“Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress is given 60 legislative days to disapprove a rule and receive the president’s signature, after which the rule goes into effect,”

13 Ways Trump Has Rolled Back Government Regulations in His First 100 Days

by Rachel del Guidice 

As President Donald Trump reaches his 100th day in the White House on April 29, he will have worked with Congress to rescind more regulations using the Congressional Review Act than any other president.

“We’re excited about what we’re doing so far. We’ve done more than that’s ever been done in the history of Congress with the CRA,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., told The Daily Signal in an interview, referring to the law called the Congressional Review Act.

The Congressional Review Act, the tool Trump and lawmakers are using to undo these regulations, allows Congress to repeal executive branch regulations in a certain window of time.

“Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress is given 60 legislative days to disapprove a rule and receive the president’s signature, after which the rule goes into effect,” Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in a February report. The 60 days begins after Congress is notified that a rule has been finalized.

Once the House and Senate pass a joint resolution disapproving of a particular regulation, the president signs the measure.

Passed in 1996 in concert with the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America reform agenda, the Congressional Review Act is what the Congressional Research Service calls “an oversight tool that Congress may use to overturn a rule issued by a federal agency.”

The law also prevents agencies from creating similar rules with similar language.

Until this year, the law had been used successfully only once—in 2001, when Congress and President George W. Bush rescinded a regulation regarding workplace injuries promulgated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Clinton administration.

Here’s a look at 11 regulatory rollbacks Congress has passed and Trump has signed:

1. Regulations governing the coal mining industry (H.J. Res 41).

2. Regulations defining streams in the coal industry (H.J. Res 38).

3. Regulations restricting firearms for disabled citizens (H.J. Res 40).

4. A rule governing the government contracting process (H.J. Res. 37).

5. A rule covering public lands (H.J. Res. 44).

6. Reporting requirements regarding college teachers (H.J. Res. 58).

7. Regulations on state education programs (H.J. Res. 57).

8. Drug-testing requirements (H.J. Res 42).

9. Hunting regulations for wildlife preserves in Alaska (H.J. Res 69).

10. Internet privacy rule (S.J.Res. 34).

11. Rule for logging workplace injuries (H.J. 83).

12.  Rule preventing states from withholding funds from Planned Parenthood (H.J. Res 43).

13. Rule on retirement savings (H.J. Res 67).

.........

Read more: dailysignal.com

Africa: Emulating the USSR in the 1960s was not altogether irrational

How Africa Got Left Behind

by Marian L. Tupy

"Even today, Africa remains the least economically free and most protectionist continent in the world. That – and not free trade – is the problem"

Robert Colvile’s excellent article on Prince Charles’s misunderstanding of the causes of African poverty provides a good opportunity to take a closer look at Africa’s economic history.

African poverty was not caused by colonialism, capitalism or free trade. As I havenoted before, many of Europe’s former dependencies became rich precisely because they maintained many of the colonial institutions and partook in global trade. African poverty preceded the continent’s contact with Europe and persists today. That is an outcome of unfortunate policy choices, most of which were freely chosen by Africa’s leaders after independence.
By 1500, a typical European was about twice as rich as a typical African.

Like Europe, Africa started out desperately poor. The late Professor Angus Maddison of Groningen University has estimated that, at the start of the Common Era, average per capita income in Africa was $470 per year (in 1990 dollars). The global average was roughly equal to that of Africa. Western Europe and North Africa, which were parts of the Roman Empire, were slightly better off ($600). In contrast, North America lagged behind Africa ($400). All in all, the world was both fairly equal and very poor.
The origins of global inequality, which saw Western Europe and, later, North America, power ahead of the rest of the world, can be traced to the rise of the Northern Italian city-states in the 14th century and the Renaissance in the 15th century. By 1500, a typical European was about twice as rich as a typical African. But the real gap in living standards opened only after the Industrial Revolution that started in England in the late 18th century and spread to Europe and North America in the 19th century.



In 1870, when Europeans controlled no more than 10 per cent of the African continent (mostly North and South Africa), Western European incomes were already four times higher than those in Africa. Europe, in other words, did not need Africa in order to become prosperous. Europe colonised Africa because Europe was prosperous and, consequently, more powerful. Appreciation of the chronology of events does not justify or defend colonialism. But it does help explain it.

........

Read more: fee.org

Integrated Humanities Program:big dreams are the seeds of a new reality

John Senior and the Restoration of Realism

by Dwight Longenecker

John Senior’s great contribution was to forge a middle way between indoctrination and the chaos of complete relativism. Instead of indoctrinating students, the classical knowledge of a Christian culture provided the tools and the framework for true education… John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Francis Bethel (Thomas More College Press, 2016)

It was one of those serendipitous meetings that are anything but a coincidence. I was in Oklahoma conducting a Lenten parish mission and asked my hosts if it would be possible to make the three-hour drive to visit Clear Creek Monastery.

We arrived in time for Mass in the new, half-built Abbey church. A short tour with the assistant Guestmaster was followed by lunch with the monks. We had to hurry back so I could speak in the parish that evening, but as we came out of the refectory with the other guests, one of the monks greeted me. It was the Master of Oblates, Dom Francis Bethel. We chatted for a few moments about mutual friends and fellow Benedictines, and as we went through the bookstore he mentioned the book he’d written.

Before I knew it I had a review copy in my hand. Fr Bethel is one of the men who, as a student at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, came under the influence of Professor John Senior. Senior and his colleagues Franklyn Nellick and Dennis Quinn founded the Integrated Humanities Program. Fr. Bethel eventually entered monastic life at Fontgombault Abbey in France and returned to the United States in 1999 to help found Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma.

Fr. Bethel tells the story of his mentor with monastic simplicity and clarity. Combining biographical details with the outlines of Senior’s thought, John Senior and the Restoration of Realism provides an excellent introduction to the author of The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture. Most memorably, Fr. Bethel brings to life the quietly passionate professor who ran away from home to become a cowboy, and ended up being an eccentric inspiration to a generation of students.

The meat and potatoes of the book is Fr. Bethel’s in-depth exploration of Senior’s intellectual pilgrimage through Eastern religions and the occult to his conversion to the Catholic faith in 1961. Fr. Bethel outlines Senior’s thought and educational theory. Education was not simply about facts, but about experience. The “poetic mode” of learning was contrasted to the factual and purely logical modes of knowledge. This poetic mode involved an apprehension of beauty that led to the deeper appreciation of truth and goodness.

