Category Archives: Rationalism

13 Feb 2017, 12:34 p.m.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that has been defended by Mr Joyce's federal Liberal partners.

Prime Minister and Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull with Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop. Photo: Andrew Meares

Trade Minister Steven Ciobo has defended One Nation's record defending the government, while Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has warned the deal could cost the Liberal Party government in WA. Photo: Andrew Meares

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has condemned the Western Australian Liberal Party's unprecedented decision to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals at the upcoming state election, a deal that is splitting opinion in the federal Coalition ranks.

Striking a different note to Liberal colleagues, former prime minister Tony Abbott agreed with the argument that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was a "better person" today than when she was previously in Parliament but said the Nationals should be preferenced above all other parties.

While Mr Joyce described the deal as "disappointing", cabinet colleague and Trade Minister Steve Ciobosaidthe Liberal Party should put itself in the best position to govern and talked up Ms Hanson's right-wing populist party as displaying a "certain amount of economic rationalism" and support for government policy.

Mr Joyce said the conclusion "that the next best people to govern Western Australia after the Liberal Party are One Nation" needed to be reconsideredand the most successful governments in Australia were ones based on partnerships between the Liberals and Nationals.

"When you step away from that, there's one thing you can absolutely be assured of is that we are going to be in opposition," he told reporterson Monday morning.

"[WA Premier] Colin Barnett has been around thepoliticalgame a long while and he should seriously consider whether he thinks that this is a good idea or whether he's flirting with a concept that would put his own side and Liberal colleagues in opposition."

The deal will see Liberals preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house country regions in return for the party's support in all lower house seats at the March 11 election.

The alliance between the more independent WA branch of the Nationals and the Liberals is reportedly at breaking point over the deal, which could cost the smaller rural party a handful of seats.

"Pauline Hanson is a different and, I would say, better person today than she was 20 years ago. Certainly she's got a more, I think, nuanced approach to politics today," Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.

"It's not up to me to decide where preference should go but, if it was, I'd certainly be putting One Nation ahead of Labor and I'd be putting the National Party ahead of everyone. Because the National Party are our Coalition partnersin Canberra and in most states and they are our alliance partners in Western Australia."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declined to criticise the deal, stating that preference deals in the state election were a matter for the relevant division who "have got make their judgment based on their assessment of their electoral priorities".

Mr Ciobo joined the Prime Minister and other federal Liberal colleagues in defending the WA division's right to make its own decisions.

"What we've got to do is make decisions that put us in the best possible position to govern," he told ABC radio of the motivations of his own branch in Queensland.

After Industry Minister Arthur Sinodinos called the modern One Nation more "sophisticated" now, Mr Ciobo also praised the resurgent party.

"If you look at, for example, how Pauline Hanson's gone about putting her support in the Senate, you'll see that she's often voting in favour of government legislation.There's a certain amount of economic rationalism, a certain amount of approach that's reflective of what it is we are trying to do to govern Australia in a fiscally responsible way.One Nation has certainly signed up to that much more than Labor."

When in government, former Liberal prime minister John Howard declared that One Nation would always be put last on how-to-vote cards.

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The story Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Barnaby Joyce condemns WA Liberals' preference deal with One Nation - Whyalla News

14 Feb 2017, 8:09 a.m.

Labor "shouldn't be surprised" to be compared unfavourably to One Nation on economics, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo said.

Pauline Hanson's protectionist One Nation party is "more economically responsible" than the Labor opposition, Trade Minister Steve Ciobo has said.

As the Turnbull government was forced to defend a preference deal between the Liberal Party and One Nation in Western Australia, Mr Ciobosaid the ALP "shouldn't be surprised" to be compared unfavourably to the firebrand minor party.

"Poor @AustralianLabor don't like being told One Nation is more economically responsible than they are. Shouldn't be a surprise to them," he tweeted on Monday.

It came after Mr Ciobo said One Nation's four senators had frequently voted in favour of the Turnbull government's legislation and espoused "a certain amount of economic rationalism" and fiscal responsibility.

"One Nation has certainly signed up to that much more than Labor," he said.

The unprecedented deal between the parties in Western Australia, which will see the Liberals preference One Nation above the Nationals in the upper house in some regional areas, has sparked fresh debate about the role of Pauline Hanson's party in Australian politics, particularly at the conservative end of the spectrum.

Among One Nation's economic policies are taxing foreign companies to the tune of $100 billion, moving away from freetrade agreements such as the doomed Trans-Pacific Partnership and instituting a nationalised people's bank. The tax policy page on One Nation's website cites Banjo Paterson and is highly critical of the Liberal Party.

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said the former Labor government had produced "the best economic response in the world" to the Global Financial Crisis and saved the country from going into recession.

"For the Trade and Tourism Minister to be spruiking One Nation's economic credentials is beyond belief," he told Fairfax Media. "His best explanation is that someone hacked his Twitter account."

Other Labor MPs such as Tim Watts and Rob Mitchell pointed out on Twitter that One Nation's policy agenda included the introduction ofa 2 per cent flat tax and zero net migration measures antithetical to the Coalition's economic position which embraces lower taxes and migration to drive growth.

Mr Ciobo'stweet followed a speech in Parliament in which heaccusedLabor leader Bill Shorten of being "more concerned about kale than he is about coal", and ignoring the needs of coal miners in regional Australia.

In the Senate on Monday, Pauline Hanson claimed the QueenslandLabor party approached her with a "grubby deal" on preferences. However,theState Secretary of Queensland Labor said this was"absolute crap".

Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie scoffed at the "dirty filthy deals" when she appeared on the ABC's Q&A on Monday night. She said One Nation does not have the resilience to be a "power entity".

"What the Liberal Party up there in Federal Parliament will do to keep One Nation on side, honestly ... it just blows me away," Ms Lambie said.

She said the Nationals in Western Australia were a "puppy dog" that the Liberals had taken back to the pound.

"And they think they're getting something better," she said. "I'll tell you what, when that bites them, come back and see me.

"You've gotta be able to sustain that power and that resilience and that resistance, and quite frankly I don't think One Nation has it."

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull maintains the One Nation preference deal is a matter for the West Australian division of the Liberal Party, but reiterated his government works "respectfully and constructively" with the Hanson senators at the federal level.

On Sky News on Monday, Attorney-General George Brandis said the Nationals had given their preferences to One Nation and the Shooters and Fishersahead of the Liberal Party at previous West Australian elections.

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The story One Nation 'more economically responsible than Labor': Steve Ciobo first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

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One Nation 'more economically responsible than Labor': Steve Ciobo - Southern Cross

The Dalai Lama has been criticized by the Chinese government and Chinese students in the United States.

University of California-San Diegos decision to invite Dalai Lama for commencement is troubling, while the Chinese protesters opposed Free Speech and branded their blind patriotism

On Feb. 2, UC-San Diego made the official announcement that His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, a well-known advocate of Tibetan independence from the Peoples Republic of China, will be speaking at the commencement ceremony. Waves of shock and anger swept through the Chinese international student communities in UCSD, and soon, Chinese international student communities across the US. A fierce debate ensued between the supporters and critics of the Dalai Lama, with much vitriol. As a Chinese international student myself, I feel obliged to share some of my thoughts on the controversy. But before that, I want to clarify that this article does not concern itself with the historical aspects of the legitimacy of Peoples Republic of Chinas territorial claim in Tibet, the complexity of which is only to be resolved through collective efforts.

The Dalai Lama has been a well-respected person across the political spectrum in the west, though he is not without critics. Christopher Hichens, in his 1998 article on the Dalai Lama His Material Holiness, wrote Chinas foul conduct in an occupied land, combined with a Hollywood cult that almost exceeds the power of Scientology, has fused with weightless Maharishi and Bhagwan-type babble to create an image of an idealized Tibet and of a saintly god-king. Indeed, the Dalai Lama, and the people who met with him and praise him, have been in a decades-long, cynical and opportunistic symbiosis of realpolitik, with a distinctive flavor of orientalism.

The Dalai Lama has been supportive of the assembling of thermonuclear arsenal by India in the 1990s, he has made the remark that any women successor to him has to be attractive, and he has not only stayed silent on former President Bushs illegitimate invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but said that he loved Bush. Countless incidents have lead people who had faith in liberal principles to doubt the Dalai Lamas commitment to his ideals, let alone his recent statement that he had no worries about thenpPresident-elect Donald Trump.

Maybe its my poor grasp of the Buddhist doctrine of inner peace, but I am very worried, as a foreigner in the US, about Trump (though that is another story). That is why the decision of UCSD to invite the Dalai Lama for a commencement speech is troubling. As a renowned institution in public education, UCSD should cherish genuine secular and liberal values, inviting people who are sincerely devoted to making the world a better place rather than shrewd political opportunists.

Even though UCSDs decision raised questions, the reaction by Chinese international student communities is a shameful one. One day after the announcement by UCSD, the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at UCSD published a statement on WeChat denouncing the decision, and on its thumbnail it reads Whoever tries to sever my motherland must be destroyed regardless of propinquity (the original is in Chinese, and the translation is literal). The article tells the Chinese international students at UCSD to remain calm, and wait for and listen to the unified directives issued by the Chinese Embassy. The article also described the Dalai Lama as devoted to sabotaging the territorial integrity and ethnic solidarity of our mother country. In the end, the article expresses the determination of CSSA to take strong measures to protest the speech by the Dalai Lama.

This incident is just an add-on to a series of anti-free speech outbursts on UC campuses. Two years ago, students at Berkeley tried to remove the political polemicist Bill Maher from the commencement speech, and in early February prevented right-wing political commentator Milo Yiannopoulos from giving a speech. However, this time the protesters are motivated by a far more invidious sentiment than political correctnessblind patriotism.

The claim of the Dalai Lamas intention to sabotage racial harmony is highly dubious. It makes the strong assumption that there is an already established racial harmony, which requires strong evidence. But this is irrelevant here, as what is at stake is the core of liberal democracy: free speech. Free speech, in its broad sense, consists of both the tolerance for the right of others to speak, and the independence with which we think and speak. The whims of the Chinese Embassy and government should not dictate what Chinese international students think, and what Chinese international students think should not interfere with whether or not the Dalai Lama speaks at commencement.

Philosopher Karl Popper wrote in his famous The Open Society and its Enemies the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism has become the most important intellectual, and perhaps even moral, issue of our time. Unfortunately, what Popper has said during the carnage of the Second World War is still true, if not truer, today. The most efficient way to promote rational thinking is by exchanging ideas, and the best way to expose lies is by having people utter them. To my fellow Chinese students: think independently whether you agree with the Dalai Lama or not, and most importantly, let him talk!

