Happy endings require love, but the love folks are looking for is either in short supply or surprisingly unsatisfying when found. Christmas is a holiday for loving the movies tell us, but love is pretty hard to find.

As Love Actually points out “love is all around” in virtual reality, but there is too little love in reality and it is too limited scope. Instead of love being a means to a goal, it has become the goal.

We want the perfect holiday, but we actually search for the perfect “stuff” to give as gifts. We crave love, but the media has taught us that love is just sex. Dawkins and his merry band of atheists are often embraced by college students looking for liberation from “rules” . . . only to discover that love has been reduced to one selfish gene looking for another selfish gene to make it to the next generation and that free will has vanished.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Christmas always brings out the cynics in modern times and it is no wonder.

Children grow up watching Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or some other fairy tale, but seeing their parents divorce, political leaders lie, and hearing “grown up” media sneer at their movies. Disney promises that if they follow their heart, then all their dreams will come true. But even if they get what they want for Christmas, it is never as good as the advertisement. It is lie that all wishes come true and it is an even greater lie that it would be wonderful if they did. Kids don’t have to be very old to become cynics.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Note on the origins of the manuscript:

Yesterday I was working on a manuscript related to Plato’s view of time and eternity in Timaeus. My daughter was playing Christmas music in the other room just as I was translating the odd section on numbers that puzzled even A.E. Taylor. Mary Kate hit a chord . . . just as I was puzzling aloud about the text. As I spoke the following letter appeared on my computer screen. I don’t know what to think of it . . . and pass it on to you. I have not been able to duplicate the convergence that produced it . . . and so I assume that the proximate time and relationship to the winter solstice may have helped produce the result. We shall see next year.

(more at Middlebrow…)

The Conclusion of a Five Part Series based on a 11/06 ETS paper. (This section contains work also found in a paper on Mozart given to THI two yeas ago.)

West ends up taking young artists too seriously, empowering, hip-hop artists instead of educating them in better things. However, a “conservative” retreat from education and listening to the many, the heavy duties of servant-leadership, can amount to the same thing.

A great artist, Mozart, saw what Cornel West does not.

Failure to act ends up empowering the moral nihilism portrayed in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. The role of a gentleman in society is central to the opera. Many of the Don’s victims cannot understand how a “nobleman” could be ignoble. Surely they are safe with such a great man! Both the noble ladies and the peasant women cannot understand how the Don could betray the Christian social order. Such a man either cannot really exist, surely the tales about him are rumors, or he must somehow be a great man in order to defy convention. Just as Milton’s Satan can appear to be a hero by the very boldness of his rebellion, so Giovanni is given undeserved admiration for the vastness of his crimes.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Our children, the greatest asset our society has, are given to the college and university system in part to produce leaders. America needs leaders . . . men and women of virtue and character who can make hard decisions and who will serve their fellow citizens.

Colleges and universities have a civic duty to produce such leaders . . . it is the right thing to do and if they don’t do it then their very right to exist may be threatened by the enemies of freedom.

Hugh Hewitt engaged in a conversation today with Larry Arn of the fine Hillsdale College and later with me. We discussed Torrey Honors at Biola University and the nature of American education.

Hugh is a brilliant communicator and engages daily in a defense of Western values. What school is most likely to produce friends and allies for Hugh Hewitt? Do we want to send our brightest and best to college to be mentored by men and women who share our values or pay to have our future leaders propagandized by those who reject any duty to civic service?

Listeners to his show need to ask this question before writing a check to a college, “Is this school engaged in its civic duty of training up leaders to defend the very values that make the school possible? Or does it attack those values daily?”

Is the school your child attending plainly on the side of Judeo-Christian virtues and the Western tradition of reason and liberty? Ask. Ask if the school hopes to teach virtue to its graduates. If not, and most schools gave up on this long ago in a mess of moral relativism, ask them what their liberal arts curriculum does? It was intended by the men and women who created it to teach character and service. If the college has given up on that, then what is it for?

Programs like Torrey at Biola University and Hillsdale College will teach your kid to think. They might not turn out as we would wish. . . we believe in liberty after all. However, if the college you are choosing has no intention of teaching character or service, then one can be sure of what they will not get.

