Posted links are not necessarily endorsements for the originating periodicals or websites.
(Some links contain my original commentary from former social media posts.)
Ethics, Christianity, & Western Civilization
Jonathon Van Maren reports on a series of leading serious intellectuals who recognize the need for Christianity’s resurrection in Western societies but can’t bring themselves to the faith.
Dr. Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray
Dr. Peterson is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator. As a professor at McGill University, he subject to a huge backlash and faced numerous threats because of Canada’s C-16 Bill which mandates preferred pronoun usage. Journalist Douglas Murray is a British author and political commentator. He founded the Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007.
Atheists are warning that Christianity may be necessary for the survival of Western civilization | …
thebridgehead.caBy Jonathon Van Maren Historian Tom Holland is known primarily as a storyteller of the ancient world. Thus, his new book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, came as something of …
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“While studying the ancient world, Tom Holland writes, he realized something. Simply, the ancients were cruel, and their values utterly foreign to him. The Spartans routinely murdered ‘imperfect’ children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for the physical pleasure of those with power. Infanticide was common. The poor and the weak had no rights.
How did we get from there to here? It was Christianity, Holland writes. Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage, demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape. Christianity confined sexuality within monogamy. (It is ironic, Holland notes, that these are now the very standards for which Christianity is derided.) Christianity elevated women. In short, Christianity utterly transformed the world.
In fact, Holland points out that without Christianity, the Western world would not exist. Even the claims of the social justice warriors who despise the faith of their ancestors rest on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. Those who make arguments based on love, tolerance, and compassion are borrowing fundamentally Christian arguments. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, ‘no one would have gotten woke’ (Posted May 19, 2020 by J. Maren).
Jonathan Van Maren
A writer and public speaker with bylines in First Things, National Review, The American Conservative, and elsewhere. He is communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
Grave Men Facing A Grave Faith
www.convivium.caEarlier this month, I spent some time on the phone with Niall Ferguson, the Scottish historian and Milbank Family Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, for a review I was writing …
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“My fear is that the Church is not doing what so many of us on the outside want it to do, which is preaching its gospel, asserting its truths and its claims,’ he said. ‘When one sees it falling into all the latest tropes one thinks well, that’s another thing gone, just like absolutely everything else in the era. I’m a disappointed non-adherent.’
Murray believes that Christianity is essential because secularists have been thus far totally incapable of creating an ethic of equality that matches the concept that all human beings are created in the image of God. In a column in The Spectator, he noted that post-Christian society has three options. The first is to abandon the idea that all human life is precious. ‘Another is to work furiously to nail down an atheist version of the sanctity of the individual.’ And if that doesn’t work? ‘Then there is only one place to go. Which is back to faith, whether we like it or not.’
On a recent podcast, he was more blunt: ‘The sanctity of human life is a Judeo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive [the disappearance of] Judeo-Christian civilization.‘
– Atheist British Historian, Niall Ferguson / May 25, 2021Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
A Russian writer, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and prominent Soviet dissident who helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag prison system, and the over all political repression of the Soviet Union.
“A World Split Apart“
Solzhenitsyn’s Commencement Address
Harvard University
June 8, 1978
“Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of bitter truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary.“
Free Expression
The Cost of Dissent
quillette.comUninformed disagreement inhibits or destroys the very innovation and progress that diversity of opinion is meant to bring about.
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The author, Robert C. Thornett, has taught in seven countries and has written in The Diplomat, The American Mind, American Affairs, Education Next, Modern Diplomacy, Earth Island Journal, and Yale Environment 360.
National & Global
Misunderstanding Equality
quillette.comIf confusion between moral and empirical claims persists, we will find ourselves asked to choose between the truth and our ethical preferences.
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The author, Dr. Bo Winegard, was an assistant professor of psychology at Marietta College. He claims he was fired “because he dared to talk about human population variation and got slandered as a eugenicist.”
Ayan Hirsi Ali
In 2014, Brandeis University withdrew her honorary degree due to many faculty and student protests along with a large online petition against her.
The anti-woman violence feminists are afraid to confront
nypost.comVirtually every issue has become a partisan football in America’s politicized age of anti-Trump hysteria. Except one. The debate that has bucked this trend is the #MeToo campaign, which has success…
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I have great respect for this brave woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Born in Somalia to a Muslim family, she
speaks and writes about the need for reform. Consequently, she employs bodyguards because of
constant death threats.
In 2014, Brandeis University withdrew her honorary degree due to many faculty and student protests
along with a large online petition against her. Students also protest her speeches because her
criticism of fundamental Islam makes them feel “unsafe” in her presence. (Talk about feeling unsafe—at least her critics don’t need bodyguards.)
In this hard hitting opinion piece, Ms. Ali discusses contradictions in today’s feminist movement:
The right of women and girls to be free of abuse has been sacrificed at the altar of political
correctness . . . We do a disservice to women by hijacking their voices to score political points. The
campaign for women’s rights has morphed into an anti-Trump crusade.
. . . if it were a tradition among white men to remove the genitals of girls and sew their vaginas shut,
we can assume the women’s movement would suddenly take an interest. If it were serious about advancing women’s rights, the Women’s March movement would work to put those who can deliver
for women into office, not just those that tick identity-politics boxes.
As a woman of color in politics, I was used as an icon for the issues that matched my gender and skin
color. The same will happen to the “identity politicians” being pushed into office today.
Ironically, the women’s movement’s preoccupation with intersectionality will see core women’s
issues pushed further down the list of priorities. This cruel ideology asks women of color to remain
subjected and abused until we achieve some mythical moment of equality on every score.
Intersectionality entrenches victimhood and prevents men of color from being held accountable for
patriarchal attitudes and behaviors, laying the blame entirely on white men.
“Nationalism vs. Globalism”
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox and Nigel Farage, the former United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leader, debated the merits of nationalism and globalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. The conversation, hosted by the Steamboat Institute, was part of a nationwide tour of college campuses.
(April 12, 2018)
A must-see for my students next semester. A global society versus the right of citizens to their national sovereignties is one of, if not the most, significant social and political issue of our time. These two very smart men give excellent cases for both sides.
Mr. Fox seems to enjoy presumption from the get-go because he and Mr. Farage are debating on a college campus where academia’s activist approach and support of globalism is coupled with many young people’s global oriented worldview. This dynamic creates a sort of “burden of proof” for Mr. Farage.
In my opinion, Fox makes a good case for idealistic policies and theories (despite a few contradictions) while Farage is effective in taking a more pragmatic approach. The moderator’s requests for students to raise their hands seems to be ineffective. In my experience teaching college, students are often hesitant to openly show their opinions because they fear being criticized or ostracized for having the “wrong” viewpoint.
During my career in academia, I was “converting” to the idea of a global society. I still see a lot of merit in globalism, and due to technology, globalism has become a necessity in many ways. Presently, I’m becoming more skeptical of some global policies because I see the social and political unrest in the United Kingdom and western Europe where a panel of globalists (such as the European Union) seem to increasingly control the public policy decision-making by taking away or restricting citizens’ voices. Canada seems headed down the same path of unrest, and the United States is not far behind.
So, do citizens have the right to self-governance or should they assign their rights and responsibilities over to a global society? Watch the video and come to your own conclusion.
N. Russell
Due to his fear of violence and retribution, N. Russell is a pseudonym. The author is a former Ivy League college student who now works in the technology sector.
Institutional Self-Renunciation Is Making Us Lonely
quillette.comHuman identity is inextricably tied to group affiliation. So what happens when all the groups we know and love become ‘problematic’?