Embracing the myth of progress is not only a mistake, but is actually a detriment to the development of life's spiritual aspects.
My dangerous idea is that the adminition of the gospel to "think not about tomorrow" - about where you'll eat or sleep could *literally* be fulfilled if you were brave enough and trusting enough to do it.
A lot of people assume it is some kind of holy hyperbole. You're not supposed to really chuck everything and walk, trusting the Lord to feed you like the birds.
I'm certainly not going to do it, but at the same time, I believe is it absolutely true.
If you were to do it: If you were to literally leave everything and "follow Him" in this ultimate way, you would never go hungry or want for a place to lay your head. Someone would help you. You would be spending your time helping others and they in turn, or kindhearted strangers, even angels, but *someone* would help you. In fact, I would guess that you might not only have sufficiency, but abundance.
The real free market.
My "dangerous idea" is actually a fear that a representative democracy will ultimately spend itself out of financial existence.
We all want our elected officials to bring money to projects in "our" region, for roads, healthcare or whatever. We also want the overall budget to be balanced, usually by sending less funds to "their" region. So, as each representative carries out their constituents' will, the overall financial picture looks more & more "red."
A representative who says, "well, it would be nice to fund this project in my region, but it really is not essential" has little chance of reelection.
(Rod, after 800 words explaining your dangerous idea, it might be helpful to have a comments thread that does allow discussion about that idea, if only to provide a release valve to keep this thread on track.)
Immediately to my mind leapt three "dangerous ideas," one that has particular importance to this blog, one that has frightening implications for global politics, and one that is the truth that explains everything else.
1) Tradition can be idolized and mythologized just as easily as progress -- leading to results that can be just as detrimental to human liberty.
2) It may not be possible to reconcile Western civilization and Islam.
3) God's purpose for mankind is not merely our salvation, but our adoption into His family and our growth into mature sons and daughters -- with all the dreadful duties that that entails, as implied in Luke 9:23.
My idea, really something that grew out of discussions I've had with my late mother, an immigrant from Yugoslavia and a Holocaust survivor, is not likely to be original, but I've not come across it elsewhere.
I learned my view of patriotism from her, I got my education in US politics at all levels from her membership in and participation in the League of Women Voters. I should also mention that Robert A. Heinlein had IMO some very good ideas, which leads me to my idea:
The rights and liberties of US citizenship must be earned, not given, or they must end up corrupting or being corrupted.
There are elements here of Heinlein's "earned citizenship" idea in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie which got it totally wrong). I don't mean to say, either, that his idea by itself has merit.
Anyway, part of the discussions with my mother was a reminiscence of my 8th grade history teacher, who taught us the required civics lessons, but also made us memorize (and prove it by public recitation) the Gettysburg Address by Lincoln. I was complaining in hindsight about him, and she put me down hard: we cannot appreciate what we have unless we've paid enough of a price for it to give it a proportionate value. That was the lesson of her life from her early teens to early twenties as a Jew in an increasingly hostile world; she paid for her US citizenship many times over, with the blood of her kin who did not escape as well as the permanent exile from her home. That is the lesson in "memorizing" the Gettysburg Address, because Lincoln so eloquently made the same point.
I know too many peers, and many in subsequent generations, who arrogantly assume their rights and aren't even aware of their duties as citizens. That, I think, is what makes my idea dangerous.
A bit related to cs's comment: I suppose one of the more dangerous of my ideas is that the American people have passed some tipping point in their dedication to comfort, pleasure, and convenience, and are no longer capable of or even very interested in governing themselves. We are increasingly determined to avail ourselves of every one of a set of mutually exclusive options. Examples:
--We don't want to be dependent on foreign oil, but we don't want to use any less oil, and we don't want to drill anywhere in our own lands, or use more coal, or look to alternatives such as nuclear energy that might actually provide a lot of energy but carry risks.
--We want goods for the lowest possible prices, even if they're produced by quasi-slaves in China, but we're furious at companies sending jobs overseas.
