Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On September 3, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Uri Brito: Syria and the End of the World

Gary Demar has to correct once more the current apocalyptic craze in light of a potential war of Syria. Jan Markell says “the Syrians’ use of chemical weapons makes her think about Isaiah 17, which foretells the complete destruction of Damascus, which hasn’t happened in thousands of years.” But according to Demar,

Damascus was utterly destroyed in fulfillment of what was predicted in Isaiah 17. The destroyer himself —Tiglath-pileser — said so in his Annals: “I took 800 people together with their property, their cattle (and) their sheep as spoil. I took 750 captives of the cities of Kurussa (and) Sama (as well as) 550 captives from the city of Metuna as spoil. I destroyed 591 cities from the 16 districts of Damascus like ruins from the Flood.”

<>it аутсортинг дизайн продающего а

On September 2, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Lincoln, Lenin, Roosevelt, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Obama

The following paragraph is quoted from Out of Revolution, by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. Although some of the historical details are unknown to me, the overall thesis of this short argument is too evident and too relevant to be missed.

“Both Lenin and Hitler agree in one thing. First of all they realize that the farmer and worker are not interested in war, but beyond that, both are too much the pagan and the soldier not to use the fighting force and the discipline of a uniformed army. They abolish war by constantly using war machinery for internal purposes. In this respect, Mussolini is like them. The Pontine marshes, the Lira, like the coal mines of Donez, grain, money, raw materials, houses, homesteads are attacked, conquered and victoriously annexed by this new civil war strategy. The telegrams all read like reports from the front, whether it be Mussolini or Stalin who receives them. Powers usually only given to the executive in time of war are bestowed upon it in this present emergency because the emergency is the new warfare. Lincoln’s martial law measure of emancipation and Roosevelt’s New Deal powers are closely connected. Emergency is like war, and this holds good in many countries today. It is a great moment in the history of humankind when the energies of the race shift from martial laws to civil emergency laws. The armies enlisted against territorial enemies are superceded or outstripped by armies enlisting against nature. The change is so colossal, coming as it does after six-thousand years of warfare, that it can neither be achieved in a few decades, nor its scope understood by the passionate masses. Still, it is true, revolution has taken the place of war.”

Here’s a link to Out of Revolution at Amazon.com

Here’s a link to a summary of Rosenstock-Huessy’s work and thought at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<>angry racer game online создание favicon

On August 31, 2013 By Kuyperian In Books Like

The Power and Mystery of the Spoken Word

by Marc Hays

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy was born in Berlin, Germany in July 1888. He received doctorates in law and philosophy from the University of Heidelberg. In 1917 he served as an officer in the German army and fought in the trenches of The Great War. Upon Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933, Rosenstock-Huessy immigrated to America, taking a position at Harvard, then later at Dartmouth College where he taught social philosophy until he retired in 1957. He died in 1973.

This being an internet blog post, you’re probably not planning on sitting here all day, so I’ll cut to the chase. The rest of the post will be a couple of quotes from Rosenstock-Huessy to set his flavor on your pallette, hopefully whetting your appetite for more. I’ll wrap it up with some thoughts about Rosenstock-Huessy by James B. Jordan.

This first quote is from his book, Magna Carta Latina: The Privilege of Singing, Articulating, and Reading a Language and of Keeping It Alive, which he co-wrote with Ford Lewis Battles, who translated and indexed Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. You can tell by the subtitle that this is not your average Latin grammar. The following quote is also a distillation of the second chapter of his book Speech and Reality.

Articulated Speech: When you yell “iiiiiiiih” and your chum yells back “iiiiiiiih,” you are two little animals making inarticulate noise. When you, however, say to him: “Now listen, Johnnie,” and he says, “I listen, Billy,” you are two people speaking to each other in articulated speech. What is the difference between the two cases? In articulated speech, the process of listening is clearly defined between another person and yourself. You summon him to act as a listener. The roles are distributed between you two, because one in the same act first is suggested as an order on your side; then, the same act is acknowledged as a voluntary reaction on his side. You and he enter in this specific relation. In answering you, “I listen,” he partly identifies himself with you since he admits that he knows exactly what you mean. Furthermore he preserves his personality by adding “I.” Speech is both identity with, and distinction between, people. It is like weaving a pattern out of several fibres. For his “I listen” is not the same sound as your “listen.” It has passed through his conscience and consciousness and he had to reshape it before he passed it back to you. Now the sentence “I listen” carried back to you something quite different from the noise “iiiiiiiih.” It was now a declaration of cooperation, of acknowledgement of his having heard you. A sentence is a personal relation between answerable people. Articulated speech is communication between responsible people.

