Author Archives: Dr Snyder

Lewis, Education, & Not Losing Heart

  

Another academic year approaches. I will begin my 28th year of teaching full-time at the college level. As I contemplate this new beginning (every new teaching session feels like a new beginning to me), I reflect on how C. S. Lewis understood education. His Abolition of Man is key to his understanding, but one can also get some insight from his letters to Americans. Those are the letters I know best after delving into them for my upcoming book. As… Read more »

Friends, Colleagues, Former Students–Lend Me Your Ears

  

I am going to make a concerted effort next week to turn to other subjects in this blog, but for today, I feel compelled to make a heartfelt appeal to those I count as friends or colleagues, and to a multitude of former students of mine who appear to be supporting Donald Trump. Please lend me your ears. I come not to praise Trump, but to expose him. But I’m sure you already know that. When Trump first announced his… Read more »

Looking for Some Good Reads?

  

I have some book reviews for you today. I’ve been expanding my reading of books about C. S. Lewis. Some of my earliest reading of Lewis was his Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. I’ve been aware of David Downing’s analysis of these novels, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy, for quite some time; I finally got around to reading it. Every Lewis fan has a favorite in… Read more »

Third-Party Options?

  

With respect to my stated conviction that I will not be voting for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, I’m repeatedly asked about options. They are few, and yes, I understand that no one on a third-party ticket is going to win the presidency. Yet it’s worth looking briefly at what some consider to be third-party options—a place to go without violating one’s conscience. Most of the third-party attention is focused on the Libertarian Party and its nominee, former New… Read more »

Chambers, McCarthy, & Trump

  

An interesting question was posed to me yesterday by a former student, wanting to know what Whittaker Chambers might think of Donald Trump. I gave him my short answer but then decided it would be perhaps insightful to provide a fuller one here today. For those of you unfamiliar with Chambers, here’s a short synopsis of his life. Whittaker Chambers, in the 1920s, became a member of the Communist party because he saw it as the hope of a world… Read more »

The Pence Pick

  

I haven’t said anything yet about Trump’s choice for VP, Mike Pence. What was Trump looking for in a VP? Apparently, he wanted someone who, unlike himself, had been in politics for a long time and knows how to navigate in Congress. He also needed someone who would bring conservative Christians and other “social issues” people on board. He hoped Pence would be a bridge to help bring unity (even though unity doesn’t seem to be his overriding preoccupation at… Read more »

About Last Week’s Convention

  

There are different types of Trump supporters. First, there are the angry people who just want Trump to get back at those who they perceive have created all the problems in the country. Trump will build a wall, they say, and make America great again. We believe him. They are so confident that he is the new political savior that their faith is unshakeable, no matter what he does. As Trump himself famously stated, he could stand in the middle… Read more »