North Western Winds

Lent is almost done and so I'm going to let slip this one wee post. Rod Deher's Crunchy Conservatism has been talked to death on NRO and other US conservative sites. The points he raises are not specific to the U.S., however. With a new conservative government and all, Canadians might want to hash these over. An important point for Canadians to consider in this environment is that the US Republican party is not the criterion of what conservatism is all about. Other examples and traditions do exist. I recently finished Steven Ozment's A Mighty Fortress , which is a history of the German people, and one of the things I took away from it was the role of Christian Democrats as a strong moderating force in that part of the world. You can read some of that story here . The current Merkel led German government might be considered the current heirs to role of the Center party. Rod's points and the German examples I've linked are useful because of the Canadian Tories...

Die Grosse Stille "When I left the monastery, I was thinking about what exactly had I lived through and it was realizing that I had had the privilege of living with a community of people who live practically without any fears." ... "We tend to say that our society is driven by consumerism or greed but it's not true. Greed, consumerism, wanting to have a new Porsche, for example, is a disguise of pure fear. It's a near panicking society and that was difficult to accept." Documentary filmaker Phillip Groening to the BBC Groening made his comments to the Beeb in light of his documentary, Die Grosse Stille . In English it means the big silence and its' subject is life in a Carthusian monastery called Grande Chartreuse. The monks live a regimented life of a kind that I can't really contemplate ever living personally. But I am glad to know that such places exist. I would be pleased to visit and stay awhile; I would understand my own life better, I th...

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Over at Rough Type , Nicholas Carr is writing (again) about the Wikkipedia and it's shortcomings. I've been a fan of the Wikkipedia for a while, and have linked to it often in my posts when I want offer a helpful background brief to a reader. It's something I know anyone can access. That said, I've never been of the opinion that it's as good or better than a paid encyclopedia with professional, paid editors - and without pranksters and worse. Carr writes: The problem with those who would like to use "open source" as a metaphor, stretching it to cover the production of encyclopedias, media, and other sorts of information, is that they tend to focus solely on the "community" aspect of the open source model. They ignore the fact that above the community is a carefully structured hierarchy, a group of talented individuals who play a critical oversight role in filtering the contributions of the community and ensuring the quality of the resulting co...

No promises, but here are some links that I thought were good enough to post. I'll even bring them full circle and comment on the cartoon controversy. One) Adam Kirsch writes in the NY Sun about Daniel Dennett's latest book , Breaking the Spell : Mr. Dennett wrote the book in the first place. He candidly describes him self as a "godless philosopher" and has invented an obviously value laden term, "bright," to describe people like himself who are proudly emancipated from religion. [how nice! -ed] He is careful not to pronounce outright on the existence of God or the truth of any given religion - preferring to argue that what religion needs is not affirmation or denial, but study - but there is no doubt that Mr. Dennett believes the world would be better off if religion disappeared tomorrow. If his actual assertions leave any uncertainty about this, his metaphors and images do not: On the very first page, for instance, he compares human religions to Dicroceli...

This is a post that I really didn't want to write, but I'm now trying to look at it a bit longer term and remain positive about it. I'm putting NWW on hiatus, probably until the end of Lent (that would be Easter). It's been very apparent to me, and probably to any long term readers that I have, that my interests have been elsewhere of late. I had hoped to make it until my second blogging anniversary in August but it's only early February now and I can see that that isn't going to happen. I'm not pulling the plug on the site but taking a much longer break than I have allowed myself to take thus far. It's possible I'll wind it down then but that is not my intent. Maybe by then I'll have some new books under my belt to share, and the editor's block that has been my nemesis for a while now will be in retreat. I hope so, anyway.

This trophy is for you, zebras: Worst super bowl refereeing I can recall. Let's review. Bogus "pushing off" call robs Seattle of touchdown number one. Pittsburgh touchdown number one does not clearly get into the endzone. In the second half a "holding" call takes Seattle from 1st and goal on the one to first and 20 on the 30. This call not only robs Seattle of a very likely TD, it leads up to a forced throw that is intercepted and ultimately it gives Pittsburgh a TD. I should have shut the TV off at this point as any hope of enjoying this contest was gone. On the interception I just mentioned the refs also had the gall to call Hasselbeck for a "low block" when in fact he made the tackle. There's no such thing as a "low tackle." That's a fourteen point swing at a minimum, and it could easily be a twenty-one point difference since scoring a TD from the one is a very high percentage play. There's an awful lot of garbage that ...

