The Liberal Conception of Freedom 2

To remember:

• John Stuart Mill: sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number = self-protection.
• liberal conception of freedom > fully realized in context of liberal democracy > both liberal freedom + liberal democracy = ideals expressed by Mill.
• Both traditional feudal societies & modern Enlightenment societies fall short of their ideals + individuals who jointly comprise these societies fall short of the ideals of freedom embodied in each respective social order.
• the liberal + the illiberal conception of freedom = equally opposed to the anarchic conception of freedom => called the Hobbesian conception of freedom = freedom obtaining in the state of nature = perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour
• The theorist of illiberal freedom > > the individual could never be sovereign over his own body & mind until he had achieved the discipline over body and mind that is the ideal of the illiberal conception of freedom

 

+

Preceding

Lots to be said about freedom

The Illiberal Conception of Freedom 1

+++

Related

1. The Geography of Freedom
2. A Note on Freedom and Agency
3. A Thought Experiment about Freedom
4. Freedom and Fulfillment
5. Eight Permutations of Freedom, Following J. Rufus Fears
6. The American Revolution and the Enlightenment Project

Grand Strategy: The View from Oregon

Sunday

---

John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist.

In my previous post, The Illiberal Conception of Freedom, I attempted to describe a conception of human freedom that has become distant and alien to us, but which was familiar to everyone for the greater part of human history. Much more familiar to us, living after the Enlightenment, is the liberal conception of freedom, which had among its greatest exponents John Stuart Mill. Here is one of his classic statements of the liberal conception of freedom:

“…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He…

View original post 1,403 more words

When the mountains call, you listen

The boom that alpinism had in Europe in the 19th century did not pass by the women of the time – even if their alpine achievements were often not recognized to the same extent.  The strongest enticement to engage in mountain adventures probably existed for those women who lived in the mountain regions or were wealthy enough to discover them while travelling. Physically, these women were in the thick of it, yet so far away due to social constraint. Still, some brave individuals defied convention. When the mountains called, these amazing women listened and plunged into daredevil adventures.

One of them was the Irish woman Elizabeth Alice Frances Hawkins-Whitshed. In 1880, she visited Chamonix and discovered her passion for the mountains. Soon after, she stood on Mont Blanc for the first time and even made the first ascent of the Bishorn East peak, Pointe Burnaby. She was also the founder of the “Ladies Alpine Club” in London in 1907, the first alpine club in Great Britain. Lucy Walker, the first woman on the Matterhorn, was also later a member of the Ladies Alpine Club.

AN ACT OF LIBERATION For many female mountaineers, alpinism was an act of liberation, a sense of freedom from the constraints of the “dull” predetermined life, confined to clothes and stereotypes. “It is one of the chief difficulties for women who undertake an expedition of this kind that any man thinks he knows better what ought to be done than they do.”  – Annie Smith Peck, founding member of the American Alpine Club, after climbing Mt. Huascarán in Peru in 1908

SPECTACULAR ACHIEVEMENTS

An important day in the history of women mountaineers was September 3, 1838: on that day, Henriette d’Angeville (1794-1871) climbed Mont Blanc unaided. Although Marie Paradis had already been up 30 years earlier, she was supported with direct help at that time.

Fanny Bullock Workman already succeeded in setting an altitude record for women with her ascent of the 6952m Pinnacle Peak in the Himalayas in 1906.   A few years later, she made a clear statement with a photograph on a high glacier with the feminist magazine “Vote for women” in her hand. The early mountaineers made an important contribution to overcoming social stereotypes and breaking through the narrow image of women. After all, isn’t that the beauty of the mountains: in front of them, gender and origin don’t matter, because they unite all mountain lovers with a sense of awe, freedom and enthusiasm. For even more inspiring female mountaineers, check out the full story: Read more

 

Culture War Christianity in American history

In this article, you might find our comments on our previously published articles about Culture War Christians

What Are The Culture Wars?

A History Of The Culture Wars

A Theology of Culture War Christianity

Beyond the Culture Wars

---

 

Jared Stacy writes

What are the Culture Wars?

Think of “culture” as a way of life. It is the sum total of all values, beliefs, and practices making up a communal existence. When God commissions newly formed humanity in Genesis 1 to “fill the earth and subdue it”, he sets men and women into the world with a cultural mandate. His plan was for a human society, united under his rule in the world, ruling with him over the Cosmos as his vice-regents. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

Karl Marx saw how main religion tried to lure people in the ban of the church by false doctrines. It is because the majority of people did not take the time to read the Bible that so many religious groups were able to get people following their false doctrines.

Regularly, people were so prayed for by those doctrines of those churches that they no longer faced the real thing because they preferred to float on those ideas of those churches. It had become so bad that Marx also realised that for many, religion was like an ‘opium for the people’. In lots of Christian and Islamic denominations, their church leaders managed to have their followers, following and worshipping a wrong god and not following the real Christ. since his time still not much has been changed, and there are still lots of false teachers and false prophets around. Marx was disturbed by the knowledge that he saw so many people around him falling for those false human teachings and giving their money away to those churches when there were so many people around them suffering. Marx also noted few dared to question, let alone challenge, church doctrines.

It also bothered several thinkers in the 19th century that the church made no attempt to defend the majority of their churchgoers or parishioners, and did not stand up against the exploitation of parishioners. For far too many centuries, the Roman Catholic Church itself had done everything possible to trot out money from the poorer population.

The German revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist, Karl Marx and his closest collaborator, the German socialist philosopher Friedrich Engels’ answer to the ills of society was according to some, just the opposite of the utopian dreamers’ answers. Mainly this, because the ideas of utopists (like Mr. Ampe) seem for many too far-fetched and unreachable. Though Marx and Engels found enough people who, like them, believed that one could change the way people lived and could come to a better world with less inequality. They, too, went for a better world.

Since World War I the world has evolved incredibly on all levels. Politically it was a time of trying out several political systems, getting more than once in a lot of problems and crises. The Western world clinched at the industrialisation and experienced mixed economies floating between all kinds of political thoughts. Even as the western world became less religious and the church got less of a grip on its citizens, the rich continued to control everything and did everything they could to maintain their power.

For Jared Stacy we have come into a Culture War Christianity where elections are consistently framed He looks at legislation, movies, businesses, etc. as affecting the survival of Christianity itself. For him such

hyperbolic rhetoric is typical. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

For him it is clear that Christ should be at the centre of Christianity. But he also expects something for those who call themselves Christian. He writes

When Jesus prayed,

“on earth as it is on heaven”

he was indicating his expectation and desire that the culture of Heaven becomes the culture of Earth by way of his Church. But does Culture War Christianity, the sort launched in the ’70s, contradict the nature of Jesus’ Kingdom? {What Are The Culture Wars?}

So many people had looked forward to the 20th century, hoping that because of all the new inventions, brought forward by the Industrial Revolution, they would be able to create a world where everything would be much easier and giving them more time to relax. The century opened with great hope but also with some apprehension, for the new century marked the final approach to a new millennium. For many, humankind was entering upon an unprecedented era. The English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian H.G. Wells’s utopian studies, the aptly titled Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (1901) and A Modern Utopia (1905), both captured and qualified this optimistic mood and gave expression to a common conviction that science and technology would transform the world in the century ahead.

Already before the seventies of the previous century there was something going wrong in the industrialised world. Even though many countries were allowed to offer independence back to their colonies, they continued to exploit people in their own countries. Even when churches wanted to present God in different ways over the years, people should know That God never changes. He will always be the same and keep to the same Plan He had already from the beginning of times.

The American pastor and current PhD candidate in Theological Ethics at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, Jared Stacy 
wants to call our attention to this basic theological ethic:

The work of God’s rule spreading throughout the world in individual lives and communities will never contradict who God is. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

We would have loved that, but reality shows something totally different. For centuries, the main Christian churches have chosen another path than the disciples of Christ. The majority of people preferred to keep to their heathen traditions and festivals and the Catholic and several Protestant churches followed them and made Jesus Christ (the Messiah) their god. As such, we must say there is a lot of contradiction in what people say God is. For many, He is not the God of Christ, Who is the God of Israel, but is a god who is part of a three-headed godship, the Trinity.

It is not just that difference of who God is and who Christ is that has brought division in the world of believers. The diversity of religious groups has also brought both confusion and discord. Coming closer to the 21st-century tension or strife resulting from a lack of agreement came to bring even more separation between the true followers of the Nazarene Jewish masterteacher Jeshua  ben Joseph (Jesus Christ) and the name-Christians who worship Jesus as their god and do not shy away from also worshipping all kinds of people they call saints, this while the One True God desires full recognition and worship.

We have the impression that the blog writer who also writes for platforms like NPR, the BBC, Current, and For the Church, does not see (or does not know) the multiple camps in Christendom. He only mentions two of them. He writes

To speak generally, mischaracterizations come from two camps. Let’s call one group “conscientious objectors” and the other, “vocal advocates”.

Some accuse conscientious objectors to the Culture Wars of believing that Christianity should have no influence in the public square. They slander these conscientious objectors as faithless & godless, or misrepresent them as conspiratorially hypocritical, secretly harboring a progressive political agenda.

On the other end of the spectrum, some conscientious objectors accuse vocal advocates of conflating Christianity with cultural power. This often leads them to slander vocal advocates as compromising sell-outs, or mischaracterize their advocacy & well-connected influence as grounded in an inherently complicit conservative agenda. No doubt, I believe there are instances of legitimate criticisms from boths sides in Christian spaces. But polarity abounds. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

For him the polarizing gap between vocal advocates and conscientious objectors reveals a vast “no man’s land” in American evangelicalism. This is why he believes his series has pastoral and personal implications for all of us.

