Category: Culture Matters

Thinking about…cats and dogs

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

Rushes of blood to the head can be dangerous – for all sorts of reasons. The biggest risk to life and limb that one of them ever put me in was on that day when I was driving along a country road listening to the radio. There was a discussion about the joys and otherwise, mainly otherwise, of motherhood. Two feminists were waxing eloquently on the subject.

The presenter must have raised the issue of the joy which the companionship of children gives when one of the two sneered and said something along the lines of “If it is companionship you want, get yourself a dog.” The shock and the horror of it sent my blood surging into my head to the extent that I almost lost control of the car.

I was reminded of this by the conjunction of two things this morning. The first was seeing a quotation from G.K. Chesterton in which he observed: “Where there is animal worship there is human sacrifice.”

The second was a tweet from @savethetinyhumans which reminded us all that “Our politicians won’t take abortion seriously until we take abortion seriously. 55 milion dead isn’t enough, yet?.”

Human sacrifices? Yes. Absolutely. They may not be ritual sacrifices – because modern man is not so much into ritual or religious practice, pseudo or otherwise, but they are still sacrifices. They are sacrificial offerings to the comfort zones modern man wants to occupy at all costs. The abortion industry is driven by a middle class which aborts its own children to preserve that comfort zone. It then organises the abortion factories of the world for their poorer neighbours because their fertility is also a threat to the comfort and prosperity which the middle class think is its right.

I would not want to offend the dog-lovers and the cat-lovers of this world but surely we need to put these creatures in perspective. I think that there is something terribly incongruous about a society which organises the destruction of millions or “tiny humans” and at the same time threatens a man with a year in jail for cooking and eating cats. He is an odd fish, certainly, but his oddness is much less revolting that that of someone who could be a mother to a child and sacrifices that gift for the love of a dog.

When our civilization reaches that point it is surely at a stage of disintegration. We are now in a place where the truth about an individual human life is no longer recognised for what it is – the single most inestimable, lovable and precious thing in this universe. The only thing that is recognised in our dazed and confused world is the value of the empowered individual’s pleasure, enjoyment, entertainment or comfort. Everything that stands in the way of this is expendable. Fifty-five million tiny and powerless human beings are the deceased witnesses to this catastrophic degeneration.

 

For those who have been wondering about the Yazidi…

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Prospect magazine explains…

Who are the Yazidi?

An ancient religious sect, with less than 1m followers worldwide, largely concentrated in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and parts of Iran. Since Sunday, around 40,000 Yazidi from the north of Iraq have been trapped in the Sinjar Mountains in the northwest of the country, having fled their homes in the nearby town of Sinjar after it was attacked by militants from the Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS). A further 200,000 have reportedly fled the area. The Guardian reports that Kurdish troops stationed nearby have been forced to withdraw, and that at least 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, have been killed in the past week. The Yazidi have suffered violence throughout the recent fighting in Iraq; according to al-Jazeera, IS were accused of killing six Yazidi in May, and a group claiming to be part of IS kidnapped 24 Yazidi border guards in June.

What is their religion?

Linked to the ancient faith Zoroastrianism, the Yazidi religion revolves around the worship of seven angels, of whom Malak Ṭāʾūs (“peacock angel”) is the most important. Above all of these is a supreme God, who created the universe, but the Yazidi god no longer has any direct interest in the world. Yazidi deny the existence of evil, rejecting the notion of sin, the devil and hell—this makes them “antidualists.” They believe in a form of reincarnation, whereby the spirit is purified as it migrates through different bodily forms until it achieves divinity. Shaykh ʿAdī, a 12th century mystic and chief Yazidi saint, is believed by followers to have managed this.

Why are they being persecuted?

The Yazidi are reported to believe that they are descended from Adam, rather than Adam and Eve, and are distinct from the rest of mankind. Consequently, they separate themselves out from whatever community they live in. The Yazidi have been persecuted by Sunni militants in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003, and historically have faced persecution from nearby Muslim communities, as Malak Ṭāʾūs is often misidentified as the Judeo-Christian devil. This has led to Yazidi throughout the world being derided as “devil worshippers.”

