Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Religious Liberty

  • Is Trump Still the TACO Man? Or is he now THE HAMMER?

    VDH, Ten Iranian Questions: Trump had warned the Iranians on numerous occasions. They never got the message. They were apparently listening to the American Left’s smears of Trump as a “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”)—a silly slur phrase that just died Saturday night. And die it did. To hell with the American Left with its…

  • Why Catholics Voted for Trump

    A very good First Things article by Mary Eberstadt. I have only one comment. She reports, "The nation’s Catholic voters split 56 to 41 in favor of Donald Trump." 41 %  against? Why such a large percentage? Are they 'devout Catholics' in the style of Joe Dementia and Nancy the Shredder? The Democrat Party, besides…

  • Religious Liberty and David Brooks

    Top o' the Stack

  • Next Stop: The Catacombs

    Catacomb Joe sends us to this Rod Dreher piece in the European Conservative.  Believe it or not, the Trial of the Century just happened in a courtroom in Helsinki. The Finnish parliamentarian and physician Päivi Räsänen this week returned to the dock to face hate crimes charges for having quoted the Bible in defense of…

  • The Left’s Destruction of the Universities

    Said destruction is a special case of the Left's destruction of everything it touches. Here we read about a professor failing a student for refusing to condemn her Christian faith. This case is a few years old, but characteristic. Things are worse now. Since the Left has captured the Democrat Party in the USA, if…

  • Does Classical Liberalism Destroy Itself?

    Joe Odegaard sends us to The Orthosphere where we find Classical Liberalism Destroys Itself. The opening paragraph is stylistically brilliant, especially the concluding sentence, and I agree with the paragraph content-wise, though not with the quotation from Dreher: “Classical liberalism detached from the Christian faith is what got us here.”  Rod Dreher, “David French: Not…

  • The Militant Defends Religious Liberty!

    Will wonders never cease? This article receives the coveted MavPhil nihil obstat.  I found nothing in it to disagree with. Excerpt: Today anti-Catholic prejudice is being whipped up by Democrats and the middle-class left, who argue the “main threat to democracy” comes from “semi-fascists” and the far right, including Catholics who they smear as reactionary.…

  • Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?

    A re-post from two years ago. Cognate question: Why do leftists keep asking the title question? …………………………… Why did Donald J. Trump receive the support of evangelicals and other religious conservatives? After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man.  Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct: The strength of the religious vote for Trump…

  • Integralism in Three Sentences

    Here: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him:…

  • Religious Liberty and David Brooks

    A re-run from 29 October 2016. I lay into the insipid David Brooks. ………….. The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are plenty poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading.  But the following from Brooks (28 October 2016) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right: The very essence…

  • ‘Progressive’ Scum against Religious Liberty

    The State of Colorado contra Jack Phillips.

  • Religious Liberty and David Brooks

    This is a slightly redacted re-post from before the Trump victory, from 29 October 2016, to be exact. The cause of religious liberty has been substantially advanced by President Trump. Yet another reason  for patriots and true conservatives to be grateful this Holiday season. ……………….. The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are plenty poor to…