What’s Wrong with the World

The Long Tedium of Euro Crisis perdures. It’s clear that Greek departure is a real possibility; it’s plausible that this brings down the whole euro as a currency; but it is also conceivable that for people sedulous in gaining actionable financial intelligence, trades into the new currencies — neo-drachma, neo-lira, neo-franc — are already extant, by means of synthetic sight-unseen derivatives trades.

Now and then we’re informed by pundits, or rather proffered an insinuation: that Greece is all tourism and street crime and communists. “They don’t make anything anyway.” Well, they do control some fifth of the world’s shipping in certain categories of vessel. What’s happened is not that the Greeks cannot, any longer, be a productive and enterprising people; it’s that their governments have promised them too much security and livelihood at public expense, combined with the detail that Greeks don’t pay taxes. So revenues do not match commitments and the borrowing power the euro provided only masked an underlying derangement.

Contrariwise some of my friends on the Right, I do insist on noticing that creditors to Greece were part of this derangement in a big way as well. One of those creditors, it turns out, was former New Jersey Governor and Senator, and former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Jon Corzine. His hotshot quasi-hedge fund sunk big capital into a bet that peripheral Eurozone debt would rebound because (one presumes) the ECB would finance its liquidity; but the hotshots really blundered and somehow (via fraud or incompetence) sunk unconsented client capital into this and similarly disastrous trades.

The US bank JPMorgan, meanwhile, labors under the bad press of its own disastrous trades. The distant inheritors of the great Morgan financial empire didn’t get caught plugging the holes in their balance sheet with client funds; but it’s plain that they got taken for suckers, whether in proprietary trading, hedging or whatever specificity your prefer.

In a now-familiar dynamic, all this uncertainty and volatility redounds to the benefit of the US Treasury. Treasury securities continue to sell like hotcakes. The US government can issue debt at historically low cost. Creditors are lining up to lend us their money.

I stand by my conviction that the amalgamation of commercial and investment banking has been a stupefying failure. Let me be more explicit: most of the bank deregulation of the 1990s (bills written by a GOP Congress and signed by Bill Clinton) should be repealed. The sooner we restore those old quarantines the better. The only reason I care that JPMorgan traders in London lost their shirts on synthetic credit derivative trades is that, like most very large conglomerate banks, JPMorgan is dependent on TBTF and the intimacy with government it implies. And one of the key foundations of that intimacy is JPMorgan’s enormous depositary unit being fused with its capital market prop trading units.

Let me note in passing that Eurozone banks are generally much bigger than ours. And half of them are nearly crippled by Greek, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese exposures. Even if, mirabile dictu, the US finance sector were cleansed of its insidious usury, we’d still be confronting a world full of TBTF banks, national champions, sovereign wealth funds, and mercantilism from Germany to China.

One thing I can predict with confidence is that the interesting times will persist.

As my esteemed colleague Lydia McGrew illustrated in this post, there is a fairly severe malfunction in the mode under which many Christians undertake to argue contested points with non-Christians, especially in the corridors of educational institutions. This is a follow-up to that. The demise of forthright insistence on principles, even ones that are not popular, struck Catholic universities during the last century at least as hard as it struck in other places, perhaps more so. As of 1970 there was, for all practical purposes, no supposedly Catholic college in America in which one could reliably get sound Catholic philosophy, and biology that didn’t directly oppose that philosophy.

Some men saw the problems, and decided to write a critique of the trend, an analysis of the problem, and a solution – at least for the college arena. Thus they set forth the foundational document – called “the Blue Book” after its first published form - of a college that they then went on to bring into being and operate. Below are some excerpts of that document. I think that they make the point better than I could.

The willingness of a college to secularize itself in the hope of monetary gain presupposes that it already views its Catholicity as something that is subject to negotiation, which in turn presupposes that it has rejected the traditional doctrine that the essential purpose of a Catholic college is to educate under the light of the Faith. We find, in fact, that the most outspoken proponents of the secularization of the Catholic colleges are not arguing about economic considerations but are attacking the very idea of a college that educates under the light of the Faith.

