D'où vient le "mariage pour tous" et où il nous conduira s'il n'est pas abrogé....

La théorie du genre : 

le livre que doit lire Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

par Eugénie Bastié

La ministre de l'Education, qui avait affirmé que «la théorie du genre n'existait pas», vient d'annoncer son plan d'action pour l'égalité entre filles et garçons. Eugénie Bastié lui conseille de lire La théorie du genre, de Bérénice Levet,qui a enquêté sur cette thèse controversée.

«La «théorie du genre», ça n'existe pas! C'est comme le monstre du Loch Ness, tout le monde en parle, mais personne ne l'a vu!», déclarait Najat Vallaud Belkacem dans une interview au Point en juin 2013.

Circulez y a rien à voir! Quiconque relaye cette «rumeur» ou cette «prétendue théorie du genre» (comme l'écrit l'AFP) est taxé immédiatement d'obscurantiste, d'ufologue ou pire, de crypto-soralien. Les «experts» de la question, renvoient les «braves gens» à leurs hallucinations, se croyant suprêmement malins de faire la distinction entre d'une part les «gender studies», champ universitaire absolument objectif décrivant la part de constructions sociales dans l'altérité homme-femme, et d'autre part une «théorie du genre» fantasmée par les catholiques intégristes.

Bérenice Levet ne tombe pas dans le panneau et assume le vocable tabou. Son livre La théorie du genre ou le monde rêvé des anges est un véritable ABCD du genre, et probablement ce qu'on a écrit de pus complet sur la question. Dans cet essai de 200 pages, cette docteur en philosophie remonte patiemment, avec érudition et pédagogie, le fil de cette idéologie, du fameux «On ne nait pas femme, on le devient» de Simone de Beauvoir, aux écrits de Judith Butler, papesse américaine du gender, en passant par les expériences du docteur John Money. (1)

John Money, vous connaissez? Les partisans du genre n'aiment pas trop qu'on évoque ce cas douloureux. C'est pourtant par lui que tout commence. En 1955, il invente la notion de gender. Il travaille alors sur les enfants hermaphrodites, auxquels il attribue arbitrairement un sexe, d'abord «culturellement», puis chirurgicalement. Le pauvre Bruce en fit les frais: le pénis mutilé par une circoncision raté, Dr Money ordonne à ses parents qu'on l'éduque dès lors comme une fillette, rebaptisé Brenda. Mais à la puberté, quand vient le temps de l'opération chirurgicale censée donner à l'enfant le vagin conforme à sa nouvelle identité, Brenda se rebiffe, et reprend le nom de Bruce, en même temps qu'il (elle?) tente de retrouver son identité masculine. «Troublé» dans son genre (comme aime à dire Judith Butler, pour qui c'est le summum de la liberté), Bruce finira par se suicider en 2002. Triste épilogue d'une réactualisation du mythe de Prométhée.
Etre ou ne pas naître, telle est la question

Comme dans le mythe grec, il y a, au cœur du genre, une tentation démiurgique, un refus des limites, «une méconnaissance et un mépris fondamental de la condition humaine». L'homme est vide, creux, il est une page blanche où il écrit sa vie. Sexe, genre, orientation sexuelle: les combinaisons sont infinies, les possibilités sans limites. Ni nature, ni culture, tout est affaire de volonté. Androgyne, transsexuel, bi-genre, hermaphrodite, mâle ou femelle: sur Facebook, je peux cliquer sur plus de 56 identités sexuelles pour me définir. Laure, la petite fille du film Tomboy ira jusqu'au bout de la «possibilité Michael», le prénom qu'elle prend lorsqu'elle se déguise en garçon. «Pop», l'enfant suédois élevé dans la «neutralité» par ses parents, sera invité à «choisir» son sexe quand il sera grand. Ou pas. Il fera comme il voudra.

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(1) 

La théorie du genre ou le monde rêvé des anges 

Ouvrage remarquable, accessible, qui explique bien les origines d'un idéologie pernicieuse et totalitaire, aux multiples conséquences. Le "genre" n'est pas qu'un concept, comme le prétendent ses gourous. C'est aussi le véhicule d'une idéologie, d'une théorie, dont l'auteur le plus connu est la Lesbienne américaine Judith Butler. A lire par tous les gens avides de comprendre d'où vient le "mariage pour tous" et où il nous conduira s'il n'est pas abrogé.

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Lire la suite: www.lefigaro.fr

Alguien que no sabe que existen el bien y el mal como características objetivas consustanciales a la naturaleza humana está en un estado prehumano

La disolución del concepto de familia

Por: Benigno Blanco | Fuente: Foro de la Familia

Quien cree que existe la naturaleza humana, porque sabe que el mundo ha sido pensado, y que por tanto es razonable, y que en consecuencia nosotros por ser racionales podemos conocer en qué consiste de verdad el mundo

El tema que se nos propone en esta mesa redonda es “la disolución del concepto de familia”.

Agradezco la ocasión que se me ofrece de hablar de esta materia pues el diagnóstico sobre qué le pasa hoy a la familia subyace a todas las actividades e iniciativas del Foro de la Familia, la entidad que me honro en presidir en estos momentos; y, por ello, hablar de los problemas actuales de la familia me permitirá también compartir con ustedes el espíritu de esta institución que me atrevo a calificar como la mayor movilización social en defensa de la familia en la Europa de nuestros días. Tras compartir con ustedes mi diagnóstico sobre la familia hoy, me atreveré a hacer algunas consideraciones sobre cómo superar los problemas para hacer familia que deben afrontar los hombres de hoy.

