Today’s school-aged parents are parents of my generation. We’re accustomed to changing technology—at least in our adult lives. Sometimes however, we seem to recollect our own childhood education experiences as the continuing norm when that just isn’t so. When we were school-aged, we went from a period of no public internet to dial-up internet. Our idea of research was to randomly browse a ProQuest archive for as long as it took to find something relevant, because searching was an emerging art. This isn’t the world today, and we should stop acting like it where our children are concerned.

I’m not an expert, but I am a parent. I’m a parent who cares about and is committed to my children’s success. I’m one of many who have been on the fence about, but am now leaning towards and preparing for homeschooling. In exploring this idea and making preparations to execute it, here are some of my findings.

Homeschooled kids have largely been stereotyped as being socially awkward and not prepared to handle the real world. However a new Harvard study has found exactly the opposite; Homeschooled kids are more well adjusted and engaged than their public schooled peers. This is because homeschooled kids are more self-sufficient, and thrive on how to think than what to think.

If you think as a parent you are unfit to teach your children, this is merely a confidence problem you have to overcome, rather than an ability problem. This is especially true since we live in the age of information, whereas the self learning experience is a far cry from what it was when we experienced gradescool. 

Where exactly are your kids with education? How do you know where to start? The easiest answer is simply to let your kids show you.

For literacy, start with your child journaling. Whether a real journal about their day, or imaginative stories, they’ll show you exactly where they are. The words they misspell are their challenge words. They clearly know what the word means if they’ve used it accurately in context, so now it’s time to teach them how to spell it. Then it’s time to teach them similar words, and their meanings, that follow the same spelling rules while you’re on that theme. Then teach them a few alternate synonym word choices to that word. Encourage them to use these new words in their future writing. You’re creating a literacy web, while you should be challenging them to expand.

Once you have expanded literacy, you’ve given them the opportunity to learn whatever they would like if you have fostered an environment of curiosity. Raise a self starter and they will learn.

Mathematics is a challenge for me, but lucky for me I’m good with money. Coincidentally, money is a great way to introduce any mathematical concept visually all the way up to Pre Algebra. Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Decimals, Fractions and Percentages can all be visually taught with pocket change. It’s crucial to visually teach these concepts with real world tangibility before moving to written mathematics. Teaching the “why behind the what” with something as motivating as money is a great way to introduce new concepts. As for that later Algebra stuff… well, I have a few years to figure that out.

If you’re still stuck on the social aspect part, then there’s a good chance that you’re actually shallow and you should work on that. You weren’t really socialized so much as you were part of a hierarchy, and lucky you for not having been at the bottom of that hierarchy like I was. Getting pushed didn’t do much for me socially. Getting a concussion in a classroom only to have the school lie to my father about it (zero tolerance bullying) didn’t do much for me socially. Getting put in choke holds in the locker room didn’t do much for me socially.

Sunday school did a lot for me socially. If it weren’t for Sunday School, I’d be far worse off socially. If public school is where I gained my social skills, I’d probably be a psychopath right now. I understand religion is a debatable topic in libertarian circles, but community churches certainly engage in the community service and voluntarism that libertarians espouse. Sunday School is where these concepts were introduced to me and where I first engaged in them. 

Regardless of how one feels about religion, your child will fare far better socially by going to Sunday School than public school. Or any club or sports team. There are far more beneficial ways for your children to learn constructive social skills than public school. Even just a few short hours a week of constructive social activities far outweigh hours long days of public school where kids are exposed to negative behaviors and interactions. Even the kids who bully other kids aren’t getting anything positive socially, because that behavior won’t get them far in the real world, even though schools effectively enable it by pretending it doesn’t happen.

All in all, you as a parent are your child’s best teacher. There are resources out there to help you that didn’t exist when you were your child’s age. If you are committed, your children will be better off learning from you. 

The post Considering Homeschooling? You’re Far From Alone. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohan 

Attorney General William Barr warned that religious people are not imposing their beliefs on others, but that “militant secularists” are imposing their values on religious people.

Barr discussed religious freedom in the United States during an interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and co-host Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel. The attorney general warned that religion is being “driven out of the marketplace of ideas,” and that “there’s an organized, militant secular effort to drive religion out of our lives.”

“The problem today is not that religious people are trying to impose their views on non-religious people,” Barr said. “It’s the opposite — it’s that militant secularists are trying to impose their values on religious people and they’re not accommodating the freedom of religion of people of faith.”

Barr pointed out that the Founding Fathers viewed religion as “essential to maintaining a free country.”

“The reason they felt they could grant so much freedom in the Constitution and only provide for limited government was because they felt that religion was there and the people were religious people who could largely govern themselves,” Barr said. “All the founders, and as you pointed out earlier to me, Your Eminence, Alexis de Tocqueville observed the centrality of religion, to the health of American democracy.”

Barr added that he was not talking about mixing church and state.

“We believe in the separation of church and state, but what permits a limited government and minimal command and control of the population and allows people to have freedom of choice in their lives, and trust in the people is the fact that they are a people that are capable of disciplining themselves according to moral values.”

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Image: Flickr

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Skeptics may quickly reply that people can be good without believing in God. Absolutely true. Atheists and agnostics can act morally; people of faith can act immorally. That’s not the real issue. The relevant question is who or what is the source of objective morality.