(Aside: on the topic of Rod's dangerous idea, the case of former Judge Roy Moore (the 10 Commandments judge) occasioned these remarks by me on the question of moral consenus (absence thereof). "Moore’s essential insight, however badly or contentiously he may have framed and pursued it, was that the refusal to acknowledge the Judeo-Christian foundations of the Constitution is, in the end, an attack on the Constitution itself.")
My dangerous idea is to treat all people as if they were created equal.
Now I know this is truly rdical, and if ever implemented, will indeed be dangerous - to Christianists, to bigots, to homophobes, to the RRR (Radical "Religious" Rightwingnutjobs), but who gives a sh!t? Certainly not Ann Coulter, eh?
A truly dangerous idea would be if all people recieved the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This idea is SO radical and dangerous that if it ever happened, the Government would fall!
Three dangerous ideas:
1. The status of a certain conception of the "free market" in our world - a status of quasi-sacrality, as an autonomous thing that only functions well when left to itself, untouchable - not only renders the practice of the forms of virtue and stability requisite to Christian - and conservative - life increasingly difficult, even untenable, but has assumed such proportions as to obscure the fact that economic dogma is the unheralded orthodoxy of the age, the IDEA from which there is no appeal. And the logic of this economic process entails the end of the nation-state, but most conservatives would prefer to navel-gaze over the "socialist threat" that this observation represents than acknowledge that it is accelerating the withering away of meaningful representative government.
2. The United States is slowing going the way of Belgium, at best, or the Roman Empire, at worst, in its unstinting embrace of ethnic, linguistic, and cultural balkanization, of which the recent immigration controversy is merely the latest manifestation. And this will not be averted because we have internalized the conflation of the Church (as the locus of God's reuniting of broken humanity) with an immanent process of "progress", eschatologizing our multicultural embrace of the Other.
3. The unfolding of the logic of the culture of death - in cloning, fetal farming, etc. - cannot be stopped save by recourse to illicit means. Which means that it cannot, and will not, be stopped, as it appears that the people wish to sacrifice some in the pursuit of an illusory earthly immortality.
And a fourth: The disparities affirmative action was supposed to remedy, in part, will prove virtually, entirely, intractable, and our society will increasingly resemble other societies notable for their market-dominant minorities and simmering class and ethnic hostilities. Diversity may be many things, but it ain't strength.
1) The United States has become too big for the manner in which we have implemented representative democracy, and either the country must splinter, or our system of government must change.
2) "Progress" is not intractable; societies and institutions can, and must, if it will survive, go back and fix mistakes, even if the cost is inconvenient.
3) Western civilization, particularly in its American incarnation, is in steep decline.
4) The supposed triumph of the individual over society in Western civilization has actually led to the downfall of the individual.
5) It's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
Richard
(1) Liberal democracy undermines the right ordering of the faculties of the soul and any form of government that is not itself a version of democracy is preferable. (Plato's positive statement of Mr. Dreher's euphemistic rendering)
(2) The ownership of land is as barbaric and primitive - and as corrosive to the soul of the owner and the well-being of the owned - as the ownership of another human being.
(3) Education that is exclusively discursive and rational inevitably fosters the sovereignty of the passions. When the lesser thing (cranial intelligence) supplants the greater thing (noesis, cardiac intelligence) as the end of education, it in turn will be overthrown and serve what is lower than itself. [This is also why the secular regime cannot be the arbiter of what constitutes an education. The scandal of our times is not an overlapping of State and Church, but the total control of School by State, something never anticipated by the writers of the Constitution.]
(4) We are what we believe about our food and meals - because we confirm and incarnate these beliefs three or more times daily. Americans believe they are machines made for pleasure because it is their consensus and unexamined belief that food is chemical fuel of calories and nutrients and "good food" is what "tastes great" or is "less filling." The engine driving American psychosomatic decadence is its lack of a revealed food rule (or any kind of contranatural community meal) and the destruction of what few eating customs and traditions it had.
(5) Human gestation and birth is something sacred. The only people who belong at a birth are the people who were necessary at conception - and the complications of modern "deliveries" are consequent to perceiving birth as a "process" and a "disease" at which health professionals are a must-have item.
