Herzl Institute President Yoram Hazony unmasks Enlightenment thought as a political philosophy by and for unmarried, childless individuals who pedestalize consent as the sole criterion of the good.
These simple, obvious truths will be suppressed until a) married people decide they’ve had enough of the schools indoctrinating their children and act accordingly or b) the nation collapses under the weight of the lies.
The West has made a 300-year experiment of replacing Christian tradition with Liberalism. That experiment has ended in disaster.
In order to be a valid replacement for Liberalism, any proposed successor philosophy must be grounded in a Christian understanding of human nature and the world. Any substitute will set us right back on the road to ruin.
Brian,
The Catholic Enlightenment was a serious misreading of modernity exacerbated by absolutism.
Iwe need to rehabilitate the School of Salamanca and re-evaluate the Enlightenment that perspective.
xavier
What's the Catholic Enlightenment?
Almost all the Enlightenment philosophers were Calvinists.
The worst result is when women who are neither married not childless feel they ought to live their lives as though they were. (Husbands and fathers being better solely because they do this less often, and without informing everyone with whom they're on speaking terms of their resentments. I'll call it a matter of social acceptability.)
There is nothing sadder than the "me first, second, and only" women. They are miserable and on drugs. They put their kids on drugs to shut them up when the kids call her on her bullshit. Her husband is generally miserable, too.
But hey, power points are more fulfilling than caring for your "loved" ones.
Family is the continuity of society.
In order to promote virtue, we need to re-erect the social norms that kept families intact and overturn the laws that allow and promote broken families.
I've written an allegory on the topic and every time I consider printing it out and posting it somewhere, a lame excuse occurs to me and keeps me from it. So, I'll take that as an exhortation.
Write it!
Get it out there where it can do good.
You may not know who needs to read your words, but that person is out there.
And when you've written it, let us know so we can spread the word as well.
Brian, is it all right if I post the whole thing here? Contact me at vermissaherald 2 reagan > com if you'd prefer some alternative.
Here here DJ
This ties to Taleb’s Skin In the Game policy.
This is why I said long ago in a comment here that if voting is maintained in whatever future government we wish to have, it needs to be restricted to citizens who are married, never divorced with 3+ children.
Durandel,
Interesting. I'm working on a future scifi novel where voting is restricted to married couples withh and without and 5 years on the planet. I also mention some additional details here and there.
xavier
I've had thoughts about generations waiting for citizenship.
Immigrants count as 0th generation.
A child to married parents of generations A and B are of generation min(A,B) + 1. Example: If mom is gen 2 and dad is gen 3, min(2,3) = 2, so the kids would be gen 3.
You don't get to vote until gen …whatever makes sense.
I'd cosign that.
You could even expand this so that various crimes would reduce someone's generation. And have fornication, adultery, and abortion grouped with such crimes as murder, rape, and kidnapping with dropping the generation to 0 in addition to any other penalties.
I'd make it so you not only have to have deep roots (3+ generations) in the country to vote, but in the place you actually live. None of this moving from California to Colorado and screwing things up for the people whose families have been there since it was first settled.
We'd need a better economic system than the ponzi scheme we use now, though, and people with enough grit to resist cries that it's not faaaiiir to deny newcomers the vote. I'm not holding my breath.
Stability ought to be encouraged, and I like the idea of granting special privileges to the stable considerably better than the idea I had, which was restricting the use of cars.
Defining stability as "three successive generations in a state" is a bit excessive, though. I'm not sure that leaves a citizen in the whole Northeast, and as to my home state of Colorado, people are gobsmacked to meet a genuine young first-generation native such as myself, and I don't think I've met any family, however rooted, landed and virtuous, that qualifies for three generations.
Missionaries won't get the stability privilege no matter how we define stability, of course, but they're prepared for a good deal worse than that.
As I think on it, there was a lot of merit in the old standard of land ownership – people who aren't "rent-seekers" except perhaps in the literal sense of the term. I guess that's what I'd go with. The franchise should be given to landowners who have been married for… whatever number of years makes divorce unlikely; I don't have it to hand.
Agreed that interstate immigrants should be restricted on voting in local/county/state elections until a certain generational quota is met. The Bible suggests 4.
As to the issue of rampant interstate immigration, this is due to our insane policies and cultural values. Fixing the vote rules is good, but it doesn’t cover the issue of our promotion of atomizing individuals and families. Laws that restricted corporate growth, reach and saturation would encourage local business growth. More people then could stay near family rather than spread out for a higher paycheck.
Do you know, Durandel, that might be the first genuinely Distributivist policy I've ever heard of.
I wouldn't say moving from state to state qualifies as a "sin of the fathers", though.
D.J., that would strip me of pretty much all voting rights.
I'd still back it.
@MB – my own rule about being 4th generation would strip me of the vote as well, and the 3 kid rule + others such as having a full time job, also deny my vote until I finish school and we have our third kid.
As Christians, we need to be able to recognize when something is right and good regardless of how it personally affects us. Glad to see you and others are getting it, as it will be such folks who will be able to rebuild society once it collapses. The selfish cannot maintain civilization, nor build it.