Edited by William O. Einwechter and containing chapters by some of the Christian Right's most unstable extremists, Explicitly Christian Politics is nauseating. Attempting to deny what Christ said about his kingdom not being of this world, these devils would substitute Christ's heavenly kingdom for their own dictatorship.

The book's premise is straightforward: Jesus Christ is both Creator and King, and therefore all of life, both private and public, is subject to the author's interpretation. That is, the authors are pretending to be god. The implications of this should be obvious, but alas are not: today 1/2 of the U.S. Senate would sleep soundly at if the reigns of goverment were turned over to Pat Robertson- or, e.g., if John Ashcroft were to become attorney general.

Every ideology is inherently hubris, since it inevitably makes assumptions concerning creation and the nature of reality and the source and meaning of right and wrong.

Hopefully Americans will learn of the diabolical nature of these Reconstructionist theocrats before it's too late.

Edited by William O. Einwechter and containing chapters by some of the Christian Right's most distinguished thinkers, Explicitly Christian Politics is an impressive read. Attempting what is today unheard of -- an approach not only to political issues but also political theory that is rooted entirely in Christian thought -- it succeeds in making its case in a consistently scholarly fashion that is still light enough to entertain and to reach virtually any lay reader.

The book's premise is straightforward: Jesus Christ is both Creator and King, and therefore all of life, both private and public, is subject to His rule. The implications of this should be obvious, but alas are not: modern society becomes hysterical at the very thought of anything which might, in modern terms, "mix politics with religion." Of course this hysteria is nonsense. Every ideology is inherently religious, since it inevitably makes assumptions concerning creation and the nature of reality and the source and meaning of right and wrong. But the Christian religion and its trappings are out of vogue in this century, while the cults of the all-powerful state and the relativistic individual reign supreme, and it should surprise no one that the acolytes of the modern polytheism should seek to silence the ancient monotheism at every opportunity.

So just what are the implications of a consistently Christian political theory? Perhaps it is best first to understand what the implications are not. While the authors call for a Constitutional amendment recognizing Jesus Christ as Lord and as the Source of its life, liberty and law -- much the same as almost every other Western nation has -- they emphatically do not call for what moderns refer to as a "theocracy". "Theocracy," which is to say, rule by God, already exists: Christ's kingdom is "not of this world", and He rules the affairs of men no matter what they do or say. Rather, the authors believe a consistently Biblical social theory requires a separation of church and state, that the two institutions, along with the family, are ordained by God and meant to operate in very different spheres. They do not call for the submission of government to the church, or any earthly clergy: what they want is conformity of civil life, and indeed of civilization, to the teachings of Christ.

In practice, this means that the authors do not favor a change in the form of American government; they favor a change in its character and beliefs. It is an ideological and spiritual revolution they seek, not a revolution of the modern sort, and it is entirely based on principles familiar. The authors stake the claim of Jesus Christ's rights as King, but do not call for an Earthly king to rule in His stead; instead, they call for repentance and conversion on the part of those who do rule on Earth -- the electorate -- and for the election of leaders who will faithfully discharge their Constitutional duties not as faithful humanists or faithful Marxists but as faithful Christians.

And what does leadership as a faithful Christian mean, aside from not committing adultery, not breaking campaign promises, and not selling secrets to the Chinese? Well, actually, it means a change in worldviews, just as did the shift from the old order to New Deal statism in the 1930s. The authors take time to explore the Christian foundations of liberty in the modern world, noting correctly that of all the ideologies in history, only Christianity produced modern political and economic freedom. They detail the depravity which results (and which has resulted) from an abandonment of absolute right and wrong, and show why no adequate legal standard -- and certainly no truly free one -- can be built apart from the standard of Scripture. They trace the free market's roots in Biblical law and show why government must be both very small and very unintrusive. They offer a completely new paradigm for education, and call for reason over "sentimentalism." In short, they address, and address well, most of the vital issues of the day.

One cannot come away from Explicitly Christian Politics without a deepened realization of the religious nature of the "isms" of our time and the abysmally bad politics that flows from them; likewise, one cannot read this volume without an appreciation for the fact that these Christians have devised a better model. Quibble with the details all you like: Explicitly Christian Politics is nothing short of the rebirth of a vital Christian social theory, far beyond the "me-too" pluralism of the Christian Right to date. There's something special here. it is very clearly not going away.

Copyright: Rod D. Martin, 8 May 1998.

