Month: May 2016

Historical Ignorance & Hiroshima

President Obama was in Japan a few days ago, where he laid a wreath at Hiroshima, the site of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Many were concerned he would turn this event into another apology for America. That was a valid fear since he seems to consider his own country to be responsible for most of the evils of the modern era. I’ve read through his speech at Hiroshima. There is no apology per se, but the language… Read more »

No Trump Train for Me

Come on, Snyder, get on board the Trump Train. We’re going all the way to the White House, so don’t you want to take whatever meager credit you might get for being part of the Team? Besides, if you don’t get on board, we’ll blame you if we lose. You wouldn’t want that, now, would you? We’ll make you responsible for Hillary’s presidency, and you’ll never be able to live that down. Yes, the pressure builds. But it doesn’t change… Read more »

Higher Education Sometimes Isn’t

Let’s compare the myth with what is all too often the reality about what occurs in a college education. The myth is that the four years spent in the arena of higher education is a time when the student will be able, under wise direction from professors, to sift through a variety of worldviews and learn how to become discerning in a quest for what is genuine and what is not. That has been somewhat fictional all along, simply because… Read more »

Screwtape Proposes a Hellish Education

I’ve been scouring C. S. Lewis’s essays for pertinent comments for the Academic Roundtable in which I will be participating at the upcoming summer Lewis Foundation conference. This is work? Not really. More like fun. In the process of my scouring, I reread his “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” a followup to the fabulously successful book, The Screwtape Letters, that put Lewis on the literary map for Americans. As a lifelong educator, just now completing my 27th year of teaching at… Read more »

There Is a Line I Will Not Cross

Sometimes I think that if I had another life to live on this earth after this one, I would choose to follow my musical inclinations. I really love music and, at various times, have taken piano lessons, achieved first-chair trumpet status in my high school band, followed by learning how to play the guitar. All of those “talents” have fallen into disuse over time, but I have music playing constantly when I drive, both Christian and “secular.” I put secular… Read more »

A Crisis of Unfathomable Proportions

These Democrat primaries have been quite interesting if, that is, you find a race between one candidate who may be prosecuted and another who promotes a philosophy that has ruined every nation that has tried it to be an interesting race. Hillary just barely beat Sanders in Kentucky last night, with both getting 46% of the vote; meanwhile, Sanders continued to act as a spoiler to the coronation by beating her in Oregon. The only reason Hillary is going to… Read more »

No, Mr. Trump, You Are Not Ronald Reagan

In an attempt to legitimize Donald Trump’s candidacy in the eyes of conservatives, both Trump and his supporters like to say that his metamorphosis politically into a Republican is the same as Ronald Reagan’s. This is a comparison that doesn’t survive even the most casual scrutiny. The only similarity is that both were Democrats. I would argue that Trump, essentially, still is a Democrat, but masquerading as a Republican. A fuller treatment of that thesis may be forthcoming. For today,… Read more »