For nearly 15 years I worked as a Customer Service Agent for a Major Airline, which operated on what is called a hub, and spoke system. The hubs were the operational center of the Airline. Every flight for the Airline had a relationship to the hub either in arriving into the hub from one of the spoke Airports (stations) or departing from the hub to one of the spoke stations. The domestic hubs for the Airline I worked for were Chicago (ORD), Denver (DEN), Washington (IAD), San Francisco (SFO) and Los Angeles (LAX).

 
Without the hubs the Airlines couldn’t exist. The existence of spoke stations without hub stations would be like having a circumference with no center. If the center dies the circumference dies. Likewise though, the spoke stations are the lifelines for the hubs without which the hubs would die. Without a circumference the center cannot exist.

 
There is a metaphor here. What the hub and spoke system is to an Airline, theology and culture is to a people. Theology is the hub that that gives life to the spoke stations (culture considered in its multifaceted hues), and culture in turn, being given life by Theology, returns to strengthen the Theology that is giving it life. However, just as hubs and spokes cannot exist as center and circumference in the commercial Airline industry without one another so a particular Theology and culture cannot exist without one another as center and circumference.

 
This is a point that needs desperately to be driven home in our times for there are many within the Church today who insist while Jesus is Lord over the Church (the Airplane hangar at the hub where one finds Theology) His Lordship shouldn’t be as precise in society (the Airplane hangar at the spoke where one finds culture). In separating Theology from Culture the way they do these theologians desire a hub without spokes or a center without a circumference. While conceding they have the best of intentions, this advocacy of separating the Lordship of Christ over the place where one finds Theology (Church) from the place where one finds Culture (society) has been disastrous. 

 
When this Theology of separation between center and circumference is taught in their churches what happens is a vacuum is created in the circumference because the Church is not teaching the people that a center always creates a circumference. Now the consequence of this is that both a new center and a new circumference are created. It is akin to an Airline hub saying, “I no longer believe my hub should have any thing to do with spokes.” The consequence of such an action would be for another Airline to arise who would provide not only a new hub but also a new spoke system. Now, the previous Airline might exist (for awhile) as just a hub but eventually the new Airline would be the system to which everybody would fly. In the same way when the Theologians in the Church teach a Theology that insists that Christ isn’t Lord over the culture the way that He is Lord over the Church the consequence is that Theology creates a situation where rival competitors arise to create alternate hub and spokes. Put simply, when Theologians in the Church teach a Theology where it is explicitly taught that Christ is not Lord over the culture the same way He is over the Church the consequence is that those Theologians preach the death of their own theology for a theology that refuses to be connected to a culture is a center that refuse to have a circumference. The result of refusing to preach a Theology that understands the relationship between hub (Theology) and spoke (culture) is that a new Theology will arise that does understand that relationship and will preach that relationship with the further consequence that Christian Theology will go into eclipse until it once again awakens to that relationship. You cannot have a hub without spokes. You cannot have a center without a circumference to define it. You cannot have a Theology that does not create a culture.

 
The reality of this is seen all around us. The Church has abdicated its responsibility to speak a Theology that informs all of culture and the result is that the State has dotted the landscape with Churches that do preach a competitor Theology that supports the competitor pagan culture that their pagan Theology creates. These Government churches (sometimes euphemistically referred to as Public Schools) exist largely because the Church refuses to preach a Christian Theology that would thoughtfully inform a Christian counter culture to the pagan culture that the pagan Theology has bequeathed us. 

 
Now the really exasperating thing is that these well intended men who preach in the Church a Theology that insist that Christ is Lord over the culture in a substantially different (read lesser) way then He is Lord over the Church are seeking to multiply. They publish magazines with this theme. They run universities and seminaries with this theme. They do conferences with this theme. They are experts in the most arcane areas of Theology as it applies to the Church but they continue to insist that we must not tell God’s people how Christian Theology walks in the public square or how it feeds and gives life to the arts or to economics, or to education, or to civil social life or to the area of jurisprudence. They are all hub and no spokes and eventually as no spokes are left to strengthen the hub the hub will die. We must realize that Christianity can go into eclipse in a culture in one of two related ways. Like a tree rotten at its core it can go into eclipse from the inside out (this is where we most normatively look for Christianity’s demise) where because the center is rotten everything that the center supports (culture) fails, or like a tree that has had all of its branches cut off Christianity can go into eclipse from the outside in, where, because it has not protected its branches (culture), it languishes.