Continue reading "Catholicism and An Integrated Philosophy" »

Mothers this year are being asked to ignore their children on Mother's Day:

This Sunday, children of all ages will celebrate the role mothers play in their lives. But Vogue model Christy Turlington Burns and a host of female celebrities are encouraging mothers across the nation to ignore their children as part of "No Mother’s Day," a sign of their support for reducing maternal mortality by supporting family planning and global access to abortion.

The campaign asks women to "disappear" on Mother’s Day to raise awareness of maternal mortality rates and underscore "just how much a mother is missed when she’s gone." But amidst positive initiatives such as improved health care for complications such as hemorrhage and sepsis, the campaign promotes "safe" abortion, and the legalization of abortion in nations where the practice is currently illegal, as a means of lowering maternal deaths.

A press release for Every Mother Counts, the nonprofit Turlington launched in 2010, notes a new PSA "features moms encouraging other moms to join in solidarity by disappearing on May 13th, Mother’s Day. No phone calls. No emails. No social media. No gifts.”

Continue reading "No Mother's Day?" »

The College of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More was launched in Fort Worth, Texas, on the 5th of May. It is really the continuation of St. Thomas More College, begun in 1981, but reorganized along classical and traditionalist lines. Longtime W4 readers will be pleased to learn that May 5 was chosen because it is the feast of Pope St. Pius V, who "instituted the Feast of Our Lady of Victory—a particularly fond title of Our Lady to certain members of our faculty. This feast was instituted in gratitude for victory in the Battle of Lepanto since the victory was attributed to Our Lady after all of Europe prayed the Rosary for aid."

Liturgically, the College is devoted to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, with the blessing of the diocese. It's the only four-year college of its kind in the United States (and perhaps the world). The academic curriculum seems fairly rigorous. In addition to liberal arts, the college plans to offer a business and commerce degree. Fisher-More is the first to fulfill a long neglected "niche" in American higher education.

I hope you'll take some time to persuse the website, and if similarly inspired, spread the news.

There are two different attitudes that I will call "approaches of diffidence" that Christians who are philosophers can take. One is more extreme than the other. Both are wrong.

Attitude #1 is what I will call the Averroist Approach. The Averroist Approach says that, to be an honest and professional philosopher, you must even in your own mind completely bracket your Christian beliefs when you are doing philosophy. So, for example, if you are examining the question of the existence of a non-material aspect to man, you should bracket the fact that traditional Christianity clearly does assume that there is such a thing (hint: "the soul"). That's religion, not philosophy. The two are different, and that's flat. They just don't have anything to do with one another, and the fact that you believe Christianity to be true can't give you any reason, while you happen to have your philosopher's hat on your head, for believing in the existence of the soul.

My reasons for connecting this approach with Averroes should be historically evident.

Attitude #2 is what I will call Extreme Rhetorical Diffidence. ERD says that even though in the privacy of their own minds Christian philosophers do believe things at odds with the zeitgeist, when it comes to making arguments, they have to pretend for practical purposes that they don't. In fact, the best rhetorical thing to do is to assume, for the sake of the argument, the truth of the most popular present philosophical position, even if that is not only totally at odds with your Christian beliefs but also at odds with other known and developed philosophical options. Hence, even though there are non-Christians (or philosophers who don't make use of explicitly Christian premises) who question or outright deny naturalism, use only naturalist premises when making your arguments--say, in ethics. Even though there have been secular humanist philosophers who have rejected Peter Singer (e.g., Jenny Teichman), use only Singer-approved premises when doing ethics. Even though neo-Aristotelians like David Oderberg defend essences, assume nominalism in metaphysics. Even though Richard Fumerton is an internalist in epistemology, don't question naturalized epistemology and externalism. Even though Thomas Nagel strongly questions materialism, don't challenge the premise that the mind evolved by purely material means. And so forth.

Continue reading "Christianity, Philosophy, and the integrated mind" »

A Nova Scotia student, William Swinimer, has been given a 5-day suspension for continuing (after being warned) to wear a Christian T-shirt deemed offensive to non-Christians. What does it say? "Life is wasted without Jesus."

