March 18, 2022

Conformity and ‘Community’: Fertile Ground for Tyranny

Many were shocked to witness the Canadian government’s brutal suppression of the truckers’ protest against vaccine mandates.  Previously, draconian lockdowns oppressed many more Canadians, resulting in the arrest of pastors for holdi...

March 6, 2021

No mercy in collectivism

In 1885, Jo Niijima (sometimes romanized "Neesima") gave an address at the tenth anniversary convocation of Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.  During that address he declared, "A single individual is important." ...

April 21, 2020

Beware The Guru

South Korea now appears to have its COVID-19 situation under control.  Yet in February, a sudden rise in cases there centered on a group named the “Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony.”  It ...

October 24, 2019

Psychotherapism: The Mother of Wokedom

Recently it has become rather obvious that the psychotherapy world often stands ready and willing to create new mental sicknesses and abolish older ones in the service of progressive ideology.  After gender ideologues minted the notion of ...

May 4, 2019

Changing Eras and Emperors: A Tribute to Modern Japan

These days in Japan, the attention of most people has been riveted on the historic abdication of one emperor and the ascension to the throne of a new one, whose reign inaugurates the Reiwa era, by the imperial calendar.  This occasion seems...

February 3, 2019

Woke Evangelicals: Cultivating Victimhood, Vanquishing Conscience

With astonishing speed, the evangelical world has been invaded by social justice ideology.  In a recent podcast, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention (until now a theologically conservative body), J.D. Greear, highlighte...

January 13, 2018

Sex Obsession and Psychotherapism: The Culprit Is Not the Cure

Immediately after their abusive behavior finally became public, Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey rushed off to a sex addiction clinic.  Without questioning their motives, one can be justifiably skeptical about the prospect of success for such t...

July 22, 2017

'Imagine': John's and Yoko's Hymn to Progressive Utopia

For the last 15 years, I have been making good educational use of Lennon's famous song "Imagine."  In one of my classes, analyzing the song helps Japanese students think critically about song lyrics.  The song is very well kno...

May 12, 2017

The Zen Cult of Death in Wartime Japan

In my university student days, I had a professor of Japanese Buddhist literature who often contrasted the peaceable, broad-minded nature of Japanese Buddhism with the intolerance of Christianity.  I wish I could have acquainted him with the work...

February 12, 2017

The Perils of Religious Romanticism

On January 2, about fifty thousand young adults gathered in Atlanta to participate in the Passion 2017 conference.  People outside evangelicalism might imagine something named "Passion" to be an event for romantic novelists or their fa...

December 29, 2016

Love and Hate: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Not long ago, I happened to observe an ugly clash between a group of Japanese leftists and anti-Korean rightists in downtown Sapporo, Japan, each group chanting its own slogan.  The leftist one was "No more hate speech!"  Regretta...

August 31, 2016

The Death of Evangelicalism

The current presidential election has made the serious rifts within evangelicalism embarrassingly obvious.  For instance, reactions to Donald Trump vary widely.  Some, like Jerry Falwell, Jr., have declared him a Christian, while others den...

May 31, 2016

Love Sins: The Reality of Love Versus Modern Romanticism

Currently the way to victory in any controversy is to present one’s own stance as loving, while disposing of the opposite view as hate speech. Though she is hardly famous for her benevolence, even Hillary Clinton commends herself as one aligned...

January 24, 2016

The Rise of Religious Narcissism

We live in a very neo-Romantic age, in which feelings are considered more significant than facts.  This is why a man can claim to be a woman just because he feels like one and be taken seriously, even held up as a hero, despite the obvious biolo...

August 22, 2015

The Agony of the Pre-Persons: Philip K. Dick's Attack on Abortion

Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novels and short stories have provided bountiful material for TV and film adaption, including Blade Runner and the Total Recall movies.  More recently Amazon’s TV adaption of his alternate-history n...

March 22, 2015

Was Jesus a Nonviolent Pacifist?

People like Michael Moore and Ron Paul have speculated that Jesus would not give his thumbs-up to it the recent hit movie American Sniper, or to the military in general.  Many such people seem to imagine that Jesus was a nonviolent idealist like...

August 2, 2014

The Sins of Psychotherapism

Brave New World depicts a dystopia in which fathers and mothers are regarded as an obscenity – the result of the influence of Freudian psychology and the bottle-nurture of babies among a sexually liberated populace.  Huxley’s brillia...

March 23, 2014

Are Modern People Morally Advanced?

In regard to widespread disdain for the Middle Ages, C. S. Lewis felt that many modern people suffer from a kind of “chronological snobbery” and that “the modern conception of Progress ... is simply a myth, supported by no evidence ...

January 6, 2013

Sowing Hatred for Israel and Jews Among Japan's Intelligentsia

In contrast to the American presidential election, the recent election in Japan displayed better sense among Japan's electorate, a majority of whom voted the incumbent leftists out of office.  However, Japan continues to be afflicted by widespre...