 
Theology and the place where it is expected to be proclaimed is the hub of the Christian faith but if that Theology cannot or will not provide life for the outlying spokes (culture in all of its manifestations) that theology will be severely marginalized and the culture will find a new hub and so become a different culture.   

In the past week we have seen three different events on the National scale that have driven a great deal of conversation in this country. First there was the Don Imus imbroglio. Second there was the Duke Lacrosse players vindication. Third there was the mass murder at Virginia Tech University.

When looking at these three recent events the question arises as to whether or not they have anything in common. Is there any ideological mortar that serves to give some unitary meaning to these diverse current events? I believe there is.

Before looking at what I consider to be the thread of continuity that runs through these events I would first like to notice that others are looking for a thread of continuity in these events as well. Senator Barack Obama drew a connection in a speech in Wisconsin on Monday between the violence that occurred in Blacksburg, Virginia with the verbal violence that occurred on the Don Imus radio program. Sen. Obama’s contention is that we need to work on ending all these violences. The Senator from Illinois didn’t mention anything about the violence of false accusation in the Duke Lacrosse case. To be honest this speech read like a upscale version of Rodney King’s, “Can’t we all just get along,” homily, but beyond the seeming incongruity in linking offensive speech with thirty-two dead people we should at least give the Junior Illinois Senator kudos for attempting to find some continuity in these events that would turn these isolated happenings into a meaningful whole.

So the Senator was correct to look for linkage but woefully inadequate in the linkage he construed. The linkage doesn’t lie in Government officials telling us of the need to play nice but rather the linkage is the connection with political correctness that all these events have. Political correctness is the mortar that serves to give a whole meaning to these otherwise random events.

Political correctness is the petrol that drives the engine of the Worldview of Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism (neo-marxism) is a Worldview that has been embraced by much of the elite in the West and is seeking to reach hegemony, and the simplest explanation of what it is, is to simply note that it is the opposite of Christianity. Where Christianity emphasizes order, Cultural Marxism emphasizes chaos. Where Christianity emphasizes transcendent meaning, Cultural Marxism emphasizes subjectively created meaning. Where Christianity emphasizes objective knowable Truth, Cultural Marxism emphasizes process philosophy / theology. Where Christianity emphasizes hierarchal distinctions (men are different than women, God created a plurality of people groups thus cherishing variety, parents are different than children, Kings are different than peasants, scholars are different than students, etc.) Neo-Marxism emphasizes a radical egalitarianism (men and women, Kings and peasants, Scholars and students, parents and children, people groups… are all the same) where distinctions must be overturned. Because Cultural Marxism is radically opposed to the culture that Christianity creates Culture Marxism works to absolutely invert Christian culture so that all categories that Christian culture creates are stood on its head. The result of this is that male headship is attacked (in order to negate male leadership), the attainment of children’s rights are pursued (in order to negate parental rights), male and female roles are obliterated (giving us a gender blender society), the perverted replaces the virtuous so that what was once thought to be virtuous is not thought to be perverted (and so perversion dare not be attacked as perverted), and the ignorant are hailed to be genius.

Neo-Marxism in its pursuit of the perfect anti-Christ culture has given us the destruction of the author one finds in deconstructionism because if authorial intent is allowed to survive then the author has place of privilege over the reader and in a egalitarian society the primacy of the author over the reader will never do. Since Cultural Marxism is driven by process philosophy / theology the only tradition that is allowed is the tradition of no tradition. As such Neo-Marxism seeks to cut off every generation from every previous generation with the consequence that the respect for the aged that one should find in Christian culture is a replaced with disdain for the aged. In the end Cultural Marxism is the anti-culture culture and produces the anti-civilization civilization where the pervert is King.

