Hieronymus
6mo ago
Cultural differences are real and meaningful, but in this case I wonder if the difference in honesty looks bigger due to a difference in norms about how to return lost property. Unless I were in a small town, handing a lost wallet in to the police probably wouldn't occur to me, and then it would likely be option two or three.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
Were they still punishing people for wrongthink by taking away their checkmarks, or had that also changed?
Hieronymus
13d ago
Christian understanding does not end at the Bible. Indeed the Bible says not to use itself that way (2 Thessalonians 2:15).
If you have another reliable record of apostolic teaching, you should listen to it. But you don't – both Rome and Constantinople have a history of backdating later innovations to ascribe apostolicity to them. Tradition can be useful, but to call it authoritative is an error.
Fortunately that's not needed here, because the Bible speaks to the issue. If Cruz gets it wrong, well, Cruz gets it wrong.
For non-Protestant Christians, having so many Protestants in political power is bemusing, frustrating, and sometimes terrifying.
I'd like to respond with some clever remark about Roman Catholics in power, but that'd be silly because, like Protestants, they are too varied a group to generalize about that way. As far as I'm aware of Eastern Orthodox politicians in traditionally Orthodox countries, they seem more driven by ethnic nationalism than by any particularly Christian concerns.
Maybe she'll return baptized and born again.
I've been unironically praying for that – except that I presume, given her childhood faith, she is already baptized.
I have two reasons in particular to wish her well. One is that, like most, I know people who have made the normie-tier mistakes of which she has made the epic-tier versions, and I pray for their repentance. The other is that when she is talking about her (sometimes very difficult) evangelical childhood, she makes an honest effort to be fair as she understands fairness.
If she repented of her sin, then reconciled to her father such that they forgave one another, I think that would justify making the world endure a little cringeposting for a while. I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying from time to time.
Hieronymus
20d ago
Surely we can deadname an influential rationalist court prostitute when her name has so much metaphorical import?
I don't care about "deadnaming." But unless she actually changed her name to Aella, I prefer the social norm that avoids casual and unnecessary doxxing.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
That explains so much. I remember being excited to see PCM have a shot at moving off-site, but the number of PCM users who joined was dwarfed by the number of rdrama users who did, so the culture was very different.
Man, I think that men who pine for a virgin bride have caught a glimpse of the loveliness in the life you’ve described. I wish someone could explain the rest to them such that they could see the beauty of the whole package. Some secular men would be moved by it; many others would at least respect it. And it would strengthen the spines and zippers of Christian men and women alike.
I’m not the right person to do it. I’m not even sure what form it would take. But it would be a win for truth and beauty, to say nothing of the people involved.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
I am not a libertarian, and I am certainly no ancap. I have some very strong classical liberal leanings, but classical liberalism is not the summum bonum.
The family, as a classic example of natural duty, is one of the great weaknesses of a thoroughgoing, non-agression-principle–centered libertarianism. Libertarianism in its heart of hearts wants to divide the world into free agents and property; children are neither. They are both human and inescapably dependent. It is baked into the order of creation, and no one can will it away. They are not the only example, but they are by far the clearest.
Hieronymus
6mo ago
I can see why one might think so, as a polytheistic precursor to the version we now have, but it's not in line with Judean polytheists' practice. When King Josiah of Judah decided he was done putting up with all this pagan nonsense, the Jerusalem temple had plenty of artifacts of polytheistic worship for him to burn, grind up, and/or throw into the river.
Hieronymus
9mo ago
I think there are a modest but meaningful number of men online, whether they were successful cads or not, who are coming to realize that rejecting Christian sexual ethics has been bad for people of both sexes. I wonder if they'll be the one group of irreligious moderns who will find the natural law persuasive.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
… but he’s no Roy Moore.
This is definitely a tangent, but I haven’t kept up with political scandals. What do you mean? My recollection is that Moore was accused of some things that were really serious and some things that were merely weird; then, when some of the weird accusations were proved, people spoke as if the grave ones were too, mostly without evidence. But I am fully prepared to have missed some developments in the mean time.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I happened to read it at that age. Although it's not exactly history, it did put our brief coverage of Hawaii in my US history class to shame.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I want to offer a data point since your example caught my eye. My go-to butter, from a very respectable American dairy brand, is 81% butterfat. Butter isn’t what they’re most known for and I don’t think chefs seek it out, but I prefer it to the well-reviewed European brands I have tried. So it surprises me that the EU forbids it to be called butter.
On the other hand, America’s minimum alcohol content for liquor to be labeled with the obvious categories (whiskey, brandy, gin, etc.) is 80 proof (40% ABV) as opposed to the EU’s 75 proof (37.5% ABV). I don’t know what that says about us, but I am grateful for it.
