Items of Interest, 7 November 2011

Gareth Porter, Debunking the Iran Terror Plot

Thomas Fleming, Republican Party Suicide

Anthony Esolen, Big Rock Candy Nation and Part Two

Wisconsin: Legislature Passes Castle Doctrine Giving Homeowners Great Protection

Relocalization:
Local Money Creates Wealth Outside the Bubble (EB)

John Robb, Resilient Energy: Municipalization of Power

Rob Vischer, Should I become a distributist?

Occupy the economy by building local business by Vicki Robin (EB)

Don't occupy Wall Street, ditch it! by Michael Shuman (EB)

OWS:
What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral.

Presenting the Economic Policy of the Occupy Movement (EB)
Dave Pollard, The Metamovement's Message: We're Not Taking It Anymore (EB)
David D'Amato, Big Business: Good for America?
Kevin Carson, To OWS: Withdraw Consent and Starve the System

Capitalism and environmental catastrophe by John Bellamy Foster (EB)

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

The Occupy Movement and the Black Bloc

Peak Oil:
Tom Whipple, Peak Oil Review, November 7

Saturday Oil Report -- November 5, 2011 by Dave Cohen

ASPO Italy 5 Beyond Peak Oil (EB)

Ricardo study suggests global oil demand may peak before 2020 (EB)

Feminism:
Laura Word, A Few Words on the Women's Franchise

Women promoting the welfare state, collectivism, and the restruction of legitimate liberties because of emotion, or some supposed "ethics of care." Such compassion serves its role in their work in their network of family, friends, and local community, but it is dangerous when applied to political deliberation. The male mind is better suited to considerations of justice, the apportioning of responsibility and obligation. Additionally, if we understand that part of communal life as men cooperating for the sake of the well-being of the group, then the presence of women cannot be but disruptive and a hindrance.

Mark Richardson, The family - motherhood, The family - fatherhood, and Stealing motherhood

Dalrock, Submitting to the patriarchy in their heads
Promiscuity is good, so long as it is done on the woman’s terms.
Boundless is their foolishness.

On Marriage: Paternity Establishment and the Commons
Gage Riley's amicus brief for the Prop. 8 case

South Korea:
Student fashions fuse modern and traditional
New insights into traditional music

Music:

Matthew J. Franck on Judge Walker's ruling

Same-Sex Marriage and the Assault on Moral Reasoning by Matthew J. Franck (via Robert George)

Robert George, What happens when judges decree instead of deliberate

Washington Examiner

Daniel McCarthy on Judge Walker's ruling

What Happened to Marriage?

The institutional logic of the modern state is almost unavoidably incompatible with an institution as person-specific and historically complex as marriage. What has been happening for over a hundred years now — much longer in some places — is the redefinition of marriage along lines that accord better with the universal logic of liberal democracy.

More on the Prop 8 ruling

Gregory K. Laughlin, On Prop 8 Court Decision
Austin Bramwell, You Call This Equality?
Edward Feser, Some thoughts on the Prop 8 decision
The Thinking Housewife, The Liberal Judge: A Contradiction in Terms and Marriage and Civil Resistance
NOM: National Organization for Marriage Decries Federal Court Decision Invalidating Proposition 8; Calls on the Supreme Court and Congress to Protect Americans' Right to Vote for Marriage
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR MARRIAGE RELEASES STATEMENT BY JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE, PRESIDENT OF THE RUTH INSTITUTE

Some posts at Rebellion:
The 14th strikes again! (cross-posted at Rebellion)
A little background on the judge who legalized same-sex marriage
California and conservatives

Robert George responds to Judge Walker's ruling

scribd document (AFP post)

Tonight on KPIX News the reporter solicited the opinion of a USF Law School faculty member (I think this is she) about today's ruling on Proposition 8. She thought the ruling was correct--we got the rhetoric about equality, due process/the 14th Amendment, liberty, and so on. So she teaches at a supposed Catholic university? Good job Jesuits.

(I remember reading about USF faculty opposing Proposition 8 before but I wasn't paying attention to the names.)

William Luse, Here Comes the Judge...Again

One of the judges on So You Think You Can Dance celebrated the decision, and he got some cheers from the audience (mostly female teenagers). How can one not think that the culture war in the coastal areas has already been won.