For many libertarians, the non-aggression principle (NAP) is paramount, and serves as the moral basis for their beliefs. I realize there are libertarians who take issue with the NAP, but even consequentialists order their beliefs to promote human flourishing, which itself presupposes an objective morality. 

If libertarians agree that the initiation of force against another is immoral or that it is immoral to promote policies antithetical to human flourishing, is there good reason to ground these beliefs in something other than God?

I argue no. Secular libertarians would defend their views by appealing to human nature. People are intrinsically valuable because they are human. They have the ability to think, feel, reason, plan, love, and sacrifice. And because human beings stand equal in relation to each other, no person or government has the right to initiate or threaten the use of force against another innocent person.

While this conclusion is admirable, such reasoning lacks objectivity. Any attempt to justify a moral standard apart from God will inevitably end in defending the standard using subjective reasoning. Take the libertarian argument about human nature as an example. This argument’s weakness is that it can’t answer the question of why our human nature or equality is grounds for opposing the initiation of force against another person. The libertarian grounds his belief on his subjective view of the importance of our humanity and equality.

But without God, human traits are just accidents of the universe. And equality is meaningless. If we’re all just the product of evolutionary processes that have unfolded over time, then any action is permissible because human beings don’t have any intrinsic value. How could we have inherent value from a mindless product of chance? The only value that could be present is the value ascribed to us by others. And in this framework, it’s usually the people with the most political power that get to determine who is and is not of value. 

With God, the story is different. We have intrinsic worth because God created us in His image and likeness and with a purpose—to know and love Him and to love others. We aren’t the product of cosmic chance. We are sons and daughters of God—the source of all that is good. There is no moral standard higher than this. 

Our actions do have eternal consequences if God exists. They aren’t a footnote in a history that will ultimately be meaningless after the heat death of the universe. 

So if people have intrinsic value not because of biological happenstance but because of who created us, then we have a non-arbitrary stopping point for morality—the God of the universe.

Many libertarians are understandably skeptical of God and religion because of how people wield both as a weapon to impose their will on others. I’m sympathetic to that view, but I see belief in God and a proper understanding of religion as strengthening the libertarian’s case for the NAP, which can ultimately lead to freedom from government and even from sin. 

The alternative is a life without any objective moral standard and eternal purpose. And that’s just absurd.

The post Why Libertarians Need God appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Mary Margaret Olohan 

Christianity continues to decline among U.S. adults as the number of adults identifying as “nothing in particular” increases, Pew Research Center found.

The number of American adults who describe themselves as Christian dropped 12 percentage points over the past decade and the number of both Protestants and Catholics in the U.S. has dropped, according to Pew Research data released Thursday. (RELATED: Democratic Candidates Speak Out On Christian Faith’s Compatibility With LGBTQ Issues)

Surveys Pew conducted over the phone between 2018 and 2019 found 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christian. Meanwhile, 26% of American adults identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” a number that increased from 17% in 2009.

“The data shows that the trend toward religious disaffiliation documented in the Center’s 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape Studies, and before that in major national studies like the General Social Survey (GSS), has continued apace,” according to Pew.

Protestantism in America has taken a hit: 43% of adults identify as Protestant, a number which dropped from 51% in 2009. Similarly, 23% of American adults identified as Catholic in 2009, but 20% now identify as Catholic. (RELATED: Biden: ‘We Allow The Homophobes’ To Control The Agenda)

Only 2% of American adults identified as atheist in 2009 — a number which has since doubled to 4%, surveys found. Agnostics have increased from 3% in 2009 to 5% now.

Seventeen percent of Americans describe their religious affiliation as “nothing in particular.” Twelve percent of Americans described themselves this way in 2009.

Data showed a “wide gap” between baby boomers, millennials, and members of the Silent Generation. While 84% of those in the Silent Generation, who were born between 1928 and 1945, identify as Christians, 76% of baby boomers described themselves as Christian.

This differs from the 49% of millennials who identify as Christian. Four in 10 millennials consider themselves religious “nones,” and about 1 in 3 millennials say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month.

This article is republished with permission from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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“Announcement! Jesus of Nazareth has now appointed one of his successors, Greta Thunberg”, the Church of Limhamn tweeted on December 1, 2018, according to The Daily Wire.

Last week, the Church of Sweden Malmeo went as far as ringing their church bells in step with the Global Climate Strike which Thunberg leads. The Church website released a statement announcing the news which reads:

“In conjunction with the Global Climate Strike, church bells ring and we gather for prayer for the future of the earth,” the church announced. “We pray that we believe that man is responsible for nurturing and managing Creation so that children are given the opportunity for a future. We pray that we know that climate change affects the most vulnerable — poor, children, and women. We pray that we believe in man’s ability to change and change.”

From a Christian perspective, this is a gross form of blasphemy and a bold statement that only goes to show what a disgusting cult these climate change activists have created. For any Christian church to claim the name of anyone as a successor of Jesus Christ puts them at odds with the teachings of Christ Himself and makes them anti-Christ as a result.

Jesus said in John 14:6 that He “is the way the truth, and the life and that no man comes to the Father except through Him. To appoint any mortal human being as a successor to Christ should be a blatant sign to any Christian that this “church” would lead people straight to Hell both spiritually and naturally in the name of its progressive political agenda.

