John Médaille on Capitalism

An Imaginary Conservatism: Realists v. Romanticists

Why the Overconfidence?

Do they not know that the Republican party will not become libertarian but merely use libertarians as willing dupes for the plutocracy?
Why Libertarianism Will Crush Conservatism

Related:
The REPEALicans and the GOP’s Secret Hope
The 3% Solution

John Médaille on Triumph Magazine

and his memories of Frederick D. Wilhelmsen - Radical Traditionalists: The Fall of Triumph Magazine

I think that the problem for Triumph—and the lesson to be drawn from its failure—lies in its relationship with movement conservatism. For conservatism is a very difficult thing to do in a country like America which traces its founding back to the most radical liberals of their day. Our founding document, the Constitution, aims not at a polity of virtue, but one were vice checks vice; the checks and balances are designed to pit one avaricious group against another not for the purpose of eliminating avarice, but merely to ensure that the grumbling hive does not shake itself apart. A conservatism forced to defend such a founding on anything but pragmatic or historic grounds finds itself in a contradictory position. Most American conservatives are, at best, Lockeans, that is, heirs of the Scottish Enlightenment. And many conservatives, even many Catholic conservatives, have gone over completely to the dark side to extol such atheist “philosophers” as Ayn Rand, or such atheist and anti-Catholic thinkers like Ludwig von Mises, who excoriated Jesus Christ as “nihilist” and who described himself as “a man of 1789,” that is, of the French Revolution.

I can somewhat agree with his assessment of mainstream conservatives and their ideologies but not with the intellectual history.

John Médaille on Distributism

Manalive Radio Hour - mp3

(See also this piece by Daniel McInerny.)

John Medaille speaks on "The Vocation of Business”

John C. Médaille at Students for a Fair Society

John C. Médaille on Catholic Economics - Friday, October 19, 2012 (audio files of the lecture available)

Items of Interest, 31 July 2012

Begun on July 16.

Culture’s Dead, We’ve Betrayed It—Can We Save It? by Andrew Haines

While a wholesale, artificial approach won’t get us to this spot, there are nevertheless things we can do to help this culture along. Foremost among them is to foster real community—meetings of people in the flesh. These should center not simply around discussing ideals, nor the totally banal; they should incorporate objective human goods like food and music, and they should draw from the cultural tradition whence notions of “aesthetic” and “goodness” arose. They should be pockets of humanism, but with a new and very self-aware intentionality.

 

I had a brief exchange with a Blackfriar about evangelization after I claimed that the "old ways were best, too bad they're not being used now." What old ways?  "A strong local Christian community with one-on-one outreach - the "early Church" model, with an emphasis on the word community since the word doesn't really apply to most parishes. I don't see the ideal being obsered in the big metropolitan areas in the U.S., at least. Granted, there are many obstacles to that ideal being realized, but it would be good for theses to be recognized and addressed, so that people are no longer comfortable with the status quo." He had initially posted the above Apple video as a possible model for new evangelization efforts. wage slavery makes great demands of our time and two income - less resources, etc.

Part of the problem with parishes as community is that we have much more mobility so that people don't just socialize within their villages or local communities as we once did. It is still evident and very important in more agrarian societies, but not in the urbanised modern world. As such, we have to use new ways to build community, to give a sense of belonging. The Apple video above shows that a community can be formed out of a desire for excellence. In a Christian context, this would mean a love of virtue, and indeed, a love of God who is the Most Excellent. Evangelization, then, would mean letting that excellence be shared and seen and enjoyed by others – acts of charity and of preaching.

Fellowship was to be sought in the pursuit of excellence - what Apple promotes in its company ethos should be adopted by Christians, who would form associations not on the basis of local proximity, but on a common task or work. I responded:

Mobility (and mass urbanization) is possible only because of cheap energy. I would prefer the Church be ahead of the curve than behind it when it comes to adjusting to the coming loss of cheap energy, but it may not happen. Community/communion/friendship should be based on excellence but it also requires that one live with the other --"quality time" doesn't make up for lack of time, just as in parenting. 