In the Integrated Humanities Program, Senior and his colleagues put their theory into practice. Students learned to savor a fine poem like a fine wine. The poem was an incarnation of truth and the point of reading it was to come to experience that truth—not simply to achieve a discursive understanding of the poem’s meaning, and not simply to analyze the poem’s structure, rhyme scheme, and historical context.

Furthermore, literature, philosophy, history, theology, mathematics, and sciences were part of an organic whole. The subjects were not to be isolated, but integrated to provide a truly classical, liberal education.

The program was a roaring success. Students loved being part of a cadre of counter-cultural intellectuals. While their peers were getting into Eastern religions, free love, and campus protests, they went and traveled together. They delved into the ancient beauty of medieval Europe. They visited monasteries. They learned to waltz and sing and gaze at the stars. Most shocking of all, they became Catholics. Some of the young men actually took off for France and became monks.

Fr. Bethel explains how the rest of the faculty at the University of Kansas were soon opposed to the Integrated Humanities Program. While there may have been some professional jealousy, the real objections were ideological. The professors running the Integrated Humanities Program proposed that there was an overarching truth that could, and should be discovered, and that education was the key to doing so. Even in the 1970s, college campuses were being flooded with the subjective relativism that is the dogmatic orthodoxy in the academy today.

Senior and his colleagues were accused of brainwashing the students. Although an investigation uncovered no signs of intellectual or emotional pressure, their opponents insisted that Senior, Quinn, and Nellick could not possibly maintain the professional objectivity that they believed a college education required. If they believed there was a dominant Truth, how could they educate young people without imposing that truth?

This conflict unlocks a major distinction in the field of education. No doubt the attraction of a purely objective, nonjudgmental approach to education developed as a reaction to a form of education that was indeed no more than indoctrination. For generations, educators—especially religious educators—settled for rote learning of religious texts. Education consisted of memorizing Bible verses or the catechism. The ability to digest facts and regurgitate them for a test to make a good mark was the short and easy way to “educate” the masses.

Subjective relativism—which attempts to present all the viewpoints as equally valid—came from the desire for students to understand, evaluate, and choose a philosophy, a religion, or a point of view. Unfortunately, the intellectual tools to empower that task were neglected, and the level playing field in which all philosophies and viewpoints had equal value meant that none of them had any value. People cannot live without a framework of belief for long, and soon various ideologies replaced the framework provided by a classical Christian culture.

Senior’s great contribution was to forge a middle way between indoctrination and the chaos of complete relativism. Instead of indoctrinating students, the classical knowledge of a Christian culture provided the tools and the framework for true education. The tried-and-true tools of the classical educational method, and the content of the Christian literary and philosophical tradition gave the students the method and means to evaluate the different philosophies, perspectives, and ideologies with which they were presented.

Senior began with reality. Common sense affirmed that some things were real and if they were real they were true—they were not figments of imagination. If there was truth, then in true Thomistic tradition, it could be known, and to know this truth was the point of education.

While his philosophy was rooted in realism, John Senior was also a delightfully unrealistic dreamer. His ideal for a school is a combination boys camp, boot camp, classical academy, and home on the range. He dreamed of a boarding school where the boys would jump out of bed at five to splash cold water on their faces before milking the cows, sing prayers in Gregorian chant in the chapel before a hearty breakfast, and then study Latin and the classics, engage in debate, and read poetry aloud. Science would be done with experiments in the real world. Mathematics would be learned by counting real things, and learning geometry would come by designing and making real things.

Imagine: No TV. No electronics. No cars. No junk food. No junk entertainment. Nothing artificial.

It might be argued that if this is a return to realism, then it is hardly realistic. But big dreams are the seeds of a new reality. Senior’s ideals have been the inspiration for educators and youth workers and parents, even if the reality is less idealistic than Senior’s wonderfully romantic imagination.

Fr. Bethel’s own exile to a French monastery and then return to the American Midwest was partly inspired by Senior, and the rise of Clear Creek and the increasing surge of classical schools across America is a clear indication that inspired dreamers can change the world. John Senior planted seeds that are beginning to bear rich fruit.

Numbered among the graduates of the Integrated Humanities Program are Benedictine monks, abbots, a prioress, several Catholic bishops, a federal judge, and numerous teachers and professors. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are alive and well. They are forever renewed for they are forever young and strong. Fr. Bethel’s tribute to his mentor is an excellent read and a bright inspiration to those who will pick up the torch and “run on the path… their hearts overflowing with an infinite delight of love.”

Read more: www.theimaginativeconservative.org

Non più facoltativa l’ora di “educazione” sessuale: “D’ora in poi tutte le scuole saranno legate a quest’obbligo”.

“Educare ai valori Lgbt fin dai 2 anni”, dice la maestra
di Benedetta Frigerio

FONTE: lanuovabq.it


Non è uno scherzo, perché in effetti è già dagli anni Cinquanta che gli attivisti Lgbt lo avevano capito: per riuscire a sovvertire l’ordine naturale della società bisogna incominciare a diseducare gli uomini fin dalla più tenera età, oscurando la prima fra le evidenze, la differenza uomo/donna. E’ così che, instancabilmente, colpo dopo colpo, con pazienza certosina anche quando al mondo apparivano ancora folli, i figli della “rivoluzione sessuale” sono arrivati ad ottenere risultati sconvolgenti come questi.

RIEDUCAZIONE DI STATO – Settimana scorsa l’Associazione nazionale degli insegnanti inglesi ha formulato ufficialmente la sua richiesta al governo di parlare di sessualità ai bambini di due anni, per spiegare loro che le relazioni omoerotiche sono normali. Il governo inglese, che sta già lavorando per l’obbligatorietà dell’educazione sessuale nelle scuole di qualsiasi ordine e grado, invadendo una sfera che dovrebbe essere mera prerogativa della famiglia, dovrà rispondere alla mozione passata con la maggioranza dei voti. All’inizio dell’anno il ministro dell’Istruzione, Justine Greening, aveva annunciato l’avvio di un piano rivolto ai ragazzini delle medie e delle superiori che rendeva non più facoltativa l’ora di “educazione” sessuale: “D’ora in poi – aveva chiarito la Greening – tutte le scuole saranno legate a quest’obbligo”. Ovviamente, anche la Chiesa di Stato inglese si era detta favorevole. Nonostante ciò secondo Annette Pryce, membro della Associazione nazionale degli insegnanti, “l’ala destra e religiosa” avrebbe impedito al ministro di proporre un’agenda più “inclusiva” riguardo alla sessualità che parlasse esplicitamente a tutti gli alunni della normalità delle relazioni fra persone dello stesso sesso. Per questo la mozione sarebbe un passo in avanti.

