When Evil Unmasks
One of the most strange, yet wonderful works of God occurs when He brings a culture to epistemological self-consciousness. Cultures and civilisations develop to the stage where evil is unmasked and their latent demonic inspiration becomes overtly displayed.
Christians, through their knowledge of the Scriptures and the Christian faith, often see these things well in advance. They know there is a logic in Unbelief. They know that all Unbelieving cultures have a lust for power. They know that tyranny lurks just below the surface of all Unbelieving political and social systems.
For a time, a culture can coast along on gratuitous assumptions about being grounded in "common sense" or the "wisdom of the Founding Fathers" or "right reason". Concepts like justice, rights, morality, the rule of law, and freedom are believed to be self-evident, forever beyond dispute, except to fools and horses. "Common law" or the "Anglo-Saxon legal tradition" or "Western civilisation" seem like unassailable bulwarks against the void. Yet these remain nothing more than empty notions without foundation or any grounding in ultimate principles. Cultures not grounded in the law of God, the Creator of all things, are built upon shifting sand. When peoples appeal to cultural or historical traditions for what they regard as self-evident it is a sure sign they are not epistemologically self-conscious. They are sleep-walking.
One of the clearest portents of growing epistemological self-awareness occurs when blatant evil begins to be trumpeted as good.
Saturday, 17 May 2014
Friday, 16 May 2014
Letter From the UK (About a Clarion Call)
A Belly Full of Laughs
The New Statesman has published an article by David Selbourne. It is a warning about the rise of Islam, but also a critique of the effete self-censorship of the Commentariat on Islam. Some excerpts:
The New Statesman has published an article by David Selbourne. It is a warning about the rise of Islam, but also a critique of the effete self-censorship of the Commentariat on Islam. Some excerpts:
A beheading in Woolwich, a suicide bomb in Beijing, a blown-up marathon in Boston, a shooting in the head of a young Pakistani girl seeking education, a destroyed shopping mall in Nairobi – and so it continues, in the name of Islam, from south London to Timbuktu. It is time to take stock, especially on the left, since these things are part of the world’s daily round. . . .
To the aid of Islam has also come the betrayal by much of today’s left of its notionally humane principles, as Christians are assaulted and murdered (shades of what was done to the Jews in the 1930s) and their churches desecrated and destroyed from Egypt to the Central African Republic, from Iran to Indonesia, and from Pakistan to Nigeria. Islam can kill its own apostates, too; in many Muslim countries denies reciprocity to other faiths in rights of worship; and seeks to prevent reasoned discussion about its beliefs by attempted resort to blasphemy laws.
So where is the old left’s centuries-long espousal of free speech and free thought?
Interested Parties
Training Camps for Political Activists
The mass media has become a mixed bag of goods, but increasingly they appear rotten. Previously given the sobriquet "Fourth Estate", the press--the serious part of mass media--has been seen as an integral part of keeping government honest and ethical. Sunshine is the best disinfectant they say, and the press--or more accurately, the mass news media--has a vital role in keeping graft and corruption out of government.
At times the media descend into farce as they strive to expose unethical double-dealing and corruption at every turn. A politician kissing a baby is quickly scandalised and sensationalised as another case of paedophilia. A political party which encourages gift and donations from estates, via testamentary wills is portrayed as a grave robber. But these childish whiny petulances have been reasonably rare, and are best curtailed by the press and the news media being kept fiercely competitive.
But the steady stream of news media employees resigning to take up jobs promoting politicians and even themselves becoming politicians is troubling.
The mass media has become a mixed bag of goods, but increasingly they appear rotten. Previously given the sobriquet "Fourth Estate", the press--the serious part of mass media--has been seen as an integral part of keeping government honest and ethical. Sunshine is the best disinfectant they say, and the press--or more accurately, the mass news media--has a vital role in keeping graft and corruption out of government.
At times the media descend into farce as they strive to expose unethical double-dealing and corruption at every turn. A politician kissing a baby is quickly scandalised and sensationalised as another case of paedophilia. A political party which encourages gift and donations from estates, via testamentary wills is portrayed as a grave robber. But these childish whiny petulances have been reasonably rare, and are best curtailed by the press and the news media being kept fiercely competitive.
But the steady stream of news media employees resigning to take up jobs promoting politicians and even themselves becoming politicians is troubling.
Thursday, 15 May 2014
Letter From the UK (About Kidnapping)
'Climate Change' to Blame for Boko Haram and Nigerian Girls' Kidnapping
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11 May 2014
Britain's Guardian newspaper has come up with a novel explanation for the kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls in Nigeria.
Conventional analyses have pinned the blame on the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram (which means: "Western education is forbidden"). But according to the Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed, the real culprit is 'climate change.'Ahmed writes:
Pagan Wolves
A New-Age Leader of the Pack
We read periodically of the return of the wolf to Europe--once feared extinct, now running hunting packs throughout northern Europe and Spain. But metaphorical wolves are also returning to re-establish a once long thought extinct pagan culture in Europe and the West.