These schools have the right to stop educating as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers were educated. Classically trained graduates of schools like Torrey at Biola University and Hillsdale College would defend that right absolutely, but we have no obligation to support this failure of will and duty by sending our children and our hard earned treasure to schools that no longer do what they were founded to do.

My students have fun at college. . . but they are mostly here to work. They could have fun at home after all without the expensive tuition bill. We are fighting a global war against foes who hate liberty and the Western educational system. It is time to produce another greatest generation that has a serious minded goal of making a difference and defending those values.

If the school is best known for the football team, buy your kid a sweat shirt from that school, a Direct TV subscription to the college football package, and send them to Biola to work.

(more at Middlebrow…)

A Series of Posts Based on a Paper Given at the ETS 11/2006.

Cornel West with other modern Christian liberals has a problem.

He does not want to argue for passive non-involvement in politics, since he feels that great social change is needed. Most Americans are Christians and motivated by their Christianity, and as a prophet for change he obviously does not want to disenfranchise Christians. He quickly concedes that the American experience is deeply religious. Christians have always been an overwhelming majority of Americans and Christian ideas permeate American arts, thought, and philosophy. Most American leaders have professed some form of Christianity.

How to negotiate this?

He argues that good Christianity is “prophetic” and bad Christianity is “Constantinian.” Good Christians speak truth to power and bad Christians are co-opted by it.

(more at Middlebrow…)

A Series of Posts Based on a Paper Given at the ETS 11/2006.

Cornel West with other modern Christian liberals has a problem.

He does not want to argue for passive non-involvement in politics, since he feels that great social change is needed. Most Americans are Christians and motivated by their Christianity, and as a prophet for change he obviously does not want to disenfranchise Christians. He quickly concedes that the American experience is deeply religious. Christians have always been an overwhelming majority of Americans and Christian ideas permeate American arts, thought, and philosophy. Most American leaders have professed some form of Christianity.

How to negotiate this?

He argues that good Christianity is “prophetic” and bad Christianity is “Constantinian.” Good Christians speak truth to power and bad Christians are co-opted by it.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Based on a Paper Given at the ETS in 11/2006

Cornel West Tries to Attack Constantine . . .

III. Possible Definitions of Constantinianism

West uses the term “Constantinianism” throughout his book Democracy Matters. Over the course of the text, no formal definition is given, but West does give clues to what he means through his use of the term. For West “. . . the most profound, seminal teachings of Christianity, those being that we should live with humility, love our neighbors, and do unto others as we have them do unto us” are under assault from the “Constantinian religious right.” Oddly West has not taken into account the message of monotheism in the Old Testament (surely the “Hear O Israel” is seminal and the intolerance of other religions central) or the greatest commandment to love God with the totality of self.

West (and other critics) is right that Christians with access to power run the risk of worshipping that power, but that is uncontroversial. The fact that a thing can be abused is not sufficient reason to avoid since such goods as sexuality contain similar temptations to abuse. Both Dante and Augustine attacked the powers of the day, including Christians, while advocating the possibility of Christian emperors. It is not attack on an idea to point out the failures that have overcome some adherents. West must provide an alternative, but this he fails to do.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Part II of a Series based on a Paper Given at the 11/06 ETS

What about Constantine? Why is this Roman Emperor dragged into modern debate by writers like Cornel West?

Constantine was the Emperor who ended the official Roman persecution of the Church and favored Christianity in his public acts. While he did not make Christianity the state religion, he sponsored many Churches and encouraged others (such as his mother Helen) to build and endow many Christian institutions. Christianity had been growing for centuries and acquiring wealth, philosophical skill, and power. Sometimes this power was used well and sometimes badly, but Constantine marked the official acknowledgement by the Empire that Christianity had triumphed over persecution. Oddly, modern Christians such as West view this triumph in wholly negative terms.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Part I in a Series of Posts Based on an ETS paper of 11/2006:

Christendom is widely abandoned and ridiculed. Despite helping create the modern university, parliamentary forms of government, international law, world class arts and science, the vices of Christendom are more widely know than her virtues. Yet Christendom is a good model for Christian flourishing, the religious right in America (however flawed) is essentially a positive development, and attacks on it are flawed. Secularism in Western Europe and the United States has proven unable to sustain itself. It is not fecund in any way.