Fact is that to which there is no alternative. And facts can only be respected if we continue to champion secular and liberal values in university campuses, be open to new ideas, and dare to be challenged.

Runkun is a junior majoring in philosophy. Please send all comments, questions and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.

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Outcry over Dalai Lama threatens free speech - The Daily Cardinal

Decades in the making, Martin Scorseses Silence, based on Shsaku Ends 1966 novel, about 17th-century Jesuit missionaries to Japan, is ambitious and alternately gorgeous and horrifying. It is surprising that a film of this magnitude would be all but completely snubbed for Oscar nominations, particularly in the now-expanded category of Best Picture, where the competition is soft indeed. Silences sole Oscar nomination is for cinematography, and that is well deserved. With its focus on valleys and mountains shrouded in fog, the film often has the look of the movies of the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa.

Commentary on the film has focused on the dilemma facing the two Jesuit priest protagonists, Father Cristvo Ferreira (Liam Neeson) and Father Sebastio Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield): Can renouncing faithever be a path of faith? Yet the commentary has tended to ignore a more striking issue and perhaps one more relevant to our own time: namely, what happens to religious faith in a totalitarian political environment that actively and violently repudiates any religion that is not perfectly consonant with the dictates of the political regime.

Sixteenth-century Jesuit missionaries to Japan were for a time welcomed and had enormous success. Political changes in the country led to growing suspicion of foreign influences and to a fear that the allegiance of the Japanese people would be ssplit between nationalism and the new religion. The governmental response was ruthless and systematic. By the use of bribery and threats, it set ordinary citizens against one another and especially against any priests remaining in the country. The centerpiece of the elimination project was a very public form of repudiation of the faith: the so-called fumi-e (literally, to step on a picture), the stepping, and in some cases spitting, on an image of Christ or the Virgin Mary.

Around that ritual act, Japanese authorities construct a series of protracted, gruesome inducements to apostasy. Particularly terrifying is the threat that the torture of Japanese converts will cease only after the priests themselves publicly renounce their faith. Suppression was already underway when Father Rodrigues, a priest in Portugal, heard reports that his spiritual mentor, the missionary to Japan, Father Ferreira, had succumbed to Japanese terror and renounced his faith in Christ. Eager to be a missionary himself and to find out the truth about Ferreira, Rodrigues departs for Japan and immediately enters a world of systematic viciousness toward Christians, confronting a horror that he could never have imagined.

The only religious film that is remotely akin to Silence is Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ. Both are blood-soaked carnivals of torture that explore the way in which violence is the meeting point, the testing ground, in the contest between good and evil or, more precisely, between the witness of holiness and diabolical malevolence. Both films draw out to the point of excess the suffering of those who would maintain their faith in the face of betrayal and persecution. One slight weakness in the film is the performance of Andrew Garfield as the principal vehicle for the exploration of the trials undergone by the would-be faithful priest. With his performances in Silence and in Hacksaw Ridge, Garfield seems headed to stardom as a dramatic lead actor, but he is better suited to the role of the underestimated man of action in Ridge than he is to the brooding, anguished Jesuit in Silence.

The book and the film are much better at holding onto the tragic tensions in the character of Rodrigues than are many of the commentators. One of the films consultants, Father James Martin, S.J., editor of America, argues that the film underscores the inadequacy of black-and-white moral theology of the Jesuitpriests when confronted with a world of gray. But that observation only underscores the inadequacy of the banal categories of contemporary moral theology when applied to a great work of art. The world of Silence is not gray; it is surreal and nightmarish, and its dramatic depiction at the hands of Scorsese moves the film precariously close to the genre of horror.

While the priests are generous and sacrificial, they are also rightly accused of arrogance, of desiring primarily the esteem of the people they have come to serve. They are indeed focused on themselves and their tribulations. One of the key questions is whether Rodrigues hears a divine voice urging him, Trample! Jesus himself seems to speak from the icon placed before Rodrigues. If He does, then apostasy would seem to be a path of faith, not just an act of betrayal from which one can repent and return to grace. But it is far from clear how we are to interpret this scene.

This is a world where nothing is as it seems. The film leaves us with questions: Is this a divine voice? Or is it, given Rodriguess mentally strained condition, a hallucination? (How odd that God would break His apparently steadfast silence only to assuage the conscience of a Western Jesuit priest.) Or is it, as any Jesuit who had read Saint Ignatius carefully would know was possible, a communication not from the divine but from a malign spirit whose aim is to destroy souls? To seize, even in the spirit of advancing a moral theology of ambiguity, on any one of these interpretations would violate the tortured ambiguity of the film itself.

That is clearly the aim of the Japanese officials who, even as they expend enormous effort to extirpate the Catholic faith, taunt the priests for their failure to realize that Japan is a swamp in which Christianity cannot take root. That claim is belied both by the initial spread of the faith and by the lengths to which the Japanese go to rid their country of its presence.

While the lives of ordinary Japanese seem primitive indeed, the mechanisms that the officials deploy are far from crude. Instead, they exhibit a complex, diabolical rationality. The methods are totalitarian in both intent and form. The intent is to uproot completely any residue of Christian faith, to eliminate the presence of any force contrary to that of the government. Buddhism is praised but appears in the film only under the guise of a civil religion. The form is capacious, encompassing any expression of the faith, and sustained through time.

