What Do You Leave Behind?
January 04, 2006
Good Lord, should I laugh or despair in times when fresh air is so rare and a little comes along? Mark Steyn is a man stating some of the most important plain and obvious truths of the day, truths that the Church has been hard-pressed to defend (especially to its own in the West) while otherwise estimable Protestant cobelligerents have ignored and rejected them with no real thought or debate until quite recently, which is liable to be too little, too late. My main frustration with Evangelicals and NeoCalvinists, and that of some of my colleagues, is that in their charge to “engage the culture for Christ” they have generally walked quite happily into precisely this trap:
…the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society–government health care, government day care (which Canada’s thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain’s just introduced). We’ve prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity–“Go forth and multiply,” because if you don’t you won’t be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.
This is What Do You Leave Behind? in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Blogging Kills, Part II | Next: “Grassroots” | TrackBack (2) | Comments (0)
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» Addenda on Steyn from The Japery
This piece on C. S. Lewis and magic and science augments Steyn’s critique pretty well, as he never seems to consider the more vexed problem of western modernity being self-destructive for reasons deeply bound and perhaps integral to it. This… [Read More]
Tracked on January 12, 2006 04:04 AM
» Spengler from The Japery
“Spengler” makes a good complement to Steyn. Actually, he goes far beyond Steyn…. [Read More]
Tracked on February 24, 2006 06:46 PM