Friday, May 30, 2025
Lamont on Trump, abortion, and Ukraine
In an
article at One Peter Five,
philosopher John Lamont warns his fellow Catholics and traditionalists that on issues
such as abortion and Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, Trump is not an ally and must be
resisted.
What is ideology?
What does
the pejorative use of “ideology” amount to, and what is it to be an “ideologue”? I consider some common accounts before
developing my own in my latest essay at
Postliberal Order.
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)
Alasdair
MacIntyre has died. His classic After
Virtue had a tremendous effect on me when I was an undergrad and still in
my atheist days, greatly reinforcing the attraction to Aristotelian ethics I
had even then. (The spine of the light mauve cover of my copy, like that of pretty
much any copy printed in the 80s, has long since turned green.) It was, of course, part of a larger body of
work which had a similarly great impact on so many people, in philosophy, theology,
and beyond. RIP.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
Pope Leo XIV on families and the family of nations
Yesterday,
Pope Leo XIV delivered an address
to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican.
It was brief and very simple, but
elegant and deep and shows the influence of his namesake Leo XIII and of his
theological guide St. Augustine. The
world, Leo says, is a “family of peoples.”
And essential to the wellbeing of nations and the family of nations, he
says, are peace, justice, and truth, where
peace has justice and truth as its preconditions. The talk is devoted to elaborating on these
three themes. What follows are some
comments on Leo’s remarks.
Thursday, May 8, 2025
Greenland and the ethics of annexation
President
Trump has repeatedly called for U.S. acquisition of Greenland. The motivations have
to do with Greenland’s strategic location and access to its mineral
reserves. Neither
the government of Denmark (of which Greenland is a territory), nor
the people of Greenland themselves, are in favor of the idea. Not only is Trump undeterred by those facts,
he has repeatedly refused to rule out the possibility of using military force
to annex the island. For example, in
January, when asked whether he could assure the world that he would not resort
to military coercion to get control of Greenland, Trump
replied “No, I can’t assure you” and “I’m not going to commit to
that.” Asked this month about using
military force to take Greenland, Trump said
that “it could happen, something could happen with Greenland” and “I don’t rule
it out.”
Pope Leo XIV
Let us pray
for our new pope, Leo XIV. His choices to take a
traditional name and to appear in traditional papal garb (as Benedict XVI did
and Francis did not) are small but encouraging signs of a man who subordinates
himself to the papal office and understands the importance of continuity with
the past.
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