Brian Welter Reviews Kozinski's Modernity as Apocalypse

CWR: Modernity as Apocalypse outlines and offers a tonic to idolatry by Brian Welter

Thaddeus Kozinski’s provocative book on “sacred nihilism” provides analysis of the spiritual problem at the heart of modernity while suggesting the logos-centered life of virtue as the answer.

T. Kozinski on Classical Education

The Imaginative Conservative: A Classical Educational Creed by Thaddeus Kozinski

The Common Good and the Nation-State

The Imaginative Conservative: Did the Constitution Kill the Common Good? by Thaddeus Kozinski

Did I write anything about this in 2015, when the essay was originally published? Apparently not.

Not many quibbles -- Kozinski writes, "In 1787, America was a full-fledged nation-state, though in latency in extent and scope." Well, not a single nation-state, but a federation of states.

Let us agree that the nation-state, in whatever configuration it happened or happens to be (Federalist or Anti-federalist level of centralization, libertarian-market or welfare state, Republican- or Democrat-controlled, lower or higher taxes, Tea-Party or Occupy Wall St. ethos, George Bush or Barack Obama, is what it is, that is, an alliance, not a common-good institution, suitable for and capable only of providing goods and services to those polis organizations that can (but only with the Alliance’s instrumental help, as the instrumentlist insists) embody and keep common goods. Thus, it is just good philosophy to recognize what is and must be the case, and to act upon it. This, to me, is where Prof. George and the instrumentalists are coming from. Whether he would prefer to live under a state that could indeed keep a common good, such as a medieval French city or an ancient Greek polis, it doesn’t matter; for, the nation-state is here, and here to stay, and we must accept its exigencies and limitations so that we can work with it to uphold the mediating institutions that alone can secure those common goods that we need to flourish and get to heaven.

This is one way to save Roman Catholic Social Teaching on the state and the common good, which is upheld by George, and the reason why he takes the position that he does -- he isn't doing political philosophy, but theology.

In short, for the intrinsicist, the nation-state, absent any polises in which the political good is more than instrumental, will cease being a mere alliance, if it ever were a pure one, and turn into a monstrous anti-polis, pursuing anti-goods to the detriment and eventual eradication of the common good as well as individual goods.

I would argue that real poleis are not absent wholly without design; part of this is deliberate on part of the state. Whatever one may think about the political good proper to a federal union or to a political unit the size of the nation-state, historically those ruling a nation-state have held it to be superior to any other political good. There has been an increasing concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few.

What if the ability of smaller intrinsic-good-embodying-and-enabling communities to survive and flourish requires the larger society in which they exist to itself be embodied politically in a more-than-instrumental way? What if the sine qua non of the solution to a government out of control and at odds with basic human goods is a radical alternative to the alliance-nation-state of America? What if we desperately need a newly revamped and reconfigured and workable Aristotelian polis, one subordinate to the Divine-polis of the Roman Catholic Church, and one workable in a contemporary context? What if the political order by nature, and ineradicably so, even the American one, is all about intrinsic goods?

We do need a polis; but not at the scale of the state, or the federal union. The desirability and necessity of different sorts of political goods at those magnitudes of scale still needs to be acknowledged.

Can Philosophy Ever Escape Genealogy

The Imaginative Conservative: The End of Modernity by Thaddeus Kozinski

Modernity, by God’s grace, may be the site of a new synthesis, the transcending of stale categories of thought and practice, in which a new Christendom can emerge, one in which the reign of God in His glory and love emerges side-by-side with the full dignity and flourishing of man…

Michael Gillespie wrote another hit piece against nominalism, tracing all of the problems of the Western world to 14th ce Franciscans like Ockham: The Theological Origins of Modernity.

Agnosticism

Why Agnosticism Is the Worst Idea Ever by Thaddeus Kozinski

Will There Be a Return to the Medieval University?