In its current trajectory, the United States of America is sliding inexorably toward a second civil war, one that naturally will be far more horrific and catastrophic than the first.
It will resemble the Spanish Civil War in its vicious character and clash of irreconcilable worldviews.
Here's mine: The exodus of Christians and churches out of the cities will will put an end to all hope of impacting the culture in any meaningful way.
Tim Keller of Redeemer Pres. in NYC has a fascinating take on this. He says that our culture is closest to the first century City/State model than in any time in history. And now I'll quote him:
"First, this means that major world cities are far more connected to other major cities around the world than they are to their own nations. On the one hand, the "business class" and other elites of New York, London, and Tokyo are able to identify more with one another than with the non-urban citizens of their own countries.
But the strong connections between major cities are not only through the 'elites'. Huge, diverse immigrant populations in global cities tie each urban area more tightly to scores of other countries around the world than to its own regional locale. In other words, thousands of residents of NYC are far more connected to the Philippines, Haiti, Columbia, China, and Nigeria then they are to New Jersey or Connecticut.
Second, these networked world-cities are becoming more economically and culturally powerful than the national governments of their geographical regions. Why is this?
1) The mobility of capital means national governments are now virtually powerless to control the flow of money in and out of their own economies, thus greatly decreasing their influence in general. The cities are the seats of multi-national corporations and international economic, social and technological networks.
2) The technology/communication revolution means that national governments are now virtually powerless to control what their people watch or learn. (This was a major factor in the collapse of communism of Europe). As a result, it is the culture/values set of world-class cities that is now being transmitted around the globe to every tongue, tribe, people, and nation. A major city like New York or Los Angeles now is far more influential in forming the culture of residents in, say, rural Indiana or rural Mexico than are the national or local governments or civic insititutions."
Another interesting point: St. Paul never took the gospel to the countryside (the word "pagan" actually refers to a rural resident) and there was a reason for that. As the city goes, so goes the culture. How long did it take for Rome to become Christianized?
Like it or not, the city has always been the center of cultural identity. As a matter of fact, I don't like it since it threatens my country comfort zone.
And that free market also encompasses the free market of ideas.
Globalization.
Interesting ideas, especially Flavia's.
One of my dangerous ideas is that society may be, Thank God, moving out of its obsession with identity politics and into a period that recognizes that human beings can't be defined by only one identity, but that everyone has multiple identities which gives them multiple points of contact with other human beings.
In the process, we will have to lose our obsession with naive multi-culturalism and acknowledge that, while all cultures are worthy of respect and have things of value to offer, all cultures are not equal.
All cultures could only be equal if progress and change were impossible. Cultures evolve, some grow, and some decline. Some cultures are highly functional and others are highly dysfunctional.
Yet, every culture can be valued for the things about it that are functional and beautiful. To the extent that every culture is different from every other, every culture can be seen as a means of understanding the strengths and weaknesses every other culture.
I agree that we ought to fight for and defend our own culture, but we should also be open to the critique of our culture that comes from outside, since that critique has the possiblity of making our culture better.
1. That if every pro-life person took it as seriously as we ought, and took all the (peaceful) action that the issue warrants, millions of lives could be saved.
2. That God might consider us, the middle class, "rich" compared to the world, and "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
My dangerous idea: Human societies (particularly the "developed" world) is spending accumulated natural capital and fossilized solar energy far faster than they are being replaced. Our entire way of life is based on doing so, and the growth of our economies is based on doing so ever more quickly. Ecologically and energetically speaking, we are living off our savings, not our income.
So many good responses here, all worthy of response. To add one that hasn't exactly come up:
That scientific research within the next decade is going to sufficiently understand the genetic/chemical make up of the brain, and produce sufficiently targeted psychopharmaceuticals, that it will be literally possible to through drug therapy produce or eliminate religious sensibility.
To what degree is the ability to believe in God connected with the physical brain? And what happens if it becomes possible to manipulate that brain enough to destroy sincere faith, as completely as - forgive the comparison - female castration destroys the capacity for sexual pleasure?
