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POPSThe Next Culture War "During this period, debt exploded. In 1960, Americans’ personal debt amounted to about 55 percent of national income. Our current cultural politics are organized by the obsolete culture war, which has put liberals on one side and conservatives on the other. But the slide in economic morality afflicted Red and Blue America equally. If there is to be a movement to restore economic values, it will have to cut across the current taxonomies. Its goal will be to make the U.S. again a producer economy, not a consumer economy."
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POPSWhatever happened to our virtues? A well-written summary of what is wrong with America today: we've lost our "moral compass". Any "fixes" to our economy will remain short-term unless we re-cultivate the underlying virtues of thrift, integrity, self-reliance, and modesty which originally motivated our past American work ethic. I believe it possible, but won't happen quickly. It may require an entire generation or two to cultivate these virtues again, starting with our children and grandchildren.
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POPSWorking Class Emancipation in the U.S.
Black Panther Theory: The practices of the late Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm had represented both a militant revolutionary, with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities; while also being an outstanding role model, someone who sought to bring about positive social services; something the Black Panthers would take to new heights. The Panthers followed Malcolm's belief of international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender, and thus united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production.
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POPSScience, Reason & Religion: Eagleton v 'Ditchkins' <<<Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin. And liberal rationalism, in addition to its many undoubted triumphs, has provided the intellectual underpinning for exploitative capitalism and the wanton destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale. Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought. This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic. Ditchkins, he says, makes the error of conflating reason and rationality. Yet much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible. >>> (from review)
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POPSBenedict's "Charity in Truth" Benedict's "Charity in Truth" emphasizes the importance of a Biblical worldview, which challenges liberal asnosticism and conservative capitalism.
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POPSProsperity Gospel Prosperity Gospel rooted in postmillenialism, American expansion, black culture? How about simple human greed!
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POPSLow Self-Esteem & Materialism Goes Hand in Hand In the book “Happiness: Lessons From a New Science”, Richard Layard exposes a paradox at the heart of our lives. Most of us want more income so we can consume more. Yet as societies become richer, they do not become happier. In fact, the First World has more depression, more alcoholism and more crime than fifty years ago. This paradox is true of Britain, the United States, continental Europe and Japan.
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POPSScience, theology: no competition for truth? Proper to their roles as researchers into the spiritual workings of creation and God's Self-revelation, Catholic theologians limit themselves to making claims that are consistent with God's Self-revelation as understood and developed by the living Body of Christ, the Church. When Catholic theologians overstep their proper roles and use their unique methods to make claims about the how the material universe works, they engage in pseudo-science.
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POPSObama's case against Obama Excellent insights in this article about the nature of the abortion debate and the shift in rhetoric. The emptiness of Obama's words are alarmingly transparent. I say 'alarmingly' because it speaks to the extraordinary gall of person whose actions are so far removed form their words.
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POPSReal Live Preacher: Why the Preacher doesn't condemn homosexual people – and you shouldn't either
More: Have you looked closely at these passages? Do you understand their context and original language? I could show you why you don't have much, but there is something more important you need to see. Come with me to the church cellar. Come now and don't delay. I am shaking with anger and fighting the urge to grab you by the collar and drag you down these steps…There, do you see the iron furnace door, gaping open? Do you see the roaring flames? Do you see the huge man with glistening muscles, covered with soot? Do you see him feeding the fire as fast as can with his massive, scooped shovel? He feeds these flames with the Bible, with every book, chapter, and verse that American Christians must ignore to support our bloated lifestyles, our selfishness, our materialism, our love of power, our neglect of the poor, our support of injustice, our nationalism, and our pride…Do you see? DO YOU SEE? Do you see how we rip, tear, and burn scripture to justify our lives?
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POPSStop Materilaism, Militarism and Racism This was the speech in which King powerfully opposed the U.S. war in Vietnam and argued that domestic problems in the United States, including poverty, could never be solved as long as we continued with such wars and with the investment of so many of our resources in militarism. When the U.S. House of Representatives first voted on a banker bailout bill last year, it responded to immense public pressure and voted No. Then forces heavily represented on Wall Street refused to take No for an answer. Kings' giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism were protected by the three enforcers of money, media, and party that control the people who are supposed to represent us.
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POPSHappy Birthday Ronald Reagan (Thanks for Ruining America) The continuing fallout from Reagan's policies – the meltdown of the financial sector, widening income inequality, the emergence of lockdown America, the obscene inflation of CEO compensation, the end of locally owned media, market crashes, blackouts, drug-company scandals, rampant greed and materialism -- is all around us. As D.H. Lawrence once wrote in another context, "The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins."
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POPS"Democratic Centralism" "In time, “Democratic Centralism” came to mean what everything eventually meant in Lenin’s universe: my way or the highway. “Bipartisanship” for example meant discussing different viewpoints within the party as long as they didn’t reflect “bourgeois consciousness.” In short, Lenin, like President Obama it seems, claimed “I won” and would only entertain a certain “politically correct” form of bipartisanship. "The Founding Fathers divided the American government against itself so that, according to James Madison, “ambition is made to check ambition.” The purpose was to preserve our freedom and make it impossible for leaders to frighten and manipulate the citizens into accepting rash and precipitous proposals. The cost may be a certain clumsiness in reacting to pressing social issues, but the benefit is twofold: a healthy debate from each branch of government, and the knowledge that the Constitution remains the final arbiter, not fallible men who claim “I won.”
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