Twenty Years of CultureWatch

It was twenty years ago today:

If my subtitle sounds slightly familiar, that might mean you are rather old (like I am) and you know something about the Beatles (like I do). One of their quite familiar songs began with these words:

It was twenty years ago today
When Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play
They’ve been going in and out of style
But they’re guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you
The act you’ve known for all these years
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

That of course appeared on their 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. And in 1987 a British documentary film was made about the album and the summer of love called It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. Now that I have gotten that bit of nostalgia out of the way, let me state the obvious: I am not quite as popular and well-known as the Beatles.

But given that today IS the twentieth anniversary of the start of my CultureWatch ministry, I suppose I am allowed to pinch their famous line as I speak about what has transpired since then, and why. I had long been involved in the culture wars and defending the Christian faith since arriving here permanently with my Australian wife in mid-1989.

Working with various pro-faith and profamily organisations over the next 17 years included doing plenty of writing. Heaps of articles were penned and published here, there and everywhere. One part of my reason for starting CultureWatch was to gather together in one spot all my writings – or at least most of them, including some previous pieces.

So I posted my first article on my site on April 5, 2006. In addition to writing a new piece basically every single day, I then started posting and backdating around 100 of my previous articles. If you simply do the math with twenty years, you come up with 7300 days.

According to my web stats, I have so far posted 7220 articles – so I am pretty close to my one-a-day article writing schedule. Some days I write more than one piece, and some days I do none. But at least now I have somewhere to put them all. Given that I still have a faithful following of readers who keep coming to my site, I guess it is serving a useful purpose.

And being an interactive website, it brings in plenty of comments all the time. Many of course are penned by my haters and are too ugly, vile and full of bile to print. And many do not put a name to their remarks, as my commenting rules require.

But those comments that have been published now number well over 92,500. So that demonstrates that I have some sort of readership, and some folks are keen to share their thoughts. That includes both friends and foes. And as I often tell folks, if they do not have a lot of spare time on their hands, or do not have a thick skin, then I advise against having an interactive blogsite. Things can get pretty intense quite often!

The hate mail never eases up and even the occasional death threat will come in. You have to learn how to handle all the abuse and hatred, and try to keep on with the work, even though it can easily wear you down and even bum you out at times.

So why do it?

Given all the negative reactions a site like this so readily and so often gets, why put up with it? Why keep writing and interacting with others? Well, as I have said so often now, truth matters. And in a world where truth is often being replaced by lies, deception and falsehoods, it is all the more important to seek to stand for truth even though so many are no longer interested in truth.

We know full well by now that the legacy media, or mainstream media, are not interested in offering truth but in pushing agendas – agendas that are almost always anti-faith, anti-life, anti-family, and anti-freedom. The MSM is now dominated by those of the secular left who seem to hate America and the West and are working overtime to tear down everything we believe in and seek to defend.

That is a major reason why CultureWatch exists. So too are my own children. I want to leave to them a world that is better than the one we now find ourselves in. I think Western civilisation, based as it is on the Judeo-Christian worldview, is the best thing mankind has been able to come up with in a fallen world, and it is worth promoting, protecting and passing on to the next generation.

A few quotes on this matter of securing a worthwhile future for the generations to come are worth sharing here:

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.” Ronald Reagan

“Americans and other Westerners who want their families to enjoy the blessings of life in a free society should understand that the life we’ve led since 1945 in the Western world is very rare in human history. Our children are unlikely to enjoy anything so placid, and may well spend their adult years in an ugly and savage world unless we decide that who and what we are is worth defending.” Mark Steyn

“We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There’s a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody’s values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe.” Gary Bauer

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” Attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“If you leave your children a world where you never stood up, they’ll inherit one where they can’t.” Anon

I for one greatly care about the sort of world my children are living in, and the world any grandchildren of mine will inhabit. That is why I do what I do. That is why CultureWatch exists. Truth be told, I would much prefer living a quiet and peaceful life with no controversy, no strident opposition, no hatred, and no constant combat.

But the things I am fighting for are too important to ignore. As such, I must not prefer my own personal peace and comfort. In the next life I will get all the rest I could ever want. But in this life when there are battles going on all around me, then I dare not just try to opt out and take it easy.

Seven more closing quotes nicely summarise my rationale for CultureWatch and the work that I do:

“We must hate the world enough to change it but love it enough to think it worth changing.” G. K. Chesterton

“You may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is definitely interested in you.” Rod Dreher

“Most good people don’t fight. This is why we lose. More bad people fight than good people fight. That’s the only reason we lose.” Dennis Prager

“Evil is powerless if the good are unafraid.” Ronald Reagan

“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.” Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

“While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight; while children go hungry, as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight, I’ll fight to the very end!” William Booth

“And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you’.” Acts 18:9-10

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