preserve unspoiled, undisturbed and undistorted the image of eternity with which each person is born
Monday, December 28, 2015
Solzhenitsyn
In one of his novels, Solzhenitsyn has a character who believes that the meaning of existence is to:
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
What makes a woman?
Most readers will be aware that there has been a scuffle on the left between some of the older radical feminists and the transsexual movement - with the transsexuals winning hands down.
Elinor Burkett recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times defending the older feminist position. It's interesting how closely she follows typical liberal ideas in her argument.
The basic liberal idea is that society should be based on a principle of "equal freedom," meaning that the individual is to be equally free to choose for themselves who they are and what they do. This means that unchosen, predetermined qualities, such as our biological sex or our race, are thought of in negative terms as oppressive restrictions from which the individual is to be liberated.
This explains Elinor Burkett's first argument. She observes that when a transsexual man says that he has a female brain that many on the left applaud him, even though this suggests that there are real, hardwired differences between men and women that aren't self-determined:
Elinor Burkett fears that if our biological sex - the fact of being male or female - is found to matter in some way, that there will be a limitation on how we as individuals chart our own individual destiny. It might mean, for instance, that a woman might not become a combat fighter in the army, because she was born a woman and not a man - something she cannot determine for herself.
It is difficult, though, to live by the liberal principle consistently. Our sex is important to our identity: it's not easy to see yourself as an "it". And it is clearly the case that being a woman does still matter for Elinor Burkett, no matter how feminist she is. And so her second argument is that transsexual men are undermining female identity.
She makes a good argument that this is so, and I will quote her on this shortly. But the point to be made here is that it is this very fact, that transsexualism undermines female identity, which makes it such a radically liberal force and which explains why it has so much traction in a liberal society. So this may not have been the best argument for Elinor Burkett to focus on if she wishes to win support from a liberal establishment.
How does transsexualism undermine a female identity? Well, if a man in his fifties is suddenly considered to be a woman, then all the things that women uniquely experience in life don't matter so much when it comes to what it means to be a woman:
Elinor Burkett is running a fine line argument here. She is arguing that it is bad for women to be defined by hard-wired biological characteristics, such as differences between the male and female brain, but good for women to be defined collectively by shared life experiences, both negative and positive (on the positive side she writes that she has "relished certain courtesies" that she has received due to her sex). Again, I can't see this as being persuasive within a liberal framework when the liberal goal is to sever the connection between our biological sex and what happens in our life.
Elinor Burkett then lists a series of very strange outcomes of supporting transsexualism. They are strange to me and perhaps to older feminists, but no doubt they seem radically chic to younger liberals and will become part of the liberal mainstream over time.
For instance, if men can be considered women, then it becomes non-inclusive to link womanhood to having a vagina. Therefore, this:
Similarly, there are transsexual women who identify as men but who still have functioning female genitalia. Therefore, to be inclusive means that abortion and contraceptive services can't be marketed to women alone:
And what about those who are legally women but who consider themselves men? They can use female services but they don't want to be referred to as women:
Elinor Burkett shares the same underlying liberal theory as the transsexuals, but she is facing some unexpected loss of control in how the theory is played out. She liked the old way in which she got to be part of a movement in which women were defined as an oppressed group smashing apart oppressive social constructs to live liberated lives, in which women like herself could keep older privileges of womanhood but also have access to things they wanted in a more androgynous social setting.
But the theory has now reached a more radical moment, so that there is no longer a comfortable "women's movement," not when the notion of womanhood itself is in such flux. What now does it mean to be a woman? In our liberal society a woman's body doesn't make a woman, nor her distinct life experiences. Transsexuals reach back to traditional markers of femininity to make their womanhood distinct, but this isn't acceptable to feminists. Can you have a women's movement when there is confusion about what actually makes a woman?
Elinor Burkett recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times defending the older feminist position. It's interesting how closely she follows typical liberal ideas in her argument.
The basic liberal idea is that society should be based on a principle of "equal freedom," meaning that the individual is to be equally free to choose for themselves who they are and what they do. This means that unchosen, predetermined qualities, such as our biological sex or our race, are thought of in negative terms as oppressive restrictions from which the individual is to be liberated.
This explains Elinor Burkett's first argument. She observes that when a transsexual man says that he has a female brain that many on the left applaud him, even though this suggests that there are real, hardwired differences between men and women that aren't self-determined:
Suddenly, I find that many of the people I think of as being on my side — people who proudly call themselves progressive and fervently support the human need for self-determination — are buying into the notion that minor differences in male and female brains lead to major forks in the road and that some sort of gendered destiny is encoded in us.
That’s the kind of nonsense that was used to repress women for centuries.
...By defining womanhood the way he did to Ms. Sawyer, Mr. Jenner and the many advocates for transgender rights who take a similar tack...undermine almost a century of hard-fought arguments that the very definition of female is a social construct that has subordinated us.
Elinor Burkett fears that if our biological sex - the fact of being male or female - is found to matter in some way, that there will be a limitation on how we as individuals chart our own individual destiny. It might mean, for instance, that a woman might not become a combat fighter in the army, because she was born a woman and not a man - something she cannot determine for herself.
It is difficult, though, to live by the liberal principle consistently. Our sex is important to our identity: it's not easy to see yourself as an "it". And it is clearly the case that being a woman does still matter for Elinor Burkett, no matter how feminist she is. And so her second argument is that transsexual men are undermining female identity.
She makes a good argument that this is so, and I will quote her on this shortly. But the point to be made here is that it is this very fact, that transsexualism undermines female identity, which makes it such a radically liberal force and which explains why it has so much traction in a liberal society. So this may not have been the best argument for Elinor Burkett to focus on if she wishes to win support from a liberal establishment.
How does transsexualism undermine a female identity? Well, if a man in his fifties is suddenly considered to be a woman, then all the things that women uniquely experience in life don't matter so much when it comes to what it means to be a woman:
People who haven’t lived their whole lives as women, whether Ms. Jenner or Mr. Summers, shouldn’t get to define us. That’s something men have been doing for much too long. And as much as I recognize and endorse the right of men to throw off the mantle of maleness, they cannot stake their claim to dignity as transgender people by trampling on mine as a woman.
Their truth is not my truth. Their female identities are not my female identity. They haven’t traveled through the world as women and been shaped by all that this entails...
Elinor Burkett is running a fine line argument here. She is arguing that it is bad for women to be defined by hard-wired biological characteristics, such as differences between the male and female brain, but good for women to be defined collectively by shared life experiences, both negative and positive (on the positive side she writes that she has "relished certain courtesies" that she has received due to her sex). Again, I can't see this as being persuasive within a liberal framework when the liberal goal is to sever the connection between our biological sex and what happens in our life.
Elinor Burkett then lists a series of very strange outcomes of supporting transsexualism. They are strange to me and perhaps to older feminists, but no doubt they seem radically chic to younger liberals and will become part of the liberal mainstream over time.
