Posted on 10/13/2001 7:39:41 AM PDT by roughrider
I agree in complete agreement with this. One of the biggest problems is that organized religion is in bed with those in gooberment whose programs are destroying our country.
Maybe if you were a little more selective about what you snort you wouldn't be such a collossal fool?
What a prolific author. He is not our RLK, is he?
Before I started posting on FreeRepublic, there was no doubt in my mind that conservatism is libertarianism. I now know that it isn't so simple.
Thank you for the bump, great article.
I think so.
The wages of sin is death..instead of day care they need the gospel of Jesus Christ!
I heard an old fashioned preacher say in 1980 that within thirty years America would be an insane assylum between two shores.
I believe he was eluding to the fact that America was founded on Judeo Christian principles and we as a nation were forsaking them at an alarming rate!
He also knew that a nation founded upon these principles could not be governed by those who directly oppose them.
His biggest concern was his fellow preachers who were following the worldly wisdom instead of the Word of God to correct the problem!!
He is gone to be with the Lord now, but as I look at our nation becoming almost Schizophrenic(political and Religious)I think he was almost prophetic!
He is gone to be with the Lord now, but as I look at our nation becoming almost Schizophrenic(political and Religious)I think he was almost prophetic!
It wasn't a popular message then and it is not now..Truth always has two edges to it..Like a surgeons knife eithor it brings life or assures death..
I was going to say, "If you knew about the deep faith of the founders, and the Pilgrims who came before that, you would know better." But actually, my impression is that you DO know better and are trying to push your agenda in spite of the facts.
Donahue wouldn't be able to express his views if people didn't die for his freedom. He is such an idiot.
Thank God the Nader idiots aren't running the show.
----------------------------
He is. I have several other lives beyond FreeRepublic. In the last several years I have published nearly 900 pages at zolatimes.com. I was formerly associate technical editor of National Fisherman where I published a column for marine engineers, naval architects, and boatbuilders. Additional I do research on physics and engineering.
I think the advent of trash TV and the "liberated" woman magazines helped make the society we have today. But I can remember my folks talking about magazine and newspaper articles shortly after WWII, telling American women, they were a lazy lot for staying home and caring for the family, while the european women were out picking up parts of their bombed out buildings, to put the buildings back together again.
RLK
Kocher's nailed it when he said what we are dealing with here are instances of psychopathology, something the ancient Greeks called nosos or nosemos -- spiritual disease -- which takes the form of "pathological derealization or militant dissociation from reality." Such folks have made their flight into "second reality," and they plan to stay there -- but they will continue to send all their bills to "first reality" for payment -- in direct money; and worse, indirectly, in the vast social consequences of the failure of millions of parents(s) to provide the physical and emotional security necessary for the proper moral development of children -- which poses huge future social costs, tangible and intangible.
I was particularly intrigued by Kocher's use of the word "derealization." One infers that he has in mind a standard of what is "real" for the human person, such that the failure to live to that standard results in a lapse of "human beingness" that is plainly culpable, existentially and socially. He is speaking the language of the "moral universe" here.
That language, however, has become more or less socially unacceptable in an age that has embraced the doctrine of moral relativity. In today's climate, making a moral judgment is widely regarded as offensive, insensitive, "judgmental." Certainly Phil Donahue, Oprah!, et al., seem to believe this. Then they trumpet their glamorous "wisdom" via the mass media to the ignorant "rabble," who take it as a further excuse to remain both ignorant and a rabble. Thus a vicious, pathological social phenomenon is constantly pampered and fed.
roughrider, you mentioned that Kocher is a Libertarian. Yet his critique does not strike me as Libertarian per se -- it is fundamentally classical and Judeo-Christian. That is to say, his moral critique is rooted ultimately in ideas of the "divine measure," the divine law; which is the will of God made manifest in the world of men and society and nature.
Moral relativism and atheism clearly are directly correlated complexes or syndromes: The former grows apace to the extent the latter does. Yet rootedness in the moral law is what makes the human person "real" in Kocher's sense. To be a "real" human person is to be a morally responsible person.
When one uses the word "responsible," one implies there is someone there to whom one is responsible. If I am the "end-all and be-all" of my existence, I am responsible to no one but myself. Which essentially is to say I am responsible to no one, for I have myself become "unreal" by virtue of my rejection of anything greater than my own appetites and preferences.
Thus, my rejection of the world as it actually is ("first reality") and my desire to live in an alternative reality that I find more congenial ("second reality") is finally a rejection of God and the ordered creation that He made according to His laws, physical and moral. Though the flight into second reality can take many forms, in this case, the form is a perennial Peter Pan-like existence in which "I never grow up" to be what I have it in me to be, let alone guide my children to grow up to be what they have it in them to be.
Taxpayers simply cannot afford to subsidize the pathology that Kocher describes. It doesn't matter how rich America is; there isn't enough money in the world to satisfy the unlimited cravings of unprincipled, irresponsible desire for benefits that have not been earned. To support this syndrome is to subsidize the destabilization of the social order in the long run. (Indeed, that may be the point of at least some such "experiments" in socialism.) In a social order that is fast unraveling, the first victims would be the people who clamor for the socialization of irresponsibility -- the would-be beneficiaries and their children, whose "champion" is Phil Donahue.... (But don’t worry about Phil: He’ll probably “be O.K.”)
Thank you for posting this marvelous essay, roughrider, and for bumping it along to me. Best, bb.
Very good article. I'll be sure to revisit your page.
My "agenda" is to make damn sure you religious nutcases don't establish a "Christian Taliban" in this country. I'm also not going to allow you to spread your lies and propoganda without question. "Freedom OF religion" also means "Freedom FROM religion".
You are the one spreading lies. So far, you have engaged in nothing but ad hominem attacks and red herrings.
Why don't you post some quotes from the founders backing up your position? Or else you will be showing yourself as someone not interested in seeking the truth.
There are a couple of reasons for this. The primary reason are I don't save this stuff so I can argue with closed-minded people with no imagination or vision. It's like argueing biblical verses. Any quotation anybody comes up with can be countered by another quotation that changes the interpertation.
The secondary reason is I have no interest in trying to convince you of anything. I don't care what you think(?).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.