Tag: www.chalcedon.edu

We Have Lost Another Saint

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Dr. Kishore (L) with Martin Selbrede

Dr. Punyamurtula Kishore, whose pioneering work in the treatment of opioid addiction set new records for effectiveness–yet landed him in prison–has died.

Our Chalcedon print magazine, Faith for All of Life, ran 18 articles about him by Martin Selbrede, starting in 2014. All 18 are available at http://www.chalcedon.edu/ .

Dr. Kishore, frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the medical establishment’s approach–replacing one addictive drug with another–came up with a sobriety-based treatment program instead. It worked. At least, it worked much better than the old way. And they couldn’t forgive him for that.

Dr. Kishore sacrificed his good name, his livelihood, and his freedom for his patients. He fell ill in April of this year and died on June 20. A movie about his life and work is in post-production.

We don’t know how many lives Dr. Kishore saved. We wish he could have lived to see his methods adopted in all 50 states (several have already done so) and his work publicly vindicated.

For the details of Dr. Kishore’s work and sacrifice, see Martin Selbrede’s articles on the Chalcedon website.

‘Intellectuals and Society’ Revisited

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Guest Commentary: What Thomas Sowell Can Teach Us About Standing Up to the Mob | Commentaries | courierjournal.net

I reviewed this book 11 years ago–Intellectuals and Society, by Thomas Sowell–and having revisited it recently, I can still recommend it. No one more accurately analyzes the machinations of elitist fatheads than Thomas Sowell.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/a-review-of-intellectuals-and-society

But he doesn’t get into why Western intellectuals are so feckless, so wrong, and so stupid. It’s easy to explain, though: these people have explicitly rejected God. They’re stuck worshiping themselves, and it leads them into a multitude of errors.

I admire Dr. Sowell. I enjoy listening to him on the radio. I have enjoyed and profited from his books and columns. And I can’t explain why he didn’t examine the intellectuals’ rejection of God. It’s this that makes them so profoundly stupid.

On the whole, though, his analysis of the absurd beliefs of intellectuals, the sheer uselessness of their ideas, their pomposity, and their shallowness–well, you just can’t beat it. Not even after 11 years.

We do need to understand what we are up against. We can get some of that understanding from Thomas Sowell.

‘The Reversal of Standards’ (1990)

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Amazon.com: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. - "Real Music": Rosalyn Tureck: Movies & TV

What do “conservatives”… conserve?

I often find myself wondering, What are certain “conservatives” conserving? Not the Christian faith. Not the culture.

R.J. Rushdoony beat me to it, though. He was asking that question in 1990.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-reversal-of-standards

He reserved some of his sharpest barbs for churchmen who chattered about “values” without even mentioning where those values come from, and at most venturing “an occasional ‘nod to God’.”

Even 30 years ago, prominent “conservatives” had cut themselves off from their Christian roots. Without those roots, whatever anyone says is merely his personal opinion, nothing more than that. It may have been more eloquent, but William F. Buckley’s opinion was worth no more than Elizabeth Warren’s. If it ain’t planted in the solid, nurturing ground of Christianity, it will bear no fruit. (Buckley did turn back to Christianity later in life.)

By 2010 I realized that bow tie-and-country club conservatives had nothing to offer but another brand of worldly chit-chat. I hear so much of it.

Conservatives! What do you think you’re conserving?

Book Review: ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ by Sen. Josh Hawley

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Amazon.com: The Tyranny of Big Tech (9781684512393): Hawley, Josh: Books

Senator Hawley wants Congress to rein in the oligarchs and world government wannabes who own and operate Big Tech–before they can stomp our constitutional republic out of existence.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-tyranny-of-big-tech-by-sen-josh-hawley-book-review

The tech giants tried to suppress this book, but Regnery has published it and it’s doing very well. In fact, he’s already made a success of it just by delivering his message. These are things that rich and powerful bad guys don’t want us to know.

Hawley analyzes and explains the various dirty tricks Big Tech pulls on the American people. The light bulb clicks on: “Oh! So that’s what they do with all that information they have on me!”

As yet the people can’t stop these abuses. We are waiting eagerly to support powerful competition that’ll draw millions of customers away from the existing tech monsters by not spying on us, not selling our private information–and by not censoring us!

Because in addition to getting richer than anyone has ever been before, the Big Tech honchos are fully committed to reshaping the world according to their own mad utopian vision of it.

May the Lord confound them as He confounded the builders of Babel.

 

How Not to Write a ‘Christian’ Novel

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Post It Note With Hardwritten College With Question Mark On Money.. Stock Photo, Picture And Royalty Free Image. Image 139271566.

Speaking of “Christian fiction,” I’ve decided to revisit one of the weirdest novels I’ve ever read in my life–Heaven Breaks In, by Nicholas Cappas.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/heaven-breaks-in-by-nicholas-cappas

All the action in the story takes place on a college campus. What planet it’s on, that’s what mystified me. This college is remarkable for its total lack of sex and drugs, protest movements, Far Left Crazy… It resembles a 1950s sitcom episode. I mean, really, what kind of college is this? How did it get to be immune to all the loony schiff going on at all the other colleges?

The students are weird, too. They all have gobs and gobs of spending money–which they spend on meals at posh restaurants. And clothes. What kind of 19-year-old male, who has a thousand bucks to spend, makes a beeline for the upscale men’s clothing store?

And then comes the crisis! Spring break is here. Does the protagonist go on a glamorous trip to the Bahamas with his friends, or a glamorous missionary trip to Kenya with his other friends?

Did you ever have to make that choice?

