Today American Greatness presented as its long weekend read an essay by Roger Kimball,: Highways to Utopia Humanity is at the crossroads of an awesome moral divide. Embedded within this essay are links to two other pieces that work together to place our current crisis within an historical context that stretches back to the days of the Roman Empire. Taken together they also help explain why I regularly maintain that individual conversion followed by conversion of society is the only solution that has a chance of overcoming the forces that are bringing our constitutional order and way of life to ruin.
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
Mark, I consider this one of your very best and most important posts. This is cartography showing us where we are today as a society and a civilization and how we got here. I greatly appreciate your introduction of and endorsement of Dawson, whose ability to see and project the civilizational "big picture" is amazing and prophetic. I also appreciate that Milan is a great observer of the Trump phenomenon and I agree with his statements and conclusions. Finally, thank you for all your thoughts and observations, including:
"That political order was founded on the basis of certain self evident truths. The first and most important of those truths is that human beings are natured beings created by God, and the good of human being is to live in accordance with the nature that God has given us."
I actually wrote about this in an e-mail to a friend last week. Recognition of God-given (a priori) human nature and its common attributes is not just a prerequisite for the success of OUR political order but for ANY political order. That is why in our time political theories as Conservativism, Socialism, and Liberalism seem so anachronistic and inapplicable - indeed without power against the chaos. I believe the "elites" are grappling with this deficit now. Perhaps this is why according to them we need a new "Transhuman" nature to replace the old "Human Nature." No God necessary when they themselves want to be the Gods and take over his role of engineering the world and all that is in it.
JUST IN: Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX executives donated $70 million to US politicians for midterm elections, weeks before filing for bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports.
I just figured it out - you have to like the higher level ones in order to like the lower levels. Then, if you want, you can go back and unlike the higher levels, mostly. It's a bit hit and miss, but it works to a degree on my phone.
How does the saying go? When you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything. I'm not saying belief in God is simply a pragmatic necessity, but that lack of belief--reasonable belief--is behind the lack of effective resistance.
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
— C.H. Dawson
Mark, I consider this one of your very best and most important posts. This is cartography showing us where we are today as a society and a civilization and how we got here. I greatly appreciate your introduction of and endorsement of Dawson, whose ability to see and project the civilizational "big picture" is amazing and prophetic. I also appreciate that Milan is a great observer of the Trump phenomenon and I agree with his statements and conclusions. Finally, thank you for all your thoughts and observations, including:
"That political order was founded on the basis of certain self evident truths. The first and most important of those truths is that human beings are natured beings created by God, and the good of human being is to live in accordance with the nature that God has given us."
I actually wrote about this in an e-mail to a friend last week. Recognition of God-given (a priori) human nature and its common attributes is not just a prerequisite for the success of OUR political order but for ANY political order. That is why in our time political theories as Conservativism, Socialism, and Liberalism seem so anachronistic and inapplicable - indeed without power against the chaos. I believe the "elites" are grappling with this deficit now. Perhaps this is why according to them we need a new "Transhuman" nature to replace the old "Human Nature." No God necessary when they themselves want to be the Gods and take over his role of engineering the world and all that is in it.
Thanks. Consider--that was only Dawson's first published article. He went on to a long career of writing.
Astounding! I will look forward to additional reading. Thanks again!
Thank you, Mark, for this excellent post and analysis.
https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/11/republicans-likely-will-give-biden-gun.html
This is why Ron DeSantis has to be thoroughly vetted. Its not enough to have an R after your name.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/is_the_pill_turning_women_into_lesbians.html
Or maybe into Dems?
Watcher.Guru
@WatcherGuru
JUST IN: Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX executives donated $70 million to US politicians for midterm elections, weeks before filing for bankruptcy, Bloomberg reports.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/daylight-savings-time-disproportionately-impacts-communities-color-insists-cnn-article
https://www.opensecrets.org/featured-datasets/49
$57 million Democrats
$22 Million GOP
By top 3 Exec at FTX
My gut feeling is there is more donations via dark money, supposedly “non partisan”
I just figured it out - you have to like the higher level ones in order to like the lower levels. Then, if you want, you can go back and unlike the higher levels, mostly. It's a bit hit and miss, but it works to a degree on my phone.
How does the saying go? When you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything. I'm not saying belief in God is simply a pragmatic necessity, but that lack of belief--reasonable belief--is behind the lack of effective resistance.