First Word

I found this movie a bit annoying the first time. Fortunately, I saw it again. It has grown with every viewing. Now, it is Butler index material.

A youngish couple live in a small apartment, and they have taken on the husband’s mother as well. The tension between the two women Continue reading…

For the last half-century, Americans have exhibited a genius for putting opposite parties into control of Congress and Presidency.

Even the exceptions prove the rule. Continue reading…

A romance/crime thriller in the manner that only Bogart and Bacall ever truly mastered. Continue reading…

This movie began as a silent, then the producers decided to switch to sound. Some scenes are still silent or pseudo-silent (voices without need to lip sync). But one can watch it as comfortably as a normal talkie, as most of the scenes, and all the critical ones, have Continue reading…

Alfred Hitchcock silent, based on Noel Coward play.

The opening title, “easy virtue is society’s reward for a slandered reputation,” declares the theme of the movie.

Larita (Isabel Jeans) is falsely but understandably accused of adultery by alcoholic husband. Convicted in court, she tries to start over, but can she escape the hideous past? is the question.

Undoubtedly meant as a critique of bourgeois morality, read: hypocrisy. This is a favorite theme of twentieth century playwrites. Continue reading…

On the occasion of a colossal failure of judgment, immoral behavior or abortive attempts to achieve certain goals, politicians, business leaders and even clergy often utter the words, “I take full responsibility.” These words, fine in themselves, are rarely followed up with resignations, terminations, restitution, discipline or any other action which gives evidence of taking responsibility. In fact, after these magical words are incanted, the failures and sins of those who recite them are deemed to be, by both the utterer and many of the hearers, purged away and removed as far as the east from west. And the hapless man who dares ask for more than words is labeled a nitpicker, a malcontent, a Shylock after his pound of flesh.

Upon analysis, the words, “I take full responsibility,” when used in such a way, mean nothing of the sort. Rather, a string of phonemes that sound like the otherwise meaningful sentence, “I take full responsibility,” has been vocalized. As such, the sounds are as vacuous as the men who utter them.

Distasteful as it is, we are approaching yet another election season.

At least, no one can plausibly suggest, “we just need a few more Republicans to get the job done.”

Since 2001, the Republicans have owned both houses of Congress and the Presidency. The Supreme Court is now 7/9 Republican appointees.

• Row v Wade is still firmly ratified
• Government spending is higher than ever
• Yet another cabinet department has been created
• That department, the Heimatsicherheitsdienst, is laying in place everything the Gulag was about, just waiting for the implementation.
• Two wars have been waged that cannot be defended by Christian just war theory.
• War has been declared against an abstraction (The War on Terror); war has not been declared when we actually go somewhere and kill people.
• A citizen surveillance act has twice been passed, with the insulting “Patriot Act” given as its name.
• The President has repeatedly told falsehoods about the grounds for his wars, lied about the extent of citizen surveillance, and thumbed his nose when questions about constitutionality are raised.
• For the first time in American history, the use of torture is openly discussed and defended.

In short, we stand and watch in horror at what the Republicans are turning our country into.

To be fair, however, we need to recall the previous decade.

• Row v Wade was still firmly ratified
• A bunch of unpopular religionists were incinerated at their gathering place in Waco, Texas.
• The President adulterously abused young girls in his administration
• Then, he lied about it.
• Miss Lewinsky’s War was waged, equally unjust as the Bush Wars, but even more shameful because waged against a Christian, European nation.

In short, we stood and watched with a sense of shame at what the Democrats were turning our country into.

That is our choice this November: Shame, or Horror.

You are not shirking your Christian duty if you opt out of having to make this choice.

This is the second sequel to the original sensational crime thriller silent of 1922. Like the original, it was produced by Fritz Lang, after he returned to Germany after a wartime stint in Hollywood. At least five more were made, and a couple spin-offs.

The first three (if not all) the Mabuse films are “revelation of the method,” i.e. they are crime stories in which the super criminal, Dr. Mabuse, is successful by playing with people’s heads. And the way he plays with people’s heads is laid right out there.

The name “Mabuse” (pronounced: mah boo’ sah) is generally unknown in America, but in Germany evidently has the same kind of recognition as “Frankenstein” here, evoking both a character and a concept.

This one is done more after the fashion of a Ray Chandler mystery, with lots of false leads and confusion created: who is the victim, who the perp? who naive, who self-conscious? is the voyeur admirable or not? is an act heroic if it was manipulated from start to finish? is the supernatural involved, or just mind games and exploitation of people’s weaknesses?

It can be enjoyed as pure entertainment, or as food for thought.

Full title: William Lane Craig. Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time (Wheaton Continue reading…

This is a biography of Cole Porter, the great popular song writer of the first half of the 20th century.

The story is framed by a theater scene which sets up the rest of the movie as a flash-back, and the framing idea is rather clever.

This is not enough to rescue the story, however. The life of this debauched epicurean Continue reading…

1. Every airport is perpetually undergoing major renovations.

2. In the past, check-in was usually a disagreeable experience due to the surly agent awaiting you behind the counter. But at least she was a homo sapien. Now you have to deal with a surly automated check-in machine.

3. The routine physical by the family doc in a closed room can be a bit embarrassing. The routine strip search conducted by the TSA thugs in an open arena is psychological torture. Continue reading…

It turns out the expression “Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda,” though often imputed to the Reformers, was probably never enunciated by them at all. At least, no one has been able to give me a citation.

Here is an invitation to the world: send me a documentable citation, and I will reholster my revolver.

(One internet doctor claims Voetius, but could not give a citation in response to my email query. Not that Voetius counts as a Reformer anyhow.)

Let’s think about the slogan. I give my dynamic-equivalent translation: “The Reformed Church should continually be formed again” (lit. “is always to be reformed.”)

If the expression were merely saying that all councils and creeds are in principle subject to err, Continue reading…

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

– Aristotle

In the end, more than [the Athenians] wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.

– Edward Gibbon

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary

– H. L. Mencken

Sometime back a non-Christian friend asked me to explain my general political and cultural outlook. Because of the position I was arguing for she mistook me for a libertarian. Below is my reply. It is somewhat simplistic, but since she was unfamiliar with some of the basic teachings of Christianity I wrote it intentionally so.

Please forgive this lapse into autobiography. The aim of First Word is to be issue-oriented not personal. But some feel for the outlook of the writers on this blog may be helpful in orienting those who have no familiarity with us.

One last thing. I write in sweeping terms which often lack nuance and qualification. Understand that I have no particular person in mind nor do I believe there are no exceptions to my generalizations. I am also aware of my own hypocrisies regarding many of the things I write. Continue reading…

Since we are well into another tedious election cycle and are subjected to non-stop political propaganda some wisdom concerning an overused and often misused word is refreshing.

 ”My country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying “My mother, drunk or sober.”

– G.K. Chesterton Continue reading…