One Cosmos remains one of the more interesting blogs I've found of late. Today "Gagdad Bob" is writing about Taoism . I read the Tao Te Ching more than a few years ago, during university and also after when I was dating a girl who was rather hard left. This was long before I knew anything much about Christianity or even considered it worth looking at. You can imagine how pleased (and surprised!) she was when I (oh so delicately!) tried to tell her that it was not compatible with her political beliefs. You might stop and wonder how can anything be compatible with an every changing amalgam of anarchism and communism? You might give yourself an aneurism trying to reconcile just those two things, never mind adding a third element, but that would be to get ahead of things here. Do the aneurism on your own time, please. Writes Bob: wu wei is one of the central concepts of Taoism. Although literally translated as "non-doing" or "non action," it is probabl...

At TCS, Edward Fesser's essay on natural right has been followed up by Max Borders . Borders takes the view that rights do not exist as real, metaphysical entities, but are the result of agreements or "contracts." Now, Fesser has penned a response to Borders' arguments. I linked to the first Fesser essay here . I will give Fesser the floor once again tonight because I think this is an immensely important topic. We live in a world of "enlightenment" positivism run amok, where there are no shortage of highly educated, intelligent people whose main beef with realist metaphysics seems to be that it is inconvenient and therefore unnecessary (note the order of those propositions). We also live in a world in which new technologies are making the real world implications of our metaphysical propositions - of which positivism is surely one - are more and more far reaching. So I think it is increasingly important that schemes like the one Borders' outlines be g...

The Maverick Philosopher has revisited the question of theism / atheism and its relationship to the ability to do philosophical work of the higest caliber . When I first took a look at his list of the "top twenty philosophers" I immediately wanted to strike Sartre from the list for being more of a imfamous celebrity than a serious thinker, but then Bill wrote: On the score of truth, Fritz Nietzsche really falls short. For not only is there little if any philosophical truth in his writings, the poor soul denies the very existence of truth. When one studies the first seven on the list, one actually learns something about the world. But when one reads Nietzsche and (later) Wittgenstein, one learns highly original and fascinating opinions that have little or no chance of being true. One learns from them, and from some others on the list, how NOT to do philosophy. But that too is something worth knowing! I saw that about Nietschze right away, as I think one can use his criticism...

Rosie DiManno at the Toronto Star disagrees with me : the objective for Stephen Harper is not to govern with panache now, within the admittedly straitening parameters of minority rule, but to position himself such that he can secure a majority in the next election, which is apparently Job 1. Thus, to make the Tories more palatable to all those millions who preferred the Liberals and the NDP, Harper should break the presumed covenant he made with those Canadians who provided his party with its current mandate, and did so with a tapestry of support from coast to coast, leaving only Prince Edward Island unrepresented in caucus. Plus the country's three biggest cities, of course — Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver — where voters turned up their noses and rejected all Tory supplicants. This, the tall foreheads tell us, is the subtext of the election outcome — illusory power, checked by Canadian caution, translated as a warning not to boldly implement the very policies that...

In this excellent post, Liberty Corner shares his definition of what liberty is, and why liberty is not aligned with the atomizing society or with groupthink: The core of libertarianism is liberty: briefly, the negative right to be left alone - in one's person, pursuits, and property - as long as one leaves others alone. The problem with all such formulations, however, is that they gloss over two important questions: 1. What is harm and who defines it? 2. How does one ensure that one is "left alone" in a world where there are predators and parasites who will not subscribe voluntarily to a pact of mutual restraint? ... In summary: Liberty rests on an agreed definition of harm, and on an accompanying agreement to act with mutual restraint and in mutual defense. Given the variety of human wants and preferences, the price of mutual restraint and mutual defense is necessarily some loss of liberty. That is, each person must accept, and abide by, a definition of harm tha...

The future continues to look promising . As someone who can't attend expensive classes, having access to cheap, portable audio materials would be great. Se also here .