I've come across persuasive arguments that propose that if a genetic basis for homosexual inclination were discovered, like Down's Syndrome, the existence of homosexuality is bred out of a huge portion of the population.
But might something similar happen in reverse? Might neo-eugenicists create the ultimate post-Modern, post-Christian society?
Or might in a possible devil's deal Christians adopt this technology to medicate an increase in faith as readily as for many an increase in joy is medicated through antidepressants? And wouldn't this seem as sound as the generally healthy Christian acceptance of the psychiatric model for treating mental conditions?
Or, to sum up someone more pithy than me, things are going to get worse before they get better.
Doug Cramer
Liberal democracy came out of WASP culture in England and America; it cannot be sustained in countries without a significant WASP majority.
1. Sex is optional. We’ve gone from “you’ll get warts on your hands or go insane if you do that” to “you’ll go from repression to insanity if you don’t Do It at every opportunity.” Chastity has become unthinkable, and many of our social pathologies trace back to the that unthinkability.
2. In any sustained warfare between the will and the imagination, the imagination will eventually win. (Credit to C.S. Lewis - I know the source of this one at least.)
3. The single greatest corrupter of culture over the past 55 years is television. It is not merely the insinuator of unwholesome sexual images into the imagination (see dangerous ideas 1 & 2), but the great insinuator of consumerism.
4. The second greatest corrupter of culture over the last 44 years is public education, which after the 1962 school prayer decision abandoned its feigned neutrality (which was tacitly if vaguely Protestant) in favor of a feigned neutrality that was aggressively secular and communicated the idea that religion is dangerous – or at best irrelevant. In an effort to avoid religion, they flattened the universe and impoverished students’ imaginations. (John earlier made a very similar point, very nicely expressed in spiritual terms, about "discursive education.")
5. In a regime of strict separation of Church and State, when government moves in, Church gets forced out – and government keeps moving into more and more territory. We see it, for example, in Catholic Charities in Massachusetts being forced out of he adoption business because it would not place children with just any old “married” couple in the state’s new judicial regime of same-sex marriage. Kudos to Catholic Charities, however, for not succumbing to dangerous idea #6.
6. If government and Church purport to occupy the same space or to cooperate, Church sooner or later will be compromised and corrupted. Charitable Choice and the like will produce some monster scandals.
1. Far too many people vote.
2. Monarchy gets a bad rap by modern (post-modern?) thinkers.
3. Islam is diabolic in origin.
St. Matthew 13:12 "Whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him."
I'm unsure of the meaning Jesus intended. But I would offer an interpretation of this saying that seems to me a dangerous (and generally true) idea, easiest to convey by examples.
Rod's book is based on this principle, whether ot not he realized it, I think. Wanting our children to be Haves is a lot of what Crunchy Conservatism is about.
But they will be resented by the Have Nots....
On the one hand, I see children who are raised by their own parents, taught by them, etc. as being made rich; and as they grow older their lives have more stability, physical health, etc. than many of their conventionally educated peers. Life is interesting to them.
On the other hand, as a teacher in higher ed, I see many students who seem to lack, not (goodness knows) self-esteem, but self-respect. They are satisfied with their intellectual poverty when they arrive at the university. Many of them seem to me to be on a trajectory that is not wholesome or towards happiness.
I'm suggesting that children who have the richness of being loved by parents who are not (as we say today) "there for them" but are there WITH them - - they are, and they will go on to be, Haves. Other children (whatever the material prosperity to which they are accustomed) are spiritual "have nots."
Those Haves seem likely to go on experiencing rich measure of life, and the Have Nots seem likely to miss out. And because lawlessness shall increase, the love of many shall grow cold.
Of course, thank God, things can change for the Have Nots. But I fear that things often will not change. They will miss much, and they will sense that there's something missing. And they will feel angry. And feeling angry, and being ignorant, they will be ready for the blandishments of demagogues (common enough in some sections of American society already).
