The Christian Vanguard

Just about all Protestants believe that the Eucharist is just a symbol, meaning, it has no real or literal significance. A flag may symbolize a country, but it is not the country itself. In the same way, Protestants believe that the Eucharist is a symbol of Christ's body, but is not Christ's body itself. It is not the real body of Christ, or it is not the literal body of Christ. If this is what Protestants want to claim, then they can have absolutely no support from the Church Fathers, nor could they in principle. The reason is because this view of the Eucharist is anachronistic, that is to say, it assumes a metaphysical view of symbols, namely nominalism, that didn't exist at the time and wasn't commonplace until the 16th and 17th century.  The Church Fathers tended to be Platonists, which is a kind of realism. Nominalism is an anti-realism. Platonism is not only a kind of realism, but on the more extreme part of the realism spectrum, which is why Platonism is som...

Just finished watching this dcoumentary on Netflix. I recommend it.  I have positive things to say about it, and some critical things to say about it.  I agree with the general premise, that life's meaning doesn't come from certain goods or consuming certain goods, and that there is a culture out there that does kind of push us into there. The movie wants to call it "consumerism" but I think that's too cliche and doesn't really capture the nuances they themselves put forth later throughout the movie. I would just call debauchery. There is a culture of debauchery that does need to be resisted. I also like that they do explain that there isn't anything wrong with consumption per se (they make a great point that consumerism is anti-materialist because it devalues material goods by making them so dispensable), and so avoids a lot of the left leaning anti-capitalist messages out there that try to pontificate the same point. It does flirt with that me...

I had a friend complain about the electoral college, and I responded. It's long, and I want to share it with my readers here. My friend says, "[The electoral college] was only put in there because education was limited and they didn't want backwoods people to pick a psycho for President (too late). Now that everyone can read and has access to education it should be removed. What's the point of an election if your vote doesn't matter in the end? Why not just have the rich decide since we've become more of an oligarchy anyways." I don't think the electorate college was put in place because people were uneducated, and if you think so I'd like to see a citation, but rather because we never wanted a direct democracy in the first place. And the reason we don't want a direct democracy is because it is a direct threat to liberty, and liberty is one of the highest principles in the country, and the founding fathers believed an electoral college ...

I love watching movies, but there is a lot of garbage out there. I think it is important to watch movies, if one wishes to be a Christian engaged in culture. More people watch movies than read a novel these days I think, so watching a movie is part of being culturally literate. Sure, there are movies that are meant to just entertain you, like Transformers , and I am not interested in those. What I am interested in are movies that might interest the philosophically inclined, or may encourage the layman to think about philosophical issues. I'll list some of my favorites down below, but as time rolls on, I'll add some more.

I love a good fight in a hotly debated controversy. It keeps me sharp and I often learn things. Some have taken note on my silence concerning what is perhaps the most important contemporary controversy within the Church, which is,

Some of my libertarians friends will say that whatever the state has the power to do, it is able to do so because it threatens to shoot you. This is too simplistic, and probably false.

In just about every talk I hear on transgenderism, talks that try to normalize the disorder, there is a preemptive argument that genitals don't determine who or what you are. I heard it recently here , and the way he phrased it, as "genitalifying", makes me want to say something about this very common argument.  The most important point to be made is that this is a straw-man. We do not say that because you have a penis, you are a man, or because you have a vagina, you are a female. And I would press any critic to actually cite a philosopher who argues this. You probably won't find it in those terms. This is what you probably will find, and is what has been said for a very long time and is not criticized by those who want to normalize madness, which is, a male is that which has the power to reproduce actively, and a female is that which has the power to reproduce passively.  This is a better definition because it helps classify what things are, not just in hum...

Dennis Prager has this video up on the meaning between the difference of saying "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays". While I agreed with much, if not most, of what he said, I do think he made a critical error that could undermine his entire case.  How can Prager say that Christmas is his Holiday, but not his Holy-Day? They're the same thing. To separate the meaning of Holiness from Holiday, Prager is doing exactly what he is trying to fight against, Secularization. You can't secularize Holiness but then fight against the secularization of Christmas.