...........


Leggi tutto: /www.osservatoriogender.it

Del Noce -To Find Solutions, We Must Understand the Root of Our Problems

Conservatism in Translation: Discovering the Work of Augusto Del Noce

by  Scott Beauchamp

A newly published translation of “the Italian Russell Kirk” offers important insights into the philosophical roots of our culture’s nihilistic impulses—and how we might fix them.

It’s unfortunate but not entirely shocking that so few translated works are published in America. Only 3 percent of books published each year are translated from another language. That’s a pretty small number, especially in a nation that doesn’t read much to begin with. And as someone who once worked editing translated texts, it’s my guess that most of the measly 3 percent consists of books you’re probably already familiar with. Our superficial society may refuse to absorb the wisdom of the classics, but, for the moment at least, it does provide a somewhat reliable market for their sale in classrooms.

Where the small but dedicated community of American readers suffers most is in being exposed to thinkers, novelists, and poets, especially conservative ones, who are sort of “classics in waiting.” Maybe these writers already have an established reputation in their home country, but are still waiting to seep into Anglo-American consciousness. In Donald Rumsfeld’s useful categories of epistemology, they are the “unknown unknowns,” writers whom we are guilelessly unaware that we’re missing out on. We’re fortunate that the late Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989) was recently removed from this classification with a translated selection of essays and lectures published as The Crisis of Modernity.

Translation is an exercise in creative liberation. Walter Benjamin wrote that “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” Judging by hiscurriculum vitae alone, it might seem that Carlo Lancellotti, mathematics and physics professor at the City University of New York, Staten Island, is an unlikely translator of the author known as the “Italian Russell Kirk,” but Lancellotti masterfully liberates the “pure language” hidden under Del Noce’s Italian. What’s revealed is Del Noce’s penetrating insight into contemporary Western secular society, and the affable voice of the author himself.

The Metaphysician as Historian

Del Noce was born into a minor aristocratic family in Tuscany and raised in Turin. The intellectual milieu in which Del Noce was born was dominated by the Idealism of Benedetto Croce on one end of the political spectrum and the “philosopher of Fascism,” Giovanni Gentile, on the other. Spending many of his formative years studying in France, Del Noce was influenced by the mid-century revival of Thomism, especially as articulated by Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson. While he was not technically a neo-Thomist himself, Del Noce, like his hero Maritain, “developed a deep and original non-reactionary interpretation of the trajectory of the modern world in the light of the classical and Christian tradition,” as Lancellotti writes.

Del Noce was unique: a metaphysician who used the history of recent philosophy to articulate his thoughts. As Lancellotti explains in his indispensable introduction,

At a time when Western academic culture was starting to be dominated by schools of thought that favoured prepoliticalexplanations—by which I mean . . . approaches based on methods borrowed from the human sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, socio-biology, etc.—Del Noce advocated . . . a transpolitical interpretation of contemporary history, in which people’s conceptions of the world and of themselves play a significant role.

Del Noce was interested in how our philosophies interact with what we think of as the “non-philosophical” world of objectivity and fact, and how our philosophies create the boundaries of what we consider truth itself, specifically with respect to post-Cartesian rationalism and the wholesale rejection of transcendence.

Rather than accepting modernity as one single and unified development, Del Noce sees atheism, embodied in Nietzsche, as “a protagonist in the development of modernity, which appears at the end of every major cycle of European thought: Bruno at the end of the Renaissance, the libertines at the end of Cartesianism, de Sade at the end of the Enlightenment . . .” Del Noce doesn’t consider atheism an inevitable outcome of modernity, but a dangerous and avoidable pitfall that leads to nihilism. He suggests an alternative course of thought that avoids the dead end of Nietzsche by tracing a different path from Descartes through Pascal and then to Rosmini, thereby keeping the metaphysical foundations of ethics alive. In this way, he shows that the history of philosophy doesn’t have to be a secular drift terminating in inchoate nihilism.

The Revolution Demands Violence

There’s a lot to chew on even in just an overview of Del Noce, but a few examples of how his metaphysical histories are put to work in The Crisis of Modernity should be useful. Most American conservatives are familiar with the idea of ideology as a kind of inverse-religiosity—the transformation of the transcendent into the immanent, or the assertion that Utopia can only exist in the world in chronological time. Del Noce writes in the essay “Violence and Modern Gnosticism” that the modern process of secularization is as much a secularization of gnosticism as anything else: the “‘totally other’ reality . . . which for a gnostic lay beyond the empirical word, for the revolutionary lies instead in the future.”

Del Noce explains that the revolutionary immanentization of the eschaton (whatever name it goes by—Utopia, heaven, ultimate truth) leads to the “eclipse of ethics.” In the rush to create heaven on earth, anything is permitted. People are used as objects, means to the end that, obviously, never materializes. Del Noce writes,

nihilism, instead of being the preliminary stage of the revolution . . . becomes its result. At that point violence is no longer accepted as necessary, or revolutionary violence exalted as divine. Rather, it is accepted as normal because ethics comes to an end. Ethics is replaced by rules of coexistence imposed by the strongest side . . .

Look to the history of any empire founded on ideology for confirmation of that observation.

In the related essay “Revolution, Risorgimento, Tradition,” Del Noce analyzes what he calls “total revolution”: “the replacement of religion by politics as the source of man’s liberation since evil is a consequence of society . . . and not of original sin.” Interestingly, Del Noce sees most conservative responses to “total revolution” lacking, consisting of mere ad hoc assertions that tradition creates value instead of the other way around. Del Noce is interested in a more profound response. In his view, “nations can rise again only by exploring more deeply their tradition, and by criticizing the historical order from the standpoint of an ideal order.” He fears that conservatives will get sucked into the same banal political games as progressives, unable to clearly articulate problems or imagine solutions.

The Totalitarianism of Science and the Ascendancy of Sex

It probably won’t come as a surprise that Del Noce groups “scientism, eroticism, and theology of secularization” together as defining elements of progressivism. By scientism, he doesn’t mean the empirical method, but a totalizing concept in which science is regarded as “the only true form of knowledge.” Knowledge—whether religious or metaphysical—that seems to contradict scientism is explained away by “extending science to the human sphere” through psychology or sociology. Examples might include Marx’s sociological interpretation of religion as the “opiate of the masses,” or Freud’s interpretation of religious art as a manifestation of psycho-sexual desire. The result of this process is progressivism negating all tradition.

