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In the 1980’s my pastor Adrian Rogers of Bellevue Baptist, Memphis, TN was president of the Southern Baptist Convention 3 times and he got to meet with President Reagan. Rogers also can be seen in this picture above to the left when Ronald Reagan is about to speak to the Religious Roundtable’s National Affairs Briefing on August 21, 1980 in Dallas, Texas. The Religious Roundtable was founded by Ed McAteer, a member of Adrian Rogers church. Rogers was the first President elected in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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Engagement photograph of Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis. January 1952.
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__March 31, 2017Hugh HefnerPlayboy Mansion16236 Charing Cross RoadLos Angeles, CA 90024
Dear Hugh,
It is interesting to me that your magazine started out in the 1950’s initially taking a Republican point of view but later drifted quite leftward. Steven Watts in his book MR PLAYBOY notes, “The magazine even glamorized Marxist intellectuals such as Herber Marcuse described in a profile as a Septuagenarian superstar.” This interested me so I read the article, PORTRAIT OF THE MARXIST AS AN OLD TROUPERby Michael G. Horowitz which evidently was published in your magazine in September of 1970. It reminded me that I had written to you on this subject of communism before.Back on March 7, 2016 I wrote you the following words:
Yesterday I learned of the passing of Nancy Reagan. Back in 1984 my wife and I went to hear RonaldReagan speak in Little Rock. Afterwards the presidential limousine drove slowly by us and President Reagan waved to us and we waved back. Then chills went up my spinewhen I realized that Jill and I were the only ones standing on the corner!
I understand that Ronald Reagan wrote you a letter on July 4, 1960 “I once thought exactly as you think,” Reagan wrote, as he describes his shift across the political spectrum from left to right. “No one could have changed my thinking…” Reagan went on to protest you giving those who were blacklisted a place to publish their views in your magazine.
I can see both sides of the argument back then on the blacklist. Woody Allen’s move THE FRONT is about this very issue. HUGH, now looking back at President Reagan’s time in office are you glad that he referred to Russia as the EVIL EMPIRE and he did what it took to bring down their Communist empire. I found a good paper entitled, “Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” By Lee Edwards, Ph.D. and it made some very good points.
KEY POINTS
- One Western leader above all others forced the Soviets to give up the Brezhnev Doctrine and abandon the arms race, brought down the Berlin Wall, and ended the Cold War at the bargaining table and not on the battlefield: President Ronald Reagan.
- From his first week in office, President Reagan went on the offensive against the Soviet Union.
- Based on intelligence reports and his own analysis, the President concluded that Communism was cracking and ready to crumble. He took personal control of the new victory strategy.
- President Reagan forced the Soviet Union to abandon its goal of world socialization by challenging the Soviet regime’s legitimacy, by regaining superiority in the arms race, and by using human rights as a weapon as powerful as any in the U.S. or Soviet arsenal.
Communism catches the attention of the young at heart but it has always brought repression wherever it is tried. “True Communism has never been tried” is something I was told just a few months ago by a well meaning young person who was impressed with the ideas of Karl Marx. I responded that there are only 5 communist countries in the world today and they all lack political, economic and religious freedom.Tony Bartolucci noted that Francis Schaeffer has correctly pointed out:Hope in Marxism-Leninism is a leap in the area of nonreason. From the Russian Revolution until 1959 a total of 66 million prisoners died. This was deemed acceptable to the leaders because internal security was to be gained at any cost. The ends justified the means. The materialism of Marxism gives no basis for human dignity or rights. These hold to their philosophy against all reason and close their eyes to the oppression of the system.WHY DOES COMMUNISM FAIL?Communism has always failed because of its materialist base. Francis Schaeffer in his film series does a great job of showing that in the 22:30 video on You Tube “How Should we Then Live Episode 6,” which was put up on the internet by Theodore Osborne. I WOULD BE GREATLY INTERESTED IN YOUR REACTION TO THAT PROGRAM.Also Schaeffer shows that there were lots of similar things about the basis for both the French and Russia revolutions and he exposes the materialist and humanist basis of both revolutions.
Schaeffer compares communism with French Revolution and Napoleon.
1. Lenin took charge in Russia much as Napoleon took charge in France – when people get desperate enough, they’ll take a dictator.
Other examples: Hitler, Julius Caesar. It could happen again.
2. Communism is very repressive, stifling political and artistic freedom. Even allies have to be coerced. (Poland).
Communists say repression is temporary until utopia can be reached – yet there is no evidence of progress in that direction. Dictatorship appears to be permanent.