For instance, if men can be considered women, then it becomes non-inclusive to link womanhood to having a vagina. Therefore, this:
In January 2014, the actress Martha Plimpton, an abortion-rights advocate, sent out a tweet about a benefit for Texas abortion funding called “A Night of a Thousand Vaginas.” Suddenly, she was swamped by criticism for using the word “vagina.” “Given the constant genital policing, you can’t expect trans folks to feel included by an event title focused on a policed, binary genital,” responded @DrJaneChi.
WHEN Ms. Plimpton explained that she would continue to say “vagina” — and why shouldn’t she, given that without a vagina, there is no pregnancy or abortion? — her feed overflowed anew with indignation, Michelle Goldberg reported in The Nation. “So you’re really committed to doubling down on using a term that you’ve been told many times is exclusionary & harmful?” asked one blogger. Ms. Plimpton became, to use the new trans insult, a terf, which stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist.”
In January, Project: Theatre at Mount Holyoke College, a self-described liberal arts college for women, canceled a performance of Eve Ensler’s iconic feminist play “The Vagina Monologues” because it offered an “extremely narrow perspective on what it means to be a woman,” explained Erin Murphy, the student group’s chairwoman.
Let me get this right: The word “vagina” is exclusionary and offers an extremely narrow perspective on womanhood, so the 3.5 billion of us who have vaginas, along with the trans people who want them, should describe ours with the politically correct terminology trans activists are pushing on us: “front hole” or “internal genitalia”?
Similarly, there are transsexual women who identify as men but who still have functioning female genitalia. Therefore, to be inclusive means that abortion and contraceptive services can't be marketed to women alone:
Even the word “woman” has come under assault by some of the very people who claim the right to be considered women. The hashtags #StandWithTexasWomen, popularized after Wendy Davis, then a state senator, attempted to filibuster the Texas Legislature to prevent passage of a draconian anti-abortion law, and #WeTrustWomen, are also under attack since they, too, are exclusionary.
“Abortion rights and reproductive justice is not a women’s issue,” wrote Emmett Stoffer, one of many self-described transgender persons to blog on the topic. It is “a uterus owner’s issue.” Mr. Stoffer was referring to the possibility that a woman who is taking hormones or undergoing surgery to become a man, or who does not identify as a woman, can still have a uterus, become pregnant and need an abortion.
Accordingly, abortion rights groups are under pressure to modify their mission statements to omit the word woman, as Katha Pollitt recently reported in The Nation. Those who have given in, like the New York Abortion Access Fund, now offer their services to “people” and to “callers.” Fund Texas Women, which covers the travel and hotel expenses of abortion seekers with no nearby clinic, recently changed its name to Fund Texas Choice. “With a name like Fund Texas Women, we were publicly excluding trans people who needed to get an abortion but were not women,” the group explains on its website.
And what about those who are legally women but who consider themselves men? They can use female services but they don't want to be referred to as women:
Women’s colleges are contorting themselves into knots to accommodate female students who consider themselves men, but usually not men who are living as women. Now these institutions, whose core mission is to cultivate female leaders, have student government and dormitory presidents who identify as males.
As Ruth Padawer reported in The New York Times Magazine last fall, Wellesley students are increasingly replacing the word “sisterhood” with “siblinghood,” and faculty members are confronted with complaints from trans students about their universal use of the pronoun she — although Wellesley rightly brags about its long history as the “world’s pre-eminent college for women.”
Elinor Burkett shares the same underlying liberal theory as the transsexuals, but she is facing some unexpected loss of control in how the theory is played out. She liked the old way in which she got to be part of a movement in which women were defined as an oppressed group smashing apart oppressive social constructs to live liberated lives, in which women like herself could keep older privileges of womanhood but also have access to things they wanted in a more androgynous social setting.
But the theory has now reached a more radical moment, so that there is no longer a comfortable "women's movement," not when the notion of womanhood itself is in such flux. What now does it mean to be a woman? In our liberal society a woman's body doesn't make a woman, nor her distinct life experiences. Transsexuals reach back to traditional markers of femininity to make their womanhood distinct, but this isn't acceptable to feminists. Can you have a women's movement when there is confusion about what actually makes a woman?
Sunday, December 20, 2015
De Mella
This is an important part of the traditionalist response to liberal modernity (hat tip: Traditional Britain Group):
Liberals imagine that they are liberating individuals by making them self-defining. But this diminishes the individual by removing important parts of our identity, our belonging, and our sense of connection to people and place; to culture and heritage; and to a continuity between the generations.
The individual comes into his own when he is richly encultured, not when he is stripped down and abstracted to allow for self-definition
Liberals imagine that they are liberating individuals by making them self-defining. But this diminishes the individual by removing important parts of our identity, our belonging, and our sense of connection to people and place; to culture and heritage; and to a continuity between the generations.
The individual comes into his own when he is richly encultured, not when he is stripped down and abstracted to allow for self-definition
College dissenters
I've written a few pieces on the protests by left-wing students at various campuses in the U.S. The general pattern was that a group of these students claimed that they were so harmed by a "microaggression" that they could no longer function in life; they then demonstrated rowdily attacking anyone who did not actively join in; before successfully getting college administrators to resign and demanding that everyone on campus undertake various re-education courses.
The most adult response to this I've read is an editorial from a student newspaper at Claremont McKenna College. Titled "We dissent" it criticises both the student activists and the craven campus administrators. It's worth reading in full, but here are some highlights:
The most adult response to this I've read is an editorial from a student newspaper at Claremont McKenna College. Titled "We dissent" it criticises both the student activists and the craven campus administrators. It's worth reading in full, but here are some highlights:
...First, former Dean Mary Spellman...we are disappointed in you as well. We are disappointed that you allowed a group of angry students to bully you into resignation.
Second, President Chodosh. We were disappointed to see you idly stand by and watch students berate, curse at, and attack Dean Spellman for being a “racist.” For someone who preaches about “leadership” and “personal and social responsibility,” your actions are particularly disappointing. You let your colleague, someone who has been helping your administration for the past three years and the college for six years, be publicly mocked and humiliated. Why? Because you were afraid. You were afraid that students would also mock and humiliate you if you defended Dean Spellman, so you let her be thrown under the bus
To our fellow Claremont students, we are disappointed in you as well. We are ashamed of you for trying to end someone’s career over a poorly worded email. This is not a political statement—this is a person’s livelihood that you so carelessly sought to destroy. We are disappointed that you chose to scream and swear at your administrators. That is not how adults solve problems, and your behavior reflects poorly on all of us here in Claremont. This is not who we are and this is not how we conduct ourselves, but this is the image of us that has now reached the national stage.
We are disappointed in your demands. If you want to take a class in “ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory,” feel free to take one, but don’t force such an ideologically driven course on all CMC students. If the dearth of such courses at CMC bothers you, maybe you should have chosen a different school.
