Omniculture

Book Review: ‘Negrophilia’

November 15, 2010
By
Book Review: ‘Negrophilia’

By Mike Gray Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal — America’s Racial Obsession by Erik Rush WND Books 2010 Hardcover: 212 pages ISBN 978-193507182-2 Available on Amazon.com Despite common sense, despite everyday experience, despite the findings of biological science, and despite Biblical revelation to the contrary, racism has been all too common in America, a nation that because of its nominally “Christian” character should, of all countries, know better. In his book, Erik Rush identifies an important factor contributing to America’s divisions over race: Negrophilia. And what’s that? For decades now, Americans have been sold a bill of goods regarding those of us of African (or mixed) descent, other ethnic minorities, and race relations in general. That bill, tragically, contains the worst kind of intellectual excrement. White guilt is still encouraged, despite unprecedented opportunities for blacks in America. Black multimillionaires assert in the press that we live in a racist nation in which blacks are still oppressed—and millions nod mutely in agreement. Arguments for reparations to black people for slavery—a logical travesty as well as a horribly inequitable proposition—are still proffered with regularity and seriously considered by many Americans. As life has increasingly imitated art—here I refer to the portrayal

Read more »

Still “Under God” in the Lone Star State

October 23, 2010
By
Still “Under God” in the Lone Star State

by Mike Gray The pledge is a patriotic exercise, and it is made no less so by the acknowledgment of Texas’s religious heritage via the inclusion of the phrase “under God.” A pledge can constitutionally acknowledge the existence of, and even value, a religious belief without impermissibly favoring that value or belief, without advancing belief over non-belief, and without coercing participation in a religious exercise. Texas’s pledge is of this sort and consequently survives this challenge. Accordingly, the district court’s judgment dismissing the complaint is affirmed. — U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Texas has been rather dilatory in including God in their pledge: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled on October 13 that the words “under God” that appear in the Texas Pledge of Allegiance are constitutional. The term was added to the state pledge in 2007. The same year, David Wallace Croft, along with a handful of other parents of school-age children, filed a lawsuit against Texas Governor Rick Perry to challenge the words’ constitutionality and to have them banned. — Christine Dao, “‘Under God’ Stands in Texas Pledge,” full article at ICR

Read more »

Do Atheists Know More About Religion Than Believers?

October 16, 2010
By
Do Atheists Know More About Religion Than Believers?

by Mike Gray Polls of any kind should never be regarded as unimpeachable, and telephone polls even more so. Nevertheless, the results of one are now in: Recent survey results released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life suggest that atheists and agnostics know more about religion than evangelicals and Catholics. Pretty, ahem, damning at first blush; however, it’s always necessary to understand the nature of the questions: While this study may suggest that Christians don’t know as much about religion as atheists do, it appears that the questions that were asked pertained to trivial knowledge related to religion rather than to specific doctrines, or—more importantly—the application of doctrinal teachings to practical life. For example, knowing that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist is probably not as helpful to everyday living as, say, being familiar with Jesus’ teaching to pay taxes. Unlike Caesar—or any other governing body, past or present—the Dalai Lama won’t punish people for tax evasion. Read Christine Dao’s ICR article about the survey here.

Read more »

Study: Four Different Gods Rule United States

October 8, 2010
By

USA Today reports on a study that found Americans are divided among four different conceptions of God, which affect their ideas on all sorts of things. Or reflect their ideas on all sorts of things. Or both. It’s rather more complicated than the study suggests (I think the division into four categories is too facile), I think, but it’s an interesting angle. Story here.—STK

Read more »

“This Is for Ladies Only!”

October 1, 2010
By
“This Is for Ladies Only!”

ESPN is starting up a new programming brand for females: espnW. It will begin as a blog and could evolve into a TV channel.

Read more »

Chez Panisse or Red Lobster? The Fault Line Between Middle America and the Academic Elites

September 24, 2010
By
Chez Panisse or Red Lobster? The Fault Line Between Middle America and the Academic Elites

by Mike Gray “Do you know what the favorite restaurant of the white working class is?” she asked. “Red Lobster.” “Raise your hand if that is your favorite restaurant.” One hand went up. If you guessed that it belonged to this correspondent, you would be right. “I think that most of us prefer Chez Panisse in Berkeley,” Williams said. “People can’t understand why we would pay a lot of money for little food.”—Prof. Joan C. Williams before the Center for American Progress. At Accuracy in Academia, Malcolm Kline highlights the unconscious arrogance of today’s social engineers: Unemployment may be at record levels but academics are doing their level best to diversify a dwindling work force. “Work-family conflict is really a conflict over masculinity,” Joan C. Williams of the University of California posited at the Center for American Progress on September 16, 2010. The founding director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the UC-Hastings College of the Law bemoaned the “breadwinner ideal” that she claims Americans still cling to. We have “this habit of measuring masculinity by paycheck,” she claimed at CAP, and “measuring masculinity by hours worked.” …. She lamented that the current “political” situation would make her two

Read more »

About America’s “Ruling Class” and the Prospect of a Constitutional Revolution

September 18, 2010
By
About America’s “Ruling Class” and the Prospect of a Constitutional Revolution

by Mike Gray Never has there been so little diversity within America’s upper crust. Always, in America as elsewhere, some people have been wealthier and more powerful than others. But until our own time America’s upper crust was a mixture of people who had gained prominence in a variety of ways, who drew their money and status from different sources and were not predictably of one mind on any given matter. The Boston Brahmins, the New York financiers, the land barons of California, Texas, and Florida, the industrialists of Pittsburgh, the Southern aristocracy, and the hardscrabble politicians who made it big in Chicago or Memphis had little contact with one another. Few had much contact with government, and “bureaucrat” was a dirty word for all. So was “social engineering.” Nor had the schools and universities that formed yesterday’s upper crust imposed a single orthodoxy about the origins of man, about American history, and about how America should be governed. All that has changed. — Angelo M. Codevilla Codevilla’s article on The American Spectator pinpoints what might be a deadly bureaucratic uniformity in America’s societal elites—that is, those who populate “today’s administrative state”—quite different from the “man in the gray flannel

Read more »

Is “Who Created God?” an Illogical Question?

