Daniel in the Lions’ Den

Brilliant painting by Briton Rivière

I’d never heard of this artist (Briton Rivière) before, I’ve never seen this picture before (Daniel in the Lions’ Den). 

There’s a video about it titled: ‘This Painting Is an Absolute Masterpiece’

It really is brilliant! 

Interesting that it was particularly popular in Victorian times.

8-minute video here.

The Totalitarian Impulse vs. Two Words: “Oh, Yeah?”

Article by Gary North (from 2014).

Excerpt:

CONCLUSION

Totalitarianism comes when a special-interest ideological group gets in control of the machinery of government. This attempt never lasts very long. Totalitarianism must be implemented by bureaucrats, and third-generation bureaucrats are not driven by a desire to change society. They are driven the desire to protect their jobs. That desire, above all other desires, will shape any government that attempts to impose the vision of the anointed on the masses of Americans.

Americans have a two-word response to all such attempts: “Oh, yeah?” They have a follow-up: “You and who else?”

If the Communists could not pull it off in the USSR, the anointed will not pull it off in America.

It’s the End of the Age, NYTimesies

Article by Christopher Chantill.

Quotes:

It looks like our liberal friends wanted to use the firing of Jimmy Kimmel as a narrative to neuter the Charlie Kirk assassination. That was then. But now, after the speech by Charlie’s widow, Erika Kirk, who cares?

[. . .]

Twenty years ago, Lukacs wrote that the Modern Age at its height was the Age of the Bourgeois, for its minds and creators were mostly of bourgeois origins and status that replaced the nobles of the Middle Ages.

I say that the new age will be an age of the ordinary. The future will belong to energetic youngsters like the TPUSAers we saw and heard at the Charlie Kirk memorial. And his widow, Erika Kirk.

It’s okay, NYTimesies. We forgive you.

The “Climate Change” Danger

Review of the book “Fossil Future: Why Global Human Florishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas – Not Less”, by Lew Rockwell.

Quote:

Epstein thinks that the danger from global warming has been exaggerated, but though he presents extensive evidence in support of this, his main contribution lies elsewhere. He argues that modern civilization depends on fossil fuels and that far from curtailing their use, we need to spread them to the impoverished parts of the world. So great are the benefits from using the fuels that only a true “end of the world” nightmare caused by CO2 emission could require that we shift to other energy sources, and despite the alarmists’ caterwauling, this nightmare is most unlikely to occur. Moreover, Epstein holds that the benefits of fossil fuels are so obvious that only a defect in thinking could have induced people to ignore them. He is a philosopher as well as an energy economist, and he expertly identifies the false thought pattern that has led to our current confusions.

Epstein says, “Whenever we hear about what the ‘experts’ think, we need to keep in mind that most of us have no direct access to what most expert researchers in the field think. We are being told what experts think through a system of institutions and people…. Understanding how this system, which I call our ‘knowledge system,’ works and how it can go wrong is the key to being able to spot when what we’re told the ‘experts’ think is very wrong—about fossil fuels or anything else.”

Rerum Novarum: A Manifesto for the Ages

Article by Sebastian Wang.

Excerpt:

In our own time, the relevance of Leo XIII’s teaching is obvious. We live in economies where the forms of capitalism have been retained but the substance hollowed out: markets in name, but in practice dominated by a nexus of government and corporate power; competition in rhetoric, but in reality a game for those who can pay for access and influence. The same moral principles that led Leo to reject socialism oblige us to reject this corporatist order. The goal is not to level all differences of wealth, but to ensure that wealth is obtained and held by right, not by privilege; that property is widely held; that the worker has a path to independence; and that the State remembers it exists to serve persons, not to manage them.