We are disappointed in the fact that your movement has successfully managed to convince its members that anyone who dissents does so not for intelligent reasons, but due to moral failure or maliciousness. We are disappointed that you’ve used phrases like “silence is violence” to not only demonize those who oppose you, but all who are not actively supporting you.
We are adults, and we need to be mature enough to take ownership of and responsibility for our feelings, rather than demanding that those around us cater to our individual needs. The hypocrisy of advocating for “safe spaces” while creating an incredibly unsafe space for President Chodosh, former Dean Spellman, the student who was “derailing,” and the news media representatives who were verbally abused unfortunately seemed to soar over many of your heads.
Lastly, we are disappointed in students like ourselves, who were scared into silence. We are not racist for having different opinions. We are not immoral because we don’t buy the flawed rhetoric of a spiteful movement. We are not evil because we don’t want this movement to tear across our campuses completely unchecked.
We are no longer afraid to be voices of dissent.
Saturday, December 12, 2015
These are the dreaded microaggressions?
I've written some posts lately on events at American campuses, where left-wing activists have claimed that they are the victims of "microaggressions" that leave them unable to function, except to angrily band together to get campus administrators fired.
I was curious about what these microaggressions might actually be, so I did a search and came up with a project about microaggressions from Fordham University in New York City. Various students were photographed with little placards explaining the microaggressions that they have personally experienced.
I was gobsmacked by just how petty these microaggressions are. Mostly they just involve students being asked where they are from or what ethnicity they are. If that's a microaggression, then most of us are both victims and perpetrators, as people commonly ask this question, both out of curiosity and as a conversation starter.
So, here is a sample of the microaggression complaints:
It's interesting that Asian students are jumping on the microaggression bandwagon. They are, after all, members of the most privileged group in America when it comes to career, education and income. Perhaps they realise instinctively that in a liberal system you become vulnerable if you don't strongly assert your right to be a member of a victim class. Or perhaps it is too tempting, even for intelligent people, to externalise their problems, i.e. to blame external "oppression" for your unhappiness, rather than to try to set things right in your own life.
At any rate, it's difficult to take microaggressions seriously. It seems to be more the case of people searching desperately for reasons to feel put out.
I was curious about what these microaggressions might actually be, so I did a search and came up with a project about microaggressions from Fordham University in New York City. Various students were photographed with little placards explaining the microaggressions that they have personally experienced.
I was gobsmacked by just how petty these microaggressions are. Mostly they just involve students being asked where they are from or what ethnicity they are. If that's a microaggression, then most of us are both victims and perpetrators, as people commonly ask this question, both out of curiosity and as a conversation starter.
So, here is a sample of the microaggression complaints:
 |
A bit precious? I get the exact same question in the classroom, it's an abrupt way of asking for your ancestry.     |
It's interesting that Asian students are jumping on the microaggression bandwagon. They are, after all, members of the most privileged group in America when it comes to career, education and income. Perhaps they realise instinctively that in a liberal system you become vulnerable if you don't strongly assert your right to be a member of a victim class. Or perhaps it is too tempting, even for intelligent people, to externalise their problems, i.e. to blame external "oppression" for your unhappiness, rather than to try to set things right in your own life.
At any rate, it's difficult to take microaggressions seriously. It seems to be more the case of people searching desperately for reasons to feel put out.
Monday, December 07, 2015
Le Choc! FN triumph in French elections
Good to be able to report some positive developments. On Sunday the French went to the polls to elect their regional governments. The National Front, led by Marine Le Pen, is the one major party campaigning against open borders. It made large gains, being voted in first place in six of the thirteen regions. Two of the FN candidates scored over 40% of the vote. The FN candidates will still have to battle it out in the second round of voting - for more on the situation on France please visit Gallia Watch.
Saturday, December 05, 2015
The unfolding of modernity
The following is only a quick sketch and is not meant to capture everything. I hope though that it helps some readers get a handle on the steps by which the liberal worldview unfolds.
In brief, the modern liberal mindset gets to where it is through these steps:
Step 1: A denial that there is a stable, objective, external truth that exists or can be known to us.
Step 2: Therefore, the good in life is the act of choosing for ourselves; this is what generates the value that gives human life its dignity. The core value is a freedom understood to mean a right to determine our own self and being (self-determination and individual autonomy).
(A variant on this: the good is not in a community disciplining itself to a truth that resides eternally outside of itself but in the assertion of its own will or in its collective ability to shape its own reality.)
Step 3: If human dignity rests on a freedom to determine our own self, then the unchosen aspects of self should be made not to matter, including our biological sex, race and sexuality and the social roles flowing from these.
So, although for liberals there is no moral order existing objectively outside the individual, there is a new morality in which we must accept the right of others to self-determine. Therefore, we must be non-discriminatory, open to the other, tolerant, inclusive, accepting of diversity and so on.
Step 4: Therefore, there does exist a kind of moral order generated by liberalism, which does then restrict what the individual may or may not do or believe (despite the starting point of a belief in a freedom to self-determine). Individuals in a liberal order may not have beliefs that would make the unchosen aspects of self (biological sex, race, sexuality) or the social roles flowing from these matter in a public context. An individual may be judged guilty, in thought or deed, of discrimination, intolerance, exclusion, prejudice, sexism and so on.
Step 5: If there is no objective, external layer of reality by which we might come to know moral truths or ideals, then the informal, traditional ordering of societies will appear "opaque," irrational or baseless. Instead, it will seem more efficient and scientific to order society along technical lines, according to what is required by markets (i.e. society is organised around the tangible and measurable criteria of what helps an economy to be profitable) or along bureaucratic lines, in which the individual stands in a direct line to the state, with the goals being again the measurable and tangible ones of health, education, housing, welfare and so on.
Step 6: In practice modern societies are ordered along both market and bureaucratic lines. However, some moderns (right-liberals) prefer the market option (the economy) and others (left-liberals) the bureaucracy (the social option). The concept of liberty for right-liberals will emphasise a deregulated freedom to act in the market; left-liberals will prefer a more interventionist state guaranteeing an equality in those conditions of life which help individuals to act autonomously (i.e. they want to overcome disadvantage, understood to mean access to resources for a self-determining life, particularly disadvantage that correlates to those unchosen qualities that are not meant to matter such as our biological sex or race).
Step 7: Happiness and equality don't arrive as they're supposed to. Why? Some liberal moderns assert that it is because some groups of people have a self-interest in preventing it happening. Some groups of people get together and construct a false identity (e.g. maleness or whiteness) which then allows them an unearned privilege at the expense of other groups who are positioned as "the other" (the non-privileged groups). The whole of society is set up to uphold this unearned privilege, meaning that the privileged groups and the society they inhabit must be deconstructed before the promised society of equality and freedom can finally arrive.