Because either you or someone you know is wandering the no man’s land as a refugee from the Culture Wars. {What Are The Culture Wars?}

Many American evangelicals are proud that they (so-called) keep to The 10 Commandments, though all of them already sin against the first commandment, not keeping to The Only One True God, the Elohim Hashem Jehovah of hosts, the God above all gods.

David Hansen correctly says

“The majority of Americans will tell any pollster that they believe in the Ten Commandments. But only a small percentage of those people could even recite the Ten Commandment; and even a smaller percentage have any genuine interest in following them.” {The 10 Commandments in American Culture}

Lots of North Americans should seriously think about their religion and their faith. About that faith Stacy says there is a danger.

On a day of hope, we need a fresh reminder of the danger inherent in an embrace of Christian faith. {The Danger of Faith}

He points out the trap many Americans have fallen into.

It is American consumer Christianity that invites us to “make Jesus Lord of our lives”. This pitch makes Christ a commodity, leaving us—the consumer—with control. The resurrection and ascension is a coronation that happens apart from our consumer choice & control. {The Danger of Faith}

1909 painting The Worship of Mammon, the god of material wealth, by Evelyn De Morgan

The great part of the US population, as well as in other developed countries, is that believers have deviated from Biblical truth as well as become wedded to matter and thus actually honour the god Mammon. Several denominations in the United States make clever use of asking people for money all the time, pretending that they will then have a better life. It has also become so ingrained in people that one can only be successful if one has acquired a lot of money. Consequently, many do everything possible to be as rich as possible (on the material plane) while completely neglecting spiritual wealth. Many have forgotten that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

Stacy writes

It is hard to deny today that for many, the supposed downfall of America is synonymous with the collapse of Christianity. Jesus confronts this idolatry with his Kingdom. {The Danger of Faith}

Lots of Americans are even not aware of how they participate in idolatry, which they prove by continually clinging to pagan festivals such as Candlemas, Easter, Halloween and Christmas, to name only the main ones, and to cling to money and material gain.

He reigns over a Kingdom that cannot be shaken through the rising and falling empires of this world. {The Danger of Faith}

And throughout history, many kingships or kingdoms and principalities as well as republics have risen and fallen. Never before has man succeeded in creating a nation or empire in which everyone was comfortable and where justice was done to everyone. Several Christians, in imitation of Christ, have tried to make people understand how best to live in unity with fellow human beings, plants and animals.

The 1963 March on Washington participants and leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, as mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s.

When we look at the German culture struggle of the 1870’s (kulturkampf) it’s clear that the American Civil Rights movement was a “Culture War” too. King’s commitment to non-violence laid a distinct Christian foundation for the Civil Rights movement. But white evangelicals of the time either distanced themselves from King, or denounced the Civil Rights movement entirely, with calls to “just preach the gospel.”  {A History Of The Culture Wars}

writes Stacy.

But not many white Americans were really willing to go to preach what was really written in the gospel. They prefer just to take some phrases out of context to repeat them so that people come to believe them.

The forty odd years from this origin point until today witnessed the end of the Cold War and an insurrection at the US Capitol. Between these bookends, Culture War Christianity made itself known & felt in American society through movements. (See, Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne; Stan Gall, Borderlines: Reflections on Sex, War, and the Church; Frances Fitzgerald, The Evangelicals; Tim Gloege, Guaranteed Pure; historical treatments on these movements) {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Stacy reminds his readers:

The arguments and relationships in the antebellum South were transported via Lost Cause theology 100 years into the future, seen in white evangelical responses to the Civil Rights Movement. But these leaders could not ignore the impact of King’s kulturkampf. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

He assures his readers that

Culture War Christianity started after the Civil Rights Movement, not before. It borrows the playbook of the CRM. Ironically, it thrives on a sort of “persecuted minority” mindset, borrowed from the Civil Rights movement, but not actually indicative of the communal experience in its main constituents: white evangelicals. A minority mindset is a prominent characteristic of God’s people in the Scriptures. However, this mindset is not characteristic of evangelical experience in the United States. Race relations and evangelical’s historic participation in the moral establishment offer two historical keys that present a necessary critique of modern Culture War Christianity. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

He believes it is impossible to understand the history behind Culture War Christianity apart from race relations in the United States. So, we begin where we left off, with this statement:

The Culture Wars began when white American evangelicals took the activist playbook from the very Civil Rights leaders they opposed, to advance a moral agenda they could support.

…

Some were overtly political, like the Moral Majority or Christian Coalition. Others would serve the notion of family values, yet retain political influence, like Focus on the Family or Promise Keepers. Local churches and expansive media (books, radio, television) formed the local grassroots communities made these movements possible.

While this all may seem quite familiar, especially if you inhabited spaces within white American Christianity during the last 40 years, a history of the Culture Wars would be best served by going back 2 centuries to look at the phrase “Culture War” itself. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

In his blog he then goes back to the 19th century, across the Atlantic Ocean where the Germans provide us with a glimpse into a framework upstream to both the Civil Rights Movement and “Culture War Christianity” at a time when a new world order was being born. In that era, he recognises the central position of the Catholic Church, facing new threats to its grasp on power.

From the political power of the nation- state to the intellectual frameworks of liberalism and Darwinism, the winds were shifting. In response, the Church produced a flurry of theological statements and denouncements meant to stem the tide of ideas that threatened its hold on the Old World Order. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Portrait of Pope Pius IX circa 1864

The Holy See under Pope Pius IX on 8 December 1864, brought an appendix to the Quanta cura encyclical, with a syllabus where the church wanted to have the people see that it was with the times and recognised 80 of the

“principal errors of our times.”

As the errors listed had already been condemned in allocutions, encyclicals, and other apostolic letters, the Syllabus said nothing new and so could not be contested. Its importance lay in the fact that it published to the world what had previously been preached in the main only to the bishops, and that it made general what had been previously specific denunciations concerned with particular events. Perhaps the most famous article, the 80th, stigmatising as an error the view that

“the Roman Pontiff can and should reconcile himself to and agree with progress, liberalism, and modern civilisation,”

sought its authority in the pope’s refusal, in Jamdudum Cernimus, to have any dealings with the new Italian kingdom. On both scores, the Syllabus undermined the liberal Catholics’ position, for it destroyed their following among intellectuals and placed their program out of court.

The Church denounced religious liberty, the nation-state, and other consequences stemming from the “threat of liberalism.” {A History Of The Culture Wars}

For some time there had been bumbling or difficulty in having a good relationship with the Catholic Church. More thinkers also came to speak out about the huge profits the Church was making on the backs of the faithful. Increasingly, there was also the idea of going back to the basics of Christ’s teachings where simplicity was preached and people were taught how to stand up for and care for each other. In the gospel, Jesus set a good example of how not only Christians should live, but actually every human being.

In the 1870’s, the German people, specifically within the Kingdom of Prussia, found themselves in conflict with the Catholic Church over their own Reformation roots and a rapidly secularizing order. This conflict had ramifications for both the Church and the separated German states. As a result of this conflict swirling around the German peoples, individual German States united along highly Protestant lines under Otto Von Bismark of Prussia. (See, Helmut Walser Smith, editor, The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History) This period of conflict and change was given a name: Kulturkampf, or “Culture Struggle”. This German kulturkampf shows us how struggles between competing visions for human existence are sparked by complex reactions between religion, politics, and power. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

It is the clash between people of the common people, as well as philosophers and political thinkers, with the church, that caused very animated conversations in several places in the German Empire about faith, church, and the way we as human beings should choose to arrive at a better world.

After World War II several American religious groups tried to have the power over the American people. They tried to convince them that they were the sole church which preached the truth. Some even went so far to tell the people they were chosen by God and that their church is the only one that can bring them in heaven. For those churches, it is certain that one can only be accepted by God if one follows their rules. Of course, such a saying is absurd, but a large majority of Americans follow that false statement. In the life of faith, it is also certain that no particular church by Jesus was ever designated as the only one to follow.

By studying German kulturkampf, we can begin to see the American Culture War’s false claim to exclusivity and authority by claiming itself to be the sole representative and defender of orthodox Christianity. When we realize this — that American Culture War Christianity is not the single defender of the faith —  it trains us to adopt a healthy critical filter every time a Christian leader describes the “very survival of Christianity at stake” as a smoke screen for unChristian agreements with power. On the other hand, conscientious objectors to Culture War Christianity would do well to consider how “culture struggle” might be a positive expression of Christian faith. There is space to consider positive “culture struggle”. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

King’s kulturkampf was rooted in Christian principles, and sought to dismantle the injustices of racial segregation, subjugation and discrimination within America. With the upcoming of the more conservative Christians, and/or conservative evangelicals, the position between coloured people worsened again and nationalism and (far) right-wing ideas came to the forefront in the States, the same way they did in the 1930s in Europe. Thus, from Europe, we could see the very dangerous development of right-wing rule and the glorification of such despots as Donald Trump, who is a danger to the world.

What would come to define and shape Culture War Christianity in 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s in the US is not at all what King and several serious preachers had in mind. The growing conservatism by the Americans brought forward people who are against equality and who find the white man is the pure race. Even Billy Graham came to criticise segregation but also denounced the non-violent demonstrations as contributing to further violence.

Others denounced calls for desegregation entirely. Back in 1960, Bob Jones Sr. took harder lines at Christians supporting an end to segregation by referring to them as “religious infidels”. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Several pastors of mega-churches, especially in white neighbourhoods, succeeded in shifting all the faults of the system onto the backs of the blacks and refugees who just’ came and invaded America’, without the government doing enough to stop them. One would think the religious leaders would have their moral reasoning to flow from a theological calculus, but it (for sure) did not come from Biblical teaching.