A good faithful Catholic sent me this link by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding the death penalty. They are various quotations about the death penalty taken mostly from their pamphlet A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death , and the idea is that they want the faithful lay to be against the death penalty. I want to examine each of the bullet points and this, by extension, should suffice as a response to the longer pamphlet. 

When faced with passages like John 6 in regards to the Real Presence of the Eucharist, many Protestants I know will say something like, "Yeah, but Jesus obviously spoke in parables and metaphors. So this has to be another." This begs the question, but more fundamentally, it isn't an answer.  True, Jesus has spoken before in parables, analogies, metaphors, and all the rest. But how does it follow from Jesus it doing it before that he is actually doing it here? To make that leap, you would have to infer that everything Jesus says is not literal. But obviously that's absurd, because Jesus does refer to things literally, including his resurrection. The inverse can also show how this really isn't an answer. Suppose I said, "Well, Jesus obviously spoke literally and particularly elsewhere. So this is another example." That wouldn't work. 

The death penalty is up for vote here in CA. I've seen some otherwise solid Catholics in favor of abolishing it. I am for maintaining. I recently came across this article from a friend on my Facebook newsfeed, and I suppose I can respond to it here. 

I've always been uncomfortable with Divine Command Theory as a moral theory. Reading David Oderberg's Moral Theory  has really helped me understand why. The way I used to express my concern was that DCT never really told us anything about how we should live. It just kind of says that what is right or wrong for us is whatever God tells us, and so we ought to obey. Why God commands a thing may be a separate issue (maybe it is rooted in his divine nature and so flows necessarily from that, or maybe we're complete voluntarists). And what use is just saying "God says it" when we ask ourselves what the right course of action is, when God may not have addressed the issue?  Oderberg recognizes that ethics are a body of knowledge and like any other kind of science should be available to everyone by some kind of method that is repeatable and produces repeatable results. DCT, could produce real knowledge, but it couldn't be accessible to others if God has not comman...

There is the view that ones gender is whatever you feel. I've heard this view in my schools philosophy club, and you can see it in the popular media here . But the criteria that gender is whatever you feel is too vague. Of course, those LGBT advocates want to say that if you feel like a boy or if you feel like a girl then that is your gender (or any other sort of gender according to these people, since according to them it's like infinite). But what kind of feeling is the feeling of "boy" or "girl"? We know there are feelings like anger, happiness, pain, anxiety, and boredom. But they don't say "My gender is boredom because I feel bored." (Well, I have heard one of their advocates say that being a rock is a gender, so maybe I shouldn't put this pass them, but I think a more serious advocate would say that's not possible) No, the type of feeling one has as being a boy or girl is a different kind of feeling as being angry. But the defin...

How is the "Our Father" prayer meant to be recited? Many of my protestant friends do not believe that when Jesus taught us how to pray this prayer, he didn't mean it word for word, but that he kind of gave us an outline. I have not heard any exegesis for this view. That is not to say that I have not heard and sound exegetical arguments for this view, but that there is no such argument put forth at all, and I have asked.  So, on the face of it, it just seems like we should pray it exactly as Jesus told us to. But history shows that this is how we are meant to pray this. The Didache is one of the oldest teachings of the Church in print, and probably predates even some books of the Bible (a fact which probably lead some to believe that it was inspired and belonged in the Canon). It's kind of like the first catechist book. This is what is says,  Neither pray ye as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in His Gospel, so pray ye: "Our Father, who art in hea...

No. As St. Thomas Aquinas argued ,  In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common. ...whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law , to the purpose of succoring the poor. ...if the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another's property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery. I've written about this before, in my post about why I am not a libertarian, but I've been meaning to go back and edit that post. But anyways, imagine that I have labored to gain property rights over all the water in the world. Say that a man, and certainly all men but one will do, ne...