Canadian author and Climate Change activist Naomi Klein is open about how climate change activism can be used as a weapon against Capitalism. In her book, “This Changes Everything: The Climate vs. Capitalism, Klein writes, “The really inconvenient truth is that it’s not about carbon, it’s about Capitalism.” “The convenient truth is that we can seize this existential crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better,” she writes.

The Church of Sweden needs to be reminded of the Biblical command in Exodus 20:3-5 that God forbids that those who claim to have a relationship with Him “have no other gods before Him” – and further commands that His people do not create earthly idols.

This declaration, which the church later tried to write off as a joke, is in clear violation of the words written in Exodus without any room for debate.

I fail to see how anyone who claims to be a Christian would even dream of following a mortal man or woman in place of the Messiah. It doesn’t require a divine revelation to see that this so-called church is not part of the Body of Christ, but a pagan cult with a Socialist political agenda.

Jesus prayed while he was in the Garden of Gethsemane before His crucifixion that the will of The Father “be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It is abundantly clear to anyone who studies the life of Christ that there are many libertarian themes in His teachings. If the teachings of the Church of Sweden prevail, I dare to say the world will find itself in a literal Hell where human liberty is completely non-existent.

As a follower of Jesus Christ, I strive never to rush to hasty judgment. However, when a religious system seeks to push a hellish agenda, I will speak out boldly! The Lord came to bring liberty to the captives, not to chain us with political or religious schemes of men.

Like Christ, I will start flipping the tables of religious tyrants who seek to enslave people in the name of the greater good. As Thomas Jefferson said, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

Image: Flickr

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Walt Whitman’s Criticisms of “Fallen” America

The fears and concerns about social conditions and their solutions heard today have been expressed many a time in the past, both more distant and closer to our own time. For instance, the famous 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman (1819-92) expressed such disenchantment about the United States in his 1871 essay, Democratic Vistas:

Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States.… The spectacle is appalling. We live in an atmosphere of hypocrisy throughout. The depravity of the business classes of our country is not less than has been supposed, but infinitely greater. The official [government] services of America are saturated with corruption, bribery, falsehood, and maladministration.

Confess that everywhere, in shop, street, church, theater, barroom, official chair, are pervading flippancy and vulgarity, low cunning, infidelity — everywhere an abnormal libidinousness … with a range of manners, or rather lack of manners, probably the meanest to be seen in the world.

In spite of America’s industrial achievements, the rising standards of living, the opportunities for the less well off to better themselves, and the prevailing spirit of freedom and individual autonomy, America was enveloped with cultural decay and spiritual stagnation, Whitman forlornly said. Not too surprisingly, he called for a social and cultural renaissance in America through the emergence of great novelists and poets, who would capture and inspire a higher and truer and more virtuous path for America. They would highlight the heroism, the goodness, and the greatness of Democratic America, properly understood.

Whitman’s Better America and Political Paternalism

But he was too impatient to wait for these things to fully come on their own through literature and culture, appropriately inspired. A better and more virtuous America required the middle class being broadened to include more of those currently among the poor. A more active religious sentiment and practice as the ultimate foundation for America needed to be cultivated, along with love for and dedication to “the Union” to be fostered and reinforced all across the country (after all, it was only six years since the end of the Civil War). A unified and created nationalist spirit was essential.

Whitman offered no full central plan about how to ensure America being on a renewed path to “greatness,” but he made it clear that while Democracy (always in the essay with a capital “D”) was the “divine” and moral order for humanity, most especially in the United States, a free society could only be trusted with freedom when the proper values and virtues had been developed among the population.

As long as “the people” (what Whitman called God’s “divine aggregate”) was lacking in the needed qualities for free citizenship, political paternalism would have to rule over them until they were ready to democratically rule themselves. Or as Whitman expressed it: “That until the individual or community show due signs of [democratic self-ruling maturity], or be so minor or fractional as not to endanger the State, the condition of authoritative tutelage may continue, and self-government must abide its time.”

Whitman’s Program for Remaking the American People

What Whitman did call for was a “program” to be established for all Americans, to lead them to that higher level of true Democracy:

I should demand a program of Culture, drawn out, not for a single class alone, or for the parlors or lecture-rooms, but with an eye to practical life, the West, the workingmen, the facts of farms and jackplanes and engineers, and of the broad range of the women also of the middle and working strata, and with reference to the perfect equality of women, and of a grand and powerful motherhood. I should demand of this program or theory a scope generous enough to include the widest human area.

Out of this would come a new and better American Man. This program and agenda to make and keep America great would have to include the physical training of a superior breed of people. Said Whitman:

To our model a clear-blooded, strong-fibred physique, is indispensable; the questions of food, drink, air, exercise, assimilation, digestion, can never be intermitted.

Out of these we descry a well-begotten Selfhood in youth, fresh, ardent, emotional, aspiring, full of adventure; at maturity, brave, perceptive, under control, neither too talkative nor too reticent, neither flippant nor somber; of the bodily figure, the movements easy, the complexion showing the best blood, somewhat flushed, breast expanded, an erect attitude, a voice whose sound outvies music, eyes of calm and steady gaze, yet capable also of lashing and a general presence that holds its own in the company of the highest.

