The restoration of Western Civilization from its present travails requires getting the story right.

The Rise and Fall (and Restoration) of Western Civilization

BY PAUL R. DEHART

The restoration of Western civilization from its present travails requires getting the story right. Gregg’s Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization may be the most important recent work in this area, offering an important corrective to the other stories on offer.

Something is amiss. For many years now, prominent voices have claimed that Western civilization is foundering. But if Western Civilization is sinking, on what has it run aground? Some say the Enlightenment is under attack, and we are witnessing human rationality driven in retreat—by an onslaught of religious faith that rejects modernity and the Enlightenment entirely—or by a resurgence of insular, tribal, and violent tendencies that are natural to human beings, and that have characterized most of human history. Others see the Enlightenment—its rejection of religious faith or of classical philosophy, ancient and medieval—as the problem. The solution (or a key part anyway) is the rejection of modernity. We ought to replace Hobbes, Locke, and Madison with Aristotle and Aquinas and maybe Wendell Berry. In both cases a sharp dichotomy is posed: either the Enlightenment or religious faith.

In Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization, Samuel Gregg offers a different account of our ills and the way forward. Faith and reason are the twin pillars of Western civilization, Gregg argues, and they came under attack in the late medieval period. The West’s predicament today is the product of pathologies of both faith and reason that are pulling these pillars apart.

Gregg begins his argument with Pope Benedict XVI’s famous Regensburg address. I think it best to begin there, too, though I want to bring into the foreground a thread that Gregg leaves a bit in the background, so as to help situate his argument. Benedict describes the fraying of the relation between faith and reason as the product of dehellenization, which commences with the Reformer’s rejection of medieval scholasticism. On the eve of the Reformation, before the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther composed a “Disputation against Scholastic Theology” in which he claimed, “Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace.” According to Luther, Aristotle’s account of human happiness contradicts Christian doctrine. Consequently, the only way one can “become a theologian” is “without Aristotle”: “the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light.”

In response to Benedict XVI’s charge of dehellenization, Luther’s defenders might remind us that Luther’s view of the relation of Christianity to Greek philosophy is complex. After all, in his Heidelberg Disputation (1518), Luther’s predicates his rejection of Aristotle on an affirmation of Plato: “Aristotle wrongly finds fault with and derides the ideas of Plato, which . . . are better than his own.” “The mathematical order of things,” he adds, “is ingeniously maintained by Pythagoras, but more ingenious is the interaction of ideas maintained by Plato.” One could understand Luther as affirming an Augustinian Platonism against medieval scholastic Aristotelianism.

But—I’d reply—Luther also affirmed a radical meta-ethical voluntarism according to which God’s omnipotent will alone constitutes the rule and measure of just and unjust, right and wrong. In Bondage of the Will Luther says, “God is He for Whose will no cause or ground may be laid down as its rule and standard; for nothing is on a level with it or above it, but it is itself the rule of all things . . . What God wills is not right because He ought, or was bound, so to will; on the contrary, what takes place must be right, because He so wills it.”

This rejection of the Thomistic synthesis paved the way for the affirmation of nominalism with respect to universals and the advent of mechanistic philosophy in the succeeding century. Thus, certain Reformers’ embrace of the via moderna, which took Ockham for its fountainhead, served as the ground for what some scholars call the modern turn—which, they say, culminated in the Enlightenment and triumph of reason over faith.

As Gregg sees it, however, the problem with certain modern currents (those that reduce what we can know to the deliverances of quantitative, observational science or empiricism or the views of John Stuart Mill) is not an emphasis on reason or rationality but, rather, the sundering of what Christianity joined. Indeed, insofar as the modern turn has rejected the Christian synthesis (Gregg holds that it did not do this entirely), rationality has been displaced with secular fideisms that abandon the grounds of any coherent account of the cosmos or human life.

How the West Was Built

As Gregg argues, Western Civilization was conceived in the marriage of Jerusalem and Athens. To Tertullian’s famous rhetorical question—“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”—Gregg answers, “Everything.” His answer runs counter to Tertullian’s affirmation of faith against classical philosophy, counter to those who see themselves today as the defenders of science against religion, and counter to the esoteric claim of Leo Strauss to see a mutually fruitful but irreducible and ineliminable tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Christianity involved the simultaneous embrace of both faith and reason.

Against those who see the faith part as coming from Jerusalem and the reason part as coming only from Athens, Gregg holds that the synthesis of faith and reason obtains first in ancient Judaism. As Gregg argues, Judaism de-divinized nature and rejected the notion that kings and rulers are divine. Contrary to the religions surrounding ancient Israel, Judaism also viewed the cosmos as an intelligible, created order rather than chaos, and taught that the material world that God created for humanity’s abode is good rather than malevolent. Drawing on Claude Tresmontant, Gregg writes, “The Jews’ liberation of human reason from mythology and nature-worship amounted to one of humanity’s most powerful ‘enlightenments.’” Lastly, Judaism affirmed human free will, which holds that human beings are morally responsible for their actions.

The contributions of Athens to human thought cannot be overstated. Yet, Gregg observes, certain obstacles blocked the full development of Greek rationality, including the lack of a conception of free will, the influence of Greek skeptics who thought the human mind could not (for the most part) get to the real truth of things, and Greek religion. The latter posited a universe comprising irrational deities, which contrasted sharply with the rationality of the cosmos that philosophers such as Pythagoras or Aristotle taught. Greek philosophy stood at odds with the gods of Mount Olympus as depicted by Hesiod and Homer.

Following Benedict XVI, Gregg notes that the encounter of Jewish religion and Greek thought predates Christianity. Educated Jews of the Diaspora, such as Saul of Tarsus, “were conversant with Greek thought.” The Jewish philosopher Philo “moved comfortably between the Hellenic and Jewish worlds.” Nevertheless, the hellenized Roman world and Judaism remained distinct. Romans and Greeks often viewed Jews as barbarians, just “because they weren’t Roman or Greek.” Christianity made the God of Abraham universally available (apart from conversion to Judaism or the performance of Jewish rites) while appropriating, adapting, and transforming the most important insights of Greek philosophy. The Christian revolution was a synthesis of reason and revelation—spurred by revelation itself.

The Christian revolution, according to Gregg, “stressed three ideas . . . influential in the development of Western culture.” 

First, Christianity emphasizes that divine reason—which became incarnate in Christ—created the world. 

Second, Christianity emphasized the faculty of natural reason by which all human beings are capable of coming to know truth, including moral truth. The Christian account of universal moral knowledge that St. Paul describes in Romans 2:13–15 entailed “a radical affirmation of the equality of everyone. . . . All were fully human and bore concrete [moral] responsibilities.” 

Third, the Christian revolution emphasized freedom. Christ’s distinction between what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar entailed a limitation on civil government derived from divine law. Christ’s affirmation of free will—implied by his affirmation “that people were free to follow him or not”—entailed a limit on the authority of any person to tell others what to do. Christianity viewed freedom as a faculty humans possess forthe sake of choosing truth.

