Originally published last year in the Christian Research Journal

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said,

“See, this is new”?
It has already been in ancient times before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come
By those who will come after.

King Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes 1:9–11 echo through the generations. There is no new thing; we only forget what has come before. For instance, we are born rebels, yet each youthful generation that rebels believes its insurrection is novel. Seeking to set ourselves apart from the majority, to impress the world with our unique style and way of living, is part of our nature. We want to stand apart from the larger group but seek acceptance from a more insular group.

Brett McCracken, a twenty-something journalist, examines these and other tensions in Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. The self-described Christian hipster surveys his own “cool Christianity” subculture, questions whether these Christians are obsessed with being different for its own sake, and discusses the impact the quest for cool has on our faith.

The History of “Hip.” McCracken defines the hipster as a young, fashionable, and “independent-minded contrarian.” He embarks on a well-researched exploration that tracks the evolution of hip, from as far back as the Enlightenment to America’s founding to the post-World War II hipster era to 1960s hippiedom to the present-day incarnation of “a commitment to total freedom from labels, norms, and imposed constraints of any kind.”

The seeds of Christian hipsterdom were sown in the 1960s, when teenage Baby Boomers became a cultural force. As the culture goes, so goes the Christian church. Youth ministries sprang up, but churches still faced an important question. Given the church’s square and oppressive image, and youth’s countercultural rebellion, how was the church to reach them? McCracken is critical of the church, which at times has bowed to the culture to reach young Christians. Cool, as defined by mainstream culture, collided with the church’s values.

From this flowed the unexpected rise of hipster Christianity in the form of the Jesus People and Christian rock music. Next came the cultural co-option of Christianity as a sort of retail brand. The current form of Christian hipsterism mocks and rebels against this branding. Christian hipsters typically don’t like megachurches, altar calls, the 700 Club, contemporary Christian music, or Christian movies. They like breaking taboos and getting tattoos. They tend to drink and may smoke, and they prefer the term Christ follower to Christian. Generally, they like alternative and independent secular music, movies, and books “well respected by their respective artistic communities—Christian or not.” McCracken offers examples of Christian hipster “figureheads,” such as musician Sufjan Stevens and writer Lauren Winner, author of Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity, and he lists top Christian hipster cities and churches.

The “Cool” Conundrum. What distinguishes the Christian hipster from his secular counterpart? The Christian hipster strives to live a more Christlike life, as befitting a believer, and he’s marked by “significantly less” hedonism, less cynicism, less drug use, and less premarital sex. Nevertheless, McCracken concludes that the pursuits of Christianity and cool are irreconcilable.

“Cool” trails, which include individualism, alienation, and rebellion, are problematic for the Christian, because these things tend to cause self-centeredness, loneliness, and elitism. Rebelliousness, for instance, isn’t always a bad thing. Jesus Himself was a rebel. But an attitude of rebelliousness can easily move from breaking oppressive rules to breaking rules that help us grow in grace.

When is Christian coolness authentic? When it sincerely celebrates what’s good about art and culture apart from trendiness, when it’s centered on Christ and not consumption and image, when it’s different from the world, and when it’s willing to say no to sin.

“We easily forget that our Christian beliefs are actually pretty radical, unheard of, life-changing, world-shaking, and elegant,” McCracken writes. Why should we fear unpopularity or being out of touch? The Christian shouldn’t concern himself with outward coolness and being different for its own sake. Our faith sets us apart. We should dare to be different as new creations in Christ.

Though Hipster Christianity adopts a tongue-in-cheek tone at times, it’s appropriate to the material. McCracken attempts to generate a serious discussion about a subculture of believers trying to set themselves apart, like generations before and generations to come. The impulse to stand out, however, is satisfied only in Christ.

Originally published April 3, 2007, on Townhall.com

Chastity is a misunderstood virtue.

It is more than simply refraining from premarital sex. It’s an attitude, a way of life, and open rebellion against a debauched culture. Contrary to popular opinion, Christians don’t think sex is dirty or evil. Christians believe sex outside marriage is wrong.

The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On is part memoir and part how-to guide on giving up casual sex, embracing chastity, and experiencing “a life more hope-filled, more vibrant, and more real” by putting sex in its proper place. That kind of life, says author Dawn Eden, is the thrill of the chaste.

The thirty-something [now former] New York Daily News editor, blogger, and Christian convert has written a nakedly honest book for a specific audience: single women ready to admit that premarital sex is not making them happy or helping them find the husband they desperately seek.

In The Thrill of the Chaste, Eden contends that our casual sex culture encourages singles to view one another as commodities. Like many young single women, she was caught up in the hype that sex is the way to a man’s heart. Eden began to understand that premarital sex and its attendant baggage actually made it less likely that she’d get married. For example, to protect oneself from the eventual let-down of casual encounters, one must develop a toughness. In Eden’s case, she sabotaged relationships before she got dumped so she could remain in control.

“[T]he same armor that enabled me to tolerate casual sex made me less attractive to the kind of man I most desired.”

Eden says dissolving the hard shell and allowing herself to be open and vulnerable have helped her be more capable of sustaining a long lasting relationship like marriage. Yes, Eden readily admits she wants to get married and believes God has called her to marriage. She also recognizes that some women reading the book want to get married and provides practical advice on how to meet marriage-minded men who share their faith.

Whether religious or not, women reading The Thrill of the Chaste will be able to relate to Eden’s descriptions of awkward morning-after scenarios. No matter what feminists claim, it is futile to deny that women become attached. “Women are built for bonding,” writes Eden. Sex detached from love leads to a feeling of emptiness.

Being chaste has a strong spiritual component, and to practice it requires a purpose beyond mere abstention from sex until marriage. God created us as relational beings to experience his love and show that love to others. The sexual part of the martial relationship bears more than physical fruit (children). Spiritual fruit borne by two uniting together as one is the “gift of self that they give to each other,” writes Eden, which “becomes a gift to the Lord.”

Bucking the culture and remaining obedient to God present the same problems they always have. As Eden writes, “The most challenging part of chastity isn’t overcoming temptation. It’s gaining the spiritual resources to joyfully face day-to-day life as a cultural outsider.” And Christians know that kind of joy is found only in Christ.

The Thrill of the Chaste encourages single women to focus on sharing God’s love with others and growing in grace rather than putting “the goal of meeting a husband at the center of “thoughts, actions, and dreams.” Eden has found fulfillment in chastity, and she’s using her God-given gifts to help others find fulfillment, too.

