The Heckler's Veto

What's Wrong With the World has this incredible video of Americans being denied their free speech rights at a Muslim street festival in Deerborn, Michigan.



The law is that the police must protect speakers from such "heckler's vetos."

Let's hope that in Multi-cultural America, the right to free speech isn't nuanced in favor of favored minorities.

The Hidden Agenda

It's interesting how the hidden agenda of abortion-rights - reducing the surplus welfare population - has been clumsily revealed by certain liberal women recently, as if they are forgetting that they are not having a private discussion in the Hamptons. So, we had the spectacle of Pelosi admitting that abortion has the benefit of reducing government costs by reducing the number of welfare dependents and now we have Justice Ginsberg opining:

As part of her broad-ranging discussion of abortion, Ginsburg offers this, er, interesting comment why the Court’s 1980 decision in Harris v. McRae, which ruled that the Hyde Amendment’s exclusion of nontherapeutic abortions from Medicaid reimbursement was constitutionally permissible, “surprised” her:

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.

Well, of course that's what she thought. Didn't everyone?

As Kathyrn Jean Lopez points out, there is a long association of the left in America with eugenics. Also, we often forget that until World War II, eugenics was taught in American schools and in American text books as being a very good thing - very scientific and progressive. Undergirding this sentiment was the notion that there were too many of those kind of people who were a drain on social resources. After all, it was liberal icon Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in the Buck v. Bell decision who opined:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind...
Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Holmes' sentiments live on in Pelosi and Ginsburg's comments.

Samuel Greg at the Acton Powerblog offers his take on the new encyclical Caritas in Veritate:

Perhaps Caritas in Veritate’s most important truth-claim about economic life is that the market economy cannot be based on just any value-system. Against all relativists on the left and the right, Benedict maintains that market economies must be underpinned by commitments to particular basic moral goods and a certain vision of the human person if it is to serve rather than undermine humanity’s common good: “The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred” (CV no.45)

“Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust,” the Pope writes, “the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function” (CV no. 35). This surely has been amply confirmed by the recent financial crisis. America’s subprime-mortgage market collapse was at least partly attributable to the fact that literally thousands of people lied on their mortgage application forms. Should we be surprised that mass violation of the moral prohibition against lying has devastating economic consequences? “The economic sphere”, the pope reminds us, “is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner” (CV no.36).

And:

Nor does Benedict regard the market as morally problematic in itself. “In and of itself,” the Pope states, “the market is not . . . the place where the strong subdue the weak. Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations” (CV no.36). What matters, Benedict claims, is the moral culture in which markets exists.

At the heart of the economy are human persons. People whose minds are dominated by crassly hedonistic cultures will make crassly hedonistic economic choices. “Therefore”, Benedict comments, “it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals” (CV no.36).

The implications of truth for economic life do not, however, stop here. For Benedict, it is a lens through which to assess ideas such as “business ethics”, “ethical investing” and “corporate social responsibility.” The notion that investment and business choices have a moral dimension is hardly new. What matters for Benedict is the understanding of morality underlying these schemes. Merely labeling an investment scheme as “ethical”, Benedict notes, hardly tells us whether it is moral (CV no.45).

This describes the libertarian conundrum: in order to have a workable system based on the freedom implicit in a free market - or a democracy - we have to have people who recognize ethical limits on that freedom.

Here is a link to Caritas in Veritate.

Economic malaise raises hope for melanin-deficient redheads

Economic malaise seems to be driving dating:

Credit the recession for staycations and bringing us more game-night parties at home. But also give it a shout for spurring more first dates.

Economic woes, it seems, unleash something practically primal in many of us who find ourselves without a partner: a hard-wired desire for companionship.

Some singles are now hunting for dates with the same fervor others are showing hunting for jobs. On matchmaking Web site eHarmony.com, membership is up 20 percent despite monthly fees of up to $60, and activity has soared 50 percent since September at OkCupid.com.

The Invisible Hand is at work - we're looking for bargains:

Still, Sam Yagan, the founder and CEO at OkCupid.com, sees the changing dating climate as a matter of dollars and cents.

The way he figures it, a man can spend $100 buying drinks at a bar trying to pick up a stranger and leave with little more than a cold shoulder. But, when he's in a relationship, a Saturday evening can be as simple as Thai noodle takeout, Netflix and some fun under the covers. All in all, Yagan said, that's "more bang for your buck."

It's more than just the recession. Experts say changes in behavior can relate to other world events - with upticks when news is bad.

