This is a huge deal. Sex changes for children - the Biden-approved policy - is unraveling before our eyes. https://t.co/WHrWliu2oi

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 28, 2022

The clinic was the only NHS one in the whole country. Other centres will now host such clinics. But the key point of the Cass review that gave rise to this closure was that Tavistock was too free with its hormone suppression therapy, putting at risk the future of young people like Kiera Bell, who took the centre to court for not challenging her feeling that she should become a boy. 

Homosexuals share a cruel nightmare

Joseph Sciambra ... renounced homosexual activity out of disgust with what goes on Source

They did disgusting things to each other, because, as gay journalist Randy Shilts said, “there was nobody to say no.” (And the Band Played On pub.1987)

Another man who admits that as a wild young homosexual (born 1969) he did disgusting things is Joseph Sciambra. He is the mover and shaker behind an organisation that aims to rescue those 'who are still trapped within the homosexual lifestyle and within the false “gay” orientation'.

The practice of chastity and the exercise of courage is the challenge he offers. He knows that the men who accept the challenge must fight a spiritual battle to 'overcome all same-sex attractions and any persistent attachments to the homosexual or the “gay” orientation'. Sciambra is not asking others to do anything that he is not doing himself with regards living out a more human lifestyle.

Two principles by which his group operates are:

We acknowledge that homosexual acts are not part of God’s plan for nature, humanity, or ourselves.

We acknowledge that the homosexual inclination is a part of our wounded false-self that can be healed.

Sciambra presents strong arguments on why his group accepts that the homosexual inclination is sign of a wounded person, and of the need for counselling and support on the way toward healing. Here is one presentation of his arguments where he poses the question: Do I have to become straight?

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975. Thereafter other major mental health organizations followed, including the World Health Organization in 1990. Yet, before and since, evidence continues to determine that homosexuality is indeed a mental illness.

The way in which most contemporary researches get around this fact is by blaming the high rates of psychiatric morbidity in homosexuals to social and cultural homophobia, internalized homophobia, and overall that homosexuality and mental illnesses are unrelated with the unusual rates of serious psychological conditions seen in homosexuals as “possibly linked with discrimination.” Only, this supposition is categorically false, for in the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, in particular, gay men continue to exhibit a plethora of various mental disorders.*

* “Despite the Netherlands’ reputation as a world leader with respect to gay rights, homosexual Dutch men have much higher rates of mood disorders, anxiety disorders and suicide attempts than heterosexual Dutch men. Epidemiologists report similar disparities elsewhere in Western Europe and North America.”

“Exploring a Dutch paradox: an ethnographic investigation of gay men’s mental health.” Aggarwal S & Gerrets R. Culture, Health & Sexuality 16:105-119, 2014. 

Part and parcel along with any authentic program of healing from same-sex attraction, there must be at least a cursory examination of any childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse that was experienced by the person now dealing with same-sex attraction. Because some have survived particularly intense or violent abuse as children, professional therapy is highly advised; others, with a different story, perhaps therapy is not as necessary.

Here, it is not that mental illness causes homosexuality, but that the oftentimes extreme difficulties which some men experienced as children, who later become same-sex attracted, will eventually exhibit various mental illnesses because homosexuality never fully resolves the unattended wounds; [the controversial] Dr. Joseph Nicolosi put it this way: homosexuality is a “symptomatic failure to integrate self-identity. Symptoms will always emerge to indicate its incompatibility with a man’s true nature.” Ultimately, the decision to seek therapy is up to the individual; although it is possible, outside of a clinical environment, to naturally experience a diminishing of same-sex desires, and, henceforth, to witness an increase in attraction towards the opposite sex. Reparative therapy, while extremely beneficial to many, is not for everyone.

Sciambra offers a range of studies into the reality of homosexual inclination:

⊝ “Of the 1285 gay, lesbian and bisexual respondents who took part, 556 (43%) had mental disorder as defined by the revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Out of the whole sample, 361 (31%) had attempted suicide…Gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women have high levels of mental disorder…”

“Rates and predictors of mental illness in gay men, lesbians and bisexual men and women. Results from a survey based in England and Wales”. James Warner, et al. British Journal of Psychiatry 185, 479-485, 2004.

⊝ “LGB people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self-harm than heterosexual people.”

“A systematic review of mental disorder, suicide, and deliberate self-harm in lesbian, gay and bisexual people.” Michael King, et al. BMC Psychiatry 8:70, 2008.

⊝ “Self-reported identification as non-heterosexual (determined by both orientation and sexual partnership, separately) was associated with unhappiness, neurotic disorders overall, depressive episodes, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobic disorder, probable psychosis, suicidal thoughts and acts, self-harm and alcohol and drug dependence.”

“Mental health of the non-heterosexual population of England.” Chakraborty A, et al. British Journal of Psychiatry 2011, Feb; 198(2):143-8. 

⊝ “Gay/lesbian and bisexual respondents had higher levels of psychopathology than heterosexuals across all outcomes. Gay/lesbian respondents had higher odds of exposure to child abuse and housing adversity, and bisexual respondents had higher odds of exposure to child abuse, housing adversity, and intimate partner violence, than heterosexuals. Greater exposure to these adversities explained between 10 and 20% of the relative excess of suicidality, depression, tobacco use, and symptoms of alcohol and drug abuse among LGB youths compared to heterosexuals. Exposure to victimization and adversity experiences in childhood and adolescence significantly mediated the association of both gay/lesbian and bisexual orientation with suicidality, depressive symptoms, tobacco use, and alcohol abuse.”

“Disproportionate exposure to early-life adversity and sexual orientation disparities in psychiatric morbidity.” McLaughlin KA, et al. Child Abuse and Neglect. 2012 Sep; 36(9):645-55.

⊝ “Compared with heterosexual respondents, gay/lesbian and bisexual individuals experienced increased odds of six of eight and seven of eight adverse childhood experiences, respectively. Sexual minority persons had higher rates of adverse childhood experiences compared to their heterosexual peers.”

“Disparities in adverse childhood experiences among sexual minority and heterosexual adults: results from a multi-state probability-based sample.” Andersen JP, Blosnich J. PLoS One. 2013; 8(1):e54691.

⊝ “The studies reported childhood sexual abuse (CSA), childhood physical abuse (CPA), childhood emotional abuse (CEA), childhood physical neglect, and childhood emotional neglect. Items of household dysfunction were substance abuse of caregiver, parental separation, family history of mental illness, incarceration of caregiver, and witnessing violence. Prevalence of CSA showed a median of 33.5 % for studies using non-probability sampling and 20.7 % for those with probability sampling, the rates for CPA were 23.5 % (non-probability sampling) and 28.7 % (probability sampling). For CEA, the rates were 48.5 %, non-probability sampling, and 47.5 %, probability sampling. Outcomes related to SCE in LGBT populations included psychiatric symptoms, substance abuse, revictimization, dysfunctional behavioral adjustments, and others.”

“Stressful childhood experiences and health outcomes in sexual minority populations: a systematic review.” Schneeberger AR, et al. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 2014 Sep; 49(9):1427-45.

