The Senescent Man

In 1987, Professor Allan Bloom, a member of the Committee for Social Thought at the University of Chicago, began his prescient treatise The Closing of the American Mind with the following observation:

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.

Bloom said this about his young students, but he was equally critical of the educators who promulgated relativistic thinking. Likewise, Professor and Christian author R. C. Sproul has complained that modern education has abandoned truth and replaced it with rhetoric. “Educators,” he said, “have become modern-day Sophists.” And likewise, those whom the educators have attempted to educate.

Bloom’s observations were made over fifteen years ago. Today, many of those 18 to 22 year-old students, are now 35 to 40, and are serving at managerial levels on the editorial boards of the MSM. Therefore, a reason magazines like Newsweek tend to be critical of the historicity of Christ’s birth, and the Gospel accounts, is that the story flies directly in the face of moral and historical relativism.

MSM skepticism of the story of Christmas is also based upon a tenacious foolhardiness towards anything of a “super nature.” In an obituary of the beloved, brilliant, amusing, talented, conservative, though gay and agnostic Boston radio talk show host, David Brudnoy, about which I have posted a couple of times since his death, Boston Herald columnist Jeff Jacoby makes this observation:

…One day, driving our rented Fiat from Bergamo back to Milan, we [Jacoby and Brudnoy] talked at length about religion -- in particular, about the afterlife that he doubted was real. "Just wait," I told him. "One of these days you'll find out it's as real as Milan. And what will you do then?" That day came far sooner than any of us wanted,…

One hopes that David Brudnoy, before the end, followed in the leap of faith made by C. S. Lewis, A. W. Tozer, J. R. R. Tolkien, John R. W. Stott and others of equivalent gravitas. They determined that a super nature can be a legitimate component of reality. But many brilliant writers of the MSM, refuse to even consider the proposition and instead mock those who consider such things real as dull, uneducated or anti-intellectual.

For the MSM, anything believing in the supernatural is lumped together, particularly if there is a sober seriousness attached. Therefore “fundamentalist” Islam is sometimes made tantamount to Christian fundamentalism, and that, in turn, is inexorably linked to evangelicalism. So the reasoning of the MSM is that the sagacious Chuck Colson is equivalent to an Ayman Al-Zawahri.

A final thought as to reasons the MSM naysay the nativity is their unending and passionate desire to act as the official debunkers of everything underpinning Christian faith and heritage. This may be partly rooted in skepticism of a super nature, but is also founded upon a strong desire to publicly ridicule those who have faith and conviction. “Let’s guffaw at those kooky Christian nut-balls,” is the underlying attitude.

The free market of thought, prevalent in the blogosphere today but not in the MSM, will one day significantly change the way people get their information. When that day comes, and it will be soon, it will forever change the way the MSM operates. The blogosphere will rock their world. The revolution WILL be audioblogged, vlogged as well as blogged.