I asked a single buddy of mine why he doesn't look for a woman who is like him, someone who undergoes dialysis. His response was an obvious one, that he didn't want to risk children who would have kidney failure like him and his hypothetical wife. It's something I've written briefly about before when discussing PGD. So, consider the case with most people. A couple gets together and has a baby. This baby is normal and healthy. Easy peasy. Not much to see here. Now, another couple, they have a baby and the baby is born deaf. Not the parents fault. Nobodies fault. Just happens sometimes. But let us ask, if the parents could go back in time so that their baby would never be born, would they do it? It seems wrong for them to say yes. Their love for their child is the same independent of whether he turns out to be deaf. Now, consider a deaf couple. The husband and wife are both deaf, and genetics makes it certain that their child will also be deaf. Is there a problem here?...

I recall a pretty bad rejection experience. 

Here is my Amazon review for this short book.

Here is a brief review I wrote on Amazon for this resentful little book.

I had a guy ask me, "Will I go to hell because I don't believe in Jesus?"  Not really, and I want to put emphasis on the word "because." We do not go to hell because we do not put our trust in Jesus, as though we were perfectly innocent and our refusal to believe in Jesus is what sent us to hell. If we were perfectly innocent, Jesus wouldn't be necessary. But why is Jesus necessary for salvation? Because we have sinned, and it is our sin that sends us to hell, not the refusal to believe in Jesus.  Here is an analogy. You don't know how to swim, and you're in a pool of water. You will die. Why? Because you can't swim to safety. If you die, it is because you can't swim. Say I throw you a life raft to save you. Will you die because you didn't grab the life raft or because you didn't know how to swim? Clearly, you still died because you didn't know how to swim. It wasn't because of your refusal to grab the life raft. 

It has been a while since I posted my reply to Douglas Jacoby's short outline on contraception. I shortly received feedback, which I did request, but elsewhere, and not directly here, though I would appreciate it if it were posted on my blog. I didn't immediately respond, since I was busy with other things, like getting a girlfriend. A much wiser use of my time I think. Anyways, I'm finally getting around to responding to what the members of the ICOC have said in response to my response . 

For some reason, I have lost a friend again, but this time, not as serious. My friend posted up a political post on her Facebook account, I politely questioned the wisdom of said post, and she promptly deleted me. And you know what, I took that pretty hard. This person was a reader of my blog, a supporter of my decision to leave the ICOC, and my sister in the Catholic Faith. Last time something like this happened, I wondered what a relationship would look like if one continued to love the other, even if that love is not reciprocated. I want to revisit that here. While I questioned whether love is still real even if not reciprocated, I wonder whether friendship can still exist even if it is not reciprocated. I think the general conclusion I drew was that yes, you could still love this person, even if it had to go through some type of transformation, but I don't know that the same could as easily be said about friendship. If we say that these people are friends, we generally und...

The most common argument against us in the #NeverTrump movement is that if we do not vote for Trump, then we are voting for Hillary. This is a ridiculous argument. It also follows that if I do not vote for Hillary, then I am voting for Trump. So, which is it? My refusal to vote a vote for which candidate?  And why is it that when this counter-argument is presented to me, it is done in a sarcastic way? "Have fun electing Hillary then!" "You're going to be so proud when Hillary destroys this country." Why do they insist on lacking grace? Do they layer their arguments with haughtiness and snark to compensate for the lack of thought that went into this? Perhaps. But maybe it is because the gracelessness of the person they are supporting has rubbed off on them. I don't know and I'm not a psychologist.  But there are two more important philosophical issues that I want to draw attention to. First, it conflates ones choices with its consequences, which ...

The following is a reply to a text message that I received. My reply is too long and too thorough for it to be in a text message, so here it is on my blog, which I intend to send as a simple link. The issues are Marian virginity, sinlessness, and mediation. 

I've wondered what it means to be in love. What does it mean to say, "I'm in love"? There is a popular understanding of it, which is, "I have romantic attractions about this person" but I've been trying to square that with my understanding that love is the willing of the good for the other person. When we say "I'm in love", according to this popular understanding, we are only saying something about ourselves. We aren't saying anything really about the other person. And that seems to be a problem, since willing the good for the other, the traditional definition of love, and excluding them in the popular definition, are at odds. So, maybe we can understand "being in love" in this way: willing the good for the other (basic def.) but believing that you are that (or a) good for the other. 

