The Undergraduate is Not a Political Novel
By Robert Arrington
The Undergraduate, a novel by Virginia attorney E. Scott Lloyd, published by Liberty Island Press and available for electronic download on Amazon, is something of a mixed bag. This coming-of-age story, told in the first person, is about a young man who is a college student at the turn of the century. He is from a small tourist town on the Jersey Shore, but attends a fictitious private school, Montpelier University, located in the mountains, probably the Adirondacks, and apparently affiliated in some way with the Roman Catholic Church. The school attracts a number of students from the narrator’s home town, including his closest friends and a young woman in whom he has an intense interest, but for most of the book, only a platonic relationship.
The Pro-Life Message of ‘Avengers: Endgame’
By Alec Ott
To be pro-life means to uphold the dignity of human life and promote life, not death, in our answers to the problem of human suffering. When we promote life, we in turn battle the “culture of death” in this world, a world-view that promotes death as a solution to problems. This ongoing battle for life and death is played out countless times in our traditional stories and legends. In such stories, the archetype hero fights for life and saves the people from the villain who wants death, destruction and power.
[Warning: Spoilers follow.]
Abortion Advocates Dare Not Face Their Own Beliefs
By Alec Ott
G.K. Chesterton’s masterpiece, Orthodoxy, remains completely relevant in today’s world in spite of being published over 100 years ago. This is so partly because he tackles and eviscerates the contemporary philosophies of his day that are still revered to this day. One philosopher he took on was , whom many in his own day praised as bold and courageous in his ideas and writing.
Chesterton would have none of this. In Orthodoxy, he criticized Nietzsche for having “always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, ‘beyond good and evil,’ because he had not the courage to say, ‘more good than good and evil,’ or, ‘more evil than good and evil.’ Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense.” Chesterton explained that the use of such metaphors was the mark of “vague modern people” who would not dare to define what was the good of their own doctrine.
Fighting the Abortion Status Quo With “Heartbeat” Bills
Part 3 in an Ongoing Series
By Alec Ott
This past week, Amanda Prestigiacomo of The Daily Wire reported on the signing of the “fetal heartbeat” bill into law by the Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine. As a wonderful next move for the pro-life movement, the new law is intended to protect unborn babies with beating hearts from being aborted. Unborn babies’ heart beats are detectable after approximately six weeks of gestation.
As Prestigiacomo reported, a handful of states have passed such bills, including Mississippi and Georgia. And just to the south of Ohio, the Kentucky state legislature passed SB 9, and Governor Bevin signed into law the Commonwealth’s own “fetal heartbeat” bill. As summed up by a report from the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, the legislature passed several pro-life-related bills before wrapping up their session. One bill anticipates the overturning of Roe v. Wade to provide significant legal protection to the unborn. Another prohibits abortion on the basis of sex, race, or physical disability.
Political Writing 101: Start With Theme
Part 3 In a New Weekly Column With Advice for Conservative Creative Writers
By Jamie K. Wilson
Welcome to this series on how to write fiction from a conservative point of view. These posts can simply be read, or you are invited to join a guided writer’s workshop to practice and critique with other writers. To join the workshop, please email me, Jamie, at kywrite at gmail.com and request an invitation.
Why Child Sacrifice Is Easy to Imagine
By Audie Cockings
Yesterday I read a shocking article by National Geographic detailing the methodical sacrificial killing of 140 children ages five to fourteen. The broken child remains were recently discovered and unearthed near Chan Chan, an archeological complex in coastal Peru. The event is estimated to be five hundred years old.
Young ones were donated by parents to be held down, sternums severed in half, and rib cages broken open so that the undersized hearts could be cut out of the bodies. The article does not state whether the children were still alive during that procedure, but that all were killed at the same time –which tells me that there were at least 140 community members who systematically killed at once. The researchers also mentioned that there were few “false starts” in the cutting, indicating that ritual members were skilled with the procedure and ceremonial blades.
New Fiction: The Healing
By Alec Ott
The realization hit Jim like a boxing glove. “Terry,” he said, tears now flowing in his eyes. He pulled her to him and hugged her with all his might. “I’m so, so sorry!” After a few moments, he pulled back and looked into her eyes again. “The fear, the hopelessness, of being unloved! I can’t imagine how that felt!”
