A Mother’s Fierce Love
I rescued this juvenile chipmunk from a neighbor’s cat. He seemed to be in shock, so I took him inside and gave him some diced apple and maple spinners. After… Read more A Mother’s Fierce Love →
Habits of Liberty: Part III
We have been studying why liberty must be more than an idea or speech. Part I considered how ideas are inflected or corrupted by incompatible habits; a bureaucrat, for example, will understand liberty differently than a small business owner. Part II addressed the powerlessness of speech against a centralized authority unless embodied in “intermediate powers.” Next we take up reason’s ability to persuade under present circumstances. Because liberalism is agnostic regarding questions of value, it allows them to be settled at the polls and in the market. A corollary to… Read more Habits of Liberty: Part III →
Habits of Liberty: Part II
Culture—understood as something not only thought, but enacted and embodied—shapes our articulation of values. Liberty, I have suggested, wears a different aspect under the present centralized bureaucracy than it did during the phase of our free-market republic. Christopher Lasch describes a related shift in our idea of “democracy”: “The word has come to serve simply as a description of the therapeutic state. When we speak of democracy today, we refer, more often than not, to the democratization of “self-esteem.” The current catchwords—diversity, compassion, empowerment, entitlement—express the wistful hope that deep… Read more Habits of Liberty: Part II →
Habits of Liberty: Part I
The Declaration of Independence tells us that government derives its “just powers from the consent of the governed” who lay “its foundation on such principles and organiz[e] its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Liberalism thus substitutes liberty or choice for any “abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience.” It is agnostic and agonistic regarding questions of ultimate value. A liberal nation discovers and effects its choice by means of polls and market, and because that… Read more Habits of Liberty: Part I →
Religion, Fundamentalism, Gnosticism, BLM: Part V
Fundamentalism, as I have said elsewhere, is a faith in a compact doctrine “which is unprovable but unchallengeable by facts or by argument external to that faith, and which claims a universal application.” Pastor John Piper’s recent contra-Trump article provides a good example of a fundamentalist mode of argument. The essentials of Piper’s argument are I think adequately summarized as follows. Trump, he suggests, exhibits certain “sins mentioned in the New Testament…that destroy people,” including “unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai) [and] strife-stirring… Read more Religion, Fundamentalism, Gnosticism, BLM: Part V →
Sex Cult and Facebook: How the Communications Decency Act Amplifies Obscene Libel
Many people now know that social media providers suppress content at odds with certain political or ideological goals. What’s seldom discussed is that so long as content is irrelevant to those goals, social media will complacently allow it to destroy lives. Here’s a story about that. A few years ago a middle-aged, unemployed, do-nothing internet maven took to Facebook to assert, outlandishly and falsely, that my clients, their six children, and a portion of their church had organized a sex cult and were grooming and preying upon minors. His post… Read more Sex Cult and Facebook: How the Communications Decency Act Amplifies Obscene Libel →
Religion, Fundamentalism, Gnosticism, BLM: Part IV
Addresses the newly religious and intolerant left, and its opposition to the “counter-majoritarian features” of the U.S. Constitution.
Religion, Fundamentalism, Gnosticism, BLM: Part III
Religion and politics organize power by means of narrative and of narrative’s embodiment in emplacements on the high and holy places. To be effective over time, a mobilizing narrative must… Read more Religion, Fundamentalism, Gnosticism, BLM: Part III →