Hieronymus
1yr ago
I would love to read it.
I appreciate your and @screye's replies on the culture war aspects. As an American I am used to reading western history with the bias of the author in mind. But that's hard to do for parts of the world where I don't have the context; I can sometimes intuit the author's biases, but their implications are not clear to me.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
But since the title of "king" generally meant "ruler" and not "husband of queen", there was historically a lot of reluctance to give this title to someone who married the female monarch, particularly in the days when the husband ruled the wife.
Yes, I see avoiding the implication that he ruled jure uxoris. That said, what would have been the implications if he had become co-ruler? It's hard for me to see how Britain would have been worse off for giving Albert or Philip more influence.
Hieronymus
2yr ago
Thanks!
Hieronymus
2yr ago
One more minor bikeshed: modhatted comments have the poster's username in white on bright red, apparently regardless of theme. While this makes sense for bans and such, the median mod comment on TheMotte has a much mellower tone. I'd suggest either changing the color to the traditional green or dialing back the amount of red color, e.g., underline the username and set it in red with no background.
Hieronymus
3mo ago
More controversially, I feel the same is true about mandatory ID cards and hate speech laws, by the way. If Vermont wants Euro-style hate speech laws, I really don’t care. Plenty of states will oppose them. The same is true for gun control, for civil rights, for gay marriage, for religion in government.
As a red-triber in a very blue state, who is often willing to support federalism even when it harms his interests, I draw the line at my basic rights as an American. I shouldn't have to leave my home and my family's legacy here to secure them.
Hieronymus
26d ago
Seventy year olds are fully capable of caring about the generations to come. Indeed, financially secure seventy year olds (which presumably describes the elderly in the political class) are among those best suited to think in generational terms. If they don't, that's a deep cultural problem, and electing younger folks may mitigate it but will not solve it.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
These are not evangelical theologies---and it's fine to dislike them for that reason…
The gulf here is much wider than that. If Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead, then confessional Lutheranism, or Roman Catholicism, or Eastern Orthodoxy falls apart. Liberation theology and the social gospel movement keep on trucking.
… but they obviously incorporate the supernatural.
Only in the sense that they try to “use the stairs of heaven as a shortcut to the nearest chemist's shop,” in Lewis’ inimitable phrase.
Hieronymus
10mo ago
You know, as an actual literal tradcon I can say that this guy just shouldn't be dating- the man pays in relationships, that's part and parcel of rejecting modern gender roles.
But society should do its best to make it possible for men to fill those roles. I think OP is right to suggest that the British government is setting out to avoid this responsibility more or less explicitly.
Hieronymus
10mo ago
The post is structured as a politically-flipped parody of an argument from an immigration critic, with some asserted (by the parody) racism. In that way BurdensomeCount opens the discussion by mocking those who disagree with him.
As the post goes on it begins to seem that the poster also asserts the parody's claims as true, which he may indeed believe. This gives him cover (I am expressing my sincere opinion!) and baits his interlocutors into answering the parody they'd have otherwise ignored at the moment they are angriest. As a probably unintended side effect it sucks all the oxygen out of the room, preventing a more patient and interesting subthread from arising.
A frank summary of events and his opinion may have led to an interesting, if somewhat heated, discussion. I don't think that's what BurdensomeCount was looking for.
Hieronymus
5d ago
Arthur, heir to the throne, Henry's elder brother and Catherine's husband, was married at the age of fifteen and died six months later of (presumed to be) the sweating sickness. There are allegations that he had been growing weaker and more sickly since the wedding in the period leading up to his death. Doubts about the consummation of the marriage are therefore not unreasonable.
That is a fair point.
It was Henry VIII who later had the scruples about "oh I must have inadvertently married my brother's widow, which is incest, and the Old Testament says God punishes that, this is why I have no living male heirs and must annul this illegal marriage so I can marry my current mistress", and put the pressure on the pope of the time to do so.
Well, yeah. It was a misreading of Leviticus – if it were correct then levirate marriage, commanded to Jews in the same book, would make no sense. But it was a misreading that underlay canon law. And you can see why the issue would obsess him.
You can believe she was lying because she was a jealous, spiteful woman...
She'd certainly have understandable reasons for jealousy. And if she had originally felt that lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers, it wouldn't be at all shocking if she refused to come clean so that he could look justified in betraying her.
Hieronymus
1mo ago
Sure. But then, all people would be the same in that regard. Love has to single out a particular person (or a particular thing) in contradistinction to others.
Fair enough. I think that's a pretty base level definitional difference with Christianity.
That you reject sanctity and natural law does not make them incoherent.
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