7/29/2023

To be a peacemaker is to be a creator, a visionary, and a champion by Eve Witesman

The people of the world are embroiled in dozens of current and ongoing wars. Natural disasters have struck nearly every continent with dramatic destruction, including the recent devastation in Houston, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Tens of millions face starvation in famine or near-famine conditions in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria. We face the threat of both international and homegrown terror attacks. We are divided over protests, racism, and political gridlock. Trust in government is at an all-time low.

Our world seems to be anything but peaceful. In this stark reality, there is great need for peacemakers.

There are two ways to interpret the concept of “making peace.” The first is to avoid conflict; to acquiesce. As in, “I have made peace with the fact that we disagree.” Or “I have made peace with the way things are.” After this manner, peace is maintained by keeping quiet, by biting one’s tongue, by falling in line. By going gently into that good night.

This is not the kind of peace I want to make.

When I make peace, I want to build it. From the ground up if I have to. Like a first responder who runs toward the flames, or a solider who runs toward the good fight, I believe a peacemaker is the sort of person who runs toward conflict and builds peace with her words and her own two hands.

To be a peacemaker is to be a creator, a visionary, a champion.

Peacemaking is not for the faint of heart.

In a war of words and ideas, where political divisions have become chasms, a peacemaker must rappel into the darkness of the abyss and begin to scale the other side. A peacemaker must not only see the far rim of the canyon, but also find toeholds in its sheer face and, conquering understanding, begin the challenging and arduous task of building a bridge across the empty void.

Blessed are those who seek to understand the perspective of others, and who dialogue with civility and generosity.

In a war between people, a peacemaker must dig through the dirt and grime of history and culture to excavate our mutual stories — to reconstruct the lost traces of our shared roots like shards of precious, ancient pottery. A peacemaker reassembles the broken threads of our common humanity.

Blessed are those who see the humanity in the most different of others, and fight to preserve and protect the dignity and worth inherent in that humanness.

In a war between friends or family, peacemakers engineer new hearts — of sturdier and softer stuff than the old, broken ones — and, like surgeons, sew up those old wounds and graft in the new, bionic ability to love. The sight of a broken heart is not for the faint, and mending the arteries through which love flows requires patience and practice.

Blessed are those who forgive the people who have hurt them the most.

And in a war with an enemy who seeks to destroy all that we hold dear, the peacemaker chooses love instead of hatred. The peacemaker perseveres in maintaining a ceasefire in her own heart even as she defends her rights, her freedoms and her family. A peacemaker chooses hope over fear, welcoming the stranger even in the face of terror.

Blessed are those who open their homes and communities to the refugees of war-torn or corrupt nations.

A peacemaker fights the flame of prejudice not by letting it burn, but by quenching it with loving, understanding correction, by stamping out the embers of bias in her own soul and in the institutions in which she has a voice. And where she has no voice, she finds a way to speak.

Blessed are those who acknowledge the persistent and pervasive institutions of racism and work to reverse the injustice.

Where peace is absent due to disaster or famine or disease or injustice, the peacemaker shelters the homeless, clothes the naked, feeds the hungry, heals the sick and defends the victim. This requires time, money and effort.

Blessed are those who donate time and money to improve the lives of others.

A peacemaker does not merely find peace or feel peace or desire peace. A peacemaker makes peace. Creates it, if needed, from raw materials. As apprentices to the Master, we learn to fashion peace out of disorder. “For God," Paul writes to the Corinthians, "is not the author of confusion, but of peace.”

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

Perspective: Contempt culture is metastasizing in America. Blessed are the peacemakers

There’s a contempt problem metastasizing across America.

Arthur Brooks, the respected professor of happiness, said, “We have a cultural addiction to contempt — an addiction abetted by the outrage industrial complex … and it’s tearing us apart.”

In a 2021 Pew report, Michael Dimock and Richard Wike wrote that 8 in 10 registered voters on both sides of the aisle believed differences in America centered around core values, and the escalation of fast-growing polarization has become a top concern for many Americans.

In a milestone address on peacemaking at the most recent worldwide conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, President Russell M. Nelson said that “civility and decency seem to have disappeared.” He encouraged attendees to not give up, and to instead “show that there is a peaceful, respectful way to resolve complex issues and an enlightened way to work out disagreements.”

Even though American animosity and polarization may feel resurgent and rampant, there’s a whole field of peacemaking efforts dedicated to this type of work. Many Latter-day Saints have locked arms with other people of conscience to participate in these efforts. Deseret News interviewed a number of Latter-day Saints who have been doing concentrated peacemaking work in recent years.

Becca Kearl, the executive director of Living Room Conversations, thinks listening will help people connect in spite of disagreements around everyday issues and even polarizing political questions.

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Perspective: Americans aren’t as divided as they may think

The Constitution wasn’t written overnight. Throughout the course of three months of spirited discussion in Philadelphia in 1787, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists contested philosophies of governance. And even after the Constitution was ratified, several important constitutional amendments ensured additional freedom and rights. This process required compromise and negotiations.