San Jose Mercury: Federal judge strikes down California's ban on same-sex marriage

Is impeachment possible? Vaughn R Walker is an example of how liberal ideology trumps tradition in the interpretation of law. This is also another manifestation of the National Government having too much power.

From the WSJ: the text of the ruling.

From earlier this year: Courting Attention: Covering Calif.'s Marriage Trial.

Rick Garnett, The Prop. 8 decision

Related:
Catholics for the Common Good

Edit. Tom Piatak, The Very Definition of Arrogance

Dr. Fleming weighs on the debate over Proposition 8.

If we generalize Mayor Newsom’s argument, I think we can agree. Should basic moral principles be decided either a democratic political process, whether the decision is made by a direct referendum or by democratically elected representatives or judges or by judges appointed by democratically elected public officials? Let me just draw up a random list of moral violations that have either been decriminalized or trivialized by legislators and judges–sodomy, rape, public use of profanity–or new moral and legal rights that have been discovered–women’s, children’s and animal’s rights, the right to rent a room from someone who does not like you because of your ethnicity or sexual misconduct….

The list of both sorts of outrages would be endless. If a monarch had done these things, he would have been proclaimed a tyrant. But when 20% or the population or less–or officials whose authority rests on these small percentages–overturns a longstanding custom, the usual response is to seek redress through the political processes that are responsible for the tyranny.

Marriage, until very recently, was never a mere contract between individuals or a government-created institution. Legitimate societies have always been interested in regulating inheritance laws, discouraging a decline in the reproduction of citizens, and in preventing dilution of the citizen ethos by marriage with non-citizens, but government has not, typically, defined marriage and the family, much less redefined them. The exceptions are the Jacobins of the French Revolution and the ideological states of the past 100 years, principally Marxist and democratist states.

Who made Gavin Newsom or Ken Star or Mike Huckabee, Barney Frank or James Dobson prophets or philosopher-kings that they should presume to define marriage? We have suffered enough from venal and ignorant politicians who think they are economists or patriarchs. Until people who regard themselves as conservatives are willing to find some moral and spiritual solvents to set them free from the tarbabies of political parties and ideologies, they will never even begin to resist the tyranny that Americans accept so willingly.

It is not just, as I have so often argued in the past, that politicians cannot be trusted to solve moral problems, but that there is a realm of human moral responsibility into which legislators and judges should either not enter or, if they do, their actions should be limited to preserving an ancient tradition. Democracy, in declaring that every moral issue can be determined by majoritarian politics, is a corrosive and revolutionary force that first destroys the social, then the cultural, and now the moral order. It is on the verge of attacking the natural order: Do not be surprised if Congress, while outlawing pet chimpanzees, permits intermarriage among all primates.

San Jose Mercury: California Supreme Court hears Prop. 8 arguments
California Courts: Courts: Supreme Court: High Profile Case

More from that spokesman for Catholicism, Douglas Kmiec

Insight Scoop: Douglas Kmiec comes out against Proposition 8...

Hollywood as the guiding light for American culture--AICN: Obamanation!? Jack Black, John C. Reilly & More Hit The Nets With PROPOSITION 8: THE MUSICAL!!

What do we do in response? Avoid watching movies or buying DVDs of actors who not only hold but promote views that are counter to good morals rooted in the natural law? What about directors and producers? And other 'artists'? Giving them money not only supports their way of life but makes their advocacy possible by contributing to their perceived popularity by the studios or record companies, and so on.

It would seem that there are only a few artists we can actually 'patronize' enthusiastically--Jim Caviezel, Eduardo Verastegui... Others may endorse licentiousness (dressed up as 'progressive' morality, or in the name of tolerance), but do not see themselves as spokespersons for such issues and stay quiet. I think that many artists in the classical music world fall under this description, but I could be wrong--I have not really been paying attention to what they say and do in public.

We should avoid supporting the rest, who are vocal about changing our mores, and it isn't so difficult to abstain from watching movies or buying albums, is it? I don't think any sort of compromise is possible. If it is too difficult to look at what sort of positions artists are promoting, then the obvious solution is to avoid supporting any, unless one knows that they are upholding traditional morality in their speech, if not by their personal lives?

(Most Hong Kong artists in their 20s and 30s tend to be promoters of 'liberal' morality, whether in interviews or commercials and so on. It is disappointing to see how low Hong Kong has fallen in such a short time. Western countries, especially the United States, where many of the influential are educated, have played no small role in the moral decline of East Asia.)

