Tag: www.chalcedon.edu

I’m On the Air Today

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

This afternoon I’m going to join Andrea Schwartz for one of her “Out of the Question” podcasts, brought to you by Chalcedon. Our topic will be “The Dumbest Generation”–and what’s making it so dumb. You’ll find reviews of the book here, in the archives, and on the Chalcedon website, http://www.chalcedon.edu/ .

I’m a political scientist; so when I say you can’t have idiots as the foundation for a constitutional republic, I know what I’m talking about. But idiots, big exploding bunches of them, is what our public education system’s turning out.

Surprise! Smartphones aren’t making anybody smarter.

For the rest of the morning, I’ve got a chapter of my book to write, and some more blog posts to see about.

Chalcedon Marches On

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

The Sanctuary Choir at First Methodist Church, Houston

You can’t always see what a ministry is doing; and sometimes what a minister of the gospel does will take years to show up on the radar.

In “Rushdoony’s Future Impact,” Mark Rushdoony predicts R.J. Rushdoony’s impact on the church and on the culture will only grow more telling–“because he addresses issues which the church has refused to address, but will be forced to at some point.”

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/r-j-rushdoonys-future-impact

Many readers of Rushdoony’s works show surprise when they learn the book was first published in the 1960s or 70s, yet seems still more applicable two decades into the 21st century (Rushdoony died in 2001). No one even had a keener insight into church and culture: you’d almost swear he had a crystal ball.

So Chalcedon’s mission includes keeping Rushdoony’s books in print–after all, some of these fields have yet to yield their fruit.

Reader Input Wanted: Can you think of any pressing issues which the church in America has ducked so far, but will some day have to be addressed?

The Two Roads to Destruction

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Martin Selbrede | heroinamerica

This new essay by Martin Selbrede is about a conflict that can only be resolved by following God’s word–the tension between “the one and the many.”

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/dialectical-culture

Simply put, if “the one” prevails, you wind up with tyranny–and a loss of meaning in  all but the mushiest and most useless sense. But if “the many” prevail against the one, you wind up with anarchy (leading eventually, as it always does, to a dictatorship) and the cult of Me. It is the continual tension between social order and individual liberty.

Both must be limited: but only the Bible teaches that.

There is no hope for us in following only humanistic, statist prescriptions for order and justice. These always strand us in our state of Original Sin.

This is a challenging essay, but stay with it. That little light bulb over your head might come on.

Why Is Government So Awful?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore – CBS Boston

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore

Providence! I was musing on this question–how does government get to be so awful, that it actively abuses its citizens and favors their enemies?–when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to post Martin Selbrede’s article, He Fought the Good Fight, from the Chalcedon website.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/he-fought-the-good-fight

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore was persecuted and imprisoned because his sobriety-based approach to treating opioid addiction was much more successful than the conventional more-drugs-to-treat-drugs approach. For his success, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts sought to destroy him.

Dr. Kishore died earlier this summer.

Although they took away his freedom, they couldn’t stop other states from embracing Dr. Kishore’s model and successfully applying it.

But to come to Martin’s point:

Isaiah 57:1-2, The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

By contrast, the closing verses of Isaiah 56 describe the sloth, the ignorance, the carelessness, and the folly of leaders, false shepherds, who wouldn’t know a righteous man if they tripped over him.

Government gets awful as it grows to be more and more dominated by self-absorbed, foolish, ignorant, careless, shallow, venal, greedy, crooked leaders. Political science courses never explained it, but Scripture surely does. It gets to be that the leaders will persecute any righteous men or women in their midst–if they’re aware of them at all.

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore, servant of God, benefactor of the public–well done, thou good and faithful servant! Well done.

Book Review: ‘The Dumbest Generation’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

The Dumbest Generation, Mark Bauerlein, Penguin | Yannig Roth / This is my blog

The purposeful cultivation of ignorance–and they call it “education.”

I’m rather proud of this book review. It took a lot of thought to set it up. Being able to write snippets of it here on the blog first was a big help.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/book-review-the-dumbest-generation-how-the-digital-age-stupefies-young-americans-and-jeopardizes-our-future

We have an education system whose finished products, at least half of them, brag about never reading a book. Others read only what they need for work. And the more hi-tech “educational electronics” we throw at them, the less they read, the less they learn. And they take a perverse pride in it. They embrace their ignorance.

I suppose it’s possible that if you used computers etc. properly, you really would enhance your education. But that’s a moot point because hardly anyone ever uses computers to enhance his education. Mostly all this expensive electronics is used for idle pastimes.

Anyway, read this book. You’ll understand why American education is perhaps the most expensive disaster ever inflicted on a nation.

