Philadelphia, Basil, and Bradbury

A most important path to the discovery of duty is also the study of the divinely-inspired Scriptures. For in them are not only found the precepts of conduct, but also the lives of saintly men, recorded and handed down to us, lie before us like living images of God’s government, for our imitation of their good works. And so in whatever respect each one perceives himself deficient, if he devote himself to such imitation, he will discover there, as in the shop of a public physician, the specific remedy for his infirmity. The lover of chastity constantly peruses the story of Joseph, and from him learns what chaste conduct is, finding Joseph not only continent as regards carnal pleasures but also habitually inclined towards virtue. Fortitude he learns from Job, who, when the conditions of his life were reversed and he became in a moment of time poor instead of rich and childless when he had been blessed with fair children, remained the same, and always preserved his proud spirit unhumbled; nay, even when his friends who came to comfort him trampled upon him and helped to make his sorrow more grievous, he was not provoked to wrath.

Ray Bradbury is a lover. A life of writing has shared a love of people, pets, metaphors, cities, giant apes, and improbable futures. Bradbury’s gift of loves cries out for a loving yet critical dialogue with Christian belief. Christianity at its best, I contend, is likewise full of loves: for God, creation, and people. Ray Bradbury encourages Christian theology to embrace joy amidst death, humanity amidst technology and a not yet known future with an imagination connected to summer days growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, as well as the cosmic thread of theology in the imperative for mission to Mars. And Christian theology can share its witness to Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Bradburyian joy; honest with Ray’s joy in the midst of the fear of Halloween (The Halloween Tree) and lonely sea monsters (“The Fog Horn”). The Christian gospel can propel the hope that Bradbury shares for the future, the future of humanity bearing witness to God, as “priests of creation,” according to both Bradbury and the church fathers. In the end, both Ray Bradbury (writer) and Karl Barth (theologian) are both lovers of “the humanity of God.”

Christian belief resonates with Ray’s refusal to say that death is the end, but grounds that refusal on the resurrection that has already taken place: of Jesus Christ. We will be raised because Jesus was raised (I Cor. 15:12-19). The kingdom of God is at hand (Mk. 1:15) for even Martians. 

1) “13 things you didn’t know about Ray Bradbury”

2) “Ray Bradbury, Literary Godfather” by Alice Hoffman 

Doing is being.

To have done’s not enough;

To stuff yourself with doing—that’s the game.

To name yourself each hour by what’s done,

To tabulate your time at sunset’s gun

And find yourself in acts

You could not know before the facts

You wooed from secret self, which much needs wooing, 

So doing brings it out,

Kills doubt by simply jumping, rushing, running

Forth to be

the now-discovered me.

To not do is to die,

We are the dream that other people dream.

The land where other people land

When late at night

They think on flight

And, flying, here arrive

Where the fools dumbly thrive ourselves.

Refuse to see 

We be what all the world would like to be.

had its origins when in 1953 director John Huston recruited him to write the screenplay for his film of Moby Dick. Though the two men had expressed a wish to work together, Huston’s offer came to Bradbury as a bit of a shock, possibly because at the time he had yet to read Melville’s novel.

But, of course, this was an offer he couldn’t refuse. So, the night of Huston’s proposal, Bradbury—by his own account—stayed up till dawn making good his omission, a feat that smacks of Ahab’s whale-tussling or some such epic fiction. And, by morning, the account continues, Bradbury had knocked enough skelps off the thing to believe he was the man for the screenwriting job. It turned out that he’d signed up for a stormy voyage—but the money was good: $12,500 for the script, plus another $200 a week living expenses.

Sitting in the basement typing room of UCLA in 1950, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine days. The school charged ten cents every half hour to use one of its typewriters, and Bradbury spent a total of $9.80 to complete the book. Its publication launched the struggling writer to prominence and secured his place in the pantheon of science fiction literature. Now, nearly seventy years after Bradbury emerged from the basement with his manuscript, HBO is adapting the book for television, with Michael B. Jordan cast as the main character Montag. The film’s producers must recognize the novel’s relevance to today’s cultural climate. Indeed, when reflecting on the themes of the book, one cannot help but marvel at its prescience.