Stacy writes

Charles Ivory’s masterful Proslavery Christianity examines the white evangelical relationship with black evangelicals before the Civil War. He looks at how these interactions between white and black Christians, slave and free, actually came to shape the white evangelical theological defense of slavery. If we want to understand the Culture War Christianity of Falwell, and other white evangelicals, we need to examine their response to the Civil Rights Movement. I believe their response has its source in the theological calculus of white evangelicals in the antebellum South. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Ivory writes it was not uncommon for white and black evangelicals to worship within the same church. Indeed, the revival of the late 18th century did not discriminate on the basis of cultural background. But the theological conflict in evangelical churches pre-Civil War centered around conversion. Namely, does Christian conversion necessitate manumission? Today, Christians would argue chattel slavery is indefensible regardless of a slave’s conversion to Christianity. Humanity is not property. However, the historical context of the time made the question of conversion and manumission the frontline theological conflict regarding chattel slavery within evangelical churches. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

In West Europe the people had gone already through that process, knowing that slavery was something one could not accept in a civilised society. On this, several speakers came to draw attention to a system to bring more equality among all people. The road to socialism and communism was thus promoted by several enthusiasts.

Culture War Christianity has long since ossified into the de facto expression of faith for many white American evangelicals.

But those white American Christians have come to love themselves more than someone else and consider themselves as the only ones worthy to govern America. They do not have an eye at all for the indigenous people, because they consider themselves as the rightful founders and owners of America.

For 200 years, white evangelicalism has been an insider. No where has the minority mindset been more pervasive in our modern conception of Culture War Christianity than rhetoric. Phrases like “drain the swamp”, “make America great again”, and “take back America for God” in evangelical politics go right next to “that’s too political” and “just preach the gospel” in evangelical churches. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

We can wonder from who those evangelicals have to take back ‘their country’! Those evangelicals seem not to have any idea what the ‘founders’ of America had in mind and why they wanted religion and government separated.

While separation of church and state was federally enshrined in the Constitution, it did not play out in those strict terms in state and local governments. This changed in the early 20th century, when the Scopes trial, New Deal politics, and internal theological warring between fundamentalists and modernists left a vacuum in American society that evangelicalism used to fill in common culture. Neo-evangelicals like Billy Graham emerged in this vacuum. But for the long of American history, Christians have not only been influential, but privileged.

How can a privileged majority come to see itself as a minority? Culture War Christianity accomplishes this in part by dressing itself in the Biblical and theological concept of a remnant. A faithful few of God’s people who remain loyal to God and his ways in a foreign, godless land. But this theological adaptation does not line up with the historical participation of white evangelicals in the moral establishment of the United States. Yet, the drums of Culture War for white American Christians implied a greater enemy beyond its borders. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Though the big problem of those Tea Party and conservative or fundamentalist evangelicals is that they are not at all remaining “loyal to God and his ways in a foreign, godless land” they even have betrayed God and His son on several levels. They have created some three-headed god (or three-une being) and political leaders such as Trump as their gods, and consider their American flag as their religious symbol ^{even a Christian symbol}. For sure they can not belong to the faithful few of God’s people, because they do not believe in the Only One True God and because they do not act like People of God. They themselves are part of that ‘dark world’ the Bible is talking about. And now in those times that darkness and of gloominess can be seen everywhere, they also do everything to create division and spread hate, instead of spreading the love of Christ and his great message of a world full of peace. Those evangelicals with other name Christians have made it a sport to make fun of, blacken and curse true Christians. They do everything possible to get people away from those true worshippers of God. They also have some sort of paranoia and consider all people from abroad as dangerous suspects. They fear those coming from outside America would destroy their freedom.

Stacy remarks

the drums of Culture War for white American Christians implied a greater enemy beyond its borders. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

and also see what happened under the influence of certain political figures.

The Culture Wars of white American evangelicalism was not the reaction of the minority against the majority, but the majority against a imagined majority. It is hard to avoid this conclusion given overwhelming support for President Trump. {A History Of The Culture Wars}

Stacy continues writing

In the place of Jesus’ active reign today, we find American Christians given to other reigning power structures: nationalism, racism, misogyny, and bigotry. They are discipled by political—not resurrection—power. This is partly the reason why Culture War Christians took greater issue with Kaepernick’s supposed desecration of the flag than they might with his concerns over police brutality against image bearers. They operate in a power structure other than the Kingdom of Jesus. {A Theology of Culture War Christianity}

Stacys wonders

What if Culture War Christianity long ago bowed the knee to a nationalist, secular conservatism? One with its law & order politics, reticence on issues of race, and idolatry of country? {Beyond the Culture Wars}

Ans says that he has argued this in his series.

Long before white evangelicals told MLK to “just preach the gospel”, there has always been a Christianity domesticated by, and deployed in defense of, the status quo in this country. Frederick Douglass called it before any of us. And in this sort of Christianity, “make disciples” has too often been code for “make people like us” not “make us like Jesus”. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

There lies one of the biggest problems in American Christendom. The majority of Americans does not take time enough to seriously study the Scriptures. For most of them the Bible also only means the New Testament. Lots of those evangelicals also do not understand what that sacrificial offering of Jesus, letting himself be nailed at the stake, means. For them it is very difficult to grasp how a man of flesh and blood could give himself as a lamb for whitewashing the sins of many.

Some of those white evangelicals living in the United States of America are convinced they are the only ones who can  Make America Great Again and build up the most correct state. They forget how so many people before them have tried already to construct an ideal state. They should know it shall only happen under Jesus Christ that we shall be able to live in a perfect world.

Let us also not forget Niebuhr’s saying,

“any good worth doing takes more than one lifetime.”

According to Jared Stacy

This should give us pause before we entertain pragmatism to bring about change in our lifetime. It was Jesus who said,

“what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul?”

This should give us pause as we count the cost of pragmatism to reveal the Kingdom of God. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

He ends his article series by saying

After all, the cross is not a symbol of cultural superiority for white America, but of surrender and sacrifice in the Kingdom of God. We must measure our motivations by the Cross, and our methods. Take it from me. A millennial. The generation who was born in and shaped by the ‘Jesus & John Wayne evangelicalism” in its prime. {Beyond the Culture Wars}

And recognises the problem

Culture War Christianity allows you to have a Christian worldview and reject the Cross.   {Beyond the Culture Wars}

By which he hopefully means: rejecting the ransom offering of that Jewish Nazarene master teacher, Jeshua ben Josef, or Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

It substitutes other, more pragmatic means to really get things done. But in the Kingdom of Jesus the only strategy available for implementing a Christian worldview is the Cross.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

We have to do away with the false teaching in Christendom and have to go back to the Biblical teachings and keep to them, adhering to Biblical Truth and not human doctrine.

We should recognise the danger of that growing conservative evangelism.

For all it’s posturing about the morality of America, Culture War Christianity has stopped its ear to calls for ethnic & economic justice. Has tied its hands in response to sexual scandal and abuse in its ranks. Yet expresses incredulity when the world fails to take its sexual ethic seriously. Culture War Christianity can only provide more entrenchment, more combat, and more pragmatism. But crucified Christianity is growing the world over, and—as it has always done— turning the world upside down.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

Writing from Scotland, the author of the mentioned articles, wants to suggest a simple but humble invitation to venture into the wilderness as an act of faithfulness. For him,

the wilderness meant stepping out of the American pastorate, and out of America. This was my move made in faith. An attempt to combat the rise of cynicism in my own spirit, channeling it into meaningful, faithful action.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

From Moses, to Elijah, to Christ. Perhaps the wilderness is the place for those disenchanted and disillusioned, those disowned and disinherited from Culture War Christianity, to begin to see the Cross not as a symbol storming the US Capitol, but again as a place where our power grabs go to die. And where there is death to our ability to bring about change, God brings resurrection that changes everything.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

The Austrian philosopher and Roman Catholic priest known for his radical polemics arguing that the benefits of many modern technologies and social arrangements were illusory and that, still further, such developments undermined humans’ self-sufficiency, freedom, and dignity, Ivan Illich illumines what it is to be in the world, but not of it — just like Jesus.

Jared Stacy offers his words as a simple reflection in the conclusion to his series:

It is astonishing what the devil says: I have all power, it has been given to me, and I am the one to hand it on — submit, and it is yours. Jesus of course does not submit…Not for a moment, however, does Jesus contradict the devil. He does not question that the devil holds all power, nor that this power has been given to him, nor that he, the devil, gives it to whom he pleases. This is a point which is easily overlooked. By his silence Jesus recognizes power that is established as “devil” and defines Himself as The Powerless. He who cannot accept this view on power cannot look at establishments through the spectacle of the Gospel. This is what clergy and churches often have difficulty doing. They are so strongly motivated by the image of church as a “helping institution” that they are constantly motivated to hold power, share in it or, at least, influence it.  {Beyond the Culture Wars}

