Stigmas Aren’t All Bad
One of the missions of contemporary culture, perfectly consistent with the grand narrative of liberalism, is to destigmatize various identities and behaviors traditionally considered sinful in Christendom. Identity and behavior can't finally be separated, of course, and one of the most successful moves the destigmatizers have made is to weld them together. A gay man in this view is—he just is—"a homosexual," rather than a person who commits homosexual acts. This makes perfect sense given the...
Delightful Video by Entertaining and Effective Lexicographer
I no longer need to be persuaded that descriptivism, not prescriptivism, is the way to go in linguistics—although I hasten to say that I will and do most certainly prescribe language choices for the only people for whom it is appropriate for me to do so: my kids. But the source of my prescriptions is a set of descriptions. I describe to my kids, "This is the way educated people talk, and when you're in given situations (and I'll let you know), you need to talk that way, too, if you want to...
CFR
Walsh and Middleton make a good point about the Creation-Fall-Redemption story of Scripture: Christians may tend to think of the Bible as all about sin (fall) and salvation (redemption). But without creation, neither of these concepts makes sense. What is sin but the violation of the way God created things to be? And what is salvation but the restoration of God's creation to its (our) original purposes? (pp. 43-44)
Ross Douthat on Past Conservative Predictions
Read the whole thing, but if you want a little help getting to the good parts, feel free to use my highlights. The basic thesis is this: If you look at the post-1960s trend data—whether it’s on family structure and social capital, fertility and marriage rates, patterns of sexual behavior and their links to flourishing relationships, or just big-picture trends in marital contentment and personal happiness more generally—the basic social conservative analysis has turned out to have more...
Question Authority?
In our contemporary society, it is almost automatically assumed, primarily under Immanuel Kant's influence, that the mature adult must attain moral autonomy and question critically every directive that authority makes. When I was much younger, I think I would have found this a persuasive position, especially in the wake of the civil rights revolution, the Vietnam War and, of course, Watergate. Yet in the real world this is impossible. It is impossible to question authority in general. If we...