Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For January 20, 2021

 Jan 18

To Pat Buchanan and his article that attempts to criticize the House’s 2nd impeachment of Donald Trump. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Buchanan gives a tribal response to the reimpeachment of Donald Trump. And because it is tribal, it is also  authoritarian. And because it is authoritarian, it will employ aspects of all-or-nothing thinking like employing a black-white worldview and selective focus.

The issue revolves around whether Donald Trump incited insurrection. And in denying that he did, Buchanan did not report on everything Trump and his co-speakers said. Buchanan did not mention the claim that has been rejected by all of the courts, even those presided over by Trump appointed judges, that the election was stolen. and that people needed to 'take America back." And Buchanan not did report how Trump told the audience how to do what he wanted them to do, they had to show strength, not weakness. And we don't hear Trump contradicting Rudy Giuliani who said that there must be trial by combat or Mo Brooks who told the audience to kick butt. Nor does Buchanan remind us what Trump said to the Proud Boys during his last debate that they were to 'Stand back and stand by.'

Now ties are being found between the Trump campaign the the event that led to the invasion of the Capitol. Those ties are being discovered by the AP as it matches names on permits with those being paid by Trump's 2020 campaign (see https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-donald-trump-capitol-siege-campaigns-elections-d14c78d53b3a212658223252fec87e99 ). And none of that includes Trump's initial reaction to the invasion of the Senate.

And neither does Buchanan mention that the reason for the "hatred" of Trump starts, if that is to be believed, swith Trump's action to incite insurrection. In fact, there were sufficient grounds to remove Trump because of the charges in the first impeachment but the Republican held Senate restricted evidence and witnesses from being considered by the Senate.

Buchanan's article is not written to engage with the evidence, it is written to keep the sheep  in line. His inadequate evidence makes impotent the logic Buchanan attempts to employ when defending Trump

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Jan 19

To John Horvat and his article that seeks to redefine religion from having freedom of choice to that of having control over one’s passions. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

The above article doesn't recognize the contradiction of Ryszard Legutko's statements on freedom. On the one hand, freedom that recognizes our right to do what we want but is limited by the harm that we do to others is accused of only promoting self-interest. In addition that freedom is said to promote doing 'whatever, whenever. and wherever.'

Likewise, the other definition of freedom is not freedom because it does not deal with the liberty to choose. Rather, latter definition of freedom is defined by the ability to escape the consequences of wrong choices.  Of course the defense for that definition is that true freedom is the ability to control the passions. But what about following the passions is wrong? Isn't part of what is wrong about following the passions is when following them leads to hurting others? If so, isn't that part of the first definition of following freedom? And if so, then don't these two definitions have something in common?

Religiously speaking, there is a point to defining freedom in terms of having the ability to control one's passions. But we can be so vigilant in controlling the passions that we come to believe that some legitimate natural passions are evil.

At the same time, not all who live in a society where we have the freedom of religion agree on which passions should be and how they are to be controlled. Thus, if the above article could lead to the threatening of our freedom of religion since a given religion would be given a place of supremacy over other religions in determining which passions should be controlled.