A friend from the ICOC has forwarded this link from one of his (very few) teachers. I haven't talked about the issue much, so I suppose this will be a good brushing up. Douglas Jacoby thinks it is permissible to use contraception. Let me begin by saying that I haven't listened to the podcast, but I read through his notes (it's faster to read than to listen). I will assume there isn't much left out, or at least, nothing important left out, so my response should suffice.  So, the relevant portion of scripture here is Genesis 38. Jacoby claims that the reason that God killed Onan was because of his failure to fulfill his duty. I have written about this particular interpretation , so I will just copy the relevant portion. 

Friends know that I used to play chess competitively. You want to know what the most stressful part of chess was? It was waiting. Probably not the waiting a non-player associated chess with. There is never a dull moment in competitive and tournament chess, especially when you have $100,000 on the line. There are lots of things to wait for. You wait to see who will make the first mistake. You wait for your opponent to fall for your trap. You wait for your enemies time to run out so you can claim a victory. You wait for your opponents next move after calculating seven moves deep in seven different variations for his most likely seven moves (343 different positions total), only to be surprised by a novel move, trashing the time you spent crunching moves in your mind. It's a lot. It is this waiting period that really wears a player out. Well, wore me out at least.  It's a power play. In life as it is in chess. It's a demonstration of power that we can make people wait on u...

I have this friend, call him Fred. Fred is a good friend. Smart guy. I had a lot of people rooting for me to convert him to Catholicism because of our mutual beginnings in a previous protestant society. I would see Fred at Catholic get togethers, BBQ's, Christmas parties, etc. You know, whatever good Christians do. Anyways, Fred got with this girl, and they look like they're enjoying each others company. It's nice to see, because that's something I would like. I thought maybe Fred was doing what is sometimes called a "Dip and Date" where you low key want to baptize (or convert) someone just for the sake of dating them. It does not seem to be working. She, apparently, is a leftist, and has changed him in a mere few months.  Fred, a brother in the good fight, created a bit of scandal when he posted a photo of himself and his girlfriend at a Gay Pride Parade wearing a tee shirt that read, "Stand With Planned Parenthood".  I'm heartbroken an...

You've heard the dating cliche that like attracts like. I used to think this was silly. It could be true or it could be false, but they were true or false in ways that didn't matter, as in personality. But I think I've changed my mind, or at least, I'm willing to agree with this in a very serious way.  The way we are, the way we act, how we carry ourselves and the spirit that we own, we are responsible for this. It is also true and known to most people that good people tend to associate with good people, and that evil tend to associate with other evil people. So, in this way, maybe I agree. But since this can be extended to romantic relationships, then the cliche holds true, but not because it is romantic, but because in general people tend to associate with like minded people.  This is serious because this tells us about our moral character, which is vitally important when it comes to romantic relationships. Now, consider the situation, which I seem to be in, ...

I have always been on board with the Never Trump movement. Most of us have been. It doesn't seem to be winning or losing any people, so, it's a pretty solid group. One issue those who want us to violate our conscience and vote against every principle that they themselves preached only two years ago hang above our heads is that of the Supreme Court. If Hillary is elected, we have no chance of getting a justice that will favor anything we stand for. We have a chance if Trump is elected. This is a horrible argument.  Think of it like a game of Russian Roulette. If you choose the gun Hillary hands you, you know that it is completely loaded. If you choose the gun Trump hands you, there is a chance that it isn't completely loaded. The better choice is Trump. Or maybe it is more like numbers. If Hillary is elected, there is a 0% chance that we will have favorable justices. If Trump is elected, there is a >0% chance we will have a favorable justice. So, Trump is the better ...

So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...

