Can the Humanities Contribute Anything to the Modern World?

Essays of the Week

How Liberals Abuse Language by Shannon Holzer As long as words are left undefined, their meanings are vague and are left up to the listener’s or reader’s imagination. Many on the left have manipulated language concerning rights. It is because liberals make use of the nominal definition of the word “rights” in order to suit their needs. This is especially true when it comes to Constitutional interpretation. In discussing rights, the political left rarely refers to natural rights. This is because natural rights assume that natures exist. Natures contain those pesky little things called essences. And, essences lock one into a definition about objects and not words. Speaking about objects is too specific for those who care more about the pragmatism of the word truth than conforming to it. It is this pragmatic use of the word “right” that the left uses to its advantage... [MORE] The Federal Idea by Wilfred McClay The federal idea was not somehow incidental to the Framer’s intentions. It was absolutely essential, and we need to remember why. There are, roughly speaking, two reasons; and it is in keeping with my allusion to Isaiah Berlin that one of them is negative, the other positive. First, the negative one: The Framers distrusted power, distrusted government, distrusted majorities, distrusted human nature. They believed in “the necessity of auxiliary precautions” to guard against the abuses of power to which popular governments are prone. Hence the need to devise a government that deliberately set up “opposite and rival interests” that could check and balance one another, using “ambition… to counteract ambition.” Federalism was a crucial part of this arrangement. The separation of national and state governments, in tandem with the separation of powers within each level of government, provided “a double security” for the people’s rights, through the effective dispersion of power... [MORE] The Unbounded Eros of Tristan and Isolde by Peter Kalkavage Listening to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is a ravishing and, I believe, important human experience. The opera contains music of incredible beauty and power, especially in its richly textured harmonies. To listen to this music, quite apart from seeing a production, is to be under a spell and to imbibe Wagner’s all-too-effective tone-potion. We listen at our peril, for in listening we are the voluptuous music of death-bound Eros. The potion that is Tristan contains much truth, terrible truth, about erotic passion. But it also prompts us, or should prompt us, to search for an antidote to the lovers’ death wish—to pursue a love that preserves rather than destroys, celebrates rather than abolishes individuality, and seeks life rather than death, clarity rather warmth alone, wakefulness rather than sleep, and reconciliation with the external world, which mixes great evil with great good... [MORE] Why Philosophy? by Thaddeus Kozinski If philosophy is so impractical, then why were the American Founding Fathers, not impractical men, educated so thoroughly in philosophical dialectic, in the Platonic/Aristotelian/Scholastic school of rigorous logic and subtle distinction-making? Philosophy is many things to many people, but to me it is the art of questioning. Questions are not self-sufficient, of course, for without answers, we despair. But answers that are not the answers to our own questions are not really answers. If we can learn to ask the right questions in the right spirit, then the answers for which our hearts yearn will be given to us... [MORE] Can the Humanities Contribute Anything to  the Modern World? by Jason Baxter The whole thrust of our modern society is to promote a bold sense of moving forward, to create the desire to marshal resources which will help us be successful in the next generation. But what do we mean by successful? What are the standards for judging such success? The hidden assumption of modernity is that the problems that ought to occupy us are technological at their base. There seems to be very little cultural space for humanistic studies. It is difficult to perceive how literature, philosophy, or theology could contribute to technological capitalism. And so, on first thought, we might want to answer our question—can the humanities possibly contribute to our modern culture?—in the negative...  [MORE] Whither “Nevertrump”? by Bruce Frohnen Reasonable expectations for the Trump Presidency must focus neither on recent fear-mongering, nor on down-the-line conservative orthodoxy. Rather, they must focus on what Mr. Trump actually promised. Given the hysteria of so many, it may seem surprising to note that what he promised was a return to political sanity: Concern for the national self-interest rather than globalist ideology, preservation of national borders, concern for the economic well-being of the American people, and an end to the radical ideological programs destroying our educational system and undermining the character, self-understanding, and knowledge of our young people. This is no full-scale conservative program—it lacks any overt commitment to principles of local self-government and restoration of a virtuous public square. But it is a crucial program for the preservation and possible renewal of the American way of life... [MORE] Stephen King’s Maine: The Importance of Place The Forgotten Music of the American Neoclassicists The Plato Doctrine & the Essence of a “National Security Strategy” How George Orwell Helped Cause the Cold War The Scholar as Borrower & Lender of the Truth of Things Rethinking America’s Global Role in an Age of Nationalism Mark the Music! Sounds Celestial on My Desert Island The Principles That Bind Us: The Jubilee of the Constitution Why Donald Trump Should Listen to Plato on Foreign Policy   Support The Imaginative Conservative

Global governance ideology is the intellectual stepchild of Marxist materialist thought.

