Free Republic

VATICAN CITY, JAN. 17, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The rector of Rome's Sapienza University announced that he will re-invite Benedict XVI to visit the institution. Renato Guarini affirmed this after the inauguration ceremony today that was supposed to have included a lecture given by the Pope. The Vatican announced Tuesday that the visit would be postponed, due to what the Pope's secretary of state called a lack of the "prerequisites for a dignified and tranquil welcome." A small protest that eventually reached the point of several students occupying the rector's offices motivated the Holy See to cancel the visit. The protestors called...

Do not be angry with me for speaking the truth; no man will survive who genuinely opposes you or any other crowd and prevents the occurrence of many unjust and illegal happenings in the city. A man who really fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for even a short time. (Apology 31e-32a) These are the words of Socrates, who spoke before the Athenian jury in the trial that would, ultimately, condemn him to his death. Through works such as the Apology and The Republic, we can see Plato’s distaste of...

Ex-US vice president Al Gore's global warming documentary will be shown at public schools across Portugal as part of a campaign to tackle climate change, Prime Minister Jose Socrates said. "I think the duty of a politician is to divulge a political message so that all citizens are more aware of what they can do to solve this global problem," Socrates, a former environment minister, said after meeting with Gore. Gore's Oscar-nominated film, "An Inconvenient Truth," warns that urgent action is needed to reduce carbon emissions soon or else the planet will suffer disastrous consequences from climate change. Last month...

After Socrates was convicted by a court of questionable charges, his friends planned to break him out of his jail in Athens. But the philosopher refused to flee. Instead, he insisted that a citizen who lived in a consensual society should not pick and choose which laws he finds convenient to obey. Selective compliance, Socrates warned, would undermine the moral integrity of the entire legal system, ensuring anarchy. And so, as Plato tells us, the philosopher accepted the court's death sentence and drank the deadly hemlock. Socrates' final lesson about the sanctity of the law is instructive now in our...

A collection of charred scraps kept in a Greek museum's storerooms are all that remains of what archaeologists say is Europe's oldest surviving book _ which may hold a key to understanding early monotheistic beliefs. More than four decades after the Derveni papyrus was found in a 2,400- year-old nobleman's grave in northern Greece, researchers said Thursday they are close to uncovering new text _ through high-tech digital analysis _ from the blackened fragments left after the manuscript was burnt on its owner's funeral pyre. Large sections of the mid-4th century B.C. book _ a philosophical treatise on ancient religion...

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal's opposition Socialists scored their biggest-ever electoral victory on Sunday as voters ousted centre-right Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes after only seven months in power, exit polls showed. Western Europe's poorest nation swung to the left in giving Socialist leader Jose Socrates an absolute majority in parliament needed to implement a platform the party said would boost the lagging economy. Analysts said the resounding win amid a large turnout was a welcome sign of stability for the nation of 10 million people. Socrates's government will be Portugal's fourth in three years. President Jorge Sampaio dissolved parliament...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

In his new history of the counterculture, author Ken Goffman tracks down history's freethinkers ON THE FIRST page of Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, author Ken Goffman, a.k.a. R.U. Sirius, affirms Nietzsche's eschewing history in favor of myth. The philosopher believed that myth creates a spiritual community that history squashes like a bug. The pages that follow provide an expositive chronicle of freethinkers and myth seekers from Socrates to the current day, revealing how counterculture types tend to be folks who don't subscribe to any one specific dictum, ideology or reality tunnel. Instead, they put their...

Democrats, according to pollsters, receive votes from the least educated and the most educated, from grade school dropouts to college presidents. This suggests parallels between the undereducated and the overeducated that most professors don't wish to entertain. Illiterates and intellectuals form the odd couple of the Democratic Party. How did it happen? One explanation is that both groups are drawn to the party's emotional demagoguery. Having lost contact with common sense through a skeptical distrust of reason, postmodernist professors more or less decide their politics on raw emotion -- the same passions that stir their uneducated fellow Democrats. In a...

By now, more than a month since its release, Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ has elicited countless reactions from Catholics, Jews and fundamentalist Christians. Millions of viewers have so far contributed to the movie's nearly $300 million in gross earnings. Film critics and cultural commentators have weighed in on it in large numbers. Scientifically flavored responses, however, have been relatively sparse. Here's mine. Even about modern day mega-stories we're often clueless. Forty years ago in the full glare of the modern media, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and we have only a hazy idea of the motivation of the...

A Socratic Defense of Rights By Robert Escalona During the 5th century B.C a little known Athenian came to prominence. His path was a rather unusual one, guided only by his resolute quest for truth and his ardor for mentoring others. It was these two passions that enabled him to succeed and transform a society. How was this Athenian able to change the course of western thinking armed with nothing more than his intellect? He did it through the use of methodical inquiry. He employed his critical method in everyday discourse, by questioning and applying the use of logic and...