Politically Correct Moral Autonomy: Christianity Besieged! Stirring the Melting Pot to a Boil

Politically Correct Moral Autonomy: Christianity Besieged! Stirring the Melting Pot to a Boil

Author: Ferd Wagner

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2022-06-15

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1665559098

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On what basis should we accept or reject political or social philosophies that insist human nature, human wisdom and human cooperation have the potential to resolve our issues and problems if we buy into the morality espoused by liberal politics and liberal resolutions? Should we side with progressives who see most people as good, free to self-determine their own standards and will do the right thing if given the opportunity? Or with the right political and social contracts proposed by the “correct” party who see the morality of the liberal government as our correct way of achieving peace and prosperity? Should Christians have a place at the table? The challenge here and in all such debates is what constitutes acceptable moral standards and practices that accurately represent the will of the majority without denying the legal, social and moral rights of the minority? Then the question becomes how to correctly implement those standards. Here, each side should be challenged to present evidence and facts that either refute or prove the posited solutions or reforms can be validated by an acceptable objective authority or unbiased source. At this point, the debate demands proof or corroboration that the authorities being identified are trustworthy and beyond reproof. Is the authority a person, institution, document or charismatic leader and speaker? What evidence or past experiences corroborate their integrity and wisdom in dealing with the issue at hand? If you combine or spread the authority from the four different entities listed above, are you more likely to get subjective solutions based on human nature and human experience or divine solutions based on Christian theology and practice? One standard will insist that merit, integrity, honor and personal accountability is the better way to create more ethical and harmonious relationships while the other looks more towards fairness, inclusion and equality as the keys to harmony and prosperity. Here is where the rubber hits the road. Can any human, political party or institution claim superiority over all other authorities? If so, which one? In our system of government, a president and in most situations, his political party rules the roost for four years. Often, they dramatically change the moral and ethical atmosphere, refuting the direction of the preceding administration. Our checks and balances are primarily politically manipulated by the party in power and frequently are more rigged than balanced. Should our system be predicated on scriptural truth whose default is ethical accountability across the board or continue down the path where what is politically pragmatic and pluralistic enough to maintain control and power is the default? Political correctness cannot please all the people all the time. Nothing can. Which groups then should get priority; the ethical, accountable, sacrificial individuals and organizations, or the self-serving, you owe me, I deserve it groups who feel entitled to special privileges or rights? Meritocracy or hypocrisy? God’s ethics or man’s identity politics’ morality?


A Patriot's History of the United States

A Patriot's History of the United States

Author: Larry Schweikart

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2004-12-29

Total Pages: 1373

ISBN-13: 1101217782

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For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.


Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Luxury Arts of the Renaissance

Author: Marina Belozerskaya

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2005-10-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0892367857

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Today we associate the Renaissance with painting, sculpture, and architecture—the “major” arts. Yet contemporaries often held the “minor” arts—gem-studded goldwork, richly embellished armor, splendid tapestries and embroideries, music, and ephemeral multi-media spectacles—in much higher esteem. Isabella d’Este, Marchesa of Mantua, was typical of the Italian nobility: she bequeathed to her children precious stone vases mounted in gold, engraved gems, ivories, and antique bronzes and marbles; her favorite ladies-in-waiting, by contrast, received mere paintings. Renaissance patrons and observers extolled finely wrought luxury artifacts for their exquisite craftsmanship and the symbolic capital of their components; paintings and sculptures in modest materials, although discussed by some literati, were of lesser consequence. This book endeavors to return to the mainstream material long marginalized as a result of historical and ideological biases of the intervening centuries. The author analyzes how luxury arts went from being lofty markers of ascendancy and discernment in the Renaissance to being dismissed as “decorative” or “minor” arts—extravagant trinkets of the rich unworthy of the status of Art. Then, by re-examining the objects themselves and their uses in their day, she shows how sumptuous creations constructed the world and taste of Renaissance women and men.