So those are the basic steps. There are plenty of people who are at least dimly aware that there is something wrong with the liberal modernity that results from this way of thinking about the world. For instance, liberal societies aren't able to maintain borders - they are porous. In liberal societies, men and white people are attacked as oppressors. In liberal societies, politics is reduced to the management of the economy and certain social goods such as education and housing. In liberal societies there is no encouragement toward positive character goals or virtues, there are only the passive goals of tolerating or not discriminating. In liberal societies, important aspects of identity, such as those relating to manhood and womanhood, or to ancestry and ethny, are gradually dissolved.
But people feel overwhelmed by what appears to be a monolith. How can you possibly take on something that seems to have entrenched itself so deeply into Western society?
Those who do try to resist usually choose the wrong step. Last century most social conservatives, for instance, chose step 6. They opposed the left-liberal wing of modernity by supporting the right-liberal one. Predictably, it had little effect.
There have also been alternative forms of modernity which took the more collectivist path as described briefly in step 2 (possibly under the influence of German idealist philosophy). But this did not challenge modernity itself: it was a different face of modernity rather than a rejection of it.
It is possible as well to challenge liberal modernity at step 7 by objecting to the vilification of white people and men. This is a useful thing to do (a matter of self-defence), but it won't stop the juggernaut of modernity as it doesn't challenge it at its source.
Finally, there have also been those who have challenged modernity by asking what led to step 1. Was it the nominalist victory over philosophical realism? The influence of Gnosticism amongst influential intellectuals? This is an interesting and useful discussion but I don't think it's the best entry point for resisting liberal modernity.
My opinion is that an effective challenge will include two things. First, stating as clearly as possible what liberalism is and where it leads (as a means of clearing people's minds of it as thoroughly as possible). Second, reasserting what was lost from step 1 (so that we shunt aside centuries of liberal development in one decisive move).
The second step will require some scaffolding, as it is now difficult for people to readily give voice to pre-liberal thought. We can start a discussion about character and virtue; about ideals of manliness or womanliness; of natural forms of identity and attachment, and of the loves, loyalties and duties associated with them; of what makes for a good life, or of what some of our life purposes might be; of how the human personality comes to fruition or to its higher purposes; of how different sides of the human personality might be harmonised or ordered.
In brief, the modern liberal mindset gets to where it is through these steps:
Step 1: A denial that there is a stable, objective, external truth that exists or can be known to us.
Step 2: Therefore, the good in life is the act of choosing for ourselves; this is what generates the value that gives human life its dignity. The core value is a freedom understood to mean a right to determine our own self and being (self-determination and individual autonomy).
(A variant on this: the good is not in a community disciplining itself to a truth that resides eternally outside of itself but in the assertion of its own will or in its collective ability to shape its own reality.)
Step 3: If human dignity rests on a freedom to determine our own self, then the unchosen aspects of self should be made not to matter, including our biological sex, race and sexuality and the social roles flowing from these.
So, although for liberals there is no moral order existing objectively outside the individual, there is a new morality in which we must accept the right of others to self-determine. Therefore, we must be non-discriminatory, open to the other, tolerant, inclusive, accepting of diversity and so on.
Step 4: Therefore, there does exist a kind of moral order generated by liberalism, which does then restrict what the individual may or may not do or believe (despite the starting point of a belief in a freedom to self-determine). Individuals in a liberal order may not have beliefs that would make the unchosen aspects of self (biological sex, race, sexuality) or the social roles flowing from these matter in a public context. An individual may be judged guilty, in thought or deed, of discrimination, intolerance, exclusion, prejudice, sexism and so on.
Step 5: If there is no objective, external layer of reality by which we might come to know moral truths or ideals, then the informal, traditional ordering of societies will appear "opaque," irrational or baseless. Instead, it will seem more efficient and scientific to order society along technical lines, according to what is required by markets (i.e. society is organised around the tangible and measurable criteria of what helps an economy to be profitable) or along bureaucratic lines, in which the individual stands in a direct line to the state, with the goals being again the measurable and tangible ones of health, education, housing, welfare and so on.
Step 6: In practice modern societies are ordered along both market and bureaucratic lines. However, some moderns (right-liberals) prefer the market option (the economy) and others (left-liberals) the bureaucracy (the social option). The concept of liberty for right-liberals will emphasise a deregulated freedom to act in the market; left-liberals will prefer a more interventionist state guaranteeing an equality in those conditions of life which help individuals to act autonomously (i.e. they want to overcome disadvantage, understood to mean access to resources for a self-determining life, particularly disadvantage that correlates to those unchosen qualities that are not meant to matter such as our biological sex or race).
Step 7: Happiness and equality don't arrive as they're supposed to. Why? Some liberal moderns assert that it is because some groups of people have a self-interest in preventing it happening. Some groups of people get together and construct a false identity (e.g. maleness or whiteness) which then allows them an unearned privilege at the expense of other groups who are positioned as "the other" (the non-privileged groups). The whole of society is set up to uphold this unearned privilege, meaning that the privileged groups and the society they inhabit must be deconstructed before the promised society of equality and freedom can finally arrive.
So those are the basic steps. There are plenty of people who are at least dimly aware that there is something wrong with the liberal modernity that results from this way of thinking about the world. For instance, liberal societies aren't able to maintain borders - they are porous. In liberal societies, men and white people are attacked as oppressors. In liberal societies, politics is reduced to the management of the economy and certain social goods such as education and housing. In liberal societies there is no encouragement toward positive character goals or virtues, there are only the passive goals of tolerating or not discriminating. In liberal societies, important aspects of identity, such as those relating to manhood and womanhood, or to ancestry and ethny, are gradually dissolved.
But people feel overwhelmed by what appears to be a monolith. How can you possibly take on something that seems to have entrenched itself so deeply into Western society?
Those who do try to resist usually choose the wrong step. Last century most social conservatives, for instance, chose step 6. They opposed the left-liberal wing of modernity by supporting the right-liberal one. Predictably, it had little effect.
There have also been alternative forms of modernity which took the more collectivist path as described briefly in step 2 (possibly under the influence of German idealist philosophy). But this did not challenge modernity itself: it was a different face of modernity rather than a rejection of it.
It is possible as well to challenge liberal modernity at step 7 by objecting to the vilification of white people and men. This is a useful thing to do (a matter of self-defence), but it won't stop the juggernaut of modernity as it doesn't challenge it at its source.
Finally, there have also been those who have challenged modernity by asking what led to step 1. Was it the nominalist victory over philosophical realism? The influence of Gnosticism amongst influential intellectuals? This is an interesting and useful discussion but I don't think it's the best entry point for resisting liberal modernity.
My opinion is that an effective challenge will include two things. First, stating as clearly as possible what liberalism is and where it leads (as a means of clearing people's minds of it as thoroughly as possible). Second, reasserting what was lost from step 1 (so that we shunt aside centuries of liberal development in one decisive move).