Can you taste that? That’s the flavor of insight. But when he does his philosophy, when he passes this insight along, there is not an ivory tower in sight. His prose is dense, but soft, moist, and easily chewed. Kinda like a good pound cake.

This next quote is taken from Out of Revolution, an 800 page history of European civilization. Rosenstock-Huessy said that the thesis for this 20-year work was discovered while he was in the trenches during a battle in World War I. His historiography claims to be anti-Cartesian and anti-Comte, by which statements he intends to set his method apart from the mainstream presuppositions of how to do history. But even in history, or perhaps especially in his history, Rosenstock-Huessy’s emphasis on the sociology of articulate speech is unmistakable.

Every human being is endowed with the wonderful gift of speech. He can express his own secret better than anybody else. We rarely reveal our true selves in the market place of life. Words often seem to be made to hide our thoughts. But the more we try to avoid emphasis, or even truth, in our speech, the more the few moments stand out in which language has the full weight of self expression. A bride speaking her decisive “Yes” or “No” before the altar uses speech in its old sense of revelation, because her answer establishes a new identity between two separate offsprings of the race and may found a new race, a new nation. We are so dull we rarely realize how much history lies hidden in marriage, and how the one word spoken by the bride makes all the difference between cattle-raising and a nation’s good breeding.

His insight seems to be patently obvious once you’ve read it, but without him saying it, you never would’ve come up with it. In one sense he has a “firm grasp of the obvious,” which is often said in manner meant to be deprecating. But when your argument is one that is prima facie to any intelligent reader, I think the only adequate description of him would be “genius.”

In Biblical Horizons’ Open Book Newsletter 25, James B. Jordan concludes his brief introduction of Rosenstock-Huessy thusly:

…I recommend that anyone seriously interested in laboring in the intellectual arena become familiar with Rosenstock-Huessy’s insights. Now for a few observations.

1. Rosenstock-Huessy is always a surprise. One never knows what he will write or say on a topic, but it will always be something “different.” He tries to come at old things in new ways, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

2. Rosenstock-Huessy is rather a maverick as a Christian. He scoffs at the notion that the universe is millions of years old. He claims to hold fiercely to Nicene orthodoxy, and views the Bible as God’s inspired Word. He has contempt for liberal Christianity and for literary criticism of the Bible. He affirms that the four gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in that order. Yet he also thinks that the books of Moses were put together in the days of David. Also, he often speaks and writes as if the Church were going to wither away in the next millennium, but he remained an active church-goer all his life. (In fact, the coming age of international techo-tribalism will be a golden time for the local church, for the local church is the purest form of the tribe.)

3. Rosenstock-Huessy’s followers and advocates are, it seems, mainly composed of people who want some kind of religionless Christianity, or some kind of one-world order that is not grounded in the church. The antithesis between Christ and non-Christ, between “history” and the “world,” which is pretty clear in R-H’s own work (though not as clear as we would like), is not maintained by many of his disciples. In my opinion, the “liberals” who have taken up R-H’s insights are not being faithful to the master. Be warned, though, that if you begin to read the literature surrounding his work, you will sometimes encounter left-wing nonsense.

Any book recommendation made from any person to another is also no less than a bit of economic advice. I am making the economic assertion the sum of the monetary price of a book by Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy added to the temporal price it costs you to read it will never exceed the profit you will acquire through this particular business venture. Many writers are worth your time and money. You will search long and hard before finding one more profitable than Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy.

p.s. If you finished this post, I want to say “thank you” for spending part of your life reading it. I hope you found it helpful.<>game mobi продвижение а купить

On August 27, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: A New Letter From C. S. Lewis

A few years ago, I decided to write letters to my literary heroes in order to thank them for their work, to encourage them to produce more, and to open up the possibility that they might write me back. Several of them have. Now, the men who have shaped who I am are accessible to me for future contact. I’ve found that we all have feet of clay and most of the men that I respect know that fact as well. I am always honored when I get a return email in which they actually thank me for having written to them. I never expected return emails in the beginning, but more often than not, receive them. I’ll never forget the night that I was shopping at Publix, pushing the shopping cart, having an email conversation with Peter Leithart.

