Tag: Morality

Media & Culture

Public Health Leaders Should Be Carefully Scrutinized

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Quote of the Day for Sunday, November 5th, 2010: Matthew Hanley over at The Catholic Thing on Thursday, commenting on the public reaction to Pope Benedict’s recent statement on condom use in the Peter Seewald book, in a post entitled Misrepresenting Benedict’s Bravery: The New York Times tells us the pope’s words, in the newly published book Light of the World, were received with “glee from clerics and health workers in Africa, where the AIDS problem is worst.” The pope as anachronistic obstacle to global health has long been a fashionable narrative. But...

Religion & Society

The Great Retreat of Pederasty

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I picked up a link from Hot Air a few days ago to a disturbing but fascinating (English-language) article in Der Spiegel Online, The Sexual Revolution and Children: How the Left Took Things Too Far. The article explores the history of post-1968 views on human sexuality, specifically its role in the “liberation” politics of the left wing in the non-communist world, and how that was translated into pedagogy at the Kinderladen (nursery school) level in the more left-leaning communities in Germany. The results, it should come as no surprise, are chilling: Do...

Politics & Economics

The Edge of Politics

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Richard Fernandez over at Pajamas Media posted a disturbing commentary yesterday on a couple of articles he had recently read concerning the apocalyptic economic problems facing both California and Great Britain. The root of the problem, in both cases, is easy enough to identify: the entitlement mentality that promotes the belief that something can be had for nothing (or little). The title of his article (I Want My MTV) sums the matter up neatly (money for nothing, chicks for free…). But it’s easy to hammer on the unsustainability of free lunch programs ...

Critical Issues

Body/Soul Dualism, the Commodification of Man, and the Contradiction of Death

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As a rule, I like Jeff Jacoby’s columns, and even agree with him as often as not, but every now and then he comes out with something I find downright unconscionable. His July 5th Boston Globe op-ed promoting the marketing of human organs is an unfortunate example of the latter. With the recent liver transplant of celebrity tech guru Steve Jobs having again roiled the waters of the debate over the “fairness” of our current organ donation system, Jacoby has added his voice to the rising tide of liberal, utilitarian opinion promising free market “solutions”...

Critical Issues

Tiller Meets the Reaper

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So, “Tiller the Baby Killer” has met his demise – assassinated this morning during church services. I can only groan over the anticipated avalanche of righteous indignation cascading from the heights of the pro-abortion ranks. Like the proverbial mandatory pinch of incense for Caesar, everyone who is publicly pro-life will be required to preface any and all remarks on the matter by condemning the assassination. I am not an advocate of violence – assassination or otherwise – so I have no personal  problem with condemning the act, but I do have a prob...

Religion & Society

The Green Weapon

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Contributing to my continually growing suspicion that I am an alien who ended up on this planet by mistake, I observed the world observing Earth Day yesterday. This seems like a harmless enough celebration, and at one time I probably thought it sounded like a good way to recognize the importance of acknowledging humanity’s responsibility as steward of creation, but somewhere along the line (and quite possibly right from the start), the notion of earth-stewardship was co-opted by hucksters of an astounding variety of stripes. Everywhere I turned yesterday...

Politics & Economics

Is It Enough Yet?

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I suppose there are crazy things going on all the time, but there seems to be a concentration of them happening all at once. Every day brings news of more layoffs, and I wonder how many people will be unemployed before the spiral stops – and of course, I wonder if I will be among them. Meanwhile, more and more Ponzi schemes and other financial wrongdoing is being unearthed daily. Stewards of funds are being revealed as thieves, and countless reckless investors are finding out that the investments they gleefully thought were too good to be true, actually ...

Religion & Society

Things an Atheist Should Know Before He Tells Christians Things They Should Know Before Talking to an Atheist

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I came across a tease tonight on the WordPress.com dashboard for a post entitled “Things Christians Should Know Before Talking to an Atheist” and, having more curiosity than prudence, I bit on it. It turned out to be from a blog called Proud Atheists, written by an atheist who either thought he had some sage advice for Christians who might be inclined to try to convert him, or perhaps he was only looking for pats on the back from his fellow atheists for his cleverness. I would have given him the benefit of the doubt and assumed the former, bu...

Media & Culture

On the Cultural Relativism of Statutory Rape: Score One for Reality

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From the Department of Degenerate Disgrace: An article showed up in the Boston Globe a while back about a former U.S. Vice Consul to Brazil (no pun intended) who was asking a Virginia U.S. District Court judge for leniency after having been found guilty of taping himself having sex with various 14-17 year-old girls. Gons G. Nachman argued that it should be considered OK for him to have done this, because he did it in countries (the Congo and Brazil) where, he claimed, girls mature more quickly, and the cultural emphasis is on finding financially stable m...

Media & Culture

Celebrity Gossip and Moral Reasoning (part 2)

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Subjective Objectivity is the nonsense name I give to the nonsensical, widespread phenomenon in contemporary society of viewing the world through the narrow lens of one’s own experience, and assuming that such personal experience defines the norm for reality. This view is cut straight from the cloth of what Pope Benedict XVI has famously called a dictatorship of relativism. Typically, when pressed to defend the personalized opinions that emerge from such self-centered thinking, most believers of the doctrine will retreat into relativism, claiming t...