⊝ “Among 287 participants, 211 (73.5%) reported experiencing [child physical abuse] CPA before the age of 17…”

“Association between Childhood Physical Abuse, Unprotected Receptive Anal Intercourse and HIV Infection among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men in Vancouver, Canada”. Arn J. Schilder, et al. PLoS One. 2014; 9(6): e100501.

⊝ “The research results indicate that, as compared with the group of heterosexual individuals, in the group of homosexuals there occurs a worsening in psychological functioning, which may be also manifested by an increased indirect self-destructiveness index. The increased intensity of indirect self-destructiveness in homosexual individuals may be considered a manifestation of worsened psychological functioning.”

“Indirect self-destructiveness in homosexual individuals.” Tsirigotis K, et al. Psychiatria polska. 2015 May-Jun; 49 (3): 543-57.

Read this essay by Sciambra about the "cruel" consequences of male homosexual activity. For instance:

I am constantly reminded of the excesses of my past. The bathroom has become a torture chamber. Basic biological functions are excruciating and painful [...] anal fissures, prolapses, and huge distended hemorrhoids.  

The tendency towards acts of self-harm by those with a homosexual inclination—see the studies above—is borne out with in the case of  Sebastian Köhn who describes his nightmare of suffering endured since picking up monkeypox during encounters with several men during New York City's Pride "festivities" in late June. It says a lot about the mentality of those caught up in the male homosexual lifestyle that though Köhn had worked in sexual health for a long time, he embarked on his wild weekend even though he knew monkeypox was spreading and the implications for homosexual men. 

Köhn relates that having picked up monkeypox the outcome was this:

My [initial] anorectal lesions, which were already very painful, turned into open wounds. It felt like I had three fissures right next to each other, and it was absolutely excruciating. I would literally scream out loud when I went to the bathroom. Even keeping the area clean, like washing myself, was extremely painful. It was a two hour process each time.

One wishes Köhn a full recovery.  However, given the latest wave of "fashionable" homosexuality in Western societies, and the propaganda machines behind that wave—Köhn works for George Soros' globally influential Open Society Foundations—many are the young people heading for significant degrees of harm along this route of deceit and irresponsibility, when all they are hoping for is entry into the broad society that will provide them with a sense of belonging and a balanced way of life. Each of us faces the challenge of accepting our personal responsibility in creating a society that protects our young people.

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Woke ideology poisons Western life

Wokeism's fabricated world of unreality. Photo by Kristina  Nor 

The belief that each person has the wherewithal to be autonomous—as opposed to being limited in intellectual capacity and moral insight—has blighted the West's ability to make progress in justice and peace. 

That belief has given rise over the past few centuries to a certain ideology that is now bearing the fruit of fractured societies and individual misery, even as it pushes itself deeper into the governing institutions and completes its capture of the social elite of academia, large parts of the political system and government, the mainstream media, and such leading sectors as education, and the corporate world. This ideology, based on Marxist concepts of a solely material world and dictatorship by an elite, is what we have come to refer to as wokeism—or wokeness, if you prefer. (See definitions at the end.)

An awareness of the character of this "ideology" that governs the West, and which is being promoted by Western evangelists around the world, is critical if societies are to regain the equilibrium that the West's Christian heritage had offered until the Reformation's doctrine of sola scriptura fomented the view that every Jack or Jill is as capable of interpreting God's word as any spiritual authority that the Church as a whole represented, creating a "subjective and individualistic" view of life.

All this is brought into focus by a well-reasoned essay titled "Ideology has poisoned the West" published in a refreshing source of countercultural thought, the online magazine Unherd.

In this essay, author and academic at the budding University of Austin (Texas), Jacob Howland, writes that "ideology" has earned itself a connotation of something distasteful within the political arena. He presents this contrast:

In the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, primary models for English republicanism and the American Founders, politics was understood to be the collective determination of matters of common concern through public debate. As Aristotle taught, politics consists in the citizenly exercise of logos, the uniquely human power of intelligent speech. 

[...] speech reveals what is good and bad, just and unjust, binding us together in the imperfect apprehension of realities greater than our individual selves.

But ideology is incapable of treating human beings as participants in a shared life, much less as individuals made in the image of God. Like the party hack whose spectacles struck Orwell as “blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them”, it sees them [humans] only as groups to be acted upon.   

The origin of the term under scrutiny is revealing:

The term idéologie was coined during the French Revolution by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, an anti-clerical materialist philosopher who believed that reason offered a way of uncovering general laws of social relations. Tracy conceived of idéologie as a social science of “ideas” that would inform the construction of a rational progressive society governed by an enlightened elite, whose technical expertise would justify their claim to rule. 

The illiberalism of this progressive-technocratic ideal became fully apparent in the West only with the onset of Covid. It is now widely understood that the subordination of public life to ostensibly scientific guidance and the effective transfer of sovereignty from the body of citizens to an unelected overclass are fundamentally inconsistent with liberty and individual dignity.

To Western victims of this spiritual virus, we can add countries elsewhere under dictatorships of a similarly materialistic and technocratic nature, such as China and Vietnam.

What is crucial at this period of post-history history is that Western populations—and those in rapidly adopting a Western style of economic and social development—realise that the political atmosphere is not unencumbered. This means, what societies are encountering is part of the intellectual and spiritual and political debt or liability of the recent past.    

The picture Howland presents of the state of affairs abroad in society is stunningly accurate:

The political philosopher Raymond Aron defined ideology quite precisely as “the synthesis of an interpretation of history and of a programme of action toward a future predicted or hoped for”. In this synthesis, a theory about the historical origins of real or alleged social ills is pressed into the service of an imagined future in which those ills will be cured. The theory is not to be judged solely, or even primarily, by its adequacy in describing the historical record as it presents itself to an informed and inquiring mind. Rather, it is to be judged by the promised consequences of the programme of action it underwrites. Of course, ideological prophecy, appearing in times of organic or manufactured crisis when everything assumes an air of urgency, must be taken on faith.  

The roots of the intellectual and political regime societies are increasingly suffering under tells us a lot about the nature of the course being pursued by elites in Western societies:

Although ideological regimes were not unheard of in antiquity, ideology’s focus on efficacy rather than truth, its assumption that history is a problem awaiting a rational solution, and its elevation of the possibilities of a deliberately constructed future over the present constraints of the actual world, are characteristically modern. Its closest analogue is the phenomenon of technology, the harnessing of significant social resources to achieve mastery over nature through mathematical and experimental science. Formulated by the early modern philosophers Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the programme of technology rejected inherited intellectual foundations, including the guidance of God or nature.

Descartes, a professed believer whose pencil-thin moustache gave him an unmistakable air of duplicity, reduced the natural or created world to the mathematical abstraction of spatial extension, which is perfectly accessible to algebraic geometry but bears no trace of implicit order or divine goodness. And he divided his profoundly skeptical Meditations and Discourse on Method into six parts, in rivalrous imitation, scholars tell us, of the first six days of God’s creation. Liberated by technology from dependence on God and history, man and world could be fashioned in the image of human desires.

