Posted on 11/10/2009 11:55:00 AM PST by B-Chan
Technically, these statements can be regarded as not anti-American. Of course, this requires a set of definitions under which the statement “God Damn America!” is also not anti-American (hey, Rev. Wright wasn’t “advocating” anything, he was “just saying”...).
Because oven-building and gas-generation technology wasn't up to snuff back then.
I don’t want to live under any type of theocracy you can dream up. I will fight you to you or my death before it happens.
Buy an island and drink your koolaid there with any followers that you can attract. Monarch yourselves until you’re raw and sore if you please.
I had to call my wife to read that one, best line of the day!
Today's episode of Separated At Birth:
"Democracy is based on the principle of freedom of religion and belief. Under democracy, a man can believe anything he wants and choose any religion he wants and convert to any religion whenever he wants, even if this apostasy means abandoning the religion of Allah....This is a matter which is patently perverse and false and contradicts many specific [Muslim] legal texts, since according to Islam, if a Muslim apostatizes from Islam to heresy, he should be killed, as stated in the Hadith reported by Al-Bukhari and others: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him.' It does not say 'leave him alone.'"
--Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, 23 January 2005
Your post comparing the Decree of Alhambra to the Holocaust of the Nazis makes no sense. The two events had nothing in common. Ferdinand and Isabella had no desire to exterminate the Jews, the Moslems, or any other group of people. The Nazis did.
That's good, since I do not and never have advocated theocracy as a system of government. Theocracy is really more of a Muslim and Calvinist thing. I'm Catholic.
I will fight you to you or my death before it happens.
You'd lose if you were ever to fight me "to the death". Fortunately, I have no desire to fight you or anyone else.
Buy an island and drink your koolaid there with any followers that you can attract. Monarch yourselves until you’re raw and sore if you please.
I'm sorry I upset your nap time, little fella. Get Daddy or Mommy to help you with the big words the next time you put crayon to paper.
By positive law, I mean we are each and severally charged by God with providing food for the poor, water for the thirsty, etc. I'd be happy to provide Scriptural references if you need them.
By positive law is meant man-made law, not the Divine Law of Scripture. Once again, which positive legal system are you referring to here in your defense of this "right"?
As for Divine right, what authority are you referring to here as the basis of a right to daily bread and health care? What Scripture? What Tradition?
The Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition of the Catholic Church as taught by the popes and bishops in union with him since the Ascension of our Lord.
Please specify which parts of Scripture and Tradition tell us that (to use your words) "daily bread, health care, and other aspects of human dignity" are a right. My memory might be faulty, but I don't recall Our Lord using a rights-based discourse in the Gospels to speak of charity and our duty to help a neighbor in need.
Which "Divinely-ordained social order" are you referring to? During the Late Middle Ages, we had a disintegrating feudalism and a nascent capitalism. Which do you prefer?
Feudalism, as I made clear in my original post.
Thanks. I just wanted to be sure.
In terms of a political order, we find political entities such as kingdoms, republics, and empires (among others). Why no valorization of empires or republics on your part?
The Empire was the ultimate earthly expression of the Divine social order.
The unified, Western, Eastern or Holy Roman Empire? Got any particular emperor in mind?
Also, if "the Empire" is really so primary, then what do you make of Gregory VII's relationship with Henry IV?
I do not "valorize" republics because they are based upon the idea of popular sovereignty, which is anti-Christian
I don't think that La Serenissima, for example, was based upon popular sovereignty as we Moderns would think of it. I think it was called a "mixed" republic.
In what sense is popular sovereignty, under your definition, anti-Christian?
Do you mean the "Catholic" and medieval social order that had polities that were so weak that Viking, Muslim, and Hungarian raiders (and armies!) could attack at will for centuries?
Yes, just as our postmodern social order suffers from attacks from Islamic raiders and armies today.
Well, the Vikings and Hungarians have been quiet for a while, and despite the Muslim terrorist attacks the past 30+ years I've yet to see slave raiders on US soil or armies of conquest or plunder. Or are things really that different in your part of Texas?
However, all that's beside the point. Your essay is arguing that the medieval social order is better than what we see today, and thus commendable. Not that things nowadays are just as bad as they used to be. That is, since I am not presenting a defense of Obama's America, why are you attacking what I am NOT defending and wasting your time arguing that "the more things change, the more things stay the same"?
Where famine and plague ravaged urban poor and serfs in the countryside alike?
Yes, just as famine and plague ravage our urban poor and propertyless "serfs" today.
We are discussing the USA, aren't we? I see no plague or famine hereabouts, unless it's the plague caused by the dreaded Hyperbole Virus.
Where those self-same urban poor and serfs had very little of what we would recognize as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Not to mention no King's Justice, which they couldn't afford.
Yes, just as the poor cannot afford the high cost of justice in our "enlightened" society.
Give me a break. There's a big difference between not having the money to hire a good lawyer and living in a system where, in relation to your particular lord, no remedies were available and where the exercise of justice was often a kind of property from which the lord or king could derive profit.
(NB: "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is not a Christian tradition; it is a slogan of the anti-Christian "enlightenment".)
I must admit that I've heard this argument before, usually from paleocons who enjoy sneering at the DOI in general and TJ in particular. I guess it all depends upon how sincere you believe Locke's Christianity to be.
Where local economies were so cash-starved that elites either squeezed their serfs for what they could get; raided, robbed or cheated their neighbors; or financed armies for the purpose of obtaining slaves to be sold "down south" to labor-hungry Islamics?