Originally published in 2003 on Townhall

When the Ayatollah Khomeini first referred to the United States as “The Great Satan” at the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, he wanted to invoke the image of the Seducer, the Liar of all liars. According to the Koran, Satan is “an insidious tempter who whispers in the hearts of men.” To Muslims, America is not a superpower to be feared, but a deceiver to be obliterated.

In his concise, best-selling book, The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror, Bernard Lewis examines the religious origins of terrorism and takes the reader through thirteen centuries of the history of Islam. He explores key events leading up to terrorism in the twenty-first century. A follow-up to his best-selling What Went Wrong, this readable, 184-page book includes four maps showing the expansion of Islam in the Middle East from 622 A.D. to the present.

Lewis’s thesis is that Islam’s current obsession with the United States isn’t a recent phenomenon, and its hatred isn’t just about Israel. To Muslims like Osama bin Laden, the war against the “Land of the Unbelievers” is a religious one. Despite President Bush’s pronouncement that Islam is a religion of peace, Lewis makes clear that it is not. The Middle East’s escalating hatred for the West challenges many assumptions Americans–who are baffled by this hatred–may have about Islam.

A Middle East expert, Lewis proffers that Americans are puzzled by this venomous sentiment because their general level of historical knowledge is “abysmally low.” Muslims, however, are defined by their history: who they are, where they came from, and what they perceive as God’s purpose for their lives. “For [Osama] bin Laden, his declaration of war against the United States marks the resumption of the struggle for religious dominance of the world that began in the seventh century,” Lewis writes.

For example, to the Middle East, President Bush is just a successor in a long line of rulers–from the Byzantine emperors of Constantinople, the Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna, Queen Victoria, and other European imperialists–who were serious impediments to the divinely ordained expansion of Islam, merely delaying its inevitable conquest. Without understanding how important history is to followers of Islam and how important it should be to Americans, the confusion will continue.

With an engaging style, Lewis traces the development of Islam from the prophet Muhammad in seventh century Arabia, to the rule of the caliphates, under which Islam grew to become a world religion in barely a century. He dedicates a chapter to the influence of oil wealth in the spreading of Wahhabism, a strict and violent sect established in Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabis have been able to broaden their version of Islam worldwide because of Saudi Arabia’s oil money and power in the Middle East. Lewis contends this violent sect would have remained an isolated fringe without oil wealth. His point raises interesting questions about America’s present alliance with Saudi Arabia.

One of the most interesting aspects of The Crisis of Islam is the connection Lewis makes between failed social movements–Nazism, Soviet Marxism and Socialism–and the anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. These social theories played a key role in building the foundation of their anti-Americanism, a fact many are either unaware of or have forgotten (Ironically, the Middle East’s contempt for the West also had origins in the nihilistic philosophy so familiar to the brooding American college student). Muslim intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s embraced the philosophy of these movements not because they thought them great, but because anti-Americanism was a distinct part of the message. The book is packed with such fascinating facts.

Lewis challenges twenty-first century Americans’ assumption that Muslims hate America because of its alliance with Israel. At the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, the U.S. was cautious and maintained limited contact with Israel. Not until the spread of Soviet influence in the Middle East during the Cold War did the U.S. begin to see Israel as a well-positioned ally. Countries such as Russia and France have had much deeper involvement with Israel, but the Middle East’s wrath seems to be focused on America.

In the post-Cold War era, the U.S. is unmistakably the dominant force in the world. For the first time in centuries, Lewis argues, the Osamas have no useful enemies of the West to turn to for support in an attack against the U.S. To paraphrase Lewis, radical Muslims realized that if they wanted to fight the U.S., they had to do it themselves. The war has only just begun.

In the last chapter of the book, “The Rise of Terrorism”, Lewis discusses what he calls “new-style terrorists”, where innocent civilians–not just one person–are the prime target. The goal is to inspire fear and gain international publicity. Lewis instructs the reader in the Koran, declaring that suicide is a major sin and punished by eternal damnation in Islam. The terrorists who attacked the U.S. on September 11 have no justification in Islamic doctrine or law and no precedent in Islamic history. Islamic terrorists are in direct contradiction to their holy book.

The Crisis of Islam has no happy ending. Closing on a somber note, Lewis writes, “If the fundamentalists are correct in their calculations and succeed in their war, then a dark future awaits the world, especially the part of it that embraces Islam.” If The Crisis of Islam leaves us with only one lesson, it should be this: Islam is a religion, a culture, and a way of life. The more we understand this world and our place in it, the better equipped we’ll be to defend ourselves against those who are willing to die to annihilate us.

Originally published March 24, 2006, on Townhall.com

From fatherlessness flows many things.

Fatherless children are more likely to be poor, perform poorly in school, engage in premarital sex, become teen parents, abuse drugs, and commit crimes than children from intact families. Black children are significantly less likely than other children to be raised in intact families. In 2004, a mere 35 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared to 83 percent of Asian children, 77 percent of white children, and 65 percent of Hispanic children.

Despite decades worth of research on the damage wrought by illegitimacy, a research psychologist named Peggy Drexler attempts to argue that lesbian couples and “single by choice” mothers do a better job of raising boys than married couples in Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men.

Drexler, a mother of two and married for 36 years, interviewed a small and limited number of lesbian couples, heterosexual women who volunteered to deprive their sons of fathers, divorced mothers, and their sons. Her “maverick moms” reject “social judgments” and stress “communication, community, and love” in their roles as mothers.

In one form or another throughout the book, Drexler sets up the strawman, “Mother love doesn’t hurt our boys.” I have never heard reasonable people make such a claim. Unlike Drexler, most people believe that “mother love” and “father love” need to balance each other, which is why intact families are best for children. Drexler often exaggerates and uses the most extreme examples throughout the book to support her biases.

Raising Boys Without Men will give aid and comfort to single mothers, but a house full of them, no matter how well off, won’t ever change the fact that boys want and need fathers. Considering the utter devastation fatherlessness has caused in black communities, it would be easy to go off on Drexler, but she makes clear that she focused on mostly white, affluent lesbians and single mothers.

Why didn’t she interview black single mothers and fatherless boys in inner cities, mothers whose fatherless sons are in and out of the criminal justice system, and boys who are fathers themselves by the time they’re teenagers? Drexler writes:

Like mine, most research in this area has concerned a primarily White and privileged population. Lesbian identity among socioeconomically subordinate groups is generally less visible or less affirmed than it is among more prosperous, White, educated, urban populations. Ethnographic evidence suggests that closeted lesbian and gay people of color often value racial solidarity over sexual adhesiveness. Racial/ethnic allegiances may deter disproportionate numbers of people of color from coming out.