From the beginning, we observe how "an ill-formed utopian vision licenses fundamental social transformation":

The implementation of an ideological programme is an experiment testing the hypothesis that a radiant future can be achieved if only political, social, and economic relations are radically restructured, a process that always involves the preliminary destruction of existing realities. That future, like Descartes’s infinity of satisfactions, is never concretely described and never actually arrives. 

In the United States, we are currently engaged in many such experiments simultaneously, all undertaken in the name of social justice. [...] But ideology is always and everywhere opposed to the moderate middle ground, not only of politics, but of the general opinion and sentiment that goes by the name of common sense.

Howland draws several conclusions:

Ideology’s most horrific social experiments illustrate several points that apply also to the “Totalitarianism Lite” of contemporary American life. First, while human beings naturally form social groups for common purposes, ideology assumes that organic associations cannot support a good society, which must be engineered from the top down. This assumption, which no ideological experimentation has ever sustained, makes up in arrogance what it lacks in humility.

Second, ideology abjures persuasion, preferring what Hannah Arendt called “mute coercion”. We see this today in the insistence that certain widely-shared opinions that were uncontroversial only a few years ago are so morally illegitimate that they do not deserve a hearing. We see it in the fact that those who publicly voice such opinions are commonly smeared, hounded, denied financial services, investigated, and fired, even by institutions that are publicly committed to diversity of opinion and freedom of speech.

Third, ideology always involves the scapegoating and purging of opponents. Today these primitive religious rituals, enacted within the framework of a secularised and apocalyptic Christianity, include the sanctification of “victims” and the (for now metaphorical) public crucifixion of “oppressors”. Those who are targeted by, or resist, the ideological programme — denounced variously as kulaks, capitalist roadsters, vermin, or white supremacists — must, with the exception of a few penitents who are mercifully spared, be decisively defeated in battle with the forces of good. For only then will the earthy salvation of a just and harmonious society be achievable.

Western societies are on the road to greater misery, Howland predicts, because the intellectual and spiritual regime that has gained sway lacks "an ongoing attentiveness to reality that is inconsistent with wilfulness and fantasy". 

The takeaway is that the fantasy world of wokeism must be opposed and rejected at every opportunity. The common good relies on individuals and groups who are willing to display conviction and courage in the face of the distorted values and manipulated standards of virtue promulgated by those seeking meaning and purpose in the power-hungry realm of the woke. 

💢 Read the full essay here 

💢 Read also:

                      Woke censorship in publishing, here, and here.

                      Success in battle against woke lawyers. See here.

💢 Definitions of "wokeness" from UrbanDictionary.com

[] The ability of someone to become outraged at imagined enemies and create ways to be the victim, even though you're insanely privileged.

[] If anyone disagrees or is not extreme enough, then they deserve to be cancelled. Wokeness or wokeism is a cult based on neo-Marxism and post-modernism.

[] Performative wokeness: People who more concerned with self-promotion, social media "likes", or selling books & lectures than they are about actual deliverables.

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Fathers are key: Two women testify

Fathers are important for the psychological and emotional balance of children. Their absence in many families is the part of the dis-ease that so many young people experience. Two instances where fathers have died, leaving a "lingering emptiness", bring out clearly just how essential their role is in shaping their children's life.

 In the weeks after her father's death Megan Blandford felt the need to "reflect and regather". She writes:

In the winter my dad died from cancer, focusing on work became incredibly difficult.

I took a few weeks to slow down, think, and follow a craving to get back to basics. I spring cleaned my house, went for long bushwalks, caught up on my own health checks, and took over the dinner table with a thousand-piece puzzle. After school hours, I read stories with my kids — huddling together and immersing ourselves in fantasy worlds filled with magic and problems that can be solved — and took them out for chai lattés. (Kids these days.)

That time made me reflect a lot on my purpose, and how to spend the next chunk of my time on earth. 

Megan Blandford, pictured with her father, is finding it hard to recover from her loss.

Blandford, an Australian, was proud of her work as a freelance writer: 

Yet, suddenly, I just couldn't bring myself to write one more word about things that don't mean anything.

I lost my purpose, and asked myself a number of questions about it.

What could I do that would give me back that sense of achievement? How could I put more good out into the world? And why did none of it seem to mean a thing?

Time has passed, providing salve to the feeling of being without purpose in life, but the experience of such a deep loss has been revealing:

I'd seen this impact on some friends who had lost a parent. They'd go a bit off the rails, questioning everything and feeling — very outwardly — like they'd somehow lost themselves. It seemed like more than grief, as though they were adrift and needed to search for a new anchor.

As a writer, Blandford is able to find the words to explain what is going on in her life but she is surprised that even three years later she remains unsettled:

I underestimated that I would have sought Dad's advice on this career questioning that I was suddenly experiencing. I would never have followed his advice (I was never any good at doing as I was told), but I would have asked for his thoughts.

I underestimated the little things that would hit me with such a force of grief. The memory of the last time I had Christmas with my dad, when we'd ended up arguing; we were meant to have happier Christmases together after that. That the first time I'd walk into my parents' house without hearing Dad's voice call out, "Hi, Poppet!" would take my breath away.

I certainly didn't expect that, a couple of winters later, I would still be floating and searching for a new anchor.

Ruth Niemiec, who years later stood at her father's grave and said, 'I miss you'

For Ruth Niemiec, her father's life was taken in a road accident when she was nine years old. Writing as as an adult in Australia she notes how his death has had a profound effect on her:

My father's life was cut short, and it was unexpected, I didn't have time to say goodbye. It made the mourning prolonged and difficult.

For a few years, I remembered the sound of his laughter, his voice, how tall he was and his mannerisms. Twenty-four years on, I remember only his eyes and they are fading from my memory too. Dad wore his keys clipped onto a belt loop, left side. He wore brown leather shoes and was fond of light-yellow polo shirts. I know that from photographs. 

Joan Didion wrote in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, that she thought her husband would come back after he had died. At nine years old, I felt my father would come back too.

I distinctly remember sitting in the passenger seat beside my mother just a few weeks after his passing, convinced that he would come and see us soon.

The impact of the loss of any parent when the child is young can be far-reaching, and this was certainly the case for Niemiec: 

Losing a parent is never easy. It changes you completely, no matter what age you are when it happens. So many unanswered questions, so many "I love you's" whispered to the memory of their face. A lingering emptiness.

What made my confusing childhood grief deeper and more mystifying was that before he died, I hadn't seen him for a year. Mum and Dad were separated, and he had remarried.

When I was eight he took me to Gumbaya Park [Melbourne], and we spent the whole day together. It was the last time I saw him in person and the last time I was in a vehicle with him travelling down the freeway.  

In order to feel in a space where she could get on with her life Niemiec had to travel to Poland:

Dad was buried in Poland. That was his wish. His ashes were placed beside his father's at the cemetery in the village he grew up in.

It took over 15 years for me to be done with school and university and save enough money to afford a ticket to Poland. It took that long to get a chance to stand at my father's grave and say "I miss you". 

