Saturday, January 21, 2012
Australian Peak Oil Report
Australian Peaky Leaks goes mainstream by Matt Mushalik
Mark Richardson on Civic Nationalism
In a comment he writes:
A people is not just a culture. There are Americans who think that all that matters is if the Anglo or Euro culture survives - it doesn't matter if actual Anglos/Euros disappear from view.
This assumes, first, that you can have a culture minus the people who created it.
Can there be long-lasting assimilation without a significant rate of intermarriage between members of the "majority" and the immigrant "minority"?
We can't pretend that any sort of discussion at a website with a rather limited readership will lead to some sort of political change. The progressive usurpers who like to troll the website for their amusement or to demonstrate their moral superiority remain unpersuaded; what basis do we have for thinking that other committed idealogues will have a moral conversion by reading the website, if they even bother to do so? "Read TAC because we now have Noah Millman writing for us!"
For the dissemination of tradition and to articulate a defense of that tradition, that is the limit to what most conservative websites (e.g. Chronicles) can aspire intellectually. These websites can also provide a place for like-minded people to meet and converse, and diminish some of that loneliness we may feel. But in the end we have to turn our attention to our role and duties, rather than mobilizing opinion on the internet in hope of enacting wide-scale change. Rather, we must form and conslidate real relationships if we are to effect change.
I haven't seen anything by Daniel McCarthy on the new addition.
Daniel Larison, Gingrich Wins South Carolina, But He Will Not Be The Nominee
Items of Interest, 21 January 2012
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!
Friday, January 20, 2012
Innovation in the name of plurality?
Let us call it the New Liturgical Way
"How can we prevent the work of the Holy Spirit?"
The traditionalists and conservatives got Summorum Pontificum and the Anglican Ordinariate, so why can't liturgies at the other "extreme" be sanctioned, so that all may be appeased? This goes beyond Pius V, who at least allowed for the maintenance of rites that had been in existence for over 2 centuries. Maybe a more firm critique of ecclesial movements has to be written, in order to rid ourselves of the dangerous notion that because the Holy Spirit is at work we must approve of all that results. After all, isn't it too early to judge the fruits of the movement? Increase in membership and "vocations" aren't sufficient in themselves. Remember the dangers of cults?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Alison Krauss
The uploaded episode of the Tavis Smiley Show doesn't include her performance, so here is a clip--
(alt)
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Items of Interest, 18 January 2012
It so happens that I don’t own or drive a car, and indeed I never have. Among its other benefits, that’s a good way to see the limits on the alleged freedom of choice that the consumer economy provides its inmates. In today’s America, you can live without a car, but most other choices you make are going to be sharply curtailed by that decision. When my wife and I decided a few years back to leave the west coast and settle in the Rust Belt, scores of pleasant towns we might otherwise have chosen were ruled out in advance because the only way to go from there to anywhere else was to drive a car, and our options for buying a house were just as tightly constrained by the need to be within walking distance of groceries and other necessary services. All those choices the propagandists of the consumer economy prattle about? They exist, but only if you give up your right to make any of the decisions that matter.
Peter Hitchens, One Reason Why I hate Cars, and a brief note on Lifestyle Choices
Ron Paul only GOP candidate to publicly denounce SOPA; What is SOPA and Why Won't it Work?
Fabius Maximus: Is Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientists Terrorism?
Is Killing Iranian Nuclear Scientists Terrorism?
Ron Paul: Killing of Iranian nuke scientist "an act of terrorism"
Ron Paul may have gone to an extreme claiming Michele Bachmann "hates Muslims," but those who are leaving comments at JW (and the one who operates the website?) may be irrational in their fear of them. How much of a threat do they really pose to the West, when we are armed with nuclear weapons?
Patent Nonsense
Intellectual property enforces a monopoly over the mind.
Are Intellectual Property Rights Bad for Innovation?