I'm heartened to see that yesterday's post on Toryism has been getting a good response. Rod Dreher , who writes for the Dallas Morning News and who's former job was being editor of National Review Online , dropped in to say something nice about it. Now Mark Shea has linked it. See also here and here .

Rebuilding Toryism Toryism at it's best, is in my estimation the best and least threatening school of democratic political thought. What? you say! What about those crazy fundamentalists? What about those heartless Libertarians? What about those oil mad Albertans? What about....? What about...? Toryism is a broad based idea, just like Liberalism, and as such it recognizes the necessity of coalition building. It needs to be a BIG tent, one that any Canadian could proudly and comfortably park themselves under. Reconciling those groups is no small feat but Toryism has the advantage of being at heart a very pragmatic idea. It might be summed up by the old saying that "old boots and old friends are best." Meaning, in other words, that in the absence of compelling evidence of a need for change, the best course is one of stewardship, consultation and incremental change of the two steps forward, one step back sort. This is hardly threatening stuff. There is a long (and dishon...

Althouse sticks up for us men folk . I do like having the smart women on my side, and willing to put up with some of our more bearable eccentricities. So... she won't mind if we enjoy these clips then: My car doesn't do this Italy's Don Cherry? This CPU is hot Curry and Rice Girl Men and women are different Make you happy tonight I saved the best one for last, of course. Seedlings has his list here , which was inspirational.

Here are two really interesting blogs. If you like NWW, I'm sure you'll enjoy these: One Cosmos , home to a very good writer with a book to flog. Analyzer , yet another philosophy Ph.D. with a great blog. Here are some philosphy jokes taken from one of the Analyzer's posts : Don't put Descartes before the horse. One day Descartes walked into a pub and ordered a coffee. The server asked him, "Do you want that with cream and sugar?" Descartes answered, "I think not", and abruptly ceased to exist. What did the pantheist say to the hot dog vendor? ... Make me one with everything. Have you heard about the dyslexic insomniac agnostic? ... He lies awake at night wondering if there is a dog. Who's the most egotistal type of person conceivable? ... A pantheistic solipsist. If you liked those you're probably a philosphy nerd just like me.

Thanks to Andrew at BBG (note the new address) for the tip to this Globe and Mail quiz designed to help you figure out what party you should support . I scored 6 for the Conservatives and 1 for the Greens. I suspect the Green tally came on the education question. The zeros on the Liberal and NDP are a little distressing. Don't you guys even want me to consider you? For any issue? Do we really need to "nationalize" everything? How do you square that with supporting diversity and dissent? And even if you did have a policy that I really liked you have zero chance with me until you at least allow MP's to vote their conscience on issues like marriage and abortion. Frankly, those two parties are a huge disappointment. Again. Btw, since every party now receives money for every vote they get, voters frustrated with their choices now have a new method of getting the parties' attention. If you're willing to spoil your ballot, you can simply write down "no ca...

Tagged! By Carlton at Upper Canada Catholic . The 'Quartet Meme" Four jobs I have had in my life: Driving instructor Book store clerk Video store clerk Paper boy Four movies I could watch over and over, and have: Master and Commander The Lord of the Rings The Mission Braveheart Four places I have lived: In my parents' house In an apartment In a larger apartment In my own house Four TV shows I love to watch: Law and Order Lost Numbers ... Um, really don't like TV very much! Four places I have been on vacation: Germany Death Valley Las Vegas Tofino (Vancouver Island) Four websites I visit daily (sorry, Canada) Althouse Mere Comments Maverick Philosopher Get Religion Four favourite foods: steak and beer coffee and chocolate french toast hamburger and mashed potatoes (it's German) Four places I would rather be right now: There's no place like home.

Great quiz. Well, I thought it was great, but then I think theology is not only interesting, but important. You scored as Chalcedon compliant . You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451. Chalcedon compliant 100% Modalism 67% Pelagianism 33% Monophysitism 33% Monarchianism 33% Nestorianism 17% Apollanarian 0% Arianism 0% Adoptionist 0% Docetism 0% Gnosticism 0% Albigensianism 0% Socinianism 0% Donatism 0% Are you a heretic? created with QuizFarm.com