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Epoch Times
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
What Will Pope Leo Say About Education?
Commentary When the white smoke cleared and the name 'Leo XIV' was announced, most commentators missed the point. They speculated about political balance, factionalism, and the American angle. But the real clue is the name. By choosing Leo, the new Pope placed himself in a part of Catholic tradition—notably represented by Pope Leo XIII—that insists the family, not the state, is the basic unit of society. In contrast to this, parents across the West have woken up to a chilling reality. Whether it's activist teachers pushing gender ideology in class, education bureaucrats enforcing secrecy around 'preferred pronouns,' or governments insisting they—not you—decide what's best for your child, the message is clear: Your family is no longer in charge. Schools used to help parents. Now, they try to replace them. How did we get here? Leo may tell us that it's not just bad policy. The culprit is bad philosophy, and both sides of the political spectrum are guilty. On the left, Progressives see children as clay to mold into the latest ideology. They think they can remake human nature itself—erase sex, family, and tradition—and build something 'better' in its place. That's not progress. That's a revival of ancient Gnosticism: the belief that salvation comes through secret knowledge and that the restrictions of the body, family, and tradition are prisons to escape. Related Stories 5/18/2025 5/8/2025 On the Libertarian right, the problem is different—but also dangerous. Libertarians don't attack families—they ignore their importance. Parents are treated as consumers. Schools become marketplaces of ideology, with no shared sense of truth, purpose, or virtue. The result is ancient Cynicism , denying the need for family, virtue, or belonging. Children grow up rootless, unformed, and ultimately defenseless against the louder voices of state and culture. Both ideologies deny the most fundamental truth: children are not products of the state or the market. They are persons—born into families, not institutions. Offering a powerful correction to both ideologies is one of the most significant documents in Catholic history: Leo XIII's legacy is bound up in Rerum Novarum as much as Oppenheimer's is with the nuclear bomb. By taking the name, the new Pope signals his intent to teach in the The heart of the document is encapsulated in one single sentence: 'The family, the 'society' of a man's house [is] a society very small, one must admit, but none the less a true society, and one older than any State.' This means the family comes before the government, not just in time, but in authority . Parents have natural rights—not rights granted by the state—to raise and educate their children. The state's role is to support families, not to control them. Later popes were just as clear. For Catholics, this is not a negotiable opinion. It's official Church teaching and speaks directly to today's battles over pronouns, sex education, religious schools, and parental consent. It's not just Catholics. In 1976, Western countries signed and ratified two treaties. The To say that this is what the new Pope is about is, of course, speculative. But it is well-founded speculation: The choice of name is an unmistakable signal. We can expect him to denounce current attempts to sever children from their families and remake them in the image of the bureaucratic state. And, in the style of Rerum Novarum , he will likely say that both progressive social engineers and libertarian relativists are complicit in eroding natural parental rights.. His solution, too, is likely to be drawn from Rerum Novarum . That solution is not simply 'school choice,' though that helps. The solution is to reassert the family's natural authority—to 'build a wall' around the family, so to speak. That means: Enshrining parental rights in law—especially in education. Refusing to fund institutions that undermine the family's moral authority. Supporting schools—public, private, and religious—that see the parent as the first teacher. Teaching our children that freedom is not about doing whatever you want— it's for pursuing what is good, in line with natural law. Ultimately, education isn't 'just' about test scores or credentials. It's about forming the soul. And no one—no bureaucrat, activist, or expert—has the right to do that in place of the parent. The culture war over education isn't just about policy—it's about the nature of man and the purpose of freedom. Pope Leo XIII saw this over a century ago, and Leo XIV is likely to see it even more clearly. And he will probably tell us what the Church has always known: A society that attacks the family, or ignores it, is building on sand. It's time we started building on rock. John Hilton-O'Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Epoch Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
Academia and the Rest of Us
Commentary In the course of my lifetime, a theory has floated around that society is secretly ruled by an intellectual elite ensconced in academia. They might seem to be set apart in some ways, attending their own conferences and publishing in their own journals. They obey a hierarchy in their own institutions, by which they get promotions and tenure. They seem set apart. In reality, the theory goes, what happens in academia trickles down to the rest of society, always, for good and ill. The ideas promoted therein land in government, media, and high corporate layers of influence. It then travels to newspapers and becomes part of coffee shop talk. Then it influences who runs for office, what they believe, and the voters too. In the end, this theory goes, it is academia that rules all, maybe not immediately but eventually. And this fits with the ancient-world exaltation of the philosopher as the whisperer to caesars, princes, and kings. They might not be the highest paid. They often suffer for their unusual views. But in the end, they can have the satisfaction of knowing that what they think ultimately determines the shape and structure of the social order. Before you dismiss this theory out of hand—and I grant that it all sounds a