By Jordan Bloom
BRIAN J. TRAUTMAN, Why the NDAA is Unconstitutional
Taking Action to Fix our Debt
The High Achievement of Christopher Dawson
Economics:
Heinrich Pesch on Solidarist Economics
What Happens When a City Girl Reads Wendell Berry
Farming:
Gene Logsdon, Can a godless farmer be a good steward of the soil? (EB)
Energy:
Basking in the sun by Tom Murphy (EB)
Why Biofuels Are Not a Good Idea (EB)
Technological Progress for Dummies Part II (EB)
Catholic:
Training Leaders in Christian Virtue
Franciscan University’s Center for Leadership Has Global Outlook but Focuses on the Local
According to the director, the center’s program will promote authentic Catholic social teaching as well as an understanding of the principles of America’s founding: “The goal is toward a healthy patriotism with gratitude for all the gifts we enjoy in this country, but also with the idea to build upon what’s good in our nation and work to improve where we need to improve.”Emm... I'd need more information to attempt an evaluation...
From last year: Center for Leadership Launched
Rick Santorum, clueless about the Constitution
How many American bishops join Santorum in his views on the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, appealing to the former as a
Mark A. Signorelli contributes to the FPR/Joe Carter debate
As I mentioned in a comment on Mr. Salyer’s article, to govern simply means to coerce, in some form or other. This is just a definitional truth.
In the state of fallen nature, governing may require coercing, the threat of punishment, but to govern is merely to order the community with respect to the common good. I am not sure about how good the essay is; certainly it doesn't address Mr. Carter's presuppositions about the ordering of the economy. Mr. Carter attributes wrongly his freedom to choose and pursue a certain lifestyle to liberalism, when it is actually due to the type of economy that we have and his relative wealth. Liberalism may be used to defend the marriage of ["democratic"] government and big business, but it is not the cause.
I don't think much progress will be made with respect to convincing Mr. Carter.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Mutually Dependent
I think this is off:
More directly posed: community is nearly impossible in a highly monetized society like our own. That is because community is woven from gifts, which is ultimately why poor people often have stronger communities than rich people. If you are financially independent, then you really don't depend on your neighbors—or indeed on any specific person—for anything. You can just pay someone to do it, or pay someone else to do it.
Community was lost as a result of cultural priorities manifested in individual choices and economic and political pressures. The use of money may foster a psychological blindness to our need for others, that is true, as well as a false sense of self-sufficiency. Getting rid of money in our economic exchanges may force us to evaluate how we can be useful to one another, that is true. As a community-building exercise, its usefulness is rather limited. Of course, progressive liberals presume that everyone else is the right-thinking sort, and that there are no big obstacles to community. We just need to be forced to interact with one another, and everything will turn out fine.
Community is woven from gifts. Unlike today's market system, whose built-in scarcity compels competition in which more for me is less for you, in a gift economy the opposite holds. Because people in gift culture pass on their surplus rather than accumulating it, your good fortune is my good fortune: more for you is more for me. Wealth circulates, gravitating toward the greatest need. In a gift community, people know that their gifts will eventually come back to them, albeit often in a new form. Such a community might be called a "circle of the gift."
Fortunately, the monetization of life has reached its peak in our time, and is beginning a long and permanent receding (of which economic "recession" is an aspect). Both out of desire and necessity, we are poised at a critical moment of opportunity to reclaim gift culture, and therefore to build true community. The reclamation is part of a larger shift of human consciousness, a larger reunion with nature, earth, each other, and lost parts of ourselves. Our alienation from gift culture is an aberration and our independence an illusion. We are not actually independent or "financially secure" – we are just as dependent as before, only on strangers and impersonal institutions, and, as we are likely to soon discover, these institutions are quite fragile.
The diffusion of the good -- first of all in our desires and choices and through them, the passing on of our actions and material things. This is a more holistic vision of communal life with which the wise and Catholics can agree and have built upon in their teachings. After all, the diffusion of the good is proper to love.
Recognizing our dependence and reliance upon on another for satisfying certain material needs is important, but it is not as important having a common vision of [communal] life which is necessary for solidarity (along with identity, a common culture, and so on). A community is a group of people who want to live with one another, not just because they depend on each other but also because they desire to live with them. Commercial relationships or friendships are important, but they are not the same as civic friendship (the mistaken opinion of liberals reading Aristotle).
