A Good Post at Second Terrace

Let me direct your attention to Fr. Jonathan’s wonderful blog Second Terrace to his post “Localities, part one“. I am looking forward to part two.

Localities, part one

Is it possible to be an agrarian and Orthodox? Is it possible not to be?

The slogan topping off one of my favorite sites, the Front Porch Republic, baldly proclaims “Place, Limits, Liberty.”

“Limits” is not a hard word for Orthodoxy to commend. The liberal political idea is based upon the unfounded certainty that commercial and industrial expansion is limitless. There is a mystical, eschatological belief that human nature has evolved, is evolving, and will continue to evolve into more complex form (and thus of a higher order). The expansion of civilization is a program that becomes the standard upon which all other values are based: local traditions, customs, folkways, family ties, dialects, mom and pop shops, little farms should all be bulldozed by the eminent domain of “progress.”

(For progress is what a liberal believes in, not taking care of the poor: don’t get excited, neocons and Obama-bashers – you don’t believe in conservatism either. You, oddly, are just as progressive……

Protect our traditional rights to farm!

“The USDA’s proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) was originally designed to give the big beef producers help in getting export markets which required disease controls. The idea is that every single livestock animal in the United States will be identified and tagged. All livestock animal movements will be tracked, logged and reported to the government. The benefit is to the big factory farms who probably do need this type of regulation. They get to do single ID’s for large groups of animals. Small farmers, pet owners and homesteaders will have to tag and track every single animal.

There are no exceptions – even small farms that sell direct to local consumers will be required to pay the fees and file all the paper work on all their animals. Even horse, llama and other pet owners will be required to participate in NAIS. Homesteaders who raise their own meat and grandma with her one egg hen will also have to register their homes as ‘farm premises’ and obtain a Premise ID, tag all their animals and submit all the paperwork and fees. Absurd? Yes – There are no exceptions under the current NAIS plan. The USDA has slipped this plan in the back door without any legislation. This is going to be very expensive and guess who is going to pay for it in higher food prices… You!”

Get more info at NoNais.org

Listen to Wendell Berry talk about NAIS here.

Plato, Athens And The Life We Are Experiencing

I have been reading Plato’s “Seventh Letter” and I have been amazed at how the life and politics of his day are similar to our own.

As I observed these incidents and the men engaged in public affairs, the laws too and the customs, the more closely I examined them and the farther I advanced in life, the more difficult it seemed to me to handle public affairs aright. For it was not possible to be active in politics without friends and trustworthy supporters; and to find these ready to my hand was not an easy matter, since public affairs at Athens were not carried on in accordance with the manners and practices of our fathers; nor was there any ready method by which I could make new friends. The laws too, written and unwritten, were being altered for the worse, and the evil was growing with startling rapidity. The result was that, though at first I had been full of a strong impulse towards political life, as I looked at the course of affairs and saw them being swept in all directions by contending currents, my head finally began to swim; and, though I did not stop looking to see if there was any likelihood of improvement in these symptoms and in the general course of public life, I postponed action till a suitable opportunity should arise. Finally, it became clear to me, with regard to all existing communities, that they were one and all misgoverned. For their laws have got into a state that is almost incurable, except by some extraordinary reform with good luck to support it. And I was forced to say, when praising true philosophy that it is by this that men are enabled to see what justice in public and private life really is. Therefore, I said, there will be no cessation of evils for the sons of men, till either those who are pursuing a right and true philosophy receive sovereign power in the States, or those in power in the States by some dispensation of providence become true philosophers.

With these thoughts in my mind I came to Italy and Sicily on my first visit. My first impressions on arrival were those of strong disapproval-disapproval of the kind of life which was there called the life of happiness, stuffed full as it was with the banquets of the Italian Greeks and Syracusans, who ate to repletion twice every day, and were never without a partner for the night; and disapproval of the habits which this manner of life produces. For with these habits formed early in life, no man under heaven could possibly attain to wisdom-human nature is not capable of such an extraordinary combination. Temperance also is out of the question for such a man; and the same applies to virtue generally. No city could remain in a state of tranquility under any laws whatsoever, when men think it right to squander all their property in extravagant, and consider it a duty to be idle in everything else except eating and drinking and the laborious prosecution of debauchery. It follows necessarily that the constitutions of such cities must be constantly changing, tyrannies, oligarchies and democracies succeeding one another, while those who hold the power cannot so much as endure the name of any form of government which maintains justice and equality of rights.”

