored by its most gruesome crimes is as unrealistic as one that ignores such crimes altogether.”
As a journalist for many years (full-time for more than two decades), I’ve acquired a compulsive addiction to TV and radio news bulletins. If I’m driving a car and the time approaches the “top of the hour,” I’m quite unable to resist tuning the radio to the local full-time news network. If I’m watching TV (a fairly rare event), no matter what the program is that I might have intended to view, within a few minutes I find myself switching to CNN, or FOX, or MSNBC.
It was thus with utter dismay that I watched, on one of the news channels (for propriety’s sake I won’t say which), on a single middle-of-the-evening news bulletin quite recently, the following items: (1) a woman who thought she was a vampire had tied a man up, slashed him with a knife, and drunk his blood (presumably, he thought she had other things in mind when he submitted to being tied up); (2) a mother in a private home was barely prevented from drowning all of her children; (3) an 84-year-old woman was jailed for three years for having sex with an 11-year-old in her foster care.
What to Make of China?
Fri 02 Feb 2007 • Responses: 1 • by Richard W. Ohman
Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman (Second edition, Regnery Publishing, December 2006), 336 pages. ISBN 1596980257
China—what to make of it? Response to this question will undoubtedly consume an ever-increasing amount of time, energy, and analysis as our new century unfolds. The context for discussing this question is becoming clear and involves at least three major themes: economic potential, political rigidity, and the nation’s soul. David Aikman’s book, Jesus in Beijing, just released in a new edition, addresses the least-discussed of these today—the nation’s soul—which may well be the most important in answering the questions about China and its future.
The Folly of New Year Resolutions
Thu 04 Jan 2007 • Responses: 11 • by David Aikman
“Why do we repeat this folly, when empirical evidence shows that statements of a desire to change, in and of themselves, almost never cause people to change their behavior in actuality?”
The turkey has been digested, the gifts put away (or put on, if they are clothes), and the wrapping paper thrown out. After the Christmas gustatory extravaganza, it’s time for a few days of slow movement, of writing thank-you letters, and self-congratulatory exhalation. Christmas has been survived once more and life can continue its uneventful way forward.
But no. Within a week of Christmas many people find themselves practicing yet another ancient cultural ritual, the challenge of New Year Resolutions. The end of one year and the beginning of another always offers two opportunities: to look back at the previous twelve months and ponder the ups and downs of that period; and to look ahead to the next and wonder what can be done differently then. By the office water cooler, over coffee in a friend’s office, on the phone late at night with a close friend, conversations year after year turn to the subject of New Year Resolutions.
The Paradox of the Pursuit of Happiness
Fri 15 Dec 2006 • Responses: 1 • by Wilfred M. McClay
In today’s culture, not only are you unhappy, your unhappiness is your own fault.
It’s almost impossible to speak about “happiness” in a general way without sounding like a child, or a cynic, or more likely a purveyor of tired and shallow truisms. The problem is that while happiness is a subject of central importance to our existence, and a matter of irrepressibly consuming interest, many of the most reliable truths about it may easily come across as disappointingly flat and trite and commonplace. But there is one maxim that is the exception to this rule: Happiness is a matter of having the right expectations.
Because of this, ideas have everything to do with happiness. The pattern of expectations to which the pursuit of happiness conforms itself at any given time—that age’s vision of feasible felicity, so to speak, and the means one uses to reach it—is itself a product of the dominant ideas of the time in question: ideas about life, death, God, nature, causality, moral responsibility, and human possibility. In a word, what we believe about the world’s structure and meaning will determine what we think happiness is, and how we can act to gain it for ourselves. What we believe provides the basic structure of what we expect.
Civilization’s Crisis and Europe’s Choices
Tue 05 Dec 2006 by David Aikman
Ideology, Intolerance, and Identity
Senior Fellow David Aikman discusses the European crisis highlighted by militant Islam and considers its sources, current factors, and—given historical precedents—the prospects for a revitalized Continent.
Reflections on the 2006 U.S. Elections
Wed 22 Nov 2006 by Al McDonald
A look backward and forward to put recent events in perspective
Senior Fellow Alonzo L. McDonald looks at likely outcomes of the 2006 elections and puts the situation in perspective in an essay directed particularly to friends outside America. He draws on his international career and an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the American national character and suggests what to expect from the U.S. in the next two years. More unilateralism may be in the forecast.
Redeeming the Tongue
Tue 14 Nov 2006 by T. M. Moore
Conversation: A History of a Declining Art, by Stephen Miller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 368 pages. ISBN 0300110308
Anyone who has ever led a discussion group knows how difficult it can be to get people to engage in conversation. Even when the focus is clear—as in a book group or Bible study—and materials have been handed out in advance, the discussion leader can feel like a dentist working without anesthetic as he yanks and tugs to pull out of the mouths of his participants some contribution for the group’s betterment.
Whereas the Scriptures mightily prize the power of the spoken word, few of the followers of Christ seem to care much about mastering those conversational techniques that could enable them to employ the gift of the tongue to edify, enlighten, delight, direct, challenge, and entertain one another. Our conversation is lacking. And in this, as Stephen Miller points out, we are but a reflection of the larger society of which we are a part.
