“ACLJ Urges Federal Appeals Court to Permit Ohio Judge to Display ... - PR Inside” plus 4 more |
- ACLJ Urges Federal Appeals Court to Permit Ohio Judge to Display ... - PR Inside
- Only 12% of Tory MPs choose Cameronism as political philosophy - The Guardian
- Political Philosophy And The Revolutions Of '89: An Interview With ... - Radio Free Europe
- Mohr and more: Big Head Todd in Aspen - Aspen Times
- Sky Work AG - CharterX
| ACLJ Urges Federal Appeals Court to Permit Ohio Judge to Display ... - PR Inside Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:29 PM PST 2009-12-17 22:24:20 -
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) – dedicated to the defense of constitutional liberties secured by law – today filed its brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on behalf of Ohio Common Pleas Court Judge James DeWeese urging the court to clear the way for the Judge to display a poster in his courtroom that includes the Ten Commandments as part of an exhibit on legal philosophy. The ACLJ is asking the appeals court to overturn a federal district court ruling from October that declared the poster unconstitutional and issued an injunction prohibiting its display."For nearly a decade now, the ACLU has been trying to silence Judge DeWeese's expression of his legal philosophy," said Francis J. Manion, Senior Counsel of the ACLJ who is representing Judge DeWeese in the case. "That philosophy, which holds that a society's legal system must rest on moral absolutes as opposed to moral relativism, and that abandonment of moral absolutes leads to societal breakdown and chaos, is the same philosophy that was held by the founders of this nation. To say, as the ACLU does in this case, that a judge may not espouse such a view because it is 'religious', is to adopt an erroneous and timeworn interpretation of the First Amendment that is not based on the words, the history or the Founders' understanding of the Constitution." In a brief filed today with the federal appeals court, the ACLJ contends the ACLU lacks legal standing in the case, that the lower court erred in determining that the display violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution and violates articles of the Ohio Constitution, and contends that the Judge's display is protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. The brief contends that Judge DeWeese's display is constitutional. "Neither DeWeese's discussion of the contrast between legal philosophies based on moral absolutes as opposed to moral relativism, nor his use of the Decalogue as a means to illustrate that contrast bespeak a constitutionally problematic religious purpose," the brief argues. "Moreover, a reasonable observer of the poster would view the poster as a statement about legal philosophy, morality, and ethics, not theology or religion." DeWeese's poster falls well within acceptable boundaries of judicial freedom of speech." The ACLJ brief was filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, Ohio in the case of ACLU of Ohio v. Judge James DeWeese. You can read the ACLJ brief here: www.aclj.org/media/pdf/ACLJ_DeWeeseCTAOpeningBrief_12172009.pdf : This case is just the latest episode in the ACLU's crusade to rewrite our nation's history and heritage – purging any references of our country's Judeo-Christian roots. The ACLU filed its first case against Judge DeWeese in 2001. Led by Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, the American Center for Law and Justice is dedicated to the defense of constitutional liberties secured by law and is based in Washington, D.C. The ACLJ is online at www.aclj.org :
American Center for Law and JusticeFor Print:Gene Kapp, 757-575-9520orFor Broadcast:Christy fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Only 12% of Tory MPs choose Cameronism as political philosophy - The Guardian Posted: 17 Dec 2009 07:09 AM PST Only 12% of Tory MPs name "Cameronism" as their political philosophy. That's not entirely surprising – because "Cameronism" is a term that most people have never even heard, let alone tried to define – but the novelty of the expression can't be the only explanation for the figure, because Conservative candidates are happy to describe themselves as Cameroons. The figures come from a ComRes poll published in the January edition of Total Politics (which should be on the magazine's website soon). ComRes asked Tory MPs (excluding those who are standing down at the election) which strand of Conservatism best characterised their political philosophy and gave them five choices. These were the replies: One Nation Toryism: 38% Thatcherism: 26% Cameronism: 12% Cornerstone (moral traditionalists; named after the Cornerstone MPs' group): 6% Libertarian: 3% ComRes then put the same question to a sample of Tory candidates in winnable seats. The results were quite different: Cameronism: 43% One Nation Toryism: 22% Thatcherism: 19% Libertarian: 7% Cornerstone: 0% This looks like a significant split. But is it really? Candidates who were selected after Cameron became party leader might be expected to identify with him. MPs who were first elected to parliament in 2005, or perhaps many years before, probably formed their political philosophy long before they even met the member for Witney. The real surprise is that 38% of the parliamentary Conservative party identifies with One Nation Toryism, a philosophy that until recently was seriously out of fashion in the party. But Cameronism could be easily described as One Nation Toryism for the internet age and so there may well be little or no ideological split at all. For the record, ComRes received replies from 69 candidates and 34 MPs. fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Political Philosophy And The Revolutions Of '89: An Interview With ... - Radio Free Europe Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:13 AM PST