There is no financial infrastructure for it, and today's good Catholic colleges are a pale comparison with the Catholic medieval university. They may feel fortified within a conservative enclave, but just wait until they hire their first SJW (who is more likely than not to be a woman, and of course our conservative Catholic intellectuals have to show how egalitarian they are but hiring women). The sort of accountability that is required for honest debate and discussion can only be found within a group of men, and that is not always what happens. A woman who must submit and show deference or respect to men because of their unequal social standing isn't really a peer for such a discussion. An university doesn't not operate separate from the political community; rather it is an instantiation of the political community, and a teacher or scholar cannot divide his identity into two separate spheres of life. As a teacher or scholar he is also at the same time a member of the political community; he is accountable not only to his colleagues at the school but to his fellow citizens in the polis.

Imaginative Conservative: Why the Christian Philosopher & Christian College Need Each Other by Thaddeus Kozinski

One Thing Needful

Why mysticism is not an “Option” by Thaddeus J. Kozinski

Romano Guardini described, in the 1950s, a neo-pagan totalitarianism that no longer tolerates any threats to its secularist, atheistic, and humanist dogmas, one in which Christians and other theists are called to brook no compromise and live out their Faith all the more integrally and heroically. But Guardini’s prescription for action is something at once more bracing and consoling than Rod Dreher’s.

Whence This Change?

Alasdair MacIntyre: From Socratic Subverter to Supporter of the State by Thaddeus Kozinski

While I disagree with Kozinski regarding the American founding and the tenets of the Anglo-American political tradition, the centralization of political and economic power has transformed the original federal republic or federation of states into a unitary nation-state, more or less. The power of the Federal government (and that of many of the states arguably) is problematic, to say the least.

According to Kozinski's summary, MacIntyre was not talking about the legitimacy of the use of coercive power in an abstract manner (that is, a discussion of the state's authority proper to the exposition of the practical science of politics) but making claims about the responsibilities of the modern nation-state. (I haven't watched the lecture yet and probably won't be able to do so for a while.) Maybe this change isn't so surprising since MacIntyre did support the American with Disabilities Act and necessarily the power of the Federal Government (in Dependent Rational Animals, I believe).



Someone should write a sustained critique of Charles Taylor on modernity and liberal democracy (as philosophy or as intellectual history)?
Charles Taylor on Secular Democracy

Thaddeus Kozinski on Liberal Education

The Uselessness of Liberal Education: An Apology by Thaddeus Kozinski

Related:
Surprising Thoughts on Female Education from the Middle Ages by Angelina Stanford
The Education of Princess Mary Tudor
How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses

Rod Dreher Asks

Is It Benedict Option Time?

Related:
A new Benedict for a new Dark Ages by Thaddeus J. Kozinski

The Common Good, In the Concrete

Some brief comments on What If Aristotle was Right? by Thaddeus Kozinski - I don't think I would trace the source of the disagreement to the Declaration of Independence, even if Robert George were to cite it as support for his views. If George wrote that this understanding of the Declaration of Independence was foundational to his education in politics/political theory, that would be more convincing.

Let us agree that the nation-state, in whatever configuration it happened or happens to be (Federalist or Anti-federalist level of centralization, libertarian-market or welfare state, Republican or Democrat controlled, lower or higher taxes, Tea-Party or Occupy Wall St. ethos, Bush or Obama, Obamney), is what it is, that is, an alliance, not a common-good institution, suitable for and capable only of providing goods and services to those polis organizations that can (but only with the Alliances’s instrumental help, as George insists) embody and keep common goods. Thus, it is just good philosophy to recognize what is and must be the case, and to act upon it. This, to me, is where George is coming from.

The original [con-]federation of States was indeed an alliance and intended as such. Thus the good of the alliance was an instrumental good, subordinate to the good of each individual state. If a state no longer wished to live in alliance with the other states, it could separate, that is secede. Given the scale of the federation, it does not make sense to say that living with the peoples of other states is equal to living with one's fellow citizens in one's state. (And yes, that does raise the question of whether certain states were too large in themselves.) The unitary nation-state that arose from the War to Prevent Southern Independence may pretend to be fostering the common good as it is understood within classical or Thomistic political theory, but it cannot bring this about because of the disparity in scale. And so the power of the National Government must be checked lest it become unjust.