Con referencia al título que enmarca esta mesa redonda – la disolución del concepto de familia- debo decirles que en mi opinión la disolución actual del concepto de familia, realidad innegable, no es un fenómeno primario, sino secundario. Me da la sensación de que el problema singular de nuestra época, lo que caracteriza a nuestra época como señal distintiva respecto a cualquier otra época precedente, es que estamos siendo testigos de un proyecto de disolución del hombre, un proyecto de reconstrucción de lo humano sobre bases ideológicas ajenas a la naturaleza de las cosas. Puede sonar fuerte o apocalíptico decir esto, pero una atenta observación de la realidad indica –a mi entender- que ésta es la clave radical de nuestra época; época difícil de entender para nuestros contemporáneos en esta su dimensión radical última pues carecemos de precedentes de algo similar en la historia pasada.

Me da la sensación de que el gran problema de nuestra época es que una gran parte de nuestros contemporáneos no tienen ni la más remota idea de en qué consiste ser un ser humano; y este es un problema muy serio, obviamente. ¿Y por qué una gran parte de nuestros contemporáneos no saben en qué consiste ser un ser humano? Porque una gran parte de nuestros contemporáneos se han desarraigado intelectual y moralmente de la mejor tradición humanista de Occidente, ésa que nos ha permitido ir profundizando s1bbdurante siglos, con aciertos y errores, pero en clave cada vez más constructiva, en un conocimiento cierto sobre lo humano, que no es tan fácil, dicho sea de paso, porque, entre otras cosas, para conocer al ser humano hay que creer que el ser humano consiste en algo, que el ser humano tiene una naturaleza, que existe la naturaleza humana. Si fuésemos un fenómeno individual, meramente de tipo físico-químico, fruto de una evolución ciega y caótica, no seriamos comprensibles. Lo absolutamente singular no es definible, como nos enseña la vieja –y acertada- lógica de Aristóteles.

Por eso me parece muy acertado traer a este debate la memoria de Ockam, como ha hecho el ponente anterior, Ignacio Sánchez Cámara. Me parece que la gran crisis intelectual de Occidente en que todavía vivimos empieza con el nominalismo, con la extraña rebelión frente a la razón que encarnan el voluntarismo y el nominalismo que afloran en el siglo XIV. En ese siglo, con una estúpida soberbia que me cuesta entender, algunas personas empezaron a dudar sobre el carácter razonable del mundo tal y como era contemplado por la síntesis tomista, ese monumento de fe en la razón tan mal entendido y pronto olvidado. Los adalides de la rebelión frente a la razón en ese siglo XIV pensaron -¿por qué?, ¡gran misterio!- que el mundo no es razonable y que por tanto no podemos definirlo con conceptos y categorías generales; que sólo existe lo individual; que las palabras que designan lo colectivo, lo común, son flatum vocis, – así dice Ockam-, palabras sin contenido, vacías. Ahí empieza el gran problema de nuestros días: la desconfianza en la consistencia razonable de todo lo existente, la desconfianza en la capacidad de la razón para conocer con certeza la consistencia real de lo existente, la duda sobre la verdad de los universales, de los conceptos que describen lo común a todos los individuos, la desconfianza hacia los conceptos que describen la realidad tal y como es.

De esa desconfianza en el carácter razonable de lo existente al subjetivismo contemporáneo, al relativismo ambiente, hay pocos pasos. Duda metódica cartesiana, idealismo kantiano, empirismo epistemológico, materialismo marxista o economicista, evolucionismo ideológico, estructuralismo, cientificismo,..son nombres o etapas de un mismo proceso: el abandono de la fe en el carácter razonable del mundo por su condición de pensado y creado, de querido.

El gran problema de nuestra época es la autoimpuesta incapacidad de muchos de nosotros para entender lo humano.

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Leer más aquí: es.catholic.net

That’s the difference between North and South Korea

How capitalists can win the argument

by Danien Hannan

If I had to identify the most successful conservative leader of my lifetime, I’d point without hesitation to Australia’s John Howard. Winning four elections (to Reagan’s two and Thatcher’s three), the amiable cricket-lover used his time in office to make transformative changes, giving Australia a growth rate it hadn’t known since the gold rush.

Like all great leaders, John Howard embodies his country’s loftiest traits: cheerfulness, candour, confidence, largeness of spirit. Although he comes across as, for want of a better phrase, an ordinary bloke, John is quietly more ideological than you’d think. The secret of his success was to advance conservative ideas in an undogmatic and demotic fashion.

Which is, of course, the winning combination for Right-wing parties in all democracies. Most of the things they stand for are individually popular: tax cuts, immigration controls, patriotism, law and order. But these things are best sold in an undoctrinaire way.

John has just stood down after twelve years as Chairman of the International Democrat Union, a global alliance of some 60 Right-of-Centre parties, including the US Republicans, British Tories and German Christian Democrats. I’ve just come back from his last meeting, the IDU summit in Seoul, which I attended as Secretary-General of theAlliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.

Looking around the table, I was struck by how urgently some of the assembled parties needed to copy John Howard’s winning formula. The key to success is not to move to what pundits call the Centre. If it were, John Major would have been a more successful leader than Margaret Thatcher, George Bush Snr than Ronald Reagan. The key, rather, is to get across that most conservative policies are common sense.

Several conservative parties are floundering because they can’t get this right. In much of Latin America, for example, traditional parties have been hammered by Left-wing populists since the late 1990s. While some Latin Rightists understand the extent to which they need to change, others can’t overcome their sense of entitlement – their belief that administration ought to be the business of people like them, with fair skins and recognised surnames. In Europe, meanwhile, conservatives have struggled to recover from their fatal association with the bailouts and the euro – an association that places them on the side of corporatism rather than of markets.

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Read more: www.capx.co

In the 1950s, Cuba and Hong Kong were on similar paths...

One graph to show the difference

between Hong Kong and Cuba

Source: danieljmitchell.wordpress.com

In the 1950s, Cuba and Hong Kong were on similar paths, with GDP per capita at about the global average. Then, as Dan Mitchell illustrates at International Liberty, “Hong Kong became a poster child for capitalism while Cuba became an outpost of Soviet communism”. Today, Hong Kong’s GDP has sky-rocketed to over $30,000, well above the average, while Cuba’s remains virtually unchanged.

READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE

I asked Javier Solana Kiev whether it was possible for Ukraine to join the EU without joining NATO. His answer was clear: "Of course it can, why not?"

The Ukraine-NATO Relationship

Ukrainian press: Ukrainian analyst warns NATO membership brings additional threats.

14 August 2006

The question of whether or not Ukraine should join NATO is tainted by opinions formed under the pressure of Soviet propaganda and without regard for the bloc's role, a weekly has reported. The author said opinions both for and against membership are not based on rational, sober thought. He said NATO has changed substantially in the past 15 years and the NATO which the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined and the NATO which Ukraine is planning to join are "two very different things". Membership could even pose new threats to Ukraine stemming from international terrorism directed against NATO, he said noting such threats were "hypothetical" for Ukraine in its present, unaligned state. He said Ukraine could still join the EU, even if it did not join NATO. The following is an excerpt of the article by Andriy Fialko, entitled "Ukraine-NATO: You remember how it all began...on something important without emotion", published in Zerkalo Nedeli on 5 August, subheadings have been inserted editorially:

And so the entire world argues about 1,000 things, when all the pros and cons are equally false. He who backs up his talk with provocative behaviour and a high tone merely proves the weakness of his arguments.

M. Monten, Experiences

STANCE ON NATO STILL NOT CLEAR

For those citizens of our country who are exhausted by the sun and tired of the interminable and ever more depressing political serial, many questions which just yesterday seemed topical and provoked harsh discussion have been pushed into second place. And the establishment of the anti-crisis coalition could push them back even farther.

Ukraine's prospects for joining NATO undoubtedly belongs to the number of such questions.

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Read more: www.tol.org

Argentina: Una diferencia entre los países "serios" y aquellos que no lo son es la forma en que la opinión pública reacciona ante hechos de corrupción.

El sueño de un país serio

Tiene razón el senador Aníbal Fernández cuando dice que el allanamiento de "una empresa del presidente de la Nación" no se daría "en ningún país serio del mundo", aunque sólo fuera porque aquellos mandatarios –es de suponer que los hay– que se mantienen al tanto de las vicisitudes de sus negocios personales mientras están en el poder se esfuerzan por asegurar que todo esté en orden por entender que cualquier anomalía se vería aprovechada por sus adversarios. Si la presidenta Cristina Fernández de Kirchner no se preocupaba por tales detalles, fue porque suponía que nadie tomaría en serio una eventual denuncia, error éste que no soñaría con cometer la mayoría de sus homólogos de países que el exjefe de Gabinete calificaría de "serios". Con la excepción de algunos tradicionalistas como el ex primer ministro portugués José Sócrates, el que hace poco fue detenido por su presunto involucramiento en casos de fraude fiscal, blanqueo de capitales y otras nimiedades, saben que no valdría la pena exponerse al riesgo de ser blanco de un eventual operativo contra la corrupción.

Una diferencia entre los países "serios" y aquellos que no lo son es la forma en que la opinión pública reacciona ante hechos de corrupción. Mientras que en los primeros ni siquiera los oficialistas más fervorosos se animarían a intentar minimizar su importancia, en éstos la mayoría los trata como anecdóticos.

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Leer más aquí: www.rionegro.com.ar

Spettacolare discorso del vescovo di Reggio Emilia. Dal gender all’eterologa, dal senso del dono a Chiara Corbella

I nostri figli non hanno bisogno di genitori perfetti, ma di adulti affamati di verità e bellezza

Massimo Camisasca

«Diventare mamma e papà significa somigliare di più a Dio, ma anche diventare più figli». Spettacolare discorso del vescovo di Reggio Emilia. Dal gender all’eterologa, dal senso del dono a Chiara Corbella

Di seguito pubblichiamo il “discorso alla città” pronunciato da Massimo Camisasca, vescovo di Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, il 24 novembre in occasione della festa del patrono san Prospero. È un discorso lungo e meraviglioso, con alcuni passaggi spettacolari.

Cari Amici, cari Fratelli e Sorelle, illustri Autorità,

papa Francesco, con il Sinodo straordinario dei Vescovi che si è da poco concluso, ha posto all’attenzione della Chiesa e del mondo la realtà della famiglia. Egli ritiene, come tutti noi, che la famiglia sia il cuore della Chiesa e della società. È nella famiglia, infatti, che si imparano e si vivono le dimensioni fondamentali della vita. Si impara che l’amore ci precede, entra a trasformare la nostra esistenza creando dei legami che diventano fondamentali. Nella famiglia si impara l’apertura agli altri, alla nuova vita dei figli, si impara l’importanza dell’educazione, il rispetto delle altre persone, soprattutto attraverso la scoperta che i figli non ci appartengono e che, in definitiva, noi non apparteniamo a noi stessi.

In occasione della festa di san Prospero, nostro patrono, intendo dunque parlare, quest’anno, della famiglia, affrontando di essa un aspetto particolare: i figli, come dono e responsabilità.

Il discorso del Vescovo in occasione della festa di san Prospero vuole parlare a tutta la Città, non per imporre una visione ideologica della vita, ma per proporre alcune osservazioni ed esperienze che possono aiutare a leggere ciò che di profondamente umano vi è nella nostra esistenza e anche ciò che va recuperato e riscoperto. Parlare della famiglia e sostenere la realtà familiare non vuol dire, da parte mia, difendere un passato, semplicemente una tradizione, qualcosa di arcaico che si vuole salvare a tutti i costi. Sostenere la famiglia vuol dire, invece, riscoprire un bene che può costituire un grande punto di costruzione per il nostro futuro.

