Showing posts with label new book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new book. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Teresamerica's News and Views: James Delingpole Talks To Roger Hedgecock On Watermelons & Communitarianism



Here is James Delingpole's article:


The most unsettling aspect of modern politics is that the Enemy is no longer plain in view.
The most unsettling aspect of modern politics is that the Enemy is no longer plain in view. We may feel in our bones that we are as oppressed, disenfranchised and generally shat upon, in our way, as those who suffered under Nazism, Marxism and fascism. But the actual evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out.
We’re free to fly wherever we want on our hols. No one is starving. We can vote. There are no death camps. We don’t dread the small-hours knock at the door. Our politicians consult focus groups because they feel they ought to care what we think. There are lots of channels on TV, not all of which reflect the ideology of the state. Being Jewish, gay or an intellectual are not crimes. (More’s the pity in the case of the last one.) We can speak out against whomsoever we want (so long as they’re not Muslim) without fear of being arrested. We don’t need to belong to the Party to get a job. There are no bread queues. Our kids aren’t obliged to spy on us.
Why then do we yet feel so un-free? By ‘we’ I don’t mean all of us, of course. I can’t imagine, say, David Aaronovitch waking up every morning and gnashing into his Coco Pops over the liberties Big Government is taking with his liberty. I doubt Michael Moore, Paul Krugman or the environment pod at the Guardian have ever done anything except shudder very pleasurably as the tentacles of state have crept ever deeper into their every orifice. But I’m guessing I’m not the only Speccie-reading type who surveys this brave new world we inhabit with growing alarm. ‘I do hope it’s no more than my imagination,’ we say to ourselves. ‘But it seems to me that, politically, we are ****ed.’

And if that’s what you think, you’re right, we are. But your problem — as was mine, till I discovered this thing I’m going to tell you about — is that you don’t really know whom to blame, whom to hate, whom to fight. And the reason for this is that the Enemy have arranged it that way. These are exactly the same kind of people who brought you Nazism, Marxism and fascism. Their controlling, bullying, puritanical, freedom-hating instincts are as intense as ever. The only difference is that this time they’re inflicting them on you with your permission.
This nebulousness and insidiousness is precisely what makes communitarianism so much more dangerous than any of the other totalitarian philosophies I’ve just named. Communitarianism? Though it crops up quite a bit on websites, it’s still not a term you find in quotidian use. Which is odd, because it’s the defining ideological concept of our age — embracing everything from the puzzling leftishness of the supposedly ‘Conservative’ David Cameron to Australian farmers no longer being able to cut down trees on their land, to the mystifying career of comedy academic Philip Blond, to the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, Barack Obama, the Big Society, the EU, the UN, the BBC, your kids’ schools, my kids’ schools, Maurice Strong and the Rio Earth summit, to name but a few.
How does it work? Well one good example is the Localism Bill mentioned by Charles Moore the other week, which will give you, the people, more citizen power, supposedly. Except it won’t. What it will actually do is undermine one of the pillars of a free society: your property rights. By allowing ‘local people’ (clearly whoever drafted it has never watched The League Of Gentlemen) to designate something a ‘community asset’ — say, to use Charles’s example, a private field which the owner allows villagers to use as a cricket pitch — the Bill will strip away the ability of the property owner to dispose of his asset as he sees fit. What’s happening is a more consensual, touchy-feely version of what Jews experienced under the Nazis or aristocrats experienced under Lenin. Call it Big Society; call it social justice; call it what you like. What’s going on is state-sanctioned theft.

wish I had space to explain the communitarian philosophy in more detail. One of the best primers I’ve found is a blogpost by an Alaskan called Niki Raapana, who neatly defines it as ‘a Dictatorship of the Community’ whose ‘global standard of norms’ will ‘rebuild the world under a new model of governance with jurisdiction over all national state citizens’. Communitarianism’s great enabling act was a measure launched at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit called Agenda 21. Its almost risibly sinister name (quite accidental: it just means ‘an agenda for the 21st century’) means that whenever worried conservatives invoke it they come across like paranoid conspiracy freaks. But its effects are all too real. Over six hundred local government groups around the world from the City of Dallas to Woking Borough Council have signed up to Local Agenda 21, a voluntary code of practice committing them to a range of superficially worthy causes from (Marxist codeword) ‘sustainability’ to ‘diversity’. You didn’t vote for this stuff, but it’s on the books anyway.
One more brief example: lots of London councils have taken upon themselves the responsibility of ‘combating climate change’ by charging 4 x 4 owners more for their parking permits, encouraging electric cars, penalising non-recyclers and so on. But what if you’re a council taxpayer who knows it’s a crock: that electric cars are every bit as eco-unfriendly as normal ones, that recycling often uses more energy than it saves? Your view doesn’t count, nor even can you express it at the ballot box, since all the main political parties share the same valuesystem. This is communitarianism. And you are stuffed.