The following is a call-to-action from an officer in the Anglican Church of New Zealand.
We read periodically of the return of the wolf to Europe--once feared extinct, now running hunting packs throughout northern Europe and Spain. But metaphorical wolves are also returning to re-establish a once long thought extinct pagan culture in Europe and the West.
The following is a call-to-action from an officer in the Anglican Church of New Zealand.
The newly appointed vicar of Auckland's Anglican church St Matthew-in-the-City has called on the church to approve same-sex marriages and ordination of gay vicars. Reverend Dr Helen Jacobi, in her sermon on Sunday, spoke to the church's two-yearly General Synod, being held this week.
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Christian Unity
Two Kinds of Unity
In Ephesians 4, Paul teaches us that there are two kinds of unity. The first is the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace that we are to labor to preserve (Eph. 4:3). This means that this unity already exists, created by the Spirit, and that our task is to not disrupt it. We would disrupt it by refusing to walk worthily of our calling, by refusing to love, and so on. A few verses down, he describes the unity of the church, and he says that it is a unity that we are not supposed to have yet. It is not yet our possession because the Spirit has not yet given it to us. We are supposed to grow up into the perfect man, into the unity of the faith (Eph. 4:13).
For us to lament the divisions of Christendom because this unity of the faith has not yet occurred is to have an over-realized eschatology. To lament the divisions of Christendom because the session meeting broke up in a shouting match is to lament something that Ephesians 4 tells us to lament. If we did not forbear with one another in love, then we should confess our sin and make it right. That is something we are supposed to have right now, and if we don’t, we should repent of our sin. But there is absolutely no need to repent of not living five thousand years from now, when we will have grown up into the perfect man.
--Douglas Wilson, Blog and Mablog
In Ephesians 4, Paul teaches us that there are two kinds of unity. The first is the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace that we are to labor to preserve (Eph. 4:3). This means that this unity already exists, created by the Spirit, and that our task is to not disrupt it. We would disrupt it by refusing to walk worthily of our calling, by refusing to love, and so on. A few verses down, he describes the unity of the church, and he says that it is a unity that we are not supposed to have yet. It is not yet our possession because the Spirit has not yet given it to us. We are supposed to grow up into the perfect man, into the unity of the faith (Eph. 4:13).
For us to lament the divisions of Christendom because this unity of the faith has not yet occurred is to have an over-realized eschatology. To lament the divisions of Christendom because the session meeting broke up in a shouting match is to lament something that Ephesians 4 tells us to lament. If we did not forbear with one another in love, then we should confess our sin and make it right. That is something we are supposed to have right now, and if we don’t, we should repent of our sin. But there is absolutely no need to repent of not living five thousand years from now, when we will have grown up into the perfect man.
--Douglas Wilson, Blog and Mablog
It's Getting Personal
Calling Across the Storm Tossed Sea
The Christian believes in infinite cosmic personalism. As the catechism has it, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." All of existence, all life, all experience, all circumstances are Personally motivated and caused by the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God. He is in the details. All of them. Behind them, in them, and ahead of them are the thoughts, intentions and plans of God for us.
The modern Unbeliever, however, believes in cosmic impersonalism. The universe just is. Behind it and in it there is no plan, no purpose, no goodness, no justice nor truth. There is just what is. And what "is" remains ultimately random, without any meaning.
Now the Unbeliever has a problem. Cosmic impersonalism is hard to live with, to say the least.
The Christian believes in infinite cosmic personalism. As the catechism has it, "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." All of existence, all life, all experience, all circumstances are Personally motivated and caused by the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God. He is in the details. All of them. Behind them, in them, and ahead of them are the thoughts, intentions and plans of God for us.
The modern Unbeliever, however, believes in cosmic impersonalism. The universe just is. Behind it and in it there is no plan, no purpose, no goodness, no justice nor truth. There is just what is. And what "is" remains ultimately random, without any meaning.
Now the Unbeliever has a problem. Cosmic impersonalism is hard to live with, to say the least.
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Letter From the UK (About Government Education)
Progressively Worse: Britain's Education Establishment Persists in 'Dumbing Down' for Our Kids
Sometimes the education establishment in Britain appears to be a parody of itself. This morning, it was reported that the OCR exam board, despite clear calls for a return to rigour in our examination system, are developing an English Literature and Language A-Level where students study Caitlin Moran’s Twitter feed, a Newsnight interview with Dizzee Rascal, and Russell Brand’s testimony on drug use to a parliamentary committee.
Aside from the tendentious nature of these choices (would,
I wonder, Peter Hitchens’ view on drug use ever make it into an exam?),
we have to ask whether studying such texts is a valuable use of pupil
time. There is nothing new about such dumbing down. A stroll through the
recent years of AQA’s English Language GCSE shows exam papers based on
news stories about Tinie Tempah, Johnny Depp, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie
Oliver.
