Category: Books

A BADGER AMONG KITTENS BY DENTON SALLE

Certain stories make the rounds about wild animals that get mistaken for pets.  It can be someone from another country trying to pick up a skunk because it looks like a cat, a coyote or bear cub thought to be a stray dog, or a feral dog left alone with a house cat.  The stories never end well.  Once of the worse I heard (and some of these are true) was a young woman who found a badger cub and thought it a lost kitten so she took it home and put it in the basket with her kittens.  Whether true or not, it makes a good model for a multicultural society that has scrapped the idea of a common culture, particularly when that culture ignores the differences between classes and ethnic groups for the simplistic broad groupings of race and sex.  Whether you realize it or not, there are badgers in the basket.

Continue reading “”

Revealed: 104 terrorist border crossings.

Critics laughed at former President Donald Trump when he claimed that terrorists, “some real bad ones,” had crossed the border just as he was selling Congress on paying for a border wall. But it turns out that Trump was correct that in the waves of illegal immigrants pouring over the southern border in the last decade were dozens of terrorists and terror sympathizers.

In his new book, America’s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration, journalist and former counterterrorism intelligence official Todd Bensman found a model in Europe that could play out in the United States.

There, he found 104 crossed the border. That, he told Secrets, “proved the concept that border crossings by terrorists can and does happen.”

Government records he reviewed showed that 22,000 so-called “special interest aliens,” the catchphrase for terrorist-related immigrants, were “encountered” between 2008 and 2019.

“Professional homeland security leadership under both Democrats and Republicans, with access to intelligence reporting most Americans don’t have, regarded the threat of terrorist infiltration as quite real,” wrote Bensman, now with the Center for Immigration Studies.

And just a few slipping in, as with the 9/11 attackers, could be catastrophic.

“Despite comparatively small numbers, the potential consequences of attack from that pathway are high and society-changing,” he wrote.

His book is being released this week as President Biden is reversing the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration by implementing existing law that the former Obama administration simply ignored.

That raises the possibility that terrorists will again hide in the waves of illegal immigrants crossing the border.

In an interview with Secrets, former acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan raised concerns about terrorists and cartels mixing in with those the new administration plans to let in.

“We saw the cartels and smuggling operations use families and kids as a tactic to distract Border Patrol agents. They would send a family and a small group across knowing that resources would go there to process them and care for them,” he said.

“Meanwhile, the criminals and drugs went across the border right behind them. Now, that’s exactly what is already happening,” he said as some 3,500 are now surging the border since Biden signaled an open-door policy.

Clarification: This article has been updated to make clear that the border crossings counted by the author were in Europe during the migrant crisis and that this demonstrates it can happen in the U.S.

Battlefield America: The War on the American People, you don’t even have to be a dissident to get flagged by the government for surveillance, censorship and detention.

All you really need to be is a citizen of the American police state.

Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. Battlefield America: The War on the American People is constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself. In exchange for safe schools and lower crime rates, we have opened the doors to militarized police, zero tolerance policies in schools, and SWAT team raids. The insidious shift was so subtle that most of us had no idea it was happening. This follow-up to Whitehead’s award-winning A Government of Wolves, is a brutal critique of an America on the verge of destroying the very freedoms that define it. Hands up!―the police state has arrived.

CMP Guide to TARGET SHOOTING WITH VINTAGE MILITARY RIFLES

Description
Vintage military rifle competitors and collectors alike will be excited to learn the Civilian Marksmanship Program has released a new book, entitled TARGET SHOOTING WITH VINTAGE MILITARY RIFLES, authored by Gary Anderson, Director of Civilian Marksmanship, Emeritus and two-time highpower rifle Olympic gold medalist. The 284-page, soft-bound, fully-illustrated first edition is likely the most comprehensive manuscript ever written about the methods of training and competing with popular American and foreign vintage military rifles. NLU 792 $29.95 plus S&H

“Anyone who knows Gary, and is a fan of vintage military rifle shooting, will find this book to be the most complete coverage of the topic, from a competitor’s and historian’s point of view,” said Christie Sewell, CMP Programs Chief.