3. No ultimate basis for morality (right and wrong) – materialist base of communism is just as humanistic as French. Only have “arbitrary absolutes” no final basis for right and wrong.
How is Christianity different from both French Revolution and Communism?
Contrast N.T. Christianity – very positive government reform and great strides against injustice. (especially under Wesleyan revival).
Bible gives absolutes – standards of right and wrong. It shows the problems and why they exist (man’s fall and rebellion against God).
WHY DOES THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM CATCH THE ATTENTION OF SO MANY IDEALISTIC YOUNG PEOPLE? The reason is very simple.
In HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, the late Francis A. Schaeffer wrote:
Materialism, the philosophic base for Marxist-Leninism, gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man. Where Marxist-Leninism is not in power it attracts and converts by talking much of dignity and rights, but its materialistic base gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man. Yet is attracts by its constant talk of idealism.
To understand this phenomenon we must understand that Marx reached over to that for which Christianity does give a base–the dignity of man–and took the words as words of his own. The only understanding of idealistic sounding Marxist-Leninism is that it is (in this sense) a Christian heresy. Not having the Christian base, until it comes to power it uses the words for which Christianity does give a base. But wherever Marxist-Leninism has had power, it has at no place in history shown where it has not brought forth oppression. As soon as they have had the power, the desire of the majority has become a concept without meaning.
Is Christianity at all like Communism?
Sometimes Communism sounds very “Christian” – desirable goals of equality, justice, etc but these terms are just borrowed from the New Testament. Schaeffer elsewhere explains by saying Marxism is a Christian heresy.
Below is a portion from a great article. Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.This article was published January 30, 2011 at 2:28 am in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:In the end, the one argument that will never wash is that communism can’t be said to have failed because it was never actually tried. This is a transparent intellectual dodge that ignores the fact that “people’s democracies” were established all over the place in the first three decades after World War II.Such sophistry is resorted to only because communism in all of those places produced hell on earth rather than heaven….But the fact remains that no society in history has been able to achieve sustained prosperity without respect for private property and market forces of supply and demand. Nations, therefore, retain their economic dynamism only to the extent that they resist the temptation to travel too far down the socialist road.
Francis Schaeffer notes:
At Berkeley the Free Speech Movement arose simultaneously with the hippie world of drugs. At first it was politically neither left nor right, but rather a call for the freedom to express any political views on Sproul Plaza. Then soon the Free Speech Movement became the Dirty Speech Movement, in which freedom was seen as shouting four-letter words into a mike. Soon after, it became the platform for the political New Left which followed the teaching of Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was a German professor of philosophy related to the neo-Marxist teaching of the “Frankfurt School,” along with...Jurgen Habermas (1929-).
AGAIN ON YOU TUBE YOU CAN WATCH THIS DISCUSSION. You can search “How Should We Then Live – Episode 9 – The Age of Personal Peace & Affluence,” for a 27:44 length video put on the internet by Eduardo Miller and at the 5:43 mark you see Bettina Aptheker saying, “And by God people we have to push Reagan right back to the wall and if we have to, we have to push him right through the wall. We have to tell him, “No baby, this is our University!!!”
During the 1960’s many young people were turning to the New Left fueled by Marcuse and Habermas but something happened to slow many young people’s enthusiasm for that movement.
1970 bombing took away righteous standing of Anti-War movement
Francis Schaeffer mentioned the 1970 bombing in his film series “How should we then live?” and I wanted to give some more history on it. Schaeffer asserted:
In the United States the New Left also slowly ground down,losing favor because of the excesses of the bombings, especially in the bombing of theUniversity of Wisconsin lab in 1970, where a graduate student was killed.This was not the last bomb that was or will be planted in the United States. Hard-core groups of radicals still remain and are active, and could become more active, but the violence which the New Left produced as its natural heritage (as it also had in Europe) caused the majority of young people in the United States no longer to see it as a hope. So some young people began in 1964 to challenge the false values of personal peace and affluence, and we must admire them for this. Humanism, man beginning only from himself, had destroyed the old basis of values, and could find no way to generate with certainty any new values. In the resulting vacuum the impoverished values of personal peace and affluence had comes to stand supreme. And now, for the majority of the young people, after the passing of the false hopes of drugs as an ideology and the fading of the New Left, what remained? Only apathy was left. In the United States by the beginning of the seventies, apathy was almost complete. In contrast to the political activists of the sixties, not many of the young even went to the polls to vote, even though the national voting age was lowered to eighteen. Hope was gone.
