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Perennial California politico Jerry Brown is a self-styled environmentalist who likes to think of himself as a progressive Everyman, but as Laer Pearce shows with an assist from Sacramento columnist Dan Walters, Brown has more oil money than Jed Clampett ever did -- and it's from holdings in Indonesia that date back to the time of that country's military dictatorship, reinforced by personal and decisive influence over the decisions made by California's Air Resources Board.
I used to work close to the refinery in El Segundo, and bop around Playa del Rey, but it was only after reading Laer's essay at the link that I realized what kind of hardball politics has shaped that landscape. No wonder Laer calls it "Crazifornia."
14 Ağustos 2012 Salı
Philosophy 101
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"What makes a human being a rational animal, on the Aristotelian view, is not that he or she actually does or can exercise rationality at some point or other, but rather that an inherent potential for the exercise of rationality is actually in every human organism in a sense in which it is not in a turnip, or a dog, or a skin cell. this is obvious from the fact that a mature and undamaged human being actually reasons, whereas even a mature and undamaged turnip, dog, or skin cell does not and cannot reason. And yet an immature or damaged human being is still a human being, which entails that it has the form of a human being and thus the potentials inherent in that form, whether or not they are ever actualized."
-- Edward Feser at his didactic best in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
-- Edward Feser at his didactic best in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.
The power of ideas
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If you had recently finished reading Edward Feser's ringing defense of Aristotle and Aquinas, then you might also be inclined toward mashups like this one: A thoughtful look at Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s great dystopian science fiction novel ("sacred shopping list," anyone?) and a blurb on Vatican funding for adult stem cell research from the Anchoress. Those people who continue to bray about conflict between science and religion or lean overmuch on Galileo as a poster boy for what allegedly happens when popes meddle with freedom of inquiry are what Bugs Bunny would have called "maroons." Such folk need to brush up on their history and probably also their philosophy.
If you had recently finished reading Edward Feser's ringing defense of Aristotle and Aquinas, then you might also be inclined toward mashups like this one: A thoughtful look at Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s great dystopian science fiction novel ("sacred shopping list," anyone?) and a blurb on Vatican funding for adult stem cell research from the Anchoress. Those people who continue to bray about conflict between science and religion or lean overmuch on Galileo as a poster boy for what allegedly happens when popes meddle with freedom of inquiry are what Bugs Bunny would have called "maroons." Such folk need to brush up on their history and probably also their philosophy.
Paging Saint Paul
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Fr. Dwight Longenecker explains the non-negotiable "theology of patriarchy," with an assist from Fr. Aidan Nichols and Galatians 4:4:
God the Father's identity is defined and revealed by the fact that He is Father to the Only Begotten Son. Therefore, the fatherhood of God is not a culturally determined and anachronistic fossil from a patriarchal age that we have outgrown. Instead, it is a characteristic at the very heart of the essence of who God is.
Arguments for the ordination of women may be conducted on sentimental, egalitarian, and utilitarian lines, but once they stray over the border into theology, they must come face to face with the innate patriarchy of the Judeo-Christian revelation. A patriarchal element is of the essence of historic Christianity and, no matter how unpopular, is indispensable.
Of course, to assert the primacy of patriarchy is not to condone the abuses of patriarchy -- the abuse of women or the overreach of power-hungry men who use patriarchy to consolidate their control. God the Father sets the example of a servant patriarch who gives all for those in His care.
God the Father's identity is defined and revealed by the fact that He is Father to the Only Begotten Son. Therefore, the fatherhood of God is not a culturally determined and anachronistic fossil from a patriarchal age that we have outgrown. Instead, it is a characteristic at the very heart of the essence of who God is.
Arguments for the ordination of women may be conducted on sentimental, egalitarian, and utilitarian lines, but once they stray over the border into theology, they must come face to face with the innate patriarchy of the Judeo-Christian revelation. A patriarchal element is of the essence of historic Christianity and, no matter how unpopular, is indispensable.
Of course, to assert the primacy of patriarchy is not to condone the abuses of patriarchy -- the abuse of women or the overreach of power-hungry men who use patriarchy to consolidate their control. God the Father sets the example of a servant patriarch who gives all for those in His care.
Something to ponder
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Anthony Esolen:
The Thomistic view of the polis underlies the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, which asserts that communities closest to the issue at hand should be allowed the freedom to tackle it. That is not simply because they do a better job of it, as some conservatives insist. It is because the fullness of community life is essential to our being human...
The question, then, is not simply, "What system will most efficiently deliver health care to the most people?" I do not believe that it will help to nationalize medicine; but that is another issue. The real question is, "What traditions and laws best preserve the liberty of a people, not to do as they please, but to take responsibility for themselves and their communities, so that they will enjoy as fully as possible the human flourishing of the polis?" If we become beholden to the national government for our very health -- let alone for the education of our children -- what will be left for us to do but follow that government along tamely, conceding all matters to its purview?
The Thomistic view of the polis underlies the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity, which asserts that communities closest to the issue at hand should be allowed the freedom to tackle it. That is not simply because they do a better job of it, as some conservatives insist. It is because the fullness of community life is essential to our being human...
The question, then, is not simply, "What system will most efficiently deliver health care to the most people?" I do not believe that it will help to nationalize medicine; but that is another issue. The real question is, "What traditions and laws best preserve the liberty of a people, not to do as they please, but to take responsibility for themselves and their communities, so that they will enjoy as fully as possible the human flourishing of the polis?" If we become beholden to the national government for our very health -- let alone for the education of our children -- what will be left for us to do but follow that government along tamely, conceding all matters to its purview?
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