The powers and principalities are not subtle about the locus of their objection:

School board Supt. Nancy Pynch-Worthylake said the wording on the shirt is problematic because it is directed at the beliefs of others.

"If I have an expression that says 'My life is enhanced with Jesus,' then there's no issue with that, everybody is able to quickly understand that that's my opinion about my own belief," she said.

Thanks, Nancy, that's very clear. We are all relativists now. Christian expressions are allowed so long as all they say is that Jesus is good for me. Christian statements are non-threatening so long as they're purely personal, subjective, and relative. The problem comes in where anyone implies that Jesus is also good for somebody else, that other people will be better off if they know Jesus. That, in fact, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. (Just imagine what they'd do with a T-shirt that said, "Jesus is the only way.") Statements that imply that Christianity is objectively true and that this might make a claim on somebody else's life are verboten.

In other words, expressions of real Christianity are verboten.

We learn from the video accompanying the story that William has been a "problem" in other ways. Not only has he made atheists feel criticized, poor babies, by wearing a T-shirt that implies that their lives are wasted without Jesus, he has also been preaching (aka witnessing) to people. Can't have that salt and light stuff. This little light of yours, I'm not gonna let it shine. The contempt of his fellow students is evident in their faces, and chilling.

I would say that relativism is the state religion of Nova Scotia, except that there's a sense in which we all know that that's not true, either. Expressions that condemn, say, homophobia would certainly not be forbidden. In fact, I'm certain that teachers at Forest Heights Community School make such statements themselves from positions of authority, even though that entails criticizing the beliefs of others. And a T-shirt that said, "Tolerance is greater than hatred" (okay, I'm sure you can make up something catchier, but you get the idea) would surely not be banned simply because it entailed a criticism of the beliefs of those deemed intolerant.

So selective relativism is the state religion of Nova Scotia. Which is to say that leftist ideology is the state religion of Nova Scotia.

Shine on, William. You will have your reward in heaven.

HT: Wintery Knight

The original "We're all relativists now" post is here.

The Obama administration had done, and attempted to do, many shameful things. This most recent one brings shame on America in the eyes of the whole world.

The latest news I have in the case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng is here.The previous news just before that is here.

Briefly: Blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who has exposed and criticized China's forced-abortion policy, dramatically escaped from house arrest and was transported by friends to the U.S. embassy. He had to leave his wife and child behind, however. While in the U.S. embassy, he was pressured by U.S. officials to leave. The officials faithfully relayed threats from the despicable Communist Chinese government to beat his wife to death if he did not leave. Eventually he agreed to leave and go to the hospital to be treated for an injury sustained in the course of his escape. He agreed to this partly because of the threats and partly because of a promise from the U.S. that American officials would stay with him in the hospital. Our government then betrayed him, and the Americans mysteriously melted away from the hospital.

(By the way, see here for a correction to a media story being relayed all over, including in the above stories: Chen did not send a message to Hilary Clinton that he wanted to "kiss" her.)

More: The despicable Communist Chinese government is demanding an apology for our even allowing Chen into the embassy. Well, we aren't quite giving them that, but we are giving them a promise that the "incident" will not be repeated. Got that? We're promising to abandon Chen entirely and not to let him into the embassy should he manage to escape again. But why would he bother? We already betrayed him once.

And now he's appealing to Obama to get him and his family out of China? He can't really mean that. Surely he's realized the truth by now.

Obama has brought dishonor on us all by this treacherous treatment of a brave man.

America used to be a city on a hill. The light has been quenched. May God have mercy on us and protect Chen Guangcheng

Charles W. Colson passed into eternal life on April 21, 2012. He was salient among a few Christians whose work strongly influenced my own conversion some twenty years ago. Colson was an authentic and courageous warrior for Christ, defying political categories.

"On his frequent visits to prison, inmates crowded around Colson, and he always seemed to have time for everyone. Everyone mattered."