Part of the work of peacemaking involves coming together to create what President Russell M. Nelson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has called “inspired solutions.” To do so in the public square, we must weigh political gains and losses in order to achieve a greater good.

In this process, there will always be some deeply held moral and political convictions where compromising on policy may not align with conscience. In those instances, it may be important to shift toward other solutions where compromise feels right.

But seeking inspired solutions through compromise typically means none of the involved parties have every hope or demand met; instead, they assess pragmatically what is most important to their respective causes.

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Perspective: Recovering persuasion in an age of argument

In 431 B.C., the Greek historian Thucydides recorded a funeral oration given by the great statesman Pericles. Unlike a typical eulogy, the speech memorialized Athenian democracy in what many have called its golden age.

During this speech, Pericles offered a relatively novel idea about just how expansive participation in public life could be. “If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences,” he said.

But if someone didn’t have social standing, Pericles argued, advancing in public life relies on that person’s “reputation for capacity,” with “class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition.”

In ancient times, the idea that class and poverty didn’t disqualify a person from enjoying certain civic freedoms was a radical belief. Over a thousand years later, a group of New England revolutionaries would begin marking the path to the same sort of ideal, convincing people to join their cause by disseminating their ideas through pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

These open attempts at persuasion are a hallmark of both American and Greek systems. And yet, they sometimes seem at odds with peacemaking approaches centered on listening and understanding.

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The Pendulum Swings Back by Tyler Curtis

Recent Supreme Court victories could signal a popular conservative resurgence.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. With recent conservative victories at the Supreme Court, a reaction to the Left’s stranglehold on Amnerica may be emerging. 

A couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court handed down two decisions that have conservatives cheering. Affirmative Action, government-compelled speech, and President Biden’s unilateral student loan forgiveness plan were all struck down as unconstitutional.

Each case is interesting on its own, but perhaps what’s most intriguing about these three decisions is how popular they are with the electorate. In an era when so many institutions— academia, Hollywood, and most of the federal government—are controlled by the Left, the fact that a Supreme Court, composed of mostly Republican-appointees, issued such well-received decisions is astounding and indicates that Americans reject the Left’s more extreme policies. 

The country’s reaction to the Court’s decisions is indicative of a slow, but noticeable shift to the Right on several significant political issues. 

We know how they feel. Since the summer rulings, Progressives have ramped up their rhetoric, continuing their habit of questioning the legitimacy of the one institution not under their control. President Biden sourly suggested that this court is “not normal.” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, always quick to jump to extremes, declared that the court was “creeping dangerously toward authoritarianism.”

But most Americans don’t see it that way. A poll conducted by Redfield and Wilton Strategies shortly after the decisions were announced found that far more people supported the rulings than didn’t. For example, regarding 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, where the Court ruled that a Colorado web designer could not be forced to create websites for same-sex weddings, more than twice as many people supported the decision as opposed it.

These results might be surprising for those who have followed politics for the past few years. In 2018, the Court heard a case very similar to 303 Creative. In Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the Court ruled that a Colorado baker could not be forced against his conscience to produce wedding cakes for same-sex couples. At the time, most Americans opposed the decision, and one poll found that up to 66 percent of people disagreed with the Court’s ruling. 

But in just five short years, the pendulum has clearly swung in the other direction, with more Americans now saying that business owners should not be forced to engage in speech that the owners find morally objectionable. 

Similar survey splits were found for the affirmative action case. In Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Court ruled that colleges could not give preferential treatment to student applicants based on their race, as this practice violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. An ABC News/Ipsos poll also revealed that a clear majority of Americans (by a 20 percent margin) agreed with the Court’s decision.

None of this means that Americans are becoming more homophobic or racist. In fact, Americans are broadly more tolerant of sexual and racial minorities than at any point in history. Americans don’t disagree with Progressives about the need for anti-discrimination laws, but they do think the Left has gone too far in enforcing them.

The last major case — Department of Education v. Brown — is an instructive example of how Americans support progressive initiatives in theory, but not always in practice. In that case, the Court ruled that the president does not have the authority to forgive federal student loan debt unilaterally. 

Student loan forgiveness enjoys broad support amongst voters — until they’re told about the costs. A survey conducted by the Cato Institute found that 64 percent of Americans support student loan forgiveness, but that number “plummets when Americans consider its trade‐offs.” When asked if they’d still support student debt cancellation if it primarily benefited high income people, which it does, a whopping 68 percent of respondents said no. 

The Supreme Court exists to interpret the law and enforce the Constitution, not make policy. It isn’t, and shouldn’t be, beholden to public opinion. But it does say something about the country’s political trajectory when the American people largely support the Court when it strikes down the Left’s favorite policies. 

Progressives may control most major institutions, but Americans are still fiercely independent. If the Left fails to moderate their positions, they could face a backlash of Newtonian proportions. 

