Preference cascade: the real American equivalent to Egypt's Arab Spring is just beginning.
No. The bishops' Fortnight of Freedom is NOT an anti-B.O. campaign. Nor should it be.
June 10, 2012 was the 48th anniversary of the GOP stopping the Dem filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
What do tourist guide books tell tourists about the U.S.? Fascinating article.
You're nothing special. Ouch.
BXVI: Vatican Two did not forbid Eucharistic Adoration. Or processions or chaplets or statues or altar rails or any other devotional practice.
Folks, please read this article. When you finish, you will better understand what our bishops, priests, and seminarians are up against in the world of theological education. (NB. the smarmy condescension, the self-righteous tone, and the utter disdain for legit authority.)
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Preference cascade seems to be an interesting concept. Even tyrannies rely on the consent of the oppressed to exist. If, as it's usually the case, most of the oppressed do not actually consent, it's important that the tyrants use of any means to squash dissent or to hide it by instilling fear in the populace, lest it gather critical mass.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that this is what happened in the fall of the Soviet empire. When pope John Paul II visited Poland and the people in throng voiced their dissent ("We want God!"), they realized that they were not only more numerous than they thought, but also that they were the majority. It emboldened some union leaders like Walesa to challenge Jaruzelski, which in few years spread like wild-fire to other Soviet republics, firstly to the Baltic and finally, to East Germany, inevitably infecting the heart of the Soviet empire: Russia. All this without a single armed revolt and blood-shed.
So, the next time some politician proposes a law that allows the president to not only arrest without right to a speedy trial but to assassinate without trial, or to give the government the means to shut down the Internet, or to take a website offline because it infringes arbitrary and tenuous rules, take note: they are all attempts at instilling fear in the people to voice its dissent and therefore give the impression of consent by the people. Never was the 1st Amendment more important in the history of the US as in this day and age, for never were there so many attempts to undermine it.
Preference cascade is possible here in the US b/c we have the internet; thus, the gov't's aching desire to control it. Imagine the current admin w/o any opposition from blogs! Our sole source of info would be NYT, WaPo, CNN, and MSNBC. Ugh.
DeleteI used to think the 64 Civil Rights Act was a good thing, but after watching 50 years of the culture is helped produce, I think Barry Goldwater was right: a terrible and dangerous overreach of Federal power.
ReplyDeleteIt is one of the things that helped the Federal government become what it is today, a secular humanist theocratic "church", and one of the things that fostered the toxic and dead-ended race game we are living with, O and Holder being part of its poisonous fruit.