Tutti quanti siamo chiamati, perciò, a riscoprire la realtà della famiglia, a riscoprire ciò che in essa vi è di fondamentale per la vita degli uomini e ciò che può costituire un bagaglio di speranza per la nostra vita presente.

Il Concilio Vaticano II, nella Costituzione pastorale Gaudium et Spes, ha messo in luce in modo originale il valore personale dell’amore nella famiglia [1]. Accanto al suo scopo generativo, ha messo in rilievo il bene del rapporto fra le persone, marito e moglie, genitori e figli, come una caratteristica propria della vita familiare.

In questo mio discorso alla Città, desidero parlare della famiglia come luogo naturale della vita, come luogo capace di mettere al mondo un nuovo essere umano e di assicurare ad esso una stabilità di accoglienza, che solo la famiglia può dare. Sono consapevole di tutte le fragilità che sono presenti nella realtà familiare. Essa ha però dentro di sé, proprio per il patto di stabilità che la costituisce, la grande promessa di assicurare al figlio un luogo che lo aiuti a crescere adeguatamente.

Parlo di tutto ciò nella consapevolezza che l’Italia è uno dei Paesi più colpiti dal fenomeno della denatalità. In meno di dieci anni, dagli anni Settanta agli anni Ottanta, siamo scesi da 900mila nascite a 300mila, per poi attestarci intorno a 550mila unità.

Il progressivo cambiamento dei modelli di fecondità della popolazione italiana ha portato il livello di ricambio generazionale sotto la soglia dei due figli per donna da più di trent’anni e ciò, unitamente al progressivo invecchiamento della popolazione, ha condotto alle conseguenze drammatiche che oggi affrontiamo. Se verranno confermati i parametri di questi anni avremo una popolazione di ultra sessantacinquenni, i nonni, che se adesso supera di mezzo milione quella dei nipoti, nel 2030 potrebbe superarla di 6 milioni.

Ci sono poi le ragioni economiche e sociali di questa denatalità, che sono, tra l’altro, il costo dei figli, la difficile conciliazione soprattutto tra lavoro e impegni familiari, il costo delle abitazioni e la disoccupazione giovanile.

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Leggi di Più: www.tempi.it

Science isn’t everything—unless one is a transhumanist, of course. In which case it literally is everything...

At least one reason why transhumanism

will not translate into reality

BY DENYSE O'LEARY

Transhumanism: a new way of thinking that challenges the premiss that the human condition is and will remain essentially unalterable. Clearing away that mental block allows one to see a dazzling landscape of radical possibilities, ranging from unlimited bliss to the extinction of intelligent life.

Last January, hplus Magazine, dedicated to all things futurist—transhumanism, AI, nano, neuro, and whatnot—offered us five forecasts to ponder, by futurist philosopher Gray Scott.

In this column, I will deal with only one of his predictions:

1. Transhumanists will outnumber Christians by 2035.By 2035, even if a majority of humans do not self-identify as Transhuman, technically they will be… The future will be filled with digital implants, mind controlled exoskeletal upgrades, age reversal pills, hyper-intelligence brain implants and bionic muscle upgrades. All of these technologies will literally make us more Transhuman. …Along with the rising rate of atheism, this will cause Transhumanism to overtake Christianity by 2035. Evolutionary psychologist, Dr. Nigel Barber, argues that “more educated countries have higher levels of non belief and there are strong correlations between atheism and intelligence.”

Now, that last point is bunk, as I pointed out in a 2012 article here at MercatorNet, commenting on the circus wagon of such claims:

I first became suspicious when Lynn et al. tried to explain why the United States is anomalous “in having an unusually low percentage of its population disbelieving in God (10.5 percent) for a high IQ country [98].”…Good thing it’s easy to test that one. Canada has a similar history, and features average IQ 99, with 22 percent not believing in God. So twice as many Canadians don’t believe in God but exhibit no statistically significant reward in IQ. That’s one wheel off - but it’s still a tricycle.Looking at the chart closely, I noticed another anomaly: The Czech Republic and Slovakia split on January 1, 1993. In 2008, the Czech republic clocked IQ 98, 61 percent disbelieving in God, and Slovakia at IQ 96, with only 17 percent disbelieving in God. The difference is obviously cultural. Second wheel gone. We now have a bicycle.The third wobbly wheel was the fact that Israel and Portugal -with very different culture and histories - both feature IQ 95. But in Israel 15 percent disbelieve and in Portugal 4 percent. So tripling or quadrupling the number of atheists did nothing for IQ when culture and history are different. Will the data at least give us a unicycle for the theory to wobble on?

Don’t count on it; let's call a taxi and get out of this dump.

By the way, Barber’s credibility isn’t helped by the revelation that he is an evolutionary psychologist. Let’s just say that his discipline is the Bedrock of psychology.

But that’s not the big problem with the prediction. The main reasons for the decline of Christianity have nothing to do with transhumanism.

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Read more: www.mercatornet.com

Why (and How) to Return to Sunday Mass and Confession

Advent Guides, Part 1

The Register’s clip-out, photocopy and pass-on guides for Advent

Download here .pdf - www.ncregister.com/

Read more: www.ncregister.com

Our pastors might consider discussing the issue when the Synod on the Family reconvenes next year

The Recovery of Human Nature

By James Kalb

Like other living things, human beings have a distinct nature as beings of a particular kind. We have conditions we try to bring about, conditions that help us thrive, and characteristic ways of acting, responding to events, and dealing with others. All these points are obvious.

Nonetheless, if you mention human nature in public discussion today you’ll face resistance. People will say you’re engaging in stereotypical thinking that stands in the way of Hope and Change. They’ll want you to prove every detail of every assertion, no proof will be good enough, and your arguments won’t stick. The next time the issue comes up you’ll have to go through everything all over again.