After the turmoil of the sixties, many people thought that it was so much the better when the universities quieted down in the early seventies. I could have wept. The young people had been right in their analysis, though wrong in their solutions. How much worse when many gave up hope and simply accepted the same values as their parents–personal peace and affluence. (How Should We Then Live, pp. 209-210
You want some evidence that indicates that the Bible is true? Here is a good place to start and that is taking a closer look at the archaeology of the Old Testament times. Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,
The answer to find meaning in life is found in putting your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The Bible is true from cover to cover and can be trusted.
Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
Everette Hatcher, everettehatcher@gmail.com, http://www.thedailyhatch.org, cell ph 501-920-5733, Box 23416, LittleRock, AR 72221
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Francis Schaeffer has rightly noted concerning Hugh Hefner that Hefner’s goal with the “playboy mentality is just to smash the puritanical ethnic.” I have made the comparison throughout this series of blog posts between Hefner and King Solomon (the author of the BOOK of ECCLESIASTES). I have noticed that many preachers who have delivered sermons on Ecclesiastes have also mentioned Hefner as a modern day example of King Solomon especially because they both tried to find sexual satisfaction through the volume of women you could slept with in a lifetime.
Ecclesiastes 2:8-10 The Message (MSG)
I piled up silver and gold,
loot from kings and kingdoms.
I gathered a chorus of singers to entertain me with song,
and—most exquisite of all pleasures—
voluptuous maidens for my bed.
9-10 Oh, how I prospered! I left all my predecessors in Jerusalem far behind, left them behind in the dust. What’s more, I kept a clear head through it all. Everything I wanted I took—I never said no to myself. I gave in to every impulse, held back nothing. I sucked the marrow of pleasure out of every task—my reward to myself for a hard day’s work!
1 Kings 11:1-3 English Standard Version (ESV)
11 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.3 He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.
Francis Schaeffer observed concerning Solomon, “You can not know woman by knowing 1000 women.”
Featured artist is Jacolby Satterwhite
Jacolby Satterwhite was born in 1986 in Columbia, South Carolina; he lives and works in New York. Bringing together such practices as vogueing, 3D animation, and drawing, Satterwhite’s dreamlike videos explore his own body and queerness while also incorporating his mother’s identity, her schizophrenia, and the thousands of illustrations she made throughout his childhood.
Satterwhite started out as a painter but shifted his practice when he discovered new media. He often works in front of a green screen and is drawn to the virtual space because of its potential as a queer arena, but his performances also take place in public outdoor spaces.
Links:
Artist’s website
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Related posts:
Ecclesiastes 2 — The Quest For Meaning and the failed examples of Howard Hughes and Hugh Hefner
Ecclesiastes 2-3 Published on Sep 19, 2012 Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 16, 2012 | Derek Neider _____________________________ I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 162 A look at the BEATLES Breaking down the song ALL WE NEED IS LOVE Part C (Featured artist is Grace Slick)
Is Love All You Need? Jesus v. Lennon Posted on January 19, 2011 by Jovan Payes 0 On June 25, 1967, the Beatles participated in the first worldwide TV special called “Our World”. During this special, the Beatles introduced “All You Need is Love”; one of their most famous and recognizable songs. In it, John Lennon […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 158 THE BEATLES (breaking down the song WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?) Photographer Bob Gomel featured today!
___________________ Something happened to the Beatles in their journey through the 1960’s and although they started off wanting only to hold their girlfriend’s hand it later evolved into wanting to smash all previous sexual standards. The Beatles: Why Don’t We Do It in the Road? _______ Beatle Ringo Starr, and his girlfriend, later his wife, […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE PART 142 Marvin Minsky Part G (Featured artist is Red Grooms)
__________ Marvin Minsky __ I was sorry recently to learn of the passing of one of the great scholars of our generation. I have written about Marvin Minsky several times before in this series and today I again look at a letter I wrote to him in the last couple of years. It is my […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 118 THE BEATLES (Why was Tony Curtis on cover of SGT PEP?) (Feature on artist Jeffrey Gibson )
Why was Tony Curtis on the cover of SGT PEPPERS? I have no idea but if I had to hazard a guess I would say that probably it was because he was in the smash hit SOME LIKE IT HOT. Above from the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT __ __ Jojo was a man who […] By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER ANALYZES ART AND CULTURE Part 101 BEATLES,(MANY CHRISTIANS ATTACKED THE BEATLES WHILE FRANCIS SCHAEFFER STUDIED THEIR MUSIC! Part B) Artist featured today is Cartoonist Gahan Wilson
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The Daily Hatch 