Whitman spoke of building a nation of persons imbued with a “Personality” of “Individuality.” But all of his new American individuals end up being cookie-cut from the same mental and physical mold. This renewed America, with new man (and woman), would be designed according to Walt Whitman’s imagination. In addition, the United States needed “future religious forms, sociology, literature, teachers, schools, costumes, &c., [all of] a compact whole, uniform, on tallying principles.” Walt Whitman seemed to want a peculiar individualism of national conformity in mind and body.

Hazony’s Call for Tradition and Rejection of “Rationalism”

A recent variation on the same theme is the call for a new national conservatism that rejects both the relativist multiculturalism of “the left” and what is called a “rationalist liberalism” that rejects a needed American traditionalism. It is summarized in a lecture delivered at Harvard University in April 2019 by Yoram Hazony (b. 1964), the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, Israel.

Hazony argues “Conservative Rationalism Has Failed” (part 1 and part 2). In essence, he wishes to see a political, economic, and cultural turn away from the ideas and influences of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Rationalism, individualism, the free market, and religious skepticism in America and the West, in general, have become socially decadent, culturally immoral, and philosophically foundationless due to the rejection of traditionalism as the basis of belief, values, and institutions, all of which rely upon certain religious ideas and dogmas, Hazony argues.

American conservatism went astray in the post–World War II period by eschewing the sacred and basing its case for a free and good society on “reason.” Says Hazony:

What were once linchpin concepts such as family and nation, man and woman, God and Scripture, the honorable and the sacred, have been found wanting and severely damaged, if not overthrown. The resulting void has been filled by new doctrines, until now mostly neo-Marxist or libertarian in character. But a racialist “white identity” politics in a Darwinian key is gathering momentum as well.

All three of these approaches to political and moral questions are, in a sense, creatures of the Enlightenment, claiming to be founded on a universally accessible reason and to play by its rules. This is another way of saying that none of them have much regard for inherited tradition, seeing it as contributing little to our understanding of politics and morals.

He also rejects the founding premises in the Declaration of Independence on the “natural rights” of each and every individual, “a kind of official ideology of the state” that he considers misplaced and dangerous for America. He argues that rationalists of every stripe presume that “reason” has the capacity and ability to create society, mold it into any desired shape, and transform the human condition. Hazony considers this misplaced.

Religion and Tradition Back in Public Schools

Society is the long and cumulative product of human experience that has emerged out of the contributions of countless generations. Traditions capture the wisdom of the ages, while the current generation, cutting itself off from all that historical humanity has learned, has nothing to go by but the reality of its own time, which is a mere slice of mankind’s time on this planet. Relying on what the reasoning minds of the current generation can know and with the arrogance that that is sufficient to design society has resulted in the conflicts, contradictions, and tyrannical presumptions of those such as the politically correct multiculturalists and identity-politics warriors.

The acceptance by conservatives of this “liberal rationalism,” Hazony warns, has brought about the loss of religion in society, reflected in the banishing of religion from the government school system and the public square in general. Thus, America and the West have become increasingly godless societies. Earlier in American history and politics, Hazony wistfully reminds his audience, religion was a central part of the political; now it has all but disappeared.

So what does Yoram Hazony want? He wants to reinstate religion, most importantly, within the public school system and as a mandatory part of the curriculum:

A nation that honors its religious traditions in the schools will end up honoring traditions in the broader public sphere. A nation that heaps dishonor on its religious traditions by banning them from the schools will end up dishonoring its traditions in the broader public sphere as America consistently does today.

Without religion, Hazony believes, reasonable men guided by reason alone will simply go around in circles ending up, perhaps, with Marxist conclusions, maybe white-nationalist results, or possibly liberal or libertarian outcomes. Nobody knows and anything goes, unless there is this outside-and-above-man standard, benchmark, and imposer of right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust, and free and unfree on humanity.

What should be the standards and benchmarks and expected criteria for ideas and actions, according to Hazony? In other words, according to him, what does God want of us? He tells us honor and restraint. Restraint, he says, teaches us that there are natural and social limits in the confines of which freedom is possible by specifying what is or is not right, possible or doable. Honor refers to following standards and acting accordingly.

Teaching Restraint and Honor in Public Schools

Hazony believes that reason and public discourse or introspective reflection cannot ensure the discovery, valuation, and following of restraints in our personal conduct. Reason unrestrained by God-based tradition leads to chaos and tyranny, he implies. Only tradition, that is, acceptance of what earlier generations have handed down to us, can safely guide us to know that we should not do this or that — that we are obligated to do one thing but not another — and can bring restraint to people’s personal and social conduct. Once you tell people that they can decide what is good or bad, or right and wrong, the genie is out of the bottle and social instability and discord seemingly inevitably follow.

How do you get people to act in these restrained ways, according to Hazony? By honoring people who do — that is, by recognizing, socially rewarding, and respecting honorable conduct. But what is honorable conduct? Hazony suggests:

My proposal is straightforward: Freedom cannot be maintained in the absence of self-constraint. And the only known means of causing individuals to shoulder hardship and constraint without coercion or significant financial compensation is by rewarding them with honor — that is, with status and public approval that is tied to their upholding inherited norms and ideals rather than choosing to be free of them. Thus, for example, in the old Christian and Jewish order, individuals were honored for marrying and raising children, for military service, for national and religious leadership, for teaching the young, for knowledge of Scripture, law and custom, for performing religious duties, and for personally caring for the aged.