I wanted Dad to know I was there. And that I knew the beauty of the fog in the valley in Tuchów, with the first morning light beaming through it. I walked the worn streets he, too, had walked before leaving for Australia. I spoke the language he spoke to people he had known.

Being in Poland made me feel close to him and I left feeling an enormous sense of closure.

Those two personal accounts of the role fathers can play in the emotional life of children, both when young or as an adult, illustrate how important it is for society to be proactive in protecting the family as a unit of mother and father.

Therefore, it's worth repeating a snippet of the research findings about the importance of fathers. The following information is from the Child and Family Research Partnership at the University of Texas:

Children who grow up with involved fathers are: 39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school, 45% less likely to repeat a grade, 60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school, twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, and 80% less likely to spend time in jail.

💢 See the info poster here. 

💢 From a pediatricians' viewpoint, go here.

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Gun deaths and nihilism go hand-in-hand

Kids flee the Uvalde killer, a distressing sign of the times

The Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, USA, on December 14, 2012, left 28 people dead and two injured. After murdering his mother at their home, Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. 

Katherine Dee writes:

In February 2021, a clue about Lanza’s psyche emerged. It was an abandoned YouTube channel under the name CulturalPhilistine. The videos painted a picture not of a deranged killer or a sadist but a lucid young man with a rich, complicated intellectual life. In these videos, all of which featured a black screen and a scratchy voiceover, Lanza laid out his philosophy. The most unsettling thing is the cogency with which Lanza presented his views.

An analysis of those views shows Lanza appears to think of culture as a “delusion” and a “disease”. It seems he targeted schools because that is where, in his thinking, American culture—American values—is transmitted. A key person who analysed Lanza's videos believes he killed children because they represent the propagation of life. In brief: “In his worldview, death was salvation and enlightenment.” 

Dee finds such an outlook beyond "bone-chilling". But the worst of it is that such a mindset is typical among young American mass killers:

While Lanza was bookish beyond his years—he was only 20 when Sandy Hook happened—he was hardly alone in his alienation, in his rejection of the principle of life. A survey of shooters’ manifestos, blog posts, forum posts, and other bits and pieces of their online footprints suggests that they oppose life in its most literal sense. This includes not only “intellectual” mass shooters like Lanza but those who appear to be motivated by white supremacy and misogyny.   

Nor is this phenomenon limited to the United States—although it seems to be most prevalent here. Kimveer Gill, who killed one person and wounded 19 in 2006 before committing suicide in Montreal, believed that the whole of society needed to be eradicated. Pekka Eric Auvinen, who killed eight in a high school a little north of Helsinki, Finland, called for “the death of the entire human race”. Marc Lépine, also in Montreal, in 1989, shrouded his anti-life philosophy in anti-feminist rhetoric—anticipating, by a quarter-century, Elliot Rodger, who, in 2014, killed six people near the University of California-Santa Barbara. 

But everyone in a society that produces such nihilism is, according to Dee, implicated in the horrible outcomes:

We imagine that these killers have nothing to do with everyone else—that they are like a leper colony set apart from the rest of us, and every so often, one escapes and spreads his disease. We want to believe that because it makes us feel good. But the reality is that the smudge of nihilism’s fingerprints stains all things, everywhere.

It’s in the half-joking, half-serious proclamations of millennials who say they don’t want children because of the climate—because the world is beyond repair. It’s in the ubiquity of an even darker humor, the kind that was popularized by 4chan in the mid-2010s and captured the public imagination—the sort of things that can only be funny if life has lost any value. 

It’s in the commingling of our leisure and anesthesia—we drink to escape, we exercise until we can’t feel anything, we propel ourselves into fantasy lives with fandom. It’s even, paradoxically, in our insistence on living “in the moment.” Nothing matters, so we may as well be happy with where we are. The darker side of “YOLO” [You only live once] is how it forecloses on the possibility that our lives matter in any grander sense, that we can be a part of a tradition that started long before we were born and will extend for ages after we die. 

Now for Dee's sad and humbling conclusion:

As I interviewed people about Lanza, a common theme emerged. Yes, there was something obviously wrong with the material circumstances of America in the early 21st Century—an economy that seemed incapable of providing for the many, decaying institutions, the ubiquity of our screens. But there was something else. Something more abstract. It was that we now lived in a world where everything revolved around the individual. We had morphed from a universe of moral absolutes to broad social and communal forces to an all-consuming solipsism—a terrifying oneness, a “culture of narcissism”, as Christopher Lasch put it, where the self is central. [Solipsism is a a theory holding that the self can know nothing but what it does itself and that the self is the only existent thing.]

This narcissism is expressed through our perpetual identity crises, where chasing an imaginary “true self” keeps us busy and distracted. We see it in the people who use their phones and computers like they’re prosthetic selves, who are always there, but never present, gazing endlessly at their own reflection in the pond. Our shared inability to commit to anything that might make life meaningful, like children or a partner or putting down roots in a single place. It pervades Western humor, which is dominated by a sense that the world is ending, so we may as well drink and smoke ourselves to death because nothing really matters.

In this world, the individual was everything and nothing, architect of the future and hapless cog in a vast and deafening black. In this place, one murdered wantonly with the knowledge that all of us were just accidental bits of flesh bookended by eternities, that we meant nothing, that the possibility of meaning was a ruse. 

Therefore—and the ramifications that Dee lays out are huge—Western society must take stock of what it has created by wilful neglect of what history provides by way of a healthy social and moral human environment:

The debate over more guns or fewer guns completely misses the horrifying heart of the matter: the world built by modern liberalism, which took for its telos the maximization of individual autonomy, and thus guaranteed total alienation, breeds the nihilism behind these shootings. Ultimately, these killers could not cope, the way the rest of us do every day, with the crushing weight of the existential angst that is the promise of liberalism. Even the more thoughtful takes on fatherlessness and mental illness are only still addressing the symptoms of the disease. Until we see this, the ground of the problem, we will be no closer to answers, let alone solutions for these 21st Century horrors.

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Webb images: What the universe is telling us

There's nothing ordinary about the universe. Source: Slice of Webb space telescope image (see below)

The first Webb space telescope's images from the edge of time have astounded the public, amazed the space flight community given its success, and challenged the whole world's body of scientists to explain in simple terms what is being revealed afresh as the raw beauty within the complexity of creation.

Klaus Pontoppidan, project scientist with the Webb Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which works with NASA, said before the images were made public that there was a thrill in striving to capture in a comprehensible way the special reality of it all.

It was his team's job to translate infrared wavelengths into colours human eyes can see. He saw the task as like translating a poem written in another language: “It takes a little work to get the poetry across.”

As to the outcome of the Webb telescope's work, Pontoppidan said:

“The universe is huge and varied, and we’ve only scratched the surface of what's there," adding, “I think anybody would say we’re just human, and we cannot predict what the universe is going to tell us.”

A young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by the Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

In brief, scientists hope the James Webb Space Telescope will allow them to glimpse light from the first stars and galaxies that formed 13.7 billion years ago, just 100 million years from the universe-producing Big Bang. The telescope also will scan the atmospheres of alien worlds for possible signs of life.