Discipline is simple discipleship. What a dangerous idea to Christian parents who want a simple how-to manual to raising kids "God's way."
Character is more important than political discussion on the right left or center will allow.
That's dangerous because it challenges the choice of moral battles that the right makes (when they waffle on whether there is a human right to be free from torture, granted by the creator, when they waffle on how born babies are treated when it comes to education or health care, how they handle the greed of corporations, how they avoid demonstrating actual practical compassion for the poor and widows and orphans, etc)
It's dangerous because it challenges the left on its refusal or hesitance to speak clearly in terms of character or morality, waffling on stances against sadism because it may not wish to offend those who have a S/M leather lifestyle or who are in jail for committing crimes, waffling on calling the moral failures of the Bush administration MORAL failures because they don't want to offend people who are not religious by using the term 'moral', etc.
It's dangerous because it calls into question moderates and centrists who resort to pragmatism instead of principle, people who say character but only mean 'what works' on any side, and also people who do not know what the basic character premises of their worldview are and for that reason compromise in an unprincipled way.
It's dangerous to religious people or secular people who don't want to be challenged on their character.
It's not convenient for ANYONE politically. It's not convenient for marketing or for religious hypocrisy, either.
It doesn't particularly favor left or right. It's about more than this world.
I can't imagine that Ledihn is serious with those three "ideas", but just for the sake of balance:
Christianity is built on marketing tactics and the myth of authority. It cannot be labelled a peaceful belief system because its holy text give believers explicit permission to use violence in a variety of situations.
And yes, I am serious about this one.
Interesting, that Mr. Evans, a "pagan" as per his homepage, is uncomfortable with my post and uses it as a vehicle to attack Christianity. Of which, I mentioned nothing earlier.
Granted that my post might strike some as hyperbolic, however in its essentials it reflects very dangerous ideas.
#1 & #2, challenge the concept that a majority is anymore apt to produce a just government then a King. It would appear that, the reason to oppose a monarchy is pragmatic, in that most would prefer corrupt representatives that are replaced through the sham of electoral politics with those appearing less corrupt in their 30 second ads between reruns of The Simpsons, until the next election, when the cycle starts again, over the potential of a dictatorship that is assumed to be by definition illegitimate. The assumption is that an unjust democracy is somehow more likely to produce the "common good" then a just King. Maybe so, yet the idea presented is a dangerous challenge to our assumptions.
#3 reflects a logical analysis within the Western religious system. If you do not buy into this system, as a pagan would not, then this answer has no meaning. For those that do, it is not hard to follow. Israel through it prophets brought God's law to His chosen people. This law was not revoked but fulfilled in the Word made flesh. This Gospel, the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand, has been spread to all the World. For those who so believe, the question arises, why would God choose to dictate in Arabic an additional revelation, hundreds of years later, that would call for submission by the sword if necessary of those he previously revealed Himself to? In another words, it’s hard, if not impossible, to reconcile a Christian understanding of the history of revelation with the heresy of Islam. Hence if this belief system is not a manifestation of His will, of what spiritual origin could it come from? This spiritual movement, in its militant manifestation (which is arguably, its orthodoxy) seeks to destroy the Jews and Christians and places as its highest heavenly value, lust for carnal pleasure with a multitude of virgins. If we believe in God must we not also believe in his spiritual adversary? If so through what institutions would it appear that this spiritual warfare is being fought? This is also a dangerous idea with grave consequences for those (thoughtful Christians) who understand its context.
Well, I am put back into my place, it seems. Ledihn, while you are welcome to filter the world through your dogma, I prefer a more rational and logical approach, which my "dangerous idea" concerning modern Christianity is certainly closer to than a scriptural analysis of the belief system of millions of people.
In short, I prefer to let people speak for themselves, rather than put assumptions and words into their mouths... and I always speak up when xenophobia is expressed.
Oh, and every thoughtful Christian I've encountered has asked me to describe my beliefs, and asked questions rather than made assumptions. Just a thought...
Here's my dangerous thought: There is no plot (not even satanic), there is no agenda, and there is absolutely no one in charge.