‘Another Tough Assignment’ (2018)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

See the source image

For the life of me I can’t remember the actual name of this book. It has been blotted out of my mind. So you’ll just have to settle for the pseudonymn I gave it: Deeply Neurotic People with Feminism Thrown In. 

Another Tough Assigment

One of the major problems with Young Adults fiction these days is, it’s written by rather shallow adults who just don’t have a clue. Not that this one was badly written; but it was very badly thought out. They think they understand teenagers. Heaven help us.

Anyhow, this post generated a lively discussion which you may enjoy revisiting. And if I can ever remember the name of this tomfool book, I’ll come back and edit it in.

A World of ‘Empty Suits’ (Rushdoony)

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Empty suit Stock Photos - Page 1 : Masterfile

Yes, we do get disappointed, yes, it’s hard to take… when we need a solid Christian stand from our leaders–from our clergy, at least. if no one else–and all we get is dodgeball. R.J. Rushdoony in 1995 took aim at “Empty Suits.”

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/empty-suits

Where do these craven, chicken-hearted, fumfering leaders come from? They come from us. Even if elections are rigged in favor of the empty suits, the lucky empty winners are still born and raised and educated by us. No enemy country imposed them on us. They didn’t drop out of the sky.

If we don’t seek God, neither will our leaders.

The Adult Fantasy’s Not So Hot, Either

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Emissary by Thomas Locke, Paperback | Barnes & Noble®

Yesterday we looked at a review of an appallingly bad fantasy novel pitched to children.

Today’s mouldering pile of rubbish was marketed to adults.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/review-of-christian-novel-emissary

Question! When in America did “mainstream” come to mean “completely outside the Christian world-view,” and how did we ever allow that to happen?

Christian fiction author T. Davis Bunn, with a string of best-sellers on his resume, decided a few years ago to write “a wholly secular fantasy”, Emissary, under the pseudonym of Thomas Locke; and a major Christian publisher decided to publish it.

Emissary contained every fantasy cliche known to man; it was a veritable thesaurus of cliches. Why in the world do fantasy writers do this??? I mean, it’s “fantasy,” right–and that means it’s supposed to be imaginative. Like, what is the freakin’ point of a thoroughly unimaginative fantasy? Why bother to write it? Why bother to read it? If you’re an experienced fantasy reader, you’ll already know precisely what sort of characters will appear in the story, you’ll know exactly what they’ll say and do on any occasion, and the only surprise you’ll ever get is if you drop the book and fall out of your chair trying to pick it up. If you even bother.

Also, many of these fantasy cliches, in addition to their thorough predictability, are basically pagan–not “Christian” in any sense of the word. Why did Mr. Bunn waste his talents on such bilge?

Fantasy matters because it has access to regions of the heart and mind not easily explored by other kinds of stories. It matters because it ought to be included in Christ’s Kingdom and put at the service of that kingdom, not reserved as a province of neo-paganism.

And I wonder if Mr. Bunn just stopped caring about such things.

 

 

Truly Abysmal Children’s Literature

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I’ve done a lot of book reviews for Chalcedon, and I thought you might like me to share them with you.

Some of these books were breathtakingly, astoundingly bad. Here’s a book supposedly written for children under 12–Spartan and the Green Egg: The Poachers of Tiger Mountain.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/book-review-of-spartan-and-the-green-egg-the-poachers-of-tiger-mountain

Looking back on it, this book is more hair-raisingly awful than it seemed while I was reading it. Conferring virtual omnipotence on children, by means of insanely high technology, is not an idea I can get comfortable with.

And what would possess any mother to name her baby “Spartan”?

This book is just so incredibly bad, I might actually be afraid to read it to a child. What if it puts him off reading for life? What if he gets mad at me for insulting his intelligence?

But worst of all–

What if he thinks it’s good?

I wake up screaming.

Our First ‘Dr. Kishore’ Article

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

2 with Cape ties face Medicaid fraud charges - z* Breaking News Updates - capecodtimes.com - Hyannis, MA

Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore, persecuted hero

This is the first of Martin Selbrede’s 18 articles on the pioneering addiction treatment work of Dr. Punyamurtala Kishore and his persecution at the hands of Massachusetts medical and law enforcement authorities.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/massachusetts-protects-medical-industrial-complex

Once they’d successfully “demonized [him] as a monster,” the authorities set about discrediting Dr. Kishore’s character, ruining him financially, and finally packing him off to prison.

His crime: finding a better way to treat opioid addiction instead of just replacing one addictive drug with another.

These are long articles, but they’re important. With opioid addiction claiming thousands of victims all over the country, Dr. Kishore’s sobriety-based approach produced far better results than what the medical establishment had to offer–and for this he was severely punished.

All 18 articles are available at http://www.chalcedon.edu/ .