That’s a problem for Catholics and others who are concerned with the realities of human life, including the reality of how we should live. People seem to think we can make those realities what we want, so views that treat them as stable and enduring make no sense. If you say that there are two sexes that naturally connect to each other, and we need to get the connection right so people can lead happy and productive lives, they’ll say you’re a narrow-minded bigot. The accusations will become all the louder if you add that man is a rational animal, and it is important how he understands his situation, so if he is married it is important for him to recognize the natural function of the institution and his role in it.

One result of this rejection of natural patterns of life is a radically libertarian understanding that makes connections between the sexes unstable and nonfunctional, and marriage a luxury good for the successful rather than a basic structural aid that can make anyone’s life better. A further result is a great many miserable people. We won’t be able to do much about those and other results of the current refusal to accept basic human realities until people once again recognize human nature as a guide for how to live.

But how will that happen? To answer the question we need to understand why the idea of human nature has been rejected and how an understanding of it that’s stable and detailed enough to be usable becomes established.

A basic reason people today don’t accept nature as a guide is that they see it as essentially mindless. It’s atoms bouncing off each other in the void, or some updated version of that, and it’s impossible to accept such a situation as a guide to life. On such a view nature seems a blind, oppressive force that only tells us what we have to overcome if we want to be free. Rather than a guide, it should be treated as something to dominate through technology. That line of thought leads to the insane view, which is now entirely mainstream, that we can advance the human good by destroying all substantive concepts of what people naturally are. So teachers shouldn’t use terms like “boy” and “girl” because they prejudice the question of how young people should think about themselves and connect to others.

One requirement for a return to nature, then, is to persuade people that modern physics is not a total description of reality, and the world has important features that can’t be reduced to combinations of elementary particles in space. As a rational matter that shouldn’t be difficult. In order to account for reality modern physics has to say and mean something, but descriptions of particles in space don’t explain meaning. So physics itself can’t be explained in a purely physical way.

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

Le remplacement de la transmission de connaissances par l'évaluation de compétences revient à mettre à mort la culture classique

Comment les pédagogistes ont tué l'école

Par JEAN-PAUL BRIGHELLI

Il y a 30 ans, les tenants de "l'élève au centre" ont entamé leur travail de sape. Victimes : l'école républicaine, la culture et les classes populaires.

Républicains contre pédagos (pour "pédagogistes") : cet affrontement entre les tenants d'une tradition scolaire héritée de Jules Ferry et les jusqu'au-boutistes de l'expérimentation pédagogique a commencé il y a une trentaine d'années, lorsque les premiers, qui comptaient sur Jean-Pierre Chevènement pour faire avancer leurs idées, ont été supplantés par les seconds, arrivés dans les fourgons de Lionel Jospin.

Dans le Figaro du 25 novembre, un sociologue québécois réputé, Mathieu Bock-Côté, analyse avec une grande finesse les enjeux de cette guerre - dont, disons-le tout de suite, la conclusion est d'ores et déjà connue : l'école républicaine, qui mettait le savoir au coeur du système, est morte, vive l'école de la pédadémagogie, qui met "l'élève au centre" et cherche son bonheur immédiat, au détriment de sa formation, de sa culture et de sa réussite future.
Le pédagogue Ponce Pilate

Par parenthèse, que ce soit dans le Figaro que cet excellent article paraisse ou que j'écrive dans les colonnes du Point.fr n'est pas tout à fait indifférent : en face, les pédagogistes ont le Monde, l'Obs etLibération. Cet affrontement entre deux conceptions violemment antagonistes de l'école est aussi une rivalité de presse, sous-tendue en partie par une opposition droite/gauche. Même si le noyau dur des républicains est constitué de chevènementistes, voire d'anciens gauchistes.

Paradoxe, c'est le Front national qui aujourd'hui reprend sans vergogne, avec un opportunisme impeccable, les thèses des républicains (sans que cela implique en quoi que ce soit que lesdits républicains adhèrent aux thèses du Front national), et le PS se coule dans les propositions des pédagos. Par exemple, comme le souligne Bock-Côté, la récente décision de remplacer les notes par des pustules vertes, ou de renoncer définitivement au redoublement tout en imposant l'évaluation par compétences et non par performances, est une victoire majeure du clan pédago, qui proclame que c'en est fini de l'évaluation-sanction : désormais, tout le monde s'aime, et tout le monde réussira. Encore un effort, et l'élève s'autoévaluera, ce qui, soyons-en sûrs, lui évitera tout traumatisme. On est tellement mieux dans le coton. 80 % d'une génération au bac - on y est. Et puis après...

Après, c'est l'écrasement contre le mur du supérieur - mais là aussi, on arrondit les angles, on n'a que 50 % de pertes en première année. Après, c'est l'éclatement contre le mur de l'embauche. Évidemment, Ponce-Pilate-pédago s'en lave les mains, il n'est plus concerné.
La mise à mort de la culture

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Lire la suite: www.lepoint.fr

Western interests and Ukrainian lives have been sacrificed at the altar of democratic idealism.

Ukraine in the Aftermath of Maidan

By JAMES CARDEN

One year after the first protests, Western interests and Ukrainian lives have been sacrificed at the altar of democratic idealism.

But you must believe me, one cannot have everything one wants—not only in practice, but even in theory. The denial of this, the search for a single, overarching ideal because it is the one and only true one for humanity, invariably leads to coercion. And then to destruction, blood—eggs are broken, but the omelet is not in sight, there is only an infinite number of eggs, human lives, ready for the breaking. – Isaiah Berlin

Friday, November 21 marks the one-year anniversary of the anti-government protests on Kiev’s Independence Square. Much has happened since then, nearly all of it detrimental to the deteriorating European economy and to U.S. and European security interests. The standard narrative of events which posits that the battle between pro-European Kiev and revanchist Russia is nothing less than a battle for the future, indeed, the soul of Europe, though widespread, is incorrect.

