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Philosophy

A Western Government Declares BC/AD To Be Un-PC

September 13, 2011

— and some people aren’t at all happy about it: Australia is to remove the birth of Jesus as a reference point for dates in school history books. Under the new politically correct curriculum, the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) will be replaced with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, yesterday condemned the move as an ‘intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history.’ He described the phrase ‘common era’ as ‘meaningless,’ and compared it to using ‘festive season’ instead of Christmas. The changes, introduced by the government, were supposed to be pushed through next year, but have been delayed by the row. The terms CE and BCE have been popularised in academic and scientific publications. One of Australia’s political party leaders, Christopher Pyne, also registered his objections: ‘Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilization,’ he said. ‘Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people,’

Death Cult Sacrifices Could Soon Be Coming to Your Neighborhood

September 4, 2011

By Mike Gray

Death Cult Sacrifices Could Soon Be Coming to Your Neighborhood

Because of a virtually uncontrolled southern border (thank you, Washington), a bizarre, inchoate collection of rituals — including human sacrifice — might soon be generating headline news where you happen to live (and it would have to be local news — mainstream national media shy away from reporting negatively on the current administration’s “immigration” policies): . . . the cult itself is not an actual religion so it’s unclear who actually belongs to it. The veneration of Santa Muerte is a magical tradition that has little in the way of moral or philosophical instruction. Instead it simply transmits a series of rites designed to appease a being devotees think is an ancient goddess of death who once demanded people be killed in horrible ways to appease her. And while not all of the cultists commit crimes, a significant number of them come from the ranks of violent gangs, the virulently racist and anti-Semitic Reconquista movement, and impressionable dabblers in the occult seeking thrills. While not the organized threat of militant Islam, Santa Muerte’s spread into our major cities among those who are part of the unseen underground is still a potential danger we need to recognize. — Rob

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right

August 26, 2011

By Mike Gray

In a 1956 article addressed to libertarians (but from which others might benefit), Leonard E. Read briefly sketched the origins — and subsequent inversions — of the political terms “Left” and “Right”: There was a time when “Left” and “Right” were appropriate and not inaccurate designations of ideological differences. : “The first Leftists were a group of newly elected representatives to the National Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. They were labeled ‘Leftists’ merely because they happened to sit on the left side in the French Assembly. “The legislators who sat on the right side were referred to as the Party of the Right, or Rightists. The Rightists or ‘reactionaries’ stood for a highly centralized national government, special laws and privileges for unions and various other groups and classes, government economic monopolies in various necessities of life, and a continuation of government controls over prices, production, and distribution.” The leftists were, for all practical purposes, ideologically similar to those of us who call ourselves “libertarians.” The rightists were ideological opposites: statists, interventionists, in short, authoritarians. “Left” and “Right” in France, during 1789–90, had a semantic handiness and a high degree of accuracy. But

Cultural Marxism — Is It Here to Stay?

August 26, 2011

By Mike Gray

If it does, you can blame … J. R. R. Tolkien? . . . one of the things that I talk about is what I like to call “West Coast White nationalism” because West Coast White nationalism, a lot of the people that I know on the West Coast who think in terms of a racially defined new order of society, you take one look at them and you think that they’re hippies or you think that they’re liberals. Their lifestyles and their attitudes embrace a lot of things like Eastern spirituality, and drinking fruit juice, and wearing sandals, and granola, and vegetarianism, and organic food and organic farming, all these sort of things that you think are kind of hippie things. If you look at the roots of a lot of the West Coast hippie culture and also the hippie culture in Europe for that matter, a lot of it goes back to Tolkien. What doesn’t come from the New Left, let’s say the Frankfurt School and things like that, a lot of it comes from Tolkien which is pretty much directly connected with European Traditionalism. — Greg Johnson According to this view, ’60s hippies took Tolkien’s “message of

“Hitler’s Bible”