That a state that won't practice public execution is like a wife who neglects her appearance. In both cases, it is asking for trouble.
Tovart's post is a nice pithy summary of nihilist thought. I can respect this viewpoint intellectually as it is a consistent world view. What I do not understand is the view of those who profess to believe the opposite, e.g. Christians, but either ignore or down play the threat of Islam.
Either Tovart is right, or my idea #3 above is. There would appear to be no sustainable alternative. I would be very pleased to be wrong, however, and would be interested if anyone could show me where my analysis is flawed.
On second thought, I should not continue to comment on this topic or invite others to do so as it is a digression from Mr. Dreher's original post, which I did not intend to do. I know I get annoyed when others hijack these threads and take them far from where they began. I apologize.
There's something odd about the feed for the responses. I didn't see Ledihn's apology until well after I posted my last post.
Thanks, Ledihn, for the reminder. I, too, must apologize for trampling on Rod's original post and request.
The discussion here has been bracing. Feuerbach had a dangerous idea in the 19th century. He posited that any conception of God was merely a projection of an idealized self. The projection part of belief cannot be denied. But, if one joins a historic faith community, accepting some doctrines that they may not be personally comfortable with, they may be avoiding the idealized self part of Feuerbach's assertion. If, on the other hand, a person makes up his or her own belief system concerning God, then they have fallen into Feuerbach's trap to the letter.
Talking about Art in Protestant churches might actually be the last taboo.
Ledihn, can I get any credibility for using a respectful tone? 
I don't think your analysis is flawed. I do think that you do not look far enough afield, or that your horizon is limited, or to dispense with euphemisms I think you lack data.
It would not please me to prove you wrong. It would please me to see that you are covering all of the data, at least that portion of it which I seem to have but which you seem to lack.
The conclusion I come to is that there is a threat from Islamists, and that they can be distinquished from Muslims in that while they may actually be devout religiously, they use their religion in ways that would make Machiavelli green with envy.
This is no more reason to condemn the entire religion of Islam than a Jonestown or a Crusade is reason to condemn all of Christendom. That, btw, is a serious statement devoid of sarcasm.
I'm unclear as to how these dangerous ideas are to be distinguished from predictions. Heliocentrism was a dangerous idea about the way things were; the prediction would have been its acceptance.
My dangerous idea and I hope prediction is that the Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church will reunite as the result of a deal. The Orthodox will accept papal primacy and the Catholics will acknowledge the validity of Orthodox theology where it differs as opinion from Roman opinion. Ortho/Cathos will be free to choose among various and equally valid opinions about such matters as, for example, what constitutes original sin and what actually happened on Calvary.
My other and unhappy prediction is that the theta sound ( voiced as in "the" and breathed as in "thin") will disappear from the English language. Dis, dat, dese, dose, and da will rule.
That science and superstition cannot, for long, peaceably coexist.
That eventually superstition, under the guise of religion, orthodoxy, absolutist political partisanship or some mixture therein, will plunge the world into sectarian feuds that it simply can't recover from, causing the eventual extinction of our species.
Okay, who wants ice cream? I'm buying.
A very simple idea: Those who care don't matter and those who matter don't care.
1
representative democracy has the effect (and perhaps the purpose) of granting an unwarranted legitimacy to government actions, leading inevitably to totalitarian dictatorship.
2 representative democracy is only workable where there exists a moral consensus. As that consensus breaks down, so will the ability of governement to speak credibly to the populace.
3 because of 1 and 2 above, as well as the apparent polarization of society, the US is in for an increasingly authoritarian government.
damn smilies....
Except for the part about reuniting, I wonder if Caroline isn't writing history rather than prophecy. Both sides make lots of make-weight arguments about the other side's theology to prove that the other side is the real schismatics ("see how they've gone to hell in a handbasket since committing schism?") Catholics point to Orthodox laxity (as they see it) on contraception and divorce; Orthodox point at flaws in some basic approaches of Anselm and Aquinas, not to mention several dogmas defined since the schism.
Heal the schism, and the occasion for such tendentious criticism goes away. Maybe that's my dangerous idea.