This is the BBC’s account of the religion and its followers.

Religious persecution “one of the horrors of our day” – US ambassador

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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Ambassador Hackett

The United States has released an alarming country-by-country analysis of religious freedom which shows us that 2013 was one of the worst years for the displacement of entire religious communities around the world.

A comprehensive report from the State Department assesses the state of religious freedom in nearly 200 countries.

Commenting on the findings, Kenneth Hackett, U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, quoted by the agency Rome Reports, says that “Religious freedom takes a lot of interpretation. In our own countries there are some very fine lines on interpretation. But the actual persecution of people because of their religion is one of the horrors of our day.”

Ambassador Hackett’s observation on “fine lines of interpretation” would seem to be heading off any criticism of “our own countries” for what many consider infringments of freedom of conscience in recent legislation on moral issues – marriage, euthanasia, abortion, contraception – in jurisdictions like the US itself, Ireland, Britain and Belgium.

The report, concentrating on persecution at the extreme end of the spectrum, highlighted areas where entire communities are targeted simply for their religion. It recorded increased persecution of Christians in 2013, noting that in countries like Syria, Egypt and Iraq, entire Christian communities have been decimated by violence.

The report also details repressive government policies against Christians and other minorities in places like Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan and Pakistan.

The Vatican has also expressed concern for these policies. Msgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, President of the Pontifical Academies for Sciences, said:
“First off, the Holy See wants to warn the world about the issue. Second, to work with Christians so they stay. And third, to get the universal Church to pray and take social actions to stop persecution.”

Ambassador Hackett pointed out that the report highlights the plight of all religious communities, not just Christians. Whether it’s rising anti-Semitism in Europe or discrimination against Shia Muslims in countries like Bahrain, Ambassador Hackett said the U.S. and the Holy See have a a common stance. Mr. Hackett continued, saying that “Wherever we can, we want to find a common cause with the Church, and the Holy See itself, on issues of religious persecution of all people, not just Christians. It’s for all people, and the Holy See has been a loud and abiding voice for those kinds of concerns.”

American agencies will use the latest report on religious freedom to help determine U.S. policy in those countries, and determine the best way to help promote religious freedom.

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Replacing the Hammer and Sickle?

The Orwellian spin in Irish politics

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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Irish Justice Minister Francis Fitzgerald has been accused of misleading the public and of engaging in a “disgusting slur” against her former government party colleagues, when she discussed the abortion issue yesterday on the country’s Newstalk Radio’s Pat Kenny Show.

Minister Fitzgerald represents the truly ugly face of Irish politics and the Orwellian double-think at the totalitarian heart of its so-called liberal establishment.

In the course of the interview, Minister Fitzgerald said in reference to last year’s abortion legislation: “It’s hard to believe that it generated the kind of controversy and that people would leave a political party because we were legislating to save the lives of women.”

Former minister, Lucinda Creighton, and several of her colleagues, left the Party because as a matter of conscience they could not support legislation which everyone knew was simply the introduction of abortion by sleight of hand – and was the breaking of an electoral promise to boot. The legislation was passed because the bolshevik segment of the government coalition held a gun to the head of prime minister Enda Kenny. It was the next best thing to a coup d’etat.

Commenting on the Minister’s remarks, Pro Life Campaign Deputy Chairperson Cora Sherlock said:

“The Government has misled the public on this issue from day one. But it’s a particularly shameful and disgusting slur for Minister Fitzgerald to turn around and accuse her former colleagues of leaving Fine Gael over legislation ‘to save women’s lives’. Minister Fitzgerald knows perfectly well that the Government of which she is part of introduced abortion in the case of threatened suicide even though there is no medical evidence to back it up. In fact the peer reviewed evidence points to the adverse consequences of abortion for women in these situations.

