Obama & His Loyal Follwers

in the MSM:

In Ye Olden Days, CBS Reported News:

These days they work for Barack Milhous Obama in his Dirty Tricks Unit.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

My List

includes reading some contemporary philosophers. Among those would be Alasdeir Macintyre. Pending that being checked off here is some interesting tidbits to whet my appetite. (Be sure the read the whole of the original essay):

Francis, Benedict, and MacIntyre:

I enjoyed this essay, by John Haldane, called "Francis, Benedict, and MacIntyre," which is up at Ethika Politica.  Here is a taste:

MacIntyre shares with Benedict and Francis three central beliefs: first, that contemporary Western culture is at sea when it comes to thinking about the foundations of morality; second, that it is characterised by a pervasive relativism; and third, that this relativism is not only “cognitive” but is also affective and practical.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Mirror of Justice.)

What Bias?

Father Z nails it:

Child violators get a pass from liberals when they are “gay” right activists:

From NewsBusters:

Pedophiles Are Not National News — When They’re Gay Rights Pioneers

Read the whole thing.

(Via WDTPRS.)

Gay Parents Are Just Like Other Parents?

Is there some room to express doubt about that?

Life on GLAAD’s Blacklist | LifeSiteNews.com:

America doesn't know that this is part of same-sex parenting, because Americans have been blocked from hearing from me, Dawn Stefanowicz, Jean-Dominique Bunel, "Janna," Manuel Half, Rivka Edelman, and the blogger known as "the Bigot" -- just some of the many people I've come to know over the last year and a half, who have the human stories to dispel the myth that all is well with "gay families." This scares the crap out of people at GLAAD. It scares the crap out of them that I'm a professor and fluent enough in the way research works to know that the "consensus" on same-sex parenting is a fraud. It scares the crap out of them that I have a scholarly record in African-American Studies and queer readings of Thoreau and Whitman, so they can't write me off as a wacko, unwashed homophobe.

Read the whole thing.

(Via LifeSiteNews.)

Drones and Morality

My uneasiness at the use of drones is amplified by this:

The Many Victims of Drones:

We’ve discussed drones on this blog before, generally agreeing that killing enemy combatants with unmanned drones can be morally legitimate but leery about their seemingly indiscriminate use.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

School is Back in Session

So let's get our brains working again. The Professor in the video gives a capsule version of Natural (Moral) Law Theory. His book What We Can't Not Know could serve as a primer. Then you could move on to The Line Through the Heart. I'm behind in my reading so I added them to my Wishlist.

*A Primer on the Natural Law...*

...by J. Budziszewski.

It's:

A Primer on the Natural Law...

...by J. Budziszewski.


Read the whole thing.

(Via Lex Communis.)

Logical Inconsistency

is a common human condition. We are apt to entertain two quite inconsistent ideas without ever realizing it. Do read the entire article below for an illuminating exploration of one such situation, involving a brilliant man. Intelligence is guarantor of consistency it seems:

The Delusions of Liberal Humanism:

The link between intelligence and correct interpretation of reality is unfortunately weak. That is one of the reason why someone like cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker can be very smart and yet be consistently wrong. Pinker champions his latest wrong idea in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: the Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes, which posits that humans are evolving to become less violent.

The fact that you can publish a book making a claim so easily debunked by both empirical evidence and common sense says a lot about the publishing industry. But the idea that Pinker believes it to to be true—and so many people are willing to entertain the notion—says even more about the delusions of liberal humanism. As philosopher John Grey says in his devastating review,

The idea that a new world can be constructed through the rational application of force is peculiarly modern, animating ideas of revolutionary war and pedagogic terror that feature in an influential tradition of radical Enlightenment thinking. Downplaying this tradition is extremely important for Pinker. Along with liberal humanists everywhere, he regards the core of the Enlightenment as a commitment to rationality. The fact that prominent Enlightenment figures have favoured violence as an instrument of social transformation is—to put it mildly—inconvenient.

There is a deeper difficulty. Like so many contemporary evangelists for humanism, Pinker takes for granted that science endorses an Enlightenment account of human reason. Since science is a human creation, how could humans not be rational? Surely science and humanism are one and the same. Actually it’s extremely curious—though entirely typical of current thinking—that science should be linked with humanism in this way. A method of inquiry rather than a settled view of the world, there can be no guarantee that science will vindicate Enlightenment ideals of human rationality. Science could just as well end up showing them to be unrealisable.

Read more . . .

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

Toyota Versus Gardasil

We have enjoyed our car for the last eight years. The panic over sticking accelerators hasn't affected our conviction that overall Toyotas are safer and more reliable. But where does Gardasil come in?