The second step will require some scaffolding, as it is now difficult for people to readily give voice to pre-liberal thought. We can start a discussion about character and virtue; about ideals of manliness or womanliness; of natural forms of identity and attachment, and of the loves, loyalties and duties associated with them; of what makes for a good life, or of what some of our life purposes might be; of how the human personality comes to fruition or to its higher purposes; of how different sides of the human personality might be harmonised or ordered.
Thursday, December 03, 2015
Crybullies
I'm reading more and more about the crybully student movement in America. The term "crybully" is a good one, as the movement has two very different sides. On the one hand, there is much talk about racial minority students suffering poor mental health to the point that if anything doesn't go their way that they will be crushed and unable to function. On the other hand, the same students then go about in mobs fiercely intimidating those who don't cravenly fall into line, and they seek (usually successfully) to kick people out of their jobs. They cry and then they bully: they are crybullies.
I wrote a bit about this in my last post on events at Yale and the University of Missouri. A reader alerted me to an even more troubling event at the prestigious Dartmouth College, where white students studying in the library were surrounded by a mob and had racial insults screamed at them.
Then there is Claremont McKenna College. The Dean of Students, Mary Spellman, resigned there because she sought to support minority students but used a phrase they didn't like (word crime?). It didn't matter how pro-diversity she was, she was swallowed up by the movement regardless. Oddly, the minority students claim to be "marginalised" but are confidently demanding the right to remake the place according to their own wishes:
They want white professors sacked and replaced; they want courses (critical race theory) which make white people the oppressors; and they want a kind of Stalinist style "mandatory and periodic racial sensitivity training for all professors".
Such is life in the modern liberal West.
I wrote a bit about this in my last post on events at Yale and the University of Missouri. A reader alerted me to an even more troubling event at the prestigious Dartmouth College, where white students studying in the library were surrounded by a mob and had racial insults screamed at them.
Then there is Claremont McKenna College. The Dean of Students, Mary Spellman, resigned there because she sought to support minority students but used a phrase they didn't like (word crime?). It didn't matter how pro-diversity she was, she was swallowed up by the movement regardless. Oddly, the minority students claim to be "marginalised" but are confidently demanding the right to remake the place according to their own wishes:
Their demands include a permanent resource center; the immediate creation of two diversity positions for student affairs and faculty; and a general education requirement for ethnic, racial, and sexuality theory; along with over a dozen other demands.
“To the administration as a whole, we require greater diversity in our faculty and staff,” stated the protest leader. “The need for such programs to educate the student body is eminent [sic] by the numerous microaggressions felt by students of color.” Students of color called out racially-insensitive professors for making them feel unsafe. “We want mandatory and periodic racial sensitivity trainings for all professors,” one protestor stated. “How are students supposed to learn in the classroom when they don’t even feel safe? When their own professors, someone who is supposed to be a mentor to them, a teacher, doesn’t even respect their identities? We want more diverse course offerings for critical race theory, community engagement, and social justice issues.”
They want white professors sacked and replaced; they want courses (critical race theory) which make white people the oppressors; and they want a kind of Stalinist style "mandatory and periodic racial sensitivity training for all professors".
Such is life in the modern liberal West.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Melbourne Traditionalists meeting
Late notice, but this coming Thursday (3rd December) Mark Moncrieff of Upon Hope and I will be hosting a meeting of the Melbourne Traditionalists. If you're interested in attending please send either one of us an email (mine: swerting(at)bigpond.com)
Are student radicals losing mental health?
This is old news now in America but wasn't widely reported on here in Australia. Two events, one at Yale and the other at the University of Missouri, show a disturbing trend amongst radical activists.
Let's start with the prestigious Yale University. The event there began when an email was sent to students asking them to show sensitivity when selecting Halloween costumes. The wife of a college master sent an email of her own lamenting the fact that students were no longer being encouraged to be transgressive but instead were scared to offend. Her husband supported her on more libertarian, free speech grounds, that rather than college authorities ban anything, students themselves should show disapproval of what they found offensive.
Jancey Paz, a student at the college, wrote a letter of complaint about the master:
Remember, this is Yale. It is supposed to be a place where the intellectual elite gather. Instead, Jancey Paz portrays it as a place where emotionally fragile young people commune to have their feelings soothed.
Or perhaps we are witnessing a new strategy by student radicals. One in which the matter at hand never even gets to the point of political debate because this would be too upsetting - the only acceptable role for those listening to the student left is one of unqualified support and sympathy.
And if this support isn't fulsome enough? Then the supposedly "fragile" communities will punish you fiercely, as Tim Wolfe, who was until recently President of the University of Missouri, found out.
The student left at Missouri felt that he hadn't created spaces of healing after a police shooting in Ferguson:
He apologised but the left still made two demands. First, that he issue another public apology at a press conference acknowledging his "white male privilege". The second that he be fired. He was fired.
For the moment, the strategy has worked.
Let's start with the prestigious Yale University. The event there began when an email was sent to students asking them to show sensitivity when selecting Halloween costumes. The wife of a college master sent an email of her own lamenting the fact that students were no longer being encouraged to be transgressive but instead were scared to offend. Her husband supported her on more libertarian, free speech grounds, that rather than college authorities ban anything, students themselves should show disapproval of what they found offensive.
Jancey Paz, a student at the college, wrote a letter of complaint about the master:
...in his ten weeks as a leader of the college, Master Christakis has not fostered this sense of community. He seems to lack the ability, quite frankly, to put aside his opinions long enough to listen to the very real hurt that the community feels. He doesn’t get it. And I don’t want to debate. I want to talk about my pain.
My dad is a really stubborn man. We debate all the time, and I understand the value of hearing differing opinions. But there have been times when I have come to my father crying, when I was emotionally upset, and he heard me regardless of whether or not he agreed with me. He taught me that there is a time for debate, and there is a time for just hearing and acknowledging someone’s pain.
I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns. I feel drained. And through it all, Christakis has shown that he does not consider us a priority.
Remember, this is Yale. It is supposed to be a place where the intellectual elite gather. Instead, Jancey Paz portrays it as a place where emotionally fragile young people commune to have their feelings soothed.
Or perhaps we are witnessing a new strategy by student radicals. One in which the matter at hand never even gets to the point of political debate because this would be too upsetting - the only acceptable role for those listening to the student left is one of unqualified support and sympathy.
And if this support isn't fulsome enough? Then the supposedly "fragile" communities will punish you fiercely, as Tim Wolfe, who was until recently President of the University of Missouri, found out.
The student left at Missouri felt that he hadn't created spaces of healing after a police shooting in Ferguson:
“In the following months, our students were left stranded, forced to face an increase in tension and inequality with no systemic support...The academic careers of our students are suffering. The mental health of our campus is under constant attack. Our students are being ignored. We have asked the University to create spaces of healing and it failed to do so.”
He apologised but the left still made two demands. First, that he issue another public apology at a press conference acknowledging his "white male privilege". The second that he be fired. He was fired.
For the moment, the strategy has worked.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Liberalism: making the world a more dangerous place?