The instruments of torture and execution evince the power of totalitarian reason prior to, and in the absence of, modern technology. Torture is designed to work slowly over time and to be a kind of public display of the cost of belief. Public repudiation is as much about humiliation and mockery as it is about officially recanting. These methods deprive the potential martyr of any sense of glory. Both before and after their apostasy, priests are kept alive. Before their desecration of an icon, they are forced to witness the torture and murder of others, whose potential freedom rests, the priests are told, on the willingness of the priests to deny the faith. After their apostasy, the priests are kept around as examples of the falsity and cowardice of Christian leaders. They are given public roles, forced to break their vows, takes wives, and assist the government in its ongoing detection of forbidden Christian elements in the country.

What sort of religion can survive in this setting, where religious liberty is systematically denied? If anything endures, it is minimalist and completely privatized; indeed, what remains is so private that it cannot emerge from the interior of the soul. In everything external to ones thoughts and feelings, there must be complete conformity to the dictates of the state. Nothing less than public complicity with and docility toward the state is acceptable. If the film raises questions about the silence of God, it draws our attention equally to the silencing of religious speech and action.

In the service of a totalitarian ideal, government agents exhibit a kind of enlightenment rationalism. They are meticulous, patient, thorough, articulate, and confident in their control and ultimate victory. One of the more instructive characteristics of Japanese rule in the film is that it is not just a regime of terror, desecration, and destruction. The surrealist nightmare of isolation, torture, and death that it constructs for believers stands in contrast to the world enjoyed by apostates, to whom, the officials offer comfort, work, community, and the esteem of both the elites and the common people. The strategy is smartly designed to suppress memories of, and longing for, any higher calling, any end beyond the scope of the state.

Thomas S.Hibbs, the dean of the Honors College at Baylor University, is the author of Shows about Nothing.

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In Scorsese's adaptation of Endo's novel, a stark depiction of statism against religion - National Review

Past popes knew well that Freemasonry is Satan's chosen instrument for attacking the Catholic Church. To this day itremains the most condemned belief system in the Church's history.

Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical on Freemasonry in 1890 titledDall'Alto Dell'Apostolico Seggiocondemning masonic sects.

They are already judged; their ends, their means, their doctrines, and their action, are all known with indisputable certainty. Possessed by the spirit of Satan, whose instrument they are, they burn like him with a deadly and implacable hatred of Jesus Christ and of His work; and they endeavor by every means to overthrow and fetter it.

The concerned pontiff spoke of previous papal condemnations of this secret society, which cloaks itself in charitable garb.

Many times have We sounded the alarm, to give warning of the danger; but We do not therefore think that We have done enough. In face of the continued and fiercer assaults that are made, We hear the voice of duty calling upon Us more powerfully than before to speak to you again.

In his encyclical, the venerable Holy Father touches on some of the perverted goals of this seemingly altruistic society:

The masons laid out even more insidious plans to directly attack the Church in their document Alta Vendita. It's been called a masonic blueprint for destroying the Catholic Church by plotting to capture the papacy. Their plans fell into the hands of Pope Gregory XVI and were subsequently published under the authority of both Pope Pius IX and Pope Leo XIII.

The manifesto declares, "Our final end is that of Voltaire and of the French Revolution, the destruction forever of Catholicism and even of the Christian idea, which, if left standing on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christianity later on."

The document calls for corrupting the young clergy and religious with Feemasonry's secular humanist doctrines. This clergy would then go on to make revolutionary changes in the Church and select ill-formed leaders who would perpetuate these worldly errors.

Modern Freemasonry is thought to have originated in the Grand Lodge of London in 1717.Pope Clement XII in 1738 was the first Roman Pontiff to condemn Freemasonry with his papal bull, In Eminenti. Subsequent popes did likewise, namely, Benedict XIV, Pius VI, Leo XII, Pius VII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX and Leo XIII.

The most recent statement against Freemasonry came from then-Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Following the promulgation of the current Code of Canon Law, Cdl. Ratzinger in 1983 affirmed that it was still a mortal sin for Catholics to become masons.

"The faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave sin and may not receive Holy Communion," he declared.

Pope Leo XIII in his encyclicalProvidentissimus Deus, describes the rationalists of the Enlightenment, like Voltaire, as spawn of Martin Luther's Protestant Revolt. Describing the enemy as those who espouse private judgment of Scripture, Leo XIII calls Catholics to battle "rationalists, true children and inheritors of the older heretics, who, trusting in their turn to their own way of thinking, have rejected even the scraps and remnants of Christian belief. ... They deny that there is any such thing as revelation or inspiration or Holy Scripture at all."

Pope Pius XII gives freemasons credit for begetting rationalists, communists and secular humanists. In his 1958 address to the Seventh Week Pastoral Adaptation Conference in Italy, Pius XII related, "[T]he roots of modern apostasy lay in scientific atheism, dialectical materialism, rationalism, illuminism, laicism and Freemasonry which is the mother of them all."

The attacks on the Church by Communism alone are myriad. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand told Church Militant how one Communist, Bella Dodd, helped over a thousand Communist sympathizers become ordained priests. Their mission was to subvert the Church from within.

One such masonic French priest, who subsequently had a change of heart, revealed his marching orders stipulating how he was to adversely influence the Church. The plan was to encouragefellow Catholics to do the following:

Pope Leo XIII urged Catholics to ardently resist the multifaceted attacks of Freemasonry. The saintly Pope warned, "To shrink from seeing the gravity of this would be a fatal error." He admonished Catholics to fight the evil of this cult with all their might.

