America the Beautiful?
Tag: Liberty
The Lord’s Prayer, Freedom, and the Spiritual Vaclav Havel
Vaclav Havel waves to crowds in Prague, shortly before becoming Czech president in December 1989. Kamila Valenta writes in America, “I was 17 years old when I heard the Lord’s Prayer spoken in public for the first time. It was in November 1989 during the Velvet Revolution, which brought freedom to Communist Czechoslovakia. The crowd… Read More The Lord’s Prayer, Freedom, and the Spiritual Vaclav Havel
Immanuel Kant, Philosopher of the New Light
Immanuel Kant wrote, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. [‘Nonage’ is the immature inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance]. He continues: “This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know!… Read More Immanuel Kant, Philosopher of the New Light
‘I Don’t Mean To Be Rude’
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. John Kennedy (D-LA) questioned witnesses about Late Term Abortion. Town Hall.com. “During his time to ask the witnesses questions, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) asked “do you support it being legal to abort an unborn child up to the moment of birth,” a pretty straightforward question. One witness called by the… Read More ‘I Don’t Mean To Be Rude’
In Biden’s America today, there is no stable law
“Law,” in Biden’s America especially, is always in flux, ever changing from one thing to another, way beyond any necessary rare leap; it is forever “evolving” per Darwin’s imaginative narrative(1), towards the predetermined “scientific” collectivist(2) goal, where man becomes God, and the State becomes ultimate. And, on the way to that abyss, the end always… Read More In Biden’s America today, there is no stable law
Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the Antinomian Principle
“… the political fantasies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have a great deal to answer for. For two centuries, his sentimentalizing utopian rhetoric has provided despots of all description with a means of pursuing conformity while praising freedom. It is a neat trick. Words like “freedom” and “virtue” were ever on Rousseau’s lips. But freedom for him… Read More Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the Antinomian Principle
British Parliament Passes Law Banning Prayers Outside Abortion Centers
Leading pro-life groups in the UK are very upset today after MPs voted for censorship zones outside abortion centers that ban people from praying silently outside businesses that kill babies in abortions. MPs were voting on an amendment to a clause introducing buffer zones around abortion clinics, which had been added into the Public Order… Read More British Parliament Passes Law Banning Prayers Outside Abortion Centers
The DOJ and Catholics
“The FBI memo cited the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, including a list of organizations the SPLC brands “radical traditional Catholic hate groups.” As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux… Read More The DOJ and Catholics
America and Seductive False ‘Liberty’.
America… “not in any sense Christian” “….she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain o f scandal she has spread.” — Dante, The Inferno, canto V, 57 The fatal mischief in the U.S. Constitution was in the purposeful ambiguity embedded in the Enlightenment concept “liberty”. This is what logically led us… Read More America and Seductive False ‘Liberty’.
Keeping Out the Jacobins
“The French Jacobins selected France as savior of the world. The new Jacobins have anointed the United States.” Pedro L. Gonzalez.Aug 25. “I’ve been reading The New Jacobinism: America as Revolutionary State by Claes G. Ryn, first published in 1991. It’s a short but insightful polemic about the pernicious influence of neoconservatism—the “New Jacobinism”—on American… Read More Keeping Out the Jacobins
Antichristic Uncertainties
The Antichristic has manifest itself and shadowed the Cross in every age of the Church. Our era is hardly an exception. The war on the moral and natural laws today is ominous. And, be it near or far, we may be approaching times even more difficult. Catholics and other Christians who resist evils today and… Read More Antichristic Uncertainties
Should Pornography Be Illegal?
Sam Guzman: “The statistics on porn use are staggering. It’s pretty safe to say that at least one in two American men, and a growing number of women, struggle with compulsive porn use. And it’s no wonder: porn is easy to access, free, pleasurable (at least for the moment), and anonymous, making it seemingly irresistible… Read More Should Pornography Be Illegal?