As is by now well known, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign a EU Association Agreement at last November’s EU summit in Vilnius was, of course, the spark that set off the conflagration. In a narrow sense, the aims of the Euro-Maidan protests have been met: Yanukovych was overthrown in February, a new government of an ostensibly pro-European cast was subsequently formed, a new President (Poroshenko) was elected in May, and he ultimately signed the Association Agreement in June. Yet all of this came at an enormous price. The long-term ramifications of Kiev’s “European choice” are still as yet unclear.

Since the mid-19th century, Russians—due to their tumultuous political history—have had cause to raise two particular questions in the aftermath of this or that debacle. In 1845 Alexander Herzen asked, “Who is to be blamed?” (Kto vinovat?), and nearly a generation later Nikolai Chernyshevsky asked, “What is to be done?” (Chto delat?).

In assessing the Obama administration’s role in the Ukraine crisis, perhaps it might be worth asking a number of questions along similar lines.

Was it worth it?

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Read more: www.theamericanconservative.com

La economía actual de la Argentina: "similar a la de Venezuela" ...

La Argentina transita un "gradual descenso al infierno", según el diario Le Monde

Una columna publicada por el prestigioso matutino hace un duro diagnóstico sobre el país. Repasa el pasado como "primera potencia agrícola" y lo compara con la economía actual "similar a la de Venezuela"

El periódico francés Le Monde publicó hoy una columna donde explica, de manera categórica, cómo la Argentina llegó al "infierno" actual, pese al despegue que registraba a fines de siglo XIX, cuando se posicionaba como potencia emergente en el concierto de las naciones. La excusa es, una vez más, las crisis financieras recurrentes por las que atraviesa el país, tras reeditarse un nuevo default, "el sexto" en la historia, luego del bloqueo de los pagos a los bonistas reestructurados por orden del juez Thomas Griesa.

El artículo, titulado "Lecciones argentinas", afirma que la república es "un caso único en el mundo" por su éxito inicial y posterior declive. Fue "la primera potencia agrícola" y polo "estrella" de los capitales e inmigrantes, convirtiéndose en la "novena economía más grande" del globo.

"Argentina tuvo el mismo nivel de vida que Francia entre 1900 y 1950", rememora la nota, y señala que su producto bruto interno (PBI) per cápita figuraba en el puesto 12 en el ranking mundial, justo por delante de la nación gala. Ese lugar contrasta con su posición actual, que se encuentra 62, en base a dólares corrientes, o 69, en términos de poder adquisitivo.

Para el autor de la editorial, el economista Jean-Pierre Petit, presidente de Les Cahiers Verts de l'Economie, que se dedica a la investigación en macroeconomía y estrategia de inversión, hay un responsable clave del declive.

"El peronismo ha dado forma a la vida política y social del país y la mayoría de los gobiernos se han inspirado, directa o indirectamente, en el peronismo", sostiene el economista, quien califica a esa matriz de pensamiento como la "ilusión de un modelo de desarrollo autónomo dirigido por el Estado", "libre de las restricciones de la competencia y la competitividad".

"La estrategia proteccionista de sustitución de importaciones con productos de fabricación nacional, inspirada por el economista Raúl Prebisch (1901-1986), hizo que el sector manufacturero fuese cada vez más dependiente de la ayuda y la protección públicas y nunca fue realmente competitivo", marca el editorial del Le Monde.

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Leer más aquí: www.infobae.com

Para Vargas Llosa una izquierda "moderna" hace realidad la legalización de la marihuana, el matrimonio gay, la ley del aborto, y al mismo tiempo economía de mercado

Vargas Llosa habla de Mujica y los Kirchner

En entrevista realizada en exclusiva, por la Revista Viva, el escritor Vargas Llosa, hablo de todo, pero dedicó una parte de la misma a referirse a la situación de América Latina, a continuación transcribimos la misma:

En América latina tenemos menos dictadores que en toda nuestra historia, aunque existen casos dramáticos y pavorosos como el de Cuba o Venezuela.

Venezuela tiene seguidores supuestamente, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, sin embargo esos seguidores no practican las políticas de Venezuela y guardan algunas formas democráticas porque los tiempos no están a favor de los autoritarismos explícitos a la manera tradicional en América latina.

Esto, nos guste o no, es un progreso. Curiosamente en el continente, que era el que siempre decepcionaba, hoy tienes una alternativa que es bastante positiva. Las democracias, por imperfectas que sean, están funcionando cada vez más (con esas excepciones): hay una derecha democrática, como se ha visto en Chile, en Colombia, en Perú; hay una izquierda democrática, como se ve en Chile o en Uruguay.

Uruguay es un caso interesantísimo de antiguos ex guerrilleros que creían en la acción armada y en la violencia. Suben en unas elecciones libres y la democracia no sólo no sufre mella sino que es muy dinámica y progresista que está introduciendo reformas muy liberales: la legalización de la marihuana, el matrimonio gay, la ley del aborto, y al mismo tiempo economía de mercado, gran estímulo a la inversión extranjera. Es una izquierda muy moderna, una izquierda en la que lo mejor del socialismo y lo mejor del liberalismo se han co-fundido. Es un país muy pequeño con unas características muy especiales, uno de los casos más estimulantes en un panorama del mundo bastante negativo.

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Leer más aquí: eldiario.com.uy

Politiciens: "copier 10 000 fois la phrase de Pascal : « Le moi est haïssable » "

La Conjuration des Egales, 

ou plutôt des « Ego »…

par Christian Vanneste

La femme est l’avenir de l’homme. L’égalité sociale voulue par le « communiste » de la Révolution, Gracchus Babeuf, entre le riche et le pauvre n’est pas réalisée, mais l’égalité sociétale entre les sexes ou les « orientations » sexuelles, beaucoup plus tendance, et moins liée à la situation économique, a le vent en poupe depuis que nos Aragon et nos Beauvoir ont promu les revendications du deuxième sexe. 