++

Please also do find to read

1. Utopism has not ended
2. Looking at an Utopism which has not ended
3. My faith and hope
4. Utopian dreams
5. Are Christianity and Capitalism Compatible?
6. The Upbringing of Ideas and the Extrapolation of Capitalism
7. A famous individual by the name of Jesus of Nazareth
8. 19th and 20th Century Shifts in bourgeoisie
9. All that is solid still melts into air.
10. Intellectual servility a curse of mankind
11. The New Imperialist Structure
12. Is Christianity a Greedy Religion?
13. Should church members question preachers about the doctrine that is not in the Holy Bible?
14. A History Of The Culture Wars
15. Unhappy people in empty churches
16. Gradual decline by American Christians
17. Christians are increasingly mixing and matching their faith in unexpected ways
18. Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #1
19. The decline of religion in the US continues unabated
20. Liberation, salvation and the Latin American voice entering the Vatican
21. Eyes on pages and messages on social media
22. Troubles testing your faith and giving you patience and good prospects
23. The Most Appropriate teacher and Scoffers in our contemporary age
24. Social media for Trumpists and changing nature of warfare
25. Blinded crying blue murder having being made afraid by a bugaboo
26. False teachers and false prophets still around
27. The Field is the World #4 Many who leave the church
28. Unhappy people in empty churches (Our World)
29. Hardships for choosing to follow the real Christ
30. Church indeed critical in faith development
31. Crises of Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic Money
32. International Proletariat
33. The killing of capitalism
34. The Principles of Communism – Friedrich Engels
35. Ability
36. Ability (part 2)
37. Ability (part 3) Thoughts around Ability
38. Ability (part 4) Thought about the ability to have ability
39. Ability (part 5) Thought about the abilities to be under God’s Spirit
40. To whom do we want to be enslaved
41. Compromise and accomodation
42. A Living Faith #3 Faith put into action
43. Not saying Jeshua is God
44. The 17th annual White Privilege Conference a militantly Christophobic conference held in Philadelphia
45. Faith, storms and actions to be taken
46. Christ’s ethical teaching
47. Obeying God rather than man & A Time to Act
48. Entering 2022 still Aiming for a society without exploitation or oppression
49. News that’s fit to print
50. Beyond the Culture Wars
51. January 6: A Failed Apocalypse
52. Hope For, But Not In, Evangelicalism
53. Presbyterians and Reformed Christians, membership and active involvement is part of a congregation’s DNA
54. The Guardian’s view on the world 1st week of June

+++

Related

1. The Basic Principle of Establishing Equality Among all the Children of Adam (as)
2. The Pharaoh and The Worker | From Ancient Egypt to The Communist Manifesto
3. (Sunday Homily) Christianity Is Communism! Jesus Was a Communist!
4. Bernie Reminds Us that Christianity Is Communism & Jesus Was a Communist!
5. 7th Century Madina Economics
6. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
7. Karl Marx
8. Marx, Labor Rights and Reform in Capitalism
9. Das Kapital (Karl Marx)
10. Cultural Marxism versus Marx
11. Karl Marx – the prophet of goons – Part 3
12. All that is solid still melts into air.
13. Wage Differentials or Discrimination: Islamic Perspective
14. Marxists Changed How We Understand History
15. Finding the Ideal, Perfect Community
16. Alternative Earth
17. Utopia! 
18. Utopia – Thomas More ****
19. Anarchy, State and Utopia
20. Postalgia / Prostalgia – Is this as Good as it Gets?
21. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
22. Cultural Amnesia
23. The Future of Governance
24. False American Dream
25. Thinking Critically about Marxism, Socialism and Communism (All in fewer than 1000 words!)
26. The Missing Faith Dimension of the Capitalism vs. Socialism Debate
27. A Broken system
28. Psychological Warfare
29. Humanities Retribution
30. Walk The Path
31. Reform or Revolution? A Debate (I)
32. Reform or Revolution? A Debate (II)
33. Editorial: what is humane socialism?
34. The virtues of good, enlightened, accountable elitism
35. The Radical Left Needs to Call into Question Existing Social Institutions at Every Opportunity, Part Four
36. End of capitalism as we know it
37. The Future is History
38. The true believer
39. Research Resources: Communism in America
40. “A Spectre is Haunting Europe…”
41. Finding the Ideal, Perfect Community
42. So You Think Capitalism Is Evil
43. Capitalism: The Ultimate Empowerment
44. Capitalism: Misunderstood
45. On the Current Conjuncture
46. The discipled political church
47. Veneration (Gilbert and Gilbert)
48. Christianity and Idealism (Van Til)
49. Brief Insights on Mastering Bible Doctrine (Heiser)
50. A Field Guide on False Teaching
51. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
52. Evangelical: Leave It or Love It?
53. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
54. Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – An Interview
55. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
56. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”
57. Warped Christianity
58. The 10 Commandments in American Culture
59. Communist Infiltration, What Did Bella Dodd REALLY Know – YouTube
60. German priest contradicts pope and backs pornography as sexual ‘relief’ for celibates | Catholic News Agency
61. Sports Star to Be Jailed 10 Months for ‘Transphobic’ Message
62. What is at stake in the buffer zone debate? | Isabel Vaughan-Spruce | The Critic Magazine
63. Win for Christian ministry after judge refuses to strike out discrimination case – Christian Concern
64. Watch the body language in this heated exchange yesterday between Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Chinese Emperor Xi 👀 | Not the Bee
65. Episode 21 – Stella(r) (Hypo)Creasy and the Gov Crackdown on Free Speech – YouTube
66. Senate advances same-sex marriage bill amid religious freedom concerns – Catholic World Report
67. America/Brazl – After 50 years, the mission of Cimi is still “to defend with courage and prophecy the cause of the indigenous peoples” – Agenzia Fides
68. The Christian Father -Conferences of the Men’s Group – YouTube

Why Does Denmark Own Greenland?

Teaching History's Slender Threads, Including 'What Ifs', Almosts, Alternatives and Turning Points

History Matters: “Greenland is massive. Denmark is not. Given its size, it’s strategic position and its distance from Denmark? How does Denmark own it and why didn’t anybody take it from them? If you want to find out watch this short and simple animated history documentary.”

The comments section is also informative:

1. “Britain shelled Copenhagen, finally teaching the Danes how it feels to have a bunch of angry ships turn up at your shore and set things on fire” God I love this channel.
2. “America in 19th century: ‘Can we buy Greenland?’ Denmark ‘No’. America in 1905 “Can we buy Greenland?” Denmark “No” America in 1945 “Can we buy Greenland?” Denmark “NO.” America in 2019 “Can we buy Greenland?” Denmark “NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!”
3. “Napoleon is in every European story.”
4. “1:18 this is incorrect. The shelling of Copenhagen happened before Denmark joined Napoleon. Denmark was neutral, but the king of the…

View original post 103 more words

Make Ukraine A Buffer State Between Russia & the EU

One of the rules for joining NATO is that a country wishing to join must have no internal disputes and must be politically and militarily stable. Ukraine is not exactly a country where there would be no divisions. With three regions where rebels are active against the Ukrainian regime, it is impossible for Ukraine to become a member. Therefore, it is absurd and there is no reason for Moscow to fear it.

+

Preceding

Risk of accidental war with Russia highest in decades, general warns

A lot of talk about a war beginning soon

Boris Johnson warns Putin against Ukraine invasion

Britain warns Russia over Ukraine

US bolsters Europe with 3,000 extra troops

The strategic error Putin is potentially about to make

Optical illusions

++

Additional reading

1. Entering a new period of ‘Cold War’
2. Sings of the times – Difficult moments at the borders of Europe
3. The world on the very brink of conflict
4. Putin plays dangerous poker game
5. A useless but very dangerous challenge game
6. A Brief Look at NATO and Russia’s Push to Reform the Old Soviet Union
7. Interference in internal affairs
8. Prepare for Russian invasion of Ukraine, US warns European allies
9. The peoples must prevent the outbreak of war in Europe
10. Wars and Rumors of War…Russia Moves into Belarus
11. Joe Biden warns Russia could attack next month
12. Biden predicts Russia will attack Ukraine but warns Putin of a ‘stiff price’
13. President Biden threatened to impose personal sanctions on President Putin if Russia moves to invade Ukraine
14. Putin’s ‘staged atrocity’ plan to justify Russian invasion of Ukraine
15. Ukraine’s Day of Unity
16. A country willing to stand tall against any invasion
17. PM warns Vladimir Putin against ‘tragic mistake’ as tensions rise with Ukraine
18. Moscow lists demands for defusing Ukraine tensions
19. Sergey Lavrov dismisses Liz Truss meeting as ‘like talking to a deaf person’

Joyce O’Day

Photo taken by the author (Joyce O’Day) of a bronze statue of a Russian and a Ukrainian worker holding up the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples in Kiev.

It’s time to stop the BS, NATO doesn’t even want Ukraine.

Let’s be real, Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO or the EU. It’s too corrupt and politically unstable for NATO and too economically weak for the EU.

On February 16, 2022, Lt. Col. Daniel Davis (U.S. Army Retired) stated the obvious to host Laura Coates on CNN: the United States needs to acquiesce to Putin and agree that NATO membership is off the table for Ukraine. As he noted, President Biden has declared that the U.S. military will not send troops into Ukraine to fight the Russians. In short, Ukraine is not worth a nuclear war. This standoff needs to come to an end.

Oh no! We can’t…

View original post 444 more words

A History Of The Culture Wars

+

Find also to read

1. Andrew McWilliams-Doty looks at evangelicals
2. How the term Evangelical has grown to blur theology and ideology
3. Which Christians Actually Evangelize
4. Is it Time to Abandon “Evangelical?”

Jared Stacy

Culture War Christianity has long since ossified into the de facto expression of faith for many white American evangelicals. In Part One of this series (which you can find here) we introduced the American Culture Wars. As a whole, this series examines the historical & theological shape of Culture War Christianity in comparison to Jesus’ Kingdom through the lenses of these two camps, conscientious objectors and vocal advocates. We concluded last week with a descriptor: Culture War Christianity tends to make enemies, not love them.

This week, our second part examines the historical orgins of the Culture Wars. If you’re pressed for time, I present a TL;DR that takes 2 minutes, and you can return to read the article at your leisure…

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn’t Read Summary)

The key to understanding modern Culture War Christianity is the history of American race relations and Christianity. This article locates the birth…

View original post 4,720 more words

Somali women in the Somali society

It is not bad to read a view from someone living in Mogadishu, Somalia, about Somali women and widespread myths about women in Somalia.