Anderson, who stunned his Olympic rivals in Tokyo and Mexico City in the 1960s, is also a multiple U.S. and international record holder. He has poured countless hours into Target Shooting With Vintage Military Rifles for the benefit of both the serious and recreational competitor.

As the originator of the CMP’s wildly-popular competitive vintage rifle program, he set out to present a detailed manual covering all aspects of safely shooting rifles such as the 1903 Springfield, U.S. Krag, 1917 U.S. Enfield, M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, and many more, including rifles from “across the pond.”

Target Shooting With Vintage Military Rifles is comprised of 18 chapters covering:

    • Origins & Fundamental of Marksmanship
    • Firing Rifles in Competition
    • Operation, Cleaning, Loading & Unloading
    • Rifle and Range Safety
    • Sight Adjustment, Zeroing & Fine Tuning
    • Critical Value of the Sling
    • Prone, Sitting and Standing Position Building
    • Highpower Rifle Match Procedures
    • Using a Scorebook/Databook
    • Strategies for Improvement

I think it can be put a bit more simply:
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back.

When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake.

In a civilized society, violence is rarely the answer. But when it is, it’s the only answer. The sound of breaking glass downstairs in the middle of the night. The words, “Move and you die.” The hands on your child, or the knife to your throat.

In this essential book, self-protection expert and former military intelligence officer Tim Larkin changes the way we think about violence in order to save our lives. By deconstructing our assumptions about violence — its morality, its function in modern society, how it actually works — Larkin unlocks the shackles of our own taboos and arms us with what we need to know to prevent, prepare for, and survive the unthinkable event of life-or-death violence.

Through a series of harrowing true-life stories, Larkin demonstrates that violence is a tool equally effective in the hands of the “bad guy” or the “good guy”; that the person who acts first, fastest and with the full force of their body is the one who survives; and that each and every one of us is capable of being that person when our lives are at stake.

An indispensable resource, When Violence is the Answer will remain with you long after you’ve finished reading, as the bedrock of your self-protection skills and knowledge.

The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense

There’s a war against truth… and if we don’t win it, intellectual freedom will be a casualty.

The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism has never been more seriously threatened than it is today by the stifling forces of political correctness.

Dr. Gad Saad, the host of the enormously popular YouTube show THE SAAD TRUTH, exposes the bad ideas—what he calls “idea pathogens”—that are killing common sense and rational debate. Incubated in our universities and spread through the tyranny of political correctness, these ideas are endangering our most basic freedoms—including freedom of thought and speech.

The danger is grave, but as Dr. Saad shows, politically correct dogma is riddled with logical fallacies. We have powerful
weapons to fight back with—if we have the courage to use them.

A provocative guide to defending reason and intellectual freedom and a battle cry for the preservation of our fundamental rights, The Parasitic Mind will be the most controversial and talked-about book of the year.

Tucker documented his first hand knowledge of the shenanigans by the actual people who had just enacted and ratified the Constitution to try and subvert and evade its restrictiveness.

Online:
View of the Constitution of the United States 

On amazon:
View of the Constitution of the United States 
by St. George Tucker

As professor of law at the College of William and Mary, St. George Tucker in 1803 published View of the Constitution—the first extended, systematic commentary on the United States Constitution after its ratification and later its amendment by the Bill of Rights. View was originally part of Tucker’s “Americanized” or “republicanized” edition of the multivolume Commentaries on the Laws of England by Sir William Blackstone. Generations of American law students, lawyers, judges, and statesmen learned their Blackstone—and also their understanding of the Constitution—through Tucker. As Clyde N. Wilson notes, “Tucker is the exponent of Jeffersonian republicanism . . . in contrast to the commercial republicanism of New England that has since the Civil War been taken to be the only true form of American philosophy.” In addition to the entirety of View, the Liberty Fund volume includes seven other essays from Tucker’s renowned edition of Blackstone. These include “On the Study of Law,” “Of the Unwritten, or Common Law of England,” and “Of the Several Forms of Government.”