Big Business, Big Government and the Economy

“Chesterton wrote years ago about Hudge and Gudge: Big business and big government. They work together, he said, to hurt the average man. They both claim to help the average man, but in the process, they help each other more and end up spitting on the average man. The bailouts of the Wall Street banks and the long-term cost they will impose on average taxpayers for the next 100 years make no sense, unless you understand this queer affair between big government and big business. The whole concept of the federal reserve is very odd, but you begin to get an uncomfortable sense of understanding when you realize there’s a long-standing clandestine relationship between NYC and DC.

I’m not alleging conspiracy, incidentally. I am alleging mutuality of self-interest and insider dealings, but that’s not my main point here (at some point, I am going to come up with a list of merchant-government collusion incidents that have occurred since The Glorious Revolution, but not now). My main point here is, those two bastards always seem to grow together but we always think of them as enemies.

It’s in government’s self-interest to let businesses get big. When they get big, the government can claim it needs to get bigger to protect the nation from big businesses. This is exactly what happened during the Teddy Roosevelt administration, and his cousin Franklin played a similar card during The Great Depression. We know Obama is going to play that card, too: In the wake of the scandals, we need more government oversight, maybe even a nationalization of the country’s banks.

And if that occurs, big businesses will get even bigger . . . because only big businesses will be able to afford the lobby costs and wine-filled dinners to sway favorable loans out government-controlled banks.” The Daily Eudemon

Read Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher

Is Science America’s god?

“Today, more than ever before, science holds the key to our survival as a planet and our security and prosperity as a nation.” Thus, proclaimed Barack Obama in a radio address this past December. He drove the point home in his inaugural speech, declaring, “We will restore science to its rightful place….”

“Our own U.S. history is fraught with scientific abuses of the weak and vulnerable. Virginia passed a law in 1924 that required the sterilization of the mentally handicapped, in order to strengthen the nation by removing its weakest members. Such laws were rooted in a “survival of the fittest” scientific mentality. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. affirmed the law, saying, “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices…”

The U.S. Public Health Service still has a black eye from its “Tuskegee experiments” (1932-1972) in which it purported to “treat” 399 black men (mostly illiterate Alabama sharecroppers) for “bad blood” when, in reality, they were studying the effects of syphilis within their cohort and did nothing but let the disease run its devastating course. Science does not serve mankind well when it is exalted above all else.

While science has brought mankind countless benefits, it should not be held out as the fount of all knowledge. Yet, it frequently is. Scientists have been anointed the high priests of our modern era, when, in reality, they are mere mortals: fallible, biased, frequently mistaken, and subject to undue influence. Unlike the media’s portrayal, the scientific community is frequently divided—there is very little “consensus.” And often, the “prevailing view” is later proven wrong.

Our culture glorifies science today because we love to ask whether we are capable of achieving something. An equally important question, however, is whether we should pursue that which we are capable of achieving. Science cannot answer the latter question. It tells us only what is. It cannot tell us what ought to be.

Perhaps the undue emphasis on science is a result of the crisis of religion in the West: we’ve dismissed religion, and now we are left with a void. We need meaning in order to live our daily lives, and we look to science to fill the void. But science cannot provide meaning—it answers what, not why.

If we are to avoid the scientific dystopias of the past, we need to ensure that science is hedged in by ethical constraints. Those constraints will inevitably flow out of our country’s moral and religious beliefs. However “unscientific” those constraints may be, they are necessary to prevent the barbarisms that will inevitably plague science and society in their absence.”-OrthodoxToday.org

Start with “The Politics” by Aristotle

I found this conversion story (to Roman Catholicism) of Brownson posted by “The Daily Eudemon” to be very appropriate for reading on this day when Barack Obama will be inaugurated as our new president. If you are frustrated with our political climate then start reading The Politics by Aristotle. Has Barack Obama studied The Politics by Aristotle? I also recommend studying the Byzantine empire to see how church and state related to each other during the time of this forgotten Christian empire. One may also want to begin reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. God grant “many years” to Barack Obama. Today is a historic day that will be remembered for many years to come.

