Caution: Deep thinking to follow
If you're in the mood for some deep thinking, please read E. Michael Jones' review of Thomas Fleming's book, The Morality of Everyday Life: Rediscovering an Ancient Alternative to the Liberal Tradition. While I've not read the book, Jones' review alone is superb. Here's an excerpt:
Either man makes the ether of his immediate vicinity vibrate with love or he has no moral effect whatsoever. Actually that is too optimistic an account of the actual state of affairs. The man who does not fulfill his immediate moral obligations, family first, will eventually create a moral system according to which vice will be portrayed as virtue. That, in fact, is precisely what has happened over the course of the past few centuries as European elites decided to emancipate the Christian idea of the brotherhood of man from the theological context which gave it its meaning in the first place. The socialist international and the sorosian new world order are nothing more than secularized Christendom, and in the process of secularization virtues got transmuted into vices.
To learn more about E. Michael Jones, go here.
Either man makes the ether of his immediate vicinity vibrate with love or he has no moral effect whatsoever. Actually that is too optimistic an account of the actual state of affairs. The man who does not fulfill his immediate moral obligations, family first, will eventually create a moral system according to which vice will be portrayed as virtue. That, in fact, is precisely what has happened over the course of the past few centuries as European elites decided to emancipate the Christian idea of the brotherhood of man from the theological context which gave it its meaning in the first place. The socialist international and the sorosian new world order are nothing more than secularized Christendom, and in the process of secularization virtues got transmuted into vices.
To learn more about E. Michael Jones, go here.
posted by Wonderdog | 10:42 AM | Permalink
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2 comments
2 Comments:
That was an interesting review, and Fleming's book looks worth a read, but about Jones . . . I was only able to give his review a cursory read, and, while I agree with the idea of the concentric spheres of charity/responsibility, I think I strongly disagree with Jones's suggestion that such an ordering of our moral lives would entail an "isolationist" foreign policy. Jones appears to oppose -- not only the Iraq war and our intervention in Bosnia and our entrance into WW1 -- but also the American Civil War, which he characterizes as a consequence of a "nationalism" which imposed the ideology of the North on the Confederacy(!). What would he say about Sullivan Ballou, then -- that he abandoned his first responsibility (family) for the sake of an illegitmate "messianic" cause? I can't go along with him on that one, obviously.
More later (maybe), when I have time to read the review more closely.
I agree that Jones's politics would appear to be out of the misguided Pat Buchanan school and I strongly disagree with his isolationist stance. That said, I do find his promotion of moral responsibility to self and family first to be refreshing. I've often been frustrated with societal deification of the likes of JFK and Bill Clinton, whom I believe to be morally reprehensible beings. While I do believe, on an individual basis, that marginally immoral individuals can do good things for society, the cummulative effect of such individuals on a society which begins to mirror their character will ultimately lead to a world that is saved for a humanity that's not deserving of it.
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