I have just come across your blog. You’ll be pleased to know I lisstened to the WHI on Sunday. Your book is in the post and I very much look forward to reading it.

Kind Regards,

Mike (UK)

http://www.acton.org/publications/randl/rl_173article01.php

The great social problem of the present time is not the fragmentation of the family, although that too is symptomatic, but the great social problem is the fragmentation of community and the destruction of the intimate social and spiritual culture of community, in favor of the domination of humanity by the abstracted and dehumanizing Power of the State and all the media of popular indoctrination. Freedom from the Parental powers of the materialistic politics of the State is possible only if people enter into responsible cooperation with one another in free communities. In that case, the State can do no more than represent the will and strength of an autonomous, free, and responsible populace.

The modern everyman of consumer society is an unconscious propagandized individual, participating in illusions and, effectively, self-destructing.

The modern everyman is being created by the power system of the world, because it is in the interests of that power system for there to be consumer egos who are entirely self-involved, and stupefied.

Any kind of profound questions beyond the usual religious “answers”, let alone profound doings, are totally taboo.

At present, a culture of total war, a culture of death, is ruling, while the people are engrossed in stupefying consumerism.

Brought to one and all by capitalism which IS the leading edge development of the “culture” created in the image of secular-materialism.

Such a circumstance was depicted by both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. The masses stupefied by 24/7 TV titty-tainment and gross self-indulgence, and kept in a state of perpetual fear by endless imperial wars (and threats of such), and the associated 24/7 propaganda.

The subtext and real meaning of which is this:

Only we right-thinking Christians possess and know the “truth”.

Everyone else including members of other Faith Traditions and Christians of a more liberal persuasion are either completely wrong or full of relativistic errors.

And by golly we ARE going to impose our self-”righteousness” on to everyone else.

And we have the “great commission” and/or “God’s” command/demand so to do.

Plus what if the nuclear family is a profoundly anti-cultural device? Which also inevitably creates human being who are emotional cripples!

A device which creates a nation of completely self-involved (or narcissistic) house-holders in their own consumerist dream castles who have no time and energy for the always necessary task of building cooperative communities.

Each isolated individual thus being left to struggle (alone) against the over-whelming momentum of the consumerist mass “culture” at large.

And in Reality thus being no different to their secular counterparts. Every one thus sits faithfully in front of their TV screens waiting to be told which new “exciting” consumer product to buy and get excited about. The I-gotta-have-it-nowies (which used to be called keeping up with the Jones’s)

Little boxes made out of ticky-tacky, little boxes (and consumers) ALL THE SAME. Doing exactly what TV (or propaganda central) tells them to do. Even what “religious” TV tells them. The 700 club for instance

Cooperative communities have always been the bed-rock of any healthy culture.

I like your point about rights existing in tension with one another. Then decisions must be made at times about which ones supercede. I would think the survival of the society would matter more to the gays than state recognition of their marriage.