In other words, interviewing poor or economically disadvantaged, black heterosexual or closeted lesbian mothers would not have yielded the results that Drexler, an advocate for white, affluent, lesbian-headed households, was seeking.

Incidentally, the feminist movement traditionally has been a white and affluent phenomenon, although its effects have reverberated through all levels of society. The late Betty Friedan was a suburban homemaker who likened her home life to a concentration camp. For whatever reason, she was unhappy being married and trying to raise decent human beings. It sounded like a personal problem to me, but her book, The Feminine Mystique, marked the unofficial beginning of the feminist movement and sparked a revolution.

Although women had legitimate claims, especially when it came to equal wages for equal work, feminism went much further by waging war against the last standing pillar of society: the traditional family.

Feminists argued that women should be free to work outside the home and to be sexually promiscuous (and irresponsible). Chasteness until marriage was Victorian and repressive, and marriage was stifling and demeaning. A new crop of young women became sexually available to men without the shackles of commitment. The archaic idea of marrying the woman you impregnate was thrown out with the rest of the garbage.

Women from affluent, intact families were able to bounce back from sexual irresponsibility (oh, the irony!) in ways that women from lower-classes, especially those who grew up without fathers, were not. In 1964, a year after Friedan’s book hit the streets and a year before Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a report that warned of the increase of female-headed households in low-income urban areas and associated social pathologies, close to 25 percent of black babies were born to unmarried women. In 2006, the rate is 70 percent.

The irony of ironies is that despite the “independent woman” meme pushed by feminists, too many of their inner city and low-income “sisters” are not independent nor are they dependent on husbands-oppressors, either. They are dependent on the government. The state is the provider. The children grow up mired in a cycle of poverty that is passed from one generation of fatherless children to the next.

A recurring theme in Raising Boys Without Men, despite Drexler’s best efforts to downplay it, is the boys’ desire for fathers. They wanted men — masculine men — in their lives. The clear message of the book is that the boys’ hunger for fathers was trumped by the desires of their progressive “maverick moms.”

The feminist movement spawned generations of selfish women, absentee fathers, and shattered families. Some women may want to be free of husbands, but children certainly don’t want to be free of fathers. And no study will ever prove otherwise.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. What’s so remarkable about this version of the Bible? Read all about it in a book review I wrote back in October 2003:

God’s Secretaries

Most secularists believe that life is just a series of random events, though some are bold enough to believe in a “higher power” who once set it all in motion. In contrast, Christians believe the world unfolds according to the divine plan of a personal God. Throughout God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible, such a plan is evident.

In a beautifully written book, Adam Nicolson explores the efforts of a group of fallible human beings–clergymen, power-brokers, drunkards and even a few rogues–who produced a divine work of art that was to become a standard for generations. A committee of 54 men translated the King James Bible, a book that has inspired the world and influenced the work of countless great writers and thinkers, including William Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, William Faulkner, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

In God’s Secretaries, Nicolson draws the reader into a world of political, religious, social and cultural change. Crowned in 1603, the impoverished King James VI of Scotland had ascended to the throne of England as King James I, inheriting great wealth and a country divided by religious and political turmoil.

Nicolson writes, “The period was held in the grip of an immense struggle: between the demands for freedom of the individual conscience and the need for order and an imposed inheritance; between monarchy and democracy; between extremism and tolerance.” The reign of King James marked the beginning of a united England and Scotland.

Long before James’s ascension, after King Henry VIII had broken from the Roman Catholic church in 1534, the Church of England was created with the king as its head. By the time James became king, England was a crucible of Catholic loyalists, royalists, Puritans and Presbyterians, all of whom were in disagreement over how God’s word should be translated. Several translations were in existence, but King James wanted one Bible for everyone. Drawing on existing translations, including the Reformation-era Geneva Bible, the king’s men labored for seven years to create the King James Bible. Not surprisingly, King James wasn’t overly concerned with proper biblical interpretation; he wanted to maintain the order of his kingdom and preserve the “divine right of kings.” While James was open to examination of the theological basis of the Church of England itself, he wouldn’t tolerate the questioning of his own authority.

Nicolson does an excellent job illuminating a world now ancient to modern eyes as he takes the reader into the conflicted society of Jacobean England. A great admirer of the literature of the Bible, Nicolson’s own prose is magnificent. Rarely does one come across an engrossing book that elevates the ordinary, banal language often heard and spoken today. Nicolson further draws out the beauty and musicality of the language as he compares select passages from other translations to the King James Bible to show the linguistic superiority of the latter.

Readers will also learn interesting facts. For instance, the English in the King James Bible was already archaic in 1611, and the Puritans — opponents of the Church of England and future pilgrims to the New World — did not bring the King James Bible with them. The KJV didn’t become popular in America until after the Civil War.

God’s Secretaries is definitely not a Bible study, so Christian readers shouldn’t expect an exposition of Biblical truth. Regardless, this book is an enjoyable excursion into an age that produced the greatest work of English prose. For those readers who believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, Nicolson’s book offers an intriguing snapshot of a brief time in history guided by the very hand of God.

People go missing every day, and law enforcement agencies must make tough decisions about allocating resources to search for individuals. This is where the media comes into play. Sixteen-year-old Phylicia Barnes traveled from the Charlotte area to Baltimore to visit her half-sister. She was last seen on December 28.

Baltimore and Charlotte media have covered the story, but the frustrated police seek national media coverage for the case. It looks like they’re gaining traction.

Last year I reviewed a book called The Murder Business: How the Media Turns Crime Into Entertainment and Subverts Justice, by Mark Fuhrman. Yes, The Mark Fuhrman, convicted of perjury for lying about using the word “nigger” in a previous 10-year period during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Fuhrman said the media have become “major players in the criminal justice system,” not necessarily a bad thing, and even he acknowledged which crime victims tend to get the most coverage:

“Typically, the victims are female. Without exception, they are white and very pretty. In a ghoulish moment, American Murder meets American Idol, as America chooses its prettiest corpse, onto whom our collective horror is projected. It begins with a photograph that quickly becomes iconic in our culture, a name we adopt into our national conversation as if we were speaking of someone we all knew. JonBenét. Caylee. Stacy Peterson. Laci Peterson.”

Draw your own conclusions. Full book review after the jump.

American Murder Meets American Idol

Former Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) detective Mark Fuhrman was convicted of perjury in 1996 for lying under oath during the O.J. Simpson murder trial. A defense attorney asked if he’d referred to a black person as a “nigger” in the last 10 years, and Fuhrman said he hadn’t. Several witnesses contradicted him, including screenwriter Laura Hart McKinny, who produced recordings of Fuhrman using the word.

Simpson’s lawyers played the race card to defend a man who’d brutally murdered two people, and they succeeded. Fuhrman had found the infamous bloody glove Simpson wore during the murders, and the defense accused him of planting it. Blamed for Simpson’s subsequent acquittal, Fuhrman apologized in his New York Times bestseller Murder in Brentwood for using the slur, and documented errors the LAPD and the prosecutors made that undermined an otherwise strong case against Simpson.

Fuhrman followed up with several more books and now works as a FOX News consultant on criminal cases. In his latest book, The Murder Business: How the Media Turns Crime Into Entertainment and Subverts Justice (Regnery), he exposes the media’s inaccuracies, faulty reporting, and sensationalism in eight high-profile murder cases, including Caylee Anthony, killer cop Drew Peterson, Martha Moxley, Scott Peterson, and the case that started it all, O.J. Simpson.

“The media have become major players in the criminal justice system and their power increased dramatically in recent years,” Fuhrman writes. “By studying the media’s behavior in specific cases, criticizing their errors and applauding their successes, I hope to raise public awareness of a serious problem in our society, and begin a discussion of possible solutions.”

Law enforcement and the media have different agendas. The police want to apprehend the perpetrator and seek justice for the victim, and the media want to prolong cases and produce high ratings. They do nothing to try to help solve the case. Fuhrman lays most of the blame on cable news shows. It might surprise some readers to know that he acknowledges the kind of victim the media love and is critical of their fixation:

“Typically, the victims are female. Without exception, they are white and very pretty. In a ghoulish moment, American Murder meets American Idol, as America chooses its prettiest corpse, onto whom our collective horror is projected. It begins with a photograph that quickly becomes iconic in our culture, a name we adopt into our national conversation as if we were speaking of someone we all knew. JonBenét. Caylee. Stacy Peterson. Laci Peterson.”

When two-and-a-half-year-old Caylee Anthony disappeared in 2008, there were probably 3,000 other juveniles reported missing, Furhman notes. Only her story had the right ingredients for national news coverage. While it was clear early in the case Caylee was dead, the media pushed the “missing” child meme to fuel ratings and keep the story alive.

Does Fuhrman see the irony of being part of the media he criticizes?

“Even though I now work as a journalist, at heart I’m still a cop. I try to balance the often-conflicting responsibilities of truth, justice, and the public’s right to know…The greater good of helping law enforcement solve the case outweighs any other considerations.”

Fuhrman’s media criticism is familiar. The more interesting material is a behind-the-scenes look at police blunders from the perspective of a man with 20 years experience in law enforcement. Furhman’s Murder in Greenwich helped prompt Connecticut to convene a grand jury to re-examine the unsolved 1975 murder of 15-year-old Martha Moxley.

One of the Moxleys’ neighbors in upscale Greenwich was Rushton Skakel, brother of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy’s widow. Two of his rowdy teenage sons, Tommy and Michael, befriended Martha, whose family had recently moved to the neighborhood. She preferred Tommy, and Michael was jealous. Returning home from a party at the Skakels, Martha was bludgeoned to death.

Looking at evidence more than 20 years old, Fuhrman said it was obvious she was murdered in a rage killing likely committed by a neighbor who had some kind of relationship with her. The murderer used a Toney Penna golf club to kill her, a rare type of club owned by no one in the neighborhood but the Skakels. The club that killed Martha was missing from the set. Incredibly, the police did not get a warrant to search the Skakel house.

Thanks in part to Fuhrman’s independent investigation, 41-year-old Michael Skakel was convicted of Martha’s murder in 2002. A case that should have taken three days took 27 years. “In Greenwich, the police are like a civil service security force. The wealthy residents they serve tell them what to do and when to do it. The cops are their employees—literally.”

What did the local media do during the half-hearted Moxley investigation? According to Fuhrman, they wrote articles mostly based on press releases and police statements.

“[T]he way the media covered Martha Moxley’s murder is another prime example of journalists simply following the leads they’re handed, instead of looking at the facts and trying to draw their own conclusions—never mind create their own leads. So much for the ‘watchdog’ media.”

Fuhrman also reveals incompetence in the Drew Peterson case. In 2004, the police officer was suspected of killing an ex-wife, Kathleen. In 2007, fourth wife Stacy Peterson disappeared. Fuhrman learned that during the investigation into Kathleen’s death, a six-person coroner’s jury of citizens with no medical or forensic training who may or may not have ever seen a dead body determined that Kathleen, found dead in a dry bathtub with contusions and abrasions on her body, had accidentally drowned. The jury, which included a cop who knew Peterson, ruled an obvious homicide an accident.

The Murder Business ends with the Simpson case, and Fuhrman reveals gross mishandling from start to finish. Fuhrman’s writing is unadorned and to the point, and his insider look into high-profile cases is worth reading.

In light of this study, I decided to re-post a book review from 2006:

From fatherlessness flows many things.

Fatherless children are more likely to be poor, perform poorly in school, engage in premarital sex, become teen parents, abuse drugs, and commit crimes than children from intact families. Black children are significantly less likely than other children to be raised in intact families. In 2004, a mere 35 percent of black children were living with two parents, compared to 83 percent of Asian children, 77 percent of white children, and 65 percent of Hispanic children.

Despite decades worth of research on the damage wrought by illegitimacy, a research psychologist named Peggy Drexler attempts to argue that lesbian couples and “single by choice” mothers do a better job of raising boys than married couples in Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men.

Drexler, a mother of two and married for 36 years, interviewed a small and limited number of lesbian couples, heterosexual women who volunteered to deprive their sons of fathers, divorced mothers, and their sons. Her “maverick moms” reject “social judgments” and stress “communication, community, and love” in their roles as mothers.

In one form or another throughout the book, Drexler sets up the strawman, “Mother love doesn’t hurt our boys.” I have never heard reasonable people make such a claim. Unlike Drexler, most people believe that “mother love” and “father love” need to balance each other, which is why intact families are best for children. Drexler often exaggerates and uses the most extreme examples throughout the book to support her biases.

Raising Boys Without Men will give aid and comfort to single mothers, but a house full of them, no matter how well off, won’t ever change the fact that boys want and need fathers. Considering the utter devastation fatherlessness has caused in black communities, it would be easy to go off on Drexler, but she makes clear that she focused on mostly white, affluent lesbians and single mothers.