For the record, I agree with Hannon (and Kozinski) more than with George. Some of the disagreements I have with Kozinski in this essay are:

(1) Regarding the historical narrative of the founding. I reject the nationalist narrative (of the Yankee) in favor of the truly federalist narrative (as put forth by the paleos and Southron conservatives).
(2) Statements like this which absolutize and do not seem to have a historical foundation: "that the Federal Government always was opposed to the existence and autonomy of genuine, non-alliance, common-good seeking-and-embodying polises within its boundaries.
(3) The usefulness of Christopher Ferrara's polemic, Liberty, the God that Failed (which should get a response from a paleo). (You can find a summary of the book in this review by Matt C. Abbott. A review by John F. McManus.)
(4) Then there is the conception of the Catholic Church as a super-polis... but an essay dealing with the good of the political community and how it is related to the [intrinsic] good of the local Church (and the [intrinsic] good of the universal Church) needs to be done elsewhere.




Prof. Kozinski recommended the following: What is the Primary Intrinsic Common Good of Political or Imperial Community? The author, "sancrucensis," of this post writes:

"So I would say that the primary common good of political life is the reflection in the community of the order of the universe. A reflection that consists in each part realizing its proper function, in the various parts being ordered to each other in a hierarchy of subordination, and in the whole being ordered to the glory of the Creator."

I think I'd probably disagree with this formulation - while the political common good is open to the divine life (and "subordinate" to the common good of the universe, God Himself), it is also an intrinsic good in itself - the people living together ("as a community"). While the author refers to James Chastek's recent post, he does not address the question of scale, perhaps because of his support for some version of integralism and an acceptance of a traditionalist Catholic history of Europe.

One can probably see the same trends concerning the loss of local community and culture in Europe, with the pattern of centralization of power and the growth of the state, beginning in the 1500s?! The loss had been gradual, but accelerated with the centralization of economic power and its dependence upon cheap energy. I think the trend has been even worse in the United States with the loss of sustainable agrarian economies and the cultural norm of re-settling somewhere else in search of greater individual or familial prosperity. While the early settlers of the states may have had a common Anglo cultural core, this in itself is not the same as a group identity or solidarity. (It would be equal to a cultural idetity.) Such a group identity can only develop when people [men] stay in place, commit themselves to the group and work together for the benefit of the group. Such localized group identities (and local patriotism) probably still existed to a great degree in the states before Lincoln's war.

Related:
The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism
Thaddeus Kozinski Makes an Argument for a Catholic Confessional State

"Well-Being of Society" Subject of Upcoming Conference
UK Ambassador to Holy See Speaks on Challenges of Promoting "Happiness"

Marshall vs. Jefferson Then and Now: How the Intellectual and Political Struggle Over the Constitution Resonates Today by Phillip G. Henderson

Was There A Founding? by John Willson

The Common Good and Scale

Thaddeus Kozinski and James Chastek respond to the Robert George-Michael Hannon debate on the common good. Maybe I will eventually write my own post, which will be a rehash of things I've already written before...

I do have some things to say about David Hart's essay in First Things on natural law. Edward Feser has written a response to T. Kozinki's essay responding to some of Hart's critics. I must say that I am rather disappointed in how the combox discussion at Edward Feser's blog has turned out. It had started off as a polite exchange between Mssrs. Hart and Feser, but then a certain internet personality (known as someone who strenuously attacks Catholics he deems to be anti-semitic) introduced a tangent into the discussion which lead to various comments being made about "conspiracy theories" and conspiracy theorists. While there may be some merit to Feser's contention that the modern state bureaucracies of "western liberal democracies" are incapable of pulling a conspiracy off, that does not mean that a modern government, or some part of it, is not capable of executed a limited action while deceiving the public about the nature of the resulting event. Kozinski is more correct in defending his healthy skepticism as being tied to some version of epistemological humility.

Catholic public intellectuals may say that they must be circumspect in what they say or publish on the internet, so that they do not become obstacles to conversion for those who are not Catholic. But if they are bound by political correctness or certain secular orthodoxies or the fear that their rejection might have adverse consequences on their professional life or career, then what use are they, really? Better to be part of that Christian "cult" and focusing their energies on building the kingdom consonant not only with circumstances of overt hostility or persecution, but with the order of charity as well.