Finally, the circle can do a third round in which people express gratitude for the things they received since the last meeting. This round is extremely important because in community, the witnessing of others' generosity inspires generosity in those who witness it. It confirms that this group is giving to each other, that gifts are recognized, and that my own gifts will be recognized, appreciated, and reciprocated as well.
The community-building exercises do sound hokey and rather forced. Should we not be expressing gratitude to one another in our exchanges? Moreover, there is a danger inherent to turning generosity and gratitude into a spectacle - it can become an occasion for competition and vice. Finally, we need to realize that each person is a gift to the community (as well as the role he exercises), with the ultimate source of good being God. Another sentimental version of secular humanism (or some alternate spirituality) will be inadequate to deal with the reality of sin and human imperfection (especially with the devil and his ilk seeking to trip people up).
Related:
Alasdair MacIntyre's Political Liberalism
Thaddeus J. Kozinski
Grumpy old white men would have something to say about the following movies.
I'm a Denzel Washington fan, but was putting him in the role of a former CIA agent gone rogue a PC casting choice? Soft Ryan Reynolds plays the CIA newbie who has to prove himself.
This Means War (Apple
Modern liberated woman who has the attention of two alpha males who in turn have to literally fight each other for her affection. (The trailer doesn't show what she really has to offer to either.)
Man on a Ledge (Apple)
Elizabeth Banks as a tough police psychologist/negotiator, with Pooja Kumar in an action role as a friend of the main character who is trying to prove his innocence.
Why Do Catholics Feel the Need to Appropriate Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Matthew Schmitz, Who Gets to Use MLK’s Legacy?
Some use his authority to persuade others on questions like abortion. But it goes beyond that, when they accept his civil rights activism as the correct means for dealing with the problem of racism and injustice and see in him someone to admire and emulate. It is one thing to let non-Catholics have their heroes and figures; it is another to embrace those heroes and figures as one's own, even if only to try to facilitate dialogue and to be able to better identify with them. Maybe the division between groups is so great that this sort of cultural appeasement is necessary. But will it be successful in the long run? There are plenty who say the right things on race and engage in other PC grandstanding, but nonetheless will not accept "ractial integration" for themselves or their families. Can national myths and exaggerated sense of identity ever be wiped away, so that people can begin anew and deal with others as they are?
Paul Gottfried, The Cult Of St. Martin Luther King—A Loyalty Test For Careerist Conservatives?
(A reaction by Lawrence Auster to a talk Mr. Gottfried gave in NYC, based on second-hand info.)
Paul Gottfried, The Minicon Mind and MLK as Twentieth-Century Jesus
Marcus Epstein, Myths of Martin Luther King
Whiskey: Martin Luther King: The Return of Otto von Bismarck
Items of Interest, 17 January 2012
The Crash-and-Burn Future of Robot Warfare
Is the United States Still the Land of the Free
Economics:
The Problem With Citizens United Is Not Corporate Personhood
Dave Pollard, Gangsters and Bankster (EB)
Transition Voice: What’s really in and out for 2012
Janelle Orsi: Sharing Economy (EB)
Farming:
How farms are using permaculture design to survive and prosper
Jason Bradford, One acre feeds a person (EB)
Your Prius Won’t Save You: Questions for David Owen, Author of The Conundrum
Counterpunch:
GARETH PORTER AND JIM LOBE, Obama Delays U.S.-Israeli War Exercise
THOMAS H. NAYLOR, The End of Something
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, America’s Last Chance
PATRICK COCKBURN, The Newsfakers
Diet and Health:
Cherries for Gout and Arthritis
The LLVLC Show (Episode 533): ‘Minding Your Mitochondria’ TEDx Viral YouTube Sensation Dr. Terry Wahls (mp3)
Low Carb Mistakes
Music:
BBC3: Daniel Hope, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Julian Marshall (expires in 7 days)
2012 SHOT Show - Media Day at the Range
Paul Howe: Advanced Tac Pistol/Rifle Operator