Why didn’t she interview black single mothers and fatherless boys in inner cities, mothers whose fatherless sons are in and out of the criminal justice system, and boys who are fathers themselves by the time they’re teenagers? Drexler writes:

Like mine, most research in this area has concerned a primarily White and privileged population. Lesbian identity among socioeconomically subordinate groups is generally less visible or less affirmed than it is among more prosperous, White, educated, urban populations. Ethnographic evidence suggests that closeted lesbian and gay people of color often value racial solidarity over sexual adhesiveness. Racial/ethnic allegiances may deter disproportionate numbers of people of color from coming out.

In other words, interviewing poor or economically disadvantaged, black heterosexual or closeted lesbian mothers would not have yielded the results that Drexler, an advocate for white, affluent, lesbian-headed households, was seeking.

Incidentally, the feminist movement traditionally has been a white and affluent phenomenon, although its effects have reverberated through all levels of society. The late Betty Friedan was a suburban homemaker who likened her home life to a concentration camp. For whatever reason, she was unhappy being married and trying to raise decent human beings. It sounded like a personal problem to me, but her book, The Feminine Mystique, marked the unofficial beginning of the feminist movement and sparked a revolution.

Although women had legitimate claims, especially when it came to equal wages for equal work, feminism went much further by waging war against the last standing pillar of society: the traditional family.

Feminists argued that women should be free to work outside the home and to be sexually promiscuous (and irresponsible). Chasteness until marriage was Victorian and repressive, and marriage was stifling and demeaning. A new crop of young women became sexually available to men without the shackles of commitment. The archaic idea of marrying the woman you impregnate was thrown out with the rest of the garbage.

Women from affluent, intact families were able to bounce back from sexual irresponsibility (oh, the irony!) in ways that women from lower-classes, especially those who grew up without fathers, were not. In 1964, a year after Friedan’s book hit the streets and a year before Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a report that warned of the increase of female-headed households in low-income urban areas and associated social pathologies, close to 25 percent of black babies were born to unmarried women. In 2006, the rate is 70 percent.

The irony of ironies is that despite the “independent woman” meme pushed by feminists, too many of their inner city and low-income “sisters” are not independent nor are they dependent on husbands-oppressors, either. They are dependent on the government. The state is the provider. The children grow up mired in a cycle of poverty that is passed from one generation of fatherless children to the next.

A recurring theme in Raising Boys Without Men, despite Drexler’s best efforts to downplay it, is the boys’ desire for fathers. They wanted men — masculine men — in their lives. The clear message of the book is that the boys’ hunger for fathers was trumped by the desires of their progressive “maverick moms.”

The feminist movement spawned generations of selfish women, absentee fathers, and shattered families. Some women may want to be free of husbands, but children certainly don’t want to be free of fathers. And no study will ever prove otherwise.

What’s that old saying? Each generation will become weaker and wiser. Who said it?

The high-tech age has encouraged a sedentary lifestyle, which renders us physically weaker than generations before us. We’re weaker morally, I think, because we’ve mainstreamed permissiveness, sexual and otherwise.

Are we wiser? Under the definition “having knowledge or information as to facts, circumstances,” perhaps. Thanks to the microchip, we know (or can know) a little about everything. If we’re using the definition “having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right,” then a resounding no.

What’s sad is that America as a whole is losing touch with the meaning of biblical references (the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, the return of the Prodigal Son, Judas’ kiss, doubting Thomas, etc.). On a related note, we’ve heard and read about how poorly young people do on historical literacy tests. A new study from the American Enterprise Institute reports more of the same.

Half the nation’s 17-year-olds can’t identify history references, such as pinpointing the decade in which the Civil War was fought, knowing the main theme of 1984 or what Senator Joseph McCarthy had been trying to do. (But, if they’re taught, they will learn. What do government schools teach these days? I don’t know.) From USA Today:

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

“School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,” says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. “What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom’s Cabin part.”

Better, indeed. More nerds, please!

Speaking of eggheads, check out my review of Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them:

One of the funniest characters in the 1984 movie, Revenge of the Nerds, was the uncoordinated and absent-minded Arnold Poindexter. He wore thick glasses, but still couldn’t see well.

We’ve had plenty of laughs at the expense of the Poindexters of the world, studious fellows with Coke-bottle glasses, wearing pants that are too tight and too short, a pocket protector, and an ever-present social awkwardness. As we mature, we move beyond crude stereotypes and realize we all have a bit of nerdiness, geekishness, or jockishness in us.

Such nerd humor, while harmless for adults, isn’t so harmless for children. In Nerds: Who They Are and Why We Need More of Them, David Anderegg, a child and family psychologist, declares that the nerd/geek stereotype negatively affects children and contributes to anti-intellectualism in America.

Read the rest.

I don't cover politics much anymore, but I still receive review copies of political books. I wrote a review of Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past, by Bruce Bartlett. You may find it useful.

“[V]irtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.”

On December 5, 2002, Republican senator Trent Lott toasted 100-year-old Republican senator Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist, at a private birthday party, saying that if the rest of the country had voted for Thurmond for president as he had (Thurmond ran in 1948 as a Dixiecrat), “we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”

About a year and a half later, on the Senate floor (and on taxpayers’ time), Democrat Chris Dodd said that Democrat Robert Byrd (who said on cable TV a few years earlier that he’d seen a lot of “white niggers” in his time), a former segregationist and KKK recruiter, would have been “a great senator” during America’s founding, crafting of the Constitution, and the Civil War.

The backlash against Lott was fierce. He apologized and groveled on Black Entertainment Television (BET) but was eventually drummed out of his leadership post. The backlash against Dodd? Non-existent. He neither prostrated himself before the PC gods nor played the fool on BET.

This double standard was the result of a long distorted history of both parties. The Democrats, seen as the civil rights party, supported slavery, opposed civil rights legislation, instituted the “Black Codes,” and created the Jim Crow system. The Republican Party, in contrast, was founded in opposition to slavery, and supported post-Civil War and Civil Rights Movement-era legislation.

“All of the racism that we associate with [the southern] region of the country originated with and was enforced by elected Democrats,” writes Bruce Bartlett, a former domestic policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush. In Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past, Bartlett goes deep into the history of the Democratic Party and attempts to set the record straight.

Bartlett discusses the motivations of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson to maintain slavery and how Andrew Johnson (whom the author says was “a Democrat his whole life”) tried to block post-Civil War legislation designed to protect newly freed slaves. He includes obscure figures like Senator Benjamin Tillman from South Carolina, whose “consistent theme…was that black men had some sort of compulsion to mate with white women,” and Senator Theodore Bilbo from Mississippi, whose “permanent resolution of the race problem” in 1938 was to send blacks back to Africa and/or create a 49th state for them “somewhere in the West.”

