“The reason we have sexual harassment is that we do not believe in chastity. In the end, the only way to discourage unwanted advances is to condemn immoral ones. To discredit sexual harassment, one must discredit sexual sin.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
In my latest National Post column I argue that the same libertarian-libertine qualities that made social media appealing across normal partisan lines, and addictive, are now making them hugely and rightly unpopular and we must make the platforms legally “publishers” to put a stop to the raging indecency.
“The two great natural goods of marriage – the turning of the great wheel of the generations, and the union of a man and woman who cooperate in turning it – cannot be separated without damage to each of them. To suppress either one for the sake of happiness is to poison the very roots of joy.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” May 8, 2023 [https://www.undergroundthomist.org/things-i-had-to-learn]
In my latest National Post column I warn my posterity, and yours, why artificial intelligence is far and away the most dangerous and urgent problem they face.
“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.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“Thanatos can assume any form it wishes; it can kill eros, the life drive, and then simulate it. Once thanatos does this to you, you are in big trouble; you suppose you are driven by eros but it is thanatos wearing a mask.”
Philip K. Dick VALIS
“On social upheaval — say transgenderism and the invasion of women’s privacy and basic dignity (here I think of Macbeth’s quizzical outburst before the witches: ‘you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so’)…”
Rex Murphy in National Post April 22, 2023
“Whether written out somewhere or merely a collection in the back of your mind, you likely have a to-do list of things you want to get done. After all, life is busy and there often isn’t time to do everything you would like. But do you have a to-don’t list? Things that you’re planning not to do? A recent article in the Financial Times points to the often-neglected importance of the art of not doing. In the desire to be productive and accomplish goals, it’s easy to always focus your attention on what to do, rather than on what you know you want to avoid. As the author points out, however, ‘sometimes the absence of bad is more important than the presence of good.’ After all, history is littered with countless examples in which the feeling that something must be done has won out over the patient wariness of avoiding doing something wrong to disastrous effect.”
E-mail from Charalambos Dritsas of IG Wealth Management March 3, 2023