Reflections on God … Man … Life
In my study of C. S. Lewis while preparing my new book about his influence on Americans, I was constantly confronted with the opposite of what I had been told about him with regard to his views on politics and government. Lewis didn’t like the subject, I was told. Yet he mentioned it rather frequently in his letters to Americans. Then, as I re-read a lot of his essays, I again was surprised by how often he commented on the… Read more »
Alexis de Tocqueville was a Frenchman who visited America in 1831. He traveled extensively, made many notes of what he experienced, and wrote them down in a massive tome called Democracy in America. It is a classic, and is still being used today in university political science courses. It points out both the strengths and potential weaknesses he saw in this new nation. It is obvious Tocqueville liked much of what he witnessed in this country, but he also wrote… Read more »
Yesterday’s post offered some insightful analysis by C. S. Lewis on the dangers of putting the government in charge of everything in our lives. That same essay, which he wrote in 1958, goes on to issue further warnings. I couldn’t contain them all in one post, so I decided to carry his thoughts over to today also. He writes of freedom and its necessary corollary—an education free from government control: I believe a man is happier, and happy in a… Read more »
C. S. Lewis didn’t write a lot specifically about civil government because that wasn’t his priority. Yet when he did write on the subject, he was lucid and devastating with respect to how government can become a terror to individuals. One of his essays in God in the Dock is entitled “Is Progress Possible?” but the subtitle really gets to the point of the essay: “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State.” He knew whereof he spoke, writing this in 1958… Read more »
On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men put their signatures on a document intended to chart a course for the future of the fairly new United States of America. Each year, we commemorate that event as we celebrate one of the best set of by-laws ever created by a nation. At Southeastern, we always seek to use that commemoration to help students, faculty, and staff appreciate more fully what these men did, as they labored over the concepts and wording to… Read more »
Can anything new be said on the anniversary of 9/11? Maybe we don’t need to hear anything new; perhaps we just need to be reminded that there are those out there who hate us. However, what is meant by “us?” America, you say? Yes, in the abstract, but what comprises America anymore? Do I with my Biblical worldview represent the true America, or do Planned Parenthood—as one example—and Barack Obama constitute the real America? On 9/11, eleven years ago today,… Read more »
Let me just speak from the heart today without any cartoons. I’m deeply disturbed by a number of developments in our nation, but one comes to the forefront of my mind this morning as I sit to write. Unless this is changed, there is no hope for turning around the trajectory of our culture. In the Roman Empire, government officials had to come up with ingenious ways to keep the populace under control. So many of the people were unemployed… Read more »