So astronomers and physicists want to observe what is already there. It is clear from the excitement we have seen  in scientists such as Pontoppidan interviewed on TV and by print media over the past few days that they come to the task with an ability to marvel in the way that Albert Einstein expressed by quoting Socrates' epigram: "Wisdom begins in wonder."

Einstein is also quoted here concerning "our dull faculties" which, as amazing though our successes are, we remain limited in what we know and understand at any point in time. This is true of the past and present, and it is inescapable for the future. There will always be "unknowns".

One writer in the science field states:

The Webb Telescope is a new era for astronomy and science. Scientists have no idea what they might discover with Webb. But with five observations taken in just one week of operation, they have already found several cosmic Easter eggs that defy expectations — including a few complete and utter unknowns.

That writer, Inverse's Kiona Smith, rejoices at the image of  the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 about 4.5 billion light-years from Earth:

But look closely at the shinier objects, and you see the red and orange dust-like specks of other, much older, much more distant galaxies, thrown into focus using gravitational lensing. 

These primordial galaxies are the faintest objects in the Universe ever observed. But here’s the thing: We don’t actually precisely know how old or distant they might be at this point — but the two motes pointed out here come to us by way of light that travelled 13 billion and 13.1 billion years.

On Twitter, @NASAWebb said of the image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723:

If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine — galaxies galore within a grain, including light from galaxies that travelled billions of years to us! 

The sense of celebration as information about the universe is offered us in a way our intellects can cope with is likewise captured in the words of NASA senior Webb scientist John Mather, a Nobel laureate, speaking after the reveal. What is so exciting about the images is this, he said: 

“It’s the beauty but also the story. It’s the story of where did we come from.” 

Motor racing world champion Lewis Hamilton was moved to exclaim on Twitter:

The universe is so powerful and every single one of us is a part of it. Thank you for sharing the universe’s magic with us.

President Joe Biden called the  publication of the Webb images a historic event "for America and all humanity". 

Monica Grady is professor of Planetary and Space Sciences at Britain's Open University and chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. This is her take on the images:

[I]s the £8.4bn price tag worth it? What might come from the JWST that benefits us all?

For a start, there is the inspirational value of the images. The simple joy in appreciating their beauty. The colour and texture of the pictures we have seen bring to (my) mind works by some of the finest artists. What would Turner or Monet have been moved to paint if they could have seen the JWST’s shot of the Carina Nebula? How might contemporary artists, including poets and musicians, be inspired by the JWST, enriching all of us with their interpretations?

Grady stresses that the discoveries flowing already from the telescope—a million miles (1.6 million kilometres) from Earth—are "important and hugely significant" for science, and she continues with a list of  benefits for us all likely to arise from the technological breakthroughs required to enable the telescope to produce images of such clarity.

The passion to know about the heavens "above" us is not new, with plenty of evidence available that the ancients built up a body of knowledge based on long observations of the movements of the stars and the constellations they seemed to form, as well as the impact of the sun and moon on human life. Though the concept of a fixed Earth was a constant, it was always a work in progress as unexpected astronomical events kept the observers—and astrologers in particular—on their toes. 

The Bible makes many references to the splendour of the heavens, recording the state of knowledge within the ancient world. The Romans named the planets after the gods they inherited from the Greeks, named according to their appearance and movements.

The beauty, the magnificence, the abundance—this reality that has so intrigued us has rightly engendered wonder and awe over the centuries, and these qualities inspired Paul, the highly educated apostle, to write this to the Christians in Rome: 

For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them [the pagans] since God himself has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity—however invisible—have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet refused to honor him as God or to thank him; instead, they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened. The more they called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew, until they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles. 

The idols of each age may be different, no longer carved from stone or wood, but in similiar fashion, these days allegiance is proffered to ephemeral notions such as that humankind has within itself all that is required for understanding life and our place in the cosmos. In this mindset the individual is sovereign, and care for our neighbour is an optional extra unless we want to signal virtue or join a fashionable crusade led by an elite who push Marxist materialism for all it is worth in order to find some kind of meaning in life. the guiding principles for many in the West are

Obviously, what Paul saw in the grandeur of the natural world remains attractive for the minds and hearts of the people of this age. Therefore, it is worth noting the role of Christian (read Catholic) thinkers who laid the foundation for science in the modern era, such as developing the scientific method. In a thorough exposition in Wikipedia titled Science and the Catholic Church,  the point comes across clearly that science and religion are not in conflict, unless in the case of Protestant fundamentalist sects which maintain a literal reading of Genesis and the many other references to creation in the Bible. 

The resources on the NASA website provide much to wonder at. Here is a portion:

A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. Light zips through interstellar space at 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometres) per second and 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometres) per year. 

When we talk about the enormity of the cosmos, it’s easy to toss out big numbers – but far more difficult to wrap our minds around just how large, how far, and how numerous celestial bodies really are.

To get a better sense, for instance, of the true distances to exoplanets – planets around other stars – we might start with the theater in which we find them, the Milky Way galaxy

Our galaxy is a gravitationally bound collection of stars, swirling in a spiral through space. Based on the deepest images obtained so far, it’s one of about 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Groups of them are bound into clusters of galaxies, and these into superclusters; the superclusters are arranged in immense sheets stretching across the universe, interspersed with dark voids and lending the whole a kind of spiderweb structure. Our galaxy probably contains 100 to 400 billion stars, and is about 100,000 light-years across. That sounds huge, and it is, at least until we start comparing it to other galaxies. Our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, for example, is some 220,000 light-years wide. Another galaxy, IC 1101, spans as much as 4 million light-years.

Based on observations by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, we can confidently predict that every star you see in the sky probably hosts at least one planet. Realistically, we’re most likely talking about multi-planet systems rather than just single planets. In our galaxy [just one of perhaps 200 billion in the observable universe] are hundreds of billions of stars. This pushes the number of planets potentially into the trillions.

Finally, Carl Sagan spoke in 1981 about a space telescope, almost a decade before the launch of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. His words about JWST’s predecessor are relevant once again:

“The space telescope is a kind of grand intellectual adventure for all of us, which will cast light, not just on the cosmos, but also, on ourselves.”

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Elite capture is clear within Wokeism

Wokeism's elect and society's elite ... a clownish display of illogic. Photo: Source

The concept of "elite capture" is a useful one in considering what's happening in the West with the rise of the political correctness promoted by Wokeism through its adherence to the brave new world of critical race theory and transgender ideology.

In another illuminating podcast, Yascha Mounk explores the implications of societies and their institutions being dominated by one set of intellectual principles. Mounk, who is a West German-born American political scientist, is Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. He asks:

Do humans generally, including philosophers and social scientists, just have trouble letting go of one master narrative? Are we just hardwired to want to see the world through one prism? As the saying goes, “If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It seems to me that, in so much of intellectual life, [this] ends up being true. 

To find an answer to his question he enters into a discussion with Olúfẹmi Táíwò, who is a philosopher and an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His latest book is Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else).