 He ended with the implicit claim that this was not being realistic: " So, are we going to preach to the world that exists, or do we need to create that ideal world before we preach? I go for the former..."

Catholic ecclesial movements of the 20th century seem to be a response vocational model - ecclesial movements I have mentioned before that Fr. Louis Bouyer asks this question in his The Church of God, and I think his answer, that the local geographic parish maintains its importance in the life of the Church despite changing times, is right. Those who have an apostolate to preach or teach or administer the sacraments may have to meet the people where they are; but what of the laity? What are they supposed to do? The thing is that in our false meritocracy, very few people stay loyal to the company. There is a lot of changing of jobs, and very few stable friendships that survive the transition to a new workplace. (Especially if one moves to a new city or state!) More often than not, the people at work keep you company while at work or lunch, but you see very little of them when you are off work. You may get to be close with some, but if you change companies, they will probably drop out of your life, sooner or later. The human heart seeks stability and permanence, but we ignore this because we have to provide for ourselves or our families, or we have to follow career opportunities.

The recent NYT article, Friends of a Certain Age, casts light on the predicament of many young adults.

The Evolution of English
Robert Nisbet, Conservatives and Libertarians, Uneasy Cousins
Returning to the Path of Wisdom: Plato, Tolkien, and Technê by Jerry Salyer
Kevin Carson, The Phony “War on Cops” and the Real War on Us 
Can Organic Farming Feed the World? 
Resilience through simplification: revisiting Tainter's theory of collapse (part 1) by Samuel Alexander - complete 
Resilience through simplification: revisiting Tainter's theory of collapse (part 2)
More from the Simplicity Institute 

Korean Consumerism:  Photos Highlight Korea’s Plastic Surgery Obsession

Music: Froberger Suites And Toccatas By WENDY GILLESPIE

Catholic: Community and Christian Life by Br. Vincent Ferrer Bagan, O.P.
Eastern Christian "Introduction to the Liturgy" (Part 2)
Gift and Greed: Why Benedict Is Right and Mandeville Was Wrong by John C. Médaille

Misc: Triple Aught Design shop visit :: San Francisco, CA 

Items of Interest, 30 April 2012

PJB, Is Europe Sailing on the Titanic
Thomas Fleming, Obama's War on Business (Walmart and Mexico)
Paul Gottfried, Tea Party vs. Occupy: Which is Winning?

Bin Laden: Forgotten But Not Gone

Forrest McDonald, George Washington: Today's Indispensable Man

Justin Raimondo, China's Reformist Crooks

Another review of The Way of Men.

Self-Made Men, Debunked

Attack of the Drones

The Last Man Standing by W. James Antle, III
Ron Paul's under-the-radar delegate pickups are the last obstacle on Romney's road to the nomination.
Economics:
Questioning Growth Assumptions (EB)
Can we expect the economy to keep growing? by Gail Tverberg (EB)
David S. D'Amato, Musings on May Day

The Extraenvironmentalist, Ep. 40: The Corporate Influence (low/high)

Distributism:
Msgr. Luigi Ligutti and Distributism
Practical Distributism: Innovation

Relocalization:
John Médaille, Be Not Afraid, Even of Zombies
Expanding Urban Agriculture in San Francisco
Techcrunch interview with John Robb (via his blog)
AoM: 9 Ways to Start a Fire Without Matches

Permaculture:
Best Permaculture Homesteading Books
Free permaculture eBook: The Farmers' Handbook Volume Two - Near the House I (the original)
Why Every Permaculturalist Should Own a Scythe

Peak Oil and Energy:
Post Carbon Newsletter - The REAL oil story

Catholic:
NLM: Great New Pictures from Our Lady of Walsingham
Can Beauty Save the World? | Dr. Eric Cunningham
Sandro Magister: Vatican Diary / The Holy Office puts the American sisters in the corner and After Seven Years, the Secret of Pope Ratzinger