 

+++

Extra reading material about Somalia

1. 25-top-facts about Eastern-African-countries
2. Somalia military kills 50 al-Shabaab terrorists in separate operations
3. U.S. Military Conducts a Drone Strike Against Shabab Fighters in Somalia
4. US carries out first airstrike in Somalia since Biden took office
5. Somalia and Ireland discuss security support and partnership
6. Somalia postpones long-delayed election
7. COVID19 – Daily updates from #Africa and for Africa
8. Jubbaland announces its first four senators to Somali Parliament
9. Book Review and Blog Tour: The Last Nomad, by Shugri Said Salh
10. DN!: Ilhan Omar on Eviction Moratorium and her book ‘This is What America Looks Like’
11. The Last Nomad by Shugri Said Salh
12. Kids Read: Somalia
13. UK-Kenya Defence Cooperation Agreement raises eyebrows in Somalia
14. Kidnappings in Kenya, Al-Shabab & What Needs To Be Done
15. Bomb blast kills 4 footballers in Somalia
16. 4 footballers dies in Somalia bomb explosions
17. 08/02/21 Antiwar: Biden Administration Escalates Airstrikes in Somalia
18. Joe Biden Keeps Bombing Somalia
19. Focus on Refugees: Ifrah Ahmed- Somali Refugee Turned Infuencial Social Activist
20. Is Ethiopia hurtling towards all-out ethnic conflict?”

So-called own sacred values under threat

The last few years we have seen populist politicians becoming more popular and getting a stronger following who wanted to cause a fuss here and there. Often they want to have their people believe their nation was great but got damaged by the many immigrants. They say the immigrant population weakens the country and brings democracy in danger.

On the other side there is also a contemporary myth that European societies used to be homogenous. Europe has always been a blanket of a lot of diversity. Always it has been a mixture of all sorts of people and cultures. Throughout the ages we could find a battlefield in the Low Countries. Lots of pieces of land changed hands many times, once belonging to the Romans, than to the Germans, the Austrians, the French, the Dutch. Even the languages and religion changed more than once.

Threat to the security and stability of the nation

Today we can find lots of people who say the land belongs to them and others bring their Judaeo-Christian values in danger. Though many of those crying about their values, do not have any of such juedo christian values at all. The 2016 Islamist fundamentalist attacks showed clearly how far countries as France wanted to go putting liberty of thought, freedom of expression and clothing at the side. France and Belgium so secularised took measures which went totally against real democratic rules and humanitarian freedom.

Big problem in Europe today is that lots of people do not worship God any more and do not keep to the essential commandments of God and as such do not mind not telling the truth, not loving the other, not taking care of others their goods or of nature, they even enjoy being better than the other wanting to have more than they have. For many, hatred and envy are the order of the day. We notice that hatred under Christians is nothing new any more. In the previously Chrisitan countries, we also come to see more hatred against religions in general, many thinking religion is the cause of all the problems. In West Europe we find many that much-vaunted bastions of multiculturalism have become No God Zones.

The last few years we also could see that several countries did not mind to take up again very discriminatory laws.  We could see that even in the so-called most free country of Europe: France; and also in the so-called most progressive liberal country Denmark where they even went so far to go for Nazi-laws.

Too many people do forget our world evolved to a world where lots of people go from one place to another and influence each other. There are already many influencers on the net who cross many country borders and bring people to change their normal and consumption habits, plus eating and clothing customs.

Best examples which show how it is going wrong at the moment, are the United States of America, Brazil, Hungary and Hong Kong. The States takes the cake by having a president who goes in against everything the founders of that State stood for. That country was built on the aspiring hopes of people who came from all sorts of countries, all sorts of cultures and different religious denominations. The land is created or grown by a mixture of peoples. In the few years the 45th president of the U.S.A. ruled he managed to destroy a lot what was build up in the previous decades and created a lot of division between the inhabitants of those states which should be unified.

Instead of all trying to come to one unified Europe we do find more and more people going against the tendency for unification. Several politicians want to create such hammock in the country people get fed up with politics and start wanting to do their own thing in the way they want to do it.

A few years ago there was the beginning of fear created by Islamist fundamentalists. Now an other fear was added. This time it is not the clash between Islam and the West, but the power of a virus, which destroys our free way of life as well. Religious conflict was the norm in the old so-called homogenous Europe. Often the Roman Catholics were the killers to be afraid of. They had a terror regime that forced everyone to Catholicism. The people having most to fear then were the ones who worshipped the Only One True God and not Christ. Many brethren and sisters in the faith had to hide their faith or even had to hide in less easy to reach regions.

The English philosopher John Locke put it, ‘to a foreign prince’, the Pope, whose values were incompatible with those of liberal democracies, and who posed a threat to the security and stability of the nation.

At one point in European history we have two centuries where Jews were seen even more of a threat to European identity, values and ways of being, so much so that they became victims of the world’s greatest genocide. Today many forget that the treatment of Jews as the ‘Other’ was not confined to Germany. It was a central theme in most European nations, from the Dreyfus affair in France to Britain’s first immigration law, the 1905 Aliens Act, designed principally to stem the flow into the country of European Jews. And up in the North lots of Jews got burned in their homes by Russian attacks against them.

In all cases we see that governments and people want to find a victim, someone or some people to point with the finger, to cast them as the cause of all misery.

In the previous centuries high society also looked downwards to the working class. The working class and the rural poor were seen by many as racial distinct.
The French aristocratic anti-egalitarian diplomat, writer, ethnologist, and social thinker Arthur de Gobineau, in his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 4 vol. (1853–55; Essay on the Inequality of Human Races), remarked already that

‘Every social order represents a racial variety’.

Arthur de Gobineau, French diplomat, writer, ethnologist, and social thinker whose theory of racial determinism had an enormous influence upon the subsequent development of racist theories and practices in western Europe.

In the Essai Gobineau asserted the superiority of the white race over others and labeled the “Aryans”—i.e., the Germanic peoples—as representing the summit of civilization. That idea is not killed yet. Also today in Europe as well as in the United States we do find people who cling to that idea, that the fate of civilizations is determined by racial composition, that white and in particular Aryan societies flourish as long as they remain free of black, brown and yellow strains, and that the more a civilization’s racial character is diluted through miscegenation, the more likely it is to lose its vitality and creativity and sink into corruption and immorality.Donald Trump does find this enough reason to make sure everyone comes to understand that, and that it are the white federal troops which are the ones who can and should have everything in control.

Gobineau insisted that

‘We imagine that we are one nation, but we are two nations on the same land’,

each a distinctive race with

‘perpetually contradictory spirits’.

The Christian socialist Phillipe Buchez, giving a talk to the Medico-Psychological Society of Paris in 1857, wondered how it could happen that

 ‘within a population such as ours, races may form – not merely one but several races – so miserable, inferior and bastardised that they may be classed below the most inferior savage races, for their inferiority is sometimes beyond cure.’

The races that he was talking of were not, of course, from Africa or Asia, but the working class and the rural poor. In this century some reflect similar words now also referring to those who work on the fields (seasonal workers) and those who do the jobs the ‘nationals’ do not want to do.

Gobineau’s writings were quickly praised by white supremacist, pro-slavery Americans like surgeon, anthropologis and slaveowner Josiah C. Nott and the Swiss American propagandist for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, Henry Hotze, who translated his book into English. They omitted around 1,000 pages of the original book, including those parts that negatively described Americans as a racially mixed population.

In the 19th century in many countries, the poor were

‘a race of whom we know nothing, whose lives are of quite different complexion from ours, persons with whom we have no point of contact.’

explained an article on working-class life in East London in The Saturday Review, a well-read liberal magazine of the era.

‘Distinctions and separations, like those of English classes’,

the article concluded,

‘which always endure, which last from the cradle to the grave, which prevent anything like association or companionship… offer a very fair parallel to the separation of the slaves from the whites.’

Just before the pandemic struck our regions there were already enough signs we were evolving back to a segregation position of modern slaves, the working class.

With the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, we will have to be very careful that politicians and CEOs do not take advantage of this situation in order to corner the workers and exploit them even more because of the emerging economic crisis.

In the States, we see already how the president got so many people to believe that we should ignore this virus or Chinese disease and should all go back at work making our economy great again. For him, the economy comes first. Human lives are not so important and when they are black or brown they are even less important. For him as for some in Europe as well there should not be Corona restrictions, because they go against our liberty. All such matters to protect the health of people undermine the economy and therefore (according to them) should be annulled. Inc ase there are people dying from Covid-19 they should be considered as just ‘accidents de parcours’.

+

Preceding

Tribes Redux

Trans-ability and Identity and Political correctness

Seeds from the world creating division and separation from God

Denmark votes in favour for a Discriminatory Nazi law

American Christians have to think twice before going to vote

Tolerance Ends When There Is No Tolerance Shown Towards Us

Francis Fukuyama and ‘The End of History?’

++

Additional reading

1. Belgium, Belgicae and the fertile floodland
2. Disturbing language inbalance
3. Catholicism, Anabaptism and Crisis of Christianity
4. Morality, values and Developing right choices
5. Subcutaneous power for humanity 2 1950-2010 Post war generations
6. 2014 Religion
7. Europe and much-vaunted bastions of multiculturalism becoming No God Zones
8. 2016 in review Politics #1 Year of dissonance
9. Negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews
10. Migrants to the West #5
11. Built on or Belonging to Jewish tradition #1 Christian Reform
12. President Trump shall have to recognise that Immigrant Workers Are Vital to the U.S.A.
13. Secularism in France becoming dangerous for freedom of religion
14. Christians, secularism, morals and values
15. Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #2
16. Need to Embrace People Where They Are
17. 500 Years of Reformation Divisions Have Lost Much of Their Potency
18. American Christianity no longer resembles its Founder
19. What Steve Bannon really wants
20. Is Europe going to become a dictatorial bastion
21. Challenges of the Post-Pandemic period

Dependent on imports

At the European continent, we have come dependent on a lot of import to provide enough food.