The news of the past week was, of course, the Paris terror attacks. I was interested to see what the reaction would be from the general public here in Australia. Many do seem to recognise that we now live in a different world, one which is no longer as safe as it once was. A less attractive world.
You might think that the next step would be for people thinking this way to reconsider the policies causing this decline. The smaller the Muslim population in the West, the easier it is for security services to keep on top of those planning terror attacks. So if you want a safer and more secure society it makes sense to limit Muslim immigration into the West.
But most people have not taken this next logical step. Why? I think perhaps it's because if you have lived in a liberal culture for long enough you are likely to have developed a "liberal reflex" - by which I mean an internalised sense of what you can or can't think (or feel). And, at the moment, the reflex tells people that to cast any kind of insensitivity onto a migrant, including a Muslim migrant, is a worse thing than to live under the ongoing threat of terror attacks.
It is weak-minded, when what is needed is a resolute commitment to the security of the Western populations.
You might think that the next step would be for people thinking this way to reconsider the policies causing this decline. The smaller the Muslim population in the West, the easier it is for security services to keep on top of those planning terror attacks. So if you want a safer and more secure society it makes sense to limit Muslim immigration into the West.
But most people have not taken this next logical step. Why? I think perhaps it's because if you have lived in a liberal culture for long enough you are likely to have developed a "liberal reflex" - by which I mean an internalised sense of what you can or can't think (or feel). And, at the moment, the reflex tells people that to cast any kind of insensitivity onto a migrant, including a Muslim migrant, is a worse thing than to live under the ongoing threat of terror attacks.
It is weak-minded, when what is needed is a resolute commitment to the security of the Western populations.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Stepping into St Patrick's
I was in the city this morning and decided to see if a mass was being held at the cathedral, St Patrick's. As it happens, I stepped inside just as the homily was being delivered (by, I believe, Archbishop Denis Hart).
I entered at a key point in his address, when he was advising his flock on how to live a good Christian life. As I sat down, he said "And it is important that you do not involve yourself with any isms, such as...."
I'll get back to the two isms he specifically warned against in a moment. First, I want to say how impressed I was by the mass itself. The cathedral is both beautiful and monumental (the largest church building in Australia, it took 81 years to complete). The music was uplifting and also beautiful; I have never heard better sacred music than that sung by the boys choir (which has an unusual history - the Vienna boys choir was touring Australia when WWII broke out and so remained in Melbourne for many years, leading to the formation of the cathedral choir).
But back to the isms. The two that came into the archbishop's mind to specifically warn against were conservatism and fundamentalism.
The warning against conservatism made me think of just how much the Catholic church in Melbourne resembles the Anglican church of about 30 years ago - one seeking to comfortably identify with the liberal establishment.
But this is where the church is digging a hole for itself. If you want to be an establishment liberal, then, yes, the worst thing you can do is be "fundamentalist". But the way that liberals define the term fundamentalist nowadays is quite specific.
For a liberal, a fundamentalist is a person who rejects the liberal idea that there is nothing objectively right or wrong, as what is right is the subjective act of defining your own good and being tolerant and non-discriminatory in allowing others to do the same.
The problem is that the Catholic Church necessarily violates this belief. The church does, in fact, assert that some acts are objectively right or wrong (i.e. it judges, it discriminates). Furthermore, the church upholds beliefs about the existence of distinctions between men and women that also restrict the way that people might define their own good (e.g. a woman cannot choose to become a Catholic priest). That, in the liberal definition, is also fundamentalist.
The church cannot remain itself if it attempts to be a liberal institution following liberal concepts.
I entered at a key point in his address, when he was advising his flock on how to live a good Christian life. As I sat down, he said "And it is important that you do not involve yourself with any isms, such as...."
I'll get back to the two isms he specifically warned against in a moment. First, I want to say how impressed I was by the mass itself. The cathedral is both beautiful and monumental (the largest church building in Australia, it took 81 years to complete). The music was uplifting and also beautiful; I have never heard better sacred music than that sung by the boys choir (which has an unusual history - the Vienna boys choir was touring Australia when WWII broke out and so remained in Melbourne for many years, leading to the formation of the cathedral choir).
 |
| The altar, St Patrick's Melbourne |
 |
| Stained glass window, St Patrick's Melbourne |
But back to the isms. The two that came into the archbishop's mind to specifically warn against were conservatism and fundamentalism.
The warning against conservatism made me think of just how much the Catholic church in Melbourne resembles the Anglican church of about 30 years ago - one seeking to comfortably identify with the liberal establishment.
But this is where the church is digging a hole for itself. If you want to be an establishment liberal, then, yes, the worst thing you can do is be "fundamentalist". But the way that liberals define the term fundamentalist nowadays is quite specific.
For a liberal, a fundamentalist is a person who rejects the liberal idea that there is nothing objectively right or wrong, as what is right is the subjective act of defining your own good and being tolerant and non-discriminatory in allowing others to do the same.
The problem is that the Catholic Church necessarily violates this belief. The church does, in fact, assert that some acts are objectively right or wrong (i.e. it judges, it discriminates). Furthermore, the church upholds beliefs about the existence of distinctions between men and women that also restrict the way that people might define their own good (e.g. a woman cannot choose to become a Catholic priest). That, in the liberal definition, is also fundamentalist.
The church cannot remain itself if it attempts to be a liberal institution following liberal concepts.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
A different understanding of marriage
In a previous post on marriage a reader left this comment:
I do understand the point being made here. It is a reaction against the current failing understanding of marriage. When people marry now, they still often say the traditional vows, but do not really mean them. For instance, whilst it is undoubtedly true that women at their weddings want their marriages to succeed, what many are really vowing is to stay with their husbands as long as they still have a feeling of love toward them, with love understood as a romantic feeling. If the feeling goes, then the marriage was not "fated" to last, it simply wasn't meant to be, and it is then thought right to move on.
Obviously, this way of doing things means that many marriages will fail. It only takes one bout of marital weariness and it's over (see here).
My reader puts forward a different model, one based on an authoritative assertion of marriage as a social institution, rather than a personal relationship. Would it work? Well, one thing in its favour is that most people do follow whatever moral beliefs are authoritative in their society. So as long as the belief in marriage as a social institution retained moral authority, it would most likely be more successful than the current model.
Even so, I'd like to put forward a different way of framing marriage, one that ties together the personal and the social. First, for a culture of marriage to succeed there needs to be a sense of the "offices" of husband/father and wife/mother. These offices are part of what fulfil our created natures as men and women; they add a sense of meaning and accomplishment to our work in the world; and they bring a sense of fruition to our lives.
These offices are a deep expression of our manhood and womanhood and, as such, tie our personal identity closely to our social roles within the family. They also give us a reason to commit to marriage and family in a stable way over and above the romantic relationship we have with our spouse.