“It’s very frustrating having to listen to the misinformation on this issue day in day out in the media. It is why we need a new kind of politics in this country where groupthink and the false presentation of issues is properly exposed and challenged. Fine Gael would like to pretend otherwise, but there is a huge public appetite for a new politics built on trust. I remain very hopeful that we will see big changes in this regard before the next general election.”

European Convention “enshrines” traditional concept of marriage

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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There is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage says European Court of Human Rights.

From the Iona Institute:
A couple of years ago, former Tanaiste and Labour party leader, Eamon Gilmore, described same-sex marriage as “the civil rights issue of this generation”.

However, in a ruling this week, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has said no right to same-sex marriage exists in the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Strasbourg court is the same one that found Ireland’s law on abortion violated the Convention and helped pave the way for the ‘Protection of Human Life In Pregnancy Act’. Therefore, the court cannot be accused of being conservative.

The Court, in the case of Hämäläinen v. Finland, Application no. 37359/09, reaffirmed that the European Convention cannot be interpreted “as imposing an obligation on Contracting States to grant same-sex couples access to marriage”.

The Court had previously found that no such right exists in the Convention. This time it went further and explicitly stated that Article 12 of the Convention (dealing with marriage):

enshrines the traditional concept of marriage as being between a man and a woman [and] cannot be construed as imposing an obligation on the Contracting States to grant access to marriage to same-sex couples (§ 96).

In addition, and contrary to the plaintiffs, it found that no consensus in favour of same-sex marriage exists in Europe because only ten of the 47 signatories to the Convention have legalised same-sex marriage.

While the ruling still leaves it up to signatory countries to decide what form marriage should take in their legal systems, it makes it harder for campaigners to argue that same-sex marriage is a ‘fundamental right’ let alone “the civil rights issue of this generation”.

Is this where the gay narrative finally begins to crack up?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters3 Comments

As another corrupt narrative seeks to assert itself in the canon of political correctness we may be tempted to ask ourselves if this might not be the beginning of the unraveling of an earlier narrative which has been poisoning our culture for nearly half a century.

Andrew Gilligan in the Sunday Telegraph last weekend suggests that while “there really is now no shortage of evidence about the harm done by child abuse” we should still ask ourselves if, in the context of the latest frenzy about the crimes of the past, it is not worth watching whether we could, in the future, go back to the intellectual climate which allowed them.

What is he telling us? His article is revealing an open secret: that there has been, and there currently is, an under-the-radar current in the academic world which is seeking to destigmatise paedophilia. Gilligan accepts that academic inquiry is supposed to question conventional wisdom and to deal rigorously with the evidence, whether or not the conclusions it leads you to be popular. He is right about that and the academic discourse which he is revealing to us – and which many will find shocking – may well be doing us just such a service.

Liberal society is confused, profoundly confused, by the phenomenon of paedophilia. On the one hand it demands what it calls sexual liberation and the right for all to express their sexual preferences as they chose to do so. On the other hand they cannot be seen to tolerate the sexual abuse of minors. The twisting and turning being recounted in Gilligan’s article in the Telegraph reflects this quandary at the heart of today’s dominant culture.

“Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” and “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children”. These are two quotations from a conference held in the University of Cambridge this time last year. At the same conference one of the presentations was entitled “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive analysis.”  Another was: “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.” Hebephilia, it appears is the sexual preference for children in early puberty, typically 11 to 14-year-olds.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) produces the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This is a standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals.  The APA has rejected a proposal to include hebephilia as a disorder in the new edition of the manual. The proposal arose because the age at which children now reach puberty has come down in recent decades.  As a result many more children were now becoming vulnerable because charges of paedophilia – pre-pubertal sexual attraction – could not be brought against child abusers.

Ray Blanchard, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, who led the APA’s working group on the subject, said that unless some other way was found of encompassing hebephilia in the new manual, that was “tantamount to stating that the APA’s official position is that the sexual preference for early pubertal children is normal”.

Some of those who successfully defeated the effort to change the definition said hebephilia would be abused as a diagnosis to detain sex offenders as “mentally ill” under US “sexually violent predator” laws even after they had completed their sentences.