So serving in the military or in public office, as well as caring for one’s parents, and being a good husband, father, and son, should be honored in society. But as far as Hazony is concerned,

The demolition of the nation’s traditions is, at bottom, a struggle to prevent the government, schools, and private institutions from giving honor to norms inherited from the past.… I don’t believe that America has much of a chance of righting itself, for example, so long as most children are required to attend schools in which God and Scripture are daily dishonored by their absence.

Notice that while Hazony refers to the positive influence of traditions inherited from the past, and the positive social power of people being inspired and guided by what may be learned from the long experience of mankind, he believes in the state as one or even the primary societal mechanism to inculcate those traditions and values within the nation.

Disturbed that the political and cultural rationalism that he decries is propagandized for in the government-run and government-mandated educational system, he does not call for ending the government’s compulsory schooling and allowing free, voluntary, and competitive private education to function in its place. No, he wants cultural and “conservative” centrally planned schooling as much as those on “the left” that he disagrees with and disapproves of.

Conservative-Content Public Schooling Is Still Social Engineering

Conservative values wrapped in religious training will be the political vehicle to put the “right” ideas, attitudes, and conduct into people’s heads. A competition of ideas concerning which if any traditions should be followed, an intellectual rivalry about alternative notions of “tradition” and its appropriate content, is not what Hazony wants. He says that the bedrock of American traditionalist conservatism is Judaism and Christianity, and these must be reintroduced into the curriculum and taught to every young American.

But whose “Christianity” and “Judaism”? He admits that religion has been the basis of conflict and discord in the past, but he shrugs off the possibility that once religion is mandatory in every schoolroom, the battles will bubble to the surface once again. Catholicism or Protestantism? Among the many branches, which variations on the Protestant theme will be given greater prominence?

What about Judaism, and what happens when Jewish students are insistently taught that “Jesus is their Lord and Savior, the Redeemer who has already come and died for their sins”? And by the way, words matter. What will “the Book” be called: the “Old Testament” or the “Hebrew Bible”?

This, alone, can cause flurries of conflict and controversy. Is it necessary to point out the discord that has arisen over evolution versus creationism? Once religious training is compulsory in government schools, that will cause no end of warfare among parents and proselytizers of one reading of the Bible versus another on science versus faith. What about atheists and Muslims or Buddhists?

The classical liberal and libertarian case for full privatization of education defuses all these curriculum troubles and tensions. Parents and students select their own education and schooling institutions. Schools compete in offering curricula and teaching methods to serve and suit the desires and demands of many different consumers of education.

But this is not what Hazony wants to hear. For him, this demonstrates the supposed bankruptcy of “liberal” rationalism. There is one true tradition and one true faith to be taught in America. And if he is in charge — or those who think like him — all of us will get it whether or not we want part, all, or none of it. Yoram Hazony’s conservative traditionalism is a potential road to theological authoritarianism.

Hayek on Reasonable vs. Rationalistic Enlightenment

But what is most missing in Hazony’s harking back to pre-Enlightenment premises for society is a failure on his part to appreciate that there were several intellectual strands within the Enlightenment tradition that emerged in the 18th and early 19th centuries. His caricature of Enlightenment liberalism is one of them, albeit a highly influential one.

In 1946, Austrian economist F.A. Hayek delivered a lecture on what he called “Individualism: True and False.” The gist of his argument was that there had been a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding concerning the relationship between the individual and society, both in terms of social theory and practical politics.

He juxtaposed what he suggested could be considered two traditions of social and political individualism that emerged out of the Enlightenment: the British and the French. The British tradition included such thinkers as John Locke, Bernard Mandeville, Edmund Burke, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson (the last three of whom were among those often referred to as the Scottish moral philosophers). For these British thinkers, social theory began with a focus on the individual because they understood that “society” is not an entity separate from the interactions of the individuals who comprise it. To understand the origin and evolution of society, we must understand the logic and interactive processes of human action.

For especially the Scottish philosophers, John Locke’s conception of an original state of nature prior to government, out of which a “social contract” emerged for the formation of government so individuals may be more secure and protected in their “natural rights” to their respective lives, liberty, and honestly acquired property, was a mental experiment to deduce the logic of a limited government desired to ensure liberty rather than abridge it.

It was not claimed that this was the origin of society or government. It was understood and explained by David Hume, Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and others that the ideas and institutions of a free society had emerged and taken form through long societal evolutionary processes up until their own times. It was asking precisely what our reason and our historical knowledge and our human experience tell us about the nature of man, the heritage of earlier generations, and the practices of governments in the past that led to the suggested benefits of, in Adam Smith’s words, “a System of Natural Liberty,” with its wide personal and economic freedom, if liberty and prosperity was to be cultivated for all.

Furthermore, in this British or Scottish tradition the conception of man is not that of a rational calculator presumed to possess perfect knowledge and guided only by a narrow material notion of “self-interest.” Instead, man was seen as motivated by passions as much as by cool reason, with imperfect and limited knowledge. The social order and many of its institutional traditions, customs, and rules of interaction have evolved slowly and in unanticipated and unpredictable ways over many human lifetimes. Much of what is called human society and civilization is, therefore, seen as “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” (to use the phrase coined by Ferguson and often quoted by Hayek).