Fr. James Schall, SJ: The Pope on tourism and on man as traveler
Zenit: Cardinal Vegliò's Opening Address at Tourism Conference [2012-04-24]
"We are convinced that tourism humanizes"
Papal Message to Tourism Conference [2012-04-23]
"Traveling, which offers us the possibility of admiring the beauty of peoples, cultures and nature, can lead to God"
Too much accomodation to the affluent and their frivolous activities by the Bishop of Rome? When will the Church confront the limitations of a system made possible by cheap energy? What happened to encouraging the faithful to humble simplicity?


Freedom Complex
On the Road to Emmaus: The Catholic Dialogue with America and Modernity by Glenn W. Olsen.

The FSSP's Roman Pastor on Tradition in the Modern Church


Written by Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. - Francis of Assisi: A New Biography

Bioethics:
Why Human Fetuses Are "Human": Some Thoughts

Feminism:
Robert McCain, The Million Ugly Women March
Dr. Helen comments on Kay Hymnowitz - No, Women Are Not the Second Sex Because They Choose to Work Less

Diet and Health:
MDA: Primal Resource Guide - on barefooting and VFFs
Jimmy Moore, Aren’t You Going To Respond To The Negative Attacks Against You?
9th MovNat Principle: Adaptive

Music:
Limerock by Mark O'Connor and Yo-Yo Ma

Apparently it is also a traditional Sottish and Irish tune. The SF Scottish Fiddlers played it on Sat. at the Freight.

First Listen, Sara Watkins, 'Sun Midnight Sun' (her website/MS)
NC Times article

The Vespers, "Better Now"


Movies:
AICN: Mr. Beaks And Whit Stillman Discuss The Delightful DAMSELS IN DISTRESS!

Items of Interest, 22 March 2012

John Michael Greer, America Crossing the Line

Thaddeus Kozinski, Sacred Ambivalence: A Reflection on Remi Brague’s “Are Non-Theocratic Regimes Possible”

Fabius Maximus: America enters the dreamland, part of our culture of defeat

Joseph G. Trabbic interviews Raymond Dennehy on two recently republished books by Jacques Maritain: The Return of Thomistic Political Philosophy, Part I and Part II

Jordan Bloom, If the Individual Mandate is Constitutional, the Commerce Clause has No Limits

John Médaille, The Music of The Spheres and The Terminally Tone-Deaf

Paul Gottfried, Tea Party Constitutionalism

James Antle, Weak Tea

Gay marriage is now the issue through which the elite advertises its superiority over the redneck masses





Réunion du Pape Shenouda III-21.04.2010:Le péché de langue

pathways radio: The Economics of Happiness (mp3)

Energy:
Tom Murphy Interview: Resource depletion is a bigger threat than climate change by James Stafford (EB)

Catholic:
In Defense of Bells: Their Use and History in the Roman Liturgy
Byzantine liturgy in Chinese ‘a success’
I wish that some audio or video were available.

Mgr Lefebvre + s'abandonner à Dieu

Feminism:
No Long Ladies
Trampling the Nag
St. Birgitta: The Disjunction Between Women and Ecclesiastical Power
The Vulgate Genesis and St. Jerome’s Attitudes to Women

Education:
Cultivating the Affections by Dr. Peter Vande Brake

Movies:
Steve Sailer reviews Whit Stillman's latest.

Music:
Performing in the Bay Area this weekend: Brittany Haas and Lauren Rioux
Two rising stars in the Appalachian fiddle world come together for a mini 'fiddle festival'

Pat's Product Review: Benchmade CSK II - Combat/Survival Knife

AH-64 Apache mishap caught on video

Items of Interest, 5 January 2012

Thomas Fleming, Newt Gingrich, RIP and For the Last Time and Gaffes

Daniel Larison, Why Haven't Republicans Repudiated Bush on Iraq?