"What was Jamie Oliver’s reaction to the research about
his school dinners?" reads one question. "List four thing that you learn
about Tinie Tempah from the article" reads another.
Generous Condescension
Dhimmi's At Home
Further to our piece on Boko Haram, Andrew Bolt of Australia provides another take--on a Lord Haw Haw-type figure who is one of Australia's foremost apologists for Islamic oppression. He is a media favourite.
His counsel on Boko Haram? They are a splintered group, so diverse that they are impossible to identify or discuss. You know, like Al Qaeda.
Further to our piece on Boko Haram, Andrew Bolt of Australia provides another take--on a Lord Haw Haw-type figure who is one of Australia's foremost apologists for Islamic oppression. He is a media favourite.
His counsel on Boko Haram? They are a splintered group, so diverse that they are impossible to identify or discuss. You know, like Al Qaeda.
WALEED Aly is the model moderate Muslim, used by the media to persuade us we have little to fear from Islam but our own bigotry.
His rewards have been great. Once the spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, he is now an ABC radio host, a Channel 10 co-presenter and an Age columnist. He is even a politics lecturer at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, despite having no doctorate and having qualified in engineering and law. This week Aly showed the style that’s made him such a pet of the establishment Left but a worry to me.
Monday, 12 May 2014
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Nature By Grace
All right. Now it is time to bring a number of threads together.
The great American classicist Basil Gildersleeve once said that the American Civil War was fought over a point of grammar. He said that it was over whether we should say “the United States is” or “the United States are.” Other great and complicated issues can be reduced to a simple question as well. When it comes to culture wars, same sex mirage, natural law, and so on, we are really asking this: “What is the universe actually like?”
There are two basic options confronting us today. Either the cosmos was created, made, fashioned . . . or it was not. Either God spoke everything into existence from nothing, or there is no God. Eternality is an attribute of something — either the living God, or time and chance acting on matter and energy. If the former, we must do what He says. If the latter, we may do what we want.
But as it is, we are a rebellious house, and want to do what we want to do. We are a conclusion in search of a premise, and so it turns out that all respectable science testifies that Genesis is not a textbook of science, anything but that. The materialists say that Genesis is bogus, and the Christian abandoners of Genesis say that the book is crammed full of spiritual truths for your faith to believe, but you have to take care what you believe. You can’t believe everything you read. But the whole thing is a power play, seeking to drive from the field the only real alternative to their hellish vision for mankind.
Consistently Islamic
What Boko Haram and Aceh Province Have in Common
The Western world has been aghast over the depredations of Boko Haram--an Islamic group active in northern Nigeria. For months its members have been invading schools to kill and kidnap female pupils. After a recent abduction of over 200 female students, the leader has boasted in public they will be sold as slaves. Meanwhile, half a world away, an Indonesian woman has been gang raped in punishment for illicit sexual congress. The couple also face the cane--as called for by the head of the local Sharia office.
Culturally, what do Nigeria and the island of Aceh in Indonesia have in common?
The Western world has been aghast over the depredations of Boko Haram--an Islamic group active in northern Nigeria. For months its members have been invading schools to kill and kidnap female pupils. After a recent abduction of over 200 female students, the leader has boasted in public they will be sold as slaves. Meanwhile, half a world away, an Indonesian woman has been gang raped in punishment for illicit sexual congress. The couple also face the cane--as called for by the head of the local Sharia office.
Culturally, what do Nigeria and the island of Aceh in Indonesia have in common?
Saturday, 10 May 2014
Letter From Australia (About a Ruinous Government)
Cleaning Up The Unlucky Country
In hindsight it will likely be told that Australia, of all the developed countries, handled the Global Financial Crisis (GFC") the worst--and that, dear friends, from a country which went into the crisis positioned far better than most. What caused the manufacture of such a crisis?
The name of the one who is arguably Australia's worst Prime Minister? Kevin Rudd.
Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, fills in the details.
In hindsight it will likely be told that Australia, of all the developed countries, handled the Global Financial Crisis (GFC") the worst--and that, dear friends, from a country which went into the crisis positioned far better than most. What caused the manufacture of such a crisis?
- A grandiose Prime Minister who cast himself in a Churchillian role
- An insecure Prime Minister who wanted to be seen as the Barack Obama of the Asia-Pacific Region
- An economically ignorant Prime Minister who thought that money could be borrowed ad infinitum.
The name of the one who is arguably Australia's worst Prime Minister? Kevin Rudd.
Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, fills in the details.
A Really Thorough Hanging
Sinister and Stasi-like
Free speech is being attacked everywhere in the West. The saddest specatcle of all is the crowds packed around the tumbrills cheering and applauding as fresh decapitations roll in. Unbelief is becoming more and more authoritarian, more and more militant. It is now blasphemous to speak certain words, or utter certain sentiments.
