This is a fascinating look into the dysfunction within a high profile family and seems to document how Frank's strict religious upbringing brought on emotional hostility and cynicism towards his parents and an entire belief system. L'Abri sounds a bit cultish to me and I feel for Frank Schaeffer, having to grow up with a strict Calvinist father and missionary mother. I read this article in The Nation just now and I'll have to go get Frank's book and some literature on L'Abri.... I find this all very interesting:

The Nation - Link

L'Abri sounds a bit cultish to me and I feel for Frank Schaeffer, having to grow up with a strict Calvinist father and missionary mother.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There was nothing at all "cultish" about L'Abri. Schaeffer's approach was simply to have a place where people who were searching--mostly of the beatnik and hippie cultures and generations--to come to explore the Christian worldview and its implications. Timothy Leary visited--twice, for instance. People were invited to express their doubts about Christianity, and Schaeffer attempted to answer them honestly and openly, persuading some and leaving others unconvinced. He was a generalist in his approach to thinking through worldviews and their implications. Many academic philosophers who are also Christians credit Schaeffer as one of their inspirations for doing philosophy, though such philosophy Ph.D.s will likely have criticisms of the details of what Schaeffer was up to.

And, by the accounts of many people who were embraced by the Schaeffer family and lived with them, there was nothing "dysfunctional" about the family. Read Edith's What Is a Family? or her autobiographical The Tapestry or her L'Abri to get a good picture.

I would have loved to have gone to the original L'Abri when the Schaeffers were there. It is still in operation, and one of my former students spent a summer there a few years ago and loved it (though the current staff seem to be moving in a postmodernist direction that would likely have grieved the Schaeffers). There is an ample library there, and people set their own course for independent study and dialog with various mentors.

Frank is an anomaly.

____________________

"Puddleglum" by Weatherwax (one of the Muddlings).

Jeeves to the Rescue

I'd say that for some reason 64% of the voting public of the county sided with the stupid and illiterate. Sorry but facts are facts and unfortunately it's a fact. Perhaps y'all can come up with the reason.

Interesting. You cringe at the stuff that Glen Beck spews but if it comes out of the Huffington Post it's......OK?

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I don't read the Huffington Post except maybe once a month. To what are you referring?

Well that's OK, I don't listen to Glenn Beck. Reference to sniffles post.
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Caution - The Surgeon General has determined that constant blogging is an addiction that can cause a sedentary life style.

The shift of people with education from Republican to Democrat is a well established phenomena documented in numerous places and confirmed in almost all the exit polls in the recent election. In fact, the more education the more likely a person is to vote Democratic.

The Washington Post found this trend in its exit polls:

“In building his sweeping electoral majority yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama capitalized on a tidal wave of disenchantment with President Bush, deep worry about the economy, and seismic demographic shifts away from the Republican Party among young people, Hispanics and college-educated voters.”

A Vote Decided by Big Turnout

Bloomberg found the same thing:

“Another group that's key to suburban success, college graduates, represented a majority of the U.S. electorate for the first time this year. Obama carried college-educated voters 53 percent to 45 percent for McCain.”

Obama Win Propelled by Votes in Fast-Growing Suburbs

ABC’s exit polls had an even bigger margin for post-graduates:

“Education: Voters with post graduate education were 23 percent of voters and Obama won this group by 37 points, 68 percent to 31 percent. Kerry had won beaten Bush among these voters by 25 points.”

ABC Exit Polls

The Washington Times confirms the shift:

“McCain drew some of his strongest support from white, working-class voters, winning 58 percent of their vote. But it was shy of the 23-point margin by which Bush won the votes of whites without a college degree in 2004.”

Obama built win on women, minorities

A CBS News article published in the Washington Post points out the same thing:

“The Democrats appear to have built a majority across a wide, and expanding, share of the electorate -- young voters, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities, and highly educated whites in growing metropolitan areas. The Republicans appear at the moment to be marginalized, hanging on to a coalition that may shrink with time -- older, working-class and rural white voters, increasingly concentrated in the Deep South, the Great Plains and Appalachia. Nothing demonstrates this reversal as clearly as the Democrats' ascendance in the suburbs and among the moderate, college-educated voters who dominate them.”

In the same article Republican Rep. Tom Davis from Fairfax County, Virginia says, "It is a problem for Republicans. As they continue to cater to their culturally conservative rural base, they continue to alienate educated voters. The suburban vote is steadily slipping away, and the party's trying to ignore it and pretend it's not happening."

Dems Make Big Inroads In The Suburbs

Check out this map of the US voting patterns. Click on the “Voting Shifts” button to show which parties are gaining and losing votes and where:

Presidential Election Map

You can use the slide bar to follow the trend from 1992 until 2008. The GOP is losing in every section of the country except Appalachia and has been since 1992 when they had a huge lead almost everywhere.

I believe that this trend is a serious problem for the Reps. which, of course, I encourage the Dems. to exploit to the fullest.

I’m amazed that the Reps are rallying around Palin and the anti-intellectual wing of the Party. I suspect that this is because so many get their information from Rush, Sean, FOX et. al. and they fit into the demographic described above which lacks the background to evaluate the information they get.

Certainly this does not describe all Republicans such as yourself. But you are liable to one day find yourself telling someone, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left me.”

Are you some sort of machine? Anyways, I was responding to sniffles post regarding the rather nasty tone of the Huffington Post piece. As you stated before, both the GOP and Democrats have stumbled only to come back. I suspect that this time is no different.
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Caution - The Surgeon General has determined that constant blogging is an addiction that can cause a sedentary life style.

Clearly, none of the liberals on this site want to comment on your observation. That's OK, just be sure not to post any townhall article, or you'll be a hypocrite.

I had most of it done for a blog on American Thinker, the most inappropriately and ironically named publication around. I post there for fun (anon) and it drives them berserk. Today someone suggested I should be arrested and shot. That kinda stuff passes for thought there; that and filthy rants.

that 64% of the voters in the county are not as smart as they think they are?

Answer: Anything is possible.

Observation: 64% of the voters in the county thought that, for whatever reason, having Sarah Palin as a POTUS was a risk worth taking in order to vote against Barack Obama.

"I can't wait until tomorrow, because I get more lovable every day."