I didn't have all that great knowledge of Agenda 21 so I did some research on it and found two informative videos on it. 


This video shows at least some of the key players of Agenda 21



This explains Agenda 21 very well. Plus, this video exposes the Communitarians purposeful, harmful goals.




I apologize for the delay in posting my Eagle Freedom Links post but I have had a health issue to deal with which is quite painful and will hopefully have the post up tomorrow.  Have a great day!

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Holes in the Condom Debate: What the Pope Really Said

When The L’Osservatore Romano breached an embargo yesterday and decided to go full steam ahead with the release of some partial excerpts of Pope Benedict’s new book, Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times, the media went all a frenzy over comments the Pope made pertaining to the use of condoms.


Needless to say, before his new book has even hit the shelves it has stirred much controversy all across the media. Did the media get “it” right this time? Is this a BIG DEAL or much ado about nothing? Is this Pope Benedict’s personal opinion? If it is his personal opinion, does it depart from Church Teaching? I have read articles from various media sources across the internet including that of both Jimmy Akin and Dr. Janet Smith. Both Akin and Smith have posted very well written articles on the matter and both clarify the pontiffs statements. The media has twisted the Pope’s words (which isn’t that surprising) to fit their own cause of remaking a long held principle of the catholic Church, claiming that the Pope said that the use condoms can be justified in some cases. That is not what he said.

First, I would like to point out that this is an interview book and this is not a Church encyclical or anything of the sort. Second, the Pope can have private opinions which may be wrong, and he even points this out in his book. Jimmy Akin emphasizes that The L’Osservatore Romano did a major disservice to all the public, Catholic or not, by releasing excerpts which fail to show the entire context of Pope Benedict’s statements.

Here is text from the Pope’s book:

Seewald: . . . In Africa you stated that the Church’s traditional teaching has proven to be the only sure way to stop the spread of HIV. Critics, including critics from the Church’s own ranks, object that it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms.


Benedict: . . . In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. [EMPHASIS ADDED] Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease. As a matter of fact, you know, people can get condoms when they want them anyway. But this just goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself. More needs to happen. Meanwhile, the secular realm itself has developed the so-called ABC Theory: Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, where the condom is understood only as a last resort, when the other two points fail to work. This means that the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality, which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only a sort of drug that people administer to themselves. This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also a part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man’s being.

Jimmy Akin points out that the Pope’s overall argument is that condoms will not solve the problem of AIDS. Akin reiterates this:

1) People can already get condoms, yet it clearly hasn’t solved the problem.

2) The secular realm has proposed the ABC program, where a condom is used only if the first two, truly effective procedures (abstinence and fidelity) have been rejected. Thus even the secular ABC proposal recognizes that condoms are not the unique solution. They don’t work as well as abstinence and fidelity. The first two are better.

3) The fixation on condom use represents a banalization (trivialization) of sexuality that turns the act from being one of love to one of selfishness. For sex to have the positive role it is meant to play, this trivialization of sex—and thus the fixation on condoms—needs to be resisted.


Here is the statement which the media devoured and seized upon:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality. (EMPHASIS ADDED)

Jimmy Akin points out that Pope Benedict says “may” and not “is”. Then, Pope Benedict goes on to reiterate that “it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”

Janet Smith has posted excerpts from the Pope’s book. I am posting some of those excerpts below.

 The Pope stands by his “controversial” remarks that he previously stated on the use of condoms to prevent AIDS: “that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.”

Pope Benedict stated: “I had the chance to visit one of these wards and to speak with the patients. That was the real answer: The Church does more than anyone else, because she does not speak from the tribunal of the newspapers, but helps her brothers and sisters where they are actually suffering. In my remarks I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said, and this is what caused such great offense, that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease.”

Pope Benedict is correct in stating that condoms will not solve the problem of AIDS. Condoms lessen, but do not eliminate, the risk of transmitting HIV, thus they do not make sex truly safe. 
I encourage you to take a look over at The American Catholic where lively chatter has been going on covering the latest controversy.


An interview with the Pope does not change the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding condoms or otherwise.