Friday, July 04, 2014

Something to think about on this 4th of July

The "America" we baby-boomers grew up in is gone, or at least nearly so. The "America" we live in is one rapidly changing into what some would call a "Post-American" Empire. American exceptionalism is not a Catholic doctrine, but there are some profound goods that graced this land in its history (and still do), alongside some profound evils.

I haven't yet seen this film, but the trailer below clearly shows that it musters some serious alternative points of view in the "Culture Wars" to think about, even if there is no clear Catholic perspective, either in the alternatives presented or in the vantage point from which the narrative is presented.

3 comments:

Nick said...

Does anyone see the irony in that a non-White man from India is the host of this movie and the one calling for a conservative revolution?

George said...

Yes, Nick, just as there could well be more Indian missionary priests in the United States than there are American missionary priests in the rest of the world. That's probably a bit of an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.

RFGA, Ph.D. said...

One day I was sitting in the faculty lunchroom at Henry Ford Community College between classes. I looked across the room at another table around which people were beginning to gather and there much to my surprise sat Noam Chomsky. What the heck is he doing here, I thought? I worked up the nerve to approach the table and found out that he was on campus to deliver a lecture on capitalism. The host then kindly invited me to join the group. Professor Chomsky and I ended up amiably discussing his version of the Cartesian notion of innate ideas, which I then opposed- a huge thrill for a newly-minted Ph.D. dreaming of academic glory. I know the man is an atheist, but I've always found his criticism of capitalism, which I myself have detested my entire adult life, to be spot on. It led me to Rerum Novarum, Belloc, and the Distributist alternative to that Protestant abomination.