In 1958, full orbed hot war threatened to break out after dogfights over the Taiwan straights that saw a breakthrough use of Sidewinder missiles that brought down several Red Chinese Migs. We may be contemplating that brink again, if a current report on a claimed, leaked audiotape of discussions by Chinese authorities is credible. (The Read More…
Lessons of History
UK Spectator: “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” (Slippery slopes dept.)
April 30: Since last year, Canadian law, in all its majesty, has allowed both the rich as well as the poor to kill themselves if they are too poor to continue living with dignity. In fact, the ever-generous Canadian state will even pay for their deaths. What it will not do is spend money to Read More…
Breaking: Twitter accepts Musk’s Share offer buyout plan
Breitbart, as I just saw: After a two-week battle against opposition from the platform’s board members, self-declared free speech absolutist Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest man in the world, has succeeded in his bid to buy Twitter. In a press release, the Twitter board announced that they had Read More…
Francis Schaeffer’s “line of despair” model of our civilisation’s intellectual history:
We can adapt Francis Schaeffer’s themes, looking back to the Christian Synthesis of the heritage of Jerusalem, Greece and Rome, and the onward flow of ideas and cultural agendas since Paul of Tarsus: Schaeffer thought that once there was an upper/lower storey approach that in effect gave up on solving the problem of the one Read More…
To get change, create or exploit a crisis . . .
to control the change, set the agenda and control thought to a thesis, an antithesis and your desired synthesis. So, we see, in a cartoon: Where, let us recall the change challenge: . . . thus the fallacy of the false dilemma pushing a simplistic dichotomy of choices: . . . and the Overton Window Read More…
China’s surveillance and control move, targeting esp. Christians
We see in current news: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has activated measures to drastically restrict the availability of Christian content on the internet, Open Doors reported this week. Last December, China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) announced its upcoming “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services,” a series of regulations designed Read More…
DEVELOPING: The US Truckers’ protest convoys converge at Hagerstown MD, head for the DC Beltway March 5th
According to Gateway Pundit (a handy source not an endorsement): On Friday, the largest group, ‘The People’s Convoy,’ merged with another massive group when it arrived at its final rest stop in Hagerstown, Maryland, which is just 75 miles (90 minutes) away from the nation’s capital. The convoy is now well over 10,000 vehicles long, Read More…
A media bias takedown by the Frontline Doctors
If you needed a case study on loaded language driven slanted reporting, here is a case study that deserves to be headlined: For context, see the de-spin chart: Remember, this has been with lives on the line. END
L&FP, 51a: Extending the dilemma into the “multi-lemma” — getting out of thorny personal, organisational and policy thickets (aka, problematiques)
In one of the classics, in the Minor Prophets, we read a strange-seeming tale: Amos 5:18 Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!Why would you have the day of the LORD?It is darkness, and not light,19 as if a man fled from a lion,and a bear met him,or went into the house Read More…
Guest post: Harry, on the misanthropy (so, disregard for life) of the lawless elite
UD sometimes hosts guest posts, some by request, some by promotion of comments. This is one of the latter. A key point is his note that the toll of our living posterity in the womb is now two billions (I can readily show 800+ millions and can plausibly support the 1.4 billion statistics I have Read More…
L&FP, 50: The error(s) of telling ‘truth’ by the clock
In a given time and culture, characteristic fashionable fallacies too often gain persuasive power by mutual reinforcement, and/or by swinging from one extreme to another; bypassing the point of responsible balance. So, too, we end up in a thorny thicket of errors, a hard-to-escape problematique. And yes, that often includes the [neo-]marxist version of the Read More…
L&FP, 48m: The legitimate authority of knowable moral truth in service to justice, thriving and prudence
In the current thread on an unfortunate event with a newborn, there is an exchange of comments: BA, 45: Suppose the overwhelming majority regarded dumping newborns in dumpsters as good. Would it then be good? Sev, 56: Presumably, it would be good in the minds of the majority who approved of it. It would not Read More…
L&FP, 48j: Dallas Willard’s (partial) list of reasons for the unwarranted disappearance of moral knowledge
As we continue to explore the issue of the marginalisation of moral knowledge, let us highlight from 48b, Willard’s (incomplete) list of key causes: (2). How did this disappearance [of moral knowledge] come to be the case? Not through a discovery of some kind: e.g. that there was no such knowledge. But through a lengthy Read More…
L&FP, 48i: Dallas Willard on the legitimate authority of knowledge (vs the radical narrative of oppression)
In the course of exploring the marginalisation/disappear-ING of moral knowledge, Professor Dallas Willard gave an expanded definition of knowledge that also draws out the legitimate authority of knowledge; including, moral knowledge, i.e. knowledge of duty to right conduct etc. As we can see from his handout for a 2010 video lecture: What is knowledge and Read More…
L&FP, 48h: Building sound Government on a built-in, Natural Law base (The US Declaration of Independence as a case study)
The natural, built in law framework in 48g culminates: . . . in civil society with government, justice is a principal task of legitimate government. In short, nihilistic will to power untempered by the primacy of justice is its own refutation in any type of state. Where, justice is the due balance of rights, freedoms Read More…