What distinguishes Fahrenheit 451 from other dystopian fiction is that it’s less about censorship than it is about self-censorship. Bradbury imagines a future in which technology has lulled people into complacency with mindless entertainment and a barrage of endless trivia. As a result, citizens have become sheltered from the realities of life and desire only to perpetuate an anodyne existence of pleasure and comfort. They have developed an intolerance for unpleasant truths, politically incorrect ideas, and opinions that might knock them out of their safe-spaces. Hence the burning of books, those containers of ideas from thinkers from the past that preserve and perpetuate a free and liberal society. As Professor Faber explains to Montag: “Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.”

One of the roles of science fiction is to provide readers with a glimpse of how the future could be. Ray Bradbury didn’t get everything about the future right. We haven’t yet seen books and reading made illegal (as in his 1953 Fahrenheit 451), just as we haven’t yet discovered another planet ready for American colonizers (as in his 1950 The Martian Chronicles). And yet, the themes he explored in those books—mass media and censorship, colonization and environmental change—are more relevant than ever. Even in his lesser-known works—such as the 1951 sci-fi collection, The Illustrated Man, Bradbury tackles a surprising array of issues that feel as if they were ripped from today’s headlines.

Readers today will find in The Illustrated Man a fresh perspective that illuminates global issues like artificial intelligence and climate change. Bradbury also engages with the political and cultural challenges of migration: specifically, the crossing of the U.S.–Mexico border…

1) The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson – March 2, 1978 

2) Ray Bradbury on Madmen – Feb 24, 1972 

I’ve never been a big reader of Jordan Peterson, but I have found it amazing how that man, who is not a religious believer, has the ability to speak deeply into the crisis of millions of people today, and give them hope. Why can’t the churches do that? I’m not saying, nor do I read Zelden as saying, that the church should mimic Peterson, or any other member of the IDW. But there must be things that these people know that the Church’s leaders have forgotten, or maybe haven’t learned. You don’t have to baptize Jordan Peterson’s philosophy to listen to his long lecture series on the Book of Genesis, and learn a lot from it. Personally, I was amazed by how Peterson had the ability to bring a compelling sense of wonder to the explication of this familiar text.

Why can’t we learn from Peterson’s answer to the question, “Why aren’t there more men in church?” We can.

Why can’t we learn from this short discussion Peterson had about Christianity with Ben Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, and Dave Rubin, an agnostic gay libertarian? We can.

the Marxist left doesn’t use Marxist language to refer to itself, preferring other jargon (e.g., “social justice,” “equity”) to describe its ideas. Hazony says these linguistic conventions prevent liberals from seeing the challenge for what it is:

The best way to escape this trap is to recognize the movement presently seeking to overthrow liberalism for what it is: an updated version of Marxism. I do not say this to disparage anyone. I say this because it is true. And because recognizing this truth will help us understand what we are facing.

He then explains, in simple, clear language, the basic framework of Marxist social analysis. It will be clear to any reader that the progressive movements today (e.g., antiracism) are fundamentally Marxist—applied not to economic relations, but to race, gender, and sexual identities.

Hazony says that anti-Marxists like to say that Marxism is a lie, but if that’s true, why is liberal society so vulnerable to it? Because, he says, “Marxism captures certain aspects of the truth that are missing from Enlightenment liberalism.” 

For reasons Hazony explains, liberals are going to have to realize that their real enemies are not to the Right, but to the Left. And, to be fair, conservatives and others on the Right need to realize that we are going to have to make common cause with good-faith liberals on these matters, to defend our own liberties.

The assumption running throughout Edsall’s analysis is that the only thing that can explain white resistance to contemporary left-wing racial politics is racism. But there is a mountain of evidence that liberals have to ignore for this explanation to be true. For example, this summer, one of the top-selling books is Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, which purports to explain how white people, when they disagree with progressive challenges on racial matters, are really behaving in pathological ways.

Is there any demographic group who would stand for being told that to object to descriptions of them as bad (as a group), and deserving of punishment is a sign of how sick and frightened they are? It is impossible to imagine a book called Black Fragility, or Latino Fragility. The left politicizes and pathologizes the condition of being white, and there is Tom Edsall, blaming whites who don’t agree with this as resentful.

The literature and media of the left these days is filled with condemnations of “whiteness.” Again, the idea that people who see themselves routinely denounced for the color of their skin, and their culture, must accept these racist insults and attempts to disempower and dispossess them, or stand guilty of racism—it’s absurd. But this is how liberals see it.

I don’t see how anybody can deny that racism exists, and that it is evil. But if you don’t agree with this radical, illiberal-left definition of race and racism, then you are therefore against full equality for black people. Good grief.

Twenty percent of the training, one day’s worth, is devoted to woke diversity. I have attached the sanitized version of the power point that was presented to us. Going back, I realized this document did not have all the woke aspects that were presented to us.

I have spent decades in liberal bastions of academia (student, grad student and professor on the tenure track) and federal government. Diversity has been preached as a good unto itself. But diversity trainings have changed over time. They have become much more woke.

1. Equity instead of equality. Equality is no longer the goal. Rather equity and ensuring equal outcomes. The examples were that pay, bonuses, raises, etc were provided the same across racial groups. The trainer did not mention equality or equal opportunity at all. It was all about equity and equal outcomes.

2. Allyship. It is no longer acceptable for people to exhibit tolerance. We must be allies who accept and embrace however people identify themselves. One of the largest topics was allyship particularly for LGBTQ. I must accept and embrace sinful behavior or else. I can’t just tolerate and work with people fairly, I must embrace all aspects of them and their behavior.

3. The training had the beginnings of a struggle session. The facilitator stressed repeatedly and at length that we need to make ourselves uncomfortable by self introspection and that we should change our beliefs.

4. The facilitator repeatedly associated the term “Fair and balanced” with bigoted and biased people whose actions are clearly discriminatory.

This is in the Trump administration. I can’t even begin to imagine how bad things will become when this training is given in the Biden administration. But this is the carryover from the Obama administration. One of the major initiatives from the Obama administration was “Cultural Transformation” and increases in the Civil Rights HR staff. Those same people who were hired then are still in here now. Trump just does not seem competent enough to root out this evil.

So, I worked hard yesterday morning to write a long, thoughtful post dissecting a New York Times columnist’s views on race. And then I worked hard in the afternoon writing a long, thoughtful post dissecting the way the woke use language to deceive and indoctrinate people.

And then I see that the lunatic Laura Loomer won her Congressional primary in Florida and that Trump halfway endorsed QAnon in his press conference, because they like him.

So I’m thinking: the world is crazy. And then I see the child porn that the filthy, disgusting Netflix is bringing us in September, and I think yeah, burn the whole damn thing down. 

On NPR this morning, the guests on 1A (here, just past the 13:00 mark) were talking about “WAP” and the reaction to it. A writer for Billboard lauds “the sexual freedom of this song,” and laments the double standard that lets male rappers get away with sexually explicit songs without criticism. “Cardi and Megan have huge young fan bases,” the writer said. He believes that the fact that women rappers have triumphed with such a sexually explicit song is therefore “really remarkable as a cultural shift.”

What he means in context—listen to it yourself to understand—is that Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion are teaching young girls that they can be just as raunchy as boys, with no apology.

On the show, the black writer Brooke Obie praised the song as an example of “women singing about their own bodies and what they want.” It is “empowering,” said Obie. She added:

“People are upset because whenever a woman is actually owning her own sexuality, and not being objectified, there is a kind of conservatism that goes with this.”

Yeah, read the lyrics. There’s nothing that says “empowering” and “not being objectified” like that.

I know perfectly well that this is not the first time a rap song has had filthy lyrics. What is so remarkable to me is how completely mainstream this stuff is now, to the point where a presidential nominee wants to associate himself with a singer of this filth.

I watch what’s happening to Baylor as a rare case (well, the only one I can think of) in which a Christian university that only the day before yesterday sought to establish and maintain a conservative-ish identity, now flipping overnight to embrace the opposite. This week, I spoke to a conservative white Evangelical, age 23, doing graduate work, and he told me it’s mind-boggling how many of the conservative white Evangelical professors at his undergraduate alma mater are now embracing Critical Race Theory, and seeing no conflict with their morals, politics, or philosophy. Something big is happening, and it’s happening all over.

I received the following letter last night from a reader, who gives me permission to publish it so long as I take his name off. He identifies himself as a lawyer and Baylor alumnus. It was a challenge to me, made honestly and graciously; I accept it.