Article

DEI and the End of the Constitutional Order by Christopher Rufo

Critical race theory was never designed to reveal truth—it was designed to achieve power.

The ambition of the critical race theorists and their confederates in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is not simply to achieve cultural hegemony over the bureaucracy, but to use this power to reshape the structures of American society. But in the miasma of mystical reasoning and therapeutic language, it is sometimes easy to lose sight of the critical question: What specifically do they want?

The answer is to be found in the original literature of critical race theory which, before its transformation in the euphemisms of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” was remarkably candid about the discipline’s political objectives. They had abandoned the Marxist-Leninist vocabulary of their precursors, such as Angela Davis and the Black Panther Party, but the critical race theorists imagined a revolution that struck just as deeply. They cobbled together a strategy of revolt against the Constitution, using the mechanisms of institutional power to change the words, meanings, and interpretations that provide the foundation of the existing order.

“The Constitution is merely a piece of paper in the face of the monopoly on violence and capital possessed by those who intend to keep things just the way they are,” said legal theorist Mari Matsuda. Tearing it down was not a transgression; it was a moral obligation. When necessary, Matsuda argued, the critical race theorists could appeal to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to advance their interests, but ultimately, they believed, “rights are whatever people in power say they are.” The point was not to uphold the principles of the Constitution, but to wield them as a weapon for securing authority.

In place of the existing interpretation, the critical race theorists proposed a three-part overhaul of the American system of governance: abandoning the “colorblind” notion of equality, redistributing wealth along racial lines, and restricting speech that is deemed “hateful.”

To begin, the critical race theorists made the case that “color-blind constitutionalism” functions as a “racial ideology” that “fosters white racial domination” and advances an implicit form of “cultural genocide.” The system of individual rights and equal protection, they argued, provided an illusion of equality that failed to ad- dress the history of racial injustice. The way stations of “multiculturalism,” “tolerance,” and “diversity” were inadequate substitutions for “legitimate governmental efforts to address white racial privilege.” To rectify this deficiency, the critical race theorists proposed a new interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment that moves from a system of negative rights—or, protection against state intrusion—to a system of positive rights, or an entitlement to state action.

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7/28/2023

The Medlock Post Ep. 169: Ayn Rand Part 2

'Atlas Shrugged' author saw that growing influence of 'rotten ideas' would create 'rotten outcomes,' social upheaval.

Many foundational pillars of society in the United States appear to be crumbling right now before our eyes, weakened by an erosive array of social, economic, and political forces.

The deterioration of traditional cultural norms and the social upheaval that’s followed — from the living room to classroom the boardroom — is no surprise to Ayn Rand scholars.

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7/26/2023

The Medlock Post Ep. 168: Ayn Rand Part 1

Ayn Rand explains her full support for the Founding Fathers and America.

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7/25/2023

‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’

We use the phrase ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ today to indicate that things are what they are, no matter what name you give them.

This line – ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ – is a quotation from William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, spoken by Juliet Capulet (Act 2, Scene 2) to herself whilst on her balcony, but overheard by Romeo Montague.

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

Juliet is saying that even if the rose has a different name it would still have its wonderful scent. She is a highly intelligent girl and this monologue is one of the most profound observations in all of Shakespeare.

This principle of things being what they are, no matter what name you give them is at the heart of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. The names Montague and Capulet are extremely important in the world of this play, but Juliet cuts through that by suggesting that whichever one of those you are is unimportant. Whether you are called Montague or Capulet you are still the same person, and that’s what matters.

Juliet has met Romeo at her father’s party and thinks he has gone home, but he is lingering in her garden, watching the balcony of her bedroom. She comes out and he overhears her speaking. It’s then that he shows himself to her and the action between them begins, leading to their secret marriage and their deaths.

The two leading families – the Montagues and the Capulets – are engaged in an ancient feud. They move in entirely different circles and avoid each other. Romeo and Juliet’s generation are slightly more flexible, as are some older members of the families, shown by Romeo’s gatecrashing Capulet’s party and Capulet welcoming him and his friends.

But any thought of intermarriage would be taboo. So when Romeo and Juliet meet and fall in love, it’s dynamite. And it becomes even more explosive when they marry, and before long they find themselves in a corner from which there is no escape.

The action hurtles from their initial encounter to their tragic deaths, something that would not have happened were it not for this ancient feud connected with the names of people bearing the names of Montague and Capulet.

And so, the actual flower with its sweet smell is the important thing and the name ‘rose’ is unimportant – without that, it still would smell as sweet. But in the situation of these two unfortunate young people, it is not the two young people but their names that prove to be more important.

Their parents, the heads of the two families, come to understand that when they see what their feud, based on their names, has led to, and they resolve to end it. Which is a fitting end to the tragedy.

Now you’ve read through Juliet’s quote and understand the full meaning of the monologue, and its context in Romeo and Juliet, try reading it one time:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.