bit preposterous in times when populism is ascended and academia seems increasingly irrelevant—I can promise you that I've heard this defense (if you can call it that) of academia thousands of times. It is a primary model in what is called the theory of social change. Its core presumption traces not just to the primacy of ideas—I can accept that—but something more troubling, namely an intellectual elitism that presumes common people are incapable of high-level thought or knowing the best paths for their lives. This is precisely why academics specialize in creating new vocabularies that transcend the vernacular: It works as a signaling system for who matters and who does not. Related Stories 5/6/2025 4/23/2025 Look up the history of Gnosticism and you will understand completely. This penchant and attitude comes to mind in part because I just laid eyes on a social media post of a friend of mine who has been deeply embedded in academia since graduate school. He is quite the success in that realm even if you have likely never heard of him. He is editor of journals, presider of academic events, and holder of chairs and titles and awards, with multiple books under his belt that no one can afford. He has always been careful with his career. He has many strong views, lots of them interesting and sometimes ferocious. However, he never shares them outside a tiny circle he can trust. This is because he has an uncanny instinct for professional survival. He never speaks out on important political topics unless it is absolutely safe to do so. The slightest pushback from higher ups causes him to shrink back into his shell like a turtle in a thunderstorm. His every opinion in print is so overqualified that he will never get into trouble. His top value in life is collegiality, by which he means getting along well with those in his profession, which is academia within his discipline of study and teaching. I would never begrudge anyone his choice of profession, but this particular gentleman often advanced to me the above theory of social change, one that places him in the driver's seat of history. The reason he had to hide, and the reason his intellectual wardrobe has a thousand different changes of clothing, is because in the end he has a responsibility toward his vocation to quietly and surreptitiously influence the course of events and the shape of the social order. In any case, his recent post online celebrated another academic after whom he has modeled his career and offered the highest praise of which he could think: so and so shape the conversation in the realm of a particular discipline. That's it. That's the whole of it. I read it carefully because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, such as, and this person had great influence on something in the real world. But the shoe never dropped. The post ended. This is profoundly telling. For many academics today, success within the academic realm—their colleagues, their journals, their friends, their institutions, their ranking—is the whole point. There is no other. The idealism is gone. The hope of changing the world seems drained. The ambition to educate the public to rise above the muck seems rather hopeless. Instead, they have mostly become functionaries within a system that is very much under fire. As a result, they have taken to hiding even more and finding satisfaction in the career climb within their realm, however tiny. This is all rather tragic to me personally because, though I declined to go the full academic route at some point, maybe because I didn't want to spend four more years in the great slog, I have always admired the academic profession and valorized its ideals. I get that the decline has been ongoing for decades if not a century but, still, there seemed to be some substance there that could not be recreated elsewhere. This presumption changed for me dramatically over the last five years. Society was shut down by force, including all colleges and universities. Only a few stayed open and they were harassed to no end. Everyone else was happy to go to Zoom U, with kids stuck at home or in dorms. When they finally reopened, most demanded that all their students mask up and then get the shot. Those students who declined were summarily dismissed. There have been no refunds of tuition, no apologies, no institutional self-reflection, nothing. Meanwhile during the darkest days of lockdowns, we heard crickets when it came to academia. They simply vanished from view, creating a bunker for themselves while awaiting the end of the crisis. Nearly all of them went along and I get why: the few who spoke out against what was happening were often fired and lost their careers. Most simply took the safe path and stayed quiet, the entire time. Now they have re-emerged and act as if nothing happened. Honestly, even I was shocked in those months and years by the academic displays of cowardice and complicity with regime priorities. My high view of this sector has not recovered. I now know for sure that academia cannot be depended upon to help in a crisis. It will choose career over principle every time. This is why all the protests on campus against Trump and so on now don't impress me much: they are merely going with the flow, nothing more. They affect the posture of rebels but the truth is otherwise: they are preening in the interest of professional survival. As I think about it from the point of view of the average professor, this behavior probably makes sense. The crucial fact to realize is that the services of an academician have a highly limited market. If they fail in one institution by being rejected for tenure or promotion they get one or maybe two more times at bat and that's it. They simply must climb the ladder or they are toast. They live in proverbial golden handcuffs: prestige, salary, benefits, social deference, so long as they don't step out of line. This is unlike, for example, a welder, accountant, or hairstylist. They can move around and change jobs with ease. There is a huge and probably unlimited demand for their services. That's why they can speak their minds. They are free to think and examine and say what they think. They can look objectively at the world around them and adapt to evidence. Academics