Gregg discusses Justin Martyr’s synthesis of “biblical monotheism” and “Greek philosophy” as “the search for the ultimate foundations of reality,” and Clement of Alexandria’s affirmation of Christianity as “the true philosophy,” before turning to Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and the High Middle Ages. “In no other culture,” he writes, “was this integration of faith and reason achieved for such a sustained period.” The medieval period created the university not only for the education of clergymen but also, says Gregg—drawing on Benedict XVI—for the pursuit of truth for its own sake—both in revelation and by means of reason. This pursuit was founded on the conviction that God is not irrational “but creative Reason.” The Christian “concern for reason” promoted inquiry “not only into theology but also into a multitude of other disciplines.” The Christian revolution did not launch an age that valued faith over and against reason. It launched an age that saw the world as “characterized by order, that the human mind can comprehend” and a world that “merits study” simply “because it is the work of God.”

How It All Unraveled

Certain currents in the Middle Ages threatened the synthesis. Franciscans tended to reject Greek thought. And voluntarism sundered the union of faith with reason by making good and evil arbitrary. Here Gregg mentions John Duns Scotus. He might also have mentioned William of Ockham, who radicalized the absolute power of God and contended that God can will anything, save violations of the law of non-contradiction and his own non-existence.

Some have viewed the Enlightenment as irreconcilably at odds with classical Christianity. Gregg, however, rightly rejects the notion of a monolithic Enlightenment that only advanced the primacy of reason and relegated faith to superstition. Isaac Newton may be the most important Enlightenment thinker. Yet Newton composed his Principia Mathematica “to refute what he regarded as the materialist assumptions underlying the theory of planetary movements proposed by . . . René Descartes.” Though heterodox in certain of his religious convictions, Newton thought that planetary motion and, indeed, the cosmos as a whole were governed by divine providence and final causation. Some Enlightenment thinkers did consider religion mere superstition (Voltaire, Frederick the Great of Prussia), or promoted skepticism (David Hume), but others preserved the conjunction of reason and religious faith (Johannes Kepler, Robert Boyle, Thomas Reid). Gregg concludes that defenders of the twin pillars of Western civilization should enter critical engagement with Enlightenment thought rather than rejecting it root and branch.

To be sure, some modern theorists followed certain Reformers in affirming nominalist metaphysics and voluntarist meta-ethics, which subordinated good and evil to arbitrary, omnipotent divine will. Thomas Hobbes and Samuel von Pufendorf are heirs to Luther’s (and Ockham’s) voluntarist account of good and evil. Other Enlightenment-era figures, however, emphasized the primacy of divine goodness. Thus, Gregg observes, Moses Mendelssohn “regarded the emphases on God’s goodness as his preeminent attribute as a recovery of ‘a fundamental insight that biblical and rabbinic Judaism first asserted against paganism.’” In this vein, I would add that the “modern” American founders and framers expressly grounded virtue and human moral obligations in divine goodness, thereby rejecting Luther’s and Ockham’s subordination of goodness to omnipotent will.

Other Enlightenment ideas were entirely at odds with Christian faith, including the claim that human beings can fashion and remake human nature or the reductionist claim that the only way to know anything at all is via the scientific method. Yet, as Gregg maintains, both claims are irrational. The first—that there is no fixed human nature—opens the “path to tyranny.” The second—that the only knowledge we can have is scientific knowledge gleaned via the scientific method—is itself not something amenable to scientific proof. It is a philosophical proposition. Indeed, as Gregg argues, the scientific method depends on antecedent philosophical claims necessary for the scientific method to have any justification at all. Scientism ultimately subverts reason itself.

Moreover, with Henri de Lubac, Gregg contends that certain influential and putatively secular ideologies that presented themselves as the deliverances of rationality and science truncate the scope of reason and ultimately tend toward fideism. While considering his position scientific, Karl Marx nevertheless “regarded the human mind’s capacity to know truth as extremely limited.” His collaborator, Friedrich Engels, maintained that “final and ultimate truths” are rare in the natural sciences and “final and ultimate” moral truth the “most sparsely sown” of all. Drawing on Eric Voegelin, Gregg writes, “after Marx decided that questions about man’s ultimate origins or the nature of good and evil were futile, he rapidly embraced the Promethean idea of man as his own creator.” The truncation of reason led Marx and Engels to create a secular ideology with the markings of a religious faith (and a fideistic one at that).

Marx, Engels, Auguste Comte (in his religion of humanity), and Mill (who affirmed Comte’s religion of humanity privately but refrained from affirming it in public) sought the replacement of traditional religious belief with ideas they considered rational and scientific, such as man’s ability to refashion human nature. But fracturing the synthesis of faith and reason ultimately culminated in Nietzsche’s rejection of reason in the name of self-creation. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote, “it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we knowers of today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by the thousand-year-old faith which was also Plato’s faith, that God is truth; that truth is divine.” Nietzsche understood that truth, God, Christianity, reason, and science stand or fall together. Affirming the death of God, if one is consistent, means giving up the objectivity of truth and the possibility of science. Moreover, the rejection of these went hand in hand with affirming the will to power and supermen who were freed from the shackles of Judaic and Christian slave morality and were capable of living beyond good and evil. The rejection of faith thus culminates in the rejection of reason and science.

Is There a Way Out?

Gregg holds there is no going back to a prior golden age. Moreover, following Benedict XVI, he refuses to reject the Enlightenment root and branch. Rather, our moment calls for rejecting the refrain that faith and reason are incompatible or mutually exclusive in any fundamental sense. We must recover the importance of Jewish and Christian revelation for the advancement of reason and science. Nietzsche is right that science and the Christian (and Jewish) view of God stand or fall together. But where Nietzsche would reject both, the restoration of Western civilization requires affirming both. It also requires affirming an orderly and intelligible cosmos created by a good God who made the human mind capable of understanding the world. In reaffirming the union of faith and reason, those who seek to restore Western civilization ought to draw not only on classical sources but also on those insights of modern science and the Enlightenment that cohere with the historic Western synthesis.

The restoration of Western Civilization from its present travails requires getting the story right. Here I have sought to situate Gregg’s argument and to highlight and bring to the fore some threads that bolster his already exceptionally compelling case. A good review doubtless proffers criticism as well. But, truly, I have none to give. I concur entirely (or almost entirely anyway). Indeed, Gregg’s Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization may be the most important recent work in this area, offering an important corrective to the other stories on offer.

Source: www.thepublicdiscourse.com

“Women trapped in men’s bodies”: the eradication of boundaries does not truly respect women

Against the “Feminine Essence”

BY JANE ROBBINS

Why do transgender activists so strongly reject the concept of autogynephilia, in which a man wants to be a woman because of an erotic attachment to the idea of himself as a woman? Shutting down scientific inquiry via political pressure impedes the objective advancement of science. Further, denying the validity of the autogynephilia theory can harm gender-dysphoric patients by denying them access to therapies that could help them overcome their specific problems.

Transgender activists frequently argue that men who wish to present themselves as women (male-to-female or MtF transgenders) have a female gender identity, probably innate, that conflicts with their biological sex. Such men, they argue, are “women trapped in men’s bodies” and therefore are suitable candidates for so-called “gender affirmation treatment”: drugs, hormones, and surgery that won’t change their sex but will help them imitate women in appearance. This argument has been deemed the “feminine essence narrative.”

Transgender activists offer this theory as scientific fact. But the feminine-essence narrative conflicts with another theory that enjoys much more evidentiary support, that explains a great deal of MtF gender dysphoria, and that offers hope for psychological treatment.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Ray Blanchard coined the term “autogynephilia” for the condition of a man who demonstrates a “propensity to be erotically aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.” Dr. Blanchard is the retired head of Clinical Sexology Services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. An internationally prominent clinician helping patients with various disorders related to gender identity and sexual orientation, and a contributor to the relevant sections of the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-5), Blanchard has decades of experience in this area.

Autogynephilia is distinct from homosexuality; indeed, autogynephiles frequently interact sexually with real women and may present themselves as lesbians after they “transition” to imitation of the female sex. The distinguishing characteristic is the patient’s erotic attachment not to another person, whether male or female, but rather to an interior idea—the idea of himself as a woman. Among many case studies from his practice, Blanchard describes patients who are sexually excited by female bodily functions such as menstruation.

This would seem to apply to Jonathan/Jessica Yaniv, a Canadian man—at various times claiming to be a woman—who muses about how to “bond” with young girls in restrooms or locker rooms by asking about tampons and other feminine-hygiene products. This is the same person who demands, under penalty of law, that female salon staffers wax his genitals, and who demonstrates a creepy obsession with female bodily functions.

More understanding of the condition can be gleaned from transgender/cross-dressing Twitter feeds. Male tweeters exchange giggly messages about their sexual fantasies, all of which feature themselves as women; debate the pros and cons of going bra-less; and discuss how to use hormones to simulate premenstrual syndrome, something biological women never do. They thrill to the idea of being among women—only women—and emulating their female essence. As feminist and lesbian commentator Lara Adams-Miller observes, this isn’t about gender identity; it’s about sexual fantasies, in which real women appear only as props.

Blanchard further explains that almost all adult MtF gender dysphoria results from, or is accompanied by, either autogynephilia or homosexuality. Either way, he draws this conclusion: “Transsexualism and milder forms of gender dysphoria are types of mental disorder, which may leave the individual with average or even above-average functioning in unrelated areas of life.”

Other clinicians agree with and have further explored Blanchard’s theories about MtF gender dysphoria. For example, psychology professor Dr. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University has written extensively about autogynephilia and its relationship to gender dysphoria, concluding that the evidence supporting Blanchard’s work greatly exceeds that for the feminine essence narrative.

But transgender activists will viciously attack anyone who suggests that gender-dysphoric individuals might not in fact have the brain of the opposite sex, or that they suffer from any type of disorder (see here and here). Twitter has boosted their efforts by blocking Blanchard’s expression of his clinical opinion as “hateful conduct.” Even though both Blanchard and Bailey believe that some adult patients may benefit from so-called “gender affirmation therapy” (GAT), perhaps even involving surgery, their position that gender dysphoria is often associated with autogynephilia disqualifies them from polite company in the radical crowd.

Why do transgender activists so strongly reject the concept of autogynephilia? 

Bailey suggests several possibilities. Gender-dysphoric individuals may fear that they will be denied “sex reassignment” if their motive is erotic satisfaction rather than deep-seated certainty that they are in fact women. They may be concerned that they will be considered sexually deviant. Or they may believe that the “feminine essence” narrative, even if unsubstantiated, will be more acceptable to the public and therefore smooth the path for other dysphoric individuals to be accepted for GAT.

Clinicians, too, may deny autogynephilia and accept instead the feminine essence narrative. As Bailey notes, they may hesitate to disbelieve their patients, who insist that they are females with female brains and are not simply erotically attracted to the idea of themselves as women. They may have “greater comfort with the idea of facilitating sex reassignment for reasons related to gender than to eroticism.” And they may also believe that “the feminine essence narrative may be beneficial for their patients’ psychological health and social interactions, even if it does not correspond to the true etiology of their desire for sex reassignment.”

Well, one might ask, so what? If a man would be happier imitating a woman, for whatever reason, why not play along (and, as GAT clinicians might note, make some money in the process)? For one thing, as Bailey points out, shutting down scientific inquiry via political pressure impedes the objective advancement of science. Further, denying the validity of the autogynephilia theory can harm gender-dysphoric patients by denying them access to therapies that could help them overcome their specific problems. “Homosexual and non-homosexual [autogynephilic] MtF transsexuals have different life issues and goals,” says Bailey, “and the persistence of the belief that they are similar prevents development of clinical interventions” that could benefit individual patients.

Bailey also argues that the hostility that is heaped on anyone who suggests the existence of autogynephilia—hostility that emanates, he believes, primarily from “autogynephiles in denial”—“makes it much less likely that [autogynephiles] can find resources that [could] help them understand themselves, forces them into the closet, invalidates their self-concepts, and heightens feelings of shame.” These men didn’t ask for this condition—its roots are deep and complex—but their situation can be improved through proper therapy. To accomplish that, however, society must recognize the condition for what it is, and offer actual help rather than knee-jerk affirmation that the painful longings of sufferers are perfectly normal.

Beyond allowing the development of better therapies for suffering patients, though, recognition of autogynephilia should guide society toward implementing appropriate policies. The condition illustrates an especially compelling reason (beyond the protection of the privacy and modesty of women) why biological men should not be allowed in women’s private spaces, such as restrooms or locker rooms. As demonstrated by the Yaniv case, not every MtF transsexual is a harmless individual who believes himself to be female and is therefore embarrassed to engage in highly personal behavior around men. Instead, he may be suffering from a condition that impels him to threaten women’s and girls’ privacy in ways even more dangerous than his mere presence.

As Adams-Miller concludes from perusing the Twitter feeds, autogynephiles “want to be on the ‘other side’ of the room, past the boundaries that separate men and women.” A society that allows—and even celebrates—the eradication of such boundaries is one that does not truly respect women.

To help individuals suffering from gender dysphoria, and to formulate best policies for dealing with the condition, we have to know what causes it. We need more information—not politically correct conclusions that defy scientific evidence. More importantly, we need a right understanding of what it means to be a healthy human being. Sacrificing women and girls to the erotic fantasies of individuals with mental illness should not be an option.

Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com

Regarding debates over the origins (and merits) of the European Union

Debating the Future of the EU

by Riccardo Gotti Tedeschi

Just as in a Roman arena where each ‘position’ was strongly and fiercely held, all vigorous debates require two opposing parties. But too often, in the midst of battle, the nuances of the debate — as well as some of the substance — are lost. Much the same has been true regarding debates over the origins (and merits) of the European Union.

A Trivial Debate in Italy?

References to the ongoing debate between pro-EU officials and anti-EU populists in Italy have been rather muted. But there have been several variations in the way the different entrenched positions in this debate have been portrayed, particularly during the European elections in late May: globalists versus nationalists, statists versus liberals, democrats versus republicans, pro-market versus pro-state, etc. These rudimentary and simplistic descriptions have at times made the debate, its quality and method publicly adopted for dealing with it seem trivial.

In the lead-up to the elections, the context of this debate was also remarkably affected by voters’ intentions. The apparent division between pro-EU ‘Persians’ (historically imperialist by vocation, pursuing a perspective of unity and peace) and pro-sovereignty ‘Spartans’ (as defenders of their independence, their own cultural and family heritage), so to speak, hid a more significant strategy — one carried out by the political parties (or what remains of them). It was a strategy that focused on advancing the most fitting arguments — those that would reach the most voters.

It was a crude strategy. But attention should be paid to one peculiar outcome to which such a strategy could give rise: it could inspire some clever people to turn into populists because of globalist positions — while others could turn into globalists because of populism! This would be not surprising at all given the current political turmoil  in Italy, particularly since the globalist/populist positions seem to be two opposites of the same coin: each refers to only part of a debate, a debate in which there has been a limited contribution to public discourse — because none of the various factions really has a solid, substantial, or even coherent idea.

It doesn’t matter whether this debate has created contradictions on both sides. What really counts in this debate is, first, getting consensus and, second, expanding this consensus. In such a context, the cries of people demanding an ‘exit’ from the Euro — the belief that the only way to ‘salvation’ is leaving the EU, without even distinguishing EU from the EMU (European Monetary Union)! — have the same weight as the more ‘flamboyant’ Europeanism as exemplified by those pro-EU activists waving flags on their Twitter profile. The funny thing these people have in common is possibly the same (lack of) background of knowledge regarding European Union and its structure and institutions.

However, a free and educated thinker still has the right to ‘cherry-pick’ among these positions. Out of this churning cauldron of different positions, he or she can still identify the best positions and arguments —provided that they are very clear aboutwhat they are reading and commenting on.

A Stronger Role for the European Parliament

The reform of the institutional architecture of the EU is, without a doubt, a thorny issue. And the public’s interest in and enthusiasm for the topic has clearly run out. Take the European Parliament. The Parliament has always been considered a secondary player in the steering of the European Union. Although the Parliament has legislative power, it does not formally possess the capacity for legislative initiative like most national parliaments of EU Member States. The Parliament, indeed, shares equal legislative and budgetary powers with the European Council (except in a few areas where special legislative procedures apply) and it keeps equal control over the EU budget.

From an institutional standpoint, therefore, there are several challenges which require specific adjustments in order to guarantee more participation and more representation of all EU citizens. These include increasing the powers of the Parliament and the European Commission, possibly overcoming the well-noted risk of conflict that exists between the legislative and executive powers (such as the function of ‘watchdog’ held by the European Commission vis-à-vis Member States and enterprises). Expanding the power of the Parliament would also shift the balance of power from outside the EU(the Council, which meets in 10 different configurations of 28 national ministers, one per state) to inside the Union. This would grant more weight to a body — the Parliament — that is composed of 751 members, all directly elected by the citizens of each Member State.

A ‘stronger’ European Parliament clearly constitutes an important tool of representation and unification. The elections this past May focused on many of the issues related to the idea of moving toward a Europe of stakeholder citizens, a Europe of citizens who own their continent. This idea, however, has been very much influenced by the macro-level issue of identity. But how much do citizens of the EU Member States feel they truly belong to the EU without any “mediation” of their own country? This question is the key to a better understanding of how Europe has changed over the years — and it requires that we take into consideration one of the goals of the European Union, set out under Article 3 of the EU Treaty: the Union “shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States”.

The Principles of the Treaties of Rome ....

Rome versus Ventotene  ...

Renewing the Spirit of the Founders ...

Read more: europeanconservative.com

One wonders if they really believe that Shakespeare was an advocate of the bizarre gender agenda with which they are themselves clearly obsessed.

“All is True,” or How to Tell a Lie

By Joseph Pearce

It is said that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time, but the writers of “All Is True” seem to think that he was not of his age but for ours. Was he an advocate of the bizarre gender agenda with which they are themselves clearly obsessed? Or do the theories defended by the film dabble in the absurd?

One of the most egregiously Orwellian aspects of relativist postmodernism is its denial of the very existence of truth. The postmodern asks Pilate’s question quid est veritas with the tired and calculated indifference of the cynic. He might answer that nothing is true or, with more wit but no more wisdom, that all is true, which is merely another way of saying that nothing is untrue. If all is true, nothing is untrue, which makes it impossible to tell a lie.

“A lie is that which you do not believe,” said the relativist critic, Holbrook Jackson.

“This is a lie,” replied Chesterton, “so perhaps you don’t believe it.”

With these thoughts in mind, one wonders if the makers of the recent film, All is True, really believe the lie they are telling in their depiction of Shakespeare’s last years. One wonders if they really believe that Shakespeare was an advocate of the bizarre gender agenda with which they are themselves clearly obsessed. Do we believe Ben Jonson who said that Shakespeare was not of an age but for all time, or do we believe Ben Elton, the atheist and hardline socialist who wrote the screenplay to the film, that Shakespeare was not of his age but ours? Was Shakespeare trapped in a tyrannical England in which people whom he knew were put to death for being Catholics, or was he trapped in his Jacobean closet wishing for a distant future in which he could be part of a Pride parade?

All these questions are begged as All is True dabbles with the absurd theory that Shakespeare, played by Kenneth Branagh, had a homosexual relationship with his patron, the Earl of Southampton, played by the militantly homosexual, Ian McKellen. Oh, how sirs Branagh and McKellen have fallen Icarus-like since the heights they attained as Henry V and Gandalf respectively.

Without wishing to spend any more time on this sordid spectacle, let’s look at what is true and, more to the point, what is untrue with respect to Shakespeare’s relationship with the Earl of Southampton, focusing on the so-called “homo-eroticism” of sonnet 20, and other alleged homosexual references in Shakespeare’s work.

Several critics have played with the idea that sonnet 20 suggests homosexual inclinations on Shakespeare’s part, and perhaps the most notorious critic to do so was Oscar Wilde in his mischievous piece of fiction, “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.” To be fair to Wilde he was literally and literarily playing with the idea, toying with a fancy or fantasy under the guise of fiction pretending to be fact. It is Wilde at his most mischievous and least charming. It is, at any event, not to be taken seriously as scholarship, not that this has prevented many “theorists” from taking it very seriously indeed, including Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde’s former partner-in-crime, and André Gide, who described Wilde’s theory as “the only, not merely plausible, but possible interpretation of the Sonnets.” Other critics, such as A.L. Rowse, Ian Wilson, and Anthony Holden have all begged to differ with Gide’s dogmatic assertion, insisting that, on the contrary, sonnet 20 illustrates Shakespeare’s robust assertion of his own heterosexuality.

Ian Wilson, in his excellent book Shakespeare: The Evidence has the following to say about this thorny “theory”:

Everything about [Shakespeare’s] work . . . conveys that he was genuinely God-fearing, at a time when sodomy was a capital offence and religious people of all persuasions regarded it as an instant passport to hell. As we have already seen, he bedded and wedded an older woman while still in his teens, quickly having three children by her. His fellow-actors were likewise mostly God-fearing married men with large families, who . . . are most unlikely to have tolerated an active homosexual in their midst . . . Venus and Adonis, the poem that Shakespeare undoubtedly wrote for Southampton, is no work for sharing between gays . . . [It] is the full-blooded story of a highly sexed older woman’s seduction of a handsome young man. In line with the Sonnets’ exhortation of their young man to marry, it is a poetic equivalent of a Titian painting, positively provoking man-woman desire.

The “theorists,” having soiled the sonnets, have also plagued the plays. W.H. Auden, who should have known better, suggested in 1962 that The Merchant of Venice made most sense if Antonio is seen as being “in love” with Bassanio. Auden’s suggestion was taken up with gusto by directors and critics who have portrayed Antonio as having an unrequited homosexual attraction for Bassanio. The absurdity of such a reading of the play was addressed with incisive insight, and with admirable constraint, by the Shakespearian scholar, Craig Bernthal:

It is a measure of the critical influence of gender politics that a homosexual crush rather than close male friendship has become for many critics the most convincing explanation of Antonio’s behavior throughout the play. Yet nothing in the play suggests that the bond of friendship between them needs to be sexualized to make Antonio’s devotion to Bassanio credible. Certainly an Elizabethan audience, accepting biblical strictures about sex between men, would have avoided the play en masse had they thought Shakespeare was implying that Antonio was sexually attracted to Bassanio.The Merchant of Venice, however, was a very popular play, revived many times, and this is the best evidence for what Shakespeare had in mind and what his audience must have understood.

Reminding his readers that in Elizabethan culture “heterosexual men stated very openly that they loved each other” without any suggestion of an erotic connotation, Dr. Bernthal elucidates what is clearly the true nature of Antonio’s love for Bassanio:

Antonio’s love expresses itself not just for Bassanio, but to others whose debts he has paid or to whom he has lent money gratis. Thus, Antonio is established at the beginning of the play as a figure of one aspect of Christian love, generosity. Later in the play, when he is prepared to lay down his life for Bassanio, Antonio will become the allegorical form of love in its most perfect form, sacrifice: “I am a tainted wether of the flock, / meetest for death,” he will say, as Shylock prepares to collect the pound of flesh nearest Antonio’s heart. Antonio will rise to Christianity’s highest ideal of love: “Greater love than this hath no man, that any man bestoweth his life for his friend’s life.”

By becoming “the allegorical form of love in its most perfect form, sacrifice,” Antonio is transfigured allegorically into a figure of Christ Himself, the Perfect Love who offers the Perfect Sacrifice. This is clearly Shakespeare’s deepest meaning, steeped as he must have been in Catholic doctrine and typology, and it is a meaning that takes Antonio as far from the sex-obsessed slandering of him by modern critics as Christ is from the scribes, Pharisees, and hypocrites of the Gospel.

A more reliable character portrait of Shakespeare was given by his near contemporary William Beeston, the son of Christopher Beeston, an actor in Shakespeare’s company and no doubt his personal friend. Beeston told the antiquary, John Aubrey, that Shakespeare was “the more to be admired, he was not a company keeper. [He] . . . wouldn’t be debauched, and if invited to, writ [i.e. wrote] he was in pain.”

The abyss that separates Shakespeare from many of his modern critics is rooted in “love” and its meaning. In Shakespeare’s time love was understood in strictly Christian terms, and could encompass, to employ the terminology used by C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves, “affection,” “friendship,” “eros,” and “charity.” One could love affectionately one’s parents or one’s children; one could love one’s friends; one could have the love of eros when one “falls in love” or in one’s relationship with one’s spouse; and one could love in caritas, or charity, in the pure and sacrificial love that God has for us and we are meant to have for Him. And, as Ian Wilson states, the word, “love,” was employed freely in Elizabethan England whenever any of these loves were being evoked:

All too seldom realized is that in Shakespeare’s time the word “love” had not taken on its heavily sexual connotations of our own era. From the same decade as the Sonnets, Thomas Arundel wrote asking for a favour from Lord Burghley’s son Robert Cecil, assuring him in the course of this that “I do truly love you and therefore wish that every man should love you, which love in these troublesome discontented times is sooner won by clemency . . . I am wholly yours.” No one would seriously suggest that Arundel meant those words in the way they would be taken today, and innumerable similar examples can be quoted, not least family-man Ben Jonson addressing Shakespeare as “my beloved” in the First Folio.

In this context, and this was the context in which Shakespeare wrote, Antonio’s love for Bassanio is clearly that of friendship which matures into that of charity. It should be added that the very idea that Antonio could have had an erotic love for Bassanio would have been seen as not only perverse but impossible. Erotic love was bound up with marriage and procreation. It was, like all love, a virtue. It was not furtive but fertile. It had nothing to do with fornication or sodomy, which were vices, and to which the use of the word “love” would be anathema. This might make uncomfortable reading for our modern critic but it is true nonetheless. The fact is that the culture in which Shakespeare lived was very “politically incorrect” by today’s standards, as was he. To attempt to mould Shakespeare into the image of what Evelyn Waugh called “our own deplorable epoch” is not merely absurd, it disqualifies those endeavouring to do so from being taken seriously as scholars or critics. If these critics were able to empathise with the past, even if they could not bring themselves to sympathise with it, they would see and understand the works of Shakespeare as Shakespeare himself saw and understood them. They would see them as they truly are, as the inspired work of a Catholic genius. Were they able to see the works in this way they would see, and understand, that the sonnets have more to do with the psalmody of David than with the sodomy of Gomorrah.

Read more: theimaginativeconservative.org

The conservative believes that that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated

Conservative Credo

By Barbara J. Elliott

The conservative believes that that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated, and that all things are measured against these three transcendentals.

• Conservatism seeks the Truth that has emerged over time, drawing from the deep wellsprings of human experience, and builds anew on foundations that have withstood the tests of time. It fosters order and the flourishing of human beings as they live in relationship with one another. We are united in the eternal contract between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.

• Conservatism is rooted in the acknowledgement that God is our Creator and that the human soul sojourns through this realm toward its eternal transcendent fulfillment. We are all flawed human beings in need of redemption, capable of great evil as well as great good.

• Because man is fallible by nature, the conservative seeks to limit the damage that can be done through the abuse of power by limiting its concentration.

• The conservative fosters the fullness of human potential by protecting the freedom and dignity of each person, acknowledging that responsibility comes with freedom. Rights and duties are always linked.

• For the conservative, each man and woman is equal in dignity and equal before the law, but gloriously individual and unequal in talents, aptitudes, and outcomes. The conservative celebrates the uniqueness of individuals and does not level to eliminate differences.

• The conservative honors the family as the essential building block of civilization, the house of worship as the locus for forming culture, and the community as the matrix for human interaction. Culture and community grow from relationships and affinities over time, rooted in place. Conservatives value the rich diversity of relationships, organizations, and private associations that make up civil society and intermediary institutions.

• The conservative values subsidiarity because we know many of the best solutions to human problems are found at the level closest to the individual person. We foster personal, local care for persons in need, preferably face-to-face with someone whose name we know. We believe that human transformation occurs best in the context of a personal, loving relationship, with accountability, over time.

• The conservative is more concerned with the culture than politics, because the political realm is a derivative one, not primary, in human existence. Political problems are at their root moral and spiritual problems, which blend into the economic realm. Political change is rooted in cultural change.

• Conservatives believe that caring for our neighbor is so important that it should not be left to the government. The one thing government cannot do is love. That is what we are called to do in the private sector, with our own time, talent, and treasure.

• The conservative believes that that the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are interrelated, and that all things are measured against these three transcendentals.

• We believe that there is Truth, that it is knowable, and that it is our duty to seek Truth and live it throughout our lives. The conservative believes that the virtues of Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance should be practiced in both private and public life. We believe that virtues, not values, define the human soul.

• We believe that Love is the highest motivation of the human person and that the purpose of life itself is to know God, to love Him and serve Him, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Our ultimate fulfillment is in the transcendence of love.

This was was presented April 15, 2013 in a debate between conservatives and progressives, co-sponsored by the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies of Grand Valley State University and the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal.

This essay in our series of “Timeless Essays” was first published here in April 2013.


Read more: theimaginativeconservative.org

Procreación Médicamente Asistida (PMA): ¿Libertad, igualdad, fraternidad?

¡Ninguna mercantilización del niño, ningún niño querido sin padre!

Por Christian Vanneste

Los opositores a la extensión de la Procreación Médicamente Asistida (PMA) a lesbianas y mujeres solas se manifestarán esta tarde entre el Senado y la estación Montparnasse a la convocatoria de una veintena de asociaciones agrupadas bajo el título "Niños marchemos". Las palabras elegidas tienen una consonancia revolucionaria, porque de lo que se trata es de una revolución, que comenzó lentamente con el cuestionamiento del entorno familiar tradicional, de su estabilidad y del estatus de sus miembros, que continuó con la creación de nuevos estilos de vida para las "parejas" adaptadas a las "orientaciones sexuales", y que triunfó con el "matrimonio" unisex. A partir de esta toma del poder, los revolucionarios continúan desarrollando su programa frente a una resistencia que ha disminuido, en momentos en que la apuesta es vital para nuestro país y para nuestra civilización. Hoy, a través de la sanción de una ley de "bioética" se trata de extender los medios que la técnica científica brinda a las parejas que tienen dificultades accidentales para procrear, a personas que esencialmente,  por su propia naturaleza, no pueden hacerlo, como por ejemplo en el caso de dos mujeres.

El hilo rojo de esta revolución, de la cual la mayoría de los franceses parecen ignorar su importancia y sus consecuencias, está constituido por dos ideas aparentemente inevitables, que realmente son suicidas.

Los que legitiman el "progreso" son estos valores inscritos en el frontispicio de nuestros ayuntamientos. Justificarían la extensión de la PMA la libertad de vivir su "sexualidad" de acuerdo con sus deseos, y de tener hijos a pesar de las limitaciones naturales por un lado; y por el otro la igualdad entre hombres y mujeres, entre "parejas" de mujeres e incluso la de la mujer sola con respecto a la pareja. Debe tenerse en cuenta sin embargo que las "parejas masculinas" se ven privadas de este nuevo nivel legal, y que sería necesario legalizar la gestación para terceros, es decir, las madres sustitutas, en espera de "herramientas" de fabricación de niños más sofisticadas, para poder 'progresar' todavía más. El gobierno, por razones tácticas, ha jurado a sus grandes dioses que no haría nada ... al menos durante este período. 

Lamentablemente, los más entusiastas de los miembros de su mayoría no dudaron, el 3 de octubre, en votar una enmienda (1591) que prevé la retro-transcripción automática, en el estado civil francés, de cualquier niño nacido de un contrato de gestación para terceros realizado en el extranjero. Es una apuesta segura que la desigualdad entre Francia y ciertos países, la posibilidad de que los más afortunados de recurrir a ella, la complicidad de algunos magistrados y el apoyo de personalidades mediáticas lograrán arrancar la gestación por terceros (GPA) tarde o temprano, incluso si el poder simula hábilmente renunciar a ella por ahora.

En cuanto a la fraternidad, el tercer término del lema que recuerda que la libertad de los individuos debe integrarse a una dimensión colectiva, que el ciudadano obviamente limita sus deseos personales lo mismo que reconoce una jerarquía social para el bien común del grupo, en este caso la nación, se olvida por completo; porque la clave de la revolución suicida que sufrimos es el individualismo rey, el narcisismo absoluto, la libertad como emancipación de los caprichos y la igualdad impulsada hasta el absurdo. Esta ideología mortífera pisotea la antropología racional, las especificidades naturales y complementarias de los sexos, que las sociedades ciertamente pueden asociar de manera diferente pero que no pueden negar, a riesgo de autodestruirse.

