The Surveillance State

In this season of the “holidays,” it was announced several days ago that Fairfax County schools would be permitted to install video surveillance cameras in High Schools. Fairfax County is frequently lauded as being one of the best public school counties in the nation, but, as residents of the county, we receive regular updates of various assaults, thefts, “gang-banging” and near-riots taking place in the High Schools.

A civilization reveals its deepest commitments through its education – enculturation – of its young. We have whitewashed not only God and religion from the schools, but all questions of the Good in favor of a embrace of relativist toleration and non-judgmentalism, along with an ethic of entitlement, self-realization, and a utilitarian view of education. It has been argued since the beginning of the liberal era that the “bracketing” of questions of the Good would result in civil peace and toleration.

Instead – as Thomas Hobbes told us – we increasingly live within a surveillance State, an all-seeing Leviathan. In lieu of self-sustaining standards of respect, modesty, manners and maturity, we are surrounded by evidence of cultural pollution, social dissolution and irresponsibility. Into the breach fills the State to enforce by diktat what social decencies once governed.

This is the consequence of several centuries of the liberal vision of toleration and peace in place of God and Good – our children “surveilled” where instead they should be gaining deeper understanding and practices of adulthood and even the beginnings of wisdom. But, do not mention the name God or say “Merry Christmas” – that might cause discomfort. Better to turn our schools into panopticons, our children into inmates.

- Patrick Deneen

What do people think of "The Servile State"?

Wilhelmson in ISI, circa 1978:

But The Servile State still runs through edition after edition and men today still ponder the sobering thesis advanced by its writer: there is no liberty, political or social, unless there is economic liberty, which means the restoration of property, not paper property owned by usurers, but real property owned by proprietors, by men who in one fashion or another eat and drink their own. Nothing less is worth the dignity of Christian men.

I am currently overwhelmed by this book.

RIP Christopher Hitchens

Can't Support Newt and Romney is Blahhhh

Two reasons I can't support Newt:

1. "Christian conservatives, in the toxic atmosphere of the culture wars, cannot afford to have as a public face a figure who for most of his adult life has shunned the virtues and ways of life that Christian conservatives want to advance in the public square. " Francis Beckwith, quoting Rod Dreher at The Catholic Thing

2. Intellectuals tend to make bad rulers, and Newt's record as Speaker of the House is not compelling evidence he refutes this stereotype.

And Romney, oh Romney.

I want to believe you, but I cannot. You've never been able to to persuasively articulate conservative ideas, and the analogy of business and business and government runs thin in my book. And Massachusetts is a big pile of poop thanks to policies you helped to implement.

Newt Gingrich has a PhD?

Who knew!

Letter from a Holy Priest to His Parish

... Dear Brothers and Sisters, I am writing this on Thursday, the 17th. It is the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, the patroness of the Secular Franciscan Order. Even though there were proper readings for this feast I privately read the readings from the ordinary day. The first reading was from the Book of Maccabees (2:15-29), which is in the Catholic Bible. In this passage Mattathias is refusing to obey the evil king`s orders and he says,

"Although all the Gentiles in the king`s realm obey him, so that each forsakes the religion of his fathers and consents to the king`s orders, yet I and my sons and my kin will keep to the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake the law and the commandments. We will not obey the words of the king nor depart from our religion in the slightest degree."

Why did this strike me like a rock between the eyes? because the government in this country and other forces are trying in every way to erode the free exercise of religion ? not in matters of faith ? but in matters of morals. The government is forcing Catholic social service agencies to provide medications and procedures that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching. The government wants our money, our facilities and our personnel, but NOT our morals. They want us to keep our morals in the sacristy. We must remember that there is a dual purpose to our religion; the proper worship of God and the proper living of our lives according to God`s expectations as handed on to us through the Catholic Church. This Church has not only the right but the responsibility to teach and encourage and expect goodness and virtue under the leadership of the Pope.

Our government, like any other government wherever the Church has been established in the past 2000 years wants to usurp that right and responsibility so that they can promote their own set of agendas. Perhaps we should be looking at the illusion of "euthanasia" ??? How many of us will not just be pushed to the sidelines of medical care but possibly even killed because we are a drain on society ??? Brothers and Sisters, the Catholic Church is the only force that will stand as a whole to oppose these trends. We must all stand together if we like Mattathias will be true to the religion of our fathers. As I have said many times? know the Faith, know what God expects of each of us Catholics and pray for the courage to fulfill His laws and commandments.

God bless you all.