Much more should be said here concerning Cultural Marxism but connections still have to be made.

Now, Political correctness is the fuel that serves and drives this Worldview. Political correctness works in the concrete to advance what Cultural Marxism teaches in the abstract. As such political correctness works, to bring social change by means of media outlets, educational propaganda, advertising subtleties, and political legislation. Through these concrete means political correctness works to redress what it claims are the historical injustices brought about by Christianity and Christian culture. The consequence of this action is that it first works to inculcate in people a sense of injustice and victimhood that only can be relieved by following its plan of action to punish those perceived by the Cultural Marxist to be part of the group who preyed upon the victimized group. So in the land of the politically correct any group that can make any kind of case that it has been victimized or abused by the remnants of Christian culture are to be listened to, while the perceived victimizers need not even try and make a case that their alleged victims are mistaken.

Now, after setting the backdrop we can see how all these events spoken of at the beginning are all connected by the prevailing currents of Cultural Marxism and political correctness. With the Duke case the young men were guilty for no other reason than because they were white males. White Males have been victimizers forever in Western Christian culture. As Whites they were guilty of victimizing blacks just by their ethnicity and as males they were guilty of victimizing a female just by virtue of their maleness. In the Virginia Tech case political correctness prevented legislation in the Virginia State house that would have allowed students to carry permitted concealed weapons on campus. Everyone knows that guns have been the means by which victimized people have been oppressed (not to mention that guns are in the way of Cultural Marxism running the table in the West) and as such guns cannot be allowed on University campuses in Virginia because they are a symbol of oppression and all people must be equally defenseless. Finally the Imus case becomes a part of this only because of the double standard employed in the way it was handled. Political Correctness allows the victimized group to speak in degrading ways (hip hop lyrics) but does not allow the perceived victimizers to speak in the very same way (Don Imus’ vulgar language).

So, there is a common thread that unites all these events into one cohesive whole and that common thread is Cultural Marxism and political correctness. If it had not been for Political Correctness those Duke men would have never been charged. If it had not been for Political Correctness very possibly there would not have been as many dead bodies in Blacksburg, Virginia. If it had not been for Political Correctness the deserved firing of Don Imus would not have been greeted with such outrage over the hypocrisy of those calling for his head.

The internal problems we have experienced as a Nation in the last week are not disconnected. These events are united by the anti-culture culture’s attack on culture. It would be well to keep in mind that, ‘A house divided against itself cannot long stand.’

Blacksburg, Virginia may likely refer to it forever as ‘Black Monday.’ On Black Monday God was blasphemed as thirty-two people created in His image were massacred. Thirty-two sons and daughters won’t ever again sit around their respective family tables breaking bread and fellowshipping with their loved ones. The dreams and aspirations of thirty-two young people have been extinguished. This can be nothing but a tragedy.

Understandably, the faultfinders are at work pointing fingers already, but even if the fault is found and universally agreed upon it will do little to assuage the grief of the family and friends of those who have perished. Still, it is only normal for Americans as a people to ask who is responsible for this and to query whether or not anything can be done to prevent future Black Mondays.

Christians believe that individuals are responsible for their own actions. So for Christians the primary answer to the question of responsibility for Black Monday is to look to the one who fired the weapons. God has already held him accountable.

But having laid the responsibility upon the individual we still might ask whether or not on a corporate scale we as a people are somehow responsible for creating a culture that aids and assists in events such as Black Monday. For example, if a particular culture communicated that killing the most innocent was a positive good we would still rightly primarily fault those individuals who kill the most innocent but hopefully we would go beyond to ask ourselves if the culture’s appraisal in killing the most innocent really was a positive virtue that we want to continue to exalt as a culture.