Not being in school at the moment, I find myself with a bit more leisure time. I've taken up water coloring. I want to take up sailing again. Having lived in a beach city all my life, I was no stranger to boats. I remember when I was about nine or so, my dad took me on this trip on a replica pirate ship. We went out about a mile from shore, and passed by two other pirate ships filled and manned by actors in pirate costume, with loud but hollow bangs from their canons, and pirates swinging from their mast onto the other ships, and do sword fights. It captured my young minds imagination. I tried reading Treasure Island after that, but didn't get past half way.  For the more adult among us, the late great William F. Buckley Jr. wrote an entertaining trilogy of his sailing adventures.  Something about the sea and being on a ship captures many people's imagination. You don't see many children on sea, but rather grown men, and grown men having fun (although, I was told rece...

Say you are able to vote in a primary for both parties. You have your party, which gives you the choice between some really decent candidates, and the opposing party, which has some really evil people. The winners will face off in the general election. Will you also vote in the primary that is not your party? My hunch is yes, you will, and you will choose the opponent which is easiest to defeat, to better increase the chances of victory, or, in another light, to reduce the chances of you losing. No matter who your guy is, it seems to make sense that you want the easiest opponent.  Now, take a similar scenario except that you can no longer vote within your own party. Would you still vote for the person is who most likely to be an easier opponent? It seems so. If not, what is the difference? There are those who will say that "Voting for the lesser of evils is still voting for evil." This is to refuse to understand strategy. This idiotic slogan claims that the reason you fo...

I'm on Catholic Match. I don't know why. I shouldn't be. I have no business being there. But I am. A part of me hates myself for it, another part just really wants to be successful. I guess I consider it a scraping of the barrel, because, you know, online dating. But, whatever, that's not what I want to talk about. So, I've had a few exchanges with one woman, and being the fool that I am, I didn't look through her profile because she initiated conversation. When I finally did, I saw that she had a child. That's a big NO for me. My friend told me to man up. So, I just want to sort of lay out my reservations here, and maybe we can extract some more general principles from them.  I'll be honest and say I haven't really given it much thought. I mean, I've given it some consideration, but I haven't applied thought to it. It just really rubs me the wrong way, and that was sufficient for me. So, what exactly bothers me about it? What does not b...

Here is an argument I heard from Jerry Walls. I'll be putting it in my own words and I won't be directly quoting him.  Take any person that you love, like a child, spouse or parent. Would you die for that person? As Scripture says, there is no greater love than laying down your life for a friend. Suppose you say, Yes, you would die for your child. Now, would you die for the salvation of your child? Presumably, yes to that as well. Under Calvinism, God does not love everybody, and God loves only the elect, or at least, died for only the elect. Suppose now that while you love and would die for your child, your child happens not to be a member of the elect. It seems then that you love this person more than God loves this person. This is counter intuitive. 

Adam Omelianchuck has a paper in Vol. 13, No. 1 of Philosophia Christi that discusses the ontological subordination of men and women. He argues that men and women are not ontologically equal. The basis for this, he argues, is on the function of men and women. Being familiar with natural law, this is comfortable ground for me. The function of women is to be a helper, and the function for man is to be a leader. There is a difference in role, and there is a hierarchy of subordination, but what he seems to draw out is that this entails there is an ontological inequality between men and women.  He presents a Hierarchy's Less Valuable Function Principle, which states,  Necessarily, given the two functions, F1 serving as a means to and end and F2 having authority to direct the end, if any person having F1 is, in virtue of having F1, essentially subordinate to a person having F2, then F1 is a less valuable function than F2.   Now, men and women have these functions...

About a week ago, the topic of discussion for Philosophy club was animal rights. One member, whose name I cannot recall, gave a brief presentation on why animals have rights, and I got up, gave a brief explanation as to why they do not, and we all had a good discussion from there. This is just an outline of my talk, I deviated and gave some examples, and I took questions as I spoke. But this was requested by a friend, so, here it is. 

This is an outline for the book Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air by Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl . This outline was requested by a friend.