Clark Stooksbury, Pink Buckets of Chicken

Refuted Congressional Lies about NDAA Kidnapping

Peter Hitchens, Don't forget, it takes a cynical knave to create a dodgy knight and Einstein Versus the Atheists

Intellectual Conservative, No Evidence for God?

Prophet of Conservatism, Russell Kirk

Mike Church: Interview with Kevin Gutzman on the state of conservatism

Mike Church & Winston Elliott discuss Conservatism, Russell Kirk and the Humane Economy

Paul Gottfried, Enough with Family Values and When Democracy Murders Liberty

America: Christian or Jacobin? by John Zmirak

End the Violence, End the War on Drugs

Srdja Trifkovic, Obama's Strategic Doctrine: W Lite
Daniel Larison, Syria and Interventionism Run Amok

Peter Hitchens, The Tory Party, Who Needs It?

Rebellion: Abbeville Institute Conference

Ron Paul:
Scott McConnell, Ron Paul and His Enemies
Patrick Buchanan: Ron Paul: Reactionary or Visionary ?

Iran:
Philip Giraldi, Another War on the Cheap
Chairman of Joint Chiefs to Israelis: U.S. Won’t Join Your War on Iran by Gareth Porter
US Frets Israeli Attack on Iran
Daniel Larison, Israel Is Not Going to Attack Iran

On Recent Economic Figures:
Auomatic Earth has a new url. Who Killed the Money Printer?
Paul Craig Roberts: Economics 101 and The Real Economic Picture
Fabius Maximus: About the January jobs report – mildly good news, but bought at great cost

Economics:
John Médaille, There is No Such Thing as a Bank Loan
Ralph Nader, The Health Care Racket

Peak Oil and Energy:
Janet Napolitano Personifies US Myopia
Peak Oil Crisis Election 2012

History:
Romance of the Middle Ages
Kathryn Boughton, A Book on James Madison by Dr. Kevin Gutzman

Christianity:
Thomas Fleming, Scribes, Pharisees, Hypocrites
Ethiopian Iconography
Christian Jihad
The Christianity of Modernism by Cleanth Brooks

Feminism:
The Feminist Mystique

Diet and Health
What happens when you eat Ramen.
Regrowing Your Own Teeth

Misc:
Man Builds Fairy Tale Home for His Family for only 3000 Pounds

Items of Interest, 21 January 2012

Leon Hadar, Another War That Nobody Wants
Patrick J. Buchanan, Who Wants War with Iran
Daniel Larison, The Complete Folly of an Iranian War

Playing Our Strength - Why COIN Doesn't Work
Foreign Internal Defense in Iraq


Philip Giraldi, Creating American Terrorists

Defending corpse urination begs the question: who’s the racist? by Kelley Vlahos

The Military-Industrial Complex: The Enemy from Within by John W. Whitehead

Daniel Larison, Murray’s Proposal for Reducing Cultural Inequality

Elite and Underclass
A review by F. Roger Devlin of Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 by Charles Murray

Globalize or Localize? Beyond the Post-American World by Carl L. Bankston III

Tradition and Critique: On Wanting to Know by R. J. Snell

Decline and Fall by Thomas F. Bertonneau

(A review of At the End of an Age by John Lukacs. Another review)

Economics:
John Médaille, The Content of ‘Business Ethics’ Isn’t Ethics, or, The Hangman and the State

Link to a Nicole Foss interview at Automatic Earth: Infinite Rehypothecation

Allan Carlson, Röpke’s Conundrums Over the Natural Family

From last November, Richard Heinberg's appearance at the Commonwealth Club: The Great Disruption

Peak Oil:
Why Oil Prices Will Stay High
The Happy Hoarder: Fire in the belly

MRA:
Men's Earnings Haven't Just Stagnated Over Past 40 Years--They've Fallen

Jack Donovan interview (Dunbar's Number)

Dunbar's Number:
The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
NPR: Don't Believe Facebook; You Have Only 150 Friends
Why Dunbar's Number is Irrelevant
Robin Dunbar: we can only ever have 150 friends at most…

Robin Dunbar: How Many Friends Does One Person Need? from The RSA on FORA.tv

Robin Dunbar: How Many Friends Does One Person Need?

