Also from Mark Steyn

• As I was saying: The Boomers still admire themselves for the Civil Rights thing, even though it was a previous generation that did all the foot-work.
• The over-Nazification by movies, books, and video games has blinded much of our society to the nature and evil or Communism — which is still very much with us, and attacking us from within, as well as internationally. Wear a swastika to the mall one day, and then a Soviet/Chinese hammer and sickle the next, and note the reactions — despite the larger death-toll and misery caused by imperial Communism in the 20th century, versus its racialist little brother, Hitlerian national socialism. Or Che was a coward and a murderer and your poster is not cool. For many years I’ve known Russian survivors of Communism.
• I don’t go in for other Christians’ ‘war on Christmas’ wank but this from First Things is pretty good: The same secularists who think that playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City while listening to gangsta rap has no effect on children act as if hearing “Merry Christmas” will turn little Johnny into a Pat Robertson clone.
• How did so many clergy get in bed with the Zeitgeist? Part is a desire to be liked, and not get in trouble for preaching clearly the truth and morality of authentic Christianity, but part is a deeper infiltration of the church by a subtle delusion. Starting in the 1960s, clergy training began to include something called ‘CPE’, or Clinical Pastoral Education. Originally meant to give potential pastors some practical experience dealing and learning from real situations, it also includes a dose of Freud, Marxist-style self-criticism, amateur psychologizing, and a crazy amount of relativism (otherwise known as the touchy-feely smarmy ‘What I hear you saying is...’, and ‘How do you feel about that?’ and ‘That’s true for you.’). Of course, the church had, for years, done pastoral care of souls... but the Freudification and psychologizing of that ancient and holy calling of soul-care is a bastardization and emptying of true pastoral care as practiced until the 20th century. This is despite the widespread discrediting of much of Freud’s psychology. Indeed, as Europe slouched towards darkness in the early 20th century, a dying Freud considered most of his work to have been a failure. That didn’t stop pop-culture and the ever-belated liberal churches from taking up his rags. Psychology is legitimate but these are abuses. I understand Freud is to psychology as alchemy is to chemistry: some of his methods and accidental discoveries are true but the theory is crap.

Labels: history, politics