Global elites put Christianity in the crosshairs

by Robert F. Gorman

The term global governance refers to the political dimension of globalization. Here the question is to what degree governance will be centralized and controlled by international institutions in ways that threaten to diminish national and local governmental capacity. Global governance advocates tend to prefer both transnational regulation of markets and the creation of new human rights norms marked by increased centralization.

In the latter sense, global governance can imply much more than simple international coordination and cooperation, which has existed throughout modern international relations. Now it is also a deeply and widely embedded ideology that seeks global centralization and regulation of wide-reaching areas of international interaction. It is believed and advanced by its devotees with an almost religious zeal. 

Among these devotees are 

(1) university professors and teachers at all levels, 

(2) nongovernmental organization professionals, 

(3) international lawyers, 

(4) journalists, 

(5) increasingly large numbers of elected and appointed governmental leaders and officials, 

(6) international civil servants, 

(7) celebrities and cultural elites, and 

(8) experts in the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations. 

If this growing and increasingly influential body of believers simply wanted to resolve pressing international problems, its effects would be largely unobjectionable. International cooperation is needed to prevent, control, and resolve conflicts; provide much-needed humanitarian emergency assistance; and promote increasing prosperity among nations.

Globalists, as they were once called, and global governance advocates, as they are now often known, call for much more, however. Global governance ideology aims at eroding and eliminating national sovereignty by reducing national governmental control over the movement of people, goods, services, and capital across national boundaries. It seeks to establish an entirely secular order in which activities such as education, health care, economic development, and justice are fashioned by global experts rather than by the leaders in their natural local and national contexts. Rule by experts, by global bureaucrats, is regarded as the ideal.

These experts in turn share a common set of outlooks about the world. 

• They are secularists who are at best suspicious of but often outright hostile to religion and traditional culture as influences on civilization.
• They are bureaucrats or advocates of bureaucracy who believe that government by expert rather than by elected officials is the only way to advance a progressive agenda of modernization. 
• They are environmentalists who, to varying degrees, regard human beings and human population growth as a scourge on global ecology. 
• They are thus almost universally population-control advocates who regard the family, especially the traditional family and the religious beliefs of families, as a threat to environmental integrity. 
• Often they are eugenicists who wish to reduce the fertility of less desirable peoples. 
• They are transnationalists who believe that the nation-state is an anachronistic cultural construct in need of deconstruction. 
• They are generally advocates of gender plasticity who seek in the name of human rights to promote global redefinition of masculinity and femininity and thus a redefinition of the human person and of marriage as a normative basis of family life. 
• They are materialists who ultimately deny the transcendent spiritual nature of human beings and who thus are concerned almost exclusively about the physical and emotional needs of people.
• They are relativists who generally reject the concept of objective moral truth, of natural law, or of the religious and spiritual dimensions of the human person. 
• They regard power and control as the mechanisms by which to remake the world in their own image. 
• They are centralists who have little regard for the rights of subsidiary bodies, local agencies of mutual aid and support, churches, local governments, or even national governments that wish to preserve their distinctive ways of life. In the name of global solidarity, they violate basic principles of subsidiarity.

.......................

Read more: www.acton.org

Patriarchy is inevitable so long as men are men and women are women ...

 

December 2, 2016

 

Click here to see html version

One of the remarkable things to come out in the US post-election wash is the collective mea culpa of the liberal/progressive press about its disdainful attitude to Middle America – the population in between the big coastal cities (and not a few of the people in those cities as well).

Sheila Liaugminas has been collecting examples of this breast-beating and today gives us a run-down on some of the more dramatic ones. Here’s a par from one of them:

Our theme now should be humility. We must become more impartial, not less so. We have to abandon our easy culture of tantrums and recrimination. We have to stop writing these know-it-all, 140-character sermons on social media and admit that, as a class, journalists have a shamefully limited understanding of the country we cover.

You get the picture. Mind you, most of it was three weeks ago when editors had hardly shaken off their post-election day hangover. Maybe the feeling of repentance and humility has already worn off. As Michael Cook observed a couple of weeks ago, the front page of the New York Times looked pretty much the same in the days following its publisher’s declaration that it was turning over a new leaf.

Here at MercatorNet we will keep trying to do better.