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

The Nancy Pelosi’s of this world are shown, yet again, to have no clue when it comes to how democracy actually is supposed to work here in this country (or anywhere else, if “work” means generically successful in organizing stable, fruitful society for generations on end). A couple years ago, the Supreme Court struck down the constitutionality of section 441B of Title 2 of the US Code (election law), put in place by the McCain –Feingold act of 2002, a legal mistake if ever there was one. This section was the one that introduced a direct suppression of free speech by corporations: it outlawed so-called “electioneering communications” within 60 days of a federal election by any corporation whatsoever. The law was considered problematic to begin with, and President Bush when he signed it did so with publicly stated misgivings about its constitutionality. Now that the SC has struck down this provision in Citizens United vs. FEC, Pelosi and crew are foaming at the mouth and calling for a constitutional amendment:

The People's Rights Amendment Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons. Section 2. People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulations as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution. Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people's rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

A brief glance at the first sentence provokes awe and wonderment, that supposedly savvy political operatives can so badly mis-align a mere 14 words, the second part of the sentence, against reality and political intelligibility. Forget, for a moment, that Pelosi is a liberal’s liberal, and you will notice that those words would strike down all sorts of rights dear to liberals. Like, for example, the freedom of all of the media corporations. The First Amendment’s protected freedom of press would cease to apply to the New York Times, but only to humans employed by the NYT. The corporate entity could not claim any relief from suppression of speech, and would have no standing to sue for protection of the press from government interference. Nothing in the 4th amendment would protect the NYT building from unreasonable searches.

Continue reading "Only People Have Rights?" »

I indicated in a thread now well below that I have a lot of suspicion about the “take my ball and go home” mentality that prevails among many conservatives when it comes to electing our rulers. The detached observer can easily discern the self-regard and impatience from which it often springs. Such an observer will be struck by the impression he receives of folks who feel themselves quite fully entitled to politicians of virtue and probity. Alas, history does not disclose many examples bearing this out. You might live your life without ever setting eyes on a upright man in politics.

Part of the disagreement derives, no doubt, from differences concerning the nature of civic obligation. Does civic obligation apply with force sufficient to overawe, in most cases, the dictates of personal principle? Or do the latter constrain the former sufficiently to induce a wise reluctance to vote at all in many elections?

While I tend to subscribe to the Buckley Rule, so named for the late William F. Buckley’s dictum to support the most conservative candidate who is electable, I am cognizant of the necessity of unpacking what, precisely, one means in a given context by “electable.” The idea is susceptible to imposture like few concepts in democratic politics.

Endeavoring to avoid any impostures, allow me to set forth one form of electoral protest that I could definitely get behind: mass boycott. It appears that of both major candidates in the upcoming election, it will be true to say they have affixed their executive signature to health care bills that coerce the conscience of Roman Catholics by obliging them to underwrite contraceptives.

Now imagine the effect of a widespread and firm unity of Catholics in a determining not to cast a vote for either man.

Let it be proclaimed from the parishes and read out at mass: In good conscience no Catholic may cast a vote for either major party candidate. My children, you can’t vote in this election. Now that would turn a few heads.

Certainly the election could proceed without them; very probably a president would still be elected; nonetheless, a man taking the Oath of Office bereft of a single Catholic vote would do so under some considerable stain of bewilderment and anxiety. The boycott would surely bulk as big a story as the inauguration.

If even half of American Catholics, who normally voted diligently, joined the boycott — why, it would reduce to marvelous ruins every polling model, every worn-out cliché, every bad bit of babble that gets passed off as election commentary. What is the voting pattern for PA shorn of all its orthodox Catholics? How votes Colorado without all the pressure of Catholic orthodoxy preached and flung out in defiance by Archbishop Chaput, now of Philadelphia? I don’t know. And neither do you. This is a protest worthy of name. The touch of rampart and revolt thrills me.

So the day the Church calls for a boycott of elections, this Protestant will sign on without a lick of regret. But until then, I’m sticking with Buckley.

(I'm going to take a page from our friend Fake Herzog and put this entry in the form of a letter.)

Dear Wesley,

As you know, I've been a long-time fan of your blog Secondhand Smoke and often link to it and make my own comments on the stories you highlight there.

