[goldstategop]

Yep. Its the liberals and their secular base that keeps shrinking. No wonder they live in dread of a theocracy. It could turn out to be America's obly salvation in the forthcoming battle with Islam. They should welcome America's being the last redoubt of Judeo-Christian values. If they're missing anything, as Mark Steyn could recapture it in a pithy made to order phrase, the secular Left is pretty much the wave of the past and what you hear are its dying screams. The future belongs to the righteous.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[HOTTIEBOY]

ping

[fanfan]

Ping!

[hosepipe]

Ping

[Lesforlife]

Just sent to my favorite Athiest with the title:

Steyn's Christmas Brilliance

[XJarhead]

And as for my excreta and the hard-working nematode, who gets the better end of that deal?.

Only Steyn can pull off something like that line. Hilarious!

[Mercat]

best on the subject that I've read.

[metesky]

Bumpity bump

[shezza]

...the so-called rationalist ought to be capable of a rational assessment of the comparative strengths and weaknesses of different societies. If he is, he’ll find it hard to conclude other than that the most secular societies have the worst prospects. Rationalism is killing poor childless Europe. But instead of rethinking the irrationalism of rationalism, the rationalists are the ones clinging to blind faith, ever more hysterically.

No one can turn a phrase quite like Steyn. Excellent, as usual.

[denydenydeny]

Possibly the best Steyn ever, and that is saying something.

[ichabod1]

In the same way, assume that there was no baby in the manger, no virgin birth, no resurrection. A rationalist ought still to be able to conclude that, as a societal model, Christianity is more rational than Eutopian secularism.

An excellent distillation of what C.S. Lewis spent so much time teaching us after he left the childish world of Narnia behind, and allowed himself to be captured by Jesus Christ.

[Servant of the 9]

For a big-ideas guy, Watson is missing the bigger question: something has to be ‘responsible for most of the wars and bigotry’, and if it wasn’t religion, it would surely be something else. In fact, in the 20th century, it was. Europe’s post-Christian pathogens of communism and Nazism unleashed horrors on a scale inconceivable even to the most ambitious Pope.

Mere copycats.
Monotheism was the wellspring of genocide and hate thy neighbor for what he thinks.
Before monotheism, man attacked man in self defense or to gain resources, not from pure spite hatred and bloodymindedness.

SO9

[Mr. Jeeves]

‘Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.’

Though I am as skeptical of religious fervor as any other Deist/Objectivist, Watson misses the mark completely here. The wars and bigotry stem from the belief that one's own particular variant of ethical monotheism is the One True Way, and that all who oppose you are heretics and deserve to be put to the sword. "The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world" serves as a moderating influence to that impulse, and has prevented wars and bigotry in societies where it has been adopted.

[The KG9 Kid]

I long for the bygone days where political thought was distributed by penned missive rather than the odious soundbite accompanied by makeup, Botox, facelifts, blow-dryers, cameras, and complementary lighting.

If the realm of Hamilton's Federalist, John Jay, Tom Paine, and Sam Adams were substituted in contemporary times for what serves as political discourse today, Mark Steyn would be single-handedly vanquishing all comers.

Unfortunately, the broadcast nitwitisms of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi reach more people than Steyn's printed word does.

Reading is harder than flipping on the tube, you know.

[Junior_G]

On both sides of the Atlantic, the godly will inherit the Earth: in the United States, blue-state birthrates mean that in 20 years America will look a lot less like John Kerry’s Massachusetts and a lot more like Texas and Utah

Great article, but I disagree with this final point. Just because red-staters are the ones having children doesn't mean those children will still hold to red-state ideals once they've been run through the leftist state-run education system. Leftists don't need to give birth to the children as long as they can raise them from grade-school through college.

[Elsie]

‘Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.’

It's amazing that non-christians spout this exact same line a lot of the time! Must be a VAC out there somewhere!

[joesnuffy]

Better for everyone that we live as if there really is one creator God to whom we owe everything including our final destination in the hereafter...(of course you'd better live according to the 'correct one and only God' and not 'the wrong one and only god' as they each have vastly different ends and means by which life must be lived)

There after all only two choices

Even if we never really believe unto salvation....but have a sort of religiosity/godliness but denying the power thereof...the end is exactly the same as if we made all the other wrong choices..even though we made our space and time here more comfortable for others...

Which is a still good thing... even though the will to do such good things did not originate in us at all...but came down to us from the the creator and provider of all good things.. the one true God.

And so...is it really better to miss the mark completely by an evilly wide margin than to miss by only a a hairs-width...and call it good?

Only God can give the correct answer to that one....and all decisions are final.

Of course the whole notion of a 'purgatory' adds a whole new dimension I suppose..I dont put any faith in that...though YMMV :)

imo

[Taliesan]

Peter Watson, the author of a new book called Ideas: a History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, was interviewed by the New York Times the other day, and was asked to name ‘the single worst idea in history’. He replied:

‘Without question, ethical monotheism. The idea of one true god. The idea that our life and ethical conduct on Earth determines how we will go into the next world. This has been responsible for most of the wars and bigotry in history.’

Just finished Mr. Watson's "The Modern Mind: an Intellectual History of the 20th Century."

Not a bad book. But as you near the end, and you've suffered with him through the intellectual wasteland that is post-Christian thought (and Watson recognizes that the twilight of faith after the enlightenment is a problem) you expect him to say something profound, or tragic. He ends by opining that Darwinism is the best idea ever, and he hopes it gives mankind the sense of meaning we lost when we outgrew God. He hopes, but he doesn't seem to convince even himself.

[Tribune7]

A home run by Steyn.

[July 4th]

Marx has a lot more blood on his hands than Christ — other people’s blood, I mean

Heh heh.