Stole My Thunder

[h/t: Theo]

Mark Steyn - Palin

For his usual Chestertonian take on the McCain choice for VP, read Mark Steyn's The hostess with the moosest. [tip: Rich Leonardi]

'Puny' Apocalypticism

Martin Amis writes in the Wall Street Journal of what it would take to cause the seismic shift from the (present) "puny apocalypse" of international terrorism to something worse, and the role of religion:

Was Sept. 11 about religion? This is still controversial. Both President Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are religious, were very quick to say that Sept. 11 was "not about religion" ("religion," hereabouts, being a euphemism for Islam). It then subsequently emerged that Sept. 11 was about religion -- or, at least, was not not about religion. But in the last year or two, it seems, we have gone back to saying that Sept. 11, and March 11 Madrid (2004), and July 7 London (2005), and all the rest, are not about religion.

The two most stimulating international terrorism-watchers known to me are John Gray and Philip Bobbitt. Professor Gray ("Straw Dogs," "Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern" and "Black Mass") and Professor Bobbitt ("The Shield of Achilles" and the masterly "Terror and Consent") are utterly unalike, except in brainpower and literary panache. Mr. Bobbitt is a proactive and muscular Atlanticist, whereas Mr. Gray is almost Taoist in his skepticism and his luminous passivity. Mr. Bobbitt is religious, and Mr. Gray is philo-religious (or, rather, wholly reconciled to the inexorability of religious belief); but neither man is an exponent of relativist politesse. And they assert, respectively, that international terrorism is "not about Islam" and has "no close connection to religion."

Al Qaedaism, for them, is an epiphenomenon -- a secondary effect. It is the dark child of globalization. It is the mimic of modernity: devolved, decentralized, privatized, outsourced and networked. According to Mr. Bobbitt, rather more doubtfully, Al Qaeda not only reflects the market state: it is a market state ("a virtual market state"). Globalization created great wealth and also great vulnerability; it created a space, or a dimension. Thus the epiphenomenon is not about religion; it is about human opportunism and the will to power. (My emphases) Real all …

One sees how Mr. Amis begins to "get it" and yet doesn't get it after all, from a Girardian point of view. Even the title of his essay, "Terrorism's New Structure" leans in the direction of grasping the events of the mimetic swirl of destruction and violence structurally. But he veers away from it finally, apparently for the ideological reason of remaining loyal to academic social science's nostalgic reductionism. It reminds one of the same way Freud veered away from the truth of his observations of mimesis in favor of his pet sexual theory.

What Mr. Amis misses is that the apocalyptic predilections of present "puny" apocalyptic efforts of terrorists is indeed part and parcel with the anthropological phenomenon of religion; the "primitive sacred" so well delineated structurally by René Girard's mimetic theory. Amis wishes once again to define "religion" in the Procrustean bed of conventional academic social sciences instead of seeing the attempts of "terrorists" as the actions of ad hoc "priests" of humanity's oldest culture-creating, culture-sustaining mechanisms: those of religion itself.

Vote Strong - Vote Culture of Life

Thanks, Patrick!

Lap Dogs of Loyalty to the Party

IT IS NOW manifestly clear, after the shimmer of the Democratic National Convention recedes like a mirage in the distance, that the forays into defining the terms of public discourse about abortion carried out by Speaker Pelosi and VP candidate Biden were obedience tests. They showed their ersatz commander, BHO, that they were worthy of being his lieutenants by shoving aside the teaching of the Church's Magisterium - willing to commit a grave sin - for the good of the party.

It will be a difficult future for people of Catholic faith should this regime acquire the Executive Branch. It has already shown its willingness to seek legal coersion to silence its enemies.

Pray constantly for the culture of life. And for the fortitude for possible dark days ahead of "change".

Defending Our Priests

Priests are ordinary men who have an extraordinary vocation; namely, to bring us the means of grace provided by Our Lord through His Church. It should not be any wonder to us that the fallen world should on occasion seek to do injury or to rob us of them. Still, when an attack like this occurs, it makes us realize not only the importance of legitimate defense, but that it is a form of justice: "giving God and neighbor their due."

That is, not to defend our priests is to deprive God of his divine right to gift us with the means of grace through them, and to deprive our neighbor of those same means of grace.

We need more chivalric men - and women and children - to protect, defend, and protect our priests.

Free Speech is Criminal, Obama Camp Cries

Somebody Call a Waaaaambulance!

Cat at Brits at Their Best calls the Barack Hussein Obama campaign on the issue of free speech in her important post, Obama campaign ignores Petition of Right achieved in 1628.

They'll Look So Nice at the Nursing Home

R. R. Reno looks at the way tattoos are a mark of mass non-conformity, as well as the "draw" of their permanence here.

Self-mutilation as an effort as "ontological substantiation," perhaps. What, pray tell, is that? Forgive me if I sidestep the question and instead defer to the words of René Girard on "originality" which may be helpful:

There are two ways to be original. You know, I criticized earlier the modern conception of originality. We’re going to think something entirely different. I think only a hyper-mimetic world, obsessed with not imitating, can come to such a point. Therefore, indirectly, in my view, this modern concept of originality, which was born with Romanticism, in a way testifies to the mimetic nature of our world. “Imitation” is the bad word par excellence in culture. If you bring it in, it is something disgraceful; not being polite.

There is another notion of originality which I think is really more profound, which is going back to the origin and changing it. What Christ is doing is going back to the bad origin, which is violence, and making it nonviolent by suffering the violence willingly instead of inflicting it. So this origin will not be immediately change everything, but will slowly act like that...and change our world in a gradual fashion, which is, I think, happening today faster and faster.

Fellow Travelers

Richard Landes of Augean Stables shows us the dim-bulb Denver realities in In Bed With Scimitar Monsters.

Faith of Our Fathers

Bird Dog of Maggie's Farm reminds us of a fine essay by Bruce Thornton:

(W)henever Christians actually dare to make political choices on the basis of those beliefs, then the enlightened gatekeepers of American secularism in the academy and in the media rise up in righteous wrath and rush to the barricades to defend us against the barbarian hordes of true believers who if unchecked will transform our republic into a "theocracy" and impose their intolerant bigotry on everybody else ...

If Judeo-Christian belief is so central to the ideals that created our government in the first place—if, as de Tocqueville wrote, "Freedom sees religion as the companion of its struggles and triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its rights"—then the current anti-Christian fundamentalism strikes at the root of our political order. For if we are, as the secularists tell us, mere material creatures bound to one another only by contractual relations to be dissolved or altered at will, then what will provide the basis for all those selfless actions and emotions that any community depends on for its cohesion, and that keep freedom from degenerating into mere license, the power to do and consume whatever gratifies our selfish will and appetites? Where will fundamental values come from, all those beliefs that bind us into a community, and that we are willing to die and kill for, not because they have been scientifically proven but because we believe passionately that they are right and true and will benefit the greatest number of people?

The secularists have failed to provide an alternative for the religion that they have discarded ...

Read all …

'Sub-Creation' at Its Best

The Brothers Hildebrandt

Sez You - Epistemological Power Grab

In the war of words presently being engaged by Speaker Pelosi, Vice President Candidate Biden, both cafeteria-style Catholics, and notable representatives of the Catholic Church, we see a battle for who will define the terms of discourse and carry the day in public debate about abortion. Distilled, the debate is over who can validly say with epistemological certainty what is true.

The Pelosi/Biden position is not only arrogant, cynical, and proud in the extreme, it is also one that knows what is up for grabs in the coming election: the most (worldly) powerful executive office in the world.

If the Catholic laity of America listen to their Church leaders, it may mean rejection of their candidate - a devout and pragmatic humanist, over-educated in the halls of secular higher academia, as well as ushered into realms of prestige and privilege by very dubious personages.

My hope and prayer is that American Catholics will realize the hubris of the grab by the Pelosi/Biden effort.

How to Make Train Jumping Tracks "Normal"

Billionaire Tim Gill tells DNC delegates his strategy to advance the homosexual cause

“The only way bigots are going to learn is if we take their power away from them."

Obama Speech Stage Resembles Ancient Greek Temple

Reuters reports that:

DENVER - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor...

If you find this encouraging, gentle reader, I suggest a strong dose of the cultural anthropology of René Girard.

Cardinal Puts Politician in Her Place

And now a word from our Sponsor, I turn it over to Cardinal Egan:

STATEMENT OF HIS EMINENCE, EDWARD CARDINAL EGAN CONCERNING REMARKS MADE BY THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Like many other citizens of this nation, I was shocked to learn that the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America would make the kind of statements that were made to Mr. Tom Brokaw of NBC-TV on Sunday, August 24, 2008. What the Speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.

We are blessed in the 21st century with crystal-clear photographs and action films of the living realities within their pregnant mothers. No one with the slightest measure of integrity or honor could fail to know what these marvelous beings manifestly, clearly, and obviously are, as they smile and wave into the world outside the womb. In simplest terms, they are human beings with an inalienable right to live, a right that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is bound to defend at all costs for the most basic of ethical reasons. They are not parts of their mothers, and what they are depends not at all upon the opinions of theologians of any faith. Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.

Edward Cardinal Egan

Archbishop of New York

August 26, 2008

UPDATE: Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl gets in his two bits.