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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Thursday, July 13, 2006
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"Pockets of Sanity in an Insane World" By Robert W. Godwin @ One Cosmos: Did I add that I’m not a scholar? I know I’ve mentioned that I don’t consider myself a writer, not a real one, anyway. However, if you want to say “visionary,” I suppose I’m okay with that, so long as you mean it in a neutral sense. That is, for me, being “visionary” simply means seeing everything at once, or at least attempting to. It is trying to encompass as much of reality as you can in a single view. As such, there can be good visionaries and bad visionaries, and we must especially be on guard against the bad kind, for they are at the basis of most really evil movements in history. After all, Hitler was a visionary with an all-encompassing view that explained the whole of reality. So are the Islamists. All cults are headed up by a charismatic visionary of some sort. On the other hand, our founding fathers were visionaries. St. Paul was obviously one of the most important, if not the most important, visionaries in history. Newt Gingrich is a visionary, which is the reason why he probably wouldn’t be suited for president. Ronald Reagan was clearly a visionary, but in a different way than Gingrich. In Reagan’s case there was a strong component of very grounded spirituality that I don’t see in Gingrich. Again, this can cut both ways, but I would almost regard Reagan as a “nationalistic mystic,” similar to Hitler, only in a good rather than demonic way (interesting that leftists continue to regard Reagan as demonic). Sri Aurobindo described Hitler as an “infrarational mystic” who embodied the dark spirit of his nation. He clearly possessed unusual vertical powers over others, but in a wholly maniacal and diabolical way. Reagan, like Lincoln before him, came to embody America almost as if he were the “idea” or logos of America made flesh. I do not believe that the strong emotional reaction that people have to Reagan has to do with Reagan the person. Rather, it has to do with his embodiment of the ideal of America.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 07/13/06 06:09:35 PM |
"Free-Floating Outrage" By the blogger @ Assistant Village Idiot: .... There is a concept used in psychology called "free-floating anxiety." It describes an anxiety which does not derive from obvious external circumstances, but attaches itself to whatever is handy in the environment which might be thought to provoke it. The anxiety is already there, but the sufferer misattributes it to her job, or her relationships, or aspects of her health. As any of these things could drive anxiety, they are seen as driving this particular anxiety. We don't use the terms "free-floating depression," or "free-floating paranoia," but something much the same happens with these as well. The mind seeks explanations, seeks a narrative which accounts for bad feelings. Come to think of it, the mind seeks explanation for good feelings as well. Early in a first psychotic break, the patient will often recognize that his paranoia doesn't make sense. "I know it sounds crazy to you but..." or "There's no reason why people should be spying on me..." Soon enough, the paranoid explanation becomes imbedded, and the patient no longer has access to the reasonable part of the brain which knows it's impossible.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 07/13/06 05:56:25 PM |
Rafting the Tiber Mark Windsor is back. (Thanks, Pontificator.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 07/13/06 05:45:54 PM |
"The Supreme Court v. the Constitution of the United States of America" By Michael M. Uhlmann at Claremont Review of Books: .... The proposition that the federal judiciary is the fons et origo of constitutional meaning has in our time acquired the status of a religious conviction that only fools, cranks, or the impious would contest. The dogma of judicial supremacy draws added strength from two related beliefs, namely, that a written Constitution implies no less and that its roots can be traced to the American founding era. Did not the Great Chief Justice declare as much in his celebrated opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803)? The answer is that John Marshall did no such thing, notwithstanding that Marbury is commonly cited in support of the proposition. Judicial supremacy is in fact a thoroughly modern development that scarcely antedates the late 20th century. It was invented, not surprisingly, by the Supreme Court itself and asserted for the first time in Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 Little Rock schools case. The justices, whose patience had been exhausted by the opposition to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), there decreed that its decisions were "supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution." No prior Court had ever made such a broad claim, and none had ever declared, as the Cooper opinion did, that the Supremacy Clause effectively equated the authority of federal judicial opinions with that of the Constitution's text. One can sympathize with the justices' ire in the face of Southern "massive resistance," and had their claim of supreme authority been limited by the immediate context of school desegregation, one might chalk it up to rhetorical hyperbole prompted by justifiable anger. The Court's declaration, however, did not long confine itself to the conditions that occasioned its birth. In the ensuing decades, the justices have reiterated their claim of exegetical supremacy on numerous occasions. Significantly, their most forceful assertions seem to occur in cases in which the Court has broken new ground, or in which the justification for one of its prior novelties has been aggressively challenged. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), for example, the Court faced just such a challenge to its abortion decisions. While noting the severe criticisms that had been leveled against Roe v. Wade's reasoning (1973), the justices nevertheless rejected the argument that Roe should be reversed. Overruling Roe, it averred, would not only undermine the Court's authority as the definitive interpreter of the Constitution but, no less, undermine the very rule of law itself. Indeed, American citizens' desire to live according to law, the plurality opinion said, "is not readily separable from their understanding of the Court invested with the authority to decide their constitutional cases and speak before all others for their constitutional ideals." Having invested the judiciary with the authority to declare "constitutional ideals," among them the protection of liberty, the opinion went on to define liberty as a category without apparent limits: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Perhaps, but we have only the Court's word for it. Armed with that definition, one could drive a bulldozer through every statute book in the country, which is precisely what many accuse the Court of having done these past 40 years.... (Thanks, Scott.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 07/13/06 05:42:21 PM |
The MOST Theological Collection (Thanks, Esquire.) Lane Core Jr. CIW P Thu. 07/13/06 05:30:27 PM |
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