August 20, 2011

By Mike Gray

On the CMI website, Russell Grigg tries to set the record straight: Elimination of the Jews in Nazi Germany was not confined to the Holocaust. It also took the form of rewriting the New Testament to ‘dejudaize’ it, i.e., to remove references to Judaism and to recast Jesus as an Aryan, generating what has been called the ‘Nazi Bible’. This has been the subject of some sensational and substantially erroneous claims, including that the project was Hitler’s brainchild. In 1930s Germany, the ‘German Christians’ (Deutsche Christen) movement arose. These were theologically liberal Protestant churches and theologians who were enthusiastically pro-Nazi, calling Hitler the ‘Führer Jesus’ and ‘God’s agent in our day’. Politically ambitious and anti-Semitic, they wanted a faith without anything Jewish in the Bible, and without converted Jews in the Church. Their ultimate membership of 600,000 constituted about 30 percent of German Protestants. In opposition to this, the so-called ‘Confessing Church’ (Bekennende Kirche) movement arose, ultimately attracting some 20 percent of Protestant pastors. It included notable opponents of Hitler such as Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, some of its members were inclined to take other liberties with the plain meaning of the biblical text, and some

Such a Deal . . . Public Sees Fraud Behind Progressives’ Grand Bargain

August 4, 2011

By Warren Moore

Such a Deal . . . Public Sees Fraud Behind Progressives’ Grand Bargain

By Warren Moore One of the arguments a liberal friend of mine likes to use is that large percentage x of The People want government-sponsored healthcare/Head Start/cowboy poetry/snail treadmills, and that folks on my side of the aisle are therefore obstructing some sort of Rousseauian General Will. My response has typically been that of Anatole France: “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.” I think the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” argument is related to this, along these lines: P: Kansans, like the rest of the population, want the goodies the Democratic Party offers. p: However, they have voted against the Democratic politicians who would bring them these goodies. C: Therefore, Kansans have been manipulated by the GOP into voting against their best interests. As a consequence of this reasoning, the liberals/progressives tend to chalk up their failures either as failures to adequately communicate their message (remember “framing“?) or as the unfortunate consequence of a general cynicism about politics. But as Walter Russell Mead and the Ace of Spades both note, there’s more to it than that, and it’s a function of the Democrats’ neglect of half the bargain they offer. While the

Legal Challenge to New York’s Same-Sex Marriage Law

July 26, 2011

By Mike Gray

Legal Challenge to New York’s Same-Sex Marriage Law

“Back room tactics were rampant in the passage of this law. New York law requires that the government be open and transparent to keep political officials responsible. When government operates in secret and freezes out the very people it is supposed to represent, the entire system fails. … The law should be set aside and the process should begin again to allow the people a voice in the process.” — Mathew Staver Despite its merits, the suit could get thrown out if, as in California, the judge happens to be “gay” and/or a member of the ACLU. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges the Act became law through: Meetings that violated the state’s open meeting laws, including a closed-door gathering reported by the New York Times in which billionaire and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lobbied with Republicans to vote for the Act; The suspension of normal Senate voting procedures to prevent senators who opposed the bill from speaking; Failure to follow Senate procedures that require a bill must be sent to appropriate committees prior to being placed before the full Senate for a vote; Governor Cuomo’s violation of a constitutionally mandated three-day review period before the Legislature votes on a

The Crackpot Murderer in His Own Words

July 25, 2011

By Mike Gray

“As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. Europe has always been the cradle of science, and it must always continue to be that way. Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.” “I trust that the future leadership of a European cultural conservative hegemony in Europe will ensure that the current Church leadership are replaced and the systems somewhat reformed. We must have a Church leadership who supports a future Crusade with the intention of liberating the Balkans, Anatolia and creating three Christian states in the Middle East. Efforts should be made to facilitate the de-construction of the Protestant Church whose members should convert back to Catholicism. The Protestant Church had an important role once, but its original goals have been accomplished and have contributed to reform the Catholic Church as well. Europe should have a united Church lead by a just and non-suicidal pope who is willing to fight for the security of his subjects, especially in regards to Islamic atrocities.” “‘Logic’

When Stars Go Bang!