It's recently come home to me even more strongly just how important your place is in the world of philosophy and ethics. Here's the problem: The philosophical field of ethics seems to be irremediably corrupt, especially in bioethics. It is completely dominated by Peter Singer, Julian Savulescu, and their ilk, and the gatekeepers aren't allowing anything else. It is particularly difficult when a young philosopher might be inclined to accept human exceptionalism partly because of his own religious background; of course, religious premises are treated as entirely out of bounds.

I don't actually accept the proposition that religious premises are out of bounds. I believe that religious belief can be rationally grounded and, moreover, that it is crucial that our young Christian philosophers not be running about with "split minds," doing naturalist philosophy on weekdays and going to church on Sundays. We should integrate our worldview, and our well-supported religious beliefs should play a role in our ethical theory.

However, this doesn't negate the importance of the natural law, and as a sheer matter of psychological and practical fact, if Christian philosophers really believe that the only route to a humane ethics passes through propositions about the truth of Christianity, it is unfortunately all too likely that they will, at least for purposes of all discourse in their professional world, abandon humane ethics. This is especially true for young philosophers just getting started and under pressure to conform to Singer-esque assumptions. And it's still more true for those who have been, sad, sad to say, raised in our Western public school systems as "men without chests," in C.S. Lewis's words--men out of touch with the Tao, whose moral sensibilities have not been trained in basic humane principles about mankind and human nature.

This is where you come in. Though I imagine you wouldn't put it this way yourself, I see your role as that of restating the Natural Law for a post-Christian world. By starting with your principle of human exceptionalism, which as you point out can be supported by simple observation in a non-religious fashion, by assuming that there is such a thing as objective truth in ethics, and by not being intimidated by the zeitgeist, you are able to move past the anti-human and inhumane ethics of the contemporary philosophical world. You take your principles about the specialness of each human being, regardless of capacities, and you apply them to the particular, real-world cases. And as an outsider who does not depend for his bread and butter on the approval of the philosophical establishment, you are able to do this without fear or favor. This is an indispensible role.

To be honest, I would advise any young philosopher with any good moral intuitions not to specialize in ethics. The only exception to this advice might be if he could take his degree and then work in a traditional Catholic ethical milieu where natural law theory is well-respected, but how many people can do that? In the present economic and job market, it's not as though people thinking of going into philosophy can be as picky as all that in their school and job choices. But even if they are specializing in logic or epistemology or (especially) metaphysics, they are going to be surrounded by discussions that impinge upon the issue of human exceptionalism. If nothing else, such discussions will come up in the philosophy lounge when someone tries to tell them that they shouldn't be eating a chicken sandwich. And philosophers argue about everything.

So it's very important that there be a go-to place where those who have never been grounded in human exceptionalism can begin to get an idea of what a natural law ethics might look like in the real world and where those who have been so grounded can keep their weapons honed. For those purposes, I can't recommend Secondhand Smoke too highly.

Keep up the good work.

Lydia McGrew

Lying behind several of the points in the Editors' post below on the changes in America from five years ago was this simple point: Five years ago we did not have in power a politically ruthless administration determined to make political war on the American people and the American way of life. Recently Lawrence Auster has said that you can "begin to sense the impatience" of the liberals in this country:

The liberals want to get rid of us. They may not have yet articulated that thought plainly in their minds, but that is what they feel, and that is why they are not bothered by the astonishing manifestations of all-out liberal tyranny in the last three months, such as the birth control mandate...

This is true. There used to be a saying, probably meant to downplay the true evil of Communism: "A Communist is a liberal in a hurry." Well, our liberals are more and more in a hurry these days. Power has gone to their heads, and they are going to use it to the hilt. One really cannot keep up with the breathtaking moves. No doubt they know that. Who has the money, time, and energy to bring lawsuits against all of their abuses of power? And the administration will be able to use taxpayer money to defend themselves. Moreover, the arguably unconstitutional power already granted to the government over the past decades was to some extent just sitting around waiting to be used. No one knows how to use it like a leftist.