Recently, a letter has surfaced that was written by C. S. Lewis in response to a thank you letter sent to him by a twelve-year-old girl. It’s always good to see your heroes act with grace and honor. Here’s a link to the article on Mere Orthodoxy. A special thanks to the folks at Mere Orthodoxy as well for posting this letter for us to see.

Here’s the link.<>google adwords что такое поиск на е от google

On August 23, 2013 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

Are We Blessing, Cursing, or Neither? Is “Neither” Even Possible? – Part 1

“Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be.” James 3:10

My question: “Are we blessing, cursing, or neither? Is the “neither” category even possible?”

Most Christians take special care to abstain from vulgarities and blasphemies. Vulgarities often put private matters on public display, such as bathroom or bedroom activities, which ought to remain private rather than becoming coffee-break humor or hammer-meets-thumb expletives. Everyone knows what happens in the bathroom, but you’re supposed to leave it there, not bring it out with you. Everyone knows what happens in the bedroom, besides sleeping, but that is also meant to be a private matter. It is supposed to happen “off-stage.” Blasphemies, of course, take God’s name and use it in a less than hallowed manner. Number 3 on the Top 10, declares, “He will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” (Ex. 20:7) If you had to choose one, then bring your filth out of the bathroom with you before you use God’s name carelessly or worse yet, pejoratively. However, when you do choose, choose to keep what’s private private and what’s holy holy. Vulgarities and blasphemies can hardly be considered blessings.

Another verbal matter to be considered is the direct curse. The word “damn” has a specific purpose. This is not a word that cannot be appropriately used, but it is one that commonly gets misused, and overly misused, in our culture, often preceded by a blasphemy as to Who is being called upon to do the damning. We teach our children that it is not our place to condemn someone else to eternal perdition, nor should it be our desire to do so. “Damn” and “hell” are neither vulgar nor blasphemous; rather they are words that ought not be tossed around.

So we abstain from careless speech, coarse jokes, and flippant curses. Now what? Are we to assume that refraining from a short list of words and phrases means that we are controlling our tongue? That we are blessing our brother?

While there are no neutral words, no words that don’t convey what’s going on in our hearts, there is a difference between words spoken with an implied blessing and those spoken with an overt blessing. An implied blessing could be contained in the simple, “Good morning,” depending on one’s inflection. This can also be an overt blessing depending on you inflection, like “Good morning!” This can also be a curse if said too loudly, too early. (Prov. 27:14) There can also be implied blessing in casual conversations. The mere fact that you take the time to speak to someone can mean more to them than you’ll ever know. That sounds sappy and cliché, but that doesn’t make it untrue. Even if you have nothing in common with the person except the current weather, there can be a blessing in making small talk.

Every sentence we say can be used as an implied blessing, but are we willing to go further than this? Are we willing to take the effort that it takes to use our words for overt blessings; blessings that would be hard to be mistaken as anything else? Are we willing to take our eyes off of ourselves and our personal problems in order to be an overt blessing to those around us today?

However, before we have something profitable to say, we must be aware of what’s going on around us. Wisdom is contextual, so wise words are typically only wise if spoken in due season. This requires listening before we speak. Listening takes effort and time. Listening means getting down off our soap boxes and actually considering what the other person is saying. We can view every conversation today as an opportunity to take our eyes off of ourselves, shut our mouths for a minute or two, and listen to our neighbor. Then, and only then, can we overtly bless them.

We can’t heal diseases with our spoken word, but we can speak words seasoned with salt. We can’t feed the multitudes with one order of fish and chips, but we can buy someone lunch and then let them do the talking. If we actually listen, maybe we’ll actually have something to say that matters.

On August 23, 2013 By Kuyperian In Books Like

The Great Cigar Fraud – GKC

One of my favorite books by Gilbert Keith Chesterton is a collection of essays entitled, Tremendous Trifles. Within this favorite there are several favorites. One is called “A Tragedy of Twopence.” There’s nothing like a good story that ends with a good moral, especially if you’d have never seen that particular moral coming out of that particular story; hence, my undying love for Chesterton. Here’s what I mean:

