A good friend – a keen observer of the human condition – asked the other day if the Notre Dame fire is a metaphor for the destruction of the Western World?
There’s an instant recoil from that suggestion; of course things will be okay! Then you start to think about all the negative news of late. Then, you hear that a billion dollars have already been pledged to rebuild the church. But, then you read there are senior folks in the French government publicly wondering if there should be a modernized version of some of features of the great cathedral. Take heart, because the question will be settled by the Archdiocese of Paris, not some politicians.
But, wait, Notre Dame isn’t owned by the Archdiocese, it’s owned by the state. Though the government of France has stated the Archdiocese can use the church in perpetuity. Though that’s been a two-edged sword; the poor material conduction of the structure itself was due to neglect from the government – and this lead directly to the repairs – that lead to the fire. (Everyone should dig into how the building decayed over the last few centuries – it’s a good lesson in government oversight…)
But, you might say, as magnificent as it is, Notre Dame is just one building. There’s so much more to the Western World – even as France enters its sixth month of protests by truckers who believe, with a good deal of justification, their government is using – abusing – the middle class to achieve social engineering goals.
Elsewhere…
North Carolina’s legislature passed a law that would force doctors to care for infants who survive an abortion. The Governor vetoed the bill as being “unnecessary” because such conditions “don’t exist.” Just to be clear, this is about a child – having been extracted from its mother’s womb during an attempted abortion – in a medical facility of some sort – and now alive, a living, breathing human being.
The Center for Disease Control notes there have been at least 140 such events between 2003 and 2014.
In the words of the governor of North Carolina – “it’s between a woman and her doctor” whether the child would receive treatment. That should terrify you. It terrifies me. Because the next “step” is an old man left to die on gurney.
In Venezuela – the modern socialist state endowed with a super-abundance of natural resources – the economy is running a 900,000% inflation rate. Yet, here in the US, and elsewhere in the Western World, a growing number of young adults think socialism is okay. (At 900,000% inflation, prices double about every 25 days.)
In Sri Lanka an extremist Islamic group has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that killed 207 on Easter morning. And talks broke down before they began between the Afghan government and the Taliban. After 18 years of war.
After a two-year investigation, Mr. Mueller, unable to derive some reason to put impanel a grand jury to even discuss the President’s actions, decided to not only throw out the Constitution but centuries of Western legal thought and do something prosecutors should never do in a free society: accuse and insinuate guilt without offering evidence.
Along our southern border the immigration crisis continues even as one federal judge insists the executive branch doesn’t have the authority to control entry to the country.
Wars continue against an intractable foe – across North Africa and the Middle East, social and legal controls and norms appear to be unraveling, governments seem estranged from their citizens, so-called elites are even more estranged from their fellow citizens…
The point in this rambling discourse is that there are a host of crises that threaten our civilization, here, in Europe, and around the world. There will be no easy answers. In some cases there may be no answers at all.
If we’re to arrive at a solution that can save us from not only all these forces of chaos, but also from ourselves, that solution will begin with an understanding that we need to accept standards that took centuries to develop – and only change them slowly, carefully, and deliberately; we need to adhere to the rule of law and not allow ourselves to ignore legal processes and standards because of some visceral response to this or that figure; and we need to understand that moral behavior is, in the end, the only thing that separates us from savages.
But, this is the Easter Season. Miracles DO happen…
Copyright 2019 Arrias
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