Let's recap why free speech is a Christian construct--required by the faith. Firstly, God alone is judge of the human mind and its ruminations. He alone is judge of the tongue. He has not given that authority over to man. He alone "takes every thought captive" to His Son, the designated and appointed Messiah. (II Corinthians 10:5-6) He alone understands, and can weigh the thoughts and intentions of the human heart. (Psalm 139:1-6)
Secondly, when man arrogates the power and authority to control what people think or say he is necessarily claiming authority over all knowledge, truth, and thought. This inevitably means the approval of some beliefs and thoughts, and proscription of others. The forcible imposition of an ideology or religion is the inevitable outcome. "Official Man", whoever that might be, becomes self-elevated to the status of a deity.
Free speech is being attacked everywhere in the West. The saddest specatcle of all is the crowds packed around the tumbrills cheering and applauding as fresh decapitations roll in. Unbelief is becoming more and more authoritarian, more and more militant. It is now blasphemous to speak certain words, or utter certain sentiments.
Let's recap why free speech is a Christian construct--required by the faith. Firstly, God alone is judge of the human mind and its ruminations. He alone is judge of the tongue. He has not given that authority over to man. He alone "takes every thought captive" to His Son, the designated and appointed Messiah. (II Corinthians 10:5-6) He alone understands, and can weigh the thoughts and intentions of the human heart. (Psalm 139:1-6)
Secondly, when man arrogates the power and authority to control what people think or say he is necessarily claiming authority over all knowledge, truth, and thought. This inevitably means the approval of some beliefs and thoughts, and proscription of others. The forcible imposition of an ideology or religion is the inevitable outcome. "Official Man", whoever that might be, becomes self-elevated to the status of a deity.
Friday, 9 May 2014
Letter From America (About Black Genocide)
Dr. Alveda King Tells Students of Modern Day Black Genocide
Standing for Nothing; Falling for Everything
Secularist Paper Tigers Confront Islam
The prevailing view of religion in the West can be characterised as one of condescending ignorance. Religion is something belonging to a primitive past. It is made up of superstitions, myths, and fanciful errors without any basis in truth or reality. To extend tolerance and civic freedom to religions is considered an act of indulgence--putting up with childish notions, ideas, and behaviour until those involved in a religion grow up and become true moderns--that is, materialistic, atheistic, and humanistic.
This world-view has two Achilles heels. The first is the failure to understand that Western secularism is indeed a religion in its own right. A religious anti-religion. It is a cosmology, and ultimate belief system, with no authentication outside of itself. This places Western secularism in a vulnerable position. It is founded on rationalism, but its rationalism cannot defend or authenticate its own position. It is ultimately, therefore, an irrational system that is viciously circular. It can collapse more quickly than Ukrainian Defence Forces in the Donetsk. Because its protagonists and defenders remain unaware of its vulnerability at this point, it constantly leaves itself open to ridicule and rejection--which, given the vaunting arrogance and pride of the secular humanist religion, hurts. That's the first Achilles heel.
The second is its befuddled, double-minded attitude towards other religions.
The prevailing view of religion in the West can be characterised as one of condescending ignorance. Religion is something belonging to a primitive past. It is made up of superstitions, myths, and fanciful errors without any basis in truth or reality. To extend tolerance and civic freedom to religions is considered an act of indulgence--putting up with childish notions, ideas, and behaviour until those involved in a religion grow up and become true moderns--that is, materialistic, atheistic, and humanistic.
This world-view has two Achilles heels. The first is the failure to understand that Western secularism is indeed a religion in its own right. A religious anti-religion. It is a cosmology, and ultimate belief system, with no authentication outside of itself. This places Western secularism in a vulnerable position. It is founded on rationalism, but its rationalism cannot defend or authenticate its own position. It is ultimately, therefore, an irrational system that is viciously circular. It can collapse more quickly than Ukrainian Defence Forces in the Donetsk. Because its protagonists and defenders remain unaware of its vulnerability at this point, it constantly leaves itself open to ridicule and rejection--which, given the vaunting arrogance and pride of the secular humanist religion, hurts. That's the first Achilles heel.
The second is its befuddled, double-minded attitude towards other religions.
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Lord of the Magazine Rack
People tend to think that worldviews are expressed in the various magazines for sale, whether Field & Stream, Good Housekeeping, or Penthouse. But the foundational worldview is actually found in the magazine rack, and the location of the cash register.
If WalMart decided that Monday was Muslim Day, Tuesday Hindu Day, Wednesday Christian Day, and so on, most Christians would be honored by the fact that we got a day. This is the deceitfulness of pluralism. But this would not actually be a case of objective neutrality, because every day is Money Day.
The point of making this point is not to insist that Christians “opt out,” as though that were possible. The apostle Paul had no problem speaking at Mars Hill, even though speakers of other persuasions came before him, and many others came after.