The preachy weirdness of this novel wows me more now than it did four years ago. In it, the angels are worried about saving this kid’s soul. From what? From football? How hard can it be to save a soul in an environment that’d be the envy of any monastery?

“Christian fiction” has to do better than this. Much, much better!

Rushdoony: ‘The Freedom to Sin’

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Sistine Chapel, Adam and Eve, Satan, Tree of Life' Print - Michelangelo Buonarroti | AllPosters.com

Adam and Eve (by Michelangelo, in the Sistine Chapel): They shouldn’t have listened to the Serpent… but they did.

“We live now in an age of judgment which will soon break over us,” R.J. Rushdoony wrote in 1986.

Looking around at 2021, I think we can say it has.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-freedom-to-sin

At first glance, it might seem very odd to see Rushdoony writing about the “freedom to sin.” But he is not saying, as Rasputin used to say, “We must sin in order to be saved!” What he’s getting at are the continuing efforts by the Godless to root out and abolish sin–and how these eventually add up to the biggest sins of all.

God didn’t create us to be paper dolls, with no will of our own. Sophomoric persons think He should have created us in such a way that we would have no choice but to be good all the time.

But a birdbath is incapable of sin. Does that make the birdbath righteous?

Why did God create us with “the freedom to sin”?

Rushdoony’s answer can be found in the article cited above.

Rushdoony: ‘The Doctrine of Original Sin’

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Frustrated Man Teacher Yells At Students In Class Looks At The.. Stock Photo, Picture And Royalty Free Image. Image 62201374.

“You’re all racists, dammit!”

R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1993, long before Everything was Racist. I can’t help but be amazed by his prescience. He looked deeply into the past and present, and saw the future.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-doctrine-of-original-sin

Somewhere along the way, “thinkers” (LOL) discarded the doctrine of Original Sin, which stated a moral fact and explained why people do bad things: because they’re sinners. But that left them without an explanation, so they had to cook up a new one: we do bad things because we belong to the evil race, or the oppressor class. The one is a “genetic fact”–which precludes conversion or repentance: how are you going to repent your biology?–the other a socio-economic fact. And just lately we’ve got “the wrong gender,” too. So many ways to hate and fear each other!

Constant race-hustling must lead to rage, conflict, violence, and maybe even war if it goes unchecked for long enough.

Sin, the moral fact, has been atoned for by Jesus Christ. We are all sinners outside of Christ; inside, His righteousness is imputed to us.

But if you’re bad because you’re white or male–well, you’re out of luck.

“Everything is Racist” is a toxic ideology, fit only for angry fools.

 

The Ones You’re Not Allowed to Argue With

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Images From a Worldwide Protest Movement - The Atlantic

I don’t know how I missed this essay by Martin Selbrede when it came out in 2006, but I’m glad I found it and read it today, on the Chalcedon website.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/the-strategy-of-subversion

In reviewing Ann Coulter’s book (Godless: The Church of Liberalism) and analyzing the subversion of the English language by those who seek to subvert the entire culture, and enslave it, Martin provides a dazzling insight relevant today. Very relevant indeed!

Leftids “win” arguments by choosing as their spokesmen persons who, by virtue of their sufferings, enjoy a moral authority which no one can question without appearing to be a heartless villain. We see it today: do you want your Marxist, racist, mischief-making cabal to prosper, and to skate right past any criticism? Do you want to make it above criticism?

Just call it “Black Lives Matter”! So anyone who dares to question it can be–and certainly will be–accused of saying “Black lives don’t matter.” All dissent, all criticism, is instantly morphed into Hate.

This is just one of the tactics leftids use to black out whole issues and remove them from discussion. In fact, they can stifle any discussion at all: unless you loudly agree with them, 100%, you are Guilty Of Hate. And if you don’t try to argue with them–well, that’s not good enough! ‘Cause “Silence Is Violence.” Everything but total submission is forbidden.

But only God is entitled to total submission. These people are playing with dynamite.

Martin’s essay is a little long, but it’s packed with meat and well worth reading. Not a word of it has gone out of date!

An Encouraging Word

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In this Easter essay by Mark Rushdoony, “The Hope of the Believer,” we find encouragement that comes from God’s word. We need all the encouragement we can get, as we witness “the self-destructive paths our culture is currently pursuing.” Thankfully, he Lord never runs out of it.

https://chalcedon.edu/blog/the-hope-of-the-believer

We need to study Christ’s Resurrection not as just a historical event that’s over and done with, Mark writes, but as having urgent relevance to our lives now and in the future; because “our Lord is now at work, as He has been, and that ‘the gates of hell’ will not prevail against Him or His Kingdom.”

We really do need to keep that in mind.

R.J. Rushdoony on ‘The Retreatists’

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St. Stephen

When R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1994, we had no “Clergy for Choice” promoting abortion, no unrepenting “gay clergy,” no “re-imagining” conferences of minor league theologians trying to take the Cross out of Christianity. But we do now, and what he wrote in 1994 is only even more starkly true today.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-retreatists

The question he asks, he dares today’s churches to answer: “How will Christ the King treat a church that hands His world over to His enemies?” Ouch.

In Acts Chapter 6, the church in Jerusalem creates and appoints deacons to minister to her members, adding to the church an active agency for helping the poor and needy. In no time at all the establishment turns against the deacons and puts Stephen to death. That’s how important the deacons were. But in our time, in many of the churches, deacons have lost their function–if you can even find any deacons at all.

We as Christians need to reclaim lost ground for Christ’s Kingdom: too much of it has been surrendered.