Now with this corona crisis many think we do have to change our way of life and our way of consumption.

Let us go back in history to think about today. Andrew James Chandler writes:

from the 1840s, was the demand for rails, wheels and frames for rolling stock necessary to build railways around the world. Britain was providing perhaps forty per cent of the world’s manufactured goods by the mid-century. The spread of steam power, for both railways and shipping, also created a great demand for British coal. In terms of imports, British demand for wool from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa grew significantly. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain had been self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs, but developed a great demand for ‘luxuries’ from the tropics such as sugar, tea and coffee. They soon became cheap, available to all social classes. Home agriculture was protected by the Corn Laws until 1846, restricting imports of basics and kept prices of bread and other staples high. By the 1850s, population growth had made basic food imports absolutely essential, and protection was abandoned for free trade. By the 1850s about a quarter of Britain’s food needs were being met by imports. {Poverty, Emigration & Empire, 1821-1881: Australia, New Zealand & South Africa.}

In the future, we shall become more dependent, if we are not careful, on more food coming into the country we should make sure it is correctly produced, without slave labour, without toxic fertilizers and non-necessary additives.

Corona part of much too many or not enough

There are people who consider that the last few years we had so many sorts of corona viruses because we are with too many and have are animals locked up with to many in one cage.

About the matter of keeping too many animals in a cage, there is a reality we have to face. That creates a lot of diseases we could avoid when we would give those animals much more space to move around.

We do not think we are living in an overcrowded world. There is still enough space if we are willing to use that space properly and ecologically right.

Thomas Mathus (born 1766), a mathematically-minded person, who was convinced that people multiplied at a much greater rate than food was produced. For him the outcome, unless former was controlled, would be starvation and misery.

‘Son of the manse’ Andrew James Chandler writes:

Part of Malthus’ solution was to discourage marriage and any other relationship which might result in childbirth. He also deemed it wise to encourage individuals and families to emigrate. He regarded the colonies as a receptacle for excess inhabitants, and had a formula to back up his ideas. There were also a number of schemes which were capable of translating his notions into practical terms.

The collection of reliable statistical information was only begun with the first decennial census in 1801, but this was a barely reliable source for contemporaries and historians alike until 1841. There were no reliable government figures relating to unemployment until 1921. {Poverty, Emigration & Empire, 1821-71: Atlantic Crossings & North American Settlement.}

Avoiding getting children is one idea several people used to have control abut their ‘people of the state’.  Many forgot that those living in poverty were more often creating kids in bad circumstances. Also wages could create a condition to have more or less children, and got families moving from the countryside to the cities.

Although industrial wages may have been a little better in the Midland towns than in the villages, living and working conditions were generally worse, so that it was not until the beginning of the last century that people were drawn in any significant numbers into cities like Coventry, Oxford and Birmingham from the surrounding countryside. Although Birmingham and the Black Country had become heavily industrialised by the mid-nineteenth century, it was only at the end of that century that Coventry became a city of many trades, with the decline of the traditional craft industries of ribbon weaving and watchmaking, and the birth of the cycle trade in the 1890s, to be followed gradually by motor-cycle and car manufacture, and the establishment of Courtauld’s works in 1905. {Part Three: 1861-1914: Poverty, Progress and Prosperity}

When people had to spend a lot of time in the factory they had less time to create new children. But when there were strikes or people had no work they had more frustrations and man got to work it out at their wives and made more kids.

The growing urbanisation of the country which many thought aggravated the problems of the poor, also made it easier to deal collectively with some of the worst injustices in the early years of the twentieth century. Towns provided an increasing range of free services, and local government expenditure almost doubled between 1900 and 1913.

Free school meals and school medical inspections helped to improve health among children and better attention in hospitals which catered mainly for working-class patients in conditions that were generally much better than richer classes who still preferred to be treated in their own homes or in private nursing homes. Workmen’s trains, electric tramcars and cheap, second-hand bicycles enabled many wage earners to escape from the congested areas of towns to the suburbs, leaving more room for those remaining.

Better grocer shops, such as Sainsburys and Liptons, football matches and other sporting events on Saturday afternoons,  excursions by trains, music halls and then silent films, public houses with bright lighting, were all additional signs of an improvement in the quality of urban working-class life, and a departure from the past.  Working-class women benefited the most from these changes. There was a preference for smaller families, making their domestic lives easier, and the arrival of the typewriter and telephone were among the developments which provided more employment opportunities for girls.  There were also more scholarships, often to new secondary schools and technical colleges which gave bright young people of both sexes opportunities for further education and better jobs, encouraging greater social mobility than their parents had experienced. However, these changes were not as rapid as sometimes supposed. There may have been more women teachers, nurses, shop assistants, telephonists, typists and machine operators, but there was still a vast army of female domestic servants. There was little understanding of the home conditions of many of the domestic servants among those whom they served.

One child from a prosperous family, who had employed two maids before the Great War, later  admitted to the BBC that she had very little idea what poverty was. Her maids never complained of poverty. Neither did they complain of the hard physical work and sense of alienation that many of them endured in  service.

Alice Cairns, from Staffordshire, was placed as a maid in a big old rectory in the same county. It was still lit with oil lamps, not even by gas, and she had to clean the big range and get the fire going every morning before she could boil a kettle. After that she had to scrub the big kitchen, which had a floor like gravestones, scrub the tables and then take the cook a cup of tea before seven. …

It is doubtful whether British Society has ever been so beset with contradictions as it was on the eve of the First World War.  Old age pensions began to be paid by the state only at the beginning of 1909, and health and unemployment insurance at the beginning of 1913. However poverty was still alarmingly extensive in 1914, especially in the countryside. {The Fires of Perfect Liberty: Labouring Men and Women of England, 1851-1951: Part Three}

Who had enough food at that time and who had the children to have a lot of worries or to have no worries at all?

Today in the west the families are very small, two or max three children, or when it is a family with more than 5 children it is what they call a newly composed family.

Until now everything seemed to go alright, but since March 2020 lots of people have a totally opposite idea of the future. It is expected we shall get some population explosion by corona-kids. People having had enough time with their partner to enjoy themselves but also trying to forget the negative prospect of soon being without work and without pay.

For some it might look lie we are going to face some serious economic crisis after this health crisis. soon we might have again some more children, but with the temperatures rising, getting more dry and wet period endangering the food production, the matter or question:

Is theere going to be enough food?

is going to rise again. This in a time when the rich have become richer and the ordinary man poorer, and work prospects not so great.

From the 18th century museums to the present Jewish Museum in New York city

The great museums of the 18th and 19th centuries — the British Museum in London (1753), the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg (1764), the Louvre in Paris (1792), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (1891), and many others — were encyclopedic in scope and ambition. Born, in part, of an imperial impulse, they aimed to demonstrate the geographical and intellectual range of great national powers by becoming repositories of some of the most precious objects on earth. Simultaneously, they were shaped by the Enlightenment conviction that both the natural and human worlds could be understood and even mastered by subjecting their diverse offerings to scientific analysis and discerning the universal laws at work in the midst of miscellany. The Enlightenment museum tried to answer great human questions: where did we come from? what is the significance of what we see? how have we come to be its overseer?

For humankind such questions are important and should regularly be posed. At the same time musea should be a reflection of peoples and their culture. One expects than enough artefacts, letters, paintings and objects that can be a witness of the culture spoken about.

By the turn of the 20th century everywhere, interest in ethnicity and folk heritage was growing. In 1908, the composers Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály traveled the Hungarian countryside, memorializing the music of Magyars; the American ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore, foremost American authority of her time on the songs and music of American Indian tribes, and widely published author on Indian culture and life-styles, was recording, for the Smithsonian, 3,000 wax cylinders of songs by Indian tribes. In Eastern Europe, Shlomo Zanvl Rappoport (pen name S. Ansky), educated in a Ḥasidic environment was as a young man attracted to the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) and to the populist doctrines of the Narodniki, a group of socialist revolutionaries, became conducting an ethnographic survey among the rural Jewish communities of Russia and Poland.

Cyrus Adler (1863–1940), American educator, Jewish religious leader and scholar.

Along with the amassing of music and oral testimony came the amassing of objects. At the Smithsonian, a Judaica collection was begun in 1887 by Cyrus Adler, who, having obtained the nation’s first doctorate in Semitics at Johns Hopkins University, would found the American Jewish Historical society in 1892. In 1904, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York received a gift of 26 artifacts that it displayed in its library; they became the seeds of the Jewish Museum, which after World War II would move into its current home in the Warburg mansion on Fifth Avenue. A similarly small-scale collection, mainly of family heirlooms, was housed in the Hebrew Union College, the seminary of Reform Judaism, in Cincinnati. In 1913, the holdings became incorporated as the first Jewish museum in the United States; today its successor is the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.

Such were the halting beginnings of the Jewish museum in the United States, and once again a difference is to be observed. In other museums, collections of artefacts were often associated with a culture’s thriving continuity; the objects were there to testify to that culture’s power and range. By contrast, a Jewish religious object put on exhibit was no longer playing its vital role in synagogue or home; taken out of its context and function, it had been turned into a relic, more closely resembling the artefacts of a fading Native American tribe in a museum of natural history than a 17th-century Dutch portrait at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

JTS building at 3080 Broadway in Manhattan

Warburg mansion in New York, today the Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum was founded in 1904 with only 26 pieces and was originally located in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1946 the museum moved to the Felix Warburg mansion (see Warburg family) located on New York City’s “Museum Mile.” The Jewish Museum is one of the foremost museums of its kind.