Perhaps there is another reason why Christian "intellectuals" (i.e. teachers and preachers) should be primarily monks, religious, and clerics - they do not have to worry about protecting a career and a livelihood.

Thaddeus Kozinski on Saving Modernity

A new Christendom: Can Christianity breathe life into modernity?

"The transition from enlightenment, secular foundationalism to post-enlightenment, secular traditionalism can best be understood by considering the transition from the early-medieval synthesis of faith and reason to its divorce in late-medieval nominalism and voluntarism. Such a consideration can also help us to predict and depict more accurately what the next transition might look like."

I won't say this genealogy has "long been discredited" by intellectual historians; indeed it remains popular among Catholics. Who is able to write a scholarly historically accurate refutation of the thesis?

The Enlightenment was a tool for those pursuing the "will to power" - some may have been sincere believers in liberalism, but was it true of all who sought to increase their own power? I do think that it remains useful to look at various historical trends as a rejection of various forms of authority and tradition, but I would not tie every individual rejection with the concomitant adoption of Enlightenment ideology.

"In the words of Maritain, there has been a certain maturation of the political order, and it does look like the Gospel seed has come to a greater fruition in certain temporal areas - though there is room for much more growth, and there have been many misshapen and misbegotten stalks, as well as abortive fruits. One simply cannot discount or reject the modernity-friendly Gaudium et Spes in this regard. This maturation, and the real responsibility that it demands, which is the aspect of modernity gravely lacking today, is the true message of Gaudium et Spes when interpreted correctly according to the hermeneutic of continuity - that is, not as a replacement of the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX, but as its complement. After Vatican II, no Catholic can interpret the prior Leonine social teaching and theology as simply a rejection of modernity, but neither can he reject or dismiss the prior teaching as outdated or simply mistaken."

How many of the advances in "science" and technology were possible because of the excess wealth first made possible through empire, supplemented later by cheap energy? As for the supposed maturation of the political order - I deny such a thing has happened. To take one aspect, we have drifted away any authentic form of republican government. Is it not the case that those who have maintained the consolidation of political and economic power during the early stages of nationalism have done so while proclaiming themselves to be fervent believers in "democracy" and "freedom"? The current political [dis-]order cannot be "Christianized" because it itself is opposed to right reason. Evangelization can only prepare people for death or possibly for a new, more localist order arising from the old.

Perhaps there are no "convincing and satisfying answers" because there are no easy answers that enable the current system to be perpetuated. Any real movement towards republicanism cannot but be a subversion of the system.

Items of Interest, 3 October 2012

(via Dr. Helen)

Manly Honor: Part 1 - What is Honor?

CRW interview with Chilton Williamson, Jr - Has Democracy Died? (via Insight Scoop)

Radical simplicity and the middle class by Samuel Alexander (EB)

‘Degrowth is not a liberal agenda: Relocalisation and the limits to low energy cosmopolitanism’ by Stephen Quilley (EB)

2.3 Plato's Revenge: Small as Bio-regional, Communitarian and Jeffersonian

With the recent publication of Plato's Revenge. Politics in the Age of Ecology (2011), Ophuls completed a trilogy on the politics of scarcity. In 1977 he had achieved a certain notoriety among environmentalists by questioning whether ecological integrity could ever be compatible with modern liberal democracy. He pointed out that the entire set of ideas, institutions and practices predicated on abundance would inevitably be replaced by new social and political forms based on scarcity.

In 1997 he extended the critique of modern liberalism, arguing that the paradigm of mass politics inherited from Hobbes and Locke, even without ecological crisis, was bound for self-destruction because it abandons the premise that a successful polity must be rooted in an unspoken but pervasive framework of virtue, itself reproduced in the context of a binding we-identity and community (or what Tönnies [1887]called 'gemeinschaft'). In Plato's Revenge, Ophuls completes the argument by sketching a possible replacement – a new communitarian philosophy and political framework rooted in the ideas of Jefferson and Rousseau, but grounded in evolutionary psychology, anthropology and Jungian psychology.