But these offices are no longer as effective as they once were in anchoring our family commitments. One problem is the emphasis in liberalism on "freedom as individual autonomy". If the aim is to be an autonomous, self-determining, self-creating individual, then inherited social roles, particularly those based on our unchosen biological sex, will be thought of negatively as restraints on the individual. So over time marriage will be reconceived as an increasingly personal union alone, minus the social offices.
A second issue is the feminist idea that the offices of wife and mother were constructed for oppressive purposes; i.e. that rather than being part of the fulfilment of a woman, or of a fruitful life, that they are the very opposite, a way of women being subordinated in society. Therefore several generations of women have been raised not necessarily to reject marriage itself, but rather the significance or worth of the role/office of being a wife and mother.
This is especially true of the wifely role which has been widely cast as being old-fashioned or disempowering. In contrast, there do still exist some women (including women with careers) who uphold some of the older culture attached to the motherhood role and this does help to cement their marital commitments. There are some women, in other words, who might not stay in a marriage for the sake of their husbands or societies, but who will do so for the sake of their children.
For a culture of marriage to succeed there also needs to be a certain understanding of love. Emotional feeling is not the only test of love; the love we are called on to cultivate in marriage is one that should be settled in the will and be expressed, in part, as fidelity and service. Nor should we see love as being passively fated, but rather as something that we are actively oriented to, i.e. that we will love the spouse we are with, with all that this entails (e.g. the emotional maturity to forgive).
Finally, our stable commitments to marriage and family can also be reinforced by our perception of the good. Our commitment to community or tribe or nation is drawn partly from the identity and connectedness we draw from them, but partly also from the good that we perceive in them. This good can be understood in a secular way (e.g. the positive role that family plays in the emotional development of the young), but also in a religious way, as a transcendent good, by which I mean a good that exists independently of human agency and which might be experienced as something like "the eternal in the moment of perception".
Romantic love can be experienced as a transcendent good (finding your "soul mate"), although this is not what anchors family commitments. But so too can the life and character of a family - this can be experienced as a unique expression of a transcendent good, something of inestimable value, that you would not then ordinarily choose to dissolve (just as you would not ordinarily choose to dissolve your own tradition if you saw in it a unique expression of a transcendent good).
The traditional concept of Marriage in Christian (an indeed all major religious) tradition is of a social institution and not a personal relationship. Marriage, like other social institutions, must have a vision and goals which are in line with the common good of the society and families from which the bride and groom originate.
The principle functions of marriage are the procreation and enculturation of children, and the care of the elderly and the sick. Marriage does not, therefore, exist primarily to fulfil personal emotional or sexual gratification needs. Its primary purpose is the preservation and perpetuation of the social order.
The Christian view of Mary and Joseph as the model family requires that the righteous man marries within his own tribe. Husband and wife should, as Mary and Joseph, be of common ancestral descent. Thus the genetic heritage and gifts which God created in each ethnic group be preserved.
I do understand the point being made here. It is a reaction against the current failing understanding of marriage. When people marry now, they still often say the traditional vows, but do not really mean them. For instance, whilst it is undoubtedly true that women at their weddings want their marriages to succeed, what many are really vowing is to stay with their husbands as long as they still have a feeling of love toward them, with love understood as a romantic feeling. If the feeling goes, then the marriage was not "fated" to last, it simply wasn't meant to be, and it is then thought right to move on.
Obviously, this way of doing things means that many marriages will fail. It only takes one bout of marital weariness and it's over (see here).
My reader puts forward a different model, one based on an authoritative assertion of marriage as a social institution, rather than a personal relationship. Would it work? Well, one thing in its favour is that most people do follow whatever moral beliefs are authoritative in their society. So as long as the belief in marriage as a social institution retained moral authority, it would most likely be more successful than the current model.
Even so, I'd like to put forward a different way of framing marriage, one that ties together the personal and the social. First, for a culture of marriage to succeed there needs to be a sense of the "offices" of husband/father and wife/mother. These offices are part of what fulfil our created natures as men and women; they add a sense of meaning and accomplishment to our work in the world; and they bring a sense of fruition to our lives.
These offices are a deep expression of our manhood and womanhood and, as such, tie our personal identity closely to our social roles within the family. They also give us a reason to commit to marriage and family in a stable way over and above the romantic relationship we have with our spouse.
But these offices are no longer as effective as they once were in anchoring our family commitments. One problem is the emphasis in liberalism on "freedom as individual autonomy". If the aim is to be an autonomous, self-determining, self-creating individual, then inherited social roles, particularly those based on our unchosen biological sex, will be thought of negatively as restraints on the individual. So over time marriage will be reconceived as an increasingly personal union alone, minus the social offices.
A second issue is the feminist idea that the offices of wife and mother were constructed for oppressive purposes; i.e. that rather than being part of the fulfilment of a woman, or of a fruitful life, that they are the very opposite, a way of women being subordinated in society. Therefore several generations of women have been raised not necessarily to reject marriage itself, but rather the significance or worth of the role/office of being a wife and mother.
This is especially true of the wifely role which has been widely cast as being old-fashioned or disempowering. In contrast, there do still exist some women (including women with careers) who uphold some of the older culture attached to the motherhood role and this does help to cement their marital commitments. There are some women, in other words, who might not stay in a marriage for the sake of their husbands or societies, but who will do so for the sake of their children.
For a culture of marriage to succeed there also needs to be a certain understanding of love. Emotional feeling is not the only test of love; the love we are called on to cultivate in marriage is one that should be settled in the will and be expressed, in part, as fidelity and service. Nor should we see love as being passively fated, but rather as something that we are actively oriented to, i.e. that we will love the spouse we are with, with all that this entails (e.g. the emotional maturity to forgive).
Finally, our stable commitments to marriage and family can also be reinforced by our perception of the good. Our commitment to community or tribe or nation is drawn partly from the identity and connectedness we draw from them, but partly also from the good that we perceive in them. This good can be understood in a secular way (e.g. the positive role that family plays in the emotional development of the young), but also in a religious way, as a transcendent good, by which I mean a good that exists independently of human agency and which might be experienced as something like "the eternal in the moment of perception".
Romantic love can be experienced as a transcendent good (finding your "soul mate"), although this is not what anchors family commitments. But so too can the life and character of a family - this can be experienced as a unique expression of a transcendent good, something of inestimable value, that you would not then ordinarily choose to dissolve (just as you would not ordinarily choose to dissolve your own tradition if you saw in it a unique expression of a transcendent good).
Sunday, November 08, 2015
What would you say if you became PM?
When Malcolm Turnbull took over from Tony Abbott as PM, he fronted the media and declared:
This is a vision of the nation as an economy and of our political leaders as economic managers.
This is too small a view of nation and leadership. It is too limited in scope.
This is true also of Turnbull's commitment to "freedom, the individual and the market". This is misconceived. You don't serve the individual by serving the individual alone. You serve the individual by upholding the institutions and traditions which help form his identity, which inspire his loves and attachments, and which anchor his commitments.