Feminism:
Is Feminism a Heresy? by Donna Steichen

Diet and Health:
Understand the calcium myth; here's what really makes healthy bones
Aloe Vera Gel
All Things Leptin - Leptin 101

Office Hours with Eric Westman:


A Gut Check for Many Ailments

The Daily Lipid: My Interview with Dave Asprey and Armi Legge

Catholic:
The Other Successors of Peter: The Patriarchs of Antioch

Père Abbé du Barroux sur Direct8/Dieu merci !


Fontgombault: Claude Pateau interviewé par l’Homme nouveau

John Hunwicke preaching in Latin - Anniversary Sermon in Newman's Pulpit

Music:
Something recent with Jero.

Misc:
Chris Costa!

Items of Interest, 12 January 2012

Peter Hitchens, Reflections on the Rule of Law, on Scotland and on an astonishingly cruel portrayal of Lady Thatcher
Daniel Larison, Thoughts on Scottish Independence

Recessing the Constitution By W. James Antle, III

Bring Order to the Commonwealth by Ordering the Soul

Virginia’s New Ecclesiasticism

Afghanistan:
Obama's Mission Accomplished Moment?
And a military-first policy on a destabilizing planet
Don’t Count on Obama’s Defense Cuts by Ivan Eland
Marine Corps Manual Offers a Blunt, Revealing Portrait of Afghan War
New National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan: War Still a Stalemate

Iran:
RALPH NADER, Iran: the Neocons Are At It Again
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, The Next War on Washington’s Agenda
GARETH PORTER, Clinton Revives Dubious Charge of “Covert” Iranian Nuclear Site

What War With Iran Might Look Like by Philip Giraldi

Fabius Maximus, Status report on the war with Iran (we’re ignorantly drifting into yet another illegal war)
What happens if Iran gets nukes? Not what we’ve been told.
What happens when a nation gets nukes? Sixty years of history suggests an answer.
What does the IAEA know about Iran’s nuclear program? Enough to start a war?

Farming and Relocalization:
Greener Pastures with Lunatic Farmer Joel Salatin (EB)
If you want more local food, stop criminalizing family farmers (EB)
How resilient is the food system? by Adam Streed (EB)

The Happy Hoarder: Put a cork in it

Gene Logsdon, Hail, The Mighty Pocketknife (EB)

Economics:
The Faustian bargain that modern economists never mention (EB)
Dr. Gary Peters, Our Finite World
Friends and Strangers: A Meditation on Money by John Médaille
Peter Hitchens, Does Immigration cause Unemployment? And other matters
The return of "The Limits to Growth" by Ugo Bardi (EB)
Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory

Peak Oil and Energy:
Warm and fuzzy on geothermal? by Tom Murphy (EB)
What do triple digit oil prices mean for growth? by Jeff Rubin
The peak oil crisis: gasoline in 2012 by Tom Whipple (EB)
Richard Heinberg, Geopolitical Implications of Peak Everything
The End of Growth

The Crisis of Civilization

The Crisis of Civilization: Trailer from thecrisisofcivilization on Vimeo.