Anthony O'Hear is editor of the journal "Philosophy," published by the Royal Institute of Philosophy in Britain, and professor of philosophy at the University of Buckingham. He recently participated in a conference on philosophical questions in Prague. RFE/RL's Executive Editor John O'Sullivan took the opportunity to question O'Hear about the impact of the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 on philosophy and political philosophy. RFE/RL: Hegel's philosophy was greatly influenced, I understand, by the emergence of Napoleon as a world historical figure. Have the events of 1989 had any comparable effect on philosophy in the last 20 years? Anthony O'Hear: I'm sorry to say that in the philosophical world I inhabit -- broadly the Anglo-American analytical philosophical tradition -- this great event of 1989 has passed more or less unnoticed, even though it is surely a world-historical event in Hegelian terms. This is perhaps because the underlying presumption of most Western political philosophers is that some form of egalitarianism is the ideal position in politics. This is not exactly Marxism, but it presumes that what you have to do in political philosophy is to finesse egalitarianism so as to allow people as much liberty as possible. And my view is that this approach bears so little relation to any reality – political or human – that in a way they did not really notice what was going on in the Soviet bloc and so they were untroubled by its disappearance. RFE/RL: But surely other schools of philosophy had to pay attention because the regimes that collapsed in 1989 were explicitly founded upon the philosophy of Marxism. Has not that had an impact on Marxist thinking? O'Hear: Yes, I think it has had an impact on Marxist thinking, but less so in Eastern Europe than in the West. From my visits to Eastern Europe before the fall of the Soviet Union, my impression was that although diamat [dialectical materialism] was taught everywhere as a compulsory topic and formed obviously part of any philosophical program, nobody actually believed in it there. RFE/RL: Are there still citadels of Marxist belief in the West? O'Hear: There are certainly philosophers who were sympathetic to Marxism and probably still are. Today, however, most of them would not go along with the centralization that it implies and probably they would be much less certain about any idea of historical predictability. That said, their basic intuition that some form of progressive egalitarianism is the ideal toward which we should be working clearly overlaps with Marxism. RFE/RL: Where does that leave words like conservatism, liberalism, socialism? Surely, they must have a meaning very different from that they possessed in 1970 when there still was a functioning communist world. O'Hear: Certainly that clear contrast between liberal capitalism and "really existing socialism" no longer exists. The Cold War has finished. We don't see ourselves fighting an enemy of that sort. What has happened in Western politics as a result – in Europe and Britain, anyway – has been a coalescing towards a middle ground. We hear a lot of phrases such as the third way and compassionate conservatism. Most politicians with a chance of being elected try to get the benefits both of socialism in the sense of state welfare-ism and of the free market. They don't realize that there may be contradictions and tensions between these various positions. Voters have only a choice between slightly different ways of finessing these rather unsatisfactory compromises. What's rather disappointing about politics in the West is that there isn't really a genuinely socialist position on the table nor, equally, a position that would be within the classical, liberal free-market conservative tradition. In Britain, for instance, the Conservative Party is as explicitly committed to state health and education and welfare provision as its opponent, the Labour Party. They just promise to do it a bit differently. RFE/RL: But doesn't this broad ideological consensus between the parties make government more efficient and less disruptive? O'Hear: Quite the contrary. The absence of real debate makes sensible reform very difficult. The state education system, which I know quite a lot about, is almost a total failure. Yet almost no politician is really prepared to say that. What should happen is that parents should be given control over their children's education by some such device as educational vouchers they could ""spend" in the school of their choice. I say that from the standpoint of a conservative or classical liberal who believes that children are not the property of the state. Maybe it has a duty to see that they are educated but nothing much more than that. Socialists and social democrats will disagree. But the point is that because no one does disagree or debate the virtues of different reforms, the educational system continues its slow decay. RFE/RL: But surely this situation -- different parties effectively pursuing the same policies but rhetorically exaggerating their differences -- has to be a temporary state of affairs. After all, politics is an arena of conflict -- conflict of ideas as well as of interest groups. Skeptical of predictions though you may be, what future divisions do you see emerging in European politics? O'Hear: Most voters seem to me to be pretty fed up with the inefficiencies of state provision, particularly in health and education, and also with the amount of pettifogging regulation that goes on. Socialism has gone from Europe only in the sense that the state does not own the big industries anymore. But it regulates everything to death; the European Union is the regulator par excellence. Ordinary people may not have the means or the intellectual equipment to articulate this, but as things get worse -- and they are getting worse -- that will eventually produce a situation in which voters listen to genuine