The present exhibition and the position of the museum is reviewed in the article: New York Jewish Museum’s Discomfort with Religion

Go! Proclaim! Testify!

+

Preceding

High time to go out telling the world about Jesus

7 Ways To Become A Better Christian

What Should I Preach ?

Daring to speak in multicultural environment

Crisis man needed in this world

Refusing to Be Silent

Go Ye!

To proclaim the day of vengeance

Proclaiming: a task given to Christians

++

What to do in the Face of Global Anti-semitism

Since a year or five we do notice that the ten years of the growing ‘right’ has not only brought an aversion against immigrants and/or refugees. More and more the Jewish community became target of bullying and hate actions.

The deathly attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels was something which should have awaken the politicians. In Belgium the Jewish schools and centres could receive extra security measures from the Belgian government. That is nice but should be something that would not be necessary.

All over the West-side of the European continent we do see a growing resistance or hate against the choice of living of the Jews in Europe. Several young Jews found it already better to take everything together and to leave this part of the world to go to live in Israel, even when that meant also to go in the army for two years.

Many of us really wonder what we should do today in the face of global anti-Semitism?

There are those who still caution a “better to hush it up and make believe it isn’t there” policy. Giving it publicity, they claim, will only stoke the fire. A shrill response is counterproductive. When we show that we hurt, the argument goes, we’re giving our enemies comfort.
But they are wrong. They are as wrong as those in the early stages of the Holocaust who pretended not to see, who claimed Hitler can’t really be considered a threat, who were sure that the evil of Jew hatred was so obviously uncivilized and barbaric that it had no chance of succeeding. Wait it out, said those who counselled against protests, those who didn’t want to identify themselves as Jews with profound interest in saving their fellow Jews. It can’t happen here, they claimed. But it did – and they were proven wrong six million times over.

There are all too many Hamans today. Anti-Semites require the spotlight of our attention and the public scorn of our protests and demonstrations.

Today we see the growing  hostility toward or prejudice against Jews or Judaism as well as against Muslims, because of fundamentalist Muslims (Jihadists) defiling the Muslim faith and calling for a hate against Jews and non-believing people. It looks like we are also getting a revival of the rising nationalism like the one of the 19th century. Today we also see how the Roman Catholic Church, which in the 19th century sometimes subscribed to the idea of Jewish racial identity and sometimes denied it, like then not only fails to condemn European anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism, now the Muslim communities stayed too long silent condemning those Islamist fundamentalists who have nothing to do with real Islam. A problem by the Catholics is that in the East of Europe there are still some very right-wing priests and we must remember that in the Balkan several priests in the past had worked together with the Germans to get rid of the Jews. For Rabbi Giuseppe Laras this can well be the reason why the Catholic Church does not react stronger against the growing anti-semitism. He sees in it a continuation of a contempt towards the Jewish people that found genocidal expression during World War II, when Catholic Priests ran half the concentration camps in Fascist Croatia. Though we also should remember that this loathing also extended to Orthodox Christian Serbs, real or non-trinitarian Christians, like the Jehovah Witnesses, and also other minorities like the Roma who were slaughtered in these same camps by the hundreds of thousands.

By the threats of the jihadist groups like Al Qaeda, Daesh or ISIS, and the big amount of refugees coming into Europe lots of poorer Europeans see their jobs threatened and are fearing they would loose out on them.

Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century: The Resurgence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We need not only to shout out our pain, we should motivate others to open their eyes and to see what is going on. We have to call onto those who say they are lovers of God.

We need to assert our Jewish identity – not mask it – with increased passion and vigor. We need to make the elimination of anti-Semitism not simply a Jewish cause but the universal response to a heinous crime which for far too long has soiled the pages of history.

As we prepare to observe Purim this year, let us make the noise required to eradicate the genocidal ambitions of anti-Jewish hatred which still continue to plague us.

The US delegation for the 2004 OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism, led by former New York Mayor Ed Koch and former US Secretary of States Colin Powell. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

+

Preceding article

Seeds from the world creating division and separation from God

++

Additional reading

1. Religious Practices around the world
2. Protest against Tzahal concert in Antwerp
3. Migrants to the West #6
4. 2014 European elections
5. Hamas the modern Philistines
6. January 27 – 70 years ago Not an end yet to genocide
7. World remembers Auschwitz survivors
8. 25 Orthodox rabbis issued a statement on Christianity
9. French Muslims under attack
10. At the closing hours of 2016 #1 Looking down at terror
11. Jews the next scapegoat for Donald Trump
12. The American clouds of Anti-Semitism
13. Objective views and not closing eyes for certain sayings
14. Donald Trump after declining numbers of people victimised for their religion managed to increase the numbers again

+++

Further reading

1. Anti-Semitic threats towards Jewish Centers continue to rise in numbers
2. anti-Semitism, the DNC, and Donald Trump
3. Anti-Semitism row at Bristol University as lecturers rally round academic who claimed Jews should stop ‘privileging’ the Holocaust
4. Jeffrey Goldberg on Mel Gibson: He is “Hollywood’s leading antisemite”
5. This #Muslim interfaith activist knows more about #Zionism than most Jews
6. France has passed the point of no return
7. Far-right candidate sees a France sans kippas, headscarves — NZ Friends of Israel Association Inc
8. Anti-Semites attack Philadelphia, USA Jewish cemetery
9. Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia vandalized, more than 100 headstones toppled
10. How has it come to this?
11. Another day, another Muslim ban
12. Meet ‘Based Stick Man,’ the Alt-Right’s LARP-y New Hero
13. Mourning Oak Grove
14. Israel: Boycotters are no longer welcome — Israel restricts visas — “If anyone insults us, we respond.”
15. Israeli Apartheid Week in France — anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment has been high in France while Jews flee to the Israeli homeland — Under French law boycotting is illegal
16. President Trump Vows to Give Up Denouncing Anti-Semitism for Lent
17. In Israel, Lauding and Lamenting the Era of Trump
18. American Liberal Jews: “staggeringly naive believing that marching at airports with signs that read “We love Muslims” will change those Muslims who hate Jews into Muslims who love Jews”
19. Steve Cohen’s ‘That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Anti-Semitic’
20. Rochester Area JCC Re-Opens After Morning Bomb Threat
21. A Sixth Wave Of Bomb Threats On Jewish Centers Also Targeted The Anti-Defamation League
22. “The sad phenomenon of Jews accusing other Jews of provoking antisemitism can be found throughout Jewish history”
23. Seattle Fed Says Kadima Purim Event Violates Promo Policy
24. Donald Trump Is Not the “Least Anti-Semitic Person” Ever
25. Switzerland funds NGOs that call for Israel’s destruction
26. Glimmers of Hope
27. Entire U.S. Senate Demands Trump Act on Jewish Center Threats
28. The anti-Semitic Martin Luther
29. So Many Hamans- Anti Semitism Rears Its Ugly Head
30. Tomb of Purim Heroes Esther and Mordechai Still Standing in Modern-Day Persia -Breaking Israel News | Latest News. Biblical Perspective.
31. Why Is Purim Essential?
32. Headlines — 3/08/17
33. “If you talk privately to those who work in the Jewish organization world, many will confide that the greatest threat to the security of the American Jewish community is “changing demographics,” which is a euphemism for a growing population of Arab migrants to the United States”
34. A Liberal Zionism for the Trump Era
35. Cindy Jacobs Wants To “Harvest” The Jews
36. Also in Media: “The View from Israel: The Inevitable Outcome of the Establishment of Palestine.”  March 7, 2017
37. Anti-Semitism (by If we the people)
38. Ilan Pappe asks “Am I an anti-Semite?”
39. Four steps to reach mutual understanding
40. In An Angry And Fearful Nation, An Outbreak Of Anti-Semitism (by K Street)
41. Remembering Amalek’s oppression of us-and others
42. Goucher’s Jewish community reacts to anti-Semitic attacks
43. The Rise of Anti-Seminism
44. In an Angry and Fearful Nation, an Outbreak of Anti-Semitism (Reprint)
45. The Story of Esther is Now
46. United against Freedom…
47. Activist: ‘Let’s free England from Jewish control’
48. “A key teaching of the Book of Esther is that once the plague of Jew-hatred gets in the air, almost any environment can nourish it”
49. Auschwitz
50. Alternative Reality #5: Friends Indeed: Hoteps and Neo-Nazis Unite
51. Islamophobia and its apologists
52. Temple De Hirsch Hosts BDS Rabbi
53. PewDiePie, Nazi?
54. Show your love
55. ADL plans Silicon Valley center to fight cyberhate
56. A Sign That Reads ‘Beware of Jews’ Appeared in London
57. Beware of Jews
58. The Restless Ghosts of Baiersdorf
59. Front National: Back to Holocaust Denial
60. YouTube Grows a Spine
61. Labour selects anti-Semite as New Plymouth candidate
62. The enemy inside
63. US ‘Outraged’ by UN Report That Accuses Israel of Establishing ‘Apartheid Regime’ That ‘Dominates the Palestinian People’
64. The Guardian: Why won’t YouTube and Google consider moderators to tackle online hate?
65. What Type of Utopia Will Israel Be?
66. Italian rabbis accuse biblical conference of fueling anti-Judaism
67. 167 House members ask Trump to retain ambassador to combat anti-Semitism
68. US Muslim vets vow to protect Jewish communities
69. Jews Support Muslims against Trump’s border closure
70. Organizations call for Sebastian Gorka resignation for ties to far-right group
71. On anti-Semitism, anti-Islam and fictitious alliances in U.S.
72. Money Sought To Protect Jewish Schools
73. Praying for an anti- anti-Semitic Awakening
74. Alliel – A Window Into Tribal Arrogance
75. Jewish mentality: Charging Palestinians millions of dollars to have their homes demolished
76. Culture Clashes Real and Imagined
77. The Old Man and the Tortoise
78. The Goy According To Hoenlein
79. Lost Tribes of Israel, Blood and History
80. Sanctuary: An Interfaith Movement
81. Vienna – 1938
82. Come in, Come in
83. Not That Jewish
84. Why Call it Judaism? The Case for Humanistic Judaism
85. Legitimacy: the Struggle of Progressive Judaism
86. Is Pope Francis ushering in a revival of Catholic anti-Semitism as it seeks to ally itself with Islam? Prominent Italian Rabbi Giuseppe Laras sounds the alarm
87. Sermon: Anti-Semitism: Do We Have a Problem?