The real shock-wave at the conference came from Philip Tromovitch, a professor at Doshisha University in Japan. Dealing with the “prevalence of paedophilia” he stated that the “majority of men are probably paedophiles and hebephiles” and that “paedophilic interest is normal and natural in human males”.

All of this is deeply unsettling to the liberal mind. The liberal left’s house of cards is falling apart because of a fundamental flaw in modernity’s analysis of the human condition. Its search for a solution to their quandary is a doomed one.  By identifying this as an exclusively biological and/or psychological issue the search has tied itself up in knots. The problem is a moral one and if they were not locked in their relativistic prison they might have some chance of seeing that.

Gilligan observed that last week, after the conviction of Rolf Harris, the report into Jimmy Savils’s years of predatory activity, and claims of an establishment cover-up to protect a sex-offending minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, Britain went into a convulsion of anxiety about child abuse in the Eighties. But, he added, unnoticed amid the furor is a much more current threat: attempts, right now, in parts of the academic establishment to push the boundaries on the acceptability of child sex.

He pointed out that a key factor in what happened all those decades ago in the dressing rooms of the BBC, the wards of the NHS and, allegedly, the corridors of power was not just institutional failings or establishment “conspiracies”, but a climate of far greater intellectual tolerance of practices that horrify today.

Norman Tebbit, a confidant of Margaret Thatcher and a minister at the very heart of her Government said on the BBC on Sunday that there “may well” have been a cover-up of abuse implicating politicians in the 1980s. Lord.Lord Tebbit added: “At that time I think most people would have thought that the establishment, the system, was to be protected and if a few things had gone wrong here and there that it was more important to protect the system than to delve too far into it.” Asked if he thought there had been a “big political cover-up” at the time, he said: “I think there may well have been. But it was almost unconscious. It was the thing that people did at that time.”

It is a separate story, but I wonder if the media will pursue the political establishment in his instance as they pursued every sniff of scandal in the Catholic Church, right up to the hounding of the Pope himself.

Gilligan reminds us that in that era, on the Left, there we many for whom the prohibition on sex by or with children was just another repressive boundary to be swept away – and some of the most important backing came from academia. With the Pill, the legalisation of homosexuality and shrinking taboos against premarital sex, the Seventies was an era of quite sudden sexual emancipation.

It is here that the crux of the inherent contradiction within modernity’s reading of modern man lies. Is our culture’s corrupt narrative about sexuality now about to fall apart?

Sexuality is a force within us that modernity has placed at the centre of the meaning of our lives. In doing so modernity legitimizes all those things that Gilligan lists. But the reality is that it is Love that is at the centre of all that gives meaning to our existence. Sex is just one of many modes through which we may realize that great centre-piece. Modernity has grossly equated sex with love and demanded a freedom for it which subordinates all else to it. With this identification come demands for all those inter-related things which have been tearing us and our society apart – the destruction of monogamous marriage, divorce, co-habitation, the redefinition of marriage out of existence, abortion, the destruction of the family, and many more.

This current flash-point around paedophilia brings an inherent fallacy into focus for us. Sexuality is a constant in human nature. It is a good of enormous significance. But like so many goods – even the goods of the earth itself – it is open to exploitation. In the frenzied effort – more frenzied every day – of modernity to elevate sex to the status of that which gives meaning to our existence, every form of sexual activity imaginable has been brought into the canon of the acceptable and allowable.

All decaying and decadent civilizations have ended up in this kind of morass. This one is an exception only insofar as it is attempting to cover is abuses of sexuality in a veneer of equality, legality and sanctimonious rights jargon. Nature is not fooled. Neither is logic. The narrative that homosexuality is something innate is breaking down in the face of the contorted thinking about paedophilia now being agonised over.

There are two sexes, male and female. There are varying intensities of sexuality experienced by humans and different experiences when it comes to sexual attraction. In some cases these produce confusion but if we are responsible we will deal with these confusions in a rational and sensible way.