Catholic:
British Jesuit welcomes Scorsese's latest film project (via First Thoughts)
Dominican friars appointed to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas

Music:
Shelby Lynne: A Murder Ballad Hits Close To Home by Lynne Margolis

Documentary with Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart


California Pickers: Butch Waller

TV:
‘Justified’ Star Timothy Olyphant On Violence And Villain, Neal McDonough

Forgot this in the last round-up

The symposium on distributism at Anamnesis Journal on distributism (via Peter Haworth):
Equity and Equilibrium: The Political Economy of Distributism by John C. Médaille
Capitalism, Distributism and the Hierarchy of Human Goods by Thomas Storck
What's Wrong with "Distributism" by Thomas Woods Jr.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Energy Wars 2012

Joe versus the FPR Volcano

Joe Carter, Monarchists to the Left of Me, Socialists to the Right, Here I Am, Stuck in the Middle with You Liberals

Jerry Salyer, Who Gets To Be The Czar of Human Evolution?
Mark T. Mitchell, Agrarian Hypocrisy and the Evils of Distributism

Discussion at Rod Dreher's blog. (Dreher on Scruton: Conservatism as conservation)

The Gift Economy

John Médaille:

The first market in which we operate is the gift economy of family and the community. We are first called into being by the ready-made community of the family, and from this community we receive a variety of gifts. Our being, to be sure, but also the gift of our name, our family, our language, our first moral perceptions, our first experiences of love and belonging, and so forth. This economy of grace (gifts) is the primary economy, and all other economic and social activity must be judged from the standpoint of how will it serves the family. Without this check, there is really no way to know whether the economy “works” in any concrete sense. A fully monetized economy erodes the gift economy of the family upon which the whole social order depends. Beyond this family economy, there are economies of community service, economies of political activity (in which votes are the medium of exchange), religious economies, and so forth. All of these depend on the economy of production and exchange (note both terms), and hence are checked by that economy, even as they provide checks for the exchange and production economies.

Mr. Médaille does not talk about the gift of the environment (or natural resources), but Pope Benedict XVI does in Caritas in Veritate (CNA Article). This can be combined with an understanding of the primary, secondary, and tertiary economies as outlined by John Michael Greer, building upon the work of EF Schumacher. The primary economy is indeed a gift of God, but we should also understand our family and other people as gifts from God as well, whom we should aid in seeking perfection. (The gift of non-rational creation is instrumental to the perfection of humanity.) As mutually dependent animals, we rely first of all upon communication in order to bring about perfection upon others. In a real community, in which people share bonds, culture, and history, they are given to one another and can come to recognize this - there is very little "choice" in the matter. This is in contrast to our megapoleis which have more the form of voluntary associations or "intentional communities" if anything at all.

Hence the great flaw of this aspect of the encyclical (and of Médaille's work)?* The attempt at an economic solution or a political solution without a proper understanding of the science politics, in particular what community is and its necessary conditions, and thus the true nature of the problem with which we are faced. One can use law to regulate the actions of individuals, but if the common good is rather ephemeral, to what can it be ordered except relative tranquility? One ends up upholding the liberal order and transactional justice despite one's rejection of it, because  when we are dealing with the modern nation-state (which is just too large) or megapoleis, there is very little basis for talking about social justice or solidarity or civic friendship to a group of strangers who have very few ties to one another. A band-aid solution which will not work in the long run because the loss or destruction of community will continue to erode even commutative justice?

If the form is not proportioned to the matter, the matter will not receive it.

If one wants to promote solidarity and social justice, one must first rebuild community. (Paradoxical? Not quite.)

*wrt JM: another problem being the ideal of autarky with respect to goods necessary for the perfection of the polity.

Related:
Mr. Greer's The Wealth of Nature

Items of Interest, 4 December 2011

Dr. Fleming, Democracy Comes to Egypt
James Howard Kunstler, Suspended Civilization
Fabius Maximus: RIP, Constitution. The Second Republic died this week. Of course, we don’t care (that’s why it died).
Craig Holland Dixon, Will Due Process Cease to Exist for Americans?
Paul Craig Roberts, The Obama Regime Has No Constitutional Scruples
Karen De Coster, Public Education, Meet the Newest Bullies on the Block and Federal Bully Pulpit

Economics:
The Restoration of Property
Distributism and the Supremes

Relocalization:
Britta Riley: A Garden in My Apartment


100 Best Permaculture & Homesteading Books: The Ultimate Reading List for Sustainable Living

LOCAL - A Short Documentary

LOCAL - A Short Documentary from Christian Remde on Vimeo.