Táíwò lays out where the problem lies when there is a sole narrative within and between academia, the corporate sector, the social elite, and all those who aspire to be accepted within that grouping: 

With elite capture itself, I worry there's a kind of path dependency: the longer the more entrenched elite and top heavy social institutions exist, the harder it seems to reverse—barring some kind of weird cataclysm or accident of history. Once you start to lose the kinds of institutions that are designed to challenge elite control over everything (unions, strong social movements, etc.), I worry that even increased attention or understanding of social problems won't do anything. And then there's a worry about the kind of conversation around elite capture and identity politics, so-called “wokeism”, and cancel culture. 

[...] the real thing that's happening is the actual institutions where we develop habits, where we refine our ideas, are more and more owned by and responsive to a very small group of people. That, in and of itself, is the problem. 

Referring to Elite Capture, Mounk says:

I found it quite convincing—this is partially just Miłosz’s explanation of the captive mind—that there is an intoxication in being able to waltz into any conversation and say, “Well, actually, that's all wrong. I have a vocabulary that I've learned—a certain form of Orthodox Marxism—that tells me that this is all about class and class relations in this particular kind of way, and not only does that make me feel like my life has meaning (because I'm a foot soldier in an important, trans-historical movement for justice), but also, I get to lord it over you a little bit, right? Once I've mastered it, I can go in and say, ‘Hey, you're an idiot.’”

Mounk asks for clarification on what "the current framework" of Wokeism fails to achieve. Táíwò replies:

I'm trying to see what the current framework does achieve. What's the output of diversity training, in terms of political outcomes or social interactions? I think what I'm getting at is not just different modes of attacking the problem, but a different understanding of what the problem is in the first place. [...]  I think there's a sense that people feel powerless and disconnected, and there's a question of who and what to put the blame on. [...] I don't think there's any version of responding to that kind of diagnosis of the problem that would solve the thing that, it seems to me, people are worried about.

To which Mounk responds:

[...] To what extent can we summarize the most important takeaway you offer us by saying: we keep thinking exclusively, primarily about race and identity, when we really should be thinking about economics and social class? How much does that capture, and how much important insight does it leave off the table? 

Which meets with limited concurrence by Táíwò: 

There's definitely a way that people can talk about race that might distract us from a more complex understanding of what's going on, and that would include class and economics. But that's not a particular feature of race discourse. You could talk about anything in a close-minded, reductive sort of way. My particular perspective on this has as many bones to pick with class reductionism as it has with race reductionism. So I wouldn't describe the takeaway of this book as an attack on race reductionism in particular. Maybe it would be better to just describe it as an attack on reductionism.

A follow-up question from Mounk: 

We've heard some of your concerns earlier in this conversation about what happens when you try to solve the current problems of the United States through at least one particular kind of race reductionist framework. But if you say, “This is all about class. As long as we elect Bernie 2016—to caricature a little bit—and give lots of nice European-style welfare state benefits to poor people, all of these other problems will go away,” that perhaps would be a form of class reductionism (there are more and less radical versions of it).

What would that get wrong, both about the current state of America and how to fix what's wrong with the current state of America?

Táíwò in reply:

I think that version of class reductionism has a lot more going for it than most other versions of class reductionism. Maybe that would get somewhere: just give people a bunch of money, free healthcare, etc., and the rest will sort itself out. I don't think that's true. But I think it's worth pointing out the differences between a kind of class reductionism about how we should respond to social problems, versus a class reductionism about what those sorts of problems are in the first place. 

[...] It just isn't true that mass incarceration is purely a problem of class. It has a lot more to do with class than people give it credit for, and the way that poor white people are policed is maybe not as different from the way that poor people of color are policed as people might guess, but it is measurably different. There's libraries of social science explaining why it's different.

It just isn't true that the problems of toxic waste and environmental racism are entirely explained by class or the level of income of residents. There are measurable relationships between the demographics of a community and zoning decisions about industrial pollution. If you're looking at what our world is—how it decides who to make predator and who to make prey—there are just more things going on than class. 

Narratives can vary, Mounk says, but the "hardwired" nature of an elite's choice of narrative is important as it has a bearing on the political and social relationships throughout society. Táíwò takes up the issue:

There have been, as a matter of fact, historical eras and epochs where people just seemed willing to accept, or respond to in friendly ways, different overlapping narratives about what the world was like, what was wrong with it, and what to do about it. I think what we're seeing in our time period is not the effect of some deep-seated human inability to move between different narratives of the world, but a manufactured kind of scarcity and competition between political narratives. Part of the manufacture of that has to do with the way that the platforms we use have been constructed.

I think the better part of explaining that has to do with the kind of austerity moment that we're living in, where there's fewer and fewer parts of the economy where people can experience anything like economic security, which fosters a sense of competition between the people who have resources and the people who don't. I think those are the things that we should look at if we're trying to explain why people talk about politics, or many other things, in the ways that they do.

This is the point in the conversation where Mounk spoke the words used at the top of this piece about everyone wanting to comply with the leading narrative. He concludes that thought with this question:

It seems to me like some of our intellectual class today suffers from the same temptation, and can walk into any conversation saying, “Well, this is about white privilege and microaggressions.” [They] get to go into a conversation with people discussing other terms and dismiss them without having to think very hard. Do you think there's something to that parallel? 

To which Táíwò replies:

I think that's right. There's a few kinds of temptation going on. I agree that people want to be able to feel like they understand something, and potentially to lord that over people. They want to feel like they're part of something. They also don't want to feel like they don't understand: complexity is daunting and humbling in ways that not everybody accepts. I'm coming around to why you said “hardwired.” Find me a generation of people where those desires aren’t pushing at us, right?

What's different about what's happening now is not those desires, but the relative absence of the checks on those desires. Decades ago, if you wanted to have the perspective that communism has figured out everything—i.e. ”Our intellectuals have the master narrative of what's good and what's bad, and they have created the singularly most important movement for justice in history”—one of the things you would have had to do is respond to a bunch of people saying, “Well, here's what the Soviet Union is actually doing. Here's what Mao's up to. Here's what's happening in Albania,” and you would have to position yourself in response to that. You may do that in a healthy and honest way, with integrity. You might fail to do that. But those are things that you would have to answer, and not just answer in an interpersonal way.

 Now, in the age of the so-called “end of history” (maybe we won't want to describe it that way anymore), that's no longer the geopolitical situation. In the United States, there is a kind of hegemony of capitalism as the actual master narrative—regardless of whether we give it a thumbs up or thumbs down—that explains what happens in our lives. There's a functional hegemony of the core US political institutions, military and national security.

Again, there are people who would give those institutions a thumbs down, but those institutions do not fear that they will not exist in a few years. So it just means a different thing to have any kind of opinion on political matters, master narrative or not. It means a different thing in our context to succumb to those desires, because there isn't any real political situation or set of institutions forcing you to have a “come-to-Jesus” moment about whether those desires should really be directing your behavior. There's none of the brakes or constraints that there might have been in particular, other eras—or less of them, maybe.