The Poison of Nanny McPhee
A Disastrous Diet With Deadly Consequences
Never trust "official science"--that is, the science being pushed by government agencies. If scepticism is the good oil of solid scientific research, once the science becomes "official" in the sense of being accepted by government programmes and enforced by government regulations, healthy scepticism withers on the vine. At that point, science has become intermingled with, if not captured by, propaganda: the trustworthiness of science diminishes substantially.
To make matters worse, there are lots of vested interests vying for commercial advantage when science becomes "official". Engineer a government "tick" and millions can be made. Achieve the promulgation of a government programme, and millions can be parlayed into billions of dollars. It becomes, in the coarse words of US Vice President, Joe Biden, a "big . . . deal"--that is, a crude joke.
It is now becoming clear that generations of diet advice--official diet prescriptions--backed by scientific research, is wrong. In fact, it has done enormous damage to human health. A significant essay recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, by Nina Teicholz:
Never trust "official science"--that is, the science being pushed by government agencies. If scepticism is the good oil of solid scientific research, once the science becomes "official" in the sense of being accepted by government programmes and enforced by government regulations, healthy scepticism withers on the vine. At that point, science has become intermingled with, if not captured by, propaganda: the trustworthiness of science diminishes substantially.
To make matters worse, there are lots of vested interests vying for commercial advantage when science becomes "official". Engineer a government "tick" and millions can be made. Achieve the promulgation of a government programme, and millions can be parlayed into billions of dollars. It becomes, in the coarse words of US Vice President, Joe Biden, a "big . . . deal"--that is, a crude joke.
It is now becoming clear that generations of diet advice--official diet prescriptions--backed by scientific research, is wrong. In fact, it has done enormous damage to human health. A significant essay recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, by Nina Teicholz:
Rising Authoritarianism
Shut Up, Shut Down, And Shut Out
One of the surest indications that an opponent is either pedalling a shonky argument or he is too incompetent to press his case intelligently is when he attacks the opponent (ad hominem) or attempts to silence him. What has been dubbed the "new authoritarianism of the Left" has all the hallmarks.
We see it on every hand these days. We will doubtless continue to see it. The whole brouhaha resembles a dirty bomb: lots of heat, not much light, but plenty of poison.
The laziness of the Left over climate change is a case in point. Not willing to face up to the debate, it sought to elude the argument by leap frogging it, declaring "the debate is over; the science is settled". This casts opponents as reactionary idiots--a modern type of flat-earthers, or geo-centric astronomers. But anyone who knew even the barest basics of science, or the elementary principles of logic, or the primary hermeneutics of the scientific method knew instantly this was balderdash. Feeding hypothetical projections into an electronic calculator to "prove" the reality of global warming has been the biggest instance of question-begging since Adam was a boy.
One of the surest indications that an opponent is either pedalling a shonky argument or he is too incompetent to press his case intelligently is when he attacks the opponent (ad hominem) or attempts to silence him. What has been dubbed the "new authoritarianism of the Left" has all the hallmarks.
We see it on every hand these days. We will doubtless continue to see it. The whole brouhaha resembles a dirty bomb: lots of heat, not much light, but plenty of poison.
The laziness of the Left over climate change is a case in point. Not willing to face up to the debate, it sought to elude the argument by leap frogging it, declaring "the debate is over; the science is settled". This casts opponents as reactionary idiots--a modern type of flat-earthers, or geo-centric astronomers. But anyone who knew even the barest basics of science, or the elementary principles of logic, or the primary hermeneutics of the scientific method knew instantly this was balderdash. Feeding hypothetical projections into an electronic calculator to "prove" the reality of global warming has been the biggest instance of question-begging since Adam was a boy.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Letter From the UK (About The Iron Fist)
Doctors who oppose morning-after pill on conscience grounds face qualifications bar
Guidelines confirm that doctors and nurses who oppose controversial emergency contraception on ‘moral or religious’ grounds cannot receive key specialist qualifications
7:00AM BST 29 Apr 2014
Doctors and nurses who object to providing controversial emergency
contraception on moral or religious grounds are being barred from specialist
professional qualifications under official guidelines. They class Roman Catholics and others motivated by pro-life beliefs as
“ineligible” for important qualifications provided by the Royal College of
Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) even if they complete the training
programme.
The Pillage of Progressive Government
Evasive Action Increasing
It's a hard lesson to learn, but sooner or later even the antediluvians amongst us will begin to comprehend. Point #1: Capital and labour are the core components of any commercial enterprise. Point #2: Capital and labour are mobile.
Now this has not always been the case. Before the development of technologies that can move people relatively quickly and inexpensively from one side of the globe to the other, labour was relatively immobile. In a particular area, the number of jobs were necessarily limited; in times of recession, sometimes severely limited. That meant that employees were effectively reduced to being "price takers". They had little economic leverage to increase wages. The number of employment opportunities was small or fixed; there was often surplus labour chasing those jobs.
