I want to ask a simple question of the bishops of the American Catholic Church: Why is it acceptable for Federal agents to fondle the breasts of American women, probe the genital regions of American children, and publicly remove the diapers of incontinent elderly Americans but beyond the moral pale to force those violated Americans … [Read more…]
I have uploaded a new and relatively short book: Human Rights: An Evolutionary and Christian Perspective. This book is freely downloadable under the Creative Commons license as referenced on the copyright page. It replaces an article I published back in 2007, Natural and Inalienable Rights, which I came to consider very inadequate though not wrong … [Read more…]
One of the worst things one generation can do is trap future generations in one specific way of life or one way of solving problems. There is perhaps more than some think to the witticism by someone whose name I can’t recall: “I refused to be a radical when I was young because I didn’t … [Read more…]
Not one to accept the mishmash of ideas which is the modern worldview, Professor Minogue reminds us: A free State is one in which there is a strong resistance to professionalization; it is marked by that “versatility” which Pericles claimed for Athens. [page 150] This is not to argue that professionalization is bad. Minogue was … [Read more…]
The state as we know it in the United States and most countries in this year of 2011 can’t be limited without destroying that state. This is because — in Jeffersonian terms — the state as it currently exists in most countries is an instrument of a vague group of human beings which we could … [Read more…]
Here’s a link to a good article about some specific problems which have developed in the Medicare system, resulting in fraud: The Systemic Nature of Medicare Fraud. Some of us are crooks for sure. Why do those crooks all of a sudden have the power to bankrupt our society and destroy our middle-class prosperity? Years … [Read more…]
In the poem The Sycamore, Wendell Berry straddles some no man’s land between metaphysics and theology and poetry to give an interestingly aslant and insightful definition of narrative: It [the sycamore] has gathered all accidents into its purpose. As characters in the narratives which are our individual lives, we should gather all accidents into our … [Read more…]
I’m trying to deal with a problem I feel to be at the foundation of a body of thought which I generally admire — libertarianism of the Old Right and Rothbardian sort. On the whole, my attitude is similar to my attitude towards Jamesian pragmatism. For a discussion of that attitude, see my earlier articles … [Read more…]
I’m reposting an essay originally published on September 21, 2009. First, I’ll make a few comments. I seem to fall into a line of thinkers, Tocqueville to Hawthorne to Melville to Henry James the Elder to Mark Twain to Flannery O’Connor with the British guy Graham Greene joining in. This line of thinkers have tried … [Read more…]
In The Liberal Mind Kenneth Minogue, the British political theorist, tells us: “Need” belongs to a particular language of political and moral thought arising from the conception of generic men. Once we have entered into that language, we can only say individualist things. It is a language which has grown out of the liberal movement … [Read more…]