Here are two of the latest. Are these "against the rules" as the rules of executive power have been gradually interpreted? Who knows? But I can say this: They are unjust laws, and they are beyond all doubt and question against the concept of limited federal government as envisaged in the American founding.

1) The Obama administration directly attacks what is left of family farm life and culture in this country by planning to outlaw children's helping their parents with many farm chores they were previously permitted to do. Moreover, the 4-H is no longer going to be permitted to give safety training to minors. That task will be reserved for, you guessed it, the federal government. Not being a farmer, I can only guess at what this means in practice, but it sounds extremely sweeping. Just from having read novels all my life I can get some clue of the way in which this strikes a blow at the normal, gradual, humane process by which the children of farmers are taught by their parents to be farmers themselves, to handle animals. Yes, even to slaughter animals or treat them for illnesses. (The article points out that children would under the new rules not be permitted to see veterinary practice.) Family apprenticeship for kids is out. The bond between young and old is to be broken. The liberals' hatred of such quintessentially American institutions as 4-H and the family farm is to be given a powerful weapon for destroying these entities. The federal government is to be all-in-all to the rural youth of America. The more you think about it, the worse it gets.

This needs to be recognized as the act of all-out ideological warfare that it is. As I have said, I consider this to be an unjust law. I say no more on the subject of whether farmers should obey it or not.

2) Unrelated except in the sense that it is also a breathtaking act of tyranny and ideological warfare, which our Federal Masters do "just because they can"--The EEOC has ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act applies to "transgender persons." This is quite amazing. First of all, if we care at all about legislative intent (which sometimes has been applied to the Civil Rights Acts), it's quite outrageous to claim that Congress has ever intended that non-discrimination statute with its reference to not discriminating "on the basis of sex" to mean "not discriminating on the basis of claiming to be the opposite of one's actual biological sex." Obviously, the sex discrimination aspects of the federal non-discrimination law were meant to be a sop to the feminists. They were meant to prevent discrimination against women. That's got a whole set of problems all its own, of course, but the application to "transgendered persons" is a joke interpretively.

Second, let's remember, what is often forgotten, that as of yet federal non-discrimination law does not unambiguously apply to homosexuals, to "sexual orientation." That is why the homosexual lobby works so hard to put such laws in place at the state and even local level. The non-discrimination agenda for homosexuals has generally been treated as less extreme than the non-discrimination agenda for transsexuals. (I am not granting that it is in some objective sense "less extreme," only that there has been an ordering to these things in the way that they have come up in and been treated in American politics.) The latter is more recent and more "progressive." The EEOC is obviously flexing its muscles. As usual, liberals just hate, hate having to go through a cumbersome process of actually getting a new policy voted into law by a whole bunch of elected representatives. Who needs that hassle? They'd rather carry out their agenda through much smaller bodies of radical judges and bureaucrats. And they hate the democratic process even worse if they have to engage in it at lower political levels. They have been thirsting for a federal law banning "discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation" (which, yes, for all you foolish, naive people out there, does mean on the basis of sexual acts) for a long time. If the EEOC can simply enact federal non-discrimination law for "trans persons" by executive fiat, why not for "sexual orientation"?

Tyranny isn't just around the corner anymore. We've gone around the corner. Tyranny is here now, in our beloved country, which once was the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Update: Under entirely appropriate pressure from the Daily Caller and the outrage occasioned thereby, the Obama administration has withdrawn the proposed new labor regulation for farms. Long live representative democracy and the freedom of the press!

(With apologies to Indiana Jones, and yes, it's hyperbole.)

I've recently been reading The Small Woman, Alan Burgess's 1959 biography of missionary to China Gladys Aylward. I was so fascinated by the included story of David Davies, one of her colleagues in China, which I hadn't previously encountered, that I tried to do a little googling to find out more about him.

First, part of Davies's story from The Small Woman: David Davies was an indomitable Welsh missionary to China during the Japanese occupation. In 1939 he left Gladys Aylward in charge of various refugee relief efforts being run by the missionary compound in the contested city of Tsehchow and escorted his wife and family to the relatively safer (though already Japanese occupied) Chinese coast. He then returned secretly and by convoluted paths, against Japanese orders, to the mountain region, walking approximately 1,000 miles on foot, to take up his work again in Tsehchow where he believed his duty lay.