St. George Tucker (1752–1827) was an officer in the American Revolutionary Army, a Professor of Law, justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, judge of the Federal District Court for Virginia by appointment of President James Madison, progenitor of a long line of jurists and scholars, and stepfather of John Randolph of Roanoke.

The author of the book wants free college which means he wants the old marxist canard of ‘equality of outcome’ which results in nothing more than  the ‘lowest common denominator’ i.e. stupid printed on all diplomas in invisible ink.

A Book with a Kernel of Truth—and a Grain Silo of Nonsense

Every so often, a leftist thinker breaks free from the orthodoxy to point out that policies favored by “progressives” can have adverse consequences. When that happens, it’s worth paying attention.

We have such an instance with the publication of The Cult of Smart by Fredrik deBoer, a writer and one-time academic whose work has appeared in leftist publications such as The New Republic and Jacobin.

He proudly proclaims his Marxism, saying that what all good Marxists want is a better, more equitable world. While he sees a lot to complain about—America still allows capitalism, after all—his particular target in the book is the way our education system overemphasizes academic credentials. We excessively reward those who are good at getting them at the expense of people who lack academic ability. Continue reading “”

Review: ‘Gun Control Myths’ by John R. Lott, Jr, PhD

Doctor of Economics John Lott, Jr. is the expert on gun research because he’s done most of it. His Crime Prevention Research Center is the central repository of answers to all questions about the wrongness of gun control and how in truth guns save lives.  More Guns, Less Crime (his classic introduction) and his previous book The War on Guns are the perfect foundations for Gun Control Myths—together these form a compendium that addresses most of the fraudulent claims that have been made about how guns surely (but don’t) cause “gun violence”.

I know Dr. Lott, and believe me, he’s no Dan Quayle. He’s the real thing—an ultra-conscientious researcher who makes all his data public, willingly considers criticism, and addresses newly published research by others as well as conducting his own projects to add to our knowledge base. This behavior is exactly opposite to that of nearly all other gun-related researchers, who often for not-so-good reason obscure their data, use skewed analyses, and achieve their preferred results.

In Gun Control Myths he doesn’t attempt to cover every misleading idea about guns, but has chosen to address the biggest issues of today. He begins by correcting the errors of several of the seemingly comprehensive summaries in circulation about the dangers of gun ownership. He moves on to thorough discussions about mass shootings, which are so preoccupying although very rare and more often than the media reports, ended by good guys with guns.

There has been too much manipulative politicization for far too long about guns used badly by criminals and psychopaths. In addition to correcting media misreporting, Lott points out the FBI’s “political biases [and] corruption” beginning with the Obama administration that have not been fully rooted out. This reflects worry about many levels of government picking winners and users in how they interpret laws that blatantly infringe on citizens’ “right to keep and bear arms”.

Lott is admirable in accepting no organizational funding, which leaves the non-profit CRPC running on a shoestring compared to Bloomberg and blue state millions pouring into generating anti-gun studies every year. Thankfully, the excellence of CRPC’s work continues to win on quality if not quantity.

Do you value graphs and tables? There are scores and scores, from both sides of the “debate” as he shows there’s really none. How about footnotes? There are hundreds. Appendices? Six, over 17 pages and online. John Lott leaves no room for misunderstanding at any level of inquiry.

It would be nice to refer to an index, which is absent. However, that’s a minimal issue because the chapters are clearly focused on particular topics, which makes it easy to find a specific item or reference again.

There’s no question that, as Lott concludes, “the reality is that an armed citizenry is as necessary as it’s ever been.” And given the threats lined up against our staying rightfully armed, we must arm ourselves with the facts to oppose the false “truthiness” of the anti-gun movement.