The husband who experiences attraction to a woman who is not his wife can deal with it in two ways – surrender to that attraction and act the maggot, or restrain himself and be faithful to his promises. There is no doubt but that some humans find this a bigger struggle than others – just as some find it more difficult to control their temper. In neither case is difficulty a valid excuse for behaving badly.

The same goes for humans experiencing same sex attraction and for those who experience paedophiliac attraction. Decadent western society has created a narrative to make the adulterer happy. It is called divorce. It has also created a narrative for the person indulging his or her same-sex attraction. It is called homosexuality and is being legitimatized by the redefining of marriage. The search is already on to create a narrative for those who wish to indulge their sexuality in other ways. This is all madness and nothing more than a symptom of decadence.

We have now reached the last frontier and modernity is hitting the buffers. It is unlikely – at least this side of total degeneracy – that we will cross this last frontier any time soon. But if we continue to pander to our lusts we surely will.

The way forward for the rational and sane can only be the restoration of human virtue and the best code of morality the world has ever seen, that based on the teaching of the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Dreadful Obama – so thinks America

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

 

I know that I can sometimes come off as unrelentingly anti-Obama, but here’s proof that one or two Americans dislike him, too. The Quinnipiac University’s latest presidential poll says that Barack Obama is the least favourite president since the Second World War. That’s right: he ranks beneath Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George W Bush. George W Bush. Those surveyed said that Mitt Romney might’ve done a better job if elected in 2012. Which means that Americans actually prefer terrible hypothetical presidents to the real one they’ve got now. They’re taking a second look at the devil they don’t know.

That is Tim Stanley talking. Read more about why American think this man is so dreadful here.

Deadly guidelines for doctors in Ireland

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment
Irish Prime Minister, Enda Kenny
Ireland’s ironically designated Department of “Health” took a further step today in prescribing death for countless children awaiting birth in their mothers’ wombs.  It has published its guidelines for doctors to follow when women come to them seeking abortion on the pretext that they are about to commit suicide because of an unwanted pregnancy.
This time last year the Fine Party led by Prime Minister Enda Kenny forced legislation through the Irish parliament, bludgeoning many of his party’s members into submission to support the bill against their consciences. He did so to keep his ideologically-driven socialist partners on board in his coalition government.
He did this in the face of massive public street protests from the pro-life movement in the country and has since paid a considerable electoral price for this. Independent candidates were victorious in the local and European elections in May and with the defenders of the unborn continuing to mobilize support he has every reason to be edgy about his political future.
The Pro Life Campaign today issued a statement accusing  the Government of misleading the public “every step of the way” over abortion. Deputy Chairperson, Cora Sherlock said:

” The law introduced last year was presented as emergency legislation needed to save women’s lives. If this were true, it wouldn’t have taken a full year to draw up the guidelines. The truth is the legislation was never about life-saving treatments. It was always about Fine Gael capitulating to the Labour Party, who had campaigned for 20 years for an abortion regime in Ireland. The assurances sought by some Fine Gael TDs prior to the passage of the legislation have now been shown to be worthless.”

Ms Sherlock added that the guidelines “confirm that all it takes to sign the life of an unborn baby away is for two like-minded psychiatrists to sanction the abortion without having to produce a shred of medical evidence that it would help save the life of the mother. Abortion is now legal in Ireland up to birth, based on a threat of suicide, even though the Government knew before the law was passed that abortion is not a treatment for suicidal feelings. No amount of spin from the Taoiseach or anyone else can change this sad reality.”

“Though they may try and play it down, Fine Gael knows that their support for abortion was a significant issue with voters in the recent local and European elections. I can assure them it will be an even bigger issue come the next General Election.”

If the Irish government coalition regime does not unravel before then, Kenny will be facing the electorate again in early 2016. Recent polls have shown that the socialist partners in the coalition are at their lowest  level in living memory. Their leader, Eamon Gilmore, has resigned and one of their top ministers, Ruairi Quinn, has also announced his resignation.