cannot. They must fit in or else. Thus does their primary specialization become, over time, mastering the academic game, which means fitting in and not defying consensus. When the consensus became hating Trump, that was it—they were in for the long haul for 10 years and counting, come what may. That means even staying silent as schools were closed for a year or longer, holidays were canceled, people were locked in their homes, and whole cities were segregated by medical status. The absurdities piled up but still the academic clan had to stick together and stay silent. You might say that this approach—and it can affect everything from believing in climate change to embracing transgender mutilation—runs contrary to the spirit of science and freedom of thought. But this profession no longer has the luxury to indulge such old-fashioned values, especially in times of budget cuts. This is why academia will likely get worse before it gets better. As it gets worse, it will certainly grow more separate from the values of the population, less influential over the culture, and less decisive in its influence over policy. That alone will bring about a wholesale re-examination of the core theory of social change that drives the modern academic pursuit. It becomes no longer a shining light, a city on a hill, a refuge and sanctuary for the highest ideals, but a dark dudgeon of thoughtless groupthink. You can see that forming right now, and it is quite pathetic. None of this means that the academy is going to collapse anytime soon. Moms and dads will still pay the big bucks to send their kids to the highest prestige institution they can within their financial means. Young men and women will still spend their most valuable years sitting in desks, cramming for tests, staying out too late, and sleeping in, while cobbling together social networks that will mostly evaporate once they graduate and discover the realities of a grueling labor market. They will encounter the real world eventually, waving an expensive certificate about which few employers really care and without much in the way of real marketable skills. This crazy system will surely last and last. What might not be so sustainable is the aspiration to join the academic guild as a full-blown member. Honestly, it's not a good and happy life. Nor can this clan feel a sense of satisfaction that they are really modern philosopher kings who script the narratives of history through their high thoughts and prestige papers and conferences. These days, with populism on the march and the illusion that the experts know better now entirely shattered, it's not entirely clear who is listening. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Jordan Times
08-04-2025
- Business
- Jordan Times
Trump's tariffs and the will to power
NEW YORK – In the days since US President Donald Trump unleashed his tariff tsunami on the world, economists, investors, and business leaders have almost universally questioned its rationality. As a policy matter, they are right to be scratching their heads. But Trump's tariffs are not simply about policy. They are of a piece with the animating features of his MAGA ('Make America Great Again') movement: contempt for science and the rule of law, persistent lying, and a propensity for irrational theorising. We have witnessed this embrace of unreason before, accompanied by similarly grandiose assertions of power. Hitler's well-known fascination with Theosophy, Gnosticism, and eugenics was not an isolated phenomenon. During the 1930s, psychoanalyst Carl Jung's idea of self-growth or 'individuation' was viewed by many (including Jung) to be the special destiny of the Aryan race. The well-known Eranos gatherings during this period, which included esteemed scholars such as Mircea Eliade (who publicly supported Romania's fascist Iron Guard), Henry Corbin, and Gershom Scholem, have been shadowed (not entirely fairly) by the taint of anti-Enlightenment politics. For Trump, tariffs are about much more than a change of economic policy. They are part of a toolkit for political and cultural transformation. April 2 was 'Liberation Day.' Trump sees himself as single-handedly and fundamentally altering the global order by a Herculean act of sheer will. To be sure, Trump's tariffs are likely to make life materially worse for people around the world, not least Americans. But the particulars matter less than the heroic spectacle itself, the leader's demonstration of MAGA's capacity to rivet our attention by arousing shock and awe. To borrow the Silicon Valley mantra (which echoes in Gnostic reveries), one must move fast and break things to release creative energy, including the spirit of the homeland. Mystical leaders liberate crippled instincts from conventional cultural shackles – like the 'wholly incongruous Christianity' that, as Jung put it, had been 'grafted upon the stumps' of the Aryan spirit. Who else could mobilise such transformative forces but the great leader – the one who, as Nietzsche put it, carries chaos within to give birth to 'a dancing star'? That's the MAGA pitch. The test follows: Are you willing to accept the pain that ensues? This is less an implementation of policy than a collective initiation rite, or a massive psyop. As Soviet propagandists understood, inducing friends and foes alike to repeat obvious falsehoods is a reliable test of power. So is declaring a state of emergency, as Trump did in order to justify his tariffs. Declarations of this sort embody a claim to ultimate sovereignty. As the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt wrote, the executive decision to initiate a 'state of exception' determines what sovereignty means in practice. It is a self-fulfilling act: declaring an emergency is the emergency. It is one way in which the rule of law ends. A state of emergency addresses both how the nation will survive and who will survive. That is why Schmitt separates people into friends and enemies. For example, Elon Musk's definition of friends can be inferred from the companies he owns, such as Neuralink, and SpaceX. On this reading, Musk's friends are the evolving vanguard of humankind: those who are the most AI-informed, even cyber-enhanced, and perhaps destined to colonize Mars. Enemies, by contