Fanaticism

Fanaticism: "redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim" - Santayana

Mercy Was More Common Before the Courts Were Turned Over to Objective Experts

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/pardon-me

What Is Responsible for the Radical Decrease in Global Poverty?

According to a U.N.’s 2013 Human Development Report “the proportion of people living in extreme income poverty worldwide plunged from 43 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, including more than 500 million people lifted from poverty in China alone.”

Most observers would likely concede that the decline in extreme poverty results from a combination of factors. Among possible causes here are some for consideration... 

the role increased international trade, or globalization. The movement of capital, people, and goods around the globe has increased dramatically over these decades. But trade occurs not only between developed and developing nations, and underreported story has been the remarkable increase in trade among developing countries themselves. The UN report observed that trade among developing countries constituted less than 10 percent of global trade in 1980, yet now constitutes over 25 percent of global trade.

A related hypothesis also posits that markets are a causal driver for the reduction in poverty, but this hypothesis focuses on the development of internal markets in developing countries rather than focusing on development of international markets. The hypotheses are not in conflict, of course; both causes can contribute to the gains made among the world’s poor. Nonetheless the development of internal markets in developing countries as a prime cause of income gains would suggest that these gains are less a cause of the negative pressures on workers in developed countries like the U.S.

The “rule of law” provides a foundation of consistency that allows people to plan their lives with some increased measure of predictability, and allows individuals to be more willing to invest in their personal futures, in pursuing education, for example, as well in their economic future by investing in a business, building a home, or adding to one’s fields and hiring workers to help.

increased education,

improved health, 

improved national infrastructures are possible drivers for the decrease that highlight the role government policies might serve in the development explosion (not to ignore the contributions of non-governmental actors). 

Investment in literacy, in basic health care like vaccinations, and in roads that connect different parts of a country, all allow individuals to be more productive and thus to work their way out of poverty. 

reducing discrimination against groups and classes of people allows societies to make fuller use of the talents of their people.
role of technology in the decreasing poverty rates should not be overlooked. The technological changes that set the ground for industrial revolution of the 19th century played a significant role in the era’s economic development; and technological changes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries likely play a role in broadening the gains of production throughout the world.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/whats-behind-the-stunning-decrease-in-global-poverty

Our Finite Brokenness Is A Reminder that We Are Not Masters of Our Own Fate

People with disabilities in particular put the lie to that image. We are the public evidence that all humans are finite, dependent, broken. We are the constant reminder that humans are not the final masters of their fate. As a consequence, our presence is deeply unwelcome. When possible, we are prevented from being born at all. Otherwise, though we are welcomed in public and even lip-service is paid to our equal worth, we are subtly invited to leave, even offered assistance in making our final exit.

Life is an inalienable human right, protecting an indefeasible duty we owe our Creator to preserve our lives and pursue our happiness. Thus, we cannot ask others for help in ending our lives. When government allows exceptions, when it relaxes laws against aiding the suicide of some but not other people, it is saying this class deserves less protection against homicide, deserves less safeguards of its inalienable rights, in other words, deserves less respect because in some way it is less human.

We Christians should never forget that Christ rose wounded. Those wounds He used to identify Himself as risen. From man’s perspective, they were profoundly disabling. From God’s perspective, they are inexhaustible signs of love.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/targeting-people-for-death

Christian Intellectual Is a Servant of the Truth Not the God's of the Age

He should be at home with many historical expressions of truth because he is the servant of the truth incarnate.

I’ve known many scholars (I include myself) beholden to the petty gods who superintend over a great deal of intellectual work: career, status, and illusions of immortal intellectual achievements.
Instead, freedom comes from an interior conformity to Christ in prayer. The mind follows the heart.

Love and freedom. There’s nothing uniquely Christian about these qualities in an intellectual. Socrates had both. But grace perfects nature and helps us overcome our weaknesses.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/the-christian-intellectual

Gospel Does Not Dull the Pain of the Age But Confronts and Heals It

The innate longing for God in every age...

The human heart in every age, in every corner of the world, hungers for something more than itself—for something or Someone beyond the horizon of this life. Man needs God. So it has always been. So it will always be. And so too, the message of Jesus Christ will always be life-giving, and the mission of his Church will always remain urgent. As St. Augustine once said, the human heart is restless until it rests in God.

The drift of human history without God and responding to the world as it actually is... 

The more sobering news is this. Much of human history has resembled the drift of tectonic plates, with our learning and culture pushed forward on long, slow currents of time. That season is now over. We live today in a moment of colliding plates; a time unlike anything since the confusion and anxieties of the Reformation; a civilizational change that throws down the old and elevates the new with indifference. As a result, we need to see and respond to the world as it really is. We harm our people and deceive ourselves if we let ourselves become complacent; if we misread the shape of the world now emerging around us.

There is a difference between dulling our pain and being well... 

To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, the devil is happy to cure our fevers if he can give us cancer in the process. To heal a suffering man is a noble and beautiful thing. But there’s a difference between dulling his pain, and making him whole and well.

http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/11/the-new-evangelization