September 18, 2010
By
Is “Who Created God?” an Illogical Question?

by Mike Gray Don Batten at CMI says yes: This question is a major objection that atheists put forward to justify their disbelief. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), a famous British philosopher, in his influential little essay, “Why I Am Not a Christian,” put this forward as his first objection. Today’s atheists repeat the objection, including Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Australia’s own Philip Adams at the 2010 Global Atheists’ Congress in Melbourne Australia, who said, “The great argument for God was that there had to be a Creation, a beginning. … But my objection was simple. If God was the beginning who began God?” The universe had a beginning; almost no one disputes that, because the laws of thermodynamics demand it: the universe is running down and it cannot have been running down forever, or it would have already run down. No stars would be still churning out energy and we would not be here. Some have proposed one universe giving birth to another, but again, there cannot be an infinite series of such births and deaths, as each cycle must have less energy available than the last and if this had been happening for eternity,

Read more »

Book ‘em, Danno — No, Not THAT Guy, The One Who Wrote This Script!

September 9, 2010
By
Book ‘em, Danno — No, Not THAT Guy, The One Who Wrote This Script!

by Mike Gray Once in a blue moon Hollywood can revive a property that just about everyone can agree is an improvement—the third remake of The Maltese Falcon springs to mind. But that’s the exception that proves the rule. Much of the time ill-conceived and ill-executed revivals afford opportunities for backdoor tax write-offs, and in this economy—and with Tinsletown’s dearth of original ideas—that could be crucial to some film makers. What I’ve seen of the preview material for the new Hawaii Five-O series convinces me that we don’t have another Maltese Falcon on our hands. I’d like to be proven wrong, really I would, but not if what I saw on CBS’s fall preview show is any indication of how this series will be going. Just two instances: McGarrett and Danno in a fist fight—with each other!—like two bloodied bull sealions fighting over who gets to be in charge of the harem. In the original series, the two men had mutual respect for each other’s abilities—and Danno always deferred to McGarrett’s superior leadership—so this is pure science fiction. Also: Guns, guns, guns are everywhere—and automatic weapons at that. McGarrett may have been running a special police group, but never an

Read more »

Six Worldviews That Rule the Universe

August 24, 2010
By
Six Worldviews That Rule the Universe

by Mike Gray Author and minister David Noebel offers a concise summary of the six major views of the world that presently jockey with each other not just for mankind’s attention but also his allegiance. Noebel defines a worldview as “an interpretive framework”—much like a pair of glasses—through which you view everything. It refers to any set of ideas, beliefs, or values that provide a framework or map to help you understand God, the world, and your relationship to God and the world. Specifically, a worldview contains a particular perspective regarding at least each of the following ten disciplines: theology, philosophy, ethics, biology, psychology, sociology, law, politics, economics, and history. The six philosophies delineated by Noebel are: 1. The Christian Worldview — “Many people, including many Christians, do not realize that the Bible addresses all ten disciplines of a worldview. …. America has been described as a Christian nation. However, America—along with the rest of Western Civilization—has turned away from its intellectual, cultural and religious heritage.” 2. The Islamic Worldview — “It is estimated there are 1.3 billion followers of Islam. …. ‘Islam is not a “mere” religion; it is a complete way of life, an all-embracing social, political and

Read more »

Jenner Bikini Shoot Raises Some Eyebrows

August 23, 2010
By
Jenner Bikini Shoot Raises Some Eyebrows

Fourteen-year-old celebrity manqué Kendall Jenner has posed in a skimpy bikini for a racy photo shoot. Story here. Commentary here.

Read more »

A Hopeful Look at America’s Future from Victor Davis Hanson

August 21, 2010
By
A Hopeful Look at America’s Future from Victor Davis Hanson

by Mike Gray In an article on Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hanson says that all is not lost: Societies can sometimes implode abruptly, like the Mycenaeans from mysterious causes, the Aztecs before Cortés, or the Zulu nation in 1879 — or gradually and insidiously, such as Rome in the latter fifth century BC or Britain between 1946 and 1960. I don’t believe America is in inevitable decline or will falter, but I am starting to see things, superficially, that I have not observed in the past. After an informal tour of the deteriorating California he knows well, Hanson gives us his random thoughts on pressing social and political entities such as high federal taxes (to “gorge the beast”), fearful federal and state judiciaries, a lawsuit-happy federal government, an academic elite that has become “bankrupt” (“And by that I mean utterly mendacious”), with an excursion into what he calls “y favorite elite trope of the day … ‘Cordoba,’ as in the ‘Cordoba Initiative.’” He finishes with 11 “eccentric suggestions that would have far more positive repercussions than we think”: a flat tax, ending academic tenure, raising the Social Security retirement age, natural gas usage, maintaining defense spending, ending affirmative action, a

Read more »


"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard

Subscribe to The American Culture.

 

February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Jan    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  

Archive

Twitter Feed!

Follow the American Culture and S. T. Karnick on Twitter! Send message "follow stkarnick1" to 40404 on your cell phone or go to twitter.com.

Packages Seo