High-priced fuel syndrome by Gail Tverberg (EB)

Occupy Education: Two reviews by Mark Garavan and Anne B. Ryan (EB)

Robert Bork, Coercing Virtue

The Moral Duty to (Not) Vote by Andrew Haines

The following two (along with the piece that I posted yesterday, Jacques Maritain, the HHS Mandate, and the Failure of American Pluralism) merit some sort of response from a paleo/traditional conservative perspective:
Can there be Statesmen? A MacIntyrean Challenge to Trepanier's Aristotle by Thaddeus J. Kozinski [see David Schindler]
Why Libertarians Are Wrong About Subsidiarity Part I by Richard Gallenstein

Sacra Liturgia 2013

A live chat with the creator of P90X: Join me, Tony Horton, on Thursday Oct. 4 for a LIVE video chat

Interviews with Tony Horton after the jump.

Items of Interest, 2 October 2012

Mystagogy: Japanese Fighter Baptized Orthodox Christian

Catholic Music: It’s Time to Stop Making Stuff Up by Jeffrey Tucker

Tea With Honey But Not in Jerusalem: The Archbishop of Canterbury Makes His Peace With Post-Christian England by Tracey Rowland

Veteran Soldiers Go Organic

Thaddeus Kozinski, Jacques Maritain, the HHS Mandate, and the Failure of American Pluralism

Eugene Genovese:
Redeeming the Time by Eugene D. Genovese
The New Republic: From the Archives: Eugene Genovese on Eric Hobsbawm
The Squandered Century
by Eugene Genovese
Paul Gottfried, Eric Hobsbawm and the Totalitarian Double Standard

AmCon:
More from Rod Dreher on the SSJ
Jack Hunter, Whatever Happened to Civil Liberties?
Kevin Gutzman, Misjudging Rehnquist
PJB, Obama’s Foreign Policy Unravels

Counterpunch:
Ralph Nader, Rigging the Presidential Debates
Paul Craig Roberts, Cynthia McKinney on Leadership

[Intellectual] Property:
An interview with Silke Helfrich: “We have to reformulate the role of the state as enabler of the commons”
Is Property Theft?

Automobiles and Driving:
Dmitry Orlov, In Praise of Anarchy, Part 1
Occupy the Motor Industry

Music:
Psy Talks ‘Gangnam Style’ and Newfound Fame
Waylon Jennings: The 'Last Recordings' Of A Dreamer

Square Dance History Project Launches New Website - here

Thaddeus Kozinski Continues His Critique of Liberalism

Thaddeus Kozinski, The Tradition of Nothing Worship II (Part 1)

 Initially, the liberal claim was to provide a political, legal, and economic framework in which assent to one and the same set of rationally justifiable principles would enable those who espouse widely different and incompatible conceptions of the good life for human beings to live together peaceably within the same society. Every individual is to be equally free to propose and to live by whatever theory or tradition he or she may adhere to… I have been wondering about this; using the language of the New Natural Law Theory (without accepting NNLT) can the good of social life be possible without taken into consideration higher "goods"? What if social life is founded upon a unity with respect to being oriented to the same higher goods? In which case, is social life not irremediably opposed to  pluralism? Pluralism can only "exist" where there is no real community, especially because the place exceeds the proper scale. It seems that liberal ideology would not have been influential if not for the rise of the modern nation-state, racked by internal divisions (and external threats?).

Dr. Kozinski writes:

To me, America’s worship of freedom at the empty shrine bears a striking resemblance to the Church’s worship of the Holy Trinity in the Eucharist. First of all, like the Catholic Church, the empty shrine defines itself as both universal and particular: as a universal idea, that of equal freedom for all, and as a particular country with a particular history, the United State of America. Like the Holy Trinity, absolute freedom is transcendent, unlimited, and infinite. Discourse about freedom, like talk about the Trinity, is necessarily abstract, since to speak in a concrete manner about that which transcends any particular object would be to profane it by limiting it, a kind of idolatry. Since America is not only an abstract idea but also a real place, its worship is both immanent and transcendent, like the Holy Eucharist. The immanent body, blood, and soul of the Eucharist are a thirty-three year old Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, but these are inseparable from His higher identity as the transcendent and eternal Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The immanent land, citizens, and government of freedom-worship are a 230-year-old regime located in North America, but these are inseparable from its higher identity as the very locus of transcendent and eternal freedom.