THIS IS STAGGERING! [Rachel Watkins]


4/30/2010


Are you ready to buy a Toyota yet? I'm not to sure.

Have you gotten a Gardisil vaccination for yourself, your daughter? I have not but have received some pressure from some who think I should.
I will not feel any guilty any more -

Toyota 52 deaths, Gardasil 49. Toyota recalled.

There is no press, no ongoing meetings before Congress, no fines being levied.

Women are seemingly less important to our country than we imagine.

(Via Heart, Mind & Strength.)

Justice as Therapy

Maybe what's needed for pædophile and pæderast priests is a trial:

Interview with the CDF’s “prosecutor” of priests who commit “graviora delicta”:

Q: What happens when a priest is accused of a "delictum gravius"?



A: If the accusation is well-founded the bishop has the obligation to investigate both the soundness and the subject of the accusation. If the outcome of this initial investigation is consistent, he no longer has any power to act in the matter and must refer the case to our Congregation where it is dealt with by the disciplinary office.

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

Therapy

is the magic mantra of our age. We have therapies for everything. But if something can't be treated with a therapy, is it a disease? Is it a human failing that needs to be fixed?

Homosexuality, for example, was removed from the APA's list of mental disorders in 1973. So now the controversy is, is it possible or desirable to "treat" homosexuality?

In light of this it's interesting to observe that pædophilia may be going down the same road. First, the idea that it involves a mental disorder is being challenged. And it is certainly resistant to therapy:

A number of proposed treatment techniques for pedophilia have been developed. Many regard pedophilia as highly resistant to psychological interference and have dismissed as ineffective most "reparative strategies."[38] Others, such as Dr. Fred Berlin, believe pedophilia can "indeed be successfully treated," if only the medical community would give it more attention.[23] The reported success rate of modern "reparative" treatment on pedophiles is very low.[38]

So are these attempts to "treat" pædophile priests doomed to failure? Are the elite trying to prepare us for a future Pædophile rights campaign? Curious, first we vilify the Church for sheltering them, then we decide there's nothing wrong with them after all.

And since eighty percent or more of the sexual abuse done in the Church is, in fact, Pæderasty there is little chance of interest in therapy for that condition.

Science and Ethics

One of the key points to keep in mind is that even if there were unethical behaviours in the "Climategate" scandal, that still doesn't tell us what the truth is about anthropogenic global warming. Remember, Galileo and Newton fudged their numbers too.

Climategate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data - Megan McArdle:

Sexing up a graph is a bad thing.  But the world is not going to plunge off a cliff because of one overdone graph.  I've become considerably more concerned at items that have subsequently gotten more attention. 

Read the whole thing.

(Via Campaign Standard.)

More LIght, Less Heat Please

The relatively abysmal state of Catholic education and literacy is making for a lot more heat and very little light when Church teaching on moral principles is concerned. For example, the phoney war Rep. Kennedy has been waging on the Catholic Church for his own political advantage has been illustrative of this problem. Bishop Tobin has been exceptional amongst his brother bishops in that he has not let the calculated ignorance of the scion of the Kennedy clan to go unremarked. He has been temperate and reasonable in his dealings with the CINO politiican. The resulting circus of condemnations from the ignoranti who were, no doubt, educated in the "Spirit of Vatican II" and little else, has been proof positive that the revolution in catechesis since the Second Vatican Council has been a spectacular failure. Could this be one of the most illiterate Catholic generations ever?

So here is a little light to dispel the darkness:

Abortion, Capital Punishment, and War — One of These Things is Not Like the Other:

Ed Stoddard of Reuters’ religion blog Faithworld carries a roundup of the skirmish between Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, has claimed that Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

Don't You Prefer Contraception to Abortion?

This is what an earnest young candidate asked me a few years ago during the RCIA Process. He reasoned, as many do, that it is the lesser of two evils. But I had to answer "no".

You see, it's not really abortion or contraception; the two go hand-in-hand:

"Most abortions are the result of unwanted pregnancies, most unwanted pregnancies are the result of sexual relationships outside of marriage, and most sexual relationships outside of marriage are facilitated by the availability of contraception. To turn this 'progression' around: contraception leads to more extra-marital sexual intercourse, more extra-marital sexual intercourse leads to more unwanted pregnancies; more unwanted pregnancies lead to more abortions."

Janet Smith (via the USCCB Pro-life page.)

The mentality that separates the sex act from procreation doesn't greet pregnancy as a happy accident. If sex is for gratification (mutual or otherwise) then the "burden" of parenthood doesn't exactly signal gratification to the reluctant parent. And that doesn't even address the fact that the contraceptive pill and IUD's are abortifacient by themselves already.