As a die hard Redskins fan, I was very sorry to see this excellent concept so badly muffed. The idea behind this book is to cash in on the Washington Post vault, providing great photos and articles combined with new pieces by long-time Skins beat reporters to tie it all together. Sadly, whoever edited and proofread this thing reeeally dropped the ball. Sentences at the bottom of the page are repeated at the top of the next, photographs are mislabeled, pieces of sentences are missing, words are chopped off in the middle. Probably still of some value for the die hard Skins fan, but a real black eye for the Washington Post. If their newspaper were produced as shoddily, Richard Nixon would have finished his second term.

Yes, there are some typos and such in the early chapters but the book isn't as lousy as described in the 2-star review. Most of the problems are hyphen-ated words that are not at the end of a page or line. It is like the typeset was changed but the book was not reproofed.

Still, there is a lot of good information in the book. I think it covers items that Loverro's book (very good as well) ignored or glossed over-- how Gibbs wanted to sign and trade Riggo and how Joe Jacoby ended up sticking around in that first camp. The Times summary makes it sound like Gibbs and Beathard were geniuses building a team. This book shows that they were also lucky geniuses. If you are a Skins fan, you should own this book.

I see there is also a newer edition out with the Synder years (ugh).

Hey fellas, how would you feel if you knew that hot phone-sex operator you wasted $40 on last night was really a GUY? This memoir of life in the highly profitable adult entertainment industry can be funny, but overall it is very disturbing to read about all the horrible things callers make the "girls" say and do. Lots of mysogyny, horrible cursing, sadistic and pedophilic fantasies...but I guess it's better these losers pay some girl (or guy) to take their abuse over the phone than inflict it upon their loved ones or strangers. A very surreal read, not for the faint of heart.

(I wrote a review of this back in early April, but for whatever reason it has not been posted here. So I'll resubmit it.)

"Sir Thomas More" is a play originally written by Anthony Munday about 1594, but it failed to pass the censors; accordingly, in c. 1600-02 the play was reworked, and some scenes occasionally rewritten, by Thomas Heywood, Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, and William Shakespeare. It is for Shakespeare's involvement in this play, consisting of no more than one scene and a short soliloquy, that "Sir Thomas More" is really remembered at all.

The first two acts of the play are, as a whole, strong and dramatically effective. As the play opens long-simmering resentment of native-born Londoners against foreign French "straungers" living in the town is boiling over, and the mounting tension leading up to rebellion is well-executed, leading up to the climactic "Ill May Day" scene, written by Shakespeare, in which all the tension is diffused by More's pacificating address to the rebels (and Shakespeare's passionate plea for the common humanity of the "straungers," reminiscent of Shylock's "Hath not a Jew"). The rabble-rousing revolutionary John Lincoln cuts an attractive figure, despite his xenophobia, and Doll Williamson is a feisty and entertaining character that a modern actress could have great fun with.

After Lincoln's execution at the beginning of Act 3, the play loses its dramatic thrust and goes all over the place in search of a plot, in a hit and miss fashion. The most noteworthy scenes of the latter half of the play are the episode of Jack Faulkner and his "shag hair," Lady More's graphic and poignant dream of the "whirlpool," and when More speaks "like Moore in melancholy."

"Sir Thomas More" is not a masterpiece, but it's worth reading and probably ought to start being printed complete in collections of Shakespeare's work. In every collection I know of, Shakespeare's "Ill May Day" scene is printed alone, but I never fully appreciated it until I read it in its context in "Sir Thomas More": there is great tension in that scene, which Shakespeare masterfully diffuses with humanity and the voice of sanity, but that tension can only be appreciated if you read the non-Shakespearean scenes which came before it and set it all up.

I very much wanted to like this book. It attempted to do what few other children's picture books would even contemplate: to introduce major themes in history to very young children: the origins of early technology, the invention of writing, religion and so on. Unfortunately the prose is stilted and the narrative uneven. It postdates the mastery of fire by about 400,000 years. Worst of all, one illustration after another depicts well-muscled men doing things, while only a few feature any women at all, and then only to show them recoiling with children on their arms. One does not have to be a revisionist feminist to point out that in the vast majority of subsistence economies, present and past, women have played an active role, and at times even a preponderant role, in cultivating, gathering and transporting foodstuffs. The same goes for religion, whether we consider the female shamans of East Asia or the mother cults of the Mediterranean. I also think its time for children's authors to stop portraying "human history" in a simple European/Mediterranean trajectory that begins with the Neanderthals, dips temporarily into ancient Egypt and Sumeria, and resurfaces with Greeks, Romans and Goths, etc. Having taken a very early interest in prehistory myself, I can say from personal experience that it took me many years to overcome the idea that the only ancient history that really mattered was the one which directly influenced later events in Europe.