Davies was insistent on a principle of complete neutrality for missionaries, a principle Aylward at first shared but later abandoned in practice. Gladys was a naturalized Chinese citizen, and she was persuaded by personal knowledge of Japanese atrocities, by her loyalty to China, and by the arguments of a Colonel in Chiang Kai-shek's intelligence to agree to spy for the Nationalist Chinese against the ruthless Japanese invaders. Burgess does a good job of portraying Aylward's ongoing ambivalence about this decision, a tension created by a conflict with her own initially pacifist version of Christianity.

Not long after Davies returned to the danger zone, the Nationalists retreated from Tsehchow in the spring of 1940. At the same time the Japanese placed a bounty on Gladys Aylward's head; obviously, they had learned of her activities working for the Chinese military. Both Gladys and David Davies were intending to stay in Tsehchow when the Japanese came to occupy it; they had done so before and survived, though on that earlier occasion Gladys (who wasn't yet working for the Chinese) was badly beaten. Neither was intending to leave this time either, but at the last minute, as the Japanese were actually entering the city, Gladys made up her mind to run, persuaded in part by having recently learned of the reward offered for her capture. She ran first to Yangcheng, to which she had already sent about a hundred Chinese orphans. She now evacuated the children in a famous and dramatic month-long journey over the mountains to relative safety and stable care in territory more firmly in the hands of the Nationalists.

Back in Tsehchow, Davies was captured by the Japanese, who were determined to force him to admit that he was a spy. They tortured both him and two of his Chinese companions. They killed both of the Chinese, crucifying one and beheading the other. Davies was beaten and tortured over a period of a year or so and eventually released after two years of imprisonment. He promptly went to the coast and, upon finding that his wife and children were in a Japanese internment camp, gave up his own opportunity to be repatriated to Wales and instead stayed with his family in the camp until the end of the war.

All of this information is in Burgess's book. Though Burgess appears not to be a Christian, he treats the story of David Davies as a triumph of the human spirit. So stirring is his rendition of the tale that I couldn't help wondering why there wasn't a movie, perhaps from the Hollywood glory days of the 1950's or 1960's, about Davies, to match The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, which is about Gladys Aylward. It's possible, though, that Davies's story would have been too gruesome for a movie of that time period, and perhaps it's just as well one was not made.

Well. Trust the despicable media of the United Kingdom not to be able to leave things at that.

Type

"David Davies" missionary China

into Google, and up pops this link about a 2004 documentary about Gladys Aylward. (I can't help noting in passing the fact that whoever wrote this summary is so illiterate that he thinks "infamous" means "famous.")

So what is the BBC's take on the story of Davies? David Davies's sufferings and the death of his companions were Gladys Aylward's fault. In fact, this version of the same story is headed "Heroine's actions 'led to atrocities'." They are obviously reasoning that if Gladys hadn't spied for the Chinese, the Japanese wouldn't have had reason to think that an associate of hers might be a spy, and then they wouldn't have imprisoned and tortured Davies and killed his Chinese Christian friends. See? So it's her fault. Her actions "led to atrocities."

How many things are there about this BBC spin that are either stupid or morally twisted?

Well, let's start with the fact that the Japanese were perfectly capable of accusing Western missionaries of being spies on zero evidence and treating them accordingly (where "accordingly" should be interpreted in terms of the type of conduct for which the Japanese were justly infamous in WWII). The story of Darlene Deibler Rose, captured by the Japanese in Indonesia, is much like that of Davies. You might almost think we were talking about a relevantly similar set of brutal, irrational, torturing conquerors. Burgess seems well aware of this and takes Davies's treatment and that of his Chinese companions to have been the result of Japanese irrationality, a determination to believe what they were going to believe about a Western missionary captive. (We might also remember that Davies had gone to great trouble to return to the region against Japanese orders, which could have been enough for them to leap to the conclusion that he was up to no good.)

