Political Philosophy

New contributor. Spencer Hess introduces his take on Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God by Kaitlin Curtice. How did we get in our own way? SH's reaction to Kaitlyn Curtice's book Native begins to indicate the way. For more from us: https://pmaurin.org … More PMC Decadence: Going ‘Native,’ Radical Liberalism Gone to Seed 1 (Contributor: Spencer)

I'm going to change it up a little in the New Year. More to come on what to expect from Spencer Hess, an interviewee and a new contributor to this channel! https://pmaurin.org On this video: Hauerwas writes about the state of universities and liberal arts colleges, particularly but not exclusively religious colleges. Many of the problems he sees and the aspirations he holds dear can be applied to...

auerwas deals skeptically with both political and religious virtue, but holds out hope for a type of political virtue within church. His treatment in Christian Existence Today is a bit cursory, but it's thought provoking. The second half of this video deals with the problems of community and political virtue in church. Hint: it doesn't mean joining team red or blue. … More Political and Reli...

cussing different views of virtue that developed at different times in history but are still with us, either as ghosts or as confused and contradictory aspirations. I suggest a new view of virtue has taken over, hyper-bourgeois virtue. … More Virtue: Ancient, Christian, Bourgeois, Hyper-Bourgeois

In his book Christian Existence Today, "A Christian Critique of Christian America," Stanley Hauerwas takes on American civil religion. Understanding why most Christian positions toward the state aren't good enough will help us determine what Christianity might look like if we stopped pursuing it through the state, ideologies and politics. … More Why Not School Prayer? Hauerwas’s Christ...

ell known for his critique of liberal ideology and his defense of the church as its own community that should be something different than "the world." His thought lends itself to communitarianism and challenges the growth of Christian Nationalism and Constantinianism in our day. This video introduces Hauerwas's life and some of his big ideas and is the beginning of a series derived from two of his...

all of them good for either the giver or receiver. This video focuses on how to be a good receiver, preferably not of Christmas largesse but of giving on a daily basis. To encourage generosity in others, being a positive receiver is necessary. Receiving without guilt and without giving a guilt trip is a way that you can move beyond the liberal capitalist transactional framework in your own life. T...

theory stream I tap into is Burkean conservatism. Because I'm doing a series on Burke right now, I thought I'd read the section from the draft introduction that has to do with classical conservatism. … More Edmund Burke vs. US Conservatives. Reading From My Latest Book Project: The Gap in God’s Country

Do you think being grateful while eating your turkey is the best thing you could be doing today? Here are some thoughts to agitate you (and maybe get you to drink one less beer) on this US holiday. Along the way we ponder the "Metaverse" of Mark Zuckerberg's dreams, why charity might not be the very best thing you could do, and why word vomiting on others is an activity to avoid--maybe particularl...

I discuss Edmund Burke's views on the "Rights of Man" as advocated by the French Revolution, in contrast with what Burke thought of as the rights of human beings living in various nations and communities. Burke critiques the idea of universal natural rights in favor of inherited rights which can be modified and applied differently over time in response to changing conditions and needs. Burke does...

After defending the English Revolution of 1688 as a thing of a different and more respectable sort than the French Revolution of 1789, Burke goes on to argue against universal rights in favor of the particular rights of particular people. He believes that people receive their rights through inheritance from past practice, and that the … More Edmund Burke’s Noble Lie (Reflections 3...

The first part of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution of France takes on England's Revolution Society and Rev. Richard Price, whom Burke considered a dangerous and radical agitator. We begin to see that Burke does not like mixing religion and politics, and he dislikes politics practiced with religious zeal. He argues that there is a big difference between the Glorious Revolution in Englan...

Why read Edmund Burke? In this introduction I explain that his classical conservatism is more of a way of thinking than it is an ideology, and as such it is flexible. It is also practical, and we need more of that in a time in which too many waste their efforts in theorizing for its own sake (or worse) just attacking the "other side." … More Introduction to Edmund Burke and Reflections on th...

ve all 12 steps, but it does give us at least two steps, and a "serenity prayer" for our particular addiction. In this penultimate episode dealing with Walter Brueggemann's Out of Babylon I discuss the themes that emerge in the last chapter dealing with accommodation and resistance to empire. Brueggemann is unflinching in his warning to US Christians that they have verged from accommodation, which...

Christian nationalism--the reasons it is wrong but also the possible reasons why it exists. Looking at the Old Testament as a source of iconic, archetypal and enduring truths is discussed as an alternative to the narrative of the US as the new Israel. If people remain captive to Empire, why? Is it partly because they truly have been displaced and are tempted by cooptation? Is it due to their fear...

Chapter 4 of Walter Brueggemann's Out of Babylon discusses the power of poetic imagination to create the conditions for change. Multiple views of God's position relative to humans, and the human response to God are entertained in poetic language. Brueggemann emphasizes the latter as a strength that shows a way beyond the sectarian infighting that characterizes most religious sects and keeps those...

God's will with the will of the nation and resolve morality into the aims of national power, or to choose the "local tradition" of adherence to God's priorities even when they clash with the priorities and values of empire. The latter involves first recognizing that there is a necessary and unresolvable conflict between any national will and Judeo-Christian morality. Brueggemann asks, will the Chr...

the second chapter of Walter Brueggemann's book Out of Babylon, the "local tradition" of the United States, as the "shining city on a hill," is explored in the context of prophetic calls for examination and repentance both in the Old Testament and in Walter Brueggemann's theology. People always design narratives to explain their situation and role in the world, and Brueggemann teaches that this is...

discussing Brueggemann's view that US Christians who hew to the "City on the Hill" ideology are committing idolatry and are aligning with Empire and not with God, the two being ultimately opposed. This is not to establish a mere negative argument (as in, this is what a Christian is not), but rather to begin to point to a positive pronouncement (this is what a Christian or other person faithful to...

In this final video on the series examining the lessons of the Versailles Treaty I venture back into US politics and ask the question of personal responsibility. Should people respond in vengeance against actual wrongs? If they don't want to, how do they resist this very (immediately) rational and biological urge? There is no doubt in my mind that we would all be better off if we did not act on th...

options. They had the option to do nothing, or to do only a small action to rectify the wrong, as well as the option of attempted obliteration of their enemies.. It's hard to argue that the world not would be better off if they had chosen to do nothing, both at the beginning of the war and at the end, when they chose a punitive peace. Out of WWI came the Great Depression and WWII. What does that s...

The first part of John Maynard Keynes’ 1919 book “The Economic Consequences of the Peace” attempts to remind the victors of WWI that the economies of Europe were deeply intertwined and especially driven by the economic powerhouse that was pre-War Germany. In doing so, he makes it clear that a “Carthaginian Peace” is unwise. He … More Interdependence is a Bitch:...

y's culture wars have in common? Power-hungry, intransigence, scapegoating, paranoia, fear, mass-mentality, technological eclipse, and more. We haven't progressed in over a century on our basic nature, but time is running out, as our technology continues to outstrip our ability to reason and cooperate by a lot. This is the first part of a series discussing the causes of intransigence, the conseque...

nterview with Jeremy Cowan, an expert in organic and permaculture agriculture, we discuss our society's prejudice against home, physical work, and native-grown food. We then discuss growing food nearby as a national security issue. … More Permaculture and National Security (Jeremy Cowan Pt. 2)

This is an introduction/head's up to my next video series, which will start next week and will start with some thoughts on John Maynard Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The central questions: why is it so hard to forgive--what would be required? How can we keep from turning into the monsters we are fighting against (very important for getting of the culture war hamster wheel)? I app...