Philosophers haunt rich men

I will give you wisdom.

 

  

Diogenes was asked, in a kind of scorn, What was the matter that philosophers haunted rich men, and not rich men philosophers? He answered, Because the one knew what they wanted, the other did not.

 

--  Francis Bacon

 

 

 

 

Elon Musk is a dangerous know-nothing: He calls US government payments to Lutheran Family/Social/Immigration Services illegal when they are not and never have been

 

One can disagree that public funds should be distributed to religious organizations who specialize in aid to immigrants as a matter of policy, but the programs are not illegal, and were even heralded a quarter century ago when they began under George W. Bush.

O tempora, o mores.

 

In 1999, then-presidential candidate George W. Bush called for the funding of religious groups that fed the hungry and housed the homeless, part of what he called the “armies of compassion.” During his first month in office, in 2001, the Republican unveiled an office to help faith-based groups partner with government, calling them “some of the finest America has got to offer.”...

... on the social media site X, right-wing Trump ally Mike Flynn accused Lutheran organizations that receive federal grants to help the needy of committing “money laundering.” Flynn put quote marks around the word “Lutheran” — one of America’s largest Protestant groups — in the post.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s then shared Flynn’s post, calling “illegal” multiple Lutheran organizations that work in the United States to provide health care to homeless people, run food pantries, and help migrants and refugees. “The @DOGE team is rapidly shutting down these illegal payments,” Musk said, referring to his U.S. DOGE Service, also known as the Department of Government Efficiency.

More.

Hundreds of millions can't be wrong: Providence, the magazine of Christian realism, laughably redefines barbarism out of existence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy's problem isn't that he doesn't know what barbarianism is, it's that he doesn't know what civilization is, which was born in a tiny country in the Mediterranean with a small population of just a few million.

 

Can you guess which one?

 

These Are Not Barbarians

Robert Nicholson 

“This is not a clash of civilizations,” the prime minister continued. “It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. For the forces of civilization to triumph, America and Israel must stand together.”

The speech went on for almost an hour, conveying a clear picture of the high-stakes war to which the US is unwittingly a party. By the end, however, I was still reeling from the analytical flaw embedded in the first few lines.

On one hand, Netanyahu is right. The actions of Hamas on Oct. 7 were barbaric, at least in a colloquial sense. The Iranian regime and its proxies threaten the US-led order. Israel needs all the help it can get.

Yet he’s also wrong. Our enemies are not barbarians. They are highly-intelligent defenders of a rival civilization who want to destroy our way of life for reasons we don’t care to understand. More importantly, they are supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims—the majority, not just the mullahs in Tehran—who, inspired by a shared understanding of the Islamic tradition, deem the killing of non-Muslim civilians as legitimate for the same reasons the ancient Israelites killed the Canaanites: because God said so.

Yeah, if hundreds of millions applaud crashing planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11 and the rape, torture, and murder of 1,000+ Israelis on 10/7, they must have a point.

Can you tell I'm disgusted?

And the assertion of immoral equivalence between Islam and Judaism is breathtaking, which isn't designed to do anything but undercut the moral superiority of Christianity and the West in the fight against Islam and other evils, like The Empire of Japan, whose holocaust in Asia is on the lips of no one like Nazi Germany's is and shouldn't have been ended by dropping the atomic bombs, according to this lunatic.

That Christians like this aren't laughed off their own stage isn't a sign that they are correct. It's a sign that Christianity has become wholly empty-headed and incapable of defending itself. London has become Londonistan in our lifetime, now infamous for knife and acid attacks by Islamists. Enoch Powell predicted it in the 1960s, but the prophet is without honor in his own country.

Barbarism isn't the "extreme outlier". It's in every man. Christianity used to teach this, as did Aristotle, and the prophet Jeremiah, but not Nicholson, nor George W. Bush for that matter, whom Nicholson resembles perfectly:

True barbarians . . . are rare in our world. ... To pretend as if hundreds of millions of Muslims who see the Hamas massacre as morally justified—and who condemn the US preoccupation with Israel’s security—are depraved savages is to insult both them and ourselves. They are merely drawing on a tradition different than ours.   

If I had a subscription to this rag I would end it.

 

Neocon speech writer for George W. Bush, Evangelical Michael Gerson is very angry with his brothers for not being angry, too

Trump should fill Christians with rage. How come he doesn’t?

The Trump movement is

inconsistent with Christianity by any orthodox measure. Yet the discontent, prejudices and delusions of religious conservatives helped swell the populist wave that lapped up on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that assault, Christian banners mixed with the iconography of white supremacy, in a manner that should have choked Christian participants with rage. But it didn’t.    

Is that disqualifying?

Like many of his fellow Christians, Gerson rejects the historical Jesus as eschatological prophet of the end of the world and instead believes in an unfolding, immanentized eschaton which realizes the universal rule of God through the church:

In the present age, [Jesus] insisted, the Kingdom of God would not be the product of Jewish nationalism. It would not arrive through militancy and violence, tactics that would contribute only to a cycle of suffering. Instead, God’s kingdom would grow silently, soul by soul, “among you” and “within you,” across every barrier of nation or race — in acts of justice, peacemaking, love, inclusion, meekness, humility and gentleness.       

Gerson's Trump critique is useful to the political objectives of Washington Post liberalism, but that liberalism all the same knows that his version of Christianity is nothing but a paper tiger, having co-opted its values long ago.

Maybe down deep Gerson knows this also.

He is a life-long sufferer of mental illness: