Curtis Dahlgren
"Separation" of church & state? Or castigation of religion? To the point:
By Curtis Dahlgren
"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of insidious forces working from within." – General Douglas MacArthur
"While [America] retains its sound and healthful state, everything will be safe . . It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate . . the people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin." – President James Monroe
"An elective despotism is not the government we fought for." – Thomas Jefferson
THERE WERE NO "MINOR PROPHETS." So I said in my 6-24-04 "Amos" column. I'd been perusing "A Deficit of Decency" and a speech by Zel Miller in the Senate. He said Amos was "a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick. But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues, and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets." Amos provided Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with one of his most famous lines:
"Let justice rush down like rain, and let righteousness roll on like a mighty river."
I improved it a bit, but he was talking about a literal and equal Justice to come, not a nebulous "social" justice (so called by modernists). Their quest is a search for virtue in-lieu-of morality, a never ending hunt for so-called progress and justice. Even the seminaries seem to be taken over by "barometer Christians" who put a finger in the air to see which way the wind blows, to find the issues du jour.
"Someone said the 'the search for truth' is a delight to modern theologians, more important than the Truth itself, because 'the search' allows them to avoid taking a firm stand on anything. Their 'faith' is more like religious nihilsm than the faith of the Lord they profess to be working for – nihilism being a belief in 'nothing at all,' or nil." – my 3/03/18 column
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Founder, was asked if he was a democrat or an aristocrat. He said, "I am neither. I am a Christocrat." So much for the separation of religion from the public square! Rush, on the radio, said that when everything if up for dispute, when there are no objective facts, when things that are undeniably fact are not permitted to be, "we have a problem." The following is an excerpt from my "America's nervous breakdown" column (2/21/04):
"For decades, the theory of deconstruction has enjoyed a vogue in academe. It originated in linguistics, where it posited the none-too-radical idea that language was a function of shared meaning . . however, deconstruction passed into textual interpretation . . If deconstruction had confined itself to English departments, it might have served as just another analytical tool. But deconstructionists were rabid partisans who realized their theory had grave implications not just for literature, but for the very notion of reality . . .
"When reality itself is a subjective construct, morality is also relative . . In the longer view, the Clinton scandal not only raised the issue of deconstruction ['depends on what is is']; it was the latest and fiercest battle in what we might now recognize as a long cultural civil war." – L.A. Times, quoted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (1/07/99)
That was seven years after Pat Buchanan gave his "culture war" speech at the GOP convention.
voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/
1.
2.
Pat was excoriated by many of his fellow Republicans because he uttered the words "culture war." They had been advised by their consultancy "experts" for years not to even mention that. "Culture war" was to them what slavery was to the Whig party of 1852. The Whigs hoped the issue would "go away" if they didn't talk about it. To this day, many in both parties say "We're into government, not culture." RINOs said they would "leave that to the theologians"; and they lost in 1992.
Michael Savage said that someone at the head of a national ticket needs to tackle the culture problem, and Donald Trump did (that's what "make America great" means) and he WON. But not without making enemies in Deep Foggy Bottom, and the media. As Charlton Heston had said:
"I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from 'ridiculous' and 'duped' to 'a brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.'"
Short and sweet and to the point! Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
P.S. One more quotation, this one from George Orwell:
"We have now sunk to the depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
PPS: More to come.
© Curtis Dahlgren
April 13, 2019
"I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of insidious forces working from within." – General Douglas MacArthur
"While [America] retains its sound and healthful state, everything will be safe . . It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate . . the people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin." – President James Monroe
"An elective despotism is not the government we fought for." – Thomas Jefferson
THERE WERE NO "MINOR PROPHETS." So I said in my 6-24-04 "Amos" column. I'd been perusing "A Deficit of Decency" and a speech by Zel Miller in the Senate. He said Amos was "a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick. But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues, and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets." Amos provided Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with one of his most famous lines:
"Let justice rush down like rain, and let righteousness roll on like a mighty river."
I improved it a bit, but he was talking about a literal and equal Justice to come, not a nebulous "social" justice (so called by modernists). Their quest is a search for virtue in-lieu-of morality, a never ending hunt for so-called progress and justice. Even the seminaries seem to be taken over by "barometer Christians" who put a finger in the air to see which way the wind blows, to find the issues du jour.
"Someone said the 'the search for truth' is a delight to modern theologians, more important than the Truth itself, because 'the search' allows them to avoid taking a firm stand on anything. Their 'faith' is more like religious nihilsm than the faith of the Lord they profess to be working for – nihilism being a belief in 'nothing at all,' or nil." – my 3/03/18 column
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Founder, was asked if he was a democrat or an aristocrat. He said, "I am neither. I am a Christocrat." So much for the separation of religion from the public square! Rush, on the radio, said that when everything if up for dispute, when there are no objective facts, when things that are undeniably fact are not permitted to be, "we have a problem." The following is an excerpt from my "America's nervous breakdown" column (2/21/04):
"For decades, the theory of deconstruction has enjoyed a vogue in academe. It originated in linguistics, where it posited the none-too-radical idea that language was a function of shared meaning . . however, deconstruction passed into textual interpretation . . If deconstruction had confined itself to English departments, it might have served as just another analytical tool. But deconstructionists were rabid partisans who realized their theory had grave implications not just for literature, but for the very notion of reality . . .
"When reality itself is a subjective construct, morality is also relative . . In the longer view, the Clinton scandal not only raised the issue of deconstruction ['depends on what is is']; it was the latest and fiercest battle in what we might now recognize as a long cultural civil war." – L.A. Times, quoted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (1/07/99)
That was seven years after Pat Buchanan gave his "culture war" speech at the GOP convention.
voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/
1.
2.
Pat was excoriated by many of his fellow Republicans because he uttered the words "culture war." They had been advised by their consultancy "experts" for years not to even mention that. "Culture war" was to them what slavery was to the Whig party of 1852. The Whigs hoped the issue would "go away" if they didn't talk about it. To this day, many in both parties say "We're into government, not culture." RINOs said they would "leave that to the theologians"; and they lost in 1992.
Michael Savage said that someone at the head of a national ticket needs to tackle the culture problem, and Donald Trump did (that's what "make America great" means) and he WON. But not without making enemies in Deep Foggy Bottom, and the media. As Charlton Heston had said:
"I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from 'ridiculous' and 'duped' to 'a brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.'"
Short and sweet and to the point! Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
P.S. One more quotation, this one from George Orwell:
"We have now sunk to the depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
PPS: More to come.
© Curtis Dahlgren
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