Rather than an extended reflection on a single theme, this is a series of short thoughts that have been knocking around in my mind.
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In many ways, we are starting all over again in the abortion battle. The notion that support for abortion has increased since Roe was overturned is not altogether an illusion – partisan lying really has panicked some people into more extreme positions. But I think the shift in poll numbers is due more to the fact that people’s true views are coming to the surface. Previously, even opposition to abortion was squishy. Some young women thought “I believe in abortion,” others thought “I am uncomfortable with the idea of abortion,” but both groups thought “it’s not a real issue for me because the option of abortion is there in case it’s needed.” Now it has become a real issue for them -- and now we have to really change their minds.
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It's curious that both left and right seem to think that things are falling apart -- but what each side views as remedy, the other views as decline. People often say they wish left and right would “come together to solve the country's problems," but they define the problems in opposite ways. For example, one side thinks that racism is on the increase and reverse racism is necessary to fight it; the other side thinks that racism was on the decline but that reverse racism is bringing it back in force. Again, one side thinks that crime is an innocent response to deprivation, and that the problem lies in the police; the other side thinks crime is wrong and dangerous, and that although we should help disturbed people, the problem lies in punishing the police and encouraging the criminals.
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The attribute view of personhood – the view that you don’t count as a person, with moral dignity and rights, unless you have such attributes as the ability to make plans and carry them out – is widely deployed in the debates over abortion. But it also carries over into everyday relationships. “You must have the attributes we value,” whatever these may be, for example holding the same opinions, “or we treat you like dirt.”
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Previous civilizations have degenerated. Previous ages have marched into the dark not knowing that they were marching into the dark. But in any previous time, were artists, scholars, and thinkers so eager to explain that degeneration was really progress?
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I’ve written in this blog numerous times about the “revenge of conscience. Conscience wreaks this revenge in a particularly spectacular way in the domain of sex. We aren’t really shameless; rather, because of our shame, we make excuses. People on the left make excuses for their shameful practices by saying that now all perversions are okay (in fact, they aren’t perversions). People on the right implausibly say “No, only my shameful practice is okay. Yours isn’t.” Is it any wonder that the liberal dog is winning this fight?
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The observation that it is difficult to portray a really good person in fiction is nothing new. But why do our contemporary novelists find it so difficult even to portray a person we wouldn’t mind meeting? Even when they try? There are exceptions. Not many. The appalling thought occurs to me that maybe they like their characters.
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It’s easy to understand the temptation to idolatry, in which limited things are treated as transcendent. For in a sense, they are transcendent, though not in the sense that God is. Objects in a sense transcend our perceptions of them. Realities in a sense transcend descriptions of them. The forms of things in a sense transcend the objects whose forms they are. The past in a sense transcends our memory of it. But all these things are finite. Only God is infinitely transcendent.
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As the classical writers knew – Aristotle knew it, Cicero knew it, Thomas Aquinas wrote of it with great insight -- the virtues are interconnected. People are confused about this fact because a person who is full of vices might have some admirable qualities. As a man I knew who was sentenced to prison for embezzling put it, “You meet some of the nicest people in prison.” But the interconnection of virtues doesn’t imply that we can’t possess even a particle of virtue unless we possess complete virtue. What it does imply is that there is no such thing as a person who fails in just one virtue. Anything wrong in one moral dimension does damage in the other ones too.
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The proponents of the so called “new natural law theory,” or “basic goods theory,” say that we shouldn’t speak of the natural purposes of things. For example, we shouldn’t say that the natural purpose that anchors the sexual powers is procreation, because this “instrumentalizes” and “depersonalizes” us – it makes us tools for making babies. This is absurd. One might as well say that it depersonalizes us to say that the natural purpose of the intellectual powers is deliberating and knowing the truth.
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Human beings are neither souls alone, nor bodies alone, but embodied souls. Since the laws of our bodies are constitutive elements of our being, we don’t diminish ourselves by honoring them -- we would alienate ourselves by not honoring them. They aren’t shackles, but real aspects of our embodied personhood -- inheritances, not encumbrances; enrichments, not impoverishments; not things to be struggled against, but things to be cherished as gifts.
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I wish someone would explain to me why it isn’t necessary to show probable cause of fraud and get a warrant in order to audit a taxpayer.
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How odd it is that the things we do spontaneously are usually bad for us. Doesn’t that suggest that something has gone wrong with our nature? I think so. Please notice that I am asking whether the condition of man’s nature has changed. I am not asking whether our nature itself has changed, for if that had happened, then either the being before the change wasn’t man -- or it was, but we aren’t.
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Everyone has a grievance. These days soliciters are offended if you merely politely decline to talk with them. Person at the door: Are you J. Budziszewski? Me: Who are you? Person: Are you J. Budziszewski? Me: Who are you? Person: Do you have such-and-such in your house? Me: Are you selling something? Person: Do you have such-and-such in your house? Me: Are you selling something? Person: [Long pause.] Not necessarily. Me: Thank you. I’m not interested. [I quietly close the door.] -- I can understand why the soliciter was frustrated. It's harder to make a sale when you are forced to begin by saying that you want to. What I don’t understand is why she was offended. This is my house.
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One reason why we don't learn as much from history as we might is that historians divide up in much the same way that factions did during the historical periods they are studying.