Here's the most dangerous idea you can imagine ... if you're a politician or secularist intent on controlling others through their pocketbooks.
"Capital homesteading" is a proposal developed by the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"), www.cesj.org. It would make every American a direct owner (not "beneficial owner") of a significant stake of income-generating assets, purchased on credit and collateralized with "capital credit insurance."
Because, as Daniel Webster noted, "power naturally and necessarily follows property," the State (and the quasi-State known as the ACLU) would not be able to control people by artificially creating jobs, bloating the welfare system, or messing around with the money supply. Exercise of religion (and politics) would be genuinely free, meaning no one would have to look over his shoulder to make certain his employer or local ward heeler wasn't displeased.
The creation of all new money would be linked to the financing of productive assets (as intended when the Federal Reserve was established in 1913), thereby creating an asset-backed currency, and making it difficult-to-impossible for the government to monetize its deficits (as was also the intent in 1913).
There's a free book on this on the CESJ web site, "Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen" that describes the whole thing in much greater (and better) detail.
If you dare ... our 80-year old volunteer says "they" are going to do us in before capital homesteading could ever be enacted into law.
My fifth dangerous idea: the status of science in the modern world is merely a modern superstition, a Baconian alchemy, if you will.
"Diversity may be many things, but it ain't strength."
Ya got that right, maximos. And we all know, might makes right, right?
Reader John,
I found your "ideas" ugly.
"4. The second greatest corrupter of culture over the last 44 years is public education, which after the 1962 school prayer decision abandoned its feigned neutrality (which was tacitly if vaguely Protestant) in favor of a feigned neutrality that was aggressively secular and communicated the idea that religion is dangerous – or at best irrelevant."
Religions ARE dangerous. Don't you read newspapers or watch TV news? The 1962 decision enofrced neutrality because - gosh - we live in a society that has more than one religion. Why should Protestant prayer be the order of the day inseat of Catholicism? Buddhism? Judaism? Islam? etc.
Which religion one is OUGHT to be "irrelevant" in society.
"In an effort to avoid religion, they flattened the universe and impoverished students’ imaginations."
Yeah, right - NOT!
"5. In a regime of strict separation of Church and State, when government moves in, Church gets forced out"
You type that as if that were a bad thing. The farther some "churches" get from my rights, the better.
"...Catholic Charities in Massachusetts being forced out of he adoption business because it would not place children with just any old “married” couple"
Ah, so "christian" of you - NOT! Why does the radical religious right get to demean, diminish and debase committed, loving same-sex couples down to "any old 'married' couple"? Why are quote marks required to describe my marriage but not YOUR marriage? It ISN'T "any old"; surely couples must prove they will be good parents, regardless of the sex of the two parents involved.
"6. If government and Church purport to occupy the same space or to cooperate, Church sooner or later will be compromised and corrupted."
Hon, the RCCI already IS currupt.
"Charitable Choice and the like will produce some monster scandals."
You mean MORE monster scandals, shurely.
Humm. How about:
Being a "Have-Not" can be properly defined by your envy of those around you, rather than your objective needs.
Many "Have-Not"s in the US today are living, by global standards, a life of luxury, as witness that they are actually more likely to be fat than the middle-class or rich. (If you don't think that's a sign of luxury -- yes, throughout much of this world, having more calories than you need regularly is a sign of wealth and power.)
Elected office holders must prove to their constituencies that they are actually protecting their rights and supporting their goals.
---o---
Anyone who fails to vote four times in a row (including primaries) permanently loses the right to vote. This must include an official NOTA (none of the above) candidate in every election for every office, and if NOTA wins an election new candidates must be found.
---o---
The person who inhabits an elected office is not automatically deserving of the respect for that office. She/he must earn that respect by actually demonstrating competence in the responsibilities of that office. (I'm officially tired of elected officials claiming a mandate, especially when close to half the eligible voters didn't even show up at the polls.)
F. Evans wrote:
> Anyone who fails to vote four times
> in a row (including primaries)
> permanently loses the right to vote.