Now already many of the European newspapers have weighed in on this matter. Many of them are insisting that Americans create ‘Black Mondays’ by countenancing a gun culture. No doubt many American newspapers and opinion outlets will soon jump on that same bandwagon, without admitting that what happened on Black Monday could likely have been significantly diminished in its severity if the University hadn’t spoken against a proposed Virginia State law that was eventually defeated that would have sanctioned permits (Virginia HB 1572) thus allowing concealed weapons on Virginia University campuses. College officials throughout Virginia had argued that guns are poison to the University atmosphere and that the learning environment should be cleansed of guns. In light of this one can only conclude that it is not 2^nd amendment believing Americans that created a culture where Black Monday could happen but rather that those who worked to defeat legislation that would have allowed legal guns on campus thus creating a environment where there was no force present that could play Wyatt Earp to Black Monday’s nutcase who was playing Kim Jong Il. Those who worked to defeat legal guns on campuses in Virginia bear some responsibility for Black Monday.

The European crowd with their American liberal sycophants can’t seem to reconcile themselves with the reality that in a fallen world self defense is sometimes required. Would that Americans still heard sermons on this subject such as one given in Philadelphia in 1747 where it was equated unequivocally that the failure to defend oneself is suicide:

He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself.

By creating a policy where handguns weren’t allowed on campus those policy makers share in the incurred guilt of murder since they created conditions where self-defense wasn’t allowed and where lives, thus, could be easily taken ‘by one that hath no authority for that.’

I am too libertarian to advocate that laws should be passed requiring the carrying of weapons but were I forced to choose between laws that restrict the 2^nd amendment and laws that require the God given right recognized in the 2^nd amendment to be embraced by all men I would opt for the latter.

More questions might be asked regarding corporate responsibility but I will be content at this point to accuse those who pursue the negation of the right of Americans to possess guns, thinking that the elimination of this right will decrease Black Mondays, are in reality guilty of creating the environment where Black Mondays are more Black then they otherwise would be.

Aside from the “I-Man” imbroglio and Larry Birkhead’s paternity in the ever unfolding Anna Nicole saga, very little “news” has penetrated the Dow Compound in recent days.

Friday morning, I woke up and meandered into the basement, hopping on-line to see what was actually going on out there.

That’s when I saw this, this, this, and this.

An Iraqi suicide bomber managed to slyly snake through eight levels of security to detonate a bomb while other “insurgents” blew up a bridge on the Tigris River that connects Baghdad’s Shia and Sunni enclaves.

Is there anyone out there besides the maniacal John McCain and our delusional president who thinks the “surge” will bring stability, freedom, democracy, peace, love and Fox News to Baghdad and the rest of Iraq?

I quickly turned on the television to see if there was any coverage of these events. Might there be pictures of the parliament or perhaps an explanation of exactly how the bomber managed to get to his intended target? The obvious supposition is that the help of many members of the security forces would have been necessary, and points to the fact that the Iraqi government and our military cannot secure the country.

Instead, I was greeted with more commentary about the sins of Imus, and the need to satisfy the vengeful god of political correctness by offering up a haggard 66-year-old man on the altar of collective guilt.

Baghdad burns as a result of “Coalition” actions in bringing down an existing state and unleashing disorder and revolution, all in the name of “freedom.” Meanwhile, the Fourth Estate, who was asleep at the switch in 2002 and 2003 no longer even bothers, flooding the airwaves day and night with inanities and salacious gossip.

If I spent more than five minutes watching MSNBC, CNN, or Fox which would I be more likely to see? A press coference with Nouri al-Maliki or Larry Birkead? An analysis of the breakdown of Iraq’s security procedures or the latest on Sanjaya Malakar? An explanation of the issues at the heart of the Shia/Sunni divide or an overview of breakdown in the friendship between Britney and Paris?