alternatives. RFE/RL: It seems to me that you are saying that the idea of liberal democracy is running out of steam, at least in its European homeland. So what prospect do you see for it being successfully spread to other parts of the world? And what would you say to those democrats who live under authoritarian governments? O'Hear: I would say some very simple but powerful things. First, even given the criticisms I have just made of Western Europe, people there are freer, more prosperous, probably even happier than under authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. They lead better lives than under the alternative regimes where people are suffering all kinds of oppression and hardship and poverty. Second, I would advise them -- if I may be so presumptuous as to advise people in much more difficult situations than me -- to think carefully about the underlying principles of Western democracy. This rests on assumptions about individuals being free but also responsible for their own lives. Third, if freedom, responsibility, and thus democracy are to flourish, there have to be as many independent institutions as possible -- institutions autonomous from the state, producing separate focuses of power, separate ideals, and separate allegiances, not necessarily conflicting with the state but at least balancing the tendency of the state to take over everything. Today, institutions like the law, the army, cultural institutions, professional bodies, even sport, are almost totally nationalized. They are not really independent or autonomous institutions. So I would suggest attempts to build up a sense of autonomous institutions and allegiance to them. RFE/RL: Let us assume that you see the restoration of these independent institutions and a recovery of the spirit of liberal democracy within Europe. We then have to ask: What is the future of liberal democracy in the world? Twenty years ago, Francis Fukuyama suggested that liberal democracy no longer had an ideological competitor. All countries would gradually become liberal democracies. World history in the sense of great clashes of rival ideological systems had come to an end. That hasn't happened -- at least yet. Do you see it happening? Or do you see the emergence of a rival ideology to liberal democracy, playing the role that Marxism once played? O'Hear: Although Fukuyama's book was a very interesting one, I think he displayed a poverty of imagination in it in two respects. First, large-scale predictions made by philosophers or commentators are very unlikely to be true because -- and this is a hopeful thing -- human beings are free even when they are oppressed, perhaps especially when they are oppressed. They will always seek alternatives and they will always defy predictions. Just to go back to 1989. Hardly any political scientists or philosophers predicted the fall of communism. It certainly looked impermeable when I visited the Eastern bloc. Even people there thought it was going to last a very, very long time. Yet it collapsed into dust over a few weeks. It was an amazing event that shows one of the pitfalls of political science and philosophy: None of the so-called experts foresaw it. And those who did, like President [Ronald] Reagan, [British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, and Pope John Paul were generally reviled by experts and academics. Second, to go back to Fukuyama's poverty of imagination, he did not even seem to notice that there had been an Islamic Revolution in Tehran, nor therefore the rise of Islam as a radical force. This is today a big alternative to liberal democracy, one which is infiltrating the Western bastions of liberal democracy via immigration. We now hear extraordinary predictions, such as that in a few years Rotterdam will be half Muslim. I don't know if this is true, and whether or not it is a good or bad thing. If it is true, however, it will certainly change the character of Holland. Furthermore, within these groups are people not committed to the forms of life of Western democracy. People are perhaps beginning to wake up to that. RFE/RL: Why should this be such a problem? In the past, societies such as France and Britain had little difficulty in assimilating immigrants and turning them and their children into Frenchmen, Englishmen, etc. What has changed? O'Hear: These societies have changed. One of the problems which exists in liberal democracy in the West -- and I am becoming more and more convinced of this -- is that they lack something vital, indeed, to return to your first question, something philosophical. For a very healthy society you need more than just a political ideal. Liberal democracy in its origins was always underpinned by Christianity, and in particular by a Christian sense of the transcendent dignity of the individual. We're not equal in any other respect except before God -- and we are all precious for God even if we are not precious for anybody else. This kind of underlying idea is really necessary to provide the context in which liberal democratic ideals can flourish. So I would hope for a revival of something like Christian practice. RFE/RL: Suppose, however, that this revival does not occur and that the tendencies we see at the moment in European democracy continue. Let me put one more political word on the table for your final reflections -- namely, bureaucracy. Won't bureaucracy then replace liberal democracy of the active, self-reliant kind that you favor? O'Hear: Bureaucracy, yes, and decadence. One of the more alarming predictions made by the Christian novelist and apologist C.S. Lewis -- a prediction that people of other religions would probably endorse -- concerned what would happen when what he called "men without chests" appeared, i.e. men without any kind of moral or religious fervor. My own view is that what would happen -- rather, what is happening -- is that people might be content materially but they would live without ideals, except perhaps for a little hand-waving in the direction of ecology. Into this kind of emptiness, their desire for comfort would really be all that is left, all that preoccupied them. And as you have said, that would invite in an ever-increasing bureaucracy to provide their wants and to preside over them. De Tocqueville warned us many years ago against this. It would be a benign despotism, but a despotism nonetheless. fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Mohr and more: Big Head Todd in Aspen - Aspen Times Posted: 17 Dec 2009 12:39 PM PST