Now, labour is globally mobile--more so than at any time hitherto in our age.
It's a hard lesson to learn, but sooner or later even the antediluvians amongst us will begin to comprehend. Point #1: Capital and labour are the core components of any commercial enterprise. Point #2: Capital and labour are mobile.
Now this has not always been the case. Before the development of technologies that can move people relatively quickly and inexpensively from one side of the globe to the other, labour was relatively immobile. In a particular area, the number of jobs were necessarily limited; in times of recession, sometimes severely limited. That meant that employees were effectively reduced to being "price takers". They had little economic leverage to increase wages. The number of employment opportunities was small or fixed; there was often surplus labour chasing those jobs.
Now, labour is globally mobile--more so than at any time hitherto in our age.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Just Getting a Drink
Posted onA recent jag in the feminist jihad has to do with what they are pleased to call microaggressions — what Jonah Goldberg recently worried might become nanoaggressions. So let’s talk about all that for a microbit.
Conservatives will frequently make merry about this kind of fevered brow behavior, assuming that these women’s-study-center-people have utterly lost it. Those who talk about microaggressions all the time must be doing so because of their microminds. But this goes wide of the mark by a good distance. What these people are doing to us is intelligent, rule-guided behavior. They are doing it because they are getting something important they want from it. Let me tell you a parable:
Once there was a game of pick-up basketball, and there were two teams — red shirts and blue shirts. The red shirts were from red states and the blue shirts were from blue states. With me so far?
Bel Bows Down, Nebo is Stooping
Modern Idolatry
A minor brouhaha has flickered in Gore where a Christian church has honoured the Lord by exercising discipline over an errant, unrepentant member. The former member has been living with a man not her husband.
In terms of the historical Christian faith there is nothing remarkable in this; it is, after all, what the Scripture commands. (I Corinthians 5:1-2; I Corinthians 5: 9-13). Any faithful, believing Christian church would do what the Calvin Community Church at Gore has just done.
What is far more instructive is the reaction of the pagans. Many blog commentators have railed against the whole notion of judging. How dare anyone judge another.
A minor brouhaha has flickered in Gore where a Christian church has honoured the Lord by exercising discipline over an errant, unrepentant member. The former member has been living with a man not her husband.
In terms of the historical Christian faith there is nothing remarkable in this; it is, after all, what the Scripture commands. (I Corinthians 5:1-2; I Corinthians 5: 9-13). Any faithful, believing Christian church would do what the Calvin Community Church at Gore has just done.
What is far more instructive is the reaction of the pagans. Many blog commentators have railed against the whole notion of judging. How dare anyone judge another.
Monday, 5 May 2014
Letter From the UK (About Nonsensical Global Warming)
Former NASA Scientist: Global Warming is Stupid
A former NASA scientist has described global warming as "nonsense", dismissing the theory of man-made climate change as "an unsubstantiated hypothesis" and saying that it is "absolutely stupid" to blame the recent UK floods on human activity.
Professor Les Woodcock, who has had a long and distinguished academic career, also said there is "no reproducible evidence" that carbon dioxide levels have increased over the past century, and blamed the green movement for inflicting economic damage on ordinary people.Professor Woodcock is Emeritus Professor of Chemical Thermodynamics at the University of Manchester and has authored over 70 academic papers for a wide range of scientific journals. He received his PhD from the University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a recipient of a Max Planck Society Visiting Fellowship, and a founding editor the journal Molecular Simulation. (h/t Climate Depot)
Professor Woodcock told the Yorkshire Evening Post:
"The term 'climate change' is meaningless.
The Earth's climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is
since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago.
Trojan Horses
Computers in Class Rooms
Group-think educrats and academic educationalists have got it wrong again. In govenrment schools computers have become synonymous with progressive, advanced education. Any school worth its merits has pupils kitted out with laptops or tablets. More and more courses and lessons are being structured around the electronic idol sitting on the pupils' desks. Otherwise they will be missing out. They will not be prepared for life in the real, new, e-world.
Instead of focusing on a content rich curriculum and instructively teaching it, the curriculum is becoming besotted with "teaching" IT techniques. Schools and teachers who do not have the necessary kit available are told they are disadvantaging their pupils and belong in the dark ages. Teachers are becoming dispirited and de-motivated. Pupils are graduating with vast experience in how to manipulate and use computers, but remain ignorant of the sciences, the arts, and how to think reasonably and accurately.
Au contraire. Smart schools are now banning computers. Why? Because they inhibit learning.
This, from Pacific Standard Magazine:
Group-think educrats and academic educationalists have got it wrong again. In govenrment schools computers have become synonymous with progressive, advanced education. Any school worth its merits has pupils kitted out with laptops or tablets. More and more courses and lessons are being structured around the electronic idol sitting on the pupils' desks. Otherwise they will be missing out. They will not be prepared for life in the real, new, e-world.
