Jonah Goldberg has a piece on National Review Online where he notes that social liberals specialize in telling other people how to live:
Go here to read the brilliant rest. Liberals are all in favor of the nanny state so long as they get to be the nannies. Contemporary liberals are the embodiment of this CS Lewis quote: “She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.”
George Steele Gordon: “Intellectuals, especially in the social sciences, have a nasty habit of thinking that, ‘This is the way the world should be, therefore this is the way the world can be.’
“Sometimes the mind just boggles.
“The Atlantic has an article this month (September or October 2012) with the title ‘Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don’t Realize It).’ I am always curious when intellectuals announce that the people (who in the American constitutional system serve as the sovereign power) don’t know what’s good for them (What’s the Matter with Kansas?) or don’t even know what they want.
“Implicit in all of these revelations, of course, is the firmest, if never directly expressed, belief of the Left: That the average person is too stupid to run his own life, let alone make public policy decisions. Those few, those happy few, that band of liberal intellectuals, must do that for them.”
Reminds me of the famous exchange between Gentile and Croce
GENTILE “Don’t you realize that the doctrine of the ‘ethical State’ constitutes my ‘new liberalism’?”
CROCE “That’s a new name for an old way of behaving which is ‘authoritarian’ and ‘reactionary.’”
“Feed the hungry” is a corporal work of mercy commanded by Christ: “Feed my lambs, feed my sheep.” The artificial person of the state or government constituted by the sovereign personhood of its citizens has no authentic authority to impede, prohibit the free exercise of religion, intervene or countermand the laws of God, the virtues or good works of the citizens, who have constituted it.
Judges are the personification of almighty God’s perfect and infinite Justice. Justice, if not perfect it is not Justice, but a miscarriage of Justice, and like sovereignty is not piecemeal, or like a little bit pregnant. One is or one is not. It is the virtue of Justice or it is a mockery of Justice.
No judge had the supreme authority to detain Terry Schindler Schiavo’s parents from feeding her. Terry Schiavo’s citizenship constituted the judge’s, all judges, office as Justice. In effect, the judge stripped Terry Schiavo of citizenship and of sovereign personhood, the sovereign personhood who had constituted the sovereign state and by so doing, the judge annihilated the sovereignty of the state, his own office as Justice and dictated homicide.
Roe v. Wade dictated that the newly conceived human being brought into existence by the creation of a human soul by “their Creator” and endowed with unalienable civil rights to Life, not be accommodated by nourishment in his mother’s womb, that the individual sovereign being who creates the office of mother and father of a man and a woman, be removed from the nourishment of the womb for which purpose the womb is created. Again, the father is disenfranchised of his own seed by Roe, and even if, by choice, the father refuses to nourish the infant child of his loins in utero, he too, becomes an accessory of homicide.
The virtues, all virtues must be defended and protected by the state for it is the duty of the state to deliver Justice to all of its citizens. It is the duty of the state to eliminate vice to enable itself to deliver Justice. The Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, so help me God is allowed in court. “God save this court” still said by the Supreme Court of the United States of America and “May almighty God have mercy on your immortal soul.” said by the court before the sentencing of capital punishment, the death penalty. The atheist has run amok and devastated our judicial system, but the truth will out, when the atheist demands Truth and God’s perfect Justice for himself. It is the duty of the court to deliver God’s perfect Justice.
Although it is the common habit to refer to the “liberal intellectuals,” I think we are giving them too much credit. Intellectual? Educated, albeit some kind of degree, perhaps. And anybody whose paid any attention since the Enlightenment should realize that they are truly “il-liberal” and intolerant except in untying the power of government. Since they think they know everything it is “my will be done” not “Thy.” And then their favorite causes are to excuse them from wanton sexuality or having to personally – with their own hands and pockets – actually touch and give to the poor. OK, not all of them, but many.
Liberals are nazis with finer professional liars, er, PR men.
Plus, “liberal imtellectuals” traffic in ideology not the truth.
“Liberal scholarship” long ago degenerated into calumnies, clichés/code words, distortions, exaggerations, fabrications, fantasies, misrepresentations, omissions, and outright lies. They engage in data mining and cherry-picking data, events or facts that coincidently support the agendae which seem totally credible, but are completely false. As in, the major historical events of 3000 B.C. Sumeria can be explained by: European (a.k.a. the white man) colonialism, homophobia, unjust income distribution, patiarchy, racism, red-lining, religion, segregation, and “stop-and-frisk.”
Ancient History has become complex to study with all the European cultural influence now involved. Sumerians in my memory had just developed cuneiform writing on papyrus and stored it in clay jars, didn’t they? Really, ‘cuneiform’ was the word that stayed with me because I never got to see a picture of the implement actually. Anyway, I associate it with the time and location of baby Moses floating in the reeds until he was rescued.
Currents events are equally mysterious. This week past has been of something like quiet power at work. From the day of prayer and fasting for peace called for and led by Pope Francis last Saturday, the people who rode to the nation’s capitol on 9/11, to the wonderful letter to the American people from President Vladimir Putin after the Syrian situation, and other ups and downs from reality as seen by political media, I’ve been trying to follow effects of that power, or turn of events, by reading news or blog posts and comments. Found most recently on Instapundit one called ‘Putin exposes the secrets of American liberalism’, which had some thoughts on its relationship with reality. Anyway, I copied a comment because the information impressed me.
“Earlier this year Barack Obama skipped Church on Christmas Day while the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, on January 6, 2013, attended mid-night mass services celebrating the Russian Orthodox Christmas in grand splendor in the traditional Vigil liturgy in Saint Christ the Saviour Cathedral in the presence of 4,000 people, including Patriarch Kirill. The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas following the old Julian calendar, which is 13 days “behind” the Gregorian calendar.
Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedeve go to Church frequently, kiss precious icons of the Virgin Mary and seek political and moral counsel from the Russian Orthodox Clergy. Furthermore, to the surprise of many Americans, particularly Evangelical Christians, Vladimir Putin wears a Christian cross with him at all times.
Who’s the Athiest? BHP or Putin?”
Also, I love the picture with the article. It is a happy and cute St. Bernard puppy being lovingly held by Vladimir Putin.
(Juxtapose that to another puppy recently traveling with team of agents on a military air tran$port.)
Pat
The church you mention – Christ the Saviour [Хра́м Христа́ Спаси́теля – Kram Khrista Spasitela] was a richly symbolic choice for Mr Putin to attend for midnight mass.
On 25 December 1812, Tsar Alexander I issued an ukase for the building of the church in honor of Christ the Saviour “to signify Our gratitude to Divine Providence for saving Russia from the doom that overshadowed Her” and as a memorial to the sacrifices of the Russian people. Tchaikovsky’ 1812 Overture was first performed at its consecration.
Stalin demolished it in 1931 to make way for his projected Palace of the Soviets, planned to be the tallest building in the world, with a colossal statue of Lenin on top. It was never built.
Boris Yeltsin ordered its faithful reconstruction, which took five years from 1995 to 2000. One of the first services to be held there was the canonization of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers, Nicholas II, Tsar of All the Russias, Tsarina Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexei and the Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.
Alas, the building itself is a tasteless piece of kitsch, rivalled only by the Sacré-Cœur in Paris.
The EWTN web site has a rather long dissertation by Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany in 1886 entitled, “Liberalism Is a Sin.” I see nothing in the video or post above that would negate what this work states, with which the formerly active Sacred Congregation of the Index agreed when it was transmitted to Rome to be banned. Obviously the opposite happened.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/theology/libsin.htm