John Lott again gives us the ammunition we need.

Robert B Young, MD

— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy

This casebook is the first and only traditional law school casebook to cover the subject. It provides a comprehensive treatment of cases and materials before and after the U.S. Supreme Court s landmark cases in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which affirmed the constitutional right to private firearm possession and use, and made the right enforceable against the states. From days of Anglo-Saxon King Alfred s militia in the eighth century through the latest cases on electric stun guns and 3-D printed firearms, this casebook covers all aspects of firearms law, policy, and regulation. Rather than looking at arms laws in isolation, the book pays careful attention to changing contexts in race, class, religion, technology, and politics. It is ideally suited to law school courses on firearms law, the Second Amendment, criminal law, jurisprudence and legal history.

Key Benefits:

  • Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of firearms law, from early English origins to present-day debates.
  • Ideally suited for a dedicated law school course in firearms law and the Second Amendment.
  • Supplemental materials on the website will provide a continuing research resource, tracking the most current developments in firearms law, regulation, and policy.
  • Five online chapters on firearms and status, the philosophy of citizen arms bearing, international law, comparative law, and an in-depth explanation of firearm and ammunition functionality.

Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control

Lott blows away one false myth about gun ownership after another.
As Andrew Pollack’s Foreward notes; “Learn the actual facts that debunk them.” From myths about mass public shootings to suicides to gun ownership rates and crime to gun free zones, Lott addresses the claims you frequently hear in the media and explains what is wrong with those claims.
“John Lott has been giving us the facts about guns for decades. Finally clear to all that one party in America has an anti-Second Amendment platform and wants to disarm you. Now you need to arm yourself with the Truth.

“Jim Rasenberger’s biography of Samuel Colt, ‘Revolver,’ has lots of interesting details about the colorful inventor of the six-shooter but unfairly faults Colt for sins against present-day leftist orthodoxy.  But Rasenberger’s greatest weakness is to downplay the great consequence of Colt’s invention. It made men equal. Rasenberger becomes authorially apoplectic at times that revolvers were used against American Indians and Mexicans, for example—as if only Americans of European descent ever pulled a trigger.” –Tony Daniel

Revolver : Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America

Revolver|Jim Rasenberger

A sweeping, definitive biography of Samuel Colt–the inventor of the legendary Colt revolver–which changed the US forever, triggering the industrial revolution and the settlement of the American West.
Patented in 1836, the Colt pistol with its revolving cylinder was the first practical firearm that could shoot more than one bullet without reloading. For many reasons, Colt’s gun had a profound effect on American history. Its most immediate impact was on the expansionism of the American west, where white emigrants and US soldiers came to depend on it, and where Native Americans came to dread it. The six-shooter became the iconic weapon of gun-slingers, outlaws, and cowboys–some willing to pay $500 out west for a gun that sold for $25 back east.

In making the revolver, Colt also changed American manufacturing–his factory revolutionized industry in the United States. Ultimately, Colt and his gun-making brought together the two most significant forces of change before the Civil War–the industrial revolution in the east, Manifest Destiny in the west.

 

Steven Fjestad passed away last year, so this is the first edition not published by him since 1981.

Forty-First Edition Blue Book Of Gun Values 

With nearly 2 million copies in circulation worldwide, the Blue Book of Gun Values one of the most relied-upon resources in the firearms industry;has announced the release of its 41st Edition, dedicated in memoriam to the late publisher Steven Peter “S.P.” Fjestad. Spanning over 2,500 pages, the 41st Edition contains upwards of 1,700 trademarks with brief histories, approximately 23,000 descriptions of firearm models from across the globe including the new makes and models for 2020 and 500,000-plus up-to-date values for modern firearms and major trademark antiques. Additionally, the latest edition’s expanded serialization charts allow more years of manufacture to be determined on individual firearm makes and models. A feature of the book that collectors in particular will find helpful is its 80-page Photo Percentage Grading System (PPGS) to assist in determining the condition of a firearm, with guidelines available for pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns.