Does this count for the dead Democrats who still vote in Chicago?
The most dangerous ideas are not political, theological, or even cosmological, perhaps, but ideas of (1) what the human person is and (2) the end or aim of this person as designed or evolved. The revelation of Christ was primarily and ultimately an "anthropological" revelation, because it demonstrated the origin and end of the human person in a divine, which is to say "contranatural" Creative Principle (Logos, Tao, doshas).
Christian anthropology (perhaps a redundancy) is trinitarian because the immaterial aspect of the psychosomatic person has three faculties in God's image. The dangerous idea that cuts to the root of hand-wringing about the demise of democracy above is that "the democratic wo/man" is not human per se because their soul's faculties are not aligned properly top to bottom and s/he denies the sovereignty of the nous (s/he in fact denies the existence or "utility" of a supra rational faculty of soul).
As C. S. Lewis wrote in "The Abolition of Man" and his student and friend Martin Lings wrote in "Ancient Beliefs and Modern Superstitions" (chapter v: 'Intellect and Reason'), a world unaware of what it means to be human degenerates quickly to a world in which human persons become servants of their passions and the "culture," or what passes for culture, becomes a desire-driven one. We live in an upside-down world because we live with an upside-down idea of what a human person is, if we accept even that there is a human design or telos.
The dangerous idea is the core belief of a theocentric civilization (again, to risk being repetitive - all normal civilizations are theocentric in human history), namely, that human beings, like the created world of which they are the principal symbol, has a natural, a supernatural, and a contranatural aspect (cf., St. Isaac the Syrian and the Sufi traditionalists - Guenon, Schuon, Burckhardt). We live in the Age of Lead or End Times because we deny the primacy and eternity of the contranatural in ourselves, in creation, and as God. The naturalists assert that the only reality is matter and energy (and assert this in contradiction to their belief as an immaterial and nonenergetic truth), the supernaturalists cling to specific temporal or exoteric revelations as the destination rather than the invaluable vehicle or means to human perfection, and the contranaturalists are silent and invisible (or crucified) by definition.
Pauli asked:
>F. Evans wrote:
>> Anyone who fails to vote four times
>> in a row (including primaries)
>> permanently loses the right to vote.
>Does this count for the dead Democrats who still vote in Chicago?
Only if it counts for the dead Republicans who still vote in California.
Great question. I'm still chuckling over it.
Anonymous of 1:58,
Managed diversity is the strength of the modern state - a strength against the nation and the people.
1. Teach everybody to think for themselves.
2. Be happy with your failures, as well as your successes.
3. Be truly happy with others' successes.
4. You are no better or worse than anybody else. Restated: get over yourself.
5. Your way is not right for anyone but you. Not even your closest friend.
6. Anarchy, lack of dogmatic religion, and compassion may well lead to a Utopia.
7. If it's not hurting anybody, stop worrying about it.
8. Be yourself.
9. Most importantly: Be excellent to each other.
Are those enough? I've more...
keep going Chris. They're great.
My belated Dangerous Idea is: Anti-Occupation.
The Israeli Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank in most ways is worse then apartheid was in South Africa.
Raymond Louw's initial impression: (of Hebron) "It's depressing. This is a city under military occupation without any rights for the occupied. There was never a situation like this with apartheid. The control in the black areas was not so forceful. I don't think you can compare the two situations. Under apartheid, there was a recognition that the blacks would continue to live in their areas. Here the impression is that the objective is to push the Palestinians out.
Source: Like the Old Days in South Africa by Gideon Levy – Haaretz Magazine 5/24/01
Ami Ayalon, retired head of the Shin Bet security service, and Israel is guilty of “apartheid” policies that go against the spirit of Judaism. He suggested that the Palestinians were following a logic in choosing violence, and spoke of the profound “humiliation” that Israel inflicts on Palestinian workers and others who seek to enter Israel.
Such comments are commonly heard from Palestinians and outsiders but rarely from an Israeli who has held senior-level positions in the security establishment.”
Los Angeles Times December 5, 2000
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