Extorting ‘Virtue’: The Problems with the Same-Sex Marriage Bill by Andrew McCarthy
Democrats want the Respect for Marriage Act because it is a potent weapon against religious liberty, camouflaged in lofty rhetoric about dignity and benign intentions.
Interesting article from someone I trust. Worth thinking about.
Leo Strauss and the Closed Society by Matthew Rose
“He argued that good teachers should not seek to dispel the allure of the closed society; instead, they should carefully draw students directly inside of it. This pedagogy would enable students to experience the power of the closed society’s moral demands, to sense the appeal of its political life, and to feel challenged by its vision of human excellence.”
Very interesting analysis of a speech given by Leo Strauss encouraging the values of a "closed society" while living in an open one.
Humanism is a Heresy by Tom Holland
God was dead — but in the great cave that once had been Christendom his shadow still fell. The myths of Christianity would long endure. And yet they were no less myths, for all that, because they now wore the show of the secular. “Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of labour”: these were Christian through and through.
Very interesting thesis on the secularization of culture.
Educating the Founder by Lee Trepanier
The Framers’ education was grounded in a deeper and broader tradition that stretches back to the Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews. They believed that practical political solutions could be found in the literature, history, and philosophy of the ancients, the common law of the English, and Christianity theology.
Obviously I love this.
The Problem with Student-Centered Education by Rebekah Wanic and Nina Powell
When we adopt a student-centered educational philosophy, irrespective of how well-meaning we may be, we short-change students. Rather than succeeding in empowering them, we fail to equip them with the skills to deal with the challenges they will invariably confront as their life after university unfolds. When we see these consequences and choose to do nothing, we perpetuate this unkindness.
Imagine treating students as students and insisting the teacher has something to teach...
Montesquieu’s Warning About Our Childlessness by Adam M. Carrington
Yet we must understand that we encourage what we honor and we discourage what we disapprove. Encouraging the birth of more children while respecting all persons regardless of familial status will demand the careful balancing that attends all true statesmanship.
Interesting ideas, going back to Montesquieu on how to encourage child-bearing in America.
[Leo] Strauss understood that Athens was closer to Jerusalem than many presupposed. In his 1967 essay, he concluded “[t]hat both Socrates and the prophets are concerned with justice or righteousness, with the perfectly just society which, as such, would be free of all evils.” To be sure, the two approaches define the perfectly just man differently, for
according to Socrates, [it is] the philosopher; according to the prophets, he is the faithful servant of the Lord. The philosopher is the man who dedicates his life to the quest for knowledge of the good, of the idea of the good; what we would call moral virtue is only the condition or by-product of that quest. According to the prophets, however, there is no need for the quest for knowledge of the good: God “hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God” (Micah 6.8).