Energy:
The myth of renewable energy - Dawn Stover, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (via EB)

Peak Engineering

Diet and Health:
Vox Populi: Exposing Injectors

Free the Animal: Unifying Nutrition: Osteoporosis and Atherosclerosis May be Linked: Vitamin K2 and The 21 Convention: My Presentation to 20-Somethings

Who says the whole world can’t eat paleo?

Toadally Primal Smoothies: The eBook

Kurt Harris: Jimmy Moore inquires about "safe starches"

Items of Interest, 3 November 2011

James Kirkpatrick, Diversity Is Strength! It's Also The End Of Southern Civility… And The South (via Rebellion)

and there is the influx of Northerners and Yankees who do not share the values, culture, or history of Southrons...

The Merchants of Death and Me by Philip Giraldi

Mother AND Teacher: The Church, Financial Reform, and Realism by John Médaille

John Robb, QUOTE: The Summum Bonum (Highest Good) of Social Capitalism

Huh?

Why the Rich are Getting Richer

Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies


Transition Voice: Take shelter by Gerri Williams (on the movie Take Shelter - trailer - FB, Apple)

Something on Richard Heinberg's new book - A windfall would beat QE hands down
by Anthony Hilton

OWS:
VoxDay: Millenials vs Baby Boomers
Welcome to the Occupation

Nuclear Energy:
Sixty Years of Orwellian Nukespeak

NPR: The War Between Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple
I wish this Mexican standoff would end with all of them in the dirt.

Counterpunch:
GARETH PORTER, U.S. Night Raids Killed Over 1,500 Afghan Civilians in Ten Months
URI AVNERY, Why Israel Will Not Attack Iran
RALPH NADER, The Road to the 2012 Presidential Debates

Diet and Health:
Mark Sisson, Introducing the New Primbal Blueprint Food Pyramid
Another Simple Question: The Paleo Diet is Not The Way to a Healthy Future For Whom?
And Why Are You Paleo?
(RN visits Happy Hound in Los Gatos.)


Classical Education:
Reading

Catholic:
Full Interview with Robert P. George (via Mere Comments)

Two novels by women world famous for their literary works published by Ignatius Press (Sigrid Undset)

The Introduction to "A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes"

Rorate Caeli: The Roman Rite: Old and New - VI
The New Mass and the Church: the underlying theology of the New Rite is Protestant and motivated by Ecumenism and A diocesan priest ordained according to the 1962 Pontifical

Once I Was a Clever Boy: Adjusting the Succession

Music:
A review of Secret Voices by Anonymous 4
The Sixteen: James MacMillan, Miserere
(I'm not a James MacMillan fan...)

Items of Interest, 2 November 2011

John Médaille v. Robert Miller, again: Is Conservatism Incoherent? Or, Pogo Was Right

John Michael Greer, A Choice of Contemplations

Jim Antle, Rebooting the Republic

Distributist Review:
There Is No Such Thing as a Bank Loan by John Médaille

Move Your Money: Campaign grows to divest from "Too Big to Fail" banks to local banks, credit unions by Amy Goodman (EB)

In praise of non-debt-based money by Graham Barnes (EB)

Oikos and Logos: Chesterton's Vision of Distributism by Richard Gill (Logos)

The Human Situation 1935–1937
William McNeile Dixon (via Scott Lahti) - the lectures

The myth of the self-made yeoman by Gene Logsdon (EB)

Occupy Wall Street's Moral Ground by Kathleen Moore

Ralph Nader, The Speculator Tax

Peak oil perspective by Tom Murphy (EB)

Life without electricity by Kazuko Kojima (EB)