ASPEN — Apart from being a songwriter of note, Todd Park Mohr, namesake of Colorado rock band Big Head Todd and the Monsters, is also a reasonably avid student of philosophy. For several years, Mohr kept a weblog, Mohr Philosophy, where he posted his reactions to the writings of Nietszche, Schopenhauer and others, and reflected on religious traditions and politics. Mohr isn't sure how those two interests, songwriting and philosophy, intersect, or if they have anything to do with one another at all. He seems to subscribe to the notion that rock 'n' roll is, and probably should be, limited to the confines of the three-and-a-half-minute pop song, and not try to wrap itself around the big, eternal issues of the world. "I'm not into writing songs that have a philosophical point of view. My songwriting is more about relationships, everyday life," Mohr said from Chicago, where he lives part of the time. Philosophy "is an area of my life that feeds my curiosity," he added, as if to say it didn't have much to do with his music. Mohr's humble self-assessment might be more convincing if his songs weren't so literate and far-reaching. It's true that from his earliest efforts, Mohr has focused on the staple subject matter of rock 'n' roll stretching back to Buddy Holly: the dynamic between girl and boy. But Mohr's songs reach for something beyond "Oh Boy" and "Peggy Sue." "Bittersweet," a huge hit from the 1993 breakthrough album "Sister Sweetly," captured, in a way, the essence of his songwriting, that there is a complexity to things, an opportunity to consider things from various angles. Mohr says he hasn't been reading much philosophy lately, as he and his bandmates — drummer Brian Nevin and bassist Rob Squires, Mohr's buddies dating back to Littleton's Columbine High School, and keyboardist Jeremy Lawton, who joined in 2004 — have been recording a new album. But that album, titled "Wipeout Turn" and due for release in June, offers a typically rigorous look at life. "The subject matter is about relationships. How relationships are very complex," the 44-year-old Mohr said. "The lyrical ideas revolve around the difficulties of relationships, how you can love somebody and hate them at the same time." Mohr wasn't specific about whether that theme has been triggered by any personal event in his life. Instead, he noted that he's addressing an issue that is always in the air; it is, in fact, an issue he wrote about going back to his earliest albums, the independent releases "Another Mayberry" and "Midnight Radio," from 1989 and 1990, respectively. "I'm always going through it. I think we all are," he said. "That's always been the most interesting thing to write about." Most of the 20 songs headed for "Wipeout Turn" are connected to the relationships theme. But Mohr mentioned two songs that were not, and both take on subject matter that is equally large in scope. One is "Muhammad Ali," about the boxer who has gotten involved in politics, religion and social matters in a manner that is rare for a professional athlete . "I've always been interested in him, the complex nature of his career. He's an extraordinary individual, very inspiring," Mohr explained. Another song is "Everything About You," which, despite the title, is inspired by outer space, and specifically, NASA. Mohr actually has an existing connection to the space program, having written "Blue Sky," from the 2007 album "All the Love You Need," at the request of an employee in NASA's research and development department. Athletes and space are part of a long list of places, outside of relationships, that Mohr has found inspiration for his songs. A serious painter (though he has never sold or exhibited his work), he is influenced by Spanish art. The 2002 album "Riviera" had several references to politics, including the song "Freedom Fighter," (though Mohr is quick to point out that the songs were mostly written prior to 9/11). The title track to "All the Love You Need" was inspired by Mexican writer Don Miguel Ángel Ruiz's novel "The Mastery of Love." And for the 1994 album "Strategem," Mohr went especially big, constructing the entire record as one connected piece, with the songs reaching toward the poetic rhythm of iambic pentameter, and the lyrics having the essence of koans, or unanswerable riddles. Mohr has also made repeated reference to two songwriters who have left their mark on him: Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. The lyrical content of Mohr's songwriting is just one part of the equation. On the musical side, however, Mohr can be just as diverse and complex, if not more so. Each of the seven studio albums from Big Head Todd and the Monsters has been a far-ranging affair of soft ballads, gritty blues and pumping rock anthems. And flashes of the guitar heroics that Mohr is capable of. "Wipeout Turn" might turn out to have the widest sonic scope of them all. "I would describe this as a reggae-blues-punk rock record," Mohr said. "It's really fun, very rhythmic, upbeat, diverse. And it's got an R&B element." fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Posted: 17 Dec 2009 10:59 AM PST
Established: 1983 • Fleet: 6 • Pilots: 20 full time BasesFleetfivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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