From the book:
“As the bird shuddered down, the wall of faces lining the perimeter were hidden behind SLRs, lighting, and shoulder-mounted video cameras – journalists here to generate the sugar high of fear that was now as much a part of the American diet as hot dogs, apple pie, and gluten-free muffins.”

To generate the sugar high of fear.
That’s what we see today, isn’t it? Whether they’re pontificating about the bug or about guns?

Under Pressure: A Lucas Page Novel

A series of deadly explosions rock the city of New York and with too many victims and no known motive, the F.B.I. turns once again to Dr. Lucas Page in Robert Pobi’s Under Pressure.

On a beautiful October evening, New York City’s iconic Guggenheim Museum is closed for a tech company’s private gala. Until an explosion rocks the night, instantly killing 702 people, including every single attendee—yet the damage to the building itself was minimal.

An explosion of that precision was no accident and, in response, the FBI mobilizes its entire team — but the sheer number of victims strains their resources. Were all 702 victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there only one target and 701 unlucky bystanders? That many victim files is a staggering amount of data to sort through and Brett Kehoe, Special Agent in Charge of Manhattan, decides that he can’t do this without more computational power.

Dr. Lucas Page, astrophysicist, university professor, and former FBI agent, is uniquely gifted for the task at hand—he can visualize a crime scene as if he was a bystander and can break down any set of data at a glance. Even though Page wants nothing to do with the FBI, with his city under attack and his family at risk, he steps in to find a killer in a haystack before they strike again.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
–Santanyana
And from the current state of education, it’s a wonder our children & young adults might even be able to appreciate history.

The Socialist Temptation

IT’S BACK!

Just thirty years ago, socialism seemed utterly discredited.

An economic, moral, and political failure, socialism had rightly been thrown on the ash heap of history after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Unfortunately, bad ideas never truly go away—and socialism has come back with a vengeance.

A generation of young people who don’t remember the misery that socialism inflicted on Russia and Eastern Europe is embracing it all over again. Oblivious to the unexampled prosperity capitalism has showered upon them, they are demanding utopia.

In his provocative new book, The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute explains:

  • Why the socialist temptation is suddenly so powerful among young people
  • That even when socialism doesn’t usher in a bloody tyranny (as, for example, in the Soviet Union, China, and Venezuela), it still makes everyone poor and miserable
  • Why under the relatively benign democractic socialism of Murray’s youth in pre-Thatcher Britain, he had to do his homework by candlelight
  • That the Scandinavian economies are not really socialist at all
  • The inconsistencies in socialist thought that prevent it from ever working in practice
  • How we can show young people the sorry truth about socialism and turn the tide of history against this destructive pipe dream

Sprightly, convincing, and original, The Socialist Temptation is a powerful warning that the resurgence of socialism could rob us of our freedom and prosperity.

Halbrook’s Book On 2A Origins Updated, Reissued

Do Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms? Or is this power vested solely in government? Recent years have seen a sea change in scholarship on the Second Amendment. Beginning in the 1960s, a view emerged that individuals had a “right” to bear arms only in militia service—a limited, “collective” right. But in the late 1980s Dr. Stephen Halbrook and a handful of other scholars began producing an altogether persuasive analysis that changed thinking on the matter, so that today, even in canonical textbooks, bearing arms is acknowledged as an individual right.

Stephen Halbrook’s The Founders’ Second Amendment is the first book-length account of the origins of the Second Amendment, based on the Founders’ own statements as found in newspapers, correspondence, debates, and resolutions. Dr. Halbrook investigates the period from 1768 to 1826, from the last years of British rule and the American Revolution through to the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the passing of the Founders’ generation. His book offers the most comprehensive analysis of the arguments behind the drafting and adoption of the Second Amendment, and the intentions of the men who created it.

