In our time, politics and culture are increasingly oriented to the national scale on the one hand, and the immediate neighborhood on the other. A book, The Increasingly United States, by Daniel J. Hopkins, highlights this. However, in my view, besides […]
History
The USA: First World, Third World, or Western World?
The United States has always been somewhat ambiguous about whether its primary loyalty was to the European Western World or to the Western Hemisphere (i.e., the Americas). The Founders thought of themselves as upholding the rights of Englishmen, which they […]
Which Western Civilization? We’re on our Third One.
These days many people are trying to defend ‘Western Civilization’. Yet, at the moment, Western Civilization seems to be moving into Version 3.0, and the form it will take is not fully clear. So what, actually, are they trying to […]
A Conference Held to Honor my Father, Howard F. Ahmanson Sr.: “WWHD — What Would Howard Do?”
The “WWHD Conference — What Would Howard Ahmanson, Sr., Do?” — was held August 1, 2018, the year marking the 50th anniversary of my father’s death. I decided I wanted to sponsor it, mostly to honor him. In the tumultuous year […]
More on Manners and Customs
Some more issues on the issue of Manners and Customs. The issue of enforcement. Disobedience to Manners is enforced, let it be said, by discrimination and exclusion. Sometimes the person is explicitly told why he is excluded; sometimes he is […]
Manners, Customs, and Languages: The Spontaneous, A-Rational Kingdom
This particular kingdom is also not one of the three that evangelicals regularly talk about, but in the training of missionaries and evangelists, we pay a lot of attention to it! ‘Missiology’ includes endless classes on culture, and how we […]
More on the Whole ‘Judeo-Christian’ Meme
In my post four years ago, “9/11, Ten Years Later” I talked a little bit about the concept of ‘Judeo-Christian’. I’d like to expand on it. As my source says, the meme ‘Judeo-Christian’ originated in the United States after World War […]
Forgiveness and ‘Tolerance’ in Charleston
There has been some coverage about the ‘forgiveness’ offered to Dylann Roof by some of the Christian parishioners of Emanuel AME church that survived his attack. Matt Schiavenza in the The Atlantic describes this. [For some other responses as to why […]
150 Years Later, People are Getting All Excited About the Confederate Flag
Recently, a young racist terrorist shot a bunch of people in one of Charleston’s historic black churches. This kind of stuff happens. But it has aroused a whole new controversy about the Confederate flag, a century and a half after […]
Dynasties and All That
It will occur to the reader that I have been talking about dynasties and this and that without giving any clear background on them. The time has come to clarify. DYNASTIES In case you don’t know, a dynasty is a […]