Privacy

When I was growing up, as least as I remember it, much more was considered private than is today. It was considered bad manners to inquire too deeply about someone's health, their income, personal habits, politics, marital status, and such. If you were a friend (i. e., a real, rather than simply a Facebook friend) you knew most of this already. If you weren't, you didn't. And more to the point, you did not expect to. Today, of course, we live in an exhibitionist culture and our private lives are no longer all that private. Obviously, as the keeper of this humble blog, and a Facebook member besides, I am something of a contributor to that culture, even if a small one. But occasionally, I think back on the older culture, the one in which it was still possible to move somewhere new and start over fresh if your old life didn't work well, which it often didn't and still doesn't. As a believer in sin, but also in redemption, I wonder sometimes if what we have lost in our mad rush to embrace ever more technology is more than what we have gained.

Here's Peggy Noonan today, from her Wall Street Journal column, echoing my thoughts:

An odd thing is that when privacy is done away with, people don’t become more authentic, they become less so. What replaces what used not to be said is something that must be said and is usually a lie. ("The Eyes Have It," WSJ, May 21, 2010)

Read the whole thing.

The "Boys of Pointe du Hoc"

I like Peggy Noonan. I've liked her ever since I learned she was the speechwriter who wrote "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech for Ronald Reagan's D-Day commemoration (the 40th anniversary) all those years ago. After Lincoln's Gettsyburg Address, I don't think better words were ever spoken by a U.S. President in honor of men who sacrificed, some of them their lives, in service to a cause of ultimate nobility. The anniversary of that day approaches soon, on June 6th. Here's just a portion:

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.

Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor."

It's easy to forget, in these troubled days, that our nation has faced far worse calamities in the past. We who are worried about the fate of the Euro, the rise of Islamist terror and Iran and Pakistan's "Islamic bomb," and the weakening of the U.S. need to remember that we have seen worse. The blood of my grandfathers ran strong, and they clawed back the continent of Europe from the Nazis and re-took the Pacific from Imperial Japan. My father's generation fought the Soviets in hard places all over the world and finally set free the half of Europe which Roosevelt and Truman permitted to fall under their boots. We are not a perfect nation, nor are we a perfect people within it. And our generation may yet prove to be made of limper stuff than that of generations past. But I do not believe that this is so. I believe that we will rise again, by God's grace, as a force for good in the world.

The Man Cake

I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day, who told me that he had really gotten into cake decorating. I told him that no matter what they show on Ace of Cakes, this seems to be as much of a man card violation as being a dude who takes up figure skating. He told me that no, I just hadn't seen his cakes. I'm still inclined to think I'm right, but I ask you, dear reader, what do you think? Can you be an authentic man and be into cake decorating?

Here's his example of a manly cake. Apparently, the big football, the logos, the benches, and the Gatorade buckets are all edible.

Don't forget to cast your vote...

Our new Supreme Court Justice

So President Obama has nominated Elena Kagan, former dean of the Harvard Law School and veteran of the Clinton Administration to fill the latest vacancy on the Supreme Court. Me? Well, Karen and I both think she should have stuck with the movies. She made a wonderful addition to the Pit of Despair in The Princess Bride...

Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is probably the most controversial European politician of whom Americans have never heard. Mr. Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament who is currently being prosecuted by his own government for the "crime" of standing against the Islamification of his own country and with it the extinction of freedom. His political party (the PVV or "Freedom Party") is poised to win the majority of seats in Parliament in the June general elections, yet is invariably described as "far right" and "extreme" by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. Wilders himself considers Maggie Thatcher his role model for effective government, but I guess how "extreme" and "far right" a person seems depends on where you stand. The PVV has called for an end to "non-Western" immigration to a country where Mohammed is already the most popular boy's name. So the man who may be the next Prime Minister is on trial for defending his party's platform, which is an intriguing thing for a Western politician to experience, to be sure. In addition, even before his trial, he was accompanied 24/7 by armed guards, who are necessary to protect him from the various excitable folk who are eager to put him to death in the name of Allah. Ironic, isn't it? The people group threatening death to the country's most popular politician are neither prosecuted nor even labeled as extremists, while the one man who stands most in opposition to their evil is treated as a criminal.

The lights of Western culture are being turned out, one by one. Since when do Western governments start prosecuting people for their opinions (especially in Holland, of all places?!). Apparently, it is since we started thinking it is better to appease the Islamic minority in our midst, lest some of the lads among them start blowing people up. Yet when the norms of a culture go undefended against even violent opposition, it is not long before that culture goes extinct. And who would trade the West's glories for a gradual transformation into another of the world's Muslim tyrannies? I think the supply of those is already more than sufficient, thanks very much.

It is past time to wake up. Islam is on the move again, after centuries of relative somnolence. Where Islam conflicts with anything else, peace is rare and never lasting. Concessions made in the name of peace turn quickly into legal rights to be enforced against all citizens, whether Muslim or not. We cannot keep doing what we are doing. If the lamp of freedom is extinguished in the West, who knows how long it will be before it is re-lit, or even if it ever will be again?

The Contemporvant Church

This video is funny, in a bitingly sarcastic way. It skewers so many of the modern evangelical megachurch's methods all in one video. But it also grieves my heart in a way too, precisely because it is a necessary corrective. A motive to reach people can slip so easily into manipulating people to get the results we want to see, but which only truly come by God's power.

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.