“The political reasons for joining the Church started to form in 1840. Brownson was startled by the huge outcry against his essay on the laboring classes. He was also startled by William Harrison’s victory in 1840 (which was obtained with vulgar propaganda). The election shook his confidence in the people’s ability to govern themselves by voting for able leaders, and accordingly shook his confidence in democracy itself.In response, he undertook a systematic study of government, beginning with Aristotle’s Politics and proceeding through the best political treatises in history. Prior to this time, his intellectual emphasis was on the importance of liberty, but now he was beginning to see that order is necessary to preserve liberty. He also developed a keen eye for good and bad forms of democracy, particularly despising what he called “absolute” or “Jacobin” democracy, a form of democracy that assumes the democratic vote is a talisman that magically guarantees good government. In opposition to such ideas, Brownson was beginning to realize that, in order for democracy to work, the people must vote under God, in accordance with His laws and commands, not in accordance with their naked will.

He also strongly opposed the liberalizing political trends of his day that adopted a nihilistic disposition toward divine law in the public sphere (“political atheism,” he called it; 140 years later, Richard John Neuhaus would call it “The Naked Public Square”). In 1843, the year before his conversion, he asserted that the church-state relations of the Middle Ages offered a good example of how divine law could interact with human law: though people must obey their earthly sovereign, the Church had the right to urge the people to resist a sovereign if he became tyrannical or violative of divine laws. In the medieval system, Brownson said, the liberty of the people was secured by giving divine law, a law that respects the dignity of mankind, a place in politics. “

The Religion of Secular Humanism and Government Education

There are two basic approaches to defining religion: a substantive approach, which focuses on the content of belief; and a functional approach, which focuses on what the belief system does for the individual or community. As James Davison Hunter explains:

The substantive model generally delimits religion to the range of traditional theism: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and so on. The functional model, in contrast, is more inclusive. By defining religion according to its social function, the functional model treats religion largely as synonymous with such terms as cultural system, belief system, meaning system, moral order, ideology, world view and cosmology.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism.”

In other words, a functional definition describes religion as “a set of beliefs, actions and emotions, both personal and corporate, organized around the concept of an Ultimate Reality. This Reality may be understood as a unity or a plurality, personal or nonpersonal, divine or not, and so forth, differing from religion to religion.” Such a definition clearly encompasses the worldview of Secular Humanism.

U.S. courts have moved from a generally substantive definition of religion (where the religion must affirm a transcendent deity) to a functional definition of religion even including Secular Humanism. For example, in United States v. Kauten (2d Cir. 1943), conscientious objector status was granted to Mathias Kauten, not on the basis of his belief in God, but on the basis of his “religious conscience.” The court concluded: “Conscientious objection may justly be regarded as a response of the individual to an inward mentor, call it conscience or God, that is for many persons at the present time the equivalent of what has always been thought a religious impulse.” Thus, the court clearly adopted the functional definition of religion as opposed to a substantive or distinctly theistic one.

Another example of the adoption of a functional understanding of religion occurred in Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda (1957). In this case, the Fellowship of Humanity sought recovery of property taxes because, it argued, its grounds were used for religious worship (though not the worship of a transcendent deity). They were awarded a refund of paid property taxes. In praise of the decision, Paul Blanshard, a signatory of the Humanist Manifesto II, declared that the court’s decision regarding the Fellowship of Humanity represented “another victory for those who would interpret the word religion very broadly [viz. to include Secular Humanism]. . . . “

One final example is well-known. In 1961 the Supreme Court handed down the Torcaso v. Watkins decision regarding a Maryland notary public who was disqualified from office because he would not declare a belief in God. The Court ruled in his favor. It argued that theistic religions could not be favored by the Court over non-theistic religions. In fact, in a footnote that clarifies what the Court means by non-theistic religions, we read, “Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.”

Clearly, American courts understand religion to include non-theistic religions like Secular Humanism.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has not been consistent in applying its definition of religion to its present interpretation of the First Amendment. If the no-establishment clause of the First Amendment really means that there should be a wall of separation between religion and the state, why are only theistic religions being forced out of the public square specifically Christianity? If Secular Humanism is a religion, something the U.S. Supreme Court has acknowledged and something countless Humanists insist is true, why is it allowed in our public schools? As James Davison Hunter says,

To be legally consistent the courts will either have to articulate a constitutional double standard or apply the functional definition of religion to the no establishment clause just as they have to the free exercise [clause]. The latter would mean that secularistic faiths and ideologies would be rigorously prohibited from receiving even indirect support from the state, which needless to say would have enormous implications for public education.