In “The Ascendance of Eroticism,” Del Noce focuses on the permissiveness of the “technological society” ruled by scientism. Quite simply, without a metaphysical foundation of truth, sex replaces love. Eccentric German expatriate Wilhelm Reich is presented as the philosophical forefather of contemporary permissiveness. In Reich’s work—a heady combination of Freud and Marx—the class struggle is replaced by a permissiveness struggle, the nuclear family is enemy number one, and tradition is something to escape from. The idea of monogamous marriage is, after all, Del Noce writes, “linked to the idea of tradition, which in turn presupposes (since tradere means to hand down) the idea of an objective order of unchangeable and permanent truths . . .” Since only scientism can express truth, and no tradition can justify itself by sociology or psychology alone, all traditions are rendered suspect.

To Find Solutions, We Must Understand the Root of Our Problems

The problems Del Noce articulated are still with us, because the philosophical underpinnings of our world have not greatly changed since last century. Del Noce’s work reminds us that, to find solutions to the nihilism we confront, we must first understand how we got where we are. Del Noce gives us that understanding in detail, and in language that any educated person with access to an online dictionary can understand.

In fact, it’s the responsibility of any educated person to understand the things that Del Noce writes about. The Crisis of Modernity isn’t light beach reading, but it’s necessary, especially for conservatives.

Its publication should also serve as a reminder of how important translation is to the cultivation of tradition. Translation of near-contemporaries has been underemphasized since the high-water mark of Modernist thought in the middle of last century, but without an open-armed embrace of the depth and breadth of the common concerns of contemporary conservatives, we’re that much weaker. Reading Del Noce is like finding correspondence from a long-lost relative. Through him, we rediscover our intellectual roots and reaffirm our shared truths.

Scott Beauchamp is a veteran and writer who lives in Maine. His work has appeared in The American Conservative, the Paris Review, and Rolling Stone, among other places.

Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com

Solzhenitsyn: ¿cual fue la causa de la revolución para el escritor?

Solzhenitsyn I: Los hombres se han olvidado de Dios, esa es la causa de todo

Schola Veritatis, el 26.07.15

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), es recordado como un eminente novelista, escritor e historiador ruso. En palabras del New York Times:
“Alexander Solzhenitsyn es un genio literario cuyo talento coincide con el de Dostoievski, Turgueniev, y Tolstoi.“ (Edición de Harrison Salisbury: [1]).
Para una breve biografía suya puede consutarse el siguiente enlace: creyentesintelectuales.blogspot.com


Reproduciremos, por partes, su discurso en la entrega del Premio Templeton.


Siendo ya niño, hace más de medio siglo, muchas veces oí decir a las personas mayores, para explicar las terribles convulsiones que habían quebrantado Rusia: “los hombres se han olvidado de Dios, esa es la causa de todo”.

Desde entonces, he dedicado casi medio siglo al estudio de nuestra revolución. He leído cientos de libros. He reunido centenares de testimonios personales, y –para empezar a despejar los escombros- he escrito ya ocho volúmenes.

Ahora bien, si me pidieran hoy precisar en forma breve, la causa principal de esa revolución devastadora, que nos ha devorado más de 60 millones de individuos, no encontraría nada mejor que repetir: “los hombres se han olvidado de Dios, esa es la causa de todo”.

Pero, todavía hay algo más: los sucesos de la revolución rusa no pueden entenderse hoy, en este fin de siglo, sino sobre el marco de fondo de lo que ocurre en los demás países. Hay un proceso universal que se perfila claramente. Si se me exigiera señalar, en una fórmula breve, el rasgo principal de este siglo XX, nuevamente no encontraría nada más exacto, más sustancial que decir: los hombres se han olvidado de Dios.

Privada de la lucidez divina, la conciencia humana se deprava y ha sido esta depravación la que ha cometido los mayores crímenes de este siglo, empezando por la primera guerra mundial, de la que deriva en gran parte la realidad que vivimos. Esta guerra está a punto de ser olvidada. Pero ella vio un Europa próspera, floreciente, llena de savia vital, precipitarse en la locura, para destruirse a sí misma, comprometiendo su futuro por más de un siglo y tal vez para siempre.

Solo puede explicarse esta guerra por un oscurecimiento de la razón, en dirigentes que habían perdido la noción de una fuerza suprema situada por encima de ellos. Solo el furor, olvidado de Dios, pudo llevar a Estados aparentemente cristianos a usar los gases químicos en una clara manifestación de barbarie.

La misma depravación de la conciencia humana-privada de su luz divina- fue la que permitió después de la segunda guerra mundial, sucumbir a la tentación del “paraguas nuclear”. Es decir: despreocupémonos y liberemos a la juventud de sus deberes y obligaciones, no hagamos ningún esfuerzo por defendernos ni mucho menos por defender a los otros; tapémonos los oídos para no oír los gemidos que vienen del oriente; instalémonos en la competencia desenfrenada por el bienestar y si la amenaza estalla sobre nuestras cabezas, la bomba atómica nos protegerá, y ¡si no que todo el mundo se vaya al diablo!

La lamentable debilidad que oprime hoy a Occidente es consecuencia notoria de este error fatal: creer que la defensa del mundo puede depender, no de la firmeza de los corazones ni de la valentía de los hombres, sino solamente del armamento nuclear.

Era necesario que Occidente hubiera perdido la noción suprema de la divinidad, para asistir sin conmoverse, después de la Primera Guerra mundial, a la lenta agonía de Rusia despedazada por una banda de caníbales, y –después de la Segunda Guerra- al derrumbamiento de toda la Europa Oriental.

Sin embargo fue allí donde empezó la ruina del mundo entero. Occidente no solo no lo comprendió sino incluso contribuyo a este proceso.

Una sola vez, en el curso de este siglo, Occidente reunió sus fuerzas: fue para combatir contra Hitler. Pero los frutos de ese esfuerzo se malgastaron hace ya mucho tiempo.

En la lucha contra los antropófagos, este siglo impío ha descubierto un método anestesiante: ¡comerciar! He aquí el pequeño montículo al que alcanza hoy nuestra sabiduría.

Si los siglos que nos precedieron hubieran podido ver tan solo los umbrales de nuestro mundo, habría resonado un clamor unánime: ¡es el Apocalipsis! Pero nosotros ya estamos habituados, formamos parte de él.

Dostoievski había advertido: “pueden sobrevenir acontecimientos que sorprendan de improviso nuestras facultades intelectuales”. Esto ya ha ocurrido. Y predijo también: “el mundo se salvará tan solo después de haber sido visitado por el espíritu del mal”. ¿Se salvará verdaderamente? Esto es lo que nos corresponderá ver a nosotros. La salvación va a depender de nuestra conciencia, de nuestro don de penetración, de nuestros esfuerzos individuales y colectivos frente a una situación catastrófica.

Algo hay que ya ha ocurrido: el espíritu del mal triunfante gira en torbellino por sobre los cinco continentes…

Fuente parte 1:infocatolica.com



Solzhenitsyn II: Somos los testigos de la ruina del mundo

Schola Veritatis, el 31.07.15

Según lo anunciado, continuamos en el presente post con la segunda parte del discurso de Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn en la entrega del premio Templeton. 

Aquí va la segunda parte del discurso:

Somos los testigos de la ruina del mundo: en algunos países, se la sufre como una desgracia; otros se entregan libremente a ella. Todo el siglo XX se sumerge en el torbellino del ateísmo y de la autodestrucción.

Esta caída en el abismo tiene rasgos comunes que no dependen de los sistemas políticos ni de los niveles económicos ni de las características nacionales. La Europa actual, tan poco semejante en apariencia a la Rusia de 1913, se equilibra al borde del mismo abismo, pero ha llegado a él por otro camino. Las diversas regiones del mundo han seguido vías diferentes, pero todas están llegando al umbral de su propia ruina.

Anteriormente Rusia conoció épocas de su historia en que la sociedad tenía por ideal no el rango, ni la riqueza, ni el éxito material, sino la santidad de la vida. La Rusia de entonces estaba irrigada por la ortodoxia, fiel a la Iglesia primitiva de los primeros Siglos. Esta ortodoxia venerable supo preservar a su pueblo, a pesar de 2 o 3 siglos de dominio extranjero, y rechazó al mismo tiempo los viles asaltos de los cruzados abanderados de Occidente. En esa época la ortodoxia moldeaba la mentalidad, el carácter, la conducta, las estructuras familiares, la vida cotidiana y el calendario de trabajo desde la semana hasta las estaciones. La fe era el vínculo de unión de la nación y el fundamento de su poder.

Pero en el Siglo XVII un cisma desgraciado mino nuestra ortodoxia, y en el XVIII Rusia fue quebrantada por las reformas tiránicas de Pedro el grande, que ahogaron el espíritu religioso y la vida nacional, para fortalecer al estado, la guerra y la economía. Con la unificación de la enseñanza impuesta por Pedro el Grande, se nos infiltró la sutil brisa venenosa del secularismo, que en el Siglo XIX penetró hasta las clases más cultas y abrió amplio paso al marxismo. En Vísperas de la Revolución, la fe había desaparecido de los círculos instruidos. Entre los monjes eruditos incluso estaba ya debilitada.

Dostoievski –siempre él- juzgando por el odio encarnizado que la revolución francesa profesó a la Iglesia, había sacado en conclusión: “la Revolución debe comenzar necesariamente por el ateísmo”. Verdaderamente es así. Pero el ateísmo como el marxista –organizado, militarizado y encarnizado- el mundo no lo había conocido hasta ahora. En el pensamiento filosófico y en el corazón mismo de la psicología de Marx y de Lenin, el odio a Dios constituye el impulso inicial, previo a todos los proyectos políticos y económicos. El ateísmo militante no es un detalle, un elemento periférico ni una consecuencia accesoria de la política comunista: es su eje central. Para alcanzar su fin diabólico, ella necesita disponer de un pueblo sin religión y sin patria.

Debe por lo tanto abatir la religión y la nacionalidad. De hecho, esta doble política los comunistas la proclaman y la practican abiertamente. La tela de araña de atentados, tejida últimamente en torno al Papa, nos muestra hasta que punto el mundo ateo tiene necesidad de dinamitar la religión; hasta que punto esta parece habérsele quedado atravesada en la garganta.

La década de los años 20 en Rusia es una larga procesión de mártires: casi todo el clero ortodoxo; 2 Obispos metropolitanos fusilados, el de Petrogrado, Benjamín, había sido elegido por el pueblo. El propio patriarca Tikhon, después de haber caído en manos de la Tcheka y de la GPU, murió en circunstancias misteriosas. Docenas de arzobispos y obispos fueron asesinados. Decenas de miles de sacerdotes, que los tchekistas quisieron hacer abjurar, fueron torturados, fusilados en los sótanos, enviados a campos de concentración, exiliados en las tundras desérticas del gran norte donde –ancianos hambrientos- fueron abandonados a la intemperie. Todos estos mártires cristianos afrontaron valerosamente la muerte por la fe. Los que vacilaron y renegaron constituyeron casos excepcionales. Decenas de millones de fieles se vieron privados del derecho de asistir a la Iglesia, del derecho de inculcar a sus hijos principios religiosos: a menudo se arrojaba a la prisión a los padres para poder arrancar la fe a los niños mediante mentiras y amenazas.

La absurda destrucción de la agricultura rusa, alrededor de los años 30 –llamada dekulakización y colectivización- que significó la muerte de 15 millones de campesinos, fue impuesta en forma implacable –según podemos comprobar ahora- con el fin de destruir las formas de vida nacional y de extirpar la religión de los campos. La perversión de las almas se extendió al atroz archipiélago, donde se empujaba a los hombres a sobrevivir unos a costa de otros. Y solamente ateos semi-enloquecidos han podido resolverse a suscribir el proyecto reciente, que se propone masacrar totalmente la naturaleza en Rusia: anegar bajo las aguas todo el norte; invertir el curso de los ríos y perturbar la vida en el océano Ártico, arrojando las aguas hacia las regiones meridionales, que otras iniciativas descabelladas del comunismo no menos absurdas han ya arruinado.


Fuente parte 2: infocatolica.com

Solzhenitsyn III: La esperanza ante un fracaso universal

Schola Veritatis, el 7.08.15

Según lo anunciado , continuamos en el presente post con la tercera parte del discurso de Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn en la entrega del premio Templeton. Los destacados en negrita y cursiva son nuestros.

