Years ago, in an article he wrote for the New Yorker titled “My Philosophy,” in a section subheadlined “Eschatological Dialects as a Means of Coping with Singles,” Woody Allen wrote: “We can say that the universe consists of a substance, and this substance we will call ‘atoms,’ or else we will call it ‘monads.’ Democritus...
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Sins of Omission
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that, as Mark Noll puts it, “there is not much of an evangelical mind”; that, despite all their other virtues, “American evangelicals are not exemplary for their thinking, and they have not been for several generations”; and that, at a popular level, “modern American evangelicals have failed notably...
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A Lot to Be Desired
As an orthodox Bible-believing Christian, I find that much of what is said by the so-called “religious right” and “religious left”—to put it charitably—leaves a lot to be desired and is, ironically, un-Christian. This summer, on NBC’s Today program, the head of the Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, said: “What we’re trying to do is not...
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Society is to Blame
Patti Davis, Reagan’s little girl whose nude body graced the cover of the July Playboy, has finally settled down, gotten her act together—and written a novel about bondage. Yes, bondage. And it’s titled, well, Bondage. Discussing her book on the NBC Today show with interviewer Katie Couric, who noted that it’s about people “totally out...
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Darwin Is Wrong
Regarding the inaugural “poem” . . . Joan Rivers. Atrium. A poet manqué without a poem. Or even a coherent thought. But sexually, racially, politically correct. Living proof Darwin is wrong. The fittest have not survived. Once mute. Now, unfortunately, speaking. Mind-numbing gibberish that would make Ferlinghetti puke. She a species that has not, alas,...
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Sex and Soldiering
My, how time flies, sir. It seems like only yesterday (it was in late November 1991, actually) that you were apologizing after being caught telling a so-called gay-bashing anti-lesbian joke to Jerry Brown. You remember, the one that was inadvertently picked up by a C-Span microphone. I thought that what was wrong with the joke...
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The Puritan and the Profligate
John Lofton Interviews Allen Ginsberg Lofton: In the first section of your poem “Howl” you wrote: “I saw the best young minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” Did this also apply to you? Ginsberg: That’s not an accurate quotation. I said the “best minds,” not “the best young minds.” This is what is called...