Malgré les évidentes réticences des réactionnaires phallocrates comme Eric Zemmour, la révolution est en marche. 

Les défenseurs de la famille avec un père qui travaille et gagne plus, tandis que la Mère privilégie le soin des enfants sont acculés dans les cordes d’un passé révolu.

Les violences subies par les femmes, les inégalités salariales à leur détriment sont à l’évidence des arguments plus que recevables. 

Les quotas facilitant l’accès des femmes à certaines responsabilités au nom de la discrimination positive sont plus discutables, car ils faussent la mesure des capacités et des talents entre des personnes qui devraient avoir le même droit de les faire valoir, quelque soit leur sexe. 

Maggie a été sans doute l’homme fort du Royaume-Uni de l’après-guerre, par ses qualités propres, et non en vertu de quelque « préférence » sexuelle. 

La France qui a instauré des obligations de ce type pour les élections et dont les élus affichent le souci de parité n’a pas encore connu de femme politique de cette dimension. 

Elle connaît au contraire un phénomène qui n’est pas particulier au sexe féminin mais qui est en pointe chez lui.


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Lire la suite: www.christianvanneste.fr

Richard Dawkins’ level of hypocrisy should severely undermine his credibility among his followers...

Dawkins’ Unholy Trinity: 

Incoherency, Hypocrisy and Bigotry

By Scott Ventureyra

Earlier this month, the BBC interviewed E.O. Wilson (a highly reputable emeritus Professor of Entomology at Harvard University) asking him about his differing views on natural selection with Richard Dawkins. He responded that:

There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he’s a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I’ve had have actually been with scientists doing research.

Although Dawkins possesses a PhD in zoology, the majority of his scientific research ended in the 1970s according to his publication list. Since then he has been, as Wilson states, nothing more than a science journalist. Yet, Dawkins has consistently declared that, “there is no serious scientist who doubts that evolution is a fact.” My motivation here is not to dispute the findings of evolutionary biology but to point out Dawkins’ hypocrisy. The truth is that there are many scientists, even biologists, who deny that evolution is a fact but are light years ahead of Dawkins in terms of research and peer reviewed publications. Here are just a few verifiable examples: Dean H. Kenyon, John C. Sanford and Henry F. Schaefer III. Clearly Dawkins is not in a position to make declarations as to what constitutes a “serious scientist.”

In his treatise on Darwinism, The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Dawkins writes:

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

Nothing Dawkins has written since then indicates that he’s changed his mind. If he hasn’t, then he still believes that, in our universe, there is no good or evil. And yet, Dawkins made headlines this August, twenty-eight years later, with a proclamation that it’s immoral for a mother not to abort a foetus that has Down’s syndrome. Has Dawkins changed his mind? Has he decided we can say certain actions (like abortion) are not “indifferent” but either “good” or “bad”—for the troubled mother, or for others in her family, or, on any of a number of grounds, for society?

Several questions arise from Dawkins’ recent declaration in light of his atheistic materialism.

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Read more:www.crisismagazine.com

The Catholic understanding of marriage is built on the Catholic understanding of grace.

Changing Discipline Changes Doctrine, Again

By Jacob W. Wood

In a recent piece on the Synod, I argued that sometimes a change of Church discipline cannot not happen without a change in Church doctrine, and that since Church doctrine about Communion for Catholics who have obtained a civil divorce and remarriage does not change, Catholics should not expect Church discipline to change either. Today I would like to suggest that the same holds true with the Marriage Pledge proposed by Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz, and hosted by First Things. It is not possible for Catholics to embrace a pledge whereby clergy refuse to acknowledge civil recognition of marriages performed in churches. Even though the pledge aims to send a clear witness about Christian marriage to society, the practice it proposes entails something contrary to what Catholics believe about the sacrament of holy matrimony, and about the relationship between human law and natural law.

It would be impossible to trace all the lines of argument in the recent explosion of material on this proposal, so I will focus on one small point which gets right to the heart of the matter. Recently, Edward Peters responded to Matthew Schmitz’s claim that separating the “simultaneous enactment [of the] civil contract with the sacrament of marriage” would “protect” the Church’s witness to the Christian nature of marriage. In an important but passing point, Peters observed that Catholics could not willingly embrace this because Catholics believe that the first exchange of matrimonial consent (which Schmitz would presumably have done in a Church) creates both the civil contract and the sacrament (Canon 1055.2). But just because Peters references canon law doesn’t mean he’s not talking about doctrine. There’s infallible doctrine lurking under that Canon.

The Catholic understanding of marriage is built on the Catholic understanding of grace. Catholics believe that receiving grace does not destroy your humanity and then remake it; it restores the humanity you already have and makes it better—purified and healed from sin, elevated to friendship with God and enriched with God’s heavenly gifts. Nowhere is this idea more true than in the sacraments. A sacrament is not a magical symbol dropped out of the sky, which changes us into something other than who we are. In each of the seven sacraments, God takes some ordinary human activity (like washing or eating), and perfects it so that he can perfect us through it. That’s part of how God helps us understand the truth of Genesis 1: “God saw all that he had made, and behold it was very good.”

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Read more: www.crisismagazine.com

On Tuesday, I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford...

Free speech is so last century. Today’s students want the ‘right to be comfortable’

by Brendan O'Neill 

Student unions’ ‘no platform’ policy is expanding to cover pretty much anyone whose views don’t fit prevailing groupthink

Have you met the Stepford students? They’re everywhere. On campuses across the land. Sitting stony-eyed in lecture halls or surreptitiously policing beer-fuelled banter in the uni bar. They look like students, dress like students, smell like students. But their student brains have been replaced by brains bereft of critical faculties and programmed to conform. To the untrained eye, they seem like your average book-devouring, ideas-discussing, H&M-adorned youth, but anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in their company will know that these students are far more interested in shutting debate down than opening it up.