With the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia vs. Heller upholding the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to bear arms, The Founders’ Second Amendment could scarcely be more timely as the authoritative book on the subject.

Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis

Simply put, spinal stenosis is arthritis of the back, and Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis will show you how to get rid of lower back and leg pain that are caused by the various aging changes that take place in everyone’s low back over time. Anyone with a herniated disc, bone spurs, degenerative discs, scoliosis, or unstable vertebrae can greatly benefit from the targeted exercises in this book, as these spinal problems are often involved in the process of spinal stenosis.

Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control

Lott blows away one false myth about gun ownership after another. As Andrew Pollack’s Foreward notes; “Learn the actual facts that debunk them.” From myths about mass public shootings to suicides to gun ownership rates and crime to gun free zones, Lott addresses the claims you frequently hear in the media and explains what is wrong with those claims.

“John Lott has been giving us the facts about guns for decades. Finally clear to all that one party in America has an anti-Second Amendment platform and wants to disarm you. Now you need to arm yourself with the Truth. Buy and read Gun Control Myths today. Before it’s too late.”

Sebastian Gorka Ph.D.,host of AMERICAN First, former Strategist to President Trump

 

“John Lott shows that the media and many politicians are biased against guns. For example, many stories are written in the media about shooters, but very few about defensive uses of guns. Similarly, he shows that some gun control policies are actually counterproductive.

Shooters seek out gun-free zones. If we banned “assault” weapons, shooters might shift to larger hunting guns. The book is copiously footnoted. It is full of statistical and graphical analysis, so that his points are easily grasped and persuasive. Anyone who advocates gun control and does not seriously consider John’s work is negligent.

Any journalist who does not at least consider John’s work is committing journalistic malpractice.”

Paul H. Rubin, Dobbs Professor of Economics Emeritus, Emory University

 

“We have John Lott to thank for once again providing factual and empirical based research to counter the anti gun movement’s well funded and organized campaign based on nothing more than slogans, myths and propaganda designed to demonize supporters of our cherished Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

David Clarke Sheriff(RET) Milwaukee County

 

“John Lott is the go-to expert when it comes to protecting the second amendment. Without the second amendment Americans could be stripped of our right to arm ourselves against aggressors. Arm yourselves with knowledge by reading “Gun Control Myths” and join me in protecting the Second Amendment.”

Eric Bolling Host “AMERICA This Week” Sinclair Broadcast

I imagine the angst in their minds must be coming intolerable to them

Atheists are warning that Christianity may be necessary for the survival of Western civilization

Historian Tom Holland is known primarily as a storyteller of the ancient world. Thus, his newest book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, came as something of a surprise for several reasons. First, Tom Holland is not a Christian. Second, Holland’s book is one of the most ambitious historical defenses of Christianity in a very long time.

While studying the ancient world, Holland writes, he realized something. Simply, the ancients were cruel, and their values utterly foreign to him. The Spartans routinely murdered “imperfect” children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for the physical pleasure of those with power. Infanticide was common. The poor and the weak had no rights.

From There to Here …

How did we get from there to here? It was Christianity, Holland writes. Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage, demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape. Christianity confined sexuality within monogamy. (It is ironic, Holland notes, that these are now the very standards for which Christianity is derided.) Christianity elevated women. In short, Christianity utterly transformed the world.

In fact, Holland points out that without Christianity, the Western world would not exist. Even the claims of the social justice warriors who despise the faith of their ancestors rest on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. Those who make arguments based on love, tolerance, and compassion are borrowing fundamentally Christian arguments. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, “no one would have gotten woke.”

Attracting Criticism

Holland’s book-length defense of the belief system the elites love to despise has unsurprisingly attracted some criticism. He faced off with militant atheist and prominent philosopher A.C. Grayling on the question “Did Christianity give us our human values?” Grayling struggled to rebut Holland, sounding more petty than philosophical. Holland, on the other hand, became positively passionate in his defense of Christianity. If Western civilization is the fishbowl, he stated, then the water is Christianity.

