Comments for Machiavelli’s Children – or Ours? at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 01:05:06 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6452 I wish I'd had a professor such as Dr. Arkes when I was in law school. Instead, I became an irritant in part because -- not yet a Catholic but long pro-life -- I had begun to perceive or at least desire a moral basis for law. Recall the worst thing his critics could think to label George Orwell was a "moralist." I meet quite a few young people and it seems they have been taught, perhaps from middle school on, that the state is the standard for all behavior. Thus their disapproval of questioning almost any statement or action of our most statist president in some time. And thus their unimaginative acceptance of abortion, promiscuity, the marginalizing of family, "social issues," "euthanizing the old and terminally ill," and on and on. It may be that faith and values and moral law require far more imagination than say a novel or song or movie. Isn't, after all, human creativity a leap of faith into understanding ourselves as a primary reflection of the divine, of our humanity as made in His Image? - Graham Combs Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:29:30 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6450 I appreciate Professor Arkes' always careful thoughts. But is Strauss' evaluation on the American Founding so unambiguously positive? Was that Founding not based upon a subjective natural right in uneasy tension with both "Athens and Jerusalem"? If Strauss takes important elements of the American Founding to go against the grain of Machiavelli, which no one would deny, does this rule out the possibility that the Founding also contains more questionable premises? In fact I suspect Strauss found America so promising because, paradoxically, of the moral diversity (and thus ambiguity) of our origins, and if the Founders did "build better than they knew," it will be up to their often-confused progeny to decide that. - Bill McCormick Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:09:05 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6445 I'd like to thank Ray Hunkins, Debby and John --three steady readers of these columns for their comments. There will be more to say about the understanding of our current students. But I want to say a special word for Debby. At times we will say things pointing in a certain direction, and we'll leave it to our readers to complete the thought. She supplied precisely the thought to which I was pointing. - Hadley Arkes Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:59:35 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6443 Among my own students for years now, when the topics of their essays touch on human rights, I almost always encounter the expression "rights that the state gives us," or words very much to that effect. Some of them hesitate a little when I probe (gently, to be sure) the assumptions behind such an expression. But most of them respond with a chilling shrug: after all, where else could rights possibly come from? Yes, they are not children of the Founders. And God help us. - John II Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:55:04 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6440 Excellent! Many good points! I especially appreciate the comment about Grant and Lee. What an example of misdirection- 1 Cor. 13 rings in my ear, "even if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing." What a hard word. We can be "such a great guy" and totally wrong, our efforts useless! I dare to comment on the last sentence: "...but something deep in our people, deep in our nature, still runs back to Jerusalem and Athens." I would say that the something deep runs back further, to the dawn of our own Creation, in His Image, the deep eternal which yearns for Truth, Freedom, Life, Love, His breath in our soul. St. Paul admonished us, "Quench not the Spirit." Is not the quenching of this Spirit the very denial of who we are as people, the clouding over of our moral North Star, the soul murder which can only dehumanize and debase? May we be found as His Children. - debby Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:16:52 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/machiavellis-children-or-ours.html#comment-6439 Well said Professor. What runs back is like a thread, sometimes tangled,sometimes obscure, sometimes frayed but nevertheless still present. I see it in my children and in my grandchildren and I am thankful and hopeful. - Ray Hunkins Tue, 29 Mar 2011 03:44:18 +0100