Woodrow Wilson, a liberal who implemented progressive reforms while in office, also instituted racial segregation throughout the federal government. And Bartlett notes that Wilson’s attorney general “did far more to repress free speech and political freedom” than Senator Joe McCarthy, a Republican, ever attempted. But when was the last time Hollywood made a movie about A. Mitchell Palmer?

Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had a “reputation for being a progressive on the race issue,” wasn’t much better on civil rights. He appointed a Klan member to the Supreme Court and ordered the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII. Republican Dwight Eisenhower, “conventionally portrayed as having done nothing for blacks during his eight years,” passed civil rights bills in 1957 (the first since Reconstruction) and 1960. Eisenhower also sent federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Bartlett praises Democrat Harry Truman for signing an executive order establishing a presidential committee on civil rights, an unpopular move in the party, but spares none for President John F. Kennedy, who receives far more credit on civil rights than he deserves. Kennedy did nothing substantive on civil rights, contends Bartlett, and what he did do was largely symbolic as he tried to avoid antagonizing Southern Democrats. He credits President Lyndon B. Johnson for “finally repudiating both his own segregationist past and the Democratic Party’s” in the wake of Kennedy’s assassination.

And what about President Richard M. Nixon’s so-called Southern strategy? Bartlett calls it a myth. There was no strategy “to carry racist votes through coded messages about crime and welfare, as is often alleged.” During his campaign in 1968, Nixon emphasized his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and picked Spiro Agnew as his vice president, a man reputed to be strong on civil rights.

The shift in Southern voting patterns from Democratic to Republican had to have been about race, right? According to Bartlett, economic changes in the South were the primary factor. During the Democrats’ political reign, the South had been the poorest region. As the South’s wealth increased, southerners became receptive to Republican messages of low taxes and small government.

People tend to forget that Nixon pushed to desegregate schools, denying federal aid to segregated school districts. “Just one month into his presidency,” Bartlett writes, “any idea that Nixon was pursuing a Southern strategy had been thoroughly discredited.”

Unfortunately, Nixon also implemented government race preferences.

Bartlett’s meticulously researched Wrong on Race concludes with suggestions on how Republicans can reach out to black voters, including connecting through immigration policy and this stunner: getting behind the idea of slavery reparations. Bartlett tries to make the case on legal, public policy, and political grounds.

If reaching out to black voters has to involve reparations race pandering, don’t bother. (Besides, it wouldn’t work, anyway.) Despite that shocker at the end, Wrong on Race provides ammunition for Republicans fed up with being called racists.

King Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. All that has come before will come again. Whenever we think we’ve uncovered something new about ourselves or the world, all we need do is look to history to set us straight.

Ken Bazyn, editorial director of the Religious Book Club, offers an insightful look at history in The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring. In this readable, yet intricate work, he gives us a literary, religious and philosophical perspective on the seven “perennial” or “root-sins”: pride, envy, anger, avarice (greed), lust, gluttony and sloth (apathy). While the very idea of sin has fallen out of fashion — as pointed out to me by a colleague who once remarked that “sin is a Western concept” — we see it in action every day.

Bazyn masterfully examines how writers, theologians, and philosophers viewed each perennial sin and its “offspring” or variation. Each of the seven is at the root of all others. For example, murder is not listed as one of the seven because it is not a root-sin; it may arise from anger or avarice or envy or all seven.

As an English major, I appreciated Bazyn’s liberal use of literary examples to illustrate the recurring theme. He states at the outset that literature “has a pleasing indirectness that catches us unawares” and that stories help us to “flesh out abstract principles and imprint them on our memories.” Just as Jesus Christ’s parables reflected what was in men’s hearts, stories can hold up a mirror that reflects our own nature.

From such literary characters as Jay Gatsby, Bartleby the Scrivener, Dr. Jekyll, and a host of Biblical figures, Bazyn shows how each perennial sin manifests itself in their tortured lives. He quotes such men as Nietzsche, Kant, St. Augustine, and C.S. Lewis, and refers to historical events such as the French Revolution and the Vietnam War, to build an overarching theme of how human fallacies plague us all. While Bazyn’s book is an excellent study of history and literature, I found myself relishing passages of his own original thoughts and wished he’d used more of a balance in technique.

The Seven Perennial Sins and Their Offspring makes reference to many forgotten stories once read in high school and college, ones that gave us metaphors to “help us cope with life’s complexities and contradictions,” Bazyn writes. Public school educators in America would be wise to return to the study of great literature and Western culture. In the twenty-first century, moral relativism has all but eroded the concept of sin. Some redefine it; others deny it. Ken Bazyn reiterates throughout his book that sin is a deep-rooted, unchanging, universal, and permanent condition of man. We would do well to call it what it is.

King Solomon tells us that no one on earth is free from sin. What, then, is our hope? “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

A perennial solution to a perennial problem.

Originally published at Townhall.com in July 2003

Update (9/21): Wow. Even posting a book review, I can’t get away from controversy. There’s supposedly some dispute about who actually authored Ecclesiastes, a reader tells me. Traditionally, people believed it was Solomon, king of Israel, son of the great King David. Some modern biblical scholars doubt Solomon was the author. My MacArthur Study Bible reads: “The autobiographical profile of the book’s writer unmistakably points to Solomon.” For purposes of this book review, I’ll stick with the traditional view.

I need a vacation…

Warning: This review contains MAJOR spoilers.

J.K. Rowling’s epic tale about an orphan boy who discovers he’s a wizard at age 11 comes to an end in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The seventh and final book in the series sold a reported 11 million copies in the first 24 hours on sale, which broke the record for fastest-selling book. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince held the previous record at nine million.

The seven-book series has sold more than 325 million copies worldwide. The first five books have been made into top-grossing movies, and Rowling has been named one of the richest people in the world.

Not bad for a former divorced welfare mother who nursed cold cups of coffee in a café while writing the first book.

Read the rest at Townhall.com.

Update (7/31): When a religion reporter called Deathly Hallows “unambiguously Christian,” he was referring to the “Christian” concept of substitutionary sacrifice. I’m going to take a semi-educated guess and say that Christianity is unique in this regard: a sinless Savior who sacrifices himself to pay for the sins of others.

Is substitutionary sacrifice a major (or minor) feature of other religions? Discuss here.

America may be too good for its own good.

The qualities that draw people from all over the world “religious and political freedom, the rule of law, due process, a vibrant economy, and a high standard of living” are the same qualities bad eggs use against us.

There are an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in the United States. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the net cost of illegal immigration is about $70 billion per year, which doesn’t include unemployment compensation for legal citizens who lost jobs to illegal aliens.