Classical Education:
Rush Limbaugh on Classical Studies and Latin by Dr. Christopher Perrin

An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents (pdf)

Higher Education:
Just Don’t Go, the Sequel? By Frank Donoghue

America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education By Marty Nemko

Diet and Health:
Balanced Bites Podcast: Episode #10 with guest Robb Wolf (mp3)

LLVLC: Wise Traditions UK Conference 2011 DVD Features 14 Hours Of Lectures By Low-Carb, Real Food Activists

Music:
Gramophone: Parsons - Sacred Music
The Cardinall's Musick / Andrew Carwood

Exclusive - Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile - "Quarter Chicken Dark"

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

(the full episode)

Items of Interest, 20 October 2011

Papal Address to Centesimus Annus Foundation
"The Relationship Between Family and Work"

Occupy Wall Street: Leaderless, consensus-based participatory democracy and its discontents

Which Bank Is the Worst for America? 5 Behemoths That Hold Our Political System Hostage

It's All About Usury by John Médaille

David Korten's Message to #OccupyWallStreet


John Robb, Beyond Farmers Markets and Onto the Resilient Community

Rod Dreher, The Second Coming of Distributism
He was fit, then he went fluffy

Ralph Nader backs Ron Paul... on the growing of industrial hemp: Let It Grow

Philip Giraldi: How to Kill An Ambassador

TV:
Downton Abbey: Behind the Scenes

William Shatner Covers Bohemian Rhapsody and Yes It's Very Weird

On Truth and Trade: Economics and the Catholic Vision of the Good Life
Bernardo Aparicio García, Robert T. Miller, John C. Médaille


The Cosmopolitan Conservative by R.R. Reno

A fanciful view of liberalism -- what classical ideal are we talking about?

Ideally, the liberal seeks a cosmopolitanism of impartiality, one that calls for “public reasons” that everyone can agree on. It’s a classical ideal of cosmopolitanism based on a vision of universal reason safely above the particular religious and moral beliefs that often serve as the source of discord and division. A laudable goal, perhaps, but in point of fact this ideal tends to undermine rather than promote solidarity. Those who imagine themselves to have attained the universality of reason preside at a distance, casting themselves in the roles of referee and judge responsible for determining whose reasons are “public” or indeed “reasonable.”

Or worse, they become cultural therapists, anointed experts in the supposed pathologies of conviction and cultural conflict. The therapeutic ethos receives support in present-day liberalism from a widespread skepticism that seems the opposite of older beliefs in universal reason but turns out to lead to the same governing mentality. We can’t know moral or religious truths, we are told, and to know that we can’t know creates the paradoxical imperative to denounce moral imperatives so that we can manage our differences in an “inclusive” and “nonjudgmental” fashion.

Judge or referee, therapist or manager, the liberal governs from above. This distance—the conviction that liberalism has somehow transcended the nitty-gritty of substantive debate and attained a higher outlook—is what allows the old-fashioned rationalists like Steven Pinker to ally themselves with postmodern skeptics in the liberal establishment. The liberal maintains his distance, exempting himself (or imagining himself exempted) from the agonies of the always morally, metaphysically, and religiously fraught content of important human interactions. It’s this insulating distance, along with a therapeutic understanding of those below them, that encourages unwarranted feelings of superiority. The liberal does not see the conservative as a man or woman with ideas and convictions to be engaged but as a person with prejudices and interests to be diagnosed and treated.

Earlier, though, Mr. Reno wants to safeguard his credentials as one of the enlightened:

Although liberals like to think that those who remain conservative have somehow evaded or insulated themselves from these challenges, the reality is that conservatives have participated in modernity just as fully. Traditional social and religious views have often (though not always) been criticized for good reasons. We don’t want our daughters’ futures to be limited in the way roles for women were at the beginning of the modern era, nor do we mourn the passing of racial segregation and the indignities of Jim Crow.

What does First Things have to offer for the traditional conservative or traditionalist?