Free Republic

From CatholicInsight.com Features The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to corrupt By Timothy Matthews Hardcopy Issue Date: March 2009 Online Publication Date: Mar 17, 2009, 22:36 Western civilization at the present day is passing through a crisis which is essentially different from anything that has been previously experienced. Other societies in the past have changed their social institutions or their religious beliefs under the influence of external forces or the slow development of internal growth. But none, like our own, has ever consciously faced the prospect of a fundamental alteration of the beliefs and institutions on which the whole fabric of social...

“ Until now,” wrote Joseph Comte de Maistre ( 1753- 1821), who for 15 years was a Freemason, “ nations were killed by conquest, that is by invasion: But here an important question arises; can a nation not die on its own soil, with­out resettlement or invasion, by al­lowing the flies of decomposition to corrupt to the very core those original and constituent principles which make it what it is...”

Hegel as Sorcerer: The “Science” of Second Realities and the “Death” of God   by Jean F. Drew       A friend asked for an explanation of a remark I recently made on a public forum that the great German philosospher, Hegel, was a “sorcerer.” I’m glad for this opportunity to respond. For the spirit of Hegel is alive and well today in the construction of any Second Reality, of which I regard the recent Obama Campaign to have been a splendid example.   Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a world-class philosopher — a master of classical...

The frivolity and boredom which unsettle the established order, the vague foreboding of something unknown, these are the heralds of approaching change. The gradual crumbling that left unaltered the face of the whole is cut short by a sunburst which, in one flash ,illuminates the features of the new world. - Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit Liberalism is decidedly Hegelian. Okay, so maybe a few curious readers of this blog will then go over to Amazon and buy Hegel's masterpiece, The Phenomenology of Spirit, just to check it out for themselves. Unfortunately, the work is as arduous and as contradictory as...

GEORG HEGEL was a German philosopher of the early 19th century. Hegel believed that history unfolds through a "dialectical" process, in which each stage is the product of the contradictions inherent in the ideas that defined the preceding one. Within these tensions and contradictions, Hegel believed, the philosopher can discern a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity. He called that unity "the absolute idea." History consists of an inevitable and progressive march to that idea.Until recently it appeared that Marxism (which borrowed Hegel's dialectic but replaced "ideas" with economic systems and classes--hence "dialectical materialism") would represent Hegel's most enduring contribution to the...

This is a proposed slogan for Freeps. Certainly it would be great for a Hillary or a Barbara Boxer or a Barney Frank sign. Here are a couple of thoughts of explanation. The perversion the Democrats seek is not just sexual perversion. They seek to pervert the state, school, church, voluntary organizations of every kind with their marxist/marcusian ideology that says that were are "progressing" towards a one-world one-sex socialist environmentalist utopia. They seek to spread that message and undermine the original purpose of every institution they touch. These wackos have captured the Democratic Party and need to be exposed....

The 20th century is one of wars and dictatorships. It opened with the First World War, during which Communist dictatorship appeared on the European fringe in Russia, and following which Fascist and Nazi dictatorships arose in the heart of Europe. Then came the Second World War and the Cold War. Communist dictatorship spread to Asia, Africa and the Americas (Cuba). Even areas which hadn't arrived at dictatorship were well along the road. They suffered continuous erosion of citizens' rights. We must learn why! We must know the cause to find a cure. History is a record of human actions, and...

The collapse of the liberal order and the end of classical sovereignty. Editor's note: The following is longer that the traditional TCS essay, but its timeliness and importance prompted us to break with tradition and publish such a lengthy feature this week. We have included a 'quick jump' navigation tool to help reading the essay on the Internet, but we encourage you to print the entire essay and read it at your convenience, or bookmark the article and return to it several times. We are confident the piece will challenge you and may change how you think about the coming...

1: THE PROBLEM Of the many words written for and against the coming war with Iraq, none has been more perceptive than Paul Johnson's observation in his essay "Leviathan to the Rescue" that such a war "has no precedent in history" and that "in terms of presidential power and national sovereignty, Mr. Bush is walking into unknown territory. By comparison, the Gulf War of the 1990's was a straightforward, conventional case of unprovoked aggression, like Germany's invasion of Belgium in 1914 and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor." The implications of this remark - like the implications of the war with...

THE SELF AS GOD IN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY All of which is only another way of saying that . . . it is our affair to participate in this redemption by laying aside our immediate subjectivity (putting off the old Adam), and getting to know God as our true and essential self. H E G E L The movement of thought from Kant to Hegel revolved in a fundamental sense around the idea of man's self-realization as a godlike being, or alternatively, as God. A radical departure from Western tradition was implicit in this tendency. the centuries-old ruling conception of...