Aquí va la tercera parte del discurso:

Presionado por la necesidad de unir todas las fuerzas de Rusia contra Hitler , Stalin halagó en forma cínica a la Iglesia, y ese juego equivoco, prolongado por la espectacular propaganda brezneviana, Occidente lamentablemente lo ha tomado por la verdad auténtica. Pero hasta qué punto el odio a la religión es inseparable del comunismo, podéis juzgarlo por el ejemplo del más liberal de sus jefes, Kruchev: él, que dio pasos decisivos hacia la liberación, volvió a encontrar el mismo celo furioso de Lenin en la persecución de la fe religiosa.

Y sin embargo, contra lo que era de espera - en un país despojado de Iglesias, donde el ateísmo ha triunfado desde hace dos tercios de siglo, donde los obispos son rebajados hasta privárseles de toda voluntad, donde los vestigios de la Iglesia se toleran nada más que con fines de propaganda dirigidos a Occidente, donde hoy todavía la fe es un delito castigado con campos de concentración, donde incluso en los campos se arroja al calabozo a los que se reúnen a rezar el día de Pascua- la tradición cristiana ha resistido al aniquilamiento comunista.

Sí. Entre nosotros el ateísmo impuesto por el poder ha destruido y pervertido a millones de fieles reducidos hoy al silencio , pero –como ocurre con frecuencia en la persecución y en el sufrimiento- el sentido de Dios ha alcanzado en mi patria una penetración muy profunda.

Vemos aquí la primera luz de una esperanza : en vano el comunismo está erizado de cohetes y de tanques. En vano obtiene éxitos en la conquista del planeta: está condenado a no triunfar jamás sobre el cristianismo.

Occidente no ha sufrido todavía la invasión comunista ; la religión aquí es libre. Pero su itinerario histórico ha desembocado en un agostamiento del sentimiento religioso. Ha sufrido también cismas desgarradores, enfrentamientos y sangrientas guerras religiosas.

Y –casi no hay necesidad de decirlo- desde la baja Edad Media, Occidente ha sido invadido de forma progresiva por el secularismo. Para la fe, esta amenaza –no de un exterminio exterior sino de una anemia interna- puede ser todavía más grave.

Imperceptiblemente en Occidente el sentido de la vida se ha desgastado en el curso de los años hasta reducirse a la sola “conquista” de la felicidad, que se inscribe incluso en las Constituciones. No es solo en este siglo que se han desvalorizado las nociones del bien y del mal, hábilmente sustituidas por argucias sin fundamento, ya sean éstas de clase o de partido. Desde entonces se tiene vergüenza en apelar a conceptos inmutables. Se tiene vergüenza en admitir que el mal anida en el corazón del hombre antes de penetrar en los sistemas políticos; pero nadie tiene vergüenza de ceder habitualmente al mal integral. Y sobre la pendiente de estas concesiones, en el espacio de una generación, Occidente está a punto de deslizarse sin remedio en el abismo. Las sociedades occidentales pierden cada vez más su sustancia religiosa, y abandonan alegremente su juventud al ateísmo. ¿Es necesario dar ejemplo de impiedad? ¡Ved a los Estados Unidos que pasa sin embargo por ser una de las naciones más religiosas del mundo, pero donde se proyecta una película injuriosa para Cristo, y donde un diario de circulación nacional publica en forma desvergonzada una caricatura de la Madre de Dios! Cuando todos los derechos formales están de vuestra parte, ¿por qué privarse voluntariamente de cometer una acción indecente?

¿Por qué en estas condiciones habría de moderarse el ardor del odio , sea este racial, clasista o ideológico? Este odio corroe muchas almas hoy día. Los maestros ateos educan a la juventud en el odio hacia la sociedad en la que viven. En su permanente actitud crítica, pierden de vista el hecho de que los vicios del capitalismo son vicios inherentes a la naturaleza humana, a los que se les ha dado libre curso siguiendo la huella de los otros derechos del hombre ; que, bajo el comunismo (y éste apremia a las demás formas de socialismo que no son nada sólidas) estos mismos vicios no conocen ni freno ni control en todos aquellos que poseen una migaja de poder (en cuanto al resto de la población, efectivamente ha conquistado la igualdad pero en la esclavitud y en la miseria).

Este odio, atizado sin cesar, impregna hoy toda la atmósfera del mundo libre ; la extensión de las libertades personales; el auge de las conquistas sociales e incluso del confort no hacen paradojalmente otra cosa que acrecentar este odio ciego. Las sociedades desarrolladas de Occidente prueban hoy día que la salvación del hombre no está en la abundancia material ni en el éxito económico.

Este odio, atizado sin cesar, se extiende a todo lo viviente, a la vida en sí misma , a sus colores, a sus sonidos, a sus formas, al cuerpo humano; y el arte exacerbado del siglo XX se muere de este odio monstruoso, porque el arte sin amor es estéril.

En Oriente, el arte ha decaído porque ha sido aplastado y pisoteado; en Occidente ha decaído por sí mismo , al convertirse en una búsqueda cerebral y pretensiosa en la cual el hombre no pretende manifestar a Dios sino sustituirlo.

Una vez más constatamos el desenlace común de un fracaso universal , la convergencia de resultados en Oriente y en Occidente. Y nuevamente, hay una sola razón para todo esto: los hombres se han olvidado de Dios.




Fuente parte 3: infocatolica.com

Solzhenitsyn y IV: Volvernos a Dios, o perecer del todo

Schola Veritatis, el 13.08.15


En este post terminamos con la última parte del discurso de Aleksander Solzhenitsyn en la entrega del premio Templeton. 


Aquí va el final del discurso:

Frente a la presión del ateísmo universal, los creyentes se encuentran divididos y muchos de ellos desorientados. Y sin embargo el mundo cristiano –o lo que una vez fue el mundo cristiano- haría bien en no perder de vista el ejemplo del extremo oriente. Recientemente he tenido ocasión de constatar que en Japón o en China libre (Taiwan), aunque las concepciones religiosas sean más tenues, la sociedad y la juventud –con igual libertad de elección que en Occidente- están menos dañadas por el espíritu destructor del secularismo.

¡Y qué decir de la separación existente entre las diversas religiones, si el propio cristianismo se encuentra tan fragmentado! En estos últimos años, las principales Iglesias cristianas han dado algunos pasos hacia la reconciliación. Pero estos son demasiado lentos, y el mundo corre a una velocidad 100 veces mayor hacia el abismo. Incluso sin esperar una fusión de Iglesias ni una modificación del dogma, sino tan solo una simple resistencia común frente al ateísmo, los progresos son demasiado lentos.