No means must be neglected that are in your power. All the resources of speech, every expedient in action, all the immense treasures of help and grace which the Church places in your hands, must be made use of, for the formation of a Clergy learned and full of the spirit of Jesus Christ, for the Christian education of youth, for the extirpation of evil doctrines, for the defence of Catholic truths, and for the maintenance of the Christian character and spirit of family life.

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Freemasonry Catholics' Deadly Foe - Church Militant

Age Of Anger: A History of the Present, by Pankaj Mishra (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 416 pp., $27)

ABritish writer of immense learning, Pankaj Mishra has authored a new book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present, that reflects an extraordinary breadth of reading. It opens as a conventional work of intellectual historyin this case, the history of modernization and its travailsbut soon becomes more of a collage of aperus organized around themes laid out by the path-breaking critic of modernity Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the 1920s Iranian writer Jalal al-Ahmed, and the Italian poet-cum-Duce Gabriel DAnnunzio, among many others.

For instance, Mishra pits Rousseaus finicky quest for authenticity against Voltaires heirs, the mimic men who try to replicate Anglo-French manners and mores. Mishra sees Voltaire as primarily a champion of enlightened despotism, while Rousseau is presented as a clear-eyed critic of liberal rationalism and cosmopolitan pretension. Mishra is sympathetic to al-Ahmeds obsession with the psychic damage or Westoxification imposed on the Islamic world by Western colonialism. Hes fascinated by DAnnunzio, who, in the wake of World War I, choreographed a disastrous fascist future that paved the way for Mussolini. DAnnunzio was the first Italian politician who decked out his supporters in black uniforms and stiff armed salutes. He cheered on the Italian armies as they conquered the Ottoman provinces that came to be called Libya and which, Mishra notes, suffered the worlds first aerial bombing in 1912. Libya became the testing ground for the New Man theorized by Nietzsche and Sorel.

Mishras loosely connected pearls of insight about belief, mindsets and outlooks are tied together by his anti-anti-Communism, an outlook echoed by todays anti-anti-Islamicism, exemplified in the pages of the British Guardian, which paints the Muslim world as the victim of Western liberalism. Mishras disdain for the liberal ideals of progress and reasoned choice, understood as excesses of individualism, will be familiar to readers of Elie Kedourie on nationalism, Jacob Talmon on the creation of secular salvationism, Christopher Lasch and John Gray on the paradoxes of progress, and William Pfaff on the pent-up violence of the modern world. But his discussion of the Nazi origins of Hindu nationalism will be eye-opening to many readers.

Mishras intermittent account of how the writings of Giuseppe Mazzini, the liberal nationalist founder of modern Italy, inspired nationalists in India and China places the problem of modernization in an illuminating context. On a darker note, Mazzini influenced Georges Sorel, whose anti-liberal paeans to the power of myth excited would-be dictators on both right and left. Sorel saw in the working class the collective incarnation of the Nietzschean superman. Mussolini first read Sorels work on violence when he was a socialist, but he continued to incorporate his ideas as he moved to develop fascism.

Mishra is right to argue that attempts to modernize traditional cultures involve, as in Italy and Germany, considerable psychic dislocation. It can produce a burning anger fueled by the emotional displacement of communal cultures fractured by the demands of economic individualism. But Mishra goes off the rails when he tries to assimilate the acquired insanity of Islamic jihad into the pains of modernization. Modernizationas in Iranoffered an alternative to the meld of entitlements and resentments borne of Islamic claims to rule over infidels. Islam has always been a political theology of the sword. Muhammad wasnt responding to modernization when he slaughtered the Jews of Medina.

The books failing is its lack of historical context and slipshod understanding of America. Mishra insists on seeing constitutionalist America, which had little interest in Britains Benthamism, as a utilitarian nation. He sees early twentieth-century social Darwinism as an American right-wing ideology when its appeal, as the great historian of liberalism Eric Goldman documented, was almost entirely to the liberal Left. Reading Mishras repeated references to Timothy McVeigh, one might think that the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber had inspired an army of imitators comparable in size and strength to al-Qaida. Mishra writes that centuries of civil war, imperial conquest and genocide in Europe and America has been downplayed in the West, which suffers from a lack of self-criticism. Its hard to take such an assertion seriously. Can Mishra really be unaware of the epidemic of political correctness and self-hatred infecting the universities and the broadsheet press?

Mishra disdains the new nationalism as an expression of irrationalist urges, concluding, in the words of Alan Bloom, that fascism has a future. But he has nothing to say about the E.U. autocracy thats governed Europe so ineptly. He seems unaware of the close connection between liberal nationalism and the practice of democracy. Hes similarly contemptuous of Donald Trump, proclaiming his administration a disaster even before the New York real-estate dealer took office. Trump may well turn out to be a failure, but Mishra seems not to grasp the connection between Barack Obamas insistence that Islamophobia is as great a problem as terrorisma view that Mishra sharesand Trumps rise to power. Similarly, the E.U., which proclaims itself an expiation of past nationalist excesses, has unwittingly midwifed a new nationalism.

A book lacking a conventional structure, Age of Anger repeatedly circles around the subject of modernization. Mishra doesnt so much conclude as exhaust his conceptual repetitions. Nonetheless, Age of Anger is well worth reading, even if its best approached like a rich buffet that should be selectively sampled.

Fred Siegelis aCity Journalcontributing editor, Scholar in Residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and the author ofThe Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class.

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Modernism and Its Rages - City Journal

I know -- everyone is tired of talking about identity politics -- and for good reason.