+++

Related articles

• Pope Suggests ‘better To Be Atheist Than Hypocritical Catholic
• Why Does Amazon Sell Holocaust-Denying Authors Next To Real Historians?
• US almost deports French Jewish Holocaust scholar
• ‘There are a couple more years left’: Top Nazi hunter isn’t slowing down his search for aging war criminals
• Anti-Semitism row at Bristol University as lecturers rally round academic who claimed Jews should stop ‘privileging’ the Holocaust
• Nations pledge millions after US pulls family planning funds
• World Holocausts
• Paris exhibit of Nazi-looted art honors a Europe many fear is under threat again
• Seattle synagogue spray-painted with graffiti denying Holocaust
• Renewed Catholic-Jewish relations still with a blemish

Cosmina Craciunescu looks on Positivism

Positivism and its developments in Europe

Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that information derived from sensory experience, logical and mathematical treatments, being the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge, stating that only in science there is a valid knowledge or truth.

Positivism is an older quarrel between philosophy and poetry later being described as a middle way between the humanities and the sciences. It was laid out by Plato , and it states that the only authentic knowledge is the one that allows for positive verification and assumes that valid knowledge exists only in science.

Auguste Comte (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Among the most important Enlightenment thinkers, we can refer to Auguste Comte, who was a French philosopher and sociologist. He followed the creation of a positivist philosophy, and embraced the concept of the evolution of the modern society and of the people through time. The idea of progress was central to Comte’s new science, called sociology, which will eventually lead to the historical consideration of every science.

The positivist phase requires a complete understanding of the universe and the world around us and states that the society should never know if it is in this positivist phase.

As for scientific positivism, it was considered one of the most influential ideologies of progress in the early modern period and had a powerful impact in Europe during the course of 19th Century. It took form in France and had a great impact over other European movements.
The contemporary positivism actually meant the use of scientific methods to uncover the laws according to which both physical and human events occur, while sociology would tend to synthesize all knowledge in order to make a better society.
Positivism is a way of understanding based on science, (Auguste Comte) in which people do not rely on the faith in God, rather on the science behind humanity.

Moritz Schlick, the founding father of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that the observational evidence is indispensable for the knowledge of the world, along with a version of rationalism, being the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation.
Logical positivism developed in a group of discussions called the First Vienna Circle that was organized after the end of the First World War. Some of the important names that tried to support this movement were Hans Reichenbach, Otto Neurath and Rudolph Carnap. The main idea that was supported by them was called synthetic a priori propositions – meaning that the rejection of metaphysics had no meaning, without actually being wrong. In the end, this project did not seem to last for too long.

Stephen Hawking is a recent high profile advocate of positivism, regarding the physical sciences. In his work, called The Universe in a Nutshell , –

English: NASA StarChild image of Stephen Hawking. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

– “…a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory should describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested…if one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is to describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes…”

Through the Vienna Circle, the positivist movement emerged in Europe in the late 1920s. The members of the Vienna Circle had a great antipathy toward the German speculative philosophy and toward sweeping metaphysical theories that had flourished on the continent all throughout the 20th Century.
An interesting aspect of the positivist movement was that the positivists regarded women as being superior to men. Comte praised women as being the vehicles of feelings over reason, of morality over politics .

 Positivism in the Frame of International Relations

In international relations, positivism has been the dominant epistemological point of view. In the theory of the International Relations, positivism tends to create knowledge that is being supported by four foundational assumptions.
The first one is that methodologies that apply in the scientific world can be assumed to perform the same in the non-scientific world. This is referred to as the unity of science .
The second assumption would constitute the fact that there is a clear delineation between values and facts , as well as the belief that facts remain neutral between various theories.
The third assumption is that both the natural and the social environments have regularities that can be uncovered by theories, being the same kind of process that is used when a scientist approaches the natural world, also being used in the context of the social research.
Positivism has a major role to play in international relations theory. It is considered to be one of the explicit alternatives among many, but rather as the implicit Gold Standard which stands against all values that were known before this particular time, along with all of the approaches that were evaluated in the past decades.
International theory underpins and informs international practice even if there is a lengthy lag between the major theories all the way to their absorption in the social, political and economic life.
In the context of international relations, positivism is regarded by scientists in different manners. Based on the works of John Locke and David Hume , the central premise of positivism is that science must be based on a Phenomenalist Nominalism expressing the notion that only statements about a particular phenomena which can be directly experiences can count as knowledge, and that any statements that do not refer to independent atomized objects cannot be granted the status of justified knowledge.

 – Cosmina Craciunescu

  Continue reading: Social Constructivism and Positivism in the Context of International Relations

+++

Related articles

• Social Constructivism and Positivism in the Context of International Relation

• Is Science Objective? – Logicial Positivism – Ashley, Jessica, Sophie (talonsphilosophy.wordpress.com)
  Logical Positivism is an outdated, radical idea that started in the Vienna Circle as far back as the early 1800s. The main view that logical positivists held is that no statement is legitimate or meaningful until it can be proven true or false. In the minds of logical positivists, personal opinions and values only warps science, and it can only be objective through the scientific method. During or class discussion, with the help of a spectrum of ideologies such as instrumentalism and postmodernism, the majority of the class came to the conclusion that science is not objective. This agreement was based on the idea that science is about the process of which we come to a conclusion, rather than the conclusion itself. Logical positivists would disagree with this analogy, as they believe that science is about coming to a proven legitimate conclusion rather than the process.
• Logical Positivism (professorabapo.wordpress.com)
  The history of philosophy interested the Vienna Circle as well as the philosophical views of Hume and Kant. The main goal of their group was to search and find scientific truths. The Nazi party was not in favor of the Vienna Circle during this time as well as the Circle not agreeing with the views of the Nazis. The Vienna Circle wanted to resurrect and update the idea of Hume’s fork which included the idea that all propositions were either analytic, synthetic, or just plain nonsense. Their idea to update Hume’s fork included a man names Rudolf Carnap who presented a description stating basically that “in metaphysics which includes value and normative theory, logical analysis shows negative results that the statements in this domain are completely meaningless.”
• “Methodological Mistakes and Econometric Consequences” (rwer.wordpress.com)
  The rise and fall of logical positivism is the most spectacular philosophical story of the twentieth century. Rising to prominence in the second quarter of the twentieth century, it swept away all contenders, and became widely accepted throughout the academia. Logical positivism provided a particular understanding of the nature of knowledge, as well as that of science and of scientific methodology. The foundations of the social sciences were re-formulated in the light of this new understanding of what science is. Later on, it became clear that the central tenets of the positivist philosophy were wrong. Logical positivism had a “spectacular crash,” and there was some dispute about who had “killed” logical positivism
• The Legal Positivism Of The Elite: A Slippery Slope Toward Tyranny (forbes.com)
  To the legal positivist, there are no immutable principles, no moral absolutes. All is relative, and human legislation and regulation are more a matter of convenience or expedience or personal preference than attempts to codify permanent standards of right and wrong.If law is something malleable and unmoored from immutable principles, then who decides what is legal and illegal? How does a society determine the guidelines that govern how individuals relate to each other?The unspoken assumption of legal positivism—which is an important pillar of the progressive and socialist ideologies that predominate in the social science departments on most college campuses today—is that the most enlightened members of society should use legislation to design and build a “great society.”
• On methodological issues (IV): Austrian Method vs Positivism (jaimemartinez87.wordpress.com)
  the peculiar nature of social sciences implies, following the austrian model, that the method of research must be different from the method applied in natural sciences. An essentialist method based on the axioms of human action whereby propositions are logically and aprioristically deduced.
• Quote for the Day – C.S. Peirce’s Refutation of Positivism (philosophyandpsychology.wordpress.com)
  Positivism “appears” false, a modesty born from his doctrine of fallibilism
  +
  Peirce’s point seems to be that Positivism fails to live up to its own standards because if we suppose the gold standard for knowledge is “direct observation”, how can we be sure that our observation was really and not seemingly direct? To verify that our observation was direct, we need a direct observation that our observation was direct. Thus, Positivism will either lead to an infinite regress or bottom out at a direct observation that we haven’t directly observed is a direct observation.
• Positivism (aroojbhattiblog.wordpress.com)
  he chief results of empiriocriticism are theories that concern concepts and scientific laws very different from those of classical positivism. Forms of positivism that developed later, including logical positivism and neopositivism, which are directly related to critical positivism. Positivism and more usually logical positivism is also used to refer to the radical empiricism and scientism advanced at the beginning of the 20th century by the Vienna Circle. It is considered to be the main influence on sociological positivism, through the philosophy of theorists including Czech-American philosopher Ernest Nagel (1901-1985), philosopher of science Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997) and American sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld (1903-1976).