In a pluralistic society, the Christian family, culture of life, and evangelism will bring a gradual growth in influence for traditional Christians. While Christendom will never be identical to any state in this age, any state can associate with it.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Losing is no fun, but it points the way forward for traditional Christians who are also Republicans. First, there is no sense attacking the voters for their choice. In some cases the Republican candidate was tainted (Burns) or not really Republican (Chafee), but that is not enough to explain our losses. Good people lost, especially Santorum and Allen. They lost in part because the message of traditionalists is not being argued in a persuasive way.

(more at Middlebrow…)

Good news: many of the Democrats winning tonight in the House are mainstream. . . and not Pelosi Democrats.

Bad news: Pelosi will be majority leader.

I hoped to hold the House, but was wrong about both that and the Senate. Plainly the War and Republican party mistakes (Macca anyone?) destroyed hope for victory.

One thing I have learned: there is always another election. Ohio was toxic for Republicans due to local issues. New York is trending Democrat. . . and this was an off year. I think pro-war Republicans will have to accept that the war was a drag on the party. . . even if it was right.

We will see how the next two years go.

(more at Middlebrow…)

I always vote “no” on spending. . . since usually they don’t ask. Culture of life voters should vote for 85 an abortion parental notification bill.

Your most important vote is for local judges. . . but in California this is confusing.
(more…)

Every election since I was a boy marked the “end of the Religious Right.” Every election since I was a young man marked the “peak of the Reagan Revolution” and the end of conservatives.

If you believe the media, then Republican wins are shocks and Democrat wins are natural.

One fact: no Democrat has won 51% of the vote since Jimmy Carter. I have never voted (I am 43) in a Presidential race in which the Democrats have received over half the vote. Republicans may lose the House and Senate, but it will be close and I don’t think it will happen. I am sticking with my prediction of the first of the year.

I am no prophet or son of a prophet, but I don’t think most people spend a great deal of time “doing politics.” They are worried about Iraq, tired of crisis, not thrilled with either party, but aren’t going to do much to rock the boat. Most people like their own folks . . . and will re-elect them.

My bet is that the party turn out in 2004 will be a lower version of 2006 (same profile minus Indie voters . . . which is good news for Bush this time). My assumption is that over-polling Democrats is getting worse (not better) and that most polls are “off” by about 2/3 percent.

My picks (with a short reason):

Senate: Republicans at 53. (Main Stream shocks: Chafee will lose, but Steele will win.)
House: Republicans will lose 16 seats, but gain 2 (at least one in Georgia) to retain thin control of the House. Nobody much is watching the weak Dem seats. House polling stinks and two of the supposed easy Dem pick ups are in Republican districts where pundits assume voters are too dumb to vote for the candidate they prefer . . . new media is educating these voters. Most pundits still do not understand how the new media can get information to target voters. Mid-terms are low turn out elections, which are all about getting out the base. Republicans are the best at this. . . and have been all my life.

The key is to ignore polling . . . listen to good radio like Pastore and Hewitt . . . and vote.

This discovery shocked even me:

The study also finds that more than 50 percent of students at four-year colleges have only the most basic literacy skills, meaning they can’t do basic tasks like summarize the arguments in a newspaper editorial. On both measures, students at two-year colleges perform even worse.

Without literacy, most people will lack adequate vocabularies. An inadequate vocabulary leads to an inability to verbalize experiences or beliefs. This hurts the natural human desire to stand outside of self and ask hard, yes Socratic, questions. “Am I correct?” or better “To what extent am I correct?”

Words make the world wider by allowing humans to categorize experiences. Due to television, movies, gaming and other virtual reality technology, people have more experiences. We have increased visual intelligence, easily seeing the flaws in the most sophisticated special effects films, but we lack the vocabulary to talk about them . . . to reflect on our experience.

When someone tells you that the “new media” or the Internet is changing everything, ask them if arguments that form the basis of scientific, philosophic, and theological advances have changed. They have not. It is not just that we have not yet devised a way to create pictures of these things and get rid of words. . . it is the very ability of words to describe but not be reduced to our experience as easily as an image or icon must. Our failure to give our children the gift of language dooms them to serve those who have it, I fear.

Illiterate people are doomed to be slaves with souls stamped by tyrants to follow the will of those with words.