It's a poison pill in an already toxic landscape, a conch for the left and a stone in the shoe for the right. It's where political correctness goes to thrive or be smothered, a way to gaslight the opposition through slogans and smugness, hostility and populism.

(Photo: Pinkbadger via Getty Images)

How the hell did we get here? How did our politics mutate into such prolific and unabashed tribalism? Think about how the landscape looks like right now. The hard left have constructed a sort of boilerplate militancy; a method of attack towards anyone unwilling to abide by their version of modern decency, especially in the realm of identity politics. Meanwhile, the hard right act like science and their racist relatives don't even exist, all while using really bad wordplay to denigrate their political opposites.

In the gladiator arena of social justice, identity politics serves as a high-calibre weapon for progressives eager to force feed a perceived notion of fairness onto the populace, wielded by a hand determined to apply retribution inside the consciousness of the privileged class. To conservatives, identity politics is the ultimate propaganda tool; a vehicle for outrage spawned through university campuses by academic elites whose collective common sense has been replaced by stringent ideology.

Both sides are half right, half insane... and we do not have to choose either side.

The conventional wisdom in modern-day politics is to define these problems through polarization, but this mainstay idea relies on the suggestion of a split between the right and the left when the evidence suggests that we have been traditionally polarized for decades. There now exist two divisions and four total groups of people in the battle of ideas -- two fringe groups on the extreme right and left, and two groups desperately running from both fringes.

U.S. President Donald Trump invites a supporter onstage with him during a "Make America Great Again" rally in Melbourne, Florida, U.S. Feb. 18, 2017. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

The irony is that we used to embrace moderation in politics through the tried-and-true blueprint of being socially liberal, fiscally conservative. Well, we now have the opportunity to merge these classic beliefs into a new construct, one less reliant on orthodoxy, willing to become an ambidextrous sect of voters who care more about actual societal progress than the fortunes of a singular political party.

And if they could ever summon the political will and organize, the two fringes will never control our politics again. Make no mistake, the fringes have taken over... but there is hope now that we have witnessed the damage they have done.

We have an opportunity to use the power of the middle effectively. Voter apathy is shrinking, awareness is growing, and the identity politics war is already dividing the wings. The regressive left and alt-right are destroying our sense of rationalism through violent protests and disgusting behaviour that would be almost unheard of just a short time ago. Most of us are afraid to go against the status quo, but maybe we need to pick up our swords rather than feeling pressured to fall on them.

Because we are better than this.

We are better than the labels we thrust upon one another. We just need to stop acting like we can read the minds and motivations of people who do not subscribe to our way of speaking, or our way of looking at the world. We can believe in universal health care and still be capitalists. Just because we do not attach the profit motive to life or death doesn't mean we want to bankrupt the system or get a free ride.

We can criticize someone from a different race, and not be a racist. We can discuss privilege and oppression, but know that we are not necessarily textbook examples of the oppressed or the oppressors.

We can adore our traditions and values, but understand the painful symbolism of things like the Confederate flag. We were not robbed of our heritage by lowering that flag. In fact, we enriched it by proving we understood why it belongs in a museum instead of the top of a courthouse.

We can be incredible supporters of gender equality and still not convict a defendant in a sexual assault case until the jury does. We can be Marie Henein instead of Lena Dunham, and that's OK.

Jian Ghomeshi, a former celebrity radio host who has been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault, leaves the courthouse after the first day of his trial alongside his lawyer Marie Henein (L), in Toronto, Feb. 1, 2016. (Photo: Mark Blinch/Reuters)

Because we can be fair, and just, and reasonable, and rational -- especially when we happen to disagree with each other.

We are more complex than the gatekeepers of ideologies. But those ideologies are becoming more and more mainstream. Certain concepts on both sides have been stitched into the fabric of our pop culture quilt, and we are afraid to challenge these ideas, all because we do not want to be bullied by the mobs.

But this fight is just beginning. The successful dismantling of extremists will not be easy, or finite. There will always be ideologues. But challenging the alt-right and regressive left has never been more dire; it's a critical component needed to inject a healthy dose of rationalism back into the ether, and with it a viable chance at escaping the gladiator arena unscathed.

Sure, it's a blood sport, but the coliseum is already crowded, and the people are no longer entertained.

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SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco USA on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco USA on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco USA on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco USA on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries in the Fourth terminal of JFK airport in New York, U.S.A on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries in the Fourth terminal of JFK airport in New York, U.S.A on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Activists stage a rally against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries in the Fourth terminal of JFK airport in New York, U.S.A on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - JANUARY 28: Immigration activists stage a protest against President Donald Trump's 90-days ban of entry on 7 Muslim-majority countries in JFK airport in New York, U.S.A on January 28, 2017. (Photo by Mohammed Elshamy/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Police officers stand guard as protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.. (Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Hundreds protestor the Muslim Ban at Philadelphia International Airport on January 28th 2017 as a group of Government officials' attempt to negotiate the release of Syrian Refugees is going into the night with a standstill. A judge is expected to make a decision on Sunday Morning as two families are held by Federal Border Patrol after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order restricting entry for many traveling from selected Middle Eastern countries. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Hundreds protestor the Muslim Ban at Philadelphia International Airport on January 28th 2017 as a group of Government officials' attempt to negotiate the release of Syrian Refugees is going into the night with a standstill. A judge is expected to make a decision on Sunday Morning as two families are held by Federal Border Patrol after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order restricting entry for many traveling from selected Middle Eastern countries. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Hundreds protest the Muslim Ban of President Donald Trump at Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, PA, on January 28th, 2017. An attempt by local government representatives and ACLU lawyers to negotiate the release of a family of six Syrian refugees is going into the night with a standstill as a judge is expected to make a decision on Sunday Morning. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Hundreds protest the Muslim Ban of President Donald Trump at Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, PA, on January 28th, 2017. An attempt by local government representatives and ACLU lawyers to negotiate the release of a family of six Syrian refugees is going into the night with a standstill as a judge is expected to make a decision on Sunday Morning. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