Turnbull is a classical liberal (a right-liberal). A few years ago I wrote a post attempting to explain why classical liberalism doesn't work over time, which I think is worth reading: Can classical liberalism get what it needs?
This has been a very important, sobering experience today. I am very humbled by it. I am very humbled by the great honour and responsibility that has been given to me today. We need to have in this country, and we will have now, an economic vision, a leadership that explains the great challenges and opportunities that we face.
Describes the way in which we can handle those challenges, seize those opportunities and does so in a manner that the Australian people understand so that we are seeking to persuade rather than seeking to lecture.
This will be a thoroughly Liberal Government. It will be a thoroughly Liberal Government committed to freedom, the individual and the market. It will be focussed on ensuring that in the years ahead, as the world becomes more and more competitive, and greater opportunities arise, we are able to take advantage of that. The Australia of the future has to be a nation that is agile, that is innovative, that is creative.
This is a vision of the nation as an economy and of our political leaders as economic managers.
This is too small a view of nation and leadership. It is too limited in scope.
This is true also of Turnbull's commitment to "freedom, the individual and the market". This is misconceived. You don't serve the individual by serving the individual alone. You serve the individual by upholding the institutions and traditions which help form his identity, which inspire his loves and attachments, and which anchor his commitments.
Turnbull is a classical liberal (a right-liberal). A few years ago I wrote a post attempting to explain why classical liberalism doesn't work over time, which I think is worth reading: Can classical liberalism get what it needs?
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
The Gosford signs
Australia must be one of the few nations to have a public holiday for a horse race, the Melbourne Cup. It has been called the race that stops the nation which is why one left-wing Anglican minister put up this sign:
It's a criticism of the Australian Government's policy of stopping the boats carrying illegal immigrants before they reach Australia.
I was curious to learn more about the Gosford Anglicans and their minister, Father Rod Bower. The first thing I found out is that there are many more such signs:
You might think that a flamboyant Christian minister might be a little more cautious in supporting the Islamification of Australia. After all, recent event in the Middle East include the wiping out of ancient Christian communities that once numbered millions and the formation of a caliphate which has imposed brutal executions for homosexuals.
Father Bower has considered this issue, at least briefly. It seems that the flooding of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Europe this year has given him pause for thought. He does not believe, though, that extremism will ever happen in Australia for two reasons.
First:
This argument seems contradictory. We are reassured by Father Bower that we have nothing to fear because Australia does not have porous borders and can "systematically receive refugees"; at the same time, though, he believes fiercely that Australia should make its borders more porous and our immigration policy less systematic by allowing people to be smuggled into the country.
Here's another contradiction. Father Bower was very critical of Tony Abbot's speech in England, in which Abbott urged Europe to adopt the Australian system of detaining illegal arrivals. But if, as Father Bower states, Europe is in danger of extremism because of its porous borders, then surely the Europeans ought to follow Abbott's advice, or something like it.
This aside, Father Bower might like to consider that it has often been the children of the first arrivals who have committed acts of terrorism, so even screening on arrival does not rule out future problems.
Father Bower also believes that we are in no danger from Islamification because:
Interesting how this is massaged a certain way. Father Bower's liberal moderns do not just reject religious extremism, they mostly reject religion as a whole. In Gosford, Anglicans are outnumbered by atheists by 25% to 18%. Father Bower, as a minister of the cloth, might perhaps think twice before identifying too closely with a mainstream liberal culture.
I note too that Archbishop William Temple himself may not have been as keen on Islamifying Australia as Father Bower is. He wrote in his work Church and Nation (preface xi):
Also, it is not so much a question of whether "we" are a rational and moderate people, but whether the future waves will be equally so.
And, finally, it's difficult to see recent social developments as being "passionately moderate". Is it "passionately moderate" to use migration to dissolve the distinct Western peoples? Or to reimagine nations as being something like large-scale business ventures? Or to dissolve the culture and the social supports that once supported a stable family life?
It's a criticism of the Australian Government's policy of stopping the boats carrying illegal immigrants before they reach Australia.
I was curious to learn more about the Gosford Anglicans and their minister, Father Rod Bower. The first thing I found out is that there are many more such signs:
You might think that a flamboyant Christian minister might be a little more cautious in supporting the Islamification of Australia. After all, recent event in the Middle East include the wiping out of ancient Christian communities that once numbered millions and the formation of a caliphate which has imposed brutal executions for homosexuals.
Father Bower has considered this issue, at least briefly. It seems that the flooding of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Europe this year has given him pause for thought. He does not believe, though, that extremism will ever happen in Australia for two reasons.
First:
We live in a world of extremes. We must not, however, fall into he trap of believing that all these extremes are easily transportable to Australia. We do not have the porous borders of Europe and no matter what the scaremongers say it not possible for people to enter without notice or permission.
Australia is in the unique position of being able to intentionally and systematically receive refugees and to enable them to contribute their own unique gifts to our ever-evolving culture.
This argument seems contradictory. We are reassured by Father Bower that we have nothing to fear because Australia does not have porous borders and can "systematically receive refugees"; at the same time, though, he believes fiercely that Australia should make its borders more porous and our immigration policy less systematic by allowing people to be smuggled into the country.
Here's another contradiction. Father Bower was very critical of Tony Abbot's speech in England, in which Abbott urged Europe to adopt the Australian system of detaining illegal arrivals. But if, as Father Bower states, Europe is in danger of extremism because of its porous borders, then surely the Europeans ought to follow Abbott's advice, or something like it.
This aside, Father Bower might like to consider that it has often been the children of the first arrivals who have committed acts of terrorism, so even screening on arrival does not rule out future problems.
Father Bower also believes that we are in no danger from Islamification because:
We are a rational people who reject extremism of all types whether it is religious or political. As Archbishop William Temple said “we are not moderately passionate, we are passionately moderate." In this exceptional land we have a unique opportunity to build a harmonious, diverse and life-giving society.
Interesting how this is massaged a certain way. Father Bower's liberal moderns do not just reject religious extremism, they mostly reject religion as a whole. In Gosford, Anglicans are outnumbered by atheists by 25% to 18%. Father Bower, as a minister of the cloth, might perhaps think twice before identifying too closely with a mainstream liberal culture.
I note too that Archbishop William Temple himself may not have been as keen on Islamifying Australia as Father Bower is. He wrote in his work Church and Nation (preface xi):
We all know about Turkey; it is the essentially Mohammedan power and Mohammedanism is the religion of oppression; it believes in imposing its faith by means of the sword.
Also, it is not so much a question of whether "we" are a rational and moderate people, but whether the future waves will be equally so.
And, finally, it's difficult to see recent social developments as being "passionately moderate". Is it "passionately moderate" to use migration to dissolve the distinct Western peoples? Or to reimagine nations as being something like large-scale business ventures? Or to dissolve the culture and the social supports that once supported a stable family life?
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