Have you ever cracked open a history book?
More than a few. Have you ever cracked open one that wasn't published by TAN?
Yeah, those bad old elites of the middle ages! It's a good thing our God-fearing, Bible-believing modern elites never squeeze their "serfs" to line their own pocketbooks! It's a good thing our capitalism-believin', free-enterprise-worshippin' elites never raid the public treasury, rob the working man, or cheat the system for their own personal gain! I'm so glad the feudal system is gone so that we no longer have gigantic corporations investing in repressive overseas regimes for the purpose of obtaining wage-slaves to be sold "down south" to labor-hungry sweatshop owners!
Once again, I thought that your position is that a "Catholic" and medieval social order would be BETTER than our modern "Late Capitalist" society, not just comparable. You're not arguing here as a pro-"feudalist," but as an anti-capitalist. Still waiting for your defense of the feudal social order.
With all due respect: you, sir, are ignorant. I cannot have a reasoned discussion of the facts of history with someone who is unaware of those facts -- meaning you. Get back to me when you've read enough to have a grownup discussion on this topic.
I fail to see how someone who immediately calls me "ignorant" is treating me with "all due respect." I find your mock politeness amusing.
I presented several historical facts about the general character of the medieval social order, facts which you could have disputed but have not. Instead I have been treated with irrelevant comparisons with the modern social order, irrelevant since they neither address the facts I have presented nor advance your position that the feudal social order is somehow better.
I also admit that I find it funny how someone who doesn't know the difference between positive and Divine law, who uses an anachronistic rights-based discourse when referring to the Gospels, and who is apparently unable or unwilling to discuss the history of medieval Europe, suddenly declares me ignorant of basic history, ill-read, and childish.
This strikes me as typical behavior for you, B-Chan: when you have nothing to say in rejoinder, you declare victory and advance to the rear! LOL!
Fare thee well, oh valiant and brave Christian Knight!
All perhaps true, and all irrelevant to the point I was making about the crimes which were committed againt his parents and his person when he was a child.
Or historical accuracy: the stipulated reason given by Ferdinand and Isabella was that they expelled the remaining Jews from Spain because they were trying to eliminate any possible source of "judaizing influences" on the conversos.
As an advocate of a two-kingdom approach I have no aspirations for a “Christian society”. We are pilgrims and aliens in this world. That being said, I do believe there are certain natural rights derived from God that all men possess and it is our Christian duty to help preserve those rights for all men.
As to whether God is judging our nation I have a different impression by way of Romans 1:21-32. I don't believe it's so much a positive judgment as it is God merely giving us over, as a nation, to our own lusts. If the majority of people in this nation are giving over to the lust for government control of their lives God allows that to happen and the natural consequence is despotism.
Our job as Christians in our role as good citizens of the State is to reawaken the People to their natural rights and along with those rights comes responsibilities. Isn't this essentially what Reagan did? If we can get our fellow citizens to accept the responsibility's of their natural rights then we can live in relative peace but if we fail we shall surely live under despotism.
We may have seen a few RCs disagreeing with a Roman Catholic monarchist advocating despotism, but where is the Roman Catholic who rebukes Ratzinger's "global authority" initiative?
This forum has shown us that liberal, humanist theology breeds liberal, humanist politics.
I'm happy to stand politically side by side any conservative Roman Catholic. But there just aren't that many around here or anywhere else.
Ratzinger showed the true intentions of the papacy, and they haven't changed in 500 years. Top-down control by a select few whose power of enforcement has "teeth."
That's the future if we're not careful.
"The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will ye do in the end thereof?" -- Jeremiah 5:31
More than a few. Have you ever cracked open one that wasn't published by TAN?
I gotta give you a point for that one.
Ouch.
I want to thank you for your posts; I’ve cut and copied it to numerous people who have gotten really good laughs out of it.
Indeed, I think it is going to be a subject of an article in Israel about Christian extremeism -— most Roman Catholics are pretty well balanced people, and your defense of the Inquisition and desire for a papal state in the United States was exactly the kind of thing that was needed.
The effect of the Spanish pogrom against Jews was pretty telling -— within a generation or so, the once-great Spanish kingdom fell to ruins.
Happens when you kick out your good generals, engineers, navigators, and destroy trade and merchants.
I am particularly amused by the fact a self-decribed “Texan” would be pushing a papal state when the first stated purpose of the Texas Revolution was freedom of religion for Protestants and Jews, both for theologic reasons and to be free of the financial corruption and decay that was the Roman Church in Mexico at the time.
There was an unintended consequence to the RC Pogroms in Spain.Christopher Columbus set sail on the very last day Jews were permitted in Spain.
All Jews were to be out of Spain by Tisha B'Av
I don't know. I do know we need to support any that show up.
I'm happy to stand politically side by side any conservative Roman Catholic. But there just aren't that many around here or anywhere else.
We know 46% did not vote for 0. In that group there have to be some conservatives. They may not wish to say anything because defending their church is so closely connected to defending their faith. My only point is we need them if this country is going to be saved from the collapse we are headed towards.
Ratzinger showed the true intentions of the papacy, and they haven't changed in 500 years. Top-down control by a select few whose power of enforcement has "teeth."
I don't dispute that this is their goal. The point I've tried to make is a % of RC's in America will not agree with America surrendering her national soveriegnty and these RC's are allies.
While there is dispute over whether Columbus was actively Jewish, he was certainly of Jewish descent and his friends and backers were largely Jewish or of similar Jewish descent.
Telling that he left on such a wild adventure.
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