DALLAS, TX - JANUARY 28: Keri Puckett hands out snacks and water to protesters gathered to denounce President Donald Trump's executive order that bans certain immigration, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on January 28, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. (Photo by G. Morty Ortega/Getty Images)

DALLAS, TX - JANUARY 28: Protesters gather to denounce President Donald Trump's executive order that bans certain immigration, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on January 28, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. (Photo by G. Morty Ortega/Getty Images)

DALLAS, TX - JANUARY 28: Texas Representative Marc Veasey (2nd L) speaks to a reporter at the entrance to international arrivals at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, at the site of a protest to denounce President Donald Trump's executive order that bans certain immigration, at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on January 28, 2017 in Dallas, Texas. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. (Photo by G. Morty Ortega/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protest agaist President Trump's executive immigration ban at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on January 28, 2017. US President Donald Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Trump boasted Saturday that his 'very strict' crackdown on Muslim immigration was working 'very nicely,' amid mounting resistance to the order which has been branded by many as blatantly discriminatory. / AFP / Joshua LOTT (Photo credit should read JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protest agaist President Trump's executive immigration ban at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on January 28, 2017. US President Donald Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Trump boasted Saturday that his 'very strict' crackdown on Muslim immigration was working 'very nicely,' amid mounting resistance to the order which has been branded by many as blatantly discriminatory. / AFP / Joshua LOTT (Photo credit should read JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protest agaist President Trump's executive immigration ban at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on January 28, 2017. US President Donald Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Trump boasted Saturday that his 'very strict' crackdown on Muslim immigration was working 'very nicely,' amid mounting resistance to the order which has been branded by many as blatantly discriminatory. / AFP / Joshua LOTT (Photo credit should read JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

Demonstrators protest agaist President Trump's executive immigration ban at Chicago O'Hare International Airport on January 28, 2017. US President Donald Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Trump boasted Saturday that his 'very strict' crackdown on Muslim immigration was working 'very nicely,' amid mounting resistance to the order which has been branded by many as blatantly discriminatory. / AFP / Joshua LOTT (Photo credit should read JOSHUA LOTT/AFP/Getty Images)

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You Don't Have To Choose Between Alt-Right And Regressive Left - Huffington Post Canada

(This comes from Rev. John Cooper, who isa Unitarian Universalist minister and a chaplain. His faith journey has led him on a wide path, including natural spirituality, rationalism, shamanism, Buddhist studies and Kung Fu.)

I have been struck by contrast today, a polarization of opposites. It is early spring (or maybe late winter) here in the desert highlands, and the very weather seems to speak of polarization. Yesterday, it was warm and clear enough for me to walk for an hour outside without a coat on, today, after a shift overnight, there is a dust of snow all over the mountains, melting into the ground in the valley. Just a few hundred feet above me, the snow is blocking roads and causing delays, whereas a few hundred feet below, it feels like a cool spring day.

I feel like the weather and political climate are synchronized. The weather moves back and forth between winter and early spring, thaws interrupted by moments of freeze. Cold snow still falling not far from where new buds of hope whisper throughout the valley.

When I look to the news, it seems to shift between springs of compassion and rhetoric of icy exclusion.

Erase Bullying. Photo from the Province of British Columbia (cc) 2013.

In the news today, it is Anti-Bullying or Pink Shirt Day in Canada and that struck a chord. As I watch political leadership that seems to have lost the ability to confront disagreement with polite kindness. A recent NY Times article The Culture of Nastiness laments the loss of civic disagreement, quoting Professor Andrew Reiner at Towson University about how people have come to believe, If I disagree with you, then I have to dislike you, so why should I go to a neighborhood meeting when its clear Im going to disagree with them?

The ability to disagree with one-another in kindness and respect is often a challenge for Unitarian Universalists in our congregations. We are a strong-willed, critically-minded, and gracious people who struggle to learn to share our diverse and powerful opinions and reflections with one-another in ways that are engaging, accepting, even welcoming of The Other. Civic disagreement is a spiritual practice for us. This is a place where our movement has something powerful to offer the larger world. Whether we come from Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Humanist, Pagan or other religious roots and beliefs, when we enter into a shared UU community, we learn how to civically disagree with one-another, not only in the arena of faith, but in the areas of community administration, worship planning, religious education and more. Our way is to walk together in love and care for one-another, even when we disagree with one-another. It is our highest of callings; to welcome that which is different into our midst, to welcome it with a holy curiosity, and to treat it as a sacred stranger, to be fed, encouraged, uplifted and learned from, even when we disagree.

Not too long ago on Patheos, The Zen Pagan Time Swiss wrote about thesacred nature of hospitality, reminding us that it is not only the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) that treat hospitality as a sacred responsibility, but the ancient Celtic and Norse traditions as well. The Havamal, the Poetic Edda of Odins wisdom says Scoff not at guests nor to the gate chase them, But relieve the lonely and wretched. The call to be hospitable to the strange among us is ancient and profoundly spiritual.