Estas dimensiones antropológica y colectiva del debate escapan a la mayoría de los franceses, tanto ha invadido todos los cerebros la ideología del individuo-rey; pero incluso aunque están prisioneros de ella, muchos franceses perciben las contradicciones. Está bien, todos tienen derecho a vivir su vida sexual, pero ¿cuál es el derecho del niño? ¿No tiene el derecho, excepto en caso accidental, de tener cerca de él las dos vertientes de humanidad: un padre y una madre? Una mayoría de franceses acepta la extensión de la PMA, de acuerdo con el deseo de los individuos, pero otra mayoría prefiere que el niño sea criado por un padre y una madre. El diputado LREM Touraine, cuya obediencia no presenta ninguna duda, responde perentoriamente: "No existe el derecho por parte del niño a tener un padre". La brutalidad de esta declaración debe plantear otra preocupación. ¿los partidarios aparentes de la libertad y la igualdad, no son por el contrario sus peores adversarios? ¿No están privilegiando el comportamiento de una minoría que, por su estatus social, puede escapar de la necesidad de solidaridad familiar, cercana y constante más fácilmente que otros sectores de la población? ¿No están promoviendo la emancipación irresponsable de "hombres" permanentemente-adolescentes liberados de las responsabilidades familiares? ¿No están construyendo la pesadilla del "Brave New World" imaginada por Aldous Huxley? ¿Un mundo totalitario, materialista, científicamente inhumano? Padre 1 y padre 2 en lugar de padre y madre, como lo sugerió un parlamentario de LREM del norte, mientras que la Sra. Buzyn afirmaba “doctamente” que una mujer podría asumir la función del padre. Es este ministro quien definió al embrión como una masa de células, cuando es un proyecto de vida. Aurore Bergé, cuya fatuidad no conoce límites, y cuyo nomadismo político le permitió llegar a la Asamblea, se sitúa ya en la sociedad pintada por Huxley. Sin embargo, ella tiene para la "procreación carnal" la tolerancia cargada de piedad de los individuos de la clase superior: "Ni en este proyecto de ley, ni hoy ni mañana, vamos a evitar que los padres heterosexuales quieran concebir un hijo de modo carnal”. ¡Gracias de su parte!

¿Se puede negar totalmente a la naturaleza? ¿Se puede querer una humanidad totalmente fabricada? Esta es la pregunta crucial de este debate. El cristianismo había logrado un equilibrio armonioso entre la vida social y los instintos sexuales o agresivos, regulando a uno y otro, a los segundos por su inhibición en gran medida. El Islam está mucho más cerca de la naturaleza. Cuanto más nuestra civilización, y nuestro país prosigan alejándose hasta negarla, más se instalará el desorden en los comportamientos, transformando a nuestra sociedad en una multitud solitaria más o menos sometida a una tecnocracia y ciega a largo plazo. Y más corre el riesgo de llevar a cabo otra revolución, primero a través de la demografía, y después por la violencia.

Christian Vanneste es un político francés. Miembro de la UMP y RPR, fue elegido dos veces como diputado

Fuente: www.ndf.fr

Los movimientos neomalthusianos y eugenésicos: separación de la sexualidad de la procreación

Eugenismo, contracepción, revolución sexual: las tres victorias del transhumanismo

Por Grégor Puppinck

Con el voto en la Asamblea, el martes 15, del proyecto de ley bioética, el progresismo gana una victoria decisiva, y quizás final, en el combate que ha emprendido desde hace dos siglos contra la antropología cristiana.

El proyecto de ley sobre bioética "PMA para todos", más allá de su medida emblemática,  introduce una serie de rupturas todavía más fundamentales: separa completamente la procreación de la sexualidad al introducir la PMA no terapéutica; hace independiente de la edad a la capacidad de procrear, legalizando la auto conservación de los gametos; fomenta la eugenesia a través de la extensión del diagnóstico prenatal y previo a la implantación; libera la explotación y la modificación genética de embriones humanos; favorece el aborto al eliminar el período de reflexión y el permiso de los padres a los menores; elimina el límite entre el hombre y el animal al autorizar el trasplante de células humanas en embriones animales; sustituye la voluntad a la biología como fundamento de la filiación.

 La brutal supresión de las protecciones y prohibiciones pacientemente establecidas por las leyes anteriores deja sin palabras.  Es como si el dique bioético se derrumbara delante de nuestros ojos, arrastrado por la perspectiva progresista que anima a la mayoría parlamentaria. Por lo tanto, para comprender la filosofía que subyace a este proyecto de ley, y que le da coherencia, es necesario ir a las raíces mismas de este progresismo-cientista, que hoy se denomina transhumanismo y en cuya huella se inscribe el diputado Jean-Louis Touraine, relator de la ley, también un militante activo de la GPA y de la eutanasia.

A este respecto, es importante comprender que todas estas medidas son parte de un vasto proyecto de transformación del hombre que tiene profundas raíces en el pensamiento de la Ilustración, en particular en Condorcet. que creía "que no se ha mencionado ningún límite a la perfección de las facultades humanas”, y que "la perfectibilidad del hombre es realmente indefinida" (1795). Ese progresismo ha encontrado las bases científicas de su visión filosófica acerca del destino de la humanidad, en la extrapolación de la teoría de Darwin, y haciéndolo, también de una nueva moral.  Según esta visión, el hombre es un ser espiritual (es decir, dotado de inteligencia y voluntad) cuya conciencia provendría de la vida, y la vida de la materia.  Así, el hombre sería un mutante involucrado en un proceso constante de evolución - y elevación - por la emancipación primero de la materia inerte y luego de la vida animal, para alcanzar una forma de vida consciente, una vida "humana".  Por lo tanto, nuestra humanidad no quedaría fija en un estado dado, natural, sino que progresaría a medida que avanza el proceso de dominación de la materia, que culmina en la dominación de la voluntad individual sobre su propio cuerpo.  El progreso, como un proceso de espiritualización, se convierte así en la condición y en la medida de nuestra humanidad.  El cuerpo, en el proceso, se devalúa, se reduce a simple materia animal; y la vida solo es un material.  Esto explica, por supuesto, la eugenesia, pero también la valoración contemporánea de las diversas formas de sexualidad no fecundantes. Porque estas formas de sexualidad prueban que incluso en este aspecto particularmente animal de nuestro ser, el espíritu individual puede escapar de lo que se da naturalmente, y trascenderlo. Menos animales, estas sexualidades serían por lo tanto más humanas.

La eugenesia y la sexualidad están así íntimamente ligadas.  También lo están dado que el control de la sexualidad es una condición y una herramienta de la eugenesia.  A través del control de la sexualidad, se busca el control de la procreación, y más aún, el de la "vida".  Puesto que el control de la vida es una forma completa de dominación de nuestra inteligencia, no solo sobre nuestro cuerpo natural, sino también sobre el proceso general de evolución de la humanidad.  Solo el control biológico de la vida permitiría al hombre trabajar conscientemente en la búsqueda y en la aceleración del progreso de la evolución de la especie humana. Este es el programa del transhumanismo, que se ha implementado progresivamente a medida que las tecnologías  le proporcionan los medios.

En una primera etapa, antes del descubrimiento del ADN (1953), este programa se centró por primera vez en la especie humana y sobre las razas, y se llamó eugenesia.  Sus promotores más radicales provienen todos del mundo del libre pensamiento y la masonería.  En Inglaterra, el filósofo Herbert Spencer agrega a la ley general de la evolución la de "supervivencia del más apto" (1864). Estima que el medio por el cual la selección natural se lleva a cabo dentro de la especie humana es la competencia entre personas, sociedades y razas, asegurando la eliminación de los más débiles y el triunfo de los más aptos, y así se da el progreso.  Su trabajo se complementa con el de Thomas Huxley, el abuelo de Julian y Aldous, que desarrolla una filosofía monista en torno al evolucionismo.  En este esfuerzo lo acompaña el biólogo alemán Ernst Haeckel, eugenista radical, favorable al suicidio y la eutanasia. Haeckel fue uno de los miembros más eminentes de la Federación Internacional de Libre Pensamiento, así como de la Liga Pan-Alemana y la Sociedad Alemana de Higiene Racial, las que contribuyeron significativamente a la doctrina nazi.

