Archive for Category: "Philosophy"
We’re All Traditionalists Now
What liberals have awoken to, and what many orthodox Catholics thinkers, unfortunately, have not, is that the Enlightenment is over. Liberalism has finally recognized and accepted the contingent, particularist, historically and culturally conditioned, non-necessary, non-self-evident, and eminently debatable character of its first principles.
Does Property Have a Purpose?
Under Distributism, there will be more owners of significant property than under capitalism. More people will derive at least part of their income from their own property, and thus will have a greater incentive to defend it and to band together with others to do so, whenever necessary.
The Errors of the Economists: Usury
Interest charged on non-productive loans, as typified by credit cards, home mortgages, and personal car loans, are usurious. They are charging for both the use and sale of money, which constitutes unjust transfers of wealth that only serve to concentrate wealth away from the average person and into the coffers of rich monopolists.
The League of Fried Eggs and Bacon
Today it is easy to be taken with the advanced mechanical things of man’s intelligence: iPads, iPods, and the world wide web. Aren’t lily pads, peapods and spider webs equally—if not more—fascinating?
The Neoconservative Response Part Two
According to Novak…[S]ince capitalism is necessary for political liberty and liberty necessary for capitalism, the role of the Church must be, a priori, to support capitalism.
The Neoconservative Response Part One
The neoconservatives have tapped a strain in Catholicism that has been present in one form or another since the Enlightenment, namely the attempt to reconcile the Church to Enlightenment thought, a movement that is sometimes called “modernism.”
Locke and InsideCatholic
For Leo, men don’t form the state because they want to protect their property; they form the state because his “natural instinct moves him to live in civil society, for he cannot, if dwelling apart, provide himself with the necessary requirements of life, nor procure the means of developing his mental and moral faculties.”
Individualism and the State, Part II
Leo XIII clearly argues that not only does man exist in society by nature, but that man exists in the state by nature; and further, that the state, “no less than society itself,” is a natural institution with God at its origin.
Individualism and the State: Part I
If Locke is representative of “soft-core” individualism, which holds merely that government is purely voluntary and is limited solely to protecting individuals’ property rights, Rothbard is representative of “hard-core” individualism, which holds that the state has no legitimate role whatsoever.