 

Carolyn Moynihan Deputy Editor, MERCATORNET

Trump ‘took everyone who should know better by surprise’ By Sheila Liaugminas The presumption is revealing. Read the full article

 

 

Patriarchy is inevitable so long as men are men and women are women By Laura Perrins That’s not misogyny; it’s the evidence. Read the full article

 

 

Why did Shakespeare’s father paint over iconic medieval murals? By Kate Giles Reformation defacement of religious images in the Bard's home town. Read the full article

 

 

Beyond the politics of anger By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks A politics of hope is within reach. Read the full article

 

 

Is healthy living making us unfit for life with others? By Veronika McLindon Taking care of ourselves can become all-consuming. Read the full article

 

 

Go ahead, congratulate the newly engaged By Melissa Langsam Braunstein It's not a put-down of friends who are single. Rather it's a sign of hope. Read the full article

 

 

Explorers lost in Antartica By Jennifer Minicus Archer is determined to find his famous grandparents. Read the full article

 

 

The two-child policy: will it help Chinese economic growth or ageing? By Marcus Roberts Perhaps not... Read the full article

 

 

Frozen stiff: the quackery of cryonics By Michael Cook A 14-year-old British girl dying of cancer recently won a court battle to be cryogenically frozen. Read the full article

 

Read more here: www.mercatornet.com

L'objectif du Gouvernement serait-il donc de faire de l'avortement l'issue normale d'une grossesse ?

L'objectif du Gouvernement serait-il de faire de l'avortement l'issue normale d'une grossesse ?

Source: lesalonbeige.blogs.com


Communiqué des AFC :


"Demain, jeudi 1er décembre, sera débattue à l'Assemblée Nationale la proposition de loi du groupe socialiste faisant suite à l'initiative de Laurence Rossignol, Ministre des Familles, de l'Enfance et des Droits des femmes, qui considère que faire état sur internet des risques liés à l'avortement et proposer d'autres voies que celle de l'IVG est un "délit d'entrave numérique", passible de 30 000€ d'amende et de 2 ans de prison.

Cette proposition de loi vise les sites internet qui présentent des alternatives à l'avortement, et proposent des lieux d'écoute et d'information sur les conséquences d'un avortement, à rebours du "tout avortement" déployé progressivement depuis 2014 :

• L'IVG devient un droit fondamental : novembre 2014. 
• Suppression de la condition de détresse : août 2014
• Suppression du délai de réflexion : avril 2015
• IVG remboursée à 100% : avril 2016

L'objectif du Gouvernement serait-il donc de faire de l'avortement l'issue normale d'une grossesse ?

Les Associations Familiales Catholiques s'insurgent, comme elles l'ont déjà fait, contre cette proposition de loi idéologique qui bâillone la liberté d'expression et porte gravement atteinte à la liberté de conscience des femmes. Or, les Français et les professionnels de santé s'alarment du nombre toujours très élevé d'IVG. Est-ce en libéralisant et en poussant les femmes à avorter qu'on va résoudre ce problème ? Comme le dit le Pr Israël Nisand dans Le Figaro d'aujourd'hui, "la meilleure IVG est celle que l'on n'a pas eu besoin de faire".

Faut-il également rappeler à Madame Rossignol qu'un très récent sondage IFOP "Les Français et l'IVG" (septembre 2016) révèle que 72% des Français pensent que la société devrait faire plus pour éviter aux femmes l'IVG et 89% pensent que l'avortement laisse des traces psychologiques difficiles à vivre ?

L'existence et le succès de ces sites internet sont la preuve que la propagande officielle du "tout avortement" ne répond pas aux besoins des femmes. Confronté à cet échec, le Gouvernement déploie une réaction de faible, en cherchant à bâillonner la liberté d'expression et en menant un combat idéologique et inefficace, dont on peut même penser qu'il aurait des visées électoralistes dans le contexte politique actuel.

Les AFC considèrent que le nombre très élevé d'avortements en France constitue un problème de santé publique et devrait être traité comme tel, c'est-à-dire en étudiant les facteurs de risque et en luttant contre ces mêmes facteurs de risque."

Osservatorio Internazionale Cardinale Van Thuân - Newsletter

Newsletter n.751 | 2016-11-30


Cari Amici, ecco qui i più recenti inserimenti di materiale nel sito dell’Osservatorio:


NEWS

-NUOVO LIBRO DI STEFANO FONTANA. 

Una filosofia per ripristinare il rapporto fra fede e ragione.

Articolo di Lorenzo Bertocchi

Leggi



- NUOVO LIBRO DI STEFANO FONTANA. LA MICRO-STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA DI STEFANO FONTANA. CHE IN REALTA’ E’ UNA CONTRO-FILOSOFIA.