Thus the British and Scottish Enlightenment tradition of individualism had little confidence in the ability to plan society. And particularly because of man’s imperfections and foibles, these thinkers were reluctant to see power centralized in the hands of government. Far better to decentralize decision-making in the private competitive market so as to limit the potential damage from error and abuse.

In the alternative French tradition represented by thinkers such as Descartes, Hayek argued, there was a tendency toward hyper-rationality, a belief that man through his reason could understand clearly and definitely how to remake society. All social institutions and traditions not “provable” through logic and rational reflection to be “useful” or “good” were to be criticized and torn down. In their place would be constructed a new world according to a politically planned design. In many of his writings over the years, Hayek tried to show the “fatal conceit” in those who presumed to possess the knowledge and ability to reconstruct man and society in their own “enlightened” image.

Hazony’s Failure to Appreciate the Importance of Liberalism

If Hazony knew about or appreciated the Scottish variation on Enlightenment thinking, particularly as interpreted and formulated by someone like Friedrich Hayek, a reasonable conclusion would be that it is classical liberalism that not only respects individual liberty and economic freedom, but cultivates a social setting in which the evolved traditions and institutions of society are able to endure and “naturally” evolve over time in the context of the heritage of the past.

It is of note that in volume one of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (1973), Hayek’s last major work, he warned that the “rationalism” that Hazony opposes often fosters that type of revolt against reason that can lead blind faith, emotional irrationalism, and calls to higher intuitions claimed to be possessed by political ideologues and fanatics to arise as the false alternatives to the use of reason properly understood.

So that society can escape from both dangers — the hyper-rationalism of the social engineer and the anti-rationalism of the coercing traditionalist — Hayek explained, “Liberalism for this reason restricts deliberate control of the overall order of the society to the enforcement of general rules as are necessary for the formation of a spontaneous order [of a free society], the details of which we cannot foresee.”

Yoram Hazony’s call for a conservative traditionalism supported by government through enforced public schooling and political propagandizing in the public square for developing “honorable” conduct among the citizenry is another variation on the collectivist and statist theme. It is the other side of the same paternalistic and central planning coin as the politically correct multiculturalists that Hazony wishes to unseat.

Once there is an attempt to re-create or design the institutions of a society and their content, the “traditionalist” becomes the very type of “rationalist” social engineer that Hazony says he opposes. The very nature of the traditions of belief, values, codes of conduct, and inherited conceptions of “right things to do” is precisely their lack of centralized planning and construction.

Real Traditions Are Part of the Spontaneous Order

Traditions and the social institutions in which they are embedded emerge, take their forms, influence, and guide human action and interactions most often in unplanned ways. They originate out of the actions of individuals or groups of individuals usually pursuing purposes of the moment and their personal futures, with unintended consequences of which they have little or no forethought and which oftentimes they could not fully imagine if they tried.

Think for a moment of an example from Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on Civil Society (1767) concerning the emergence of property rights, law, and government:

Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniences, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrives at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate, and pass on, like animals, in the track of their nature, without perceiving its end. He who first said, “I will appropriate this field: I will leave it to my heirs,” did not perceive, that he was laying the foundation of civil laws and political establishments.

Or Adam Smith’s explanation in his Lectures on Jurisprudence (1766) of part of the institutional origins of probity, punctuality, and trustworthiness arising from the self-interested conduct of commerce and trade:

Whenever commerce is introduced into any country, probity and punctuality always accompany it.… It is far more reducible to self-interest, that general principle which regulates the actions of every man, and which leads men to act in a certain manner from views of advantage, and is as deeply implanted in an Englishman as a Dutchman.

A dealer is afraid of losing his character, and is scrupulous in observing every engagement. When a person makes perhaps 20 contracts in a day, he cannot gain so much by endeavoring to impose on his neighbors, as the very appearance of a cheat would make him lose.

When people seldom deal with one another, we find that they are somewhat disposed to cheat, because they can gain more by a smart trick than they can lose by the injury that it does to their character.… Wherever dealings are frequent, a man does not expect to gain so much by any one contract as by probity and punctuality in the whole, and a prudent dealer, who is sensible of his real interest, would rather choose to lose what he has a right to than give any ground for suspicion.…

When the greater part of people are merchants they always bring probity and punctuality into fashion, and these therefore are the principle virtues of a commercial nation.
The inability to know where and how these institutions emerge and the details and importance of their forms and patterns was emphasized by the Austrian economist Friedrich von Weiser in his treatise Social Economics (1914):

The economy is full of social institutions which serve the entire economy and are so harmonious in structure as to suggest that they are the creation of an organized social will. Actually they can only have originated in the cooperation of periodically independent persons. Such a social institution is illustrated by money, by the economic market, by the division of labor.…

How could any general contractual agreement be reached as to institutions whose being is still hidden in the mists of the future, and is only conceived in an incomplete manner by a few far-seeing persons, while the great mass can never clearly appreciate the nature of such an institution until it actually attained its full form and is generally operative?

And, finally, as Ludwig von Mises expressed it in Theory and History (1957):

The historical process is not designed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all individuals. No man can plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States.