And everyone is discounting:

A gentler tone is taking over, daters and observers say, with substance gaining over style.

For Mili Thomas, a 28-year-old graduate student in New York, that means she now spends time with men who didn't show up on her radar screen before the recession. Among them: a Ph.D. who would have been nixed because he lives in New Jersey and an employee at a marketing firm who wouldn't have made the grade because he is two years her junior.

"I figured this was the best possible time to explore other options since people's lives have been turned topsy turvy," she said. "I think everyone is more open to bucking convention given that 'the usual' has gone out the window."

1974 Detroit is coming back with a vengeance!

Nominalism

Craig wrote:

In a message dated 6/29/2009 5:19:42 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, craigb@csufresno.edu writes:
Here's why I'm wondering. If God is defined as "being itself," which I take it is Aquinas position, and being is inherently good, then God, and the moral structure of the universe, would just be good, baring enemy action.

But if God is simply another entity in the universe among others, albeit the most powerful, then he takes up the position of being "boss" in a different way than in the Aquinas model, and so could change moral rules at will.

Seems like a fairly significant issue for natural law.

I'm sure I haven't stated the issue very well, but maybe someone can address that too.

PSB's response:

Here is my conclusion; you can follow my thinking below.

I think that you are right about a critical distinction between Nominalism and Scholasticism being whether God is just "another object in the world" versus being the ground of existence itself. Under Thomism, everything that exists, exists in a true relationship with God, i.e., things other than God "participate" in God's goodness and being because they exist because they are ordered to God's own goodness. Since there is such a relationship, things can be compared to God.

Nominalism does not teach that things are ordered to God. The existence of things says nothing about the nature of God. Things cannot be compared to God.

For things to be compared there must be some idea or word that encompasses the things to be compared. We can compare a large ball and a small ball, for example, but we can't compare the taste of an banana with the color blue because there is no idea or word that covers both experiences at the same time. For all practical purposes, the taste of a banana and the color blue might as well be in separate universes.

Repudiating universals would have the tendency of putting God into a "different universe" in terms of making a comparison between Creator and Created. If words just describe individual things, then we don't have the ability to compare Creator and Creation.

Remove the ability to make such a comparison of existence or goodness between Creator and Creature, then all that remains is God as a "boss."

Analysis:

Obviously, one of us is going to have to break down and read William of Ockham or Duns Scotus.

Until we do, though, here are some sketchy points that are not tightly reasoned.

According David Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity:

"Faith alone, Ockham argues, teaches us that God is omnipotent and that he can do anything that is possible, that is to say, everything that is not contradictory. thus, ever being exists only as a result of his willing it and it exists as it does and as long as it does only because he so wills it. Creation is thus an act of sheer grace and is comprehensible only through revelation. God creates the world and continues to act within it, bound neither by his own laws nor by his previous determinations. He acts simply and solely as he pleases and, and as Ockham often repeats, he is no man's debtor. There is thus no immutable order of nature or reason that man can understand and no knowledge of God except through revelation."

In the Thomistic scheme, God is pure being itself. “Pure being” implies a particular kind of thing, namely that God is “pure act” – or “total actualization” - which means that there is no “potentiality” in God. God does not have the potential to be anything other than what He is. He is, therefore, immutable. ST I, 9, 1.

First, because it was shown above that there is some first being, whom we call God; and that this first being must be pure act, without the admixture of any potentiality, for the reason that, absolutely, potentiality is posterior to act. Now everything which is in any way changed, is in some way in potentiality. Hence it is evident that it is impossible for God to be in any way changeable.

God’s immutability – His perfect actualization without the possibility of potentiality, or ability to change by getting better or worse – follows from His perfection ST I, 4 , 1:

Reply to Objection 3. Existence is the most perfect of all things, for it is compared to all things as that by which they are made actual; for nothing has actuality except so far as it exists. Hence existence is that which actuates all things, even their forms.

It seems that this idea of pure existence meaning “pure act” ties into the immutability of God’s will. ST I, 19, 7.

Now it has already been shown that both the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable (9, 1; 14, 15). Therefore His will must be entirely unchangeable.

One of the conclusions that Thomas reached was that God necessarily wills His own good:

Hence God wills His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has necessary relation to its proper and principal object, for instance the sight to color, since it tends to it by its own nature. But God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end.

Now, that conclusion is clearly different than that which is ascribed to Ockham, who argued that God was not constrained by nothing – not even His own past determinations.

There is also a “jump” from God to the created world through God’s will.

