{"id":55876,"date":"2015-01-08T09:09:58","date_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:09:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=55876"},"modified":"2015-01-08T09:09:58","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T16:09:58","slug":"decline-and-fall-2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=55876","title":{"rendered":"Decline and fall, 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Pope\u2019s climate decree to declare God a green socialist”<\/a>. Peter Foster, Financial Post:<\/p>\n

A long time ago, the British satirical magazine Private Eye would occasionally append a humorous phonograph record. One such had a track that started \u201cAnd now, The Pope speaks out on The Pill.\u201d There followed the voice of one of Dr. Who\u2019s Daleks declaring \u201cI-am-the-Pope. You-will-obey.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot has happened to the Catholic Church since then, although not in its views towards contraception. In the wake of horrendous sexual scandals and a continued decline in membership, the Church has turned to an Argentinean \u201cprogressive,\u201d Pope Francis. He does not have very progressive views on contraception, abortion, or gender bias, but he is onside with homosexuality. More important, he will soon deliver an Encyclical \u2013 a lengthy epistle of more than usual moral heft \u2014 on the progressive issue of our age: projected catastrophic man-made climate change.<\/p>\n

The timing of this encyclical is hardly random. It is obviously designed to call Catholics to pressure their governments to \u201ctake action\u201d at the UN\u2019s 21st Conference of the Parties, COP, in Paris later this year. In this light, the recent announcement of the Pope\u2019s role in President Obama\u2019s decision to ease relations with Cuba becomes more intriguing. Have the White House and the Vatican been cooking up other schemes of mutual progressive interest?<\/p>\n

Obviously the Pope will not be able to claim to speak ex cathedra, that is, with divine authority, on climate science, although most alarmists will regard that as a shame. Some have suggested that he is \u201cpro-science\u201d because he has come to terms with the Big Bang theory and Evolution, but unfortunately Francis has also confirmed himself to be economically challenged, a defining characteristic of progressivism.<\/p>\n

The contents of the Encyclical were adumbrated in a recent joint statement from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Science. One has only to look at some of the signatories to know what its conclusions will be. They include Jeffrey Sachs, the UN development guru famous for orchestrating development disasters; Naomi Oreskes, who is famous for a monstrously mendacious study denying that scientifically-qualified climate skeptics exist; and Sir Martin Rees, a former President of the Royal Society who not only strongly supported the conclusions of the egregiously-biased Stern Review, but also led a campaign against ExxonMobil.<\/p>\n

The statement reads like any UN document, full of condemnation of the capitalist system, and pointing to a \u201cbetter world\u201d brought about by more global \u201ccooperation\u201d and \u201cparticipatory democracy\u201d (that is, democracy from which those who don\u2019t think the right way are excluded). In practicality it ranks with hoping for another miracle of loaves and fishes: productivity from wishful thinking. It aims not merely at stabilizing the climate but \u201cgiving energy access to all.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Energy access being, of course, a natural “right” — as is health care, etc. — even though for that “right” to be considered such, one must necessarily accept the premise that if you are a doctor or work in the energy sector, you belong to the volk, who have every right to rob you of your liberty and labor for the Greater Good.<\/p>\n

Such a paradigm, naturally, will require an enforcement measure, which is why so many progressive Utopias wind up as totalitarian police states. But evidently that doesn’t matter to this Pope, who is doing to the Catholic Church what liberation theology did to many Christian denominations: cheapen it, politicize it, and make its formal structure irrelevant as a force for real cultural liberalism (in the classical sense).<\/p>\n

It’s sad, but it’s hardly surprising: we’ve been heading down the road to relativism for years — in fact, accepted beliefs about how language works (which are logically incoherent) have assured this — so the fact that yet another institution has been coopted by leftists (in thought if not in name) as part of their Long March, is to be expected.<\/p>\n

What the co-opting isn’t, however, is some unchangeable force of nature, some historical materialism that is a immutable as fate. That’s just what proponents want you to believe so that in the end, their standing as the world’s masterminds goes unchallenged and is merely accepted as part of the natural order.<\/p>\n

And indeed, it was that way for a long time. Until the formation of USA proved that the whole narrative of leftism \/ authoritarianism was built on a foundation of straw.<\/p>\n

The west is not dying, therefore, so much as it seems committed to suicide. Luckily, not all of us are willing to drink the Kool-Aid. For which we will never, ever be forgiven by those doling it out and those willing to take a chug. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Pope\u2019s climate decree to declare God a green socialist”. Peter Foster, Financial Post: A long time ago, the British satirical magazine Private Eye would occasionally append a humorous phonograph record. One such had a track that started \u201cAnd now, The Pope speaks out on The Pill.\u201d There followed the voice of one of Dr. Who\u2019s Daleks declaring \u201cI-am-the-Pope. You-will-obey.\u201d A lot has happened to the Catholic Church since then, although<\/p>\n

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