All that most likely can be effectively done to create the “space” for the reemergence of traditions reflecting the actions, experiences, and the heritage of intergenerational wisdom is the removal of the political planning, regulation, and redistributive government policies that handicap and restrain the free action of multitudes of individuals.

In their place should be the “end-independent” general rules of individual rights, private property, free and voluntary exchange and association, and an impartial rule of law recognizing and protecting those “natural” rights to personal freedom and peaceful interrelationships among the members of society.

In this setting the use and role of “reason” to guide our actions, the appeal to some of faiths (and which ones), the forms of conduct considered appropriately “restraining” and deserving to be “honored” would spontaneously emerge anew. No doubt, this process will draw upon the heritage and legacies of the traditions of the past that remain as the residues of human affairs, in spite of the impact of the social-engineering mentality and its works.

But Yoram Hazony’s central plan to socially engineer the re-creation of the tradition-based society will be defeated by the very rationalist uses of government that he has chosen to reverse the rationalism of the political Left he so strongly opposes.

Richard M. Ebeling

The post Hazony’s Tradition-Based Society Is a Form of Social Engineering appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Despite these trends, a yearning for a soulmate remains a common thread across the generations. Most Americans, it seems, are still looking for one. According to a 2017 poll two-thirds of Americans believe in soulmates. That number far surpasses the percentage of Americans who believe in the biblical God.

The idea that there is a person out there who can make each of us happy and whole is constantly conveyed through portrayals in films, books, magazines and television.

What accounts for the persistence of the soulmate ideal in the contemporary age?

Origins of the soulmate myth

Ten years ago, after a hard breakup, I decided to investigate. As a scholar of religion and culture who was trained in the history of ideas, I was interested in connecting the various iterations of the soulmate ideal through time.

One early use of the word “soulmate” comes from the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a letter from 1822: “To be happy in Married Life … you must have a Soul-mate.”

For Coleridge, a successful marriage needed to be about more than economic or social compatibility. It required a spiritual connection.

Several centuries prior to Coleridge, the Greek philosopher Plato, in his text “Symposium,” wrote about the reasons behind the human yearning for a soulmate. Plato quotes the poet Aristophanes as saying that all humans were once united with their other half, but Zeus split them apart out of fear and jealousy. Aristophanes explains the transcendent experience of two soulmates reuniting in the following way:

“And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself … the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment.”

The religious sources

These references aren’t limited to Coleridge and Plato. In numerous religious traditions, the human soul’s connection to God has been envisioned in similar ways. While the examples from religious traditions are numerous, I will mention just two from Judaism and Christianity.

At different points in the history of these these two faith traditions, mystics and theologians employed erotic and marital metaphors to understand their relationships with God. Despite important differences, they both envision amorous union with the one divine force as the pathway to true selfhood, happiness and wholeness.

This idea is expressed in the Hebrew Bible, where God is consistently seen as the one to whom his chosen people, Israel, are betrothed. “For your Maker is your husband,” a passage in the Hebrew Bible says. Israel – the ancient kingdom, not the modern nation-state – plays the role of God’s spouse.

Throughout Israelite history this idea frames the relationship between the people of Israel and God, whom they know as Yahweh. When Yahweh ratifies his covenant with Israel, his chosen people, he is often referred to as Israel’s husband. In turn, Israel is envisioned as Yahweh’s wife. For the Israelites, the divine one is also their romantic soulmate.

This is illustrated in the Song of Songs, an erotic love poem with a female narrator. The Song of Songs is written from the perspective of a woman longing to be with her male lover. It’s filled with vivid physical descriptions of the two characters and the delights they take in each other’s bodies.

“Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates with all choicest fruits,” the narrator recounts her man saying to her, before proclaiming that her garden is “a fountain, a well of living water, and flowing streams from Lebanon.”

Song of Songs is not only an unquestioned part of Jewish and Christian scripture, it’s been understood for millennia by Jewish sages as the key to understanding the most important events in Israelite history.

Erotic mysticism

By the second century A.D., Christians too began framing their relationship with the divine in erotic terms through the Song of Songs.

One of the first, and most influential, was Origen of Alexandria, a second-century mystic who became the first great Christian theologian. According to him, the Song is the key to understanding the soul’s relationship to Christ.

Origen calls it an “epithalamium,” which is a poem written for a bride on the way to the bridal chamber. For him, the Song is “a drama and sang under the figure of the Bride,” who is about to wed her groom, “the Word of God.”

Origen views Jesus as his divine soulmate. He anticipates the end of time when his soul will “cleave” to Christ, so that he will never be apart from him again – and he does this by using erotic terms.

His writings on the Song founded a rich and expansive tradition of Christian mystical texts based on the soul’s erotic and marital union with Christ.

The power of the myth

By tracing the soulmate ideal to these religious sources it’s possible to gain fresh perspective on its power and function in an age when more Americans identify as having no religious affiliation.

The soulmate myth informs the reality show “The Bachelor,” where young women wait for the attention of one chosen “bachelor” in hopes of finding true love. It is the same in the film adaptation of Nicholas Spark’s novel “The Notebook,” which follows the path of two lovers separated at various times by war, family and illness.

And then there are the Tinder users – wading through an excess of possible romantic partners, perhaps hoping that their one and only will eventually make them whole and happy.