“I was walking about a German town, and I knew no German. I knew, however, two or three of those great and solemn words which hold our European civilisation together—one of which is “cigar.” As it was a hot and dreamy day, I sat down at a table in a sort of beer-garden, and ordered a cigar and a pot of lager. I drank the lager, and paid for it. I smoked the cigar, forgot to pay for it, and walked away, gazing rapturously at the royal outline of the Taunus mountains. After about ten minutes, I suddenly remembered that I had not paid for the cigar. I went back to the place of refreshment, and put down the money. But the proprietor also had forgotten the cigar, and he merely said guttural things in a tone of query, asking me, I suppose, what I wanted. I said “cigar,” and he gave me a cigar. I endeavoured while putting down the money to wave away the cigar with gestures of refusal. He thought that my rejection was of the nature of a condemnation of that particular cigar, and brought me another. I whirled my arms like a windmill, seeking to convey by the sweeping universality of my gesture that my rejection was a rejection of cigars in general, not of that particular article. He mistook this for the ordinary impatience of common men, and rushed forward, his hands filled with miscellaneous cigars, pressing them upon me. In desperation I tried other kinds of pantomime, but the more cigars I refused the more and more rare and precious cigars were brought out of the deeps and recesses of the establishment. I tried in vain to think of a way of conveying to him the fact that I had already had the cigar. I imitated the action of a citizen smoking, knocking off and throwing away a cigar. The watchful proprietor only thought I was rehearsing (as in an ecstasy of anticipation) the joys of the cigar he was going to give me. At last I retired baffled: he would not take the money and leave the cigars alone. So that this restaurant-keeper (in whose face a love of money shone like the sun at noonday) flatly and firmly refused to receive the twopence that I certainly owed him; and I took that twopence of his away with me and rioted on it for months. I hope that on the last day the angels will break the truth very gently to that unhappy man.

…..This is the true and exact account of the Great Cigar Fraud, and the moral of it is this—that civilisation is founded upon abstractions. The idea of debt is one which cannot be conveyed by physical motions at all, because it is an abstract idea. And civilisation obviously would be nothing without debt. So when hard-headed fellows who study scientific sociology (which does not exist) come and tell you that civilisation is material or indifferent to the abstract, just ask yourselves how many of the things that make up our Society, the Law, or the Stocks and Shares, or the National Debt, you would be able to convey with your face and your ten fingers by grinning and gesticulating to a German innkeeper.”

This Chesterton excerpt was copied and pasted out of the Project Gutenberg Ebook available here.

The Kindle version is available for free here.

Hard copies are available wherever exquisite literature is sold.<>pochtolom.com

On August 20, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: The Failure of the Sexual Revolution

Last week, I did a short review of Theodore Dalrymple’s book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass. Since then, I’ve discovered that most, if not all, of his essays are available to read online. Below is the conclusion of his article entitled, “Tough Love.” Here’s the link to the entire article at the City Journal.

The sexual revolutionaries wanted to liberate sexual relations from all but the merest biological content. Henceforth such relations were not to be subject to restrictive bourgeois contractual arrangements—or, heaven forbid, sacraments—such as marriage; no social stigma was to attach to any sexual conduct that had hitherto been regarded as reprehensible. The only criterion governing the acceptability of sexual relations was the mutual consent of those entering upon them: no thought of duty to others (one’s own children, for example) was to get in the way of the fulfillment of desire. Sexual frustration that resulted from artificial social obligations and restrictions was the enemy, and hypocrisy—the inevitable consequence of holding people to any standard of conduct whatsoever—was the worst sin.

That the heart wants contradictory, incompatible things; that social conventions arose to resolve some of the conflicts of our own impulses; that eternal frustration is an inescapable concomitant of civilization, as Freud had observed—all these recalcitrant truths fell beneath the notice of the proponents of sexual liberation, dooming their revolution to ultimate failure.

The failure hit the underclass hardest. Not for a moment did the sexual liberators stop to consider the effects upon the poor of the destruction of the strong family ties that alone made emergence from poverty possible for large numbers of people. They were concerned only with the petty dramas of their own lives and dissatisfactions. But by obstinately overlooking the most obvious features of reality, as did my 17-year-old patient who thought that men’s superior physical strength was a socially constructed sexist myth, their efforts contributed in no small part to the intractability of poverty in modern cities, despite vast increases in the general wealth: for the sexual revolution has turned the poor from a class into a caste, from which escape is barred so long as that revolution continues.

Here’s a link to my review from last week.

<>

On August 16, 2013 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

How the Messianic Tendencies of the Government Promote the Suicidal Tendencies of the Poor

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, an English medical doctor/psychiatrist and essayist. He is quite the essayist. First-rate if you ask me, and he has greatly informed and influenced my understanding of the plight of the poor under a socialist regime.

I have been reading his collection of essays entitled, “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass.” The front cover bears a recommendation by Thomas Sowell which states, “A classic for our times. It is as fundamental for understanding the world we live in as the three R’s.” If I wrote a book that Thomas Sowell viewed as fundamental, I would say so on the front cover, too. Dr. Daniels is a physician in England, and has served in inner-city hospitals and prisons in London and Sub-Saharan Africa. Wikipedia reports that he interviewed over 10,000 people who had attempted suicide as research for this book. Needless to say it is a sad book. It is sad because it relates stories of hopelessness and despair, brought on by murder, rape, theft, domestic abuse, child neglect, drug addiction, and drunkenness, which are all proliferated by the government’s attempts to fix everything. It is also sad because Dalrymple’s penetrating analysis falls woefully short of producing an answer to the problems. These people are not only caught in the downward spiral of the government’s social commode, but they continue to make wicked personal choices, which are no one’s fault but their own. They need the Light that shines in the darkness if they are to find the pathway out of despair.

However, this is not to say that Dalrymple’s analysis of the situation is fatally flawed. He is a “scientist,” and has collected the “data” from his lifetime of interviewing. Though failing to correctly abstract the Biblical “universal” problem at hand, he has correctly diagnosed many of the symptoms. Through Dalrymple’s essays, I am becoming increasingly convinced that it is not only outside the God-ordained duties of the civil government to legislate and oversee the redistribution of wealth for the supposed betterment of the poor, but also that, despite the best of intentions, this perpetual “help” from the government becomes a detriment to their personal and social well-being. Dalrymple has correctly identified this detriment as a petrification of their state of squalor by the creation of a world view that holds them captive.

Dalrymple relates that there is squalor in England, but it is not economic. It is spiritual, moral, and cultural. The transformation of the lower class into the lower caste, from which there is rarely an opportunity to escape, has been caused by a social welfare system that has inasmuch removed any fear of the possibility of hunger. From the dawn of time men and women have been driven to work, beg, borrow, or steal for the purpose of getting enough calories in order to make it to the next meal. Even the poorest of people in non-socialized countries have a telos, a purpose. Their purpose is to survive the day, and that purpose brings a certain amount of satisfaction when they accomplish it. Dalrymple’s essays remind us that without the chance of starvation, the poorest of society have their sole purpose removed. Instead of it being replaced by something profitable, they are left with boredom, which will eventually lead to crime, gluttony, drunkenness, illicit sexuality, and eventually despair. This kind of life destroys any real self-esteem, and “with no self-esteem, there is no chance of self-improvement.” This purposeless life leads many to regret being alive at all.

“That’s easy for a middle-class guy in America to say,” you might be thinking to yourself, “telling people to find their purpose and satisfaction in surviving the day.” Yeah, it does come across as harsh, but the reality of the matter, one that many refuse to accept is that you cannot legislate away poverty and you cannot ultimately sidestep your Creator. If He has created you in His image, and He has, then certain rules apply. Not just rules like the “thou shalt nots,” but the underlying fabric from which all of the positive laws spring. The two realities that God is, and God made us in His image.

There is a Messiah, who will set the world to rights. He delights in feeding the poor. In healing up the broken-hearted. In bringing joy to those who despair. In setting the prisoner free. In giving purpose to the hopeless. His name is Jesus, and next post, I will examine Dalrymple’s conclusions in the light of His Word.

Here’s a link to purchase this important work on Amazon:

Life at the Bottom, by Theodore Dalrymple

If you’re a Kindle person, you can get the book for cheap!

<>

On August 13, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Ron Paul asks why we are at war in Yemen?

Droning Al Qaeda in Yemen even as we are funding them in Syria… blowback much? And don’t forget, we know what the ones in Syria are doing.<> на вирусы

On August 13, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Don’t Talk to the Police

How Sergey Aleynikov Learned Never to Talk to the Police – The embedded video is worth taking the time to watch if you’ve not seen it. Although the advice may sound counter-intuitive or even impious on first blush (respect for authority and all that), there is a good case to be made for not speaking to the police as a matter of increasing the chances of justice. Remaining silent is a right offered you, not stubborn disobedience.<>Free online game