Instead of focusing on a content rich curriculum and instructively teaching it, the curriculum is becoming besotted with "teaching" IT techniques. Schools and teachers who do not have the necessary kit available are told they are disadvantaging their pupils and belong in the dark ages. Teachers are becoming dispirited and de-motivated. Pupils are graduating with vast experience in how to manipulate and use computers, but remain ignorant of the sciences, the arts, and how to think reasonably and accurately.
Au contraire. Smart schools are now banning computers. Why? Because they inhibit learning.
This, from Pacific Standard Magazine:
Saturday, 3 May 2014
Letter From America (About the Decline of the US)
America’s Decline and Fall
13 quotations from our interview with Mark Steyn
Apr. 23, 2014
1. History, as reflected in the life of Otto von Habsburg, is cyclical
Otto von Habsburg in 1936. (Image Source: Imagno/Getty Images)
“What I like about [Habsburg's plight]…is that it kind of reminds us that in the span of one life, everything can change. You can see the rise and fall of Communism, you can have revolutions, you can have vast convulsions, all within one man’s life. And, if you’re like Otto von Habsburg, your very surname sort of mocks the idea of prosperity – you’re going around like the last sort of souvenir of an enterprise nobody else is interested in. I like things like that, because it’s a reminder that a guy can live three score and 10, maybe he’ll get an extra 10 or 15 years on top of it, but within 80 or 90 years empires rise and fall, all within the span of a single life.”
2. Here’s the evolution of America in five simple stages
Derision of Disappointed Hopes
When Western Women Marry into Islam
For over thirty years Rosemary Sookhdeo has been involved with women--often associated with the Church--who have married Muslim men only to have everything fall apart. In her book, Why Christian Women Convert to Islam [McLean VA: Isaac Publishing, 2007] she tells the stories of some of these women.
In all the cases cited, the "after" proved a shocking contrast to the "before". In some cases, the "before" involved Muslim men wanting to secure some particular selfish advantage, such as a visa, or immigration status. Once the marriage delivered the immigration-compliance they were seeking, the marriage ceased to function. In other cases, once married the romance quickly dissipated, to be replaced by the brute reality of reduction to the status of a chattel.
For over thirty years Rosemary Sookhdeo has been involved with women--often associated with the Church--who have married Muslim men only to have everything fall apart. In her book, Why Christian Women Convert to Islam [McLean VA: Isaac Publishing, 2007] she tells the stories of some of these women.
In all the cases cited, the "after" proved a shocking contrast to the "before". In some cases, the "before" involved Muslim men wanting to secure some particular selfish advantage, such as a visa, or immigration status. Once the marriage delivered the immigration-compliance they were seeking, the marriage ceased to function. In other cases, once married the romance quickly dissipated, to be replaced by the brute reality of reduction to the status of a chattel.
Friday, 2 May 2014
Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow
Their Temples of Reason
It is usually no fun when people play the race card, but when evolutionists do it, the results can be highly entertaining, at least after a few million years.
My brother Gordon is Senior Fellow of Natural History at New St. Andrews. He was recently engaged to teach a one-off course in microbiology at the University of Idaho, which drew this protest, and then this one.
There is a kind of evolutionist who insists that his theory can only be falsified with rabbit fossils in the precambrian, and then rests easily in the full assurance that anything with a rabbit fossil in it can’t be precambrian by definition. This method works swell for them, and so they try to use a similar approach to journal articles, terminal degrees, and teaching slots. Creationists are clearly not equipped to be in the proximity of any of those things — for are they not all cornpones? — and so whenever they see a creationist they chase him out promptly, and then use his strange absence as an argument. His absence is an argument, and his presence is an outrage. What my net don’t catch ain’t fish, and if it does catch one on accident, we can always throw it back immediately and pretend it didn’t happen.
The second protest, the one from P.Z. Myers, was the more flamboyant of the two.
Hypocritical Plutocracy
The Buying and Selling of Free Speech
Free speech is usually more of an idea than a civic reality. H. L. Mencken, writing in the 1920's observed that the Bolsheviks showed the way for the West--which has clung on to the ideal of free speech far longer than most.
We have recently been treated to the debacle over the Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling who has privately expressed sentiments which fall outside of "Bolshevist" revelation. Sterling provides an excellent touchstone for Mencken's thesis that free speech is a chimera in the West.
Free speech is usually more of an idea than a civic reality. H. L. Mencken, writing in the 1920's observed that the Bolsheviks showed the way for the West--which has clung on to the ideal of free speech far longer than most.