While men and women are dying in Iraq to “make the world safe for democracy,” illegal aliens flout the rule of law at home, freely crossing our borders with a miniscule chance of being caught and deported. If Al Qaeda wanted to smuggle in a nuclear weapon, America’s southern border is a very inviting place to start.

In the age of terrorism, the federal government still won’t enforce immigration law. We can only guess why: addiction to cheap labor, fear of being called racists, blackmail by Mexican president Vicente Fox. I’m only half-kidding about Fox, but it makes me wonder why the government refuses to enforce the law.

[Now former] Congressman J.D. Hayworth of Arizona wonders, too. In his new book, Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, And the War on Terror, he explains how America is complicit in illegal immigration, a fact that would-be terrorists (who he calls “Islamofascists”) use to their advantage. Excluding the notes and index, the book is a quick read at just under 200 pages with 11 chapters. Hayworth uses plain language, devoid of politically correct jargon. He offers persuasive arguments against the nation-destroying insanity that is allowing millions of illegal aliens to infiltrate, overburden, and ultimately destroy our way of life.

Hayworth points out the absurdity of our current policies and wonders why illegal aliens are fearful of getting caught when the chances of being deported are low:

You will find no better example of political correctness mixed with political cowardice than “sanctuary” policies. These policies forbid police officers from arresting criminals based only on their immigration status and prohibit local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

In Whatever It Takes , Hayworth makes a connection between illegal immigration and crime, and contrasts immigration of the past with the present. “Assimilation is the key to any successful immigration policy, and no country in the history of the world has succeeded in assimilating immigrants as well as the United States,” he writes.

Our country succeeded because of the “Americanization” movement of the early 1900s, which Hayworth briefly discusses. All levels of government and society contributed to the effort, unlike today. These days politicians help push bilingual education, in-state tuition, and multilingual government transactions. Businesses openly hire illegal aliens and banks give them loans to buy houses.

Americanization, Hayworth contends, was replaced by multiculturalism, a “noxious idea that all cultures are equally valid and equally worthy.” One only has to look to the Middle East to see that all cultures are not equally worthy.

Contrary to popular opinion, not all Hispanics support illegal immigration. Some are opposed to non-assimilating immigrants:

Ironically, among the biggest supporters of acculturation and learning English are Hispanic immigrants who have successfully assimilated…They embrace their Americanism while still holding on to their roots. They understand that English is the language of success. They are appalled at Spanish-language advocates who believe that speaking English somehow insults or dismisses their Hispanic ethnic identity.

One barrier to fighting illegal immigration is political correctness. Hayworth writes:

The abuse of language by the pro-illegal immigration crowd is just as duplicitous and just as absurd…Another example comes from the Arizona Republic, which in a profile of two illegal aliens wrote, “Like most undocumented workers, Javier and Janet work aboveboard. They used fake Social Security numbers to land their jobs”

Using fake Social Security numbers — a felony — is what passes for “aboveboard” at the politically correct Arizona Republic. It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

Hayworth is a Republican, but he blames both sides of the aisle for our current crises. In a chapter called “The Left and Right Are Wrong,” he chastises the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page for its “open borders” stance, as well as “lettuce liberals” who support illegal immigration because the price of lettuce might go up if aliens were deported, as prescribed by law.

We know all about the problems, but we don’t hear or read often enough about solutions to the problems. The most informative part of the book is the final chapter, “What to Do about Illegal Immigration.” Some of Hayworth’s suggestions:

• Put troops on the border
• Improve interior enforcement (tamper-proof Social Security cards, 10,000 new agents solely responsible for enforcing employer compliance, 200 additional immigration judges, 500 new Department of Homeland Security trial attorneys, severe penalties for hiring illegal aliens)
• Allow local and state law enforcement to assist outmanned federal agents
• End birthright citizenship
• Impose a three-year ban on Mexican immigration

Hayworth’s ideas are common sense and workable. The question is: When will the government put a plan into action?

Whatever It Takes made me angry. If you care about America’s safety and sovereignty, it will make you angry, too. I write about illegal immigration frequently on my blog. It may be strange that a black woman, a “minority,” would be so outspoken on this issue. It’s partly because I am a member of a group once treated as second-class citizens. In 2006, we’ve all become second-class citizens.

A citizen, in case you forgot, is a “native-born, foreign-born, or naturalized person who owes allegiance to the United States and who is entitled to its protection.” I’m appalled by the government’s refusal to protect law-abiding citizens from the burden of illegal immigration. We have a right to be here and should not be treated this way.

Criminal aliens are coddled by the system, and they exploit what makes America great: a system of fairness and opportunity. If you’re opposed to illegal immigration, Whatever It Takes will help you articulate the reasons and encourage you to get off the sidelines and do something about it.

Originally published at Townhall.com on February 21, 2006

Chastity is a misunderstood virtue.

It is more than simply refraining from premarital sex. It’s an attitude, a way of life, and open rebellion against a debauched culture. Contrary to popular opinion, Christians don’t think sex is dirty or evil. Christians believe sex outside marriage is wrong.

The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On is part memoir and part how-to guide on giving up casual sex, embracing chastity, and experiencing “a life more hope-filled, more vibrant, and more real” by putting sex in its proper place. That kind of life, says author Dawn Eden, is the thrill of the chaste.

The thirty-something [now former] New York Daily News editor, blogger, and Christian convert has written a nakedly honest book for a specific audience: single women ready to admit that premarital sex is not making them happy or helping them find the husband they desperately seek.

In The Thrill of the Chaste, Eden contends that our casual sex culture encourages singles to view one another as commodities. Like many young single women, she was caught up in the hype that sex is the way to a man’s heart. Eden began to understand that premarital sex and its attendant baggage actually made it less likely that she’d get married. For example, to protect oneself from the eventual let-down of casual encounters, one must develop a toughness. In Eden’s case, she sabotaged relationships before she got dumped so she could remain in control.

“[T]he same armor that enabled me to tolerate casual sex made me less attractive to the kind of man I most desired.”

Eden says dissolving the hard shell and allowing herself to be open and vulnerable have helped her be more capable of sustaining a long lasting relationship like marriage. Yes, Eden readily admits she wants to get married and believes God has called her to marriage. She also recognizes that some women reading the book want to get married and provides practical advice on how to meet marriage-minded men who share their faith.

Whether religious or not, women reading The Thrill of the Chaste will be able to relate to Eden’s descriptions of awkward morning-after scenarios. No matter what feminists claim, it is futile to deny that women become attached. “Women are built for bonding,” writes Eden. Sex detached from love leads to a feeling of emptiness.

