Friday, April 22, 2016

Communism and Freedom


I noted below that I have read The Soul and the Wire from The Gulag. Now I am back to reading the rest of Part III of the same, which I had put off to read Part IV. Reading about the women in the work camps has to be one of the most depressing things I have ever read. The total loss of humanity that these women experienced may not be the worst atrocity in history, but it is still most difficult to read.
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My children are reading Animal Farm together (school) and listening in, I think it surely relates to what is happening today or at least what may be starting to happen in our own "land of the free" country. Our freedom to speak and even think about what we believe is surely going the way of the wild buffalo.
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Related in a way is this article  about some comments Ted Cruz made about who should legislate same-sex adoption. Not particularly to pick on Ted Cruz, but the article addresses the conservative/libertarian notion that only states (as opposed to the Federal government) should legislate moral issues. Here is the essence of the article:

Cruz may take for granted that states have rights to legislate on every issue. He and his followers might disagree with such a characterization, but if the legalization of homosexual adoption of children is not outside the authority of individual states, then one cannot possibly know what else is. One should seriously question the idea that states contain within themselves some innate right to weigh-in on every issue. Questions relating to the Natural Law should be considered outside the scope and competency of state legislatures, at least in a non-defensive sense. In other words, states only have the duty to defend the Natural Law, not make positive laws to destroy it.

For example, most reasonable people would agree that states should outlaw rape, while at the same time agree that they do not have the right to legalize murder. States have the duty to use their power to defend these moral concepts, but not to violate them.

 All things to consider .....
Oremus pro invicem!

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