Has the virus of Wokeism infected the United States, and in a secondhand fashion, Canada, the contagion bred in the cesspool of individualism and moral permissiveness? Will America be able to recover its intellectual integrity? Or is America "blinded and hell-bent on its own destruction" as one American wrote for a New Zealand newspaper chain and website? Will Americans being able to excavate their soul to understand why they have "gone completely off the rails", as that American wrote last month, even though expressing his views from a very wokeish perspective. 

💢 See also from Persuasion:

 The Warped Appeal of "Anti-Racism" 

John McWhorter - The Elect: Neoracists Posing as Antiracists 

 When an opinion is an act of violence  

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Moral and legal case against abortion

Dependent, yes, but still of incalculable worth

That an educated American should say that he has not heard or read a proper presentation of the moral case against abortion is a surprising statement to make, but it indicates how our understanding of important issues can be clouded by the assumptions and beliefs arising from the cultural silo in which we tend to live.

That statement admitting to ignorance of the moral case against abortion was made by Yascha Mounk, 40, a West German-born American political scientist. He is currently Associate Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington D.C. 

He said in a podcast discussion:

One of the things that it strikes me about my upbringing as a nonreligious person in Europe, and about my intellectual circles in the United States for the last 15 or so years, is that the pro-choice case is so fundamental an assumption that I have barely ever heard the pro-life case. I would love for you to state for me and for my listeners why we should have a deep moral concern about abortion, and why the law may get involved in regulating whether or not women are entitled to getting one.

He was speaking to David French, 53, a columnist for The Atlantic and senior editor at The Dispatch. His books include Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation and The Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can't Ignore. French received a Bronze Star for service during Operation Iraqi Freedom and, as an attorney, litigated cases surrounding issues of religious and personal liberties.

So, for the sake of all who have never had the opportunity to weigh the arguments supporting a pro-life stance on abortion, here is much shortened version of the discussion between Mounk and French.

French opens his comments on why we should have a "deep moral concern about abortion" this way:

It revolves around a very simple concept: that an unborn child is a human life. It is not the mother, it is not the father. It is a separate human being and quite entire—quite dependent on the mother, of course, and exclusively dependent on the mother prior to viability. But it is a separate human being and as a separate human being a just nation does, in fact, protect innocent life from intentional killing.

The argument that an unborn child is a separate human being isn't just faith-based. From the moment of conception, you're talking about a human being that has separate DNA from the mother and the father; it's not a sperm, and it's not an egg. It's a separate human entity that has the same separate DNA from conception until birth and natural death. A separate human being should receive protection from the law and that status of being dependent on another does not deprive it of worth and value.

A baby is not like a tumor or a toenail or another sort of extension of a person's body. It is a separate body—completely dependent, yes—but another human being. As another human being, why does it have no protection from intentional killing? That's the fundamental argument of the pro-life movement. It's not that women should have no rights over their bodies. It's just that science teaches us it is not, in fact, merely another part of the woman's body; it's a separate living human being.

Mounk picks up on some of those points:

Here, I am torn in two different directions. If I look at a fetus that's five or six months old, and I look at pictures of that fetus, it's very easy to feel that it is, in fact, a different human being. It looks like a kind of little baby. There are complicated scientific arguments about whether or not it is capable of feeling pain at some particular stage of development, but it is clear that it is capable of doing so well before natural birth.

When I look at what a fetus looks like at three weeks or four weeks, I'm starting to be torn in the other direction, which is to say that, yes, I recognize that it is potentially human life, I recognize that it has a unique set of DNA that will remain the same though its natural death, but it does present as a clump of cells. It does not appear to have brain functions. And so at that point, I see there is some moral value there, some reason for moral concern, but it appears to be a lot less than it would be a few months later. 

French stays with the point about the instincts that Mounk owned to where people feel that it is right that a limit should be set on when abortion is allowed. French says:

From where the baby is recognizable as a baby, a lot of moral instinct starts to lock in. What's the scientific basis for this sort of consensus, middle position? I don't know. What's the moral basis for it? Well, it just seems more like a baby then. A lot of the compromise position is really based a great deal on a particular sort of sentiment about the child more than it is a scientific understanding. 

That the fetus is human biologically speaking is accepted by Mounk, but he raises the question of the child's "personhood":

Let's investigate for a moment this question about when the fetus is human, because in some biological sense, it seems obvious to me that two or three weeks in, the fetus is in fact, human; that is, a human entity that has DNA. It can grow to be a full adult human. Biologically speaking, it is human. But I guess the question is, “Is it human in the relevant ways that normally give us moral consideration towards humans?”  

He expands on that question:

I think some of the arguments for why we shouldn't have moral concern for a fetus at six or seven months are bad, precisely by analogy to that question, because you might say, “Well, they can't fend for themselves!” Sure. But nor can a lot of adult humans who we nevertheless want to treat with consideration, right? “They're not capable of rationality.” Alright, so again, if you make that the criterion for how we treat human beings, then you're going to have to treat a number of mentally disabled people in extremely cruel ways. 

There seems to be a background set of assumptions that we want to treat human lives with consideration if they are capable of having feelings, of feeling pain, of having a set of interests and so on. And though this is a very complicated and fraught question, it doesn't seem to me to be obviously wrong to say that in those relevant senses, a fetus at three or four weeks is not human in the way that a fetus becomes human at five or six months.

This is recognised by abortion opponents, says French, and that is why they do not advocate pressing a charge of murder or infanticide against the woman who aborts her baby:

There is an understanding of the large gulf that exists in the state of mind [of the woman] regarding an unborn child at different stages of development. 

Therefore, this discussion has come to a point where there is a common acceptance of the moral status of the fetus, based on the entity being human, even "two or three weeks in", with the heart starting to beat about five weeks in.  

Accordingly, the legality of killing the human entity inside the woman comes into focus. As for the catchcry, "It's my body. I can do what I like with the fetus!" Mounk sets out the areas where difficulty arises:

[We] have a clash of two sets of interests: the interest of a woman to have control over her own body, to be self-determined; and the interest of a fetus which is dependent on her for its survival. It appears that you have two very significant interests clashing with each other. The law deals with clashing interests all the time, but this clash in interests seems to be particularly stark. What does that imply to you for how we can recognize those legitimate interests and try to mediate within this really strong clash of legitimate interests?

Which brings French into the sphere of his most prominent expertise, the law. He says:

This is not an argument that just started with Roe in 1973—America has had abortion laws for a very, very long time that were decided through the democratic process. And I think that the procedural answer to that is that those competing interests should be resolved through the democratic process. And the injury of Roe v. Wade was that it removed those interests from the democratic process. 

Then it becomes incumbent upon pro-life citizens to convince the public of a couple of things. One is that the unborn child in a mother's womb is a life of incalculable worth, and the woman who is carrying the child is a life of incalculable worth. Rather than pitting the interests of child and mom against each other, what healthy public policy should do is harmonize them as much as humanly possible.

Now, public policy is not going to be able to solve everything. But we know why people get abortions, and one of the principal reasons is financial insecurity. That's something that public policy can do something about, along with, for example, private philanthropy. So a holistic pro-life movement knows that it cannot rest its argument solely by talking about the baby, because of the powerful and legitimate interests of the mother.