July 21, 2011

By Mike Gray

An ordinary star is a gigantic ball of gas, about a million times more massive than the earth—our sun is a medium-sized star. It is potentially stable for a long time, because the energy produced by the core produces an enormous outward pressure, which balances the inward force of gravity on its huge mass. However, when the nuclear fuel runs out, there is no longer any force to balance its gravity. If the star is very massive, most of it collapses very fast — in about two seconds. This releases a huge amount of energy—one supernova will out-shine all the billions of stars in its galaxy. The collapse is so violent that the electrons and nuclei are crushed together and produce a core of neutrons. This core is so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh 50 thousand million tons on earth. It cannot be compressed any further, so the incoming material from the rest of the star meets a solid wall. This material bounces off the core, rushes outward and shines very brightly. The remaining core, only about 20 km in diameter, is called a neutron star. Because it is spinning very fast, and has a strong

“Confirmation Bias Is Everywhere”

July 20, 2011

By Mike Gray

By Mike Gray A new study suggests that your values, not science, determine your views about climate change. — Ronald Bailey The study produced by a major university suggests: The more scientifically literate you are, the more certain you are that climate change is either a catastrophe or a hoax, according to a new study from the Yale Cultural Cognition Project. Many science writers and policy wonks nurse the fond hope that fierce disagreement about issues like climate change is simply the result of a scientifically illiterate American public. If this “public irrationality thesis” were correct, the authors of the Yale study write, “then skepticism about climate change could be traced to poor public comprehension about science” and the solution would be more science education. In fact, their findings suggest more education is unlikely to help build consensus; it may even intensify the debate. Led by Yale University law professor Dan Kahan, the Cultural Cognition Project has been researching how cultural and ideological commitments shape science policy discourse in the United States. To probe the public’s views on climate change, the Yale researchers conducted a survey of 1,500 Americans in which they asked questions designed to uncover their cultural values,

Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

July 20, 2011

By Mike Gray

Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

By Mike Gray Voyage of the Mind Carriers — By Gary Wolf — iUniverse — 2011 — Philosophical science fiction novel — Trade paperback: xv + map + 189 pages — ISBN: 978-1-4620-0433-1. Gary Wolf doesn’t write conventional fiction, and more so for his science fiction. He may occasionally use a common SF trope, but you can bet he’ll put his own unique spin on it. You almost never know where his stories will go. Wolf’s science fiction trenchantly explores the same territory that many “crime fiction” and SF authors only rarely and tangentially venture into with their works: the contested battleground of culture, the professed — and often hypocritical — acceptance of certain norms, and the cognitive dissonances that result from these clashes. In short, Gary Wolf could be unique in specializing in what might be termed “cultural science fiction.” In Voyage of the Mind Carriers, the main character is a police detective (who once spent some time in a sanitarium) trying to solve a murder (and another one later on) while dealing with his adolescent daughter’s teen angst; he’s fallen in love with one of his best suspects; and he’s come to seriously doubt his own place in

Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

July 19, 2011

By Mike Gray

Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

By Mike Gray Dennis Prager says, “Oh, yeah!” and offers ten reasons why: 1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. 2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme. 3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic. 4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work. 5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. 6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption. 7. The welfare state corrupts family life. 8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults. 9. . . . because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world’s evils . . . . 10. The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Prager elaborates on each of these points in his Townhall article “Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character.” You can buy Henry Hazlitt’s still-relevant economic critique, Man vs. The Welfare State, here.

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Philosophy

A Western Government Declares BC/AD To Be Un-PC

Death Cult Sacrifices Could Soon Be Coming to Your Neighborhood

The Ups and Downs of Left and Right

Cultural Marxism — Is It Here to Stay?

“Hitler’s Bible”

Such a Deal . . . Public Sees Fraud Behind Progressives’ Grand Bargain

Legal Challenge to New York’s Same-Sex Marriage Law

The Crackpot Murderer in His Own Words

When Stars Go Bang!

“Confirmation Bias Is Everywhere”

Book Review: ‘Voyage of the Mind Carriers’

Is the Liberal-Progressive Welfare State a Moral Threat?

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