I was attacked by a swarm of Stepford students this week. On Tuesday, I was supposed to take part in a debate about abortion at Christ Church, Oxford. I was invited by the Oxford Students for Life to put the pro-choice argument against the journalist Timothy Stanley, who is pro-life. But apparently it is forbidden for men to talk about abortion. A mob of furious feministic Oxford students, all robotically uttering the same stuff about feeling offended, set up a Facebook page littered with expletives and demands for the debate to be called off. They said it was outrageous that two human beings ‘who do not have uteruses’ should get to hold forth on abortion — identity politics at its most basely biological — and claimed the debate would threaten the ‘mental safety’ of Oxford students. Three hundred promised to turn up to the debate with ‘instruments’ — heaven knows what — that would allow them to disrupt proceedings.

Incredibly, Christ Church capitulated, the college’s censors living up to the modern meaning of their name by announcing that they would refuse to host the debate on the basis that it now raised ‘security and welfare issues’. So at one of the highest seats of learning on Earth, the democratic principle of free and open debate, of allowing differing opinions to slog it out in full view of discerning citizens, has been violated, and students have been rebranded as fragile creatures, overgrown children who need to be guarded against any idea that might prick their souls or challenge their prejudices.

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Read more: www.spectator.co.uk

Two new important histories look at Hitler’s fascination with Islam and Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey

The Nazi Romance With Islam 

Has Some Lessons for the United States

By David Mikics

Both Hitler and Himmler had a soft spot for Islam. Hitler several times fantasized that, if the Saracens had not been stopped at the Battle of Tours, Islam would have spread through the European continent—and that would have been a good thing, since “Jewish Christianity” wouldn’t have gone on to poison Europe. Christianity doted on weakness and suffering, while Islam extolled strength, Hitler believed. Himmler in a January 1944 speech called Islam “a practical and attractive religion for soldiers,” with its promise of paradise and beautiful women for brave martyrs after their death. “This is the kind of language a soldier understands,” Himmler gushed.

Surely, the Nazi leaders thought, Muslims would see that the Germans were their blood brothers: loyal, iron-willed, and most important, convinced that Jews were the evil that most plagued the world. “Do you recognize him, the fat, curly-haired Jew who deceives and rules the whole world and who steals the land of the Arabs?” demanded one of the Nazi pamphlets dropped over North Africa (a million copies of it were printed). “The Jew,” the pamphlet explained, was the evil King Dajjal from Islamic tradition, who in the world’s final days was supposed to lead 70,000 Jews from Isfahan in apocalyptic battle against Isa—often identified with Jesus, but according to the Reich Propaganda Ministry none other than Hitler himself. Germany produced reams of leaflets like this one, often quoting the Quran on the subject of Jewish treachery.

It is not surprising, then, that there are those today who draw a direct line between modern Jew-hatred in the Islamic world and the Nazis. A poster currently at Columbus Circle’s subway entrance proclaims loudly that “Jew-hatred is in the Quran.” The poster features a photograph of Hitler with the notoriously anti-Jewish Mufti al-Husaini of Palestine, who is erroneously labeled “the leader of the Muslim world.” The truth is considerably more complex. The mufti made himself useful to the Nazis as a propagandist, but he had little influence in most Muslim regions. Few Muslims believed Nazi claims that Hitler was the protector of Islam, much less the Twelfth Imam, as one Reich pamphlet suggested.


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Read more: tabletmag.com

Compulsory sex-ed is back on the UK government's agenda, but there's no evidence that it works.

Compulsory sex education won’t reduce 

rates of teenage pregnancy

by David Paton 

Proposals to force all schools to teach a compulsory sex education curriculum from primary level up and to restrict the right of parents to opt-out their children are back on the parliamentary agenda in the UK. State maintained secondary schools currently have to provide sex and relationships education, but academies and free schools do not.

Back in 2010, similar proposals to make sex education a statutory requirement for all schools were washed-up in the run up to the general election. They are now being re-introduced through a private members' bill by Green MP Caroline Lucas. The education select committee also has an ongoing inquiry into whether policy changes are needed. Yet there is little evidence from research or international comparisons that making sex education compulsory will have a big impact on the sexual health of young people.

No real impact on behaviour

There is considerable agreement among academics that teenage pregnancy rates and other indicators of sexual health are strongly correlated with factors such as poverty, educational achievement, religion and family stability. But there is less agreement over the impact of policies aimed directly at reducing unwanted pregnancy, in particular the role of school-based sex education and access to family planning services.

Although hardly any studies have found that sex education programmes lead to sustained reductions in unwanted pregnancy rates, some have been found to lead to delayed sexual initiation and higher condom use. However, an earlier review in 2002 argued that the strongest studies tended to find little or no impact on the way teenagers behave.

A 2011 survey of the most recent evaluations of mainstream sex education programmes in the UK, by sexual health expert Daniel Wight, also found “minimal effect on reported behaviour” and that none of the programmes led to reductions in unwanted pregnancies.

Population-wide studies can perhaps tell us more about the potential impact of policy than studies of individual sex education programmes. In 1999, American economist Gerald Oettinger found that some groups of teenage girls who were exposed to school-based sex education in the 1970s engaged in earlier sexual activity and had slightly higher pregnancy rates than those who had not been exposed to school sex education.

Effects of abstinence education

In an attempt to control more rigorously for what other factors might cause a teenager to engage in sexual activity, a 2006 study by American economic Joseph Sabia found sex education to have little or no effect. But he found an exception in that education centred around the use of contraceptives was associated with teenagers having sex earlier than those who had sex education based around the idea of abstinence.

The evidence specifically focusing on abstinence education is similarly mixed, with some studies finding it no more effective than “conventional” approaches to reducing unwanted pregnancy rates. But more recent papers on abstinence education by Chilean obstetrician Carlos Cabezon and Americans John Jemmott and Colin Cannonier have presented quite positive results.




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Read more: www.mercatornet.com/