Es verdad que existe un movimiento organizado para la reunificación de las Iglesias, pero este es bien singular. El consejo ecuménico de Iglesias, aparentemente preocupado más que nada del éxito de los movimientos revolucionarios en los países del tercer mundo, permanece ciego y sordo ante las persecuciones religiosas, ahí donde ellas son más sistemáticas: en la URSS. Sería imposible no verlas, pero por cálculo político se prefiere ignorarlas y no intervenir. Pero ¿en qué queda entonces el cristianismo?

Con profunda amargura debo decir aquí (no puedo callarlo) que mi predecesor titular en este premio, el año último (nota nuestra: se trata del predicador bautista Billy Graham), ha apoyado públicamente la mentira comunista justamente durante los meses de la recepción del premio, declarando contra toda evidencia que no se habían comprobado persecuciones religiosas en la URSS. ¡En nombre de todas las víctimas que han sido pisoteadas o asesinadas, que el cielo lo juzgue!

Hoy vemos cada vez en mayor escala el hecho de que a pesar de las más sutiles maniobras políticas, el nudo corredizo se cierra en torno de la humanidad en forma inexorable, y no hay escapatoria para nadie en ninguna parte; ni atómica, ni política, ni económica, ni ecológica. Parece verdaderamente ser así.

Frente a las grandes cumbres de los acontecimientos mundiales, puede parecer inadecuado y absurdo recordar que la llave fundamental de nuestra existencia y de nuestro aniquilamiento se encuentra en el corazón de cada uno de nosotros, en la preferencia que le otorguemos al bien o al mal en concreto. Sin embargo, hoy como ayer, esta clave sigue siendo la más segura. Las prometedoras teorías sociales están en banca rota, y nos han traído a un callejón sin salida. Los hombres libres de Occidente deberían comprender que alrededor de ellos se han acumulados demasiados engaños libremente consentidos, y deberían negarse a seguir aceptándolos pasivamente.

Es inútil intentar buscar una salida a la situación del mundo sin volver nuestra conciencia arrepentida hacia el creador de todas las cosas. Ninguna puerta se abrirá para nosotros. No la encontraremos. Los medios de que disponemos son demasiado miserables.

Hay que ver primero el mal terrible –no el que podrían hacernos desde afuera los enemigos de nuestro país o de nuestra clase- sino el que está dentro de cada uno de nosotros; en el seno de cada sociedad, incluso y principalmente en las sociedades más libres y más desarrolladas, porque es ahí donde lo hemos cometido con pleno consentimiento. Si el nudo corredizo que nos asfixia se cierra cada día más, es por culpa de nuestra incuria y nuestro egoísmo.

Interroguémonos a nosotros mismos: ¿no serían mentirosos los ideales de nuestra época? ¿Y nuestra terminología a la moda tan llena de suficiencia? De esa suficiencia emanan todas esas soluciones superficiales que pretenden rectificar nuestra situación. En cada ámbito, antes de que sea demasiado tarde, hay que reconsiderarlas, purificada nuestra mirada. La solución de la crisis no se encuentra en esos caminos trillados por conceptos machacones repetidos a diario.

Nuestra vida consiste en buscar no el éxito material sino un progreso espiritual digno de tal nombre. Toda nuestra existencia no es sino una etapa intermedia hacia una vida más alta: se trata entonces de no rodar hacia abajo de este estadio y de no estancarse en forma estéril.

Las leyes de la física y de la fisiología no nos revelarán jamás la verdad irrefutable de que el creador participa de forma constante y cotidiana de la vida de cada uno de nosotros. El nos entrega fielmente la energía del ser: cuando esta ayuda nos falta, nosotros perecemos. No es menor su participación en el desenvolvimiento de la vida en todo el planeta y en esta época oscura y amenazante, es necesario empaparnos de esta verdad.

Las esperanzas desmedidas de los dos últimos siglos nos han traído a este caos, al borde de la muerte atómica o de otra naturaleza. No podemos oponerles sino la búsqueda porfiada de la dulce mano de Dios, que en medio de nuestra inconsciencia habíamos rechazado. Entonces nuestros ojos se abrirán sobre este desdichado siglo XX y nuestras manos se tenderán para reparar tantos errores. Nada más puede detenernos sobre la pendiente que lleva al abismo: todos los pensadores de la Ilustración nos han dejado las manos vacías.

Nuestros cinco continentes están envueltos en el ciclón. Pero pruebas semejantes a estas son capaces de revelar las más altas virtudes del alma humana. Si hemos de perecer, si hemos de perder nuestro mundo, será tan solo por culpa nuestra.

(Traducido de la Revista “Le Point” del 16 de Mayo de 1983)

Fuente parte 4: infocatolica.com

One-third of millennials surveyed actually believe that more people were killed under former President George W. Bush than under Soviet dictator Stalin.

‘Communism for Kids’ Turns Deadly Ideology Into a Fairy Tale

by Jarrett Stepman

In order to make the deadliest ideology of the 20th century palatable to young Americans, “Communism for Kids” is coming to a bookstore near you.

This newly released book from MIT Press “proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism.”

The death toll from communist regimes in the 20th century is well-documented. One study found that more people were killed under communism than homicide and genocide combined, and only 9 million more people were killed in World War I and World War II combined than under governments of this ideology.

Another study showed how the mass killings of civilians by their own governments took an immediate nosedive after the collapse of the Soviet Union and international communism.


.......


Read more: dailysignal.com

Transgender: feelings can change

Bravo to the Truth: What’s Wrong with Transgender Ideology

by Walt Heyer


The problem with basing a diagnosis and irreversible treatment on people’s feelings, no matter how deeply felt, is that feelings can change.


A recent New York Post article tells the story of a Detroit mom named Erica who changed into a transgender dad named Eric. If that is not enough, his son had already changed genders: born a boy, he transitioned to living as a girl. Thus, mom became dad and son became daughter. Similarly, back in 2015, a fifty-two-year-old Canadian man made the news when he traded in his wife and seven kids to fulfill his “true identity” as a six-year-old transgender girl.

Stories like these remind us that transgender identity is a product of LGBTQ social ideology, not of each human person’s innate identity as male or female. Transgender identity is not authentic gender but man’s attempt to socially engineer the family, sex, and gender identity.