And even the so-called 99% effective method (birth control pills) fails sometimes. Consider that:

"Pro-abortion Alan Guttmacher Institute has repeatedly reported on major surveys that show 56%-58% of all women having abortions were using contraception the month they became pregnant."

(Hat tip to Physicians for Life.)

If President Obama offers contraception to "lessen the need for abortion" he is in fact promoting a mindset and technologies that will increase the actual number of abortions. There's no common ground between the pro-lifer and pro-choice positions in contraception.

For those desperate for common ground they have to consider sterilization. Good luck with that project.

Of Course, It's Only Anecdotal

but it sure seems to confirm my intuition:

'Mancow' Waterboarded - Lasts 5 Seconds Before Deciding 'It's Torture':

Ranting “conservative” talk show host Erich “Mancow” Muller decided he would prove that waterboarding isn’t torture by undergoing the interrogation method himself.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Little Green Footballs.)

More Torture

I've tried wading into some of the discussion about Torture, primarily in Catholic Blogs where the argument has raged. There are questions to be answered: Does the Church teach that torture is intrinsically evil? Seemingly yes, from Veritatis Splendor, which, in turn, cites Gaudiam et Spes.

What does the Church mean by torture (or torments)? Is there a reasonably clear line that helps us decide what treatments to condemn and which to tolerate? The answer seems to be no.

My intuition remains that water-boarding is a form of torture and therefore to be rejected. But how the relatively recent movement of the Magisterium to reject torture helps in specific cases isn't at all clear to me. So in the process of trying to digest the various arguments here is another take on the problem:

Disproportionate infliction of pain:

In a discussion on a Catholic and Enjoying It! post on the ongoing defense of the Bush Administration's policy of torturing prisoners, I was invited to address the position staked out by Jimmy Akin in a series of posts back in 2006.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Disputations.)

Just To Muddy the Waters a Bit

Here is a more specifically theological look at the nature of intrinsic evil and how that might apply to torture:

JIMMY AKIN.ORG: Intrinsic Evil:

According to CCC 1755, "A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together." If any of these three is lacking, the act will be evil.

Read the whole thing.

(Via JImmy Akin.org.)

Torture Discussion

continues:

“Is Torture One of the Church’s Non-Negotiables?”:

That is the question posed by my friend Deal Hudson.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Southern Appeal.)

Torture

First off, torture is something evil, which we must not do nor condone:

Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2297

So now the question is: how do we recognize torture? Are there some things that are torture under some circumstances but not under others? Specifically, are there circumstances under which water-boarding is not torture?

Keep in mind that a fundamental principle of Catholic theology (and classical philosophy) is that you may not do evil in order to achieve some good end. The good ends do not justify the evil means. So arguing that water-boarding has been effective and saved potentially thousands of lives does not justify it. If it's evil, it's evil.

So is water-boarding torture? Intuitively that seems obvious. It is using physical and moral violence to wrench information from an unwilling prisoner.

Is it always torture? Are there circumstances under which its moral? Say, you only do it once. Or there's a million lives at stake (a al 24). To which I respond, how many times do you have to use a thumb-screw for it to be torture? If it's just as effective as water-boarding and cheaper, why not use thumbscrews?

These are just my tentative thoughts on the subject. Here are some more erudite sources for your consideration:

A Word on Torture:

For now, go read Philip Zelikow at Foreign Policy’s Shadow Government blog, and Conor at The American Scene. For later, further comment from me. I suppose I can mention here that since I’m on record as saying that one dunk at the waterboard is not torture, whereas three dunks is, I judge 130+ dunks clearly to be torture, regardless of whether the issue is whether we ought to torture or not.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Postmodern Conservative.)

Just War

Assuming that the title is not an oxymoron, it is worth investigating what the rights and wrongs, legally and ethically, are in the current Gaza conflict. Here is one thoughtful contribution. (I regret to say I can't figure out which blog pointed me to this--sorry!):

Commentary » Blog Archive » Gaza and the Law of Armed Conflict:

While much of the world engages in hand-wringing, placard-waving, teeth-gnashing, and rocket-launching over Israel’s “disproportionate” response to Hamas attacks from Gaza, it’s worth looking at what the doctrines of “proportionality” actually say.

Read the whole thing.

(Via .)

InsideCatholic.com - The Future of the Catholic Voter? An InsideCatholic Symposium

More intelligent ideas to absorb before reaching any definite conclusions:

InsideCatholic.com - The Future of the Catholic Voter? An InsideCatholic Symposium:

With Election 2008 in the history books, we asked a diverse group of faithful Catholics to respond to the following question:
 

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)