Being chaste has a strong spiritual component, and to practice it requires a purpose beyond mere abstention from sex until marriage. God created us as relational beings to experience his love and show that love to others. The sexual part of the martial relationship bears more than physical fruit (children). Spiritual fruit borne by two uniting together as one is the “gift of self that they give to each other,” writes Eden, which “becomes a gift to the Lord.”

Bucking the culture and remaining obedient to God present the same problems they always have. As Eden writes, “The most challenging part of chastity isn’t overcoming temptation. It’s gaining the spiritual resources to joyfully face day-to-day life as a cultural outsider.” And Christians know that kind of joy is found only in Christ.

The Thrill of the Chaste encourages single women to focus on sharing God’s love with others and growing in grace rather than putting “the goal of meeting a husband at the center of “thoughts, actions, and dreams.” Eden has found fulfillment in chastity, and she’s using her God-given gifts to help others find fulfillment, too.

Originally published at Townhall.com on April 3, 2007

Related post:

• Rebelliously Chaste!

I met actor Joseph C. Phillips last year when we shared a discussion panel with Shelby Steele (author of White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era) on race relations. At one point during the Q&A, Phillips lost his temper with someone in the audience. He admonished the person for failing to acknowledge that America’s Founders, regardless of their faults, had the right ideas. Individual liberty, freedom of expression, due process, etc., are objectively good principles, even if the Founders hadn’t intended to apply these principles to blacks.

Phillips had committed the “sin” of publicly expressing gratitude for being an American, despite America’s history of slavery and subjugation. His new book, He Talk Like A White Boy, is a semi-autobiographical collection of essays about his love for this country and his respect for the “old school” values that make America strong. Recurring themes are family, faith, and freedom.

Best known for his roles as Lt. Martin Kendall on “The Cosby Show” and Justus Ward on the soap opera “General Hospital,” Phillips is a rarity in Hollywood. He writes candidly about growing up speaking proper English (“talking white”), being different from the mainstream, and having his “blackness” questioned.

The opening anecdote of the 232-page book sets the tone and reveals what eventually becomes a lifelong frustration. After he made a comment in his junior high school accelerated English class, another black student said, “He talk like a white boy!” What does that mean? Phillips thought. Instead of chastising the girl or dealing with the substance of the remark, the teacher merely corrected her grammar.

“No, LaQueesha. Joseph speaks like a white boy!” The teacher had the entire class repeat the correct sentence. “[T]hat moment,” writes Phillips, “was not only the beginning of junior high school, it was the beginning of my life.”

Phillips began to recognize what he calls the “tyranny of opinion” — the idea that a self-anointed group stood at the doors of culture and determined who was or wasn’t black enough. As a conservative columnist and speaker, Phillips receives his share of letters and e-mail from members of this group who sling ad hominem attacks (usually anonymously) but rarely deal with the substance of his work. “In their minds,” he writes, “I no longer speak like a white boy, I now think like a white boy.”

He Talk Like A White Boy is replete with examples of this tyranny in action. Phillips recounts a nasty experience on a TV talk show called “America’s Black Forum.” Between segments, a black liberal journalist let loose with a profanity-laced, personal rant against him. “Imagine if I had cursed at Deborah Mathis in front of a studio audience,” Phillips writes. “My inappropriate behavior would have signaled the bankruptcy of my arguments. To the guardians however, Deborah’s inappropriate and unprofessional behavior is seen as a righteous defense of the race.”

Such a defense is considered righteous to many blacks. Criticizing negative elements of black subculture is “airing dirty laundry,” and holding opinions different from mainstream blacks is traitorous.

Airing more dirty laundry, Phillips decries the emphasis on sports in the black community over academics. “Doing well in school and reading books become anti-black, joining the debate club instead of the basketball team is anti-black as well.” But Phillips doesn’t criticize others just for the sake of it. His book is textured with honest details and examples of his own faults, and he doesn’t rationalize his wrong-headed decisions.

Phillips stays focused on the book’s themes while writing honestly about his anxiety over auditioning, his mother’s suicide, and his efforts to be a faithful Christian, a good husband, and a good father. In a poignant essay about his late father, Phillips laments the diminished role of fathers in the culture in general:

It is a shame that as social currency, fatherhood has been so drastically devalued. A man’s honor is cheap—Boys must see the pride in their father’s smile, feel the firm hand of a father’s discipline, and hear the bite of correction in his voice. Boys will not grow into men unless men lead them—Boys do not need male role models and they don’t need father figures; they need fathers in the home.

Despite the “race traitor,” “Uncle Tom,” and “self-hater” name-calling, many black conservatives understand and share the desire to identify with our racial group. “[N]o matter how successful, educated, or integrated we become, we still seek out images and stories that reflect some sense of who we see when we look in the mirror,” Phillips writes. But that doesn’t preclude telling the truth.

Phillips injects humor into serious subject matter with laugh-out-loud tales about his attempts to be “cool” while conceding that he’s “corny.” For readers interested in a black actor’s perspective on Hollywood, He Talk Like A White Boy will definitely satisfy. Phillips has met and formed strong friendships with many well-known actors. However, the name-dropping is not boastful; it’s instructive. He shares his struggle to be a working actor who doesn’t compromise his values or accept demeaning roles.

He Talk Like A White Boy is one man’s story of love of family and country. Readers looking for a forthright — and sometimes painful — account of being a black conservative won’t be disappointed.

Originally published at National Review Online on June 2, 2006

I reviewed blogger Dawn Eden’s fabulous book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On.

Check out “Rebelliously Chaste.”

As a chaste woman myself, her book resonated deeply and reminded me why I have trouble talking and writing about sexual abstinence without mentioning Christ.

The reasons for abstaining from sex until marriage are larger than avoiding pregnancy or disease. Abstinence should be elevated above mere self-control and delayed gratification. In order for chastity to be meaningful, one has to believe that he/she is being obedient to God, that the sexual act itself has a spiritual purpose ordained by God and intended for two people united in marriage.

Old-fashioned, I know. I should start a new blog called Retro Woman.

If you’ve read the book, I’d love to read your mini reviews. What are your views about sexual abstinence until marriage in general?

No off-topic comments, please.

Update (4/4): Just in case anyone is thinking this, let me clear the air. I am not a virgin. Wish I was, but that’s spilled milk under the bridge. After I became a Christian, I decided to abstain until marriage (some Christians don’t), though I began to abstain before becoming a Christian. It’s strange to think that if I don’t get married, I’ll never again…anyway, it is only by God’s grace that I can remain chaste.

And broadcast it on a public blog.