The Russian Bolsheviki . . . . once they were in the saddle, they decreed the abolition of the old imperial censorship and announced that speech would be free henceforth--but only so long as it kept within the bounds of the Bolshevist revelation! In other words, any citizen was free to think and speak whatever he pleased--but only so long as it did not violate certain fundamental ideas. [H. L. Mencken, "The Genealogy of Etiquette", Prejudices: Volume I, edited by Marion Rogers (New York: The Literary Classics of America, Inc. 2010), p. 99.]Nowadays we are moving much more into a Bolshevik world where some speech is not deemed equal at all, insofar as it violates some cherished ideas. Mencken goes on in his essay to argue that the Bolsheviki notion has been precisely the "sort of freedom that has prevailed in the United States since the first days."
We have recently been treated to the debacle over the Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling who has privately expressed sentiments which fall outside of "Bolshevist" revelation. Sterling provides an excellent touchstone for Mencken's thesis that free speech is a chimera in the West.
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Tyrannical Tumours in the Western Body Politic
The Slow Death of Free Speech
How the Left, here and abroad, is trying to shut down debate — from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage
Mark Steyn
These days, pretty much every story is really the same story:
But I don’t really think that many people these days are genuinely interested in ‘striking the balance’; they’ve drawn the line and they’re increasingly unashamed about which side of it they stand. What all the above stories have in common, whether nominally about Israel, gay marriage, climate change, Islam, or even freedom of the press, is that one side has cheerfully swapped that apocryphal Voltaire quote about disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it for the pithier Ring Lardner line: ‘“Shut up,” he explained.’
- In Galway, at the National University of Ireland, a speaker who attempts to argue against the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) programme against Israel is shouted down with cries of ‘Fucking Zionist, fucking pricks… Get the fuck off our campus.’
- In California, Mozilla’s chief executive is forced to resign because he once made a political donation in support of the pre-revisionist definition of marriage.
- At Westminster, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee declares that the BBC should seek ‘special clearance’ before it interviews climate sceptics, such as fringe wacko extremists like former Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
- In Massachusetts, Brandeis University withdraws its offer of an honorary degree to a black feminist atheist human rights campaigner from Somalia.
- In London, a multitude of liberal journalists and artists responsible for everything from Monty Python to Downton Abbey sign an open letter in favour of the first state restraints on the British press in three and a quarter centuries.
- And in Canberra the government is planning to repeal Section 18C — whoa, don’t worry, not all of it, just three or four adjectives; or maybe only two, or whatever it’s down to by now, after what Gay Alcorn in the Age described as the ongoing debate about ‘where to strike the balance between free speech in a democracy and protection against racial abuse in a multicultural society’.
But I don’t really think that many people these days are genuinely interested in ‘striking the balance’; they’ve drawn the line and they’re increasingly unashamed about which side of it they stand. What all the above stories have in common, whether nominally about Israel, gay marriage, climate change, Islam, or even freedom of the press, is that one side has cheerfully swapped that apocryphal Voltaire quote about disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it for the pithier Ring Lardner line: ‘“Shut up,” he explained.’
Legends and Myths
The Myth of the Dark Ages
The standard secular humanist perspective on European history was wrapped up and handed to us by Enlightenment philosophes. The basic thesis was that rational thought and accomplishment ended with the waning of the Roman Empire. It was succeeded by the Dark Ages--a period of ignorance, disease, poverty and brutality--until Charlemagne (circa 800AD), who represented a flickering, dying ember of former glories. But human history did not recommence its triumphant upward movement until the Enlightenment, which it began to hymn brazenly, and with just a smidgen of self-serving chutzpah, declaring "We are the Champions of the World".
Nowadays only the untutored cling to such a deceitful trick, and then only for the purposes of propaganda--which is elegantly appropriate, since this was largely why Gibbon wrote his magisterial Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The way the story "rolled" was to magnify Rome and its Empire and contrast its glories with the succeeding degradations, then slip in an association of the "decline and fall" with the spread of Christianity (a superstition undermining classical thought), leading to the "inevitable" conclusion that the Christian religion was bad for the general well-being of mankind.
Here is Gibbon's paean of praise to Roman accomplishment:
The standard secular humanist perspective on European history was wrapped up and handed to us by Enlightenment philosophes. The basic thesis was that rational thought and accomplishment ended with the waning of the Roman Empire. It was succeeded by the Dark Ages--a period of ignorance, disease, poverty and brutality--until Charlemagne (circa 800AD), who represented a flickering, dying ember of former glories. But human history did not recommence its triumphant upward movement until the Enlightenment, which it began to hymn brazenly, and with just a smidgen of self-serving chutzpah, declaring "We are the Champions of the World".
Nowadays only the untutored cling to such a deceitful trick, and then only for the purposes of propaganda--which is elegantly appropriate, since this was largely why Gibbon wrote his magisterial Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The way the story "rolled" was to magnify Rome and its Empire and contrast its glories with the succeeding degradations, then slip in an association of the "decline and fall" with the spread of Christianity (a superstition undermining classical thought), leading to the "inevitable" conclusion that the Christian religion was bad for the general well-being of mankind.
Here is Gibbon's paean of praise to Roman accomplishment:
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