I recently preached a sermon in my local UU congregation entitled Encountering Change: A Chaplains Perspective which would have been perhaps more aptly entitled Encountering the Other: A Chaplains Perspective. The key anecdote in the sermon was about how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr talked about his white jailers in his infamous sermon The Drum Major Instinct (which is an amazing read, and an even better listen, if you have never heard it, go listen now wait finish reading this, then go listen).

During his stay in Birmingham, the Rev. Dr. King visited with his white jailers daily. They would approach to tell him how his views on integration and equality were wrong, he would debate, and then he would listen. Through those conversations, the Rev. Dr. King discovered that they were earning salaries similar to many of the people of color in his movement. That was a powerful realization that Rev. Dr. King came to discover because he was in conversation with The Other. His conversations with his white jailers helped to clarify for the Rev. Dr. King that he was struggling against not only racial injustice, but economic injustice as well. In his sermon, Rev. Dr. King said that he would preach first, calmly because they wanted to talk, and that it took two or three days of polite debate before they could listen to one-another. Two or three days of polite debate.

What I take from that is that polite disagreement, civil engagement, is a prerequisite for differing views to hear one-another. Like the flip back and forth between the seasons that I see today we humans cannot find common ground in our disagreements unless we can first move civically and politely back and forth through our seasons. It is how we are made. It is manifest in the creation I see around me. Like the transition from winter to spring, we have to shift between our differences with respect before we get to the part where we hear one-another.

Flags at 25 Beacon, photo by Chris Walton (cc)

As members of intentionally diverse Unitarian Universalist communities, I think that we have cultivated this practice perhaps more than our neighbors. This time is a time where we have an opportunity to lead in our places of work, our neighborhoods, the schools our children attend we members of the Unitarian Universalist movement have an opportunity to demonstrate and model how to disagree with one-another respectfully, in love, yet without losing sight of our own values and position. Perhaps through our spiritual practice of engaging that which is different with sacred curiosity and welcome, we can help this world around us, which grows ever ruder in its disagreement, to remember how to argue with civility. Maybe then, we can all get to the part, two or three days down the road, where we learn something new from one another.

We can get to the part where spring emerges from the conversation. Perhaps even to a warm summer.

Sick cultures show a complex of symptoms such as you have namedbut a dying culture invariably exhibits personal rudeness. Bad manners. Lack of consideration for others in minor matters. A loss of politeness, of gentle manners, is more significant than is a riot.

Robert A. Heinlein,Friday

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Encountering Change: A Chaplain's Perspective - Patheos (blog)

Patch.com

Letter to the Editor: Banning Immigrants on the Basis of Faith Has Hudson Valley Roots Patch.com The report of one of the Methodist Upper Iowa districts at the 1883 Conference contained the following concern about events in its district: Upon the river borders Catholicism and German rationalism press upon us. Rum and Rome and Rationalism ...

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Letter to the Editor: Banning Immigrants on the Basis of Faith Has Hudson Valley Roots - Patch.com

Ive been listening through the audiobook version of G. K. Chestertons biography/hagiography/general musings on Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas Aquinas (Sheed and Ward, 1923; repr., Dover, 2009). Chesterton really is one of the greatest writers and essayists of the twentieth century. Very few can take something as technical as the life and philosophy of Aquinas and condense it into something that is not only understandable, but actually fun to read (or in this case, listen to). Chesterton is one of those rare masters of prose and poetry who can do such things.

Chesterton also does a surprisingly good job in communicating the advanced theistic metaphysics of Aquinas as well. Aquinass thought on the nature of ontology and God is, in my opinion, basically correct (as well as the opinion of several other key thinkers such as Etienne Gilson, Herbert McCabe, Denys Turner, David Bentley Hart, etc.). Chesterton brings much of this across in his discussion of how a Thomistic understanding of being, or ens (what is), helps to make understandable how we as subjects can actually interact with reality of the external world, without collapsing into the evil-twin errors of either radical objectivism (the error of modernity) or radical subjectivism (the error of postmodernity):

Without pretending to span within such limits the essential Thomist idea, I may be allowed to throw out a sort of rough version of the fundamental question, which I think I have known myself, consciously or unconsciously since my childhood. When a child looks out of the nursery window and sees anything, say the green lawn of the garden, what does he actually know; or does he know anything? There are all sorts of nursery games of negative philosophy played round this question. A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eve. This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope? If sight deceives, why can it not go on deceiving? Men of another school answer that grass is a mere green impression on the mind; and that he can be sure of nothing except the mind. They declare that he can only be conscious of his own consciousness; which happens to be the one thing that we know the child is not conscious of at all. In that sense, it would be far truer to say that there is grass and no child, than to say that there is a conscious child but no grass. St. Thomas Aquinas, suddenly intervening in this nursery quarrel, says emphatically that the child is aware of Ens. Long before he knows that grass is grass, or self is self, he knows that something is something. Perhaps it would be best to say very emphatically (with a blow on the table), There is an Is. That is as much monkish credulity as St. Thomas asks of us at the start. Very few unbelievers start by asking us to believe so little. And yet, upon this sharp pin-point of reality, he rears by long logical processes that have never really been successfully overthrown, the whole cosmic system of Christendom. Chapter 7, The Permanent Philosophy

Link:

There is an Is - Patheos (blog)