I ran across Caitlin Moran’s latest column at TimesOnline entitled “Abortion: Why It’s the Ultimate Motherly Act.” If you want to get at the heart of the evil of abortion, then read this article. It is by far the most unashamedly selfish argument I have ever seen in favor of murdering one’s own children:

My belief in the ultimate sociological, emotional and practical necessity for abortion did, as I have mentioned before, become even stronger after I had my two children. It is only after you have had a nine-month pregnancy, laboured to get the child out, fed it, cared for it, sat with it until 3am, risen with it at 6am, swooned with love for it and been reduced to furious tears by it that you really understand just how important it is for a child to be wanted. And, possibly even more importantly, to be wanted by a reasonably sane, stable mother. Last year I had an abortion, and I can honestly say it was one of the least difficult decisions of my life. I’m not being flippant when I say it took me longer to decide what work-tops to have in the kitchen than whether I was prepared to spend the rest of my life being responsible for a further human being. I knew I would see my existing two daughters less, my husband less, my career would be hamstrung and, most importantly of all, I was just too tired to do it all again. I didn’t want another child, in the same way that I don’t suddenly want to move to Canada or buy a horse. While there was, of course, every chance that I might eventually be thankful for the arrival of a third child, I am, personally, not a gambler. I won’t spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. …

… However, what I do believe to be sacred – and, indeed, more useful to the earth as a whole – is trying to ensure that there are as few unbalanced, destructive people as possible. By whatever rationale you use, ending a pregnancy 12 weeks into gestation is incalculably more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world. Or a child that, through no fault of its own, would be the destructor of a marriage, a family, a parent. It’s fairly inarguable to say that unhappy children, who then grew into very angry adults, have caused the great majority of mankind’s miseries. If psychoanalysis has, somewhat brutally, laid the responsibility for mental disorders at parents’ doors, the least we can do is to tip our hats to women aware enough not to create those troubled people in the first place.

Sure. This is the kind of B.S. you want to read after finding out that your own adoption process will most likely take three times as long as you once thought.

I can’t help but wonder: if Ms. Moran really wanted to ease “mankind’s miseries,” then why not make more of a personal sacrifice? Couldn’t she just as easily abstain from sex? It’s 100 percent effective. No sex, no unwanted children. Oh, but that would mean exercising a little self-control and assuming personal responsibility – and those are exactly the kinds of burdens abortion on demand is supposed to alleviate.

Compare Moran’s reasoning with that of Miranda Sawyer, who detailed how she came to “rethink” abortion in a recent article for The Observer:

Like most women – at least most British women – I have always been firmly in the pro-choice camp because I’ve spent nearly all of my sexually active life trying not to get pregnant. Throughout my twenties and the better part of my thirties, I did everything that was required for me not to have a child (other than, you know, not having sex). I wasn’t always safe – I’ve necked morning-after pills like vitamin tablets – but I was lucky enough not to end up in a situation where I was pregnant and didn’t want to be. I’ve never had an abortion, though I am mighty glad that legal abortion exists.

When I got pregnant so soon after my Granny’s death, it felt weird. My mind kept returning to the pregnancy test. If my reaction to those fateful double lines that said ‘baby ahead’ had been horror instead of hurrah – and, to be honest, it wasn’t unalloyed joy that I felt when I saw them; I was scared, too – then I would have had little hesitation in having an abortion. But it was that very fact that was confusing me. I was calling the life inside me a baby because I wanted it. Yet if I hadn’t, I would think of it just as a group of cells that it was OK to kill. It was the same entity. It was merely my response to it that determined whether it would live or die. That seemed irrational to me. Maybe even immoral.

Ms. Sawyer still thinks women should be allowed to have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. However, she believes that “once an embryo has developed enough to feel pain, or begin a personality, then it has moved from cell life into the first stages of being a human,” so, for her, “ending that life is wrong.” I guess that’s at least a step in the right direction.

But she points out the inherent fallacy of the pro-abortion argument. It isn’t about determining whether what’s being killed is a human life or not. If a woman wants it, it’s a baby; if she doesn’t, then it’s just a blob of tissue. That’s why I have never bought into the notion that having an abortion is a “tough decision” for a woman to make. It’s the easy way out of a difficult situation. Deciding what’s best for the child – whether to keep it or give it up for adoption – that’s a tough decision. But that’s also one that doesn’t have to be made alone.

Ask anyone who has adopted, or is trying to adopt, and they will tell you that there is no such thing as an “unwanted child.” That’s a lie perpetuated by those whose bloodlust and selfishness get in the way of reason.