That's why a holistic pro-life movement is not one that's just simply running around trying to develop evermore creative ways of punishing people who either provide or aid and abet in providing abortions, or evermore creative ways to limit travel out of the state. It needs to be pouring energy into creative ways to be supportive. I'm worried about the state of the “pro-life” right at the moment, because I think it's very focused on one piece of that puzzle, and not nearly as focused on the other. 

I agree with French that not enough has been done to build a public structure that is clearly seen as supporting those in need, especially those who are have a practical difficulty while pregnant. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute states that 93 per cent of women who have had an abortion in the United States did so because they had social or economic concerns, with only seven per cent, therefore, having health concerns relating to mother or child.

The government has a role here, in giving practical support to healthcare, childcare, and adoption services; private philanthropic organisations, Church organisations, and community groups, must also coordinate their efforts to ensure every pregnant mother can recognise that the "village" is with her. 

But to return to the matter of putting abortion into a legal category, it is important that the whole of society agree that the human being carried by the mother must be protected. The democratic process is key—which was the thinking the Dobbs/Roe decision promoted. However, French is despondent about the prospects for a healthy outcome in the immediate term especially. 

He finds great significance in the fact that 1980-81 saw the peak of the US abortions and that rates fell steadily until 2017, when they began to rise again. "...[F]or the first time in 40 years in the United States of America, [the] culture of life is under measurable decay."  

However, if society can rebuild solidarity out of the mess that the aggressive individualism in the West is creating, then there is hope for renewed appreciation of life over money, fame, and the bogus self-invention that attracts so many young people these days.  

A final point: When people have a wish to solve the "problem" of the new life that they are responsible for producing, they may clutch at the straw which is the argument that this life is not a person, and so can be got rid of without moral reproach. However, we need to remember that what is legal is not always morally right or just. Just take the example of the belief that owning humans as slaves is a morally blameless act, a belief held acceptable in the US for a couple of hundred years, but which is now seen clearly as a crime against humanity. 

💢See also:

                  Women will thrive without abortion, but work is needed

                  Legal does not mean ethical

                 Modern slave owners rail against Roe ruling

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Justin Bieber celebrates the goodness of God

SOURCE: INSTAGRAM / @JUSTINBIEBER

 Celebrities are often criticised for living superficial lives, caring only about themselves, how to keep themselves in the public eye in order to advance their own status and wealth. Therefore, it's worth noting those who evidence a deeper element in their life. 

Justin Bieber is extremely talented and, of course, is fully involved in developing this talent within the music industry. But his awareness of the spiritual dimension as key to a balanced life came through in his marriage to Hailey Baldwin, who has spoken of the centrality of their Christian faith in their partnership in life. 

That deeper awareness is seen in Bieber's response to the health problems experienced last month that forced the postponement of his world tour. His statements on Instagram are enlightening about the true character of this idol of a multitude of fans. 

In 2017 he told his fans that he had he cancelled the last 14 concerts of his Purpose world tour because, “I want my mind, heart and soul to be sustainable... so that I can be the man I want to be, the husband I eventually want to be, and the father I want to be.”. He had played 150 concerts across 40 countries. 

At that time he said that he was visiting an Irish castle when he had a stark realisation about his life, as successful as it was in terms of wealth and admiration. He said:

“There was a sense of still yearning for more.” He continued: “It was like I had all this success and it was still like, I’m still sad, and I’m still in pain. And I still have these unresolved issues. And I thought all the success was going to make everything good.” 

This time his health problems involved paralysis of his face. In this trial, God was with him:

Taking to Instagram, the singer spoke to his 244 million followers about the challenges he’s faced with facial paralysis and the peace he feels thanks to Jesus Christ. He revealed that he has been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. This illness happens when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near a person’s ears. For Justin this has caused paralysis on the side of the face which has been attacked by the virus. He said: “I know this storm will pass but in the meantime I know Jesus is with me.”

On Monday June 20, the singer posted a video to his social media account speaking more about the diagnosis. He said: “I wanted to share a bit of how I’ve been feelin’. Each day has gotten better and through all of the discomfort I have found comfort in the one who designed me and knows me. I’m reminded he knows all of me. He knows the darkest parts of me that I want no one to know about and he constantly welcomes me into his loving arms. This perspective has given me peace during this horrific storm that I’m facing.” 

The Justice world tour begins July 31 in Lucca, Italy, and is set to run through March 25, 2023. Scheduled concerts in the US in June had to be put off for an indefinite time.

Photo from Justin Bieber’s Instagram

In an interview with GQ, Bieber shared about the miracle of God saving him from his past shame and mistakes. One report of that interview focuses on how his spiritual depth comes across clearly:

“Hurt people hurt people—you know? And there’s a quote; The comforted become the comforters. I don’t know if you’ve heard that before. But I really do feel comforted. I have a wife who I adore, who I feel comforted by. I feel safe. I feel like my relationship with God is wonderful. And I have this outpouring of love that I want to be able to share with people, you know?” Bieber said.

But Bieber’s past life and his new life in Christ are only a few short years apart. Bieber said that God redeemed him from an almost inevitable road of emptiness.

“I was surrounded by a lot of people, and we were all kind of just escaping our real life,” Bieber said. “I think we just weren’t living in reality. I think it would have probably resulted in just a lot of doing drugs and being posted up, to be honest.”

Mistakes bring regret and shame, but Jesus is there in the midst of it all:

"He is grace,” Bieber added. “Every time we mess up, He’s picking us back up every single time. That’s how I view it. And so it’s like, ‘I made a mistake. I won’t dwell in it. I don’t sit in shame. But it actually makes me want to do better.’

“My goal isn’t to try and persuade anybody to believe in what I believe or condemn anybody for not believing what I believe,” Bieber continues. “If it can help someone, great. If someone’s like, ‘Hey, I don’t believe that. I don’t think that’s true,’ by all means, that’s their prerogative.” 

“If God forgives me and He loves me and He set these things in motion, if He put these desires in my heart, then I’m going to trust Him,” Bieber said.

I thought all the success was going to make everything good. And so for me, the drugs were a numbing agent to just continue to get through.” 

 Although God’s redemption is evident in Bieber at 28, his faith is active and continues to grow.

“I just kept trusting what He said and what He’s saying to me,” Bieber explains. “And I just believe He speaks to me. It’s not audible. I don’t hear His audible voice. I don’t know if people do. I know people have said it, and in the Bible, it talks about that, but I just never heard it. It’s more like nudges: Don’t do this. Or: Set these boundaries.”

He added: “It’s just rewarding to be all that you were designed to be. And I believe that, at this point in my life, I’m right where I’m supposed to be, doing what I believe that God wants me to do. And there’s nothing more fulfilling.” 

Amid the gloom and doom of life it's great to have someone with the strength of character to face off those would reject all boundaries in their life and make the choice to live without acknowledging the supernatural qualities of their humanity that God has endowed them with. The bland one-dimensional existence that so many people in the West endure is not all there is to life, as Bieber makes clear. 

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