A Pipe Dream
Originally published as (curiously enough) In Defense of Cigarettes. by Matt Labash, National Correspondent | The Weekly Standard, August 08, 2017 Dear Matt, I had this thought that America was more civil when everyone smoked. You learned from an early age that people will do something you don’t like but there wasn’t much you could… Read More A Pipe Dream
White Lies
“…that you may know how you ought to behave yourself self in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” — 1 Timothy 3:15 The living Word of God dwells within, and never apart from, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, the Interpreting Church… Read More White Lies
George Weigel on The Last Laugh of Alfredo Ottaviani
First Things. Despite his humble origins as a baker’s son from Trastevere, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, longtime curial head of the Holy Office (“successor to the Inquisition,” in journalese) and scourge of the nouvelle théologie of the 1950s, was a formidable figure in pre-conciliar Catholicism. Ottaviani’s approach to theology was neatly summarized in the Latin motto of his… Read More George Weigel on The Last Laugh of Alfredo Ottaviani
The Lessons of Mao’s Cultural Revolution
China’s Cultural Revolution Destroying The ‘Four Olds’ The Chinese Cultural Revolution was one of the bloodiest eras in Chinese history, in which as many as two million people died. But who started it and what was it for? Mao Zedong’s ‘Four Olds‘ During the Cultural Revolution, the revolutionists initiated a critical campaign was the war… Read More The Lessons of Mao’s Cultural Revolution
“Protesting Against That Which Is”
Protest and Paranoia. The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Episode 52. “Surely you’ve noticed that the Woke movement doesn’t build anything or accomplish anything productive. There’s a reason for that. The only thing they bring to the table is protest, which is to say destruction. Disrupt, dismantle, deconstruct, subvert, and then “reimagine”; that’s their… Read More “Protesting Against That Which Is”
The Beat Generation… cultural catastrophe. By Roger Kimball
“We’ll get you through your children.” —Allen Ginsberg, 1958 The core of the heresy of the Free Spirit lay in the adept’s attitude towards himself: he believed that he had attained a perfection so absolute that he was incapable of sin. Disclaiming book-learning and theological subtleties, they rejoiced in direct knowledge of God- indeed, they… Read More The Beat Generation… cultural catastrophe. By Roger Kimball
The Falls of Albert Camus
In his novella, The Fall, the French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus stops lamenting for a moment social injustice as well as the “meaninglessness” and “absurdity” of an empty Nietzschean universe in general, and turns instead to biography, specifically to his own cruelty. Camus was a notorious, even “obsessive,” womanizer. But in time it got more complicated… Read More The Falls of Albert Camus
The “Scientific” and Philosophical New Order
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him: or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels: thou hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast subjected all things under his feet”—Heb 2:5-7… Read More The “Scientific” and Philosophical New Order
Garrigou-Lagrange: Everything Which Comes to Pass…
Everything which comes to pass has been foreseen by God from all eternity, and has been willed or at least permitted by Him. (Rom.8:28) Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange “Nothing comes to pass either in the material or in the spiritual world, but God has foreseen it from all eternity; because with Him there is no passing from… Read More Garrigou-Lagrange: Everything Which Comes to Pass…
Leo XIII on the “Sect of Darkness”
Posing as Light… At the Dawn of the 20th century, On March 19, 1902, in his apostolic letter Annum Ingressi, Pope Leo XIII warned of an abuse of the concepts “Liberty” and “freedom” sweeping the globe, and which is directly opposed to the traditional Christian definition (Jn. 8:31-32). “A certain sect of darkness is engaged,… Read More Leo XIII on the “Sect of Darkness”
Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation as Political Control
Note: I have problems with substantial aspects of Dr. Jones’ subsequent work but consider portions of his Libido Dominandi (especially touching on the 18th century French philosophes) to be important. Introduction: Internet in GazaExcerpted from Libido DominandiCopyright © 2000 by E. Michael Jones, Amazon.com, Fidelity Press IntroductionLondon 1996 Since Internet knows no place, it doesn’t… Read More Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation as Political Control
Catholic Critique 