Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Intermezzo
The "balance" of yesterday's elections was already calculated two months ago by conservative pundit Ramesh Ponnuru. In the end, this may well turn out to be a step towards a McCain presidency, and just a temporary anesthesia for the democratic party as it drowns in a cultural vacuum. If there is a long-term trend in US politics, it is probably that the common people in the heartland feel that their way of life is threatened by the nihilism of the liberal elites. Another is that people fear a developing world war. Obviously both of these play in the hands of the Republicans, since the Democrats are not even prepared to accept that there is a war and that their intellectual guides are essentially nihilistic. The irony is that they have to end up recruiting people like Jim Webb.
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7 comments:
Sorry, I do not understand your commentary. Why do you think that the Democratic party will be living in a "cultural vacuum" when a big number of them run defending conservative values? Many of their ideas are more in accord with Catholic principles than the Republicans. Think about compassion with immigrants and health services available for the dozens of millions of poors of our country.
What ideas? Sentimental humanitarianism without onthological foundations? That relates to nihilism liken whipped cream to strawberries. Walker Percy figured that one out: "Compassion leads to the gas chambers."
That they are forced to run people like Webb and Casey just shows that there still a (shrinking?) gap between European-style nihilism and the US mainstream. It does not show that US liberalism nowadays has any solid philosophical foundations besides a generic faith in "science" (which has only one logical outcome: social Darwinism) and the conviction that individual instinctivity should never be constrained by tradition or shared social values. You call those "ideas?"
On the Democtratic side, there also seems to be a strong connection between taking care of existing poor women, infants, children but doing everything possible to limit their numbers (family planning, birth control, abortion).
On a completely unrelated topic, did anybody see this article: BRITAIN'S Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology is reportedly calling on doctors to consider euthanasing "the sickest of newborns" which it says can disable healthy families.
Here we find Walker Percy's prediction (which he snagged from Flannery O'Connor!) demonstrated in the civilized West.
Dear Carlo and "Deep Furrows", the original comment was modified, and now it is clear about what s/he wants to say.
Carlo, who cares about what a person can believe? Do you remember Corinthians 13:1-13?
"si linguis hominum loquar et angelorum caritatem autem non habeam factus sum velut aes sonans aut cymbalum tinniens et si habuero prophetiam et noverim mysteria omnia et omnem scientiam et habuero omnem fidem ita ut montes transferam caritatem autem non habuero nihil sum et si distribuero in cibos pauperum omnes facultates meas et si tradidero corpus meum ut ardeam caritatem autem non habuero nihil mihi prodest caritas patiens est benigna est caritas non aemulatur non agit perperam non inflatur non est ambitiosa non quaerit quae sua sunt non inritatur non cogitat malum
non gaudet super iniquitatem congaudet autem veritati omnia suffert omnia credit omnia sperat omnia sustinet caritas numquam excidit sive prophetiae evacuabuntur sive linguae cessabunt sive scientia destruetur ex parte enim cognoscimus et ex parte prophetamus cum autem venerit quod perfectum est evacuabitur quod ex parte est cum essem parvulus loquebar ut parvulus sapiebam ut parvulus cogitabam ut parvulus quando factus sum vir evacuavi quae erant parvuli videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate tunc autem facie ad faciem nunc cognosco ex parte tunc autem cognoscam sicut et cognitus sum nunc autem manet fides spes caritas tria haec maior autem his est caritas"
Walker Percey could way whatever wants, but we should obbey Christ. In your opinion Casey and Webb are bad, but do you think that Santorum or Randy Graf are mor ein accord with Catholic fatih? How do you order the commandments and with what authority that you can say something like that?
Santorum and Casey oppose abortion rights. Read this article from The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:
http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=10776
Who ever said Casey and Webb are bad? I love them! I hope they take over the democratic party, but I think they may also end up being used (by the people who control the party) in order to hide the obvious fact which you refuse to recognize: that today the philosophical foundations of contemporary liberalism are nihilistic. Instead of waxing pompously about charity, you should stop and think how virtue relates to knowledge (theologically, how charity relates to faith).
Anyway, we are clearly talkin at cross purposes. And if you care to continue this conversation you should at least start signing your name to you pronouncements.
Christ commands us to love others. Loving others does not necessarily imply socializing health care or adopting the system of government run childcare that Hillary Clinton once proposed. It also does not mean being a pacifist.
Though I agree with Carlo, I'd like to correct his quotation. Percy--citing Flannery--says that tenderness leads to the gas chambers. Compassion is a positive virtue that all human beings should possess. But tenderness, untethered to a meaningful ontological foundation, is a mere sentiment that can be twisted into justifying evil acts like eugenics.
Compassion and justice are virtues proper to a person, not to governments. It was a non-Catholic economist, Friedrick Hayek, who reminded us of that.
Nice with the Latin, Mr. Anonymous. We were very impressed. Except that I read the gospels in the original Greek.
Just kidding.
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