Dr. Kozinski apparently accepts the Nationalist narrative; the First Amendment is for the protection of the states, it is not an absolute curtailment of religion's influence in the public life. It merely prohibits the Federal Government from appointing a state church that would be imposed on all of the states. It thus respects the states and their identity. Has there been a deliberate substitution of civic religion for true religion by certain politicians and ideologues? Yes, but it is questionable whether this was the intention of those who ratified the Constitution. (For now, I will not deal with the question of the attitudes of those who drafted the Constitution, like Madison and Jefferson, to official religion and religious liberty.) The dominance of liberal ideolgy may be an unintended consequence, not of the Constitution (or the federal union), which respected the rights of the states to determine the question of a state church for themselves, but of the instability of the states and the lack of true communities with stable identities. (The influx of new arrivals and immigrants, the lack of proper education, or rather, the assimilation of the Yankee mythos after the "Union" defeated the Confederacy.) This sort of ethnic pluralism allows liberalism to seem like a reasaonble way of handling differences in culture.

Granted, Anglo-American conservatism (or the Anglo-American political tradition) may be problematic with respect to some of the sources which are claimed for it. The supposed republicanism of people like Oliver Cromwell and those who opposed the Stuarts? The Glorious Revolution? The tension between republicanism and liberalism in the thought of the American founding fathers? Consequently, some are critical of the effort to recover and pass on Anglo-American republicanism; they favor looking to medieval European models for inspiration.

It may be that there is a mixture of republican and liberal elements in the thought of many of the premier American statesmen who were involved in giving form to the American states and the federal union. Might it be possible to separate a republican tradition be separated from the problematic elements, especially by returning to sources in classical antiquity and the medieval period? Can we not look to them as heroes even while admitting that they were wrong on certain points?

If the decay of the states and the loss of history and cultural memory continues, this may not really matter, but it seems impossible that we can "start from scratch," unless there is a great disaster which wipes out all bearers of tradition and artifacts of intellectual culture.

Related:
Rothbard's Rejection of the Old Order of Catholic Europe
Noam Chomsky, Destroying the Commons: How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta

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, 12 March 2012

Egalitarian Elites and the Academic Dilemma by Darryl Hart

Ryan Grant, Navigating the Republican Milieu, Part I

The Chapelstone Foundation

Robert George, Why Study the West? (National Association of Scholars - Academic Questions)

Rebellion: Country music and the culture wars

Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski, We’re All Traditionalists Now

Russell Kirk, The Conservative Purpose of a Liberal Education
Conservatism and the Western Tradition
Obedience to What is Noble


VDare: Deport Keish Kim! Impeach John Morton! (And Obama!)

Patrick Buchanan on Japan: Land of the Setting Sun


The European Union's Racist and Unintentionally Revealing TV Ad

Counterpunch:
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, The Land of the Mega-Rich
URI AVNERY, Attacking Iran
TOM ENGELHARDT, The Zero Percent Doctrine

Farming:
Shannon Hayes, A Farmers' Daughter
Rodale: The Girl Next Door Is the Future of Food
How can organic farming feed the world?
Why Monsanto Thought Weeds Would Never Defeat Roundup

Peak Oil:
Kurt Cobb, The narrowing window for a transition to a sustainable industrial society (EB)

Diet and Health:
Still a Fast-Food Nation: Eric Schlosser Reflects on 10 Years Later
10 Simple Ways to Improve Your Sleep
Karen De Coster, Burzynski: The Movie (the movie)
Dominicans - Complicated Compline

History:
Why Jerusalem? Why then? A study of the religious significance of Jerusalem to the West in 1095
The Templar Trials: Did the System Work?

Japanese Imperial Army Victory March Nanking 1937 日本軍の勝利は1937年南京行進


Music:
The Cranberries in Studio


For Sarge -


Chiara Luce Badano Movie Trailer

Items of Interest, 17 February 2012

Finished this response; will try to finish a couple of more on community and contemporary communitarianism before I take a break.

