Jesus Christ has always been an enigma to those on the left. Some liberal idealists embraced Him; many others on the radical left did not. Some on the radical left actually attacked Jesus by either saying He didn’t exist (a rather strange way of dealing with someone) or claiming he was demented. However, after World War II a rather cunning adaptation of Jesus was embraced by the Professional Left. The solution thought up by the Professional Left was as simple as it was devious; simply say Jesus was one of them.
The Jesus The Professional Left Chose To Ignore
Monday, September 13, 2010 \AM\.\Mon\.
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, Bruno Bauer, Catholic Church, Episcopal Bishop John Spong, Evangelical Churches, French Revolution, Gary Wills, Jacque Maritain, Jesus Christ, Karl Marx Fredrich Engels, Liberal Christianity, Norman Thomas, Parable of the Talents, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Pius XII, President Barack Obama, Professional Left, Rabbi David Dalin, Saint Paul, Saul Alinsky, Senator John Kerry, Sentaor Hillary Clinton, St Francis of Assissi, Voltaire |
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Posted by Dave Hartline
Liberal Capitalism and Catholic Economic Theory
Thursday, January 21, 2010 \PM\.\Thu\.The so-called American conservative movement is not conservative in the sense that many of its proponents would suggest. In reality, American conservatism, in many ways seeks to preserve and reassert classical liberalism. In fact, the entirety of the American political spectrum is liberal in different ways and varying degrees—but it is unmistakably and manifestly liberal.
This should come as no surprise since many of the Founding Fathers were men of the Enlightenment and there is no more obvious case than that of Thomas Jefferson, the author of that quintessential Enlightenment masterpiece The Declaration of Independence. The philosophical paradigm by 1776 had already shifted—anthropology was evolving toward an increasingly false view of man and the natural law (because the philosophical concept of “nature” was changing) was something different than that articulated by classical philosophers, which had been incorporated into the Christian tradition.
The American legal tradition seeking to adhere to the letter of the social contract, i.e. The Constitution of the United States of America, seems to have individual liberty at issue in every question of law. This, to be sure, is not something to be regarded as a problem in and of itself, insofar as the operative definition of liberty is not philosophically false and the norms of justice, in the classical sense, are not contradicted.
To the learned mind, it is patently clear that the predominant philosophical paradigm, anthropological assumptions on human nature, concept of the nation-state, view of society, of freedom, of responsibility, and so forth found in the Western world is undoubtedly borne of Enlightenment thinking. The United States is most certainly no exception. In America, across the political spectrum, there is a dubious philosophical premise, that of an abstract ideal of autonomy, which, no matter how admirable or attractive it may seem, is radically incomplete. Indeed, man does possess a free will, but the form of freedom requires content. Read the rest of this entry »
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Uncategorized | Tagged: Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic Social Teaching, Collectivism, Economic Science, Economics, False Anthropology, False Philosophies, Individualism, Jacque Maritain, Laissez-Faire, Liberal Capitalism, Modernity, Natural Law, Natural Rights, Papal Teaching, Political Theory, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, Pope John XXIII, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, Preferential Option for the Poor, Role of Government, Social Economy, Social Justice, Socialism, Solidarity, Theological Anthropology, Venerable Pope Pius XII |
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Posted by Eric Brown