Articolo di Silvio Brachetta

Leggi

- FILOSOFIA PER TUTTI, PERCHE’ LA FILOSOFIA E’ SEMPLICE

 Il nuovo libro di Stefano Fontana

Articolo di Benedetta Cortese

Leggi


ARTICOLI

-RAPPORTO ACS SULLA LIBERTÀ RELIGIOSA NEL MONDO: QUANDO IL VANGELO FA PAURA AL MONDO. TESTIMONIANZE, CIFRE E CRONACHE DEL DIMENTICATO MARTIROLOGIO DEI NOSTRI GIORNI.

Articolo di Omar Ebrahime

Leggi



-LE RAGIONI DEL BENE COMUNE

Articolo di Fabio Trevisan

Leggi



-LA DITTATURA DELL’ETICA SENZA FONDAMENTO

Articolo di Stefano Fontana

Leggi



-IL DIRITTO ALL’OBIEZIONE DI COSCIENZA E’ A RISCHIO. INTERVISTA AD ALFREDO MANTOVANO VICEPRESIDENTE DEL CENTRO STUDI LIVATINO

Articolo di Stefano Fontana

Leggi



-LA METAFISICA DELL’ESSERE E LA DOTTRINA SOCIALE DELLA CHIESA

Articolo di S. E. Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi

Leggi



-L’OBIEZIONE DI COSCIENZA PUÒ ESSERE ESERCITATA PUR IN ASSENZA DI UNA LEGGE CHE LA REGOLAMENTI. IL MAGISTRATO GIACOMO ROCCHI SUL RECENTE CONVEGNO DEL CENTRO STUDI LIVATINO

Articolo di Redazione

Leggi



-QUATTRO CRITERI PER ORIENTARE LE POLITICHE MIGRATORIE

Articolo di S.E. mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi

Leggi



RECENSIONI



-Recensione di don Samuele Cecotti al libro: G.Turco “VALORI E DEONTOLOGIA. L’ASSIOLOGIA DI NICOLA PETRUZZELLIS”, Ed Studium

Leggi



- Recensione di Fabio Trevisan al libro: Jonathan Witt - Jay W. Richards “CHE COS’E’ LO HOBBIT PARTY? LA VISIONE DELLA LIBERTÀ”, D’Ettoris Editori

Leggi


Osservatorio Internazionale Cardinale Van Thuân

Mecanismo obscuro de la ONU presiona constantemente a los Estados en materias LGBT

Vol. 19,  No 47

Mecanismo obscuro de la ONU presiona constantemente a los Estados en materias LGBT

Estimado Amigo: Mi compañera Rebecca Oas PhD es simplemente impresionante. Es nuestra directora asistente de investigación y ha hecho el Examen Periódico Universal por sí sola. Ella da seguimiento detallado a la presión de los grandes hostigadores progresistas europeos sobre las pequeñas naciones. Advocamos porque las naciones pertenecientes le hagan frente a este hostigamiento. Ustedes no lo tienen que tolerar. La Comisión Internacional de la Ley es un poderoso organismo que está rescribiendo la ley internacional de tal forma que las pequeñas naciones doblen las rodillas en materia de la agenda progresista sexual de las superpotencias. Stefano Gennarini JD reporta sobre los más recientes engaños. En Turtle Bay and Beyond, Marianna Orlandi Phd nos comenta sobre cómo los transexuales (hombres que piensan que son mujeres) están organizándose para promover y proteger los “derechos de las mujeres”. Ugh. Voy a señalar que a la Segunda Ola de Feminismo no le importan mucho los hombres que andan por la calle pretendiendo que son mujeres. Saludos cordiales. Austin Ruse Presidente Apoye Nuestro Trabajo Los proponents de “Derechos Sexuales” buscan legitimidad a través del Examen Periódico Universal Por Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.  NUEVA YORK, Noviembre 18 (C-Fam) Activistas occidentales se han tornado a un proceso relativamente obscuro en la ONU que busca cambiar las leyes internas en países tradicionales en cuanto se trata de matrimonio homosexual y “derechos” sexuales. Los últimos datos de la ONU nos muestran que la estrategia está tomando impulso pero que todavía no rompe la resistencia. Leer mas >>  La Comisión de Derecho Internacional ignora las críticas y propone reglas progresivas Por Stefano Gennarini, J.D.  NUEVA YORK, 18 de noviembre (C-Fam) Las nuevas normas del más alto órgano internacional de Derecho Internacional probablemente conducirán a una avalancha de litigios y decisiones judiciales sobre la base del nuevo y no negociado Derecho Internacional consuetudinario.  Leer mas >>  Suscríbase a Friday Fax