En Francia, la eugenesia radical fue introducida en 1862 por Clemence Royer, fundadora de la obediencia masónica Droit Humain, que hizo preceder su traducción de El origen de las especies de Darwin por una diatriba progresista que denuncia a los "representantes descartados o degenerados de la especie".  Es seguida por Paul Robin, cercano a Bakunin y Ferdinand Buisson, quien fundó en 1896 una Liga para la Regeneración Humana cuyo propósito es promover la anticoncepción, el aborto y la libertad sexual.  Eugenista, el desea trabajar para el surgimiento de una "nueva raza, científicamente mejorada" que haría desaparecer delante de ella todos los "residuos de una falsa civilización".  Para él, el respeto "de la castidad, de la pureza, es el último colgajo más resistente a la destrucción de las doctrinas metafísicas que siempre han oprimido a los humanos".  Charles Richet, Premio Nobel de Medicina en 1913 y vicepresidente de la Sociedad Francesa de Eugenesia, aboga por "la eliminación de las razas inferiores" y "anormales".  Los ejemplos podrían multiplicarse. Todos están convencidos de haber descubierto la verdad del progreso humano y odian el cristianismo, del cual denuncian (con Nietzsche) el carácter antinatural de la caridad hacia los débiles.

Los movimientos neomalthusianos y eugenésicos rápidamente se dieron cuenta de que su programa solo podía implementarse efectivamente a condición de separar la sexualidad de la procreación, si fuera posible con el consentimiento de los interesados (aunque no necesariamente). Margaret Sanger, fundadora de Planificación familiar, lo dijo muy claramente en 1922: "ninguna esperanza de progreso es posible mientras no alcancemos una nueva concepción del sexo, que no sea simplemente un acto procreativo, un  necesidad biológica para la perpetuación de la raza, sino un modo de expresión psíquica y espiritual”.  El control de la procreación, por lo tanto, tiene un doble propósito.  Su objetivo es, por un lado, "evitar el nacimiento de quienes transmiten su imbecilidad a sus descendientes" (propósito eugenésico);  pero también es, e incluso "primero, un instrumento de liberación y desarrollo humano" (finalidad espiritual).  Para ella, "a través del sexo, la humanidad puede alcanzar la mayor iluminación espiritual que va a transformar el mundo, que va a iluminar el único camino hacia un paraíso terrestre".

 Julian Huxley, hermano de Aldous y primer director de la Unesco, también milita para la difusión de la anticoncepción y del aborto como medios de limitación de los nacimientos de los seres "inferiores".  Pero va más lejos y recomienda actuar no solo sobre la sexualidad (mediante la esterilización), sino también sobre la procreación (mediante la selección).  Para él, "podrían surgir todo tipo de posibilidades" si la sociedad adoptara el sistema recomendado por Hermann Müller, consistente en la "separación de las dos funciones de sexualidad y reproducción" y utilizar para la procreación los gametos de "unos pocos machos altamente dotados”.  Esta separación no solo mejoraría la raza humana, sino que también haría que las relaciones sociales fueran más altruistas, porque estarían menos influenciadas por la competencia sexual, como las sociedades de hormigas o abejas.  Hermann Muller, ganador del Premio Nobel en 1946, fue el primero en proponer la creación de un banco de esperma con el propósito de recolectar y diseminar las semillas de hombres superiores. Propuso a Stalin en 1936 que contribuyera y lo utilizara para regenerar la población de la URSS.

 El vínculo explícito entre la eugenesia y la revolución sexual aparece claramente en la fundación en 1928 de la Liga Mundial para la Reforma Sexual, que milita a la vez por la anticoncepción, la eugenesia y la aceptación de las "personas sexualmente anormales".  Margaret Sanger, los herederos de Paul Robin o Julian Huxley se encuentran entre sus miembros y apoyos. El mismo grupo de personas se une poco después en la fundación de movimientos que trabajan para la legalización de la eutanasia. La mayoría proviene de las filas de las sociedades eugenésicas;  son impulsados ​​por el mismo deseo de dominar la vida.

Más allá de la separación de la sexualidad respecto de la procreación (a través de la anticoncepción), luego de la procreación respecto de la sexualidad (la primera fertilización in vitro de conejos se lleva a cabo en 1934), todavía es posible un tercer grado de separación: el de gestación respecto del cuerpo.  Fue concebido en 1923 por el genetista británico J. B. S. Haldane, quien prevé la gestación por útero artificial y lo denomina "ectogénesis".  Este tercer paso no se ha realizado hasta la fecha, pero ya está preparado en los laboratorios, más aún debido a la difusión de su forma "artesanal" que es la gestación por terceros.

Julian Huxley, J.B.S.  Haldane y Hermann Muller se conocen bien por haber firmado conjuntamente un "Manifiesto de Genetistas" en 1939, recomendando a los gobiernos adoptar "una especie de marco consciente de selección" para hacer posible la mejora genética de las generaciones futuras. Julian Huxley le dio un nombre a esta visión prometea de la humanidad, la llamó "transhumanismo" y la declaró "religión del futuro", en la misma época en que presidió la fundación de la  Unión Internacional Humanista y Ética.  Aldous Huxley, hermano de Julian y nieto de Thomas, estaba por lo tanto en una buena posición para comprender esta visión y exponerla en el Brave New World.  No necesitaba inventar el contenido del libro, era suficiente para escuchar a sus familiares.

 Desde entonces, estas grandes figuras han tenido herederos, que se pueden encontrar en Francia principalmente en el seno de la tradición masónica.  Sus nombres incluyen a Pierre Simon, Henri Caillavet o Jean-Louis Touraine y esencialmente solo repiten e intentan aplicar un proyecto ya antiguo. Militaron para la legalización de la anticoncepción, el aborto, la eutanasia, el GPA.  En cuanto a la eugenesia, esta se ha vuelto más eficaz al volverse liberal y sofisticada; pero su forma primaria todavía se ve a veces, como cuando Henri Caillavet declaró en 2001 que "permitir que un niño discapacitado venga al mundo es una falta de los padres y quizás incluso el testimonio de un egoísmo desproporcionado".  Para Pierre Simon, como para Jean-Louis Touraine, el punto de "cambio antropológico" fue la aceptación de la primera separación entre sexualidad y procreación, es decir, la anticoncepción.  "Todo lo demás", dice este último, es solo una consecuencia”.

Source: www.valeursactuelles.com