Author Archives: Dr Snyder

Common Sense on Refugees

  

America has always been the most accepting of nations with respect to immigrants. The doors have almost always been open wide. In the early years, there were no immigration restrictions at all. The real restrictions only applied to citizenship. Immigrants could come over, but if they wanted the privileges of citizenship, they had to meet certain requirements. The period from approximately 1890-1917 was unprecedented in history as those teeming masses descended upon a country that held greater promise than what… Read more »

Lewis & the Omnicompetent State (Part 3)

  

Last month, I presented a paper to the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s Academic Roundtable at its fall retreat. This is the third installment of that paper, which focuses on Lewis’s concerns that an elite would create a totalitarian state. This installment shows how Lewis portrayed that in his novel That Hideous Strength. Enter That Hideous Strength, first published in 1945, one year after the appearance of The Abolition of Man. The centerpiece in the novel of the unholy alliance between… Read more »

Evil & Good, Darkness & Light

  

Today I want to take a break from a specific current event, from cartoons, from book reviews, from links to other articles. Instead, I want to share a few thoughts from what I read in the Bible the other day. Going through the book of Isaiah, I came across a passage I’ve noted before, but one that deserves greater attention. It’s found in chapter five: Woe to those who drag iniquity with the cords of falsehood, and sin as if… Read more »

Lewis & the Omnicompetent State (Part 2)

  

Last Saturday I offered the first section of the paper I presented at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s fall retreat. Here’s the next segment, dealing with Lewis’s concern that we may develop what he called the “omnicompetent state.” It’s in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength that Lewis’s concerns come to the forefront. The former lays out the philosophical case against the loss of absolutes and the consequences that will follow in the wake of that loss. The… Read more »

“The Witness and the President” Makes Its Appearance

  

Ten years ago, I had the vision for a book on Whittaker Chambers and Ronald Reagan. I wanted to compare/contrast the pessimism of the former with the optimism of the latter. I also wanted to know just how much Chambers influenced Reagan. I had read Chambers’s masterful autobiography, Witness, back in the mid-1980s. It affected me deeply. I also was very appreciative of the principles that guided Reagan in his life and administration, an appreciation that grew over time as… Read more »

Boston’s Tea Party: Standing on Principle?

  

My last American history post pointed to the integrity displayed by John Adams as he defended the soldiers indicted for the Boston Massacre in 1770. After that event, an uneasy peace prevailed for three years as the British Parliament ceased its efforts to antagonize its American colonies. The tax on tea still existed, but colonists found other ways to get their tea. The East India Tea Company, closely connected to the government, was suffering, so, in 1773, the Parliament passed… Read more »

Lewis & the Omnicompetent State (Part 1)

  

C. S. Lewis often protested that he had no interest in or taste for politics. What he really meant by that was the type of politics he imbibed growing up in a Belfast suburb, listening to his father discuss with friends the nature of the local and national politics of his Irish/English homeland. Was it the pettiness that turned him against political discussion or the boredom he suffered from those overheard conversations? Whatever the cause, he normally abhorred purely political… Read more »