I just finished listening to Joe Rogan’s stimulating interview with a Christian apologist named Wes Huff. It really is a fascinating conversation, and I want to commend it to you. The occasion for the interview is Wes Huff’s “debate” with atheist Billy Carson late last year. I stayed up late last night and watched the debate. Huff dominated with facts and evidence, and he did so in a kind and winsome way. It was so one-sided, that Carson subsequently tried to keep the debate from seeing the light of day and sued Huff. It’s a big mess and has gotten a lot of commentary online, which is how Joe Rogan…
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Top 10 YouTubes of 2024
It’s time for my annual posting of the Top 10 YouTube Videos of the Year (see last year’s list here). This ranking is totally unscientific, and I gave up many years ago on limiting it to only ten videos. Only one person was polled to compile this list—yours truly. This year’s slate of videos has both humor and humanity with some other odds and ends thrown in. If you think I’ve left something out, let me know. I’ll think about adding an “Honorable Mention” category at the bottom. Enjoy! If you’re interested, here are links to lists from previous years: 2023 | 2022 | 2021 |2020 | 2019 | 2018…
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A podcast about Deception in Matt Walsh’s Film “Am I Racist?”
On Friday, The Bully Pulpit podcast featured a stimulating discussion about Matt Walsh’s new movie Am I Racist? Among other things, the four hosts discuss the ethics of deception in Walsh’s film. Andrew Walker stood alone in arguing that Walsh’s use of deception in the film was not morally justified. I think Walker is spot-on about that. The truth is that—in spite of Walsh’s claims to the contrary—the film repeatedly engages its subjects through deception. Walsh defends the film in a video arguing that his methods were necessary in order to expose the DEI grift. While that claim is disputable, the more important point is the structure of his argument.…
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An Epilogue on My Column about Lying
It has been fascinating to read responses to my column in WORLD magazine about the ethics of lying. The occasion for the article was Robin DiAngelo’s claim that Matt Walsh had lied to her in order to procure her participation in Walsh’s new film Am I Racist? I was asked to write the article last week before the film released and to address the ethics of lying for an ostensibly good cause. There was an online conversation unfolding before the film released as a result of DiAngelo’s statement, and many people were arguing in response that lying and deception are justified whenever waging culture war. For my part, I never…
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Are there male boxers fighting in the women’s division at the Olympics?
Perhaps you saw the news about an Italian boxer name Angela Carini, who threw in the towel after 46 seconds in the ring with Algeria’s Imane Khelif at the Olympics. Carini said that she had never been hit so hard by another boxer and that she had to stop the fight. Olympic hopes dashed, she fell to her knees after the forfeit weeping and crying out that it’s not fair. Why wasn’t it fair? As clips from the fight began flooding social media feeds, many viewers concluded that Carini’s opponent was a man identifying as a woman (i.e., transgender). Riley Gaines tweeted, “This is glorified male violence against women.” J.…
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How a Christian Patriot Loves His Wayward Nation
I love G. K. Chesterton’s reflections on what it means to be a Christian patriot. If you have never read it, I encourage you to read “The Flag of the World” in his classic work Orthodoxy. Chesterton contends that love of one’s homeland is not like house-hunting—an experience in which you weigh the pros and cons of a place and choose accordingly. He writes: A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential…
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The Left Is Colonizing the Calendar
The Left is colonizing the calendar. The most recent evidence of this is President Biden declaring tomorrow, Easter Sunday, to be “Transgender Visibility Day.” For Biden, I suspect this is a political calculation—a sop to the Left and indifferent contempt for faithful Christians everywhere. I have seen little evidence that his Catholic faith is anything more than a meaningless tradition. He publicly dishonors his church’s teaching about abortion, homosexuality, and marriage. And now he defiles the holiest day on the Christian calendar with transgender abomination. But Biden aside, we would all do well to recognize the larger conflict within which “Transgender Visibility Day” is simply a single skirmish. For the…
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Fading Glory and Permanent Things
I just finished watching a documentary about a band that was popular when I was a kid. If I told you who the group was, you would recognize them immediately. But I suppose naming them is pointless. It’s the same story after all. A love for music, a quest for fame and glory, hedonistic indulgence along the way, unhappiness and depression in spite of fame and fortune. The lead singer has been dead for several years now. As the film finished, this is the word that stirred in my heart: “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field The grass withers, the flower…
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The Child Will Never Be Born
My wife and I had been hearing and reading mixed reviews on the Barbie film, so last night we decided to go and check it out for ourselves. I think it’s safe to say that from the jump, the film left us pretty cold. The very first scene shows morose-looking little girls in a dark and barren landscape playing with baby dolls. The desert backdrop and the sullen expressions on the girls’ faces make it clear that playing at maternal stereotypes is oppressive and limiting for a young girl. After all, there is much more to life than the drudgery of motherhood. So the girls smash their baby dolls into…
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A Definition of “Woke”
: a shorthand to describe someone who, whether consciously or unconsciously, has adopted grievances and activism rooted in Cultural Marxism and Critical Theory, especially related to the intersectional oppression matrix of race, gender, and sexuality. Source: Colin Smothers