God wills things other than Himself but those things are willed as part of God’s willing His own goodness. ST I, 19, 2:

I answer that, God wills not only Himself, but other things apart from Himself. This is clear from the comparison which we made above (Article 1). For natural things have a natural inclination not only towards their own proper good, to acquire it if not possessed, and, if possessed, to rest therein; but also to spread abroad their own good amongst others, so far as possible. Hence we see that every agent, in so far as it is perfect and in act, produces its like. It pertains, therefore, to the nature of the will to communicate as far as possible to others the good possessed; and especially does this pertain to the divine will, from which all perfection is derived in some kind of likeness. Hence, if natural things, in so far as they are perfect, communicate their good to others, much more does it appertain to the divine will to communicate by likeness its own good to others as much as possible. Thus, then, He wills both Himself to be, and other things to be; but Himself as the end, and other things as ordained to that end; inasmuch as it befits the divine goodness that other things should be partakers therein.

Hmmmm….also, it is the nature of God’s willing, rather than his mere existence, that allows creation to participate in God’s existence. Id.

Reply to Objection 1. The divine will is God's own existence essentially, yet they differ in aspect, according to the different ways of understanding them and expressing them, as is clear from what has already been said (13, 4). For when we say that God exists, no relation to any other object is implied, as we do imply when we say that God wills. Therefore, although He is not anything apart from Himself, yet He does will things apart from Himself.

So, let’s stop here for a moment. In Scholasticism, created things exist separately from God because they are ordered to God’s goodness in that God creates things as part of His willing His own good. In Nominalism, God has no such necessary purpose in willing things – He just does it.

This means that in Nominalism there is no real relationship between God’s “existence” and the objects of His will, as there is Scholasticism.

The idea of a relationship is essential to our belief that we can understand God by looking at His creation.

Being is convertible to Goodness (ST I, 5, 1) - because (a) for a thing to be good it must necessarily exist and (b) we know - pace Augustine - that evil is merely the absence of Good, evil having no ontological existence itself. We humans have a natural experience of goodness and being - which is merely a pale penumbra from God. Still, our natural experience of goodness and being is nonetheless a true experience of God.

This conclusion follows from the fact that all things desire their own perfection, which means that ultimately they desire God. ST I, 6, 1:

Reply to Objection 2. All things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself, inasmuch as the perfections of all things are so many similitudes of the divine being; as appears from what is said above (Question 4, Article 3). And so of those things which desire God, some know Him as He is Himself, and this is proper to the rational creature; others know some participation of His goodness, and this belongs also to sensible knowledge; others have a natural desire without knowledge, as being directed to their ends by a higher intelligence.

All goodness participates in God's goodness, i.e., things are good to the extent that they resemble, more or less, God. However, if things "participate" in God's goodness or being, they "resemble" in some way God, and, therefore, we can discern something of God in examining created things.

Love and Economics


From Vox Day:

"Is marriage worth it? Well, I should say it increasingly depends on the sex and religion of the individual. In its present state-dictated form, marriage is very much worth it for women, it is a tolerable and necessary risk for religious men, and it is an incredibly stupid gamble for non-religious men. Was this man religious? If not, then you are not only dealing with whatever personal issues may or may not have been present, but also with the reality that you are asking him to stake his entire emotional and financial future on your passing fancies. That is problematic if you happen to be interested in men with IQs over 85.

As to the larger question, I don't know that it's entirely relevant. As a single mother, it very much behooves you to find a father for your child. That is more important than any questions of self-fulfillment or romantic stars, and anyhow, if you've had a long string of horrible relationships, it should be clear by now that the follow-your-feelings approach to acquiring a husband is probably not the optimal one. The good news, however, is that there isn't just one perfect man that you somehow have to find and curse the luck if he happens to have been born in Tibet where he's being raised to be a Buddhist monk sworn to celibacy and silence. More than a few of the three billion men on the planet are excellent potential husbands, the trick is to stop wasting your time on the non-starters. You shouldn't need 18 months to determine that a man isn't in the marriage market.

I really wish more men and women understood the concept of opportunity cost. Every day you waste with someone who has demonstrated that he is not a potential husband is one less day you have to meet a man who is. Don't seek to change them, accept and respect their perspective and move on. The other important thing is to refuse to let the ideal become the enemy of the real. The man you marry today will not be the man you are married to in a decade, just as you will not be the same woman. Remember that marriage and love are as much processes as states.