Thomas Fleming, American Idols and A Christian Defense of the Unspeakable Dawkins

Lessons in Empire

Marriage of Rights and Duties

Daniel Larison informs us that Andrew Bacevich is the editing a new book - The Short American Century: A Post-Mortem and American Exceptionalism

Oakeshott and Conservatism

Patrick Buchanan, Blacklisted But Not Beaten

I know there are some who are enthusiastic about Elizabeth Warren as a candidate in MA, but this (and her purported support for the feminist legal system) should give them some pause: Elizabeth Warren’s Rhetorical Extremism.

Mary Jo Anderson, Journalist for EWTN – and Professor Kevin Gutzman, Author of James Madison and the Making America – Join for Throwdown Thursday

Woods on Schiff with Rockwell and Gutzman

Faith and Marriage Under Attack

Patrick Deneen, Our Libertarian Future and Religious Liberty?

Obamacare:
Religious Freedom and the Triumph of the Therapeutic by Thaddeus Kozinski
Paul Gottfried, Immaculate Secularism
Rod Dreher, Liberalism's Assault on Catholicism and Has the Catholics Moment Passed?

Fast and Furious:
James Antle, Mission Implausible

Obama:
'Obama Girl' Turns on President, Slams Him in New Video

Economics:
The Fight of the Century by Richard Heinberg (EB)
Free online showing of The Economics of Happiness, followed by a live Q&A with Helena Norberg-Hodge (co-director and producer of The Economics of Happiness), Steven Gorelick (co-director of The Economics of Happiness), Manish Jain (founder of The People's Institute for Rethinking Education and Development) and Charles Eisenstein (author of Sacred Economics).
URL to be announced.

Relocalization:
The challenge of re-localisation by Graham Barnes (EB)
Book Review: Urban Homesteading by Oliver Lazenby (EB)
Big government and big corporations befriend the local food movement by Olga Bonfiglio
MDA: The Art of Crafting with Your Hands
Taproot Magazine

Farming:
Why Farms Want Cold Winters

Energy and Peak Oil:
World oil supply debate between ex-Shell chief and ASPO-USA professor
by Karen Rybold-Chin (EB)

Will Occupy Wall Street start drilling for peak oil?

How reliable are U.S. Department of Energy oil production forecasts? by Roger Blanchard (EB)
World energy consumption - beyond 500 exajoules by Rembrandt Koppelaar (EB)
Peak Oil and the Importance of EROI (review of Fleeing Vesuvius, Part 2)
The Grey, a peak oil flick quick take

Monsanto:
Open Seeds: Biopiracy and the Patenting of Life by grtv

Catholic:
Robert J. Araujo, SJ: What is freedom?
Introducing Chant into the Domestic Church
Culture, Liturgy, Beauty and Anthropology by David Clayton

Diet and Health:
Ask the Low-Carb Experts 6: ‘All Things Lipids (Cholesterol 101)’ | Chris Masterjohn (mp3)

Karen De Coster, Functional Medicine vs the Conventional Approach
How 1-minute intervals can improve our health

Feminism:
James Taranto Takes on Hypergamy

History:
Let It Not Happen Again by Clarence Moriwaki
Reflections on the 70th anniversary of Japanese American incarcerations.
If only immigration had been restricted... would there have been a  question of loyalty about a subset of the population? Why do we let Muslims immigrate to this country?

Which reminds me, I dreamt about SO a couple of days ago. I think she lives in Hawaii now. I saw some recent pics on her brother's FB. She has two or three kids, I can't remember. When I saw those photos I recalled how she defended "the right to an abortion" in high school. The details of the dream are lost to me now - I think it was related to HS drama/relationship problems.

Was Beowulf an Empty Nester?
Interview with Author Nancy Bilyeau (via Supremacy and Survival)

Music:
Alison Krauss & Union Station Commemorate The Simpsons 500th Episode with a Song
Brumel’s Missa “Et ecce terrae motus” (mp3)
Stile Antico on BBC3 (4 days left to listen)
Natalie MacMaster has a new album, Cape Breton Girl.

Misc:
Tim Kennedy - in a Gerber video for a giveaway contest