Capital as Power

Capital as Power

Author: Jonathan Nitzan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-06-02

Total Pages: 853

ISBN-13: 1134022298

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Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody has ever been able to observe or measure them, and for a good reason: they don’t exist. Since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital. This book offers a radical alternative. According to the authors, capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. It has little to do with utility or abstract labour, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Capital, the authors claim, represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society. Written in simple language, accessible to lay readers and experts alike, the book develops a novel political economy. It takes the reader through the history, assumptions and limitations of mainstream economics and its associated theories of politics. It examines the evolution of Marxist thinking on accumulation and the state. And it articulates an innovative theory of ‘capital as power’ and a new history of the ‘capitalist mode of power’.


Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity, and Ethnic Conflicts

Abrahamic Faiths, Ethnicity, and Ethnic Conflicts

Author: Paul Peachey

Publisher: CRVP

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 9781565181045

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"This study of religions is concerned with the tension which can be generated from these sources and the resources which religions bring to their resolution. Especially it looks to the common Abrahamic roots of the three "religions of the book": Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Throughout it looks for the complex dialects of unity in diversity, and diversity in unity."


History of the Persian Empire

History of the Persian Empire

Author: A. T. Olmstead

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 671

ISBN-13: 0226826333

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Out of a lifetime of study of the ancient Near East, Professor Olmstead has gathered previously unknown material into the story of the life, times, and thought of the Persians, told for the first time from the Persian rather than the traditional Greek point of view. "The fullest and most reliable presentation of the history of the Persian Empire in existence."—M. Rostovtzeff


The American Jewish Experience

The American Jewish Experience

Author: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Center for the Study of the American Jewish Experience

Publisher: Holmes & Meier Publishers

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780841909342

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An American Utopia

An American Utopia

Author: Fredric Jameson

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2016-07-12

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1784784540

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Controversial manifesto by acclaimed cultural theorist debated by leading writers Fredric Jameson’s pathbreaking essay “An American Utopia” radically questions standard leftist notions of what constitutes an emancipated society. Advocated here are—among other things—universal conscription, the full acknowledgment of envy and resentment as a fundamental challenge to any communist society, and the acceptance that the division between work and leisure cannot be overcome. To create a new world, we must first change the way we envision the world. Jameson’s text is ideally placed to trigger a debate on the alternatives to global capitalism. In addition to Jameson’s essay, the volume includes responses from philosophers and political and cultural analysts, as well as an epilogue from Jameson himself. Many will be appalled at what they will encounter in these pages—there will be blood! But perhaps one has to spill such (ideological) blood to give the Left a chance. Contributing are Kim Stanley Robinson, Jodi Dean, Saroj Giri, Agon Hamza, Kojin Karatani, Frank Ruda, Alberto Toscano, Kathi Weeks, and Slavoj Žižek.


American Holocaust

American Holocaust

Author: David E. Stannard

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1993-11-18

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0199838984

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For four hundred years--from the first Spanish assaults against the Arawak people of Hispaniola in the 1490s to the U.S. Army's massacre of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee in the 1890s--the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America endured an unending firestorm of violence. During that time the native population of the Western Hemisphere declined by as many as 100 million people. Indeed, as historian David E. Stannard argues in this stunning new book, the European and white American destruction of the native peoples of the Americas was the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world. Stannard begins with a portrait of the enormous richness and diversity of life in the Americas prior to Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492. He then follows the path of genocide from the Indies to Mexico and Central and South America, then north to Florida, Virginia, and New England, and finally out across the Great Plains and Southwest to California and the North Pacific Coast. Stannard reveals that wherever Europeans or white Americans went, the native people were caught between imported plagues and barbarous atrocities, typically resulting in the annihilation of 95 percent of their populations. What kind of people, he asks, do such horrendous things to others? His highly provocative answer: Christians. Digging deeply into ancient European and Christian attitudes toward sex, race, and war, he finds the cultural ground well prepared by the end of the Middle Ages for the centuries-long genocide campaign that Europeans and their descendants launched--and in places continue to wage--against the New World's original inhabitants. Advancing a thesis that is sure to create much controversy, Stannard contends that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust drew on the same ideological wellspring as did the later architects of the Nazi Holocaust. It is an ideology that remains dangerously alive today, he adds, and one that in recent years has surfaced in American justifications for large-scale military intervention in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. At once sweeping in scope and meticulously detailed, American Holocaust is a work of impassioned scholarship that is certain to ignite intense historical and moral debate.