Enormous implications indeed! Even Leo Pfeffer, the Humanist attorney who argued the Torcaso case, declared that Fundamentalists, individually or collectively, have manifested no indication of giving up in their crusade against secular humanism in the public schools. Pfeffer fears that if the Supreme Court upholds its current understanding of religion to include Secular Humanism and orders the teachings of Humanism to be removed from the public schools “the consequences may be no less than the disintegration of our public school system and the end of Horace Mann’s dream.”

But Humanism remains de facto the established religion of our land, and the public schools are the main vehicle for the promotion of its worldview. As one great Humanist triumphantly declared: Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?

Author: David A. Noebel, J.F. Baldwin and Kevin Bywater, adapted from their book Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of Secular Humanism, Summit Ministries.

Coming to a Public School Near You

This video is of a public school in Massachusetts who celebrates “gay and lesbian pride” with elementary school age children. I believe this kind of program will eventually be taught in every public school across this nation of ours. This is just another reason that the unconstitutional Federal Department of Education needs to be abolished in this country. Public education is the main vehicle of government brainwashing propaganda. You can see this video on youtube. Warning, this video is disturbing.

Virginia’s Polyface Farm

By Lorraine Eaton
The Virginian-Pilot
© September 21, 2008

It’s just past dawn, and the evidence is everywhere.

A violent July thunderstorm crackled through here last night, booming like a cannon, sending strobe lights from the heavens and driving rain sideways into the hillsides. Limbs now litter the narrow, winding roadways, and water has collected in pockets and puddles. Off on the horizon, wispy clouds peek from between dark mountain ranges.

At Polyface farm, there’s mist in the air, and a chill. The rich, dark earth is moist for the first time in weeks.

No one working on the farm has had breakfast. Most are on a grassy hillside with a white dog named Jack, extracting broiler chickens from a diagonal line of square, knee-high pens. The Polyface interns and farmhands mostly use gloves to gather three, four, five squawking, flapping birds by the legs. They turn them upside down and push them into yellow plastic crates stacked on a flatbed trailer.

The birds have spent the last 35 days of their lives outdoors on this hillside in Swoope (rhymes with rope), west of Staunton. Each day the diagonal row of pens, which are half covered, has been moved exactly one length down the hillside, advancing like pawns on a chessboard.

The constant movement means the chickens have a fresh “salad bar” and new ground to forage for bugs and worms and clover each day. In turn, they have fed the field with their nitrogen-rich poop so that the grass will flourish and nourish the next flock.

It’s an endless circle of life at Polyface, a 550-acre farm that has become a bellwether in the nation’s sustainable food movement. Here, on land passed down from father to son, owner Joel Salatin promotes, practices and tweaks a method of farming rooted in the symbiotic relationship between the sun and the Earth and the plants and the animals.

Without chemicals or pesticides or tons of fancy feed, Joel and his family raise pastured cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits and turkeys that he says are one step better than organic – safer, more nutritious and more respectfully treated.” Read it all and watch the video here.

Vote for Chuck Baldwin

I thought about not voting for a presidential candidate this election but I have decided to vote for Chuck Baldwin. He is the only candidate that I tend to agree with on most of the issues. I cannot in good conscience vote for Obama or McCain. Many Christians have said that they are voting for McCain simply because he is pro-life but is McCain really pro-life. He is for the abortion in cases of rape and incest. He has voted for the research of embryonic stem cell research. He was one of 58 congressman who wrote a letter to President Bush asking him to lift the ban on embryonic stem cell research. The Republicans have appointed 7 of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court and Roe V. Wade still stands. Do you really think that McCain is going to change that? McCain even said in his last debate that a judges position on Roe V. Wade will not be a consideration when appointing the next justice. The abortion issue is not a good reason to vote for McCain. A vote for Obama or McCain is a vote for the same. Vote for real change, vote for Chuck Baldwin. I think the two party system in this country is broken beyond repair and the only way real change will eventually  take place is when Americans start voting for candidates not a part of the two party system. The process can begin with your vote for Chuck Baldwin or any other third party candidate this year.  The only wasted vote is a vote for Obama or McCain.