In short, this book deserves to be out of print.

I bought this book hoping that our two college professors would give Brownsville a bed of rich and accurate description and at least some analytical scrubbing. I thought this because before I bought the book I examined sections in it that were written by Professor Knopp. His are the enjoyable chapters that focus primarily on Brownsville's culture and people and give us some insight into what Brownsville is about -- how it works on a structural level, how its people interact with each other, and so on. The sections written by Professor Adams, however, are awful. Why? Many reasons: they are written in a dry and dull prose with an unneccessary focus on things like boats and machinery; they are replete with subjective references to politics that should have been left out; and they lack the sophistication and insight that Knopp's chapters possess. Adams's writing is so poor in comparison to Knopp's, in fact, that it reads like a juvenile's -- there are places, for instance, where Adams glosses over big topics like Brownsville's shipping industry (instead giving us only facts and figures) and where he strays into politcal territory when he should have stayed out (at several points he reveals his dislike of such things as the welfare system, political liberals, and segments of our Mexican immigrant population). The result is that the book as a whole reads like a tourist guidebook or a manual for political upstarts who need a Cliff Notes of Brownsville. Very poor effort. If it weren't for Knopp's chapters (and I wish he had written the majority of the book), the book would have been a complete waste of my time.

Overall, it is easy book to read but you could really tell that each chapter was written by a different person. Some chapters are good but others are really poor. The end of the chapter tests were way too easy compared to the actual test. It has an incredible number of mistakes and typos especially in the calculation of subnet masking. I went round in circles and wasted so much time trying to figure out why I could never get a question correct. I think this book has a second edition that I hope is better. Avoid this book and you will be a much happier person.

OK! I know there are a lot of mistakes...especially for the beginner like me...I am really confused by this book because of its unnecessary mistakes...but, I really like the chapter 2...it's very easy to understand the ARP...IP or ICMP..However, I got confused on the chapter 5 with the wrong route table...Man, I hope it would be better when it come to the second edition!

I used the book with help from the CBT Systems computer based training and found the book quite useful for the holes that the CBT did not cover. But the book contained too many errors for a training book. I was always looking at the error correction list from the web site to make sure what I was reading was correct. That should not happen on this kind of book. Clean up the errors and it would be a lot better at its job.

Some useful info. However, the book lacks scholarship; i.e., the book simply recites the dubious works of many Afrocentric "scholars". How is it possible to assert that three men born of same mother and father can be of different races, simply because the hue of their skins may have been different? They conjecture that the hues of Ham, Shem, and Japheth are black, dusky (olive) and fair (I suppose this means white) from their names; however, a review of concordances and lexicons hasn't yielded any support for their conjectured hues. If different hues imply different races, then most African American families include different races (probably even those of the authors). Wake up. Haven't you heard that race is a political construct. Race has no biological meaning, as was once purported in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.

I think William McKissic goes out of his way not to offend anyone in this pampmhlet, rather than tell it like it is. I think in this day and age a person should feel compelled to tell the truth, rather than to have the truth swept under the carpet. One point that Mr McKisssic fails to make is that the Hebrews who were already a dark skinned race who intermarried with the Hamatic nations to become a blend of one race. There are numerous examples which show that this misgenation of the Hebrews took place. McKissic is also incorrect in saying that Shem, Ham and Japeth were of 3 distinct races. Many scholars feel that they were of the same race, however the areas in which they chose to settle brought on the need for melanin or the lack there of in Japeth's descendant's case. But one thing is certain, many Hebrews were mistaken for Hamatic people throughout the bible. Joseph is mistaken for an Egyptian in Genesis 42, and Paul is mistaken for an Egyptian by the Romans in Acts 21:38. Also McKissic fails to mentions the pictures of Yeshua (Jesus the Christ) which clearly shows that he was black, needless to say these pictures pre-dates the Eurpean image of Christ that was created during the 15th century by at least 1000 years. I think better research would have served McKissic well, rather than not trying to ruffle any feathers. This world has been living a lie for more than 500 years, thanks to European colonialism, it is time that we correct these myths. Mr McKissic work stops short of correcting these myths, and it makes me wonder, what or who he is afraid of. Slavery is over Mr McKissic you need not bow down to any man!