It used to be my biggest fear, up until recently, that my spouse (not that I'm married) would be unfaithful. I would wonder if I would be able to forgive them or be separated, or go to counseling, or whatever. There is a form of infidelity though that seems to be a degree worse than I previously imagined. I imagined that my spouse would be unfaithful for some typical reason. There is some more attractive guy she met, or she was didn't feel loved by me anymore, or maybe she just didn't love me anymore. But when I had a woman tell me that she would tell me about her attraction to another man, knowing I desired a relationship with her, not just to reject me, but to further hurt me, I imagined what that would look like if we were married. It would look like infidelity, which is intrinsically wrong, and wrong like these other types of infidelity that I previously mentioned, but infidelity so that I would be hurt. This seems much worse, but anyways, this has a strange consequenc...

1st Corinthians 6:16 says that when we are united with a prostitute, we are one body with her. I'm not exactly sure what this means, or rather, what this assumes. So, we know that sex is a unitive act. However, when you use contraceptives, that unity isn't consummated. If you were to use contraceptives, are you not really united with the prostitute and hence not one body? I wonder if there were contraceptives in Paul's day for him to consider this. I don't know if there were or if there were not. Another thing that makes me wonder is the language of one body, which is used to communicate marriage. Is Paul saying that in sex with a prostitute (assume the union, contraceptives or not, is real) we are therefore married to that prostitute? That doesn't seem correct. Then one prostitute has multiple husbands, and so does anyone who is not faithful to their spouse. I dunno. 

This argument is put forth by Frank Jackson.  Mary is a scientist confined to a room where everything is black and white. She learns every fact about the physical world, or just about everything there is to know about the physical world and how it works. If physicalism, the view that all that there is entirely physical, is true, then Mary knows everything there is to know, and so she knows everything. There isn't something she doesn't know.  Yet, this does not seem true. If Mary were let out to the world and experience something Red, it would be said that Mary has actually learned something, which is, redness. She knows what it is like to experience redness. So, physicalism is false. This is the knowledge argument against physicalism.  This doesn't seem convincing to me. First, it seems to assume that if physicalism is true, then everything must be expressed as a proposition. Even if physicalism was true, that wouldn't follow. Say Mary didn't know what stra...

I was talking to one of my Calvinist friend after some St. Patrick's Day drinks on some points of theology, and not being a Calvinist myself, we found ourselves disagreeing on some important issues. I claimed that God loved everyone, while my Calvinist friend denied that God loves everyone. He said, "So you're telling me that God loves both the saint in heaven praising him and glorifying him and the damned in hell who hate him?"  Why is that controversial? Of course he does. As I have said a thousand times on this blog, love is the willing of the good for the other. For those in heaven, it is uncontroversial that they experience some good, and so it is no surprise that God loves them. But what about those in hell? Can God love those in hell? Well, to translate, or to plug in a definition, does God will the good for those in hell? I don't see why not, and I certainly don't see why hell isn't precisely that good. Hell is good? Yes, hell is a good becaus...

Today was an enlightening day. I met Alexander Pruss, someone I highly admire and respect, and to be honest, am a little intimidated by. I took notes on my phone from his lecture, and I'll copy it here, but do scroll down for my interaction with him during Q&A. 

I suffered the death of a friend today. I loved her, and I loved her greatly. We made plans together, to graduate together, to go camping together, to shake the world up for Christ together. Those plans will not come to fruition. Love acts. Love that does not act is not love. And now, I cannot act. So, do I not love anymore? This is an interesting question.  Dietrich  von Hildebrand was married and widowed before he married Alice. From what I am told, there was a great respect on Alice's part for the deceased wife, and presumably, Dietrich still loved his first wife. But is this the same love? It might seem like it. The day before she died, he loved her, and loved her with a spousal love. The day after she died, it's probably also true that he loved her, and loved her with a spousal love. But that kind of love is unitive, and that unity is no longer possible (Maybe that's an argument for an afterlife. If one doesn't continue to exist after death, we cannot love the...