As for the gentleman who delivered the crushing blow, I think it might be educational to have a frank conversation with him. Ask him not to let you down gently and fall back on generalities as he has done, but to explain precisely why he doesn't see it working out. Make sure you let him know you're not trying to change his mind, you simply want to know in order to avoid making future mistakes. Don't argue, in fact, don't even talk, just listen to him. The purpose is not to salvage the dead relationship, but rather to help you make more intelligent decisions about your next one. Yes, breakups can hurt, but feelings always fade with time.

I think I can safely say, as someone who never thought about getting married and never wanted to get married, that marriage can definitely be worth it. While I happened to be fortunate rather than intelligent in finding Spacebunny, that doesn't mean that one can't approach the process in an intelligent manner. The greatest challenge, assuming you don't actually physically repel strangers with your looks, is that men are rightfully wary of gambling their future and family on momentary female whims. So, the more you make it clear that you will do anything and sign anything that helps reduce that unreasonable risk, the more likely it is that you will eventually find yourself in possession of a husband."

Discuss.

My thoughts. Vox is a libertarian Christian. He focuses on marriage as quintessentially a contractual exchange - sex for security. Or, perhaps, it is better to say that he perceives secular women (and men) in the marriage market as seeing marriage as a contractual exchange.

If one sees marriage as more transcendent, however, then marriage is more than contract. That requires some sense of a "sacramental" dimension to marriage, which in an essentially post-Modern, post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment world, there is no reason to expect.

For more on this, check out Jennifer Roback Morse's excellent "Love and Economics."

Gay Adoption not in the news.

Newsbusters has this non-MSM story:

Frank Lombard is an associate director at Duke University's Global Health Institute and a homosexual who was charged last week with the molestation of his adopted 5-year-old black son and actively trying to sell him for sex on the internet.

Newsbusters fleshed out the story:

At the time of this post not one television show has reported the story and only 17 newspapers in the United States featured it - a majority of which are only small local newspapers.

And most of these articles cited the American Press' report on the events,hich was as follows:

AP) WASHINGTON - A Duke University official has been arrested and charged with offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex.

Frank Lombard, the school's associate director of the Center for Health Policy, was arrested after an Internet sting, according to the FBI's Washington field office and the city's police department.

According to an affidavit by District of Columbia Police Det. Timothy Palchak, an unnamed informant facing charges in his own child sex case led authorities to Lombard.

Authorities said that Lombard tried to persuade a person -who he did not know was a police officer -to travel to North Carolina to have sex with Lombard's child.

The detective's affidavit charges Lombard identified himself online as "perv dad for fun," and says that in an online chat with the detective, Lombard said he had sexually molested his son, whom he adopted as an infant.

The court papers say Lombard also invited the undercover detective to North Carolina to have sex with the young boy, and even suggested which hotel he should use."

In response to the AP report, which most of the newspapers used almost verbatim, Mike Adams of Townhall made the observation that "The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement."

Remember when dissent was the highest form of patriotism?

Dissent on global warming and you are guilty of treason!

To the Planet!

According to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman:

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

It certainly was - never have so many been stampeded over such a non-existent issue without reading the bill they were passing.

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

Or maybe they thought that global temperature had something to do with the Sun.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

Terrific. Now the left has a whole new numinous entity that it can claim as a basis for "thought crimes." In the past, it was the Proletariat. Now, it's the Planet.

Dissent is past its "sell-by" date now that the left is in power

Ethnic Cleansing

Bosnia's Catholics Nearly Gone:

The Muslim population is growing in Bosnia to such an extent that Sarajevo is a "practically Muslim city," according to Cardinal Franc Rodé.

The prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life affirmed this when he spoke with Vatican Radio about his June 19-21 trip to the Balkans.

The prelate stated that Catholics were the main victims of the war and many fled the country, heading to Croatia or far-away nations like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. He explained that many had their houses burned and others fled for their lives. Many priests and religious were killed, and churches and monasteries destroyed.

"Numerically, they have diminished a lot," he said after his visit at the invitation of Cardinal Vinko Puljic. There are only 17,000 Catholics in Sarajevo, he noted, a city of 600,000. "In the Diocese of Banja Luka, before the war between 1991 and 1995, there were 150,000 Catholics; now there are only 35,000."

This is actually part of an ancient human phenomenon. According to Rodney Stark, whenever conflict flares up between two faiths, pressure increases against religious minorities, whether it is Jews in medieval Europe or Catholics in modern Bosnia, who are perceived as potential "fifth columnists."