In a speech on Saturday, President Obama gave even greater insight into his opinion of the voters. Here is exactly what he said: People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. This… Read more »
Criticism of the Obama agenda has centered primarily on the most visible projects, such as taking over the healthcare system and the massive stimulus packages. I have also spent most of my commentary time on these. Along the way, though, I have called attention to a quieter revolution that most people have missed. It’s time to bring that one to the forefront now. In an op-ed in the Denver Post that appeared last month, two former Republican senators who are… Read more »
I first read The Screwtape Letters more than 35 years ago. This little book remains one of C. S. Lewis’s most fascinating ventures. He puts himself into the place of a senior devil named Screwtape, who writes advice to a junior devil called Wormwood. It’s a witty piece of writing and its popularity continues today. In fact, if one had to trace the beginning of Lewis’s emergence into the public consciousness, one must begin with Screwtape. Even Time magazine recognized… Read more »
More insight from C. S. Lewis: People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “If you keep a lot of rules, I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into… Read more »
The presence of the Sojourners organization at the so-called One Nation rally last Saturday is disturbing to me. Sojourners says it is an evangelical organization, yet it found common cause with communists, socialists, homosexuals activists, and assorted other radicals at this rally. The leader of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, claims to want to bring civility back into the political debate. Is that what took place last Saturday? Civility? Not by any definition of the term with which I’m familiar. While Wallis… Read more »
There’s a new movie out—a documentary—entitled Waiting for Superman. It’s an indictment of what some people call public education. The more accurate name for it is government-controlled education. I haven’t seen this documentary yet, but the director, Davis Guggenheim, is a liberal who directed Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, which will never qualify as one of my favorite movies. This time, though, he has some genuine inconvenient truths regarding the educational establishment. Apparently, there are some liberals who are scared… Read more »
There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was “The sort of person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.” And I’m afraid that is the sort of idea that the word Morality raises in a good many people’s minds: something that interferes, something that stops you having a good… Read more »