What Makes a Person Trans?

The accepted LGBTQ standard for being a “real” trans woman or trans man is simply that a person desires to self-identify as the opposite of his or her biological sex and to be socially accepted as such. If a person feels distressed about his or her birth gender, then the politically correct action is for everyone to affirm the new and “authentic” gender identity—the one that exists only in the trans person's feelings.

In a recent interview on Fox News, transgender lawyer Jillian Weiss, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, was asked repeatedly by host Tucker Carlson, “What are the legal standards to be transgender?” Finally, the legal specialist admitted, “There are no legal standards.”

That’s right—no legal standards or legal definitions of transgender exist. Yet, as Carlson pointed out, $11 billion of federal money is spent on sex-specific programs, such as the Small Business Administration investing in businesses owned by women. Without a legal definition, these funds become easy prey for, as Carlson puts it, “charlatans” who will claim to be women simply to get the money.

When people feel that their biological sex doesn’t match their internal sense of gender, they are typically diagnosed with gender dysphoria. This is defined as “discomfort or distress that is caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and that person’s sex assigned at birth.” In other words, the medical diagnostician simply listens to and affirms the patient’s own verbal self-identification and self-diagnosis.

No objective tests can prove that the transgender condition exists. No physical examination, blood test, bone marrow test, chromosome test, or brain test will show that a person has gender dysphoria. It is a condition revealed solely by the patient’s feelings. Yet the recommended treatment is extreme—cross-gender hormones and sex-reassigning surgery.

Don’t be duped when trans activists conflate the unrelated condition ofintersexuality with transgenderism to gain sympathy for a trans agenda. People with intersex conditions are not the same as self-identified transgender people. Being intersex is verifiable in the physical body; being transgender is not. People who identify as transgender usually have typical male or female anatomies.

How to Become Transgender

The wikiHow article entitled “How to Transition from Male to Female (Transgender)” outlines a simple five-part system for men who want to become women. Here is a small sample:

Seek a qualified therapist. . . . Ask your friends in the trans community to recommend a therapist. Browse the internet in search of a therapist experienced working with members of the trans community. . . .

Receive a diagnosis. Over the course of a series of sessions, your therapist will evaluate your individual situation issuing a diagnosis. After determining that you have consistently experienced symptoms such as disgust with your genitals, a desire to remove signs of your biological sex, and or a certainty that your biological sex does not align with your true gender, your therapist will likely diagnose you with Gender Dysphoria.

These instructions are typical of the advice offered to those who believe they may be transgender. I myself followed a similar series of steps. Yet, in hindsight,after transitioning from male to female and back again, I see that many important topics are ignored by such advice, placing vulnerable people at risk. Four crucial omissions are most obvious and problematic.

- First, these instructions fail to caution the reader about therapist bias. Asking friends in the trans community to recommend a therapist guarantees that the therapist will be biased toward recommending the radical step of transitioning.

- Second, no mention is made or warning given about sexual fetishes. If a person has been sexually, emotionally, or physically abused or is addicted to masturbation, cross-dressing, or pornography, he could be suffering from a sexual fetish disorder. As such, he is probably not going to be helped by gender dysphoria treatment protocols.

- Third, the high incidence of comorbid mental conditions is not mentioned. Those who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositional defiance behaviors, narcissism, autism, or other such disorders need to proceed cautiously when considering transitioning, because these disorders can cause symptoms of gender dysphoria. When the comorbid disorder is effectively treated, the gender discomfort may relent as well.

- Fourth, regret after transition is real, and the attempted suicide rate is high. Unhappiness, depression, and inability to socially adapt have been linked to high rates of attempted suicide both before and after gender transition and sexual reassignment surgery. My website gathers academic research on this topic and reports the personal experiences of people who regret transitioning.

Standards of Care?

In theory, the medical community follows certain standards of care for transgender health, now in the seventh revision, which were developed by The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The standards provide guidelines for treating people who report having discomfort with their gender identity.

People think that because standards exist, people will be properly screened before undergoing the radical gender transition. Unfortunately, the overwhelming theme of these standards is affirmation. Again, clinical practitioners do not diagnose gender dysphoria. Their job is to approve and affirm the client’s self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria and help the patient fulfill the desire for transition. The standards also advise that each patient’s case is different, so the medical practitioners may (and should) adapt the protocols to the individual.

The patient controls the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. If a gender specialist or the patient wants to skip the screening protocols and move forward with hormone treatment and surgical procedures, they are free to do so. The standards of care do not come with any requirement that they be followed.

For example, the standards do, in fact, recommend that patients be pre-screened for other mental health conditions. But I routinely hear from family members who say that obvious comorbid conditions, such as autism or a history of abuse, are ignored. The physician or the counselor simply concludes that the psychological history is unimportant and allows the patient to proceed with hormone treatment.

When Real Looks Fake

As simple as it is to become a “real” transgender person, it’s even easier to turn into a fake one. “Fake” transgender people like me start out as real, but when they eventually see through the delusion of gender change and stop living the transgender life, transgender activists give them the disparaging label of “fake.”

If someone comes to the difficult and honest conclusion that transitioning didn’t result in a change of sex, then he or she is perceived as a threat to the transgender movement and must be discredited. Name-calling and bullying ensues. To be considered real, the transgender person must continue in the delusion that his or her gender changed. The problem with basing a diagnosis and irreversible treatment on people’s feelings, no matter how sincerely held, is that feelings can change.

My message attempts to help others avoid regret, yet the warning is not welcome to the advocates whose voice for transgender rights rings strong and loud. Some will find my words offensive, but then the truth can be offensive. Personally, I cannot think of anything more offensive than men diminishing the wonder and uniqueness of biological women by suggesting women are nothing more than men who have been pumped with hormones and may or may not have undergone cosmetic surgery.

Cheers and bravo to the offensive truth. Let’s reclaim the beautiful reality of male and female sexual difference and reject transgender ideology.

Walt Heyer is an author and public speaker with a passion to help others who regret gender change. Through his website, SexChangeRegret.com, and his blog, WaltHeyer.com, Heyer raises public awareness about the incidence of regret and the tragic consequences suffered as a result. Heyer’s story can be read in novel form in Kid Dakota and The Secret at Grandma’s House and in his autobiography, A Transgender’s Faith. Heyer’s other books include Paper Genders and Gender, Lies and Suicide.


Source: www.thepublicdiscourse.com