Jay writes: 'All of my life, I’ve had to look up the difference between “blasphemy” and “sacrilege.” '
It's simple: blasphemy is words, sacrilege is action. For example, saying or writing that the Virgin Mary was a common prostitute would be blasphemous. Defiling or stealing the Host would be a sacrilege.
Where are today's giants? Forget party labels. Moynihan was a giant. I always thought Bill Bradley had great character and a hell of a brain. Didn't care about their politics--you knew they would THINK. What do we have today? Nasty bastards specializing in vulgar missives of only a hundred words. Sad.
I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I have long encouraged my fellow (C)conservatives to be bold and forthright; we have the best story, we are the party of freedom, innovation, opportunity, and human flourishing.
When we stop doing that which we do best, we falter.
When we become distracted by shiny new things, covet that which is not ours, or fail in our vigorous defense of capitalism, free trade, and the price system, we offer government to the Laurentian Elite Liberal-NDP left-of-centre political alliance.
I have always enjoyed September and October as my favourite months, but, as I age, June is taking the lead on the outside.
** Classically, socialists were thought of as utopian whereas conservatives were realistic—grasping the world as it is.
Last week, Stephen Miller, the presidential aide, said, “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” **
The juxtaposition of these two sentences suggests that the author believes "Stephen Miller, the presidential aide" is conservative. I'm rather surprised by the author.
I wouldn't expect Jay to think of Stephen Miller as included in any sane notion of US conservatism. But when insane notions claiming that reactionary radicalism somewhere between bonkers and vicious is "conservative" gain popularity (as they unfortunately have), usage changes, even if we're right to object.
The goodness of conservatism in its vaguest sense (conserving... something) depends on the something being conserved. Ghouls like Miller offend what we would conserve. Why conserve the vicious and trivial at the expense of the important and good?
What Miller purports to conserve is slippery, since we can't trust nostalgic fantasizing justifying the will to power to conserve anything real. On the other hand, there's an old evil – very old – that Easter repudiated. Pagan Rome's notion of virtue permitted the People Who Matter (such as the male citizen, especially paterfamilias) to dispose of the People Who Don't any way they liked. Toleration of this old evil in the form of tolerating slavery marred the liberality of the US founding, a flaw to be set aright in time. Declaring a Person Who Mattered a God wasn't strange in pagan Rome. Declaring a crucified person – a person marked out by the state as particularly disposable through humiliating punishment – was.
For conservatism to mean anything good, conservatives must actually disagree with composer Frank Wilhoit's "law": "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Though conserving an order where "The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone" (what Wilhoit calls "anti-conservatism") ought to be possible, ghouls like Miller seem to enthusiastically agree with "Wilhoit's law".
Jay writes: 'All of my life, I’ve had to look up the difference between “blasphemy” and “sacrilege.” '
It's simple: blasphemy is words, sacrilege is action. For example, saying or writing that the Virgin Mary was a common prostitute would be blasphemous. Defiling or stealing the Host would be a sacrilege.
Where are today's giants? Forget party labels. Moynihan was a giant. I always thought Bill Bradley had great character and a hell of a brain. Didn't care about their politics--you knew they would THINK. What do we have today? Nasty bastards specializing in vulgar missives of only a hundred words. Sad.
I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I have long encouraged my fellow (C)conservatives to be bold and forthright; we have the best story, we are the party of freedom, innovation, opportunity, and human flourishing.
When we stop doing that which we do best, we falter.
When we become distracted by shiny new things, covet that which is not ours, or fail in our vigorous defense of capitalism, free trade, and the price system, we offer government to the Laurentian Elite Liberal-NDP left-of-centre political alliance.
I have always enjoyed September and October as my favourite months, but, as I age, June is taking the lead on the outside.
I enjoyed your collection of musings very much.
** Classically, socialists were thought of as utopian whereas conservatives were realistic—grasping the world as it is.
Last week, Stephen Miller, the presidential aide, said, “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” **
The juxtaposition of these two sentences suggests that the author believes "Stephen Miller, the presidential aide" is conservative. I'm rather surprised by the author.
The phrase "thought of" raises, by whom?
I wouldn't expect Jay to think of Stephen Miller as included in any sane notion of US conservatism. But when insane notions claiming that reactionary radicalism somewhere between bonkers and vicious is "conservative" gain popularity (as they unfortunately have), usage changes, even if we're right to object.
The goodness of conservatism in its vaguest sense (conserving... something) depends on the something being conserved. Ghouls like Miller offend what we would conserve. Why conserve the vicious and trivial at the expense of the important and good?
What Miller purports to conserve is slippery, since we can't trust nostalgic fantasizing justifying the will to power to conserve anything real. On the other hand, there's an old evil – very old – that Easter repudiated. Pagan Rome's notion of virtue permitted the People Who Matter (such as the male citizen, especially paterfamilias) to dispose of the People Who Don't any way they liked. Toleration of this old evil in the form of tolerating slavery marred the liberality of the US founding, a flaw to be set aright in time. Declaring a Person Who Mattered a God wasn't strange in pagan Rome. Declaring a crucified person – a person marked out by the state as particularly disposable through humiliating punishment – was.
For conservatism to mean anything good, conservatives must actually disagree with composer Frank Wilhoit's "law": "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." Though conserving an order where "The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone" (what Wilhoit calls "anti-conservatism") ought to be possible, ghouls like Miller seem to enthusiastically agree with "Wilhoit's law".