While many — including Holland — cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is true, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be necessary.

In fact, the very critiques of those who condemn Christianity for various perceived injustices are rooted in Christian precepts.

A Trend Identified — Defense of Christianity

Holland’s passionate defense of Christianity is fascinating because it appears to be part of a trend. As the West becomes definitively post-Christian, many secularists are suddenly realizing that Christianity may have been more valuable than they thought. While many — including Holland — cannot quite bring themselves to believe Christianity is true, they are starting to believe that Christianity might be necessary.

Douglas Murray, the conservative author and columnist, is also an atheist. In recent years, however, he has started to warn that the decline of Christianity is a dangerous thing. Society now faces three options. First, Murray says, is to reject the idea that all human life is precious. “Another is to work furiously to nail down an atheist version of the sanctity of the individual.” And if that doesn’t work? “Then there is only one other place to go. Which is back to faith, whether we like it or not.”

Murray now occasionally refers to himself as a “Christian atheist.” Speaking with Esther O’Reilly on the Unbelievable podcast, Murray lauded the “revolutionary moral insights” of Christianity. He told her that while visiting the Sea of Galilee, he couldn’t shake the feeling that “something happened here.” And he admitted that as atheists consider morality, “the more we may have to accept that … the sanctity of human life is a Judeo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive [the disappearance of] Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Speaking on The Darren Grimes Show last month, he was even blunter. “There seems to be little point to me in a life spent talking about Labour Party politics rather than God.”

King Agrippa Christians

The phenomenon of atheists praising Christianity appears to be growing. Gone are the days when Christopher Hitchens (a good friend of Murray’s) and his fellow secularists raged against the “poison” of religion. Even Richard Dawkins has now admitted that Christianity might be preferable to the alternatives. He once called for Christianity to be destroyed. Now he begrudgingly says it has good effects on society.

There is also Jordan Peterson. The famous psychologist refuses to say whether he believes in God. Or at least, he refuses to say what he means by God, or Christ or faith. Peterson is attempting to synthesize Scripture with Jung and Darwin, and the result is predictably tortured. But Peterson knows that without Christianity, unspeakable cruelty is inevitable. He speaks like a secular Calvinist. He believes in human depravity, but has not yet worked out redemption.

Charles Murray, the American social scientist and sociologist, is an agnostic. Yet, he told me in an interview that he believes the American republic will not survive without a resurgence of Christianity. “You cannot have a free society with a constitution” like the American one “unless you are trying to govern a religious people,” he observed.

The late Sir Roger Scruton, too, headed back to church. He struggled with many of Christianity’s truth claims. But still, he came to believe that Christianity was necessary. While nursing doubts, he played the organ in his local Anglican church during Sunday services. Perhaps practice, he once said, would help him along. He wasn’t sure he could believe it all. But he wanted to.

These men are King Agrippa Christians. As King Agrippa told the Apostle Paul: “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” They almost believe it. They believe Christianity is good. Some believe it is necessary. As Murray put it, he “believes in belief.” But they cannot (yet) bring themselves to believe that it is literally true — that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead.

Listen to the Warnings of the Atheists — Christianity is Necessary

These strange struggles also deliver a warning to the West. Without Christianity, we are heading into a thick and impenetrable darkness. Christianity gave us human rights. It gave us protection for the weak. Compassion rooted in commands to love. Forgiveness for enemies. It revolutionized the world. We are now in the process of undoing that revolution. In fact, we are replacing it with the Sexual Revolution.

We should look at what we are destroying before we carry on. We should ask why fences were built before tearing them down. We should listen to the atheists nervously telling us that Christianity is necessary. And we should fight to ensure that our post-Christian culture is again a pre-Christian one.