The other part of the solution is to learn how to entertain ourselves. Half-way measures such as watching only "family-friendly" movies are not enough to sustain a culture or preserve a community... Which reminds me, on Thanksgiving, the family, the cousins and DR were playing Rock Band--on par with playing Guitar Hero or Dance Dance Revolution, but better than nothing?

Robert George, One Man, One Woman: The case for preserving the definition of marriage.

Schwarzenegger Urges Supreme Court to Overturn Proposition 8
Schwarzenegger tells backers of gay marriage: Don't give up

How about an excommunication for the governator?

Stephen Bainbridge: Proposition 8 Passes: What Now? and Eugene Volokh: Is California's Repeal of Same-Sex Marriage an Unconstitutional "Revision" by Initiative?

(via Crunchy Con)

That self-professed Catholic teenagers and young adults (such as certain Soompi members) are voicing their opposition to proposition 8 can still astound me. Apparently they do not know that their bishops are supporting proposition 8 and urging Catholics to vote accordingly, or if they do know, they do not care, choosing to be enlightened liberals instead. How many understand the gravity of sexual sin? Who will be called to account for their failure to think and believe as Catholics?



Epistula ad Romans 8

Two high school classmates recently expressed their opposition to proposition 8 on Facebook. There are plenty of Soompiers who are voting no on prop 8, or would do so, if they were of age. I am surprised to see as many yes on 8 signs as I do--I would be wary of retaliation by the intolerant tolerant. Of course they see it as a question of justice; driving through Palo Alto and other cities, I see the "No on 8" signs talk about how prop 8 "unfair and wrong." I suppose that it was a wise decision for the opposition campaign not to label the proposition or its supporters as homophobic. Fortunately, if there are any liberals at the 12:00 Mass (and I suspect there are), they did not talk about the proposition, while it and Obama were the topics of conversation for some of the choir members.

Whether the opponents of traditional marriage want to admit it or not, it is ultimately about sex. Their objections to the traditional account based on sterility, the lack of children, are easily answerable--one looks at the other purposes of marriage, the intention of the parties, and also the limits to authority and law (punishing those who deliberately choose not to have children through contraception or sterilization is probably beyond the bounds of law).

I was surprised to see another high school classmate state her support for proposition 8 on FB. I don't really remember her, but since she requested to be added as a friend, I went ahead and approved. With respect to our graduation class, I suspect she and I are among the minority. We were never taught in high school that sex should be between a married man and woman. Isn't 'value-neutral' education wonderful? Look at the results...

I can't but help feel disgust at the school districts and high school of my past, even though I have some fond memories of certain teachers and principals.

Once again I am left wondering why I should waste time with Facebook, adding people as friends when we don't have anything in common except some past experiences. I wouldn't try to persuade anyone from high school that they are wrong to oppose proposition 8. But not all political questions are reducible to money; this is question pertaining to morals as well, and if we don't agree on morals, then what sort of friendship can we have, other than a practical, or commercial one?

The Yes on Prop 8 store is at CafePress. I should see if someone besides the Ratzinger Fan Club has created items there for Benedict XVI.

Edit. 10/30 The Yes on 8 signs there were at the end of the road yesterday are now gone; so are the no on 8 signs a hundred yards away.

California's Proposition 8 Is Indeed a Civil Rights Issue

Apple and Google against Proposition 8. Will traditional conservatives give them the Disney treatment? What about those of us using blogger.com? Hm. Should distinctions be made between bloggers who are generating revenue for Google and those who are not? And what about the argument that we are using free resources to counter the influence of Google?

via Stony Creek Digest

If we were in a more agrarian society, and our neighbor was vocal in his support of SSM, would we refrain from trading with him? What if he contributed money and labor as well?

Edit. Some discussion at WWWTW.

Talked to one of KK's former profs today after Mass--he thinks Proposition 8 will pass. We will see. Jerry Brown has much to answer for. Kyrie, eleison.

Protect Marriage -- Yes on 8

California Catholic Daily: “Getting desperate”

Yes on 8 campaign reports intimidation from opponents across state, Catholic parishes among targets

Zenit: Same-Sex Marriage and the Church--Conflicts Looming on the Horizon
By Father John Flynn, LC

Californians Hoping to Define Marriage in November [2008-08-29]
Bishops Speak Up in Favor of "Proposition 8"