I get annoyed when I hear fake conservatives try to distinguish themselves from their liberal counter-parts as being "principled" but they are, in reality, no such thing. And you hear a lot of politicians say the same, "We need to hold on to our conservative principles." I have a challenge for anyone who says this: what are those principles? I usually hear two things, which is fidelity to the constitution and encouraging a free market. But these are hardly principles. If fidelity to the constitution is what makes you a conservative, then it means there were no conservatives in the founding era prior to the drafting of the Constitution. There's no principle to be had there. And so it doesn't count as a principle. Principles are something like axioms, or certain truths that remain throughout history and place. Like natural law. That is why I call myself a natural law conservative. If I take an oath to the constitution and I find another document better suited...

There is a really stupid slogan that goes around in Republican circles that says, "Government is the problem." You hear variants like, "The bigger the government, the bigger the problem" or "the smaller the government, the smaller the problem" and you have these so called conservatives say stupid things like this, but they aren't thinking. What this entails is anarchy, literally. If the problem is government, then if you want to get rid of the problem, you want to get rid of government. But no conservative believes this. And conservatives who say this have no principles. And that's no conservative. 

Consider the many girls who do not like me, whom I have attempted to date. Say they clearly and soberly understand what it is about me that they do not like. Maybe it is something physical, or even something having to do with some character trait. Say Alex does not like Ben because Ben is like X. But Ben can change X. So, Ben says to Alex, "Alex, I will change X. Then, it will no longer be an obstacle. Would you like that?"  Why should Alex say no? Alex has no desire for Ben, but if Alex could like Ben if it were not for X, why would Alex not want Ben to be rid of X? Basically, I could ask, do you want to want me? Because, I'm in a few situations (I date around...) that are pretty similar to that. I can't think of a reason someone would give to not wanting to desire someone. If there is a reason, it's probably going to be something that fits in the first order, and not the second order of desire, and so, I can't see a reason, in principle, why someone wo...

I met this guy, let's call him Tom, at an engagement party, and he is a member of the ICOC, which I used to be a member of. We had a discussion about Original Sin (which they deny) and Infant Baptism (they're Anabaptists) and he sent me some Bible verses which he believed denied Original Sin, and I said I would think about it and get back to him. Of course, I've heard it all before, being a former member of the ICOC, but I was just being polite since I didn't want to get into the nitty gritty there at a mutual friends party. He has stopped responding to me, and it's been a while now, so I'm sharing our exchange here. Some arguments I was toying and experimenting with here with, so a ny feed back is appreciated. His emails are in Blue , while mine are in Red . 

Today, I had a friend casually refer to me as her best friend. It was the first time in our relatively short time having known each other (a little under a year) that she had called me that, and I didn't think she realized she did it. I grinned, and waited for her to complete her thought, and I said, "Awwww, I'm your best friend?" After a pause, she got defensive, and tried to play it down with, "Well, it's not like I have a lot of friends anyways, and my other best friend is my little cousin, who is like nine years old, so..." Sure.  It's a great honor really. But it can also be somewhat awkward if it isn't reciprocated. Say Devin is Adrian's best friend. This statement says something about the position of Devin in Adrian's life. It does not follow, however, that Adrian has the same status in Devin's life. Perhaps Lucas is Devin's best friend. Lucas is such that Lucas is the best friend in the set of friends Devin has. I th...

On the right hand of this blog, I say that I am single and ready to mingle. Indeed, I am, but I grow weary of it. Recently, I had become attached to this woman, and I thought about dating her. We had a few conversations about it, but I stopped when she said, "I am not attracted to you. You are everything I want in a man, but I just am not attracted to you." And, you know, that's definitely not easy to hear. It's had me up a few nights, and I've been thinking, so this here is just what I have so far. Nothing too organized, but some ideas for fodder.  It is true, I am not an attractive man. I can't deny that. I'm not fit, I have a porous nose, and I have a round face. She has said that she can't be compatible with someone she isn't attracted to, but I've already written about such slogans before. So, that part is nonsense. I mean, in her view, I am a virtuous man, a faithful man, and a son of the Church, which, in my opinion, is really all ...