A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

A Must-Read Book Review At The Gospel Coalition.org

A few summers back I was an intern for World Magazine and Dr. Marvin Olasky in Manhattan for three months.  One of the other interns working there at the same time was Alisa Harris.  Ms. Harris has written a book called Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith From Politics.

I've yet to read the thing, but a new friend I met at The Acton Institute's summer conference back in June, Andrew Walker, has written a wonderful review of the book over at TheGospelCoalition.org and I highly recommend you check it out!

An excerpt:

Harris gets a lot right in her book—namely, that “something is deeply wrong with the evangelical politics in which our childhood were immersed” (8). Her volume reminds us that however we vote, we must be vigilant and chastened in how we arrive at the decision. Truly, no party in American politics is the Christian party, for no party up to this point in time has adopted (nor should they) any particular religious creed into its platform. Her book offers both an important reminder in how Christians often wrongly use their rhetoric to support their positions and also a strong rebuke to the “politically obsessed.” She approvingly quotes Peggy Noonan, who warns, “Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their nature; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.” A wise warning, indeed.

What the reader will notice, however, is that Harris’s call for love, justice, and a truce in the culture wars results in the now predictable angst-ridden liberalism. She may wish to escape such labels, but her voting record and newfound political principles reveal it. This story has been told before. Whether it be Donald Miller’s youthful protest, Anne Lamott’s introspective self-doubt, or Jim Wallis’s liberalism, Harris’s volume is but another in a long litany of what Marvin Olasky calls “self-hating evangelical” manifestos.

Give the full review a tumble, folks!

Richards and Smith: Two Men You Need To Know

Two of the speakers at The Discovery Institute conference I went to were Wesley J. Smith and Jay Richards.  Watch these video clips of each respective thinker and tell me what they have to say doesn't need to be heard by Christians across the country.

First, Wesley J. Smith discussing his book A Rat Is A Pig Is A Dog Is A Boy:

And then there is this presentation Dr. Richards gave at The Cato Institute, articulating the thinking behind his best-selling book, Money, Greed, and God:

Pass these clips along to your friends and family. If you don't, they won't be heard.  Not on secular campuses.  Not on most Christian campuses.

Cyberbullying: Let’s Get The Government Involved, Right?

Despite my enormous, Chestertonian stature, I was never a bully.  Well, I take that back.  A few times I used my size to intimidate kids who were picking on smaller kids, so call that whatever you will.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have more than enough flaws to highlight, but picking on "losers" and "nerds" was never one of them.  The only reason I bring this up is because of the recent "bullying" hysteria that seems to be sweeping the nation.  I don't know what it is like to be bullied, and I don't know what it's like to bully someone.

I believe that it happens, and I'm not trying to make light of students who have felt physically intimated or who have been emotionally terrorized by some obnoxious boy or girl at their school.   However, we may have crossed a ridiculous line this week with news from (gasp!) California that a new bill has been signed into law that allows public schools to punish (and in some cases, expel) students for "cyberbullying" that takes place away from the school's campus.

What better way to highlight the madness of an issue than to "Google search" the topic in question.  Here are a few of the gems I tracked down among the myriad of Google images one finds when they type "cyberbullying" into the search engine of choice these days.

Let's start things off with a classic, McGee and Me-like cartoon depiction of what our collective response to bullying in general needs to be:

I think the message has been conveyed.  We don't want 40 year old men with pony tails harassing harmless-looking junior highers who probably made the mistake of waking up their bizarre, older, unemployed neighbor from the "beer nap" he had been enjoying on a lawn chair in the front yard.

Moving up the ladder of bullying to the kind that takes place in conjunction with cell phone usage, we have this dandy:

To my eye, what we have here is an undercover police officer busting some high school punk who wanted to buy weed, and the young punk's friend couldn't resist snapping a photo of the encounter in hopes of scoring a sweet Facebook profile pic.  If this is a bullying situation, again, why are fully grown men stealing lunch money from 15 year old kids in back allies?  And I'm fairly certain that we already have laws on the books against dudes attacking minors in allies.

Continuing on our journey toward cyberbullying nirvana, we arrive at the space set aside for harassing emails one might receive from a mean-spirited peer.

Might this girl simply have received an electronic mail informing her that another girl already likes the boy she had feelings for?  Does it really have to be bullying we are witnesses to?

Or how about this glum chap:

Now, it is more likely that this young man is watching a sad episode of LOST or 24 than it is that he is reading a harassing electronic correspondence with a fellow classmate.

And these cute little kindergartners simply cannot have made enough enemies to warrant emotionally-crippling emails from a peer:

Look at them!  They're sort of giggling.  I refuse to believe they are being bullied!

But now we do come to some more questionable pics that may in fact depict cyberbullying.  There is this:

And this:

Alright, I concede that these photos are much more incriminating (and potentially hurtful).  All I will say is that if I complained every time "people" (aka friends, family members, and loved ones) left me notes like these on my computer screen, I'd have to quit my day job to cite them all.  And plus, these menacing messages may have been part of an elaborate practical joke.  Or meant to inspire these girls to greatness, like when Rocky's trainer (Mick) told him he was rubbish as a boxer (but really Mick thought Rock was a good boxer).

Last, and certainly not least, we have snapshots of cyberbullying in which the subject is so unliked, his or her own computer lashes out at them:

And this:

If you are harassed and bullied by your PC, stop taking LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs.

I close things out with this, something I try and live my life by (and so should you).

Best way to ensure your kids won't be cyberbullied?  Don't let them use the internet so much.

Didn't even need a law to tell me that!