In light of the myth’s history, it’s not surprising that even at a time when fewer Americans may be turning to God, they are still looking for their one true soulmate.

Bradley Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Skidmore College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post What’s Behind the Belief in a Soulmate? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

During his unhinged escapade, he harassed an elderly woman for eight minutes and offered $100 bounties to dox three minor girls. So much for standing up for women, eh?

Here is the video of him harassing the elderly woman who was quietly handing out pamphlets:

Here is the video of him offering money to dox minors:

Steven Crowder mused that it was odd that Twitter would ban a clearly marked AOC parody account because their dumb tweets were too similar to AOC’s dumb tweets (policy against misleading, or something) while letting this sort of behavior stand.

On Tuesday, he released a video on Twitter committing to “do better.” The “apology” consisted of more ranting with the pledge to “do better” being a footnote at the end, all while not acknowledging his actions.

It’s once again, another example of Leftist Gatekeeping, pretending to be a champion of women, but terms and conditions apply. Those T&C’s? Only if you’re a Leftist.

Check out some of the top replies below, most of which received far more Twitter favorites than his video.

The post Rep Brian Sims Offers Non-Apology For Harassing Pro-Lifers. Twitter Non-Accepts. appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Joshua Gillon

The Satanic Temple announced Wednesday that the IRS granted it tax-exempt status as a religious nonprofit, claiming it as a victory against theistic organizations’ “exclusive rights.”

The Satanic Temple claimed in a social media post that its new status would place it on equal footing with other religious organizations, giving it “the same access to public spaces” and enabling it “to apply for faith-based government grants.”

The temple’s claims seem redundant, however, in light of the fact that any 501c3 organization, religious or otherwise, is qualified to apply for government grants. There are also no government grants exclusive to faith-based institutions.

“We are pleased to announce that for the very first time in history, a satanic organization has been recognized by the United States federal government as being a church,” the temple’s statement read.

“This acknowledgement will help make sure The Satanic Temple has the same access to public spaces as other religious organizations, affirm our standing in court when battling religious discrimination, and enable us to apply for faith-based government grants,” it added.

The federal government states clearly, however, that when approving grants it does not discriminate against nonprofit community organizations based on their religious character or lack thereof.

“The federal government does not discriminate against non-governmental organizations on the basis that such organizations have a religious character. Faith-based organizations are eligible to compete for grant funds on the same basis as all other non-governmental organizations,” reads a statement from the Health Resources and Services Administration website.

“Decisions about grant applications and awards will be made based solely on the competence, capacity, and actions of the provider, not whether it is a secular or faith-based provider,” it said.

Lucien Greaves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, decided to pursue tax-exempt status for the organization in response to President Donald Trump’s 2017 religious freedom executive order. Greaves claimed that achieving tax-exempt status was necessary to ensure that other nonprofit organizations have the same rights as religious organizations.

“As ‘the religious’ are increasingly gaining ground as a privileged class, we must ensure that this privilege is available to all, and that superstition doesn’t gain exclusive rights over non-theistic religions or non-belief,” Greaves wrote in a newsletter, according to Rolling Stone.

The Satanic Temple did not clarify which rights Greaves believed were in danger of becoming “exclusive” to theistic organizations. The temple’s new status also did not secure any new rights for non-religious nonprofit organizations.

Representatives of The Satanic Temple did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment by the time of publication.

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Neetu Chandak on December 7, 2018

A Nebraska elementary school principal was placed on administrative leave Thursday after banning various Christmas decorations like candy canes, reindeer and Christmas trees over religious concerns.

Jennifer Sinclair sent a memo to Manchester Elementary School staff about what was acceptable and unacceptable Christmas decor, according to Liberty Counsel, a group that focuses on religious freedom.

“Historically, the shape is a ‘J’ for Jesus,” the memo read. “The red is for the blood of Christ, and the white is a symbol of his resurrection.”

Colored candy canes were also banned. Acceptable items included Olaf from the Disney movie “Frozen,” penguins, snowflakes and students giving gifts.

“I come from a place that Christmas and the like are not allowed in schools, as over the years in my educational career, this has evolved into the expectation for all educators,” Sinclair wrote in the memo. “I have unknowingly awoken a ‘sleeping giant’ with many of you. I apologize for the stress that ‘Christmas/holiday/Grinch/Santa/tree’ emails and conversations have caused you.”

District spokesperson Kara Perchal said Sinclair did not check with school officials about policies concerning religious holiday themes, ABC affiliate KETV reported Thursday.

“The memo does not reflect the policy of Elkhorn Public Schools regarding holiday symbols in the school,” Perchal said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The District has since clarified expectations and provided further direction to staff in alignment with District policy. This issue was limited to Manchester Elementary School and did not arise at any other schools within the District. As of Thursday, December 6, Principal Sinclair has been placed on administrative leave. Due to the fact that this is an ongoing personnel issue, the District cannot comment further.”

Candy canes were originally white sticks and were not present until the 17th century, according to ThoughtCo. The stick was bent into the “J” shape to represent a shepherd’s staff around the 1670s. The first candy cane with red and white stripes appeared after 1900.

Manchester Elementary in Elkhorn is about 24 miles outside of Omaha, Nebraska.

Liberty Counsel did not immediately respond to TheDCNF’s request for comment.

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