Continue reading "Liberals. I hate these guys" »

Five years ago, while credentialed scholars could recommend infanticide with impunity, it was not legalized widely in the West.

Five years ago religious liberty was less menaced by busybodies and ideologists.

Five years ago the aged, the decrepit, the mentally infirm were better protected in law; and their serpentine executioners more exposed to penalty of law.

Five years ago sharia law was less anchored in proto-legal agreements and rulings. The US Code was less conformed to the Law of Muhammad.

Five years ago the faithful Catholic or otherwise pro-life nurse was more at liberty to decline participation in the slaughter of the unborn.

Five years ago coercion of conscience on points of human sexuality was an ominous prospect; today it is a legal precedent.

Five years ago no one imagined that unless every Catholic is paying for it, contraception is not available; today that is the principled doctrine of the federal administration.

Five years ago the fraudulence of Tolerance was less evident; and its tyranny less accomplished.

The last five years have seen a lot of things wrong with the world.

Five years ago, What’s Wrong with the World was launched. We took our name from a book by the great G. K. Chesterton (pictured above). We sought to emulate his unique fusion of laughter and polemic, critique and appreciation, humor and outrage, love and fury.

Despite the gathering clouds, darker and more intimidating now than in 2007, our policy reposes on the old verities that Chesterton so ably defended. We stand for Liberty. We stand for Order. We stand for Life. We stand for Family. We stand for Common Sense. We stand for what’s left of the Old Republic. Above all we stand for the Cross of Christ, and go gaily in the dark.

Below the fold is a lightly edited version of the first post to appear at this website. It describes the paradox that despite all these provocations and alarums, Conservatives retain a unity; they are the party of grateful men.

Continue reading "Five Years Ago" »

Ah, the glorious choices feminism was supposed to offer women. The opportunities! The empowerment! Put your kids in daycare and have a career because it's your choice to do so.

I remember almost twenty-five years ago meeting a Russian woman (this was before the fall of the Soviet Union, I emphasize) who was telling me how wonderful Communism was because it had liberated women. I told her that I didn't want to be liberated, that I wanted to have children and stay at home with them. She was almost literally unable to comprehend this. She kept saying over and over again things like, "But in Russia you would have a choice. You would have the opportunity to have a career." (I have no idea why, in the mid-80's, she believed that somehow this was not true in the United States. Perhaps because she had met me and assumed I was brainwashed and typical of American women at the time?) Telling her that the choice I wanted to make was not to have a career simply did not compute.

Well, the next time someone lectures you on the "softness" of Euro-socialism, or perhaps even chides you for referring to a country like Sweden as socialist, please note: Sweden is becoming my Communist acquaintance's dream. Some of us have already heard about Sweden's totalitarian and utterly committed attack on home schooling. Home education is illegal, and that's that. See here for more links and information.

But mandatory daycare, too, is on the horizon if not already here. In this article, along with more details on the persecution of home schoolers, we learn this:

Parents are pressured to put their children in daycare at age one.

"One mother told me when she went with her 18 month son to his medical checkup, and he was not in daycare. They said, 'Oh, your son is not in daycare? But he has to go to daycare. He needs that and you need to work,'" Himmselstrand told CBN News.

"The argument they give about this is that every child has a 'right' to daycare. This is not a right that parents are allowed to interfere with."

HSLDA translates from this link (which is in Swedish) the following argument for compulsory three-year-old daycare: “We cannot allow parents to deny their children the right to go to pre-school.”

The idea of children as free-standing actors in relation to the state, which enforces its own ideas of their "rights" against their parents, is not a new one. HSLDA has been warning about it for a long time. Sweden seems to have few qualms about a fairly extreme interpretation of the concept of the "rights of the child." A child has a right, in essence, to be separated from his mother.

And a mother has a duty to work. Thus the beneficiaries of feminism are now to be compelled to accept its vision, willy-nilly.

Choice? We don't need no stinkin' choice.

See Sage's sage comments on Sweden and home schooling, here.

HT for daycare pressure story, VFR.