It’s pretty clear to me from U.S. Press reactions to Vladimir’s Excellent Crimean Adventure that what most inflames American anger against world leaders are those attributes we think should be ours alone:
He displayed flashes of sardonic wit, anger and palpable disdain, … but also toward the leaders of a country, Ukraine, he made clear was a political neophyte, unable to govern itself.
He demonstrated his characteristically uncanny grasp of detail in such matters as natural-gas pricing, but contradicted himself at times and wandered off into obscure historical digressions. He made assertions that were clearly exaggerated or, less charitably, clearly not true.
Really!? I’m just floored. Can we sue him for trademark infringement?
Sally Mason, President of the University of Iowa, has been reprimanded by the Regents of said institution for remarks relating to the prevention of sexual assaults. She had recently declared that ending sexual assault probably was not realistic “just given human nature.” Board members were concerned that students found the remark to be “hurtful.”
It is not entirely clear from the article whether students deemed the remark hurtful because President Mason’s believes human nature to be somewhat depraved or because she believes there is such a thing as human nature. Certainly, in the current climate, the latter is a distinct possibility. Forty years of critical theory have taken a heavy toll on the whole notion of universal essences in a way which would have made even late medieval English nominalists cry out “I say! Steady on there, old chap!”
(Carl R. Trueman at First Things, emphasis added)
Yes, there are academics who deny that there’s such a thing as human nature; each of us, I guess, is absolutely sui generis.
Yes, it matters. Ideas have consequence. It’s on display, after a fashion, every time someone utters the words “well that may be true for you, but ….”
Not the Onion:
[O]ne of these good fellows (the same more radical one who I mentioned above, a quite successful businessman whom I know and get along with well from previous interactions) went on a long theological spiel that was actually kind of amazing. He emphasized that he, unlike Catholics, understood the words of scripture (particularly John 3:8 and Revelations (sic) 22:17) to stipulate an unforced, unguided, “whosoever will” relationship with God–and moreover, since all interactions between Christians are to be guided by the Holy Spirit, the obvious conclusion is that Adam Smith’s unforced, unguided, invisible hand is a good representation of the will of God, so long as the free market is population by Christians who are attentive to the Spirit. Thus, any truly Christian society, or even one which only aspires to such, must recognize that any regulation or redistribution which interferes with the free will decisions of individual Christians regarding how to dispose of their property or share their wealth–even edicts which exist to serve putatively Christian ends like community and equality–contravene the word of God. Hence, Pope Francis’s insistence that we need to perceive an additional commandment against an “economy of exclusion and inequality” [paragraph 53], to say nothing of his defense of states as defenders of “the common good” [paragraph 56] and his call for “politicians capable of sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots…of the evils in our world” [paragraph 205], is simply nonsense from a Christian point of view.
(Russell Arben Fox) Sometimes, I understand why people fall into the liberal abyss: fleeing preposterous “conservatism.” Yet those proof-texts aren’t much thinner than the proofs of the dispensationalist nonsense that is now so ubiquitous.
Am I the only one who is always looking for objective proof that my Church is the True Church? (No scare quotes, by the way; I believe there is a True Church and that I’m a lucky enough sinner to have stumbled onto it.) I’m not so stupid as to say it out loud, at least nowhere near as often as I think about it, but think about it, I do.
So today Rod Dreher hands me some delectable, yeasty twofer starter for such musings: Right fringe Evangelical Bill Gothard and frankly fundamentalist Bob Jones University seemingly have been covering up their respective sex scandals since at least the 1980s. And I know of a local church with two members, bam-bam, arrested within a painfully short period for child molesting. And of course, there’s the well-publicized scandals in that other major contender to the title of True Church. You know: the one with a “Rock Star” Patriarch.
Such a thing would never happen … Oh, wait! Never mind!
Honestly, I don’t even want to wallow in comparative frequency speculations, let alone to claim that “it can’t happen here.” If having these sorts of problems is a disqualification, then the whole field is disqualified.
But the coverups – the coverups are so calculated, and thus are especially appalling. One occurrence is one too many.
Lord have mercy!
I’m going to go ahead and say it: I respect Obama’s restraint from making new military “incursions” in places we really don’t need to be. I even liked Kerry’s approach to Crimea: offer Putin a face-saving escape route, like Putin earlier gave Obama on, I believe, Syria.
I suspect I would find much that’s odious about the rest of his foreign policy, where I suspect he’s pushing our decadence on the rest of the world as enlightenment and, God forbid, being on the right side of history.
But credit where credit is due: that he kept us from smacking the next military Tar Baby is not damning by faint praise (and if anyone’s offended by the Joel Chandler Harris allusion, offer me a better metaphor).
Conor Friedersdorf supports same-sex marriage, but he is also willing to look past the rhetoric and consider the facts when it comes to religious freedom. This helpful piece moves the conversation forward.
(Manhattan Declaration on Facebook, commending this article, which fulfills that promise)
Moving the conversation forward is not a commendation available to Mark Joseph Stern, who, however, admirably illustrates Chesterton’s description of bigotry: “It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.”
Either that or Stern’s just lying and bullying. It’s tedious to deal with that bullying crap, but necessary.
Ouch! It’s painful to be caught making an opportunistic argument (academic freedom) just because it has considerable cachet and fits your desired outcome at the moment.
Such is Patrick Deneen’s exposure of “conservatives” baited into arguing “academic freedom” in defense of Harvey Mansfield. I won’t lampoon those who made the argument because I could easily imagine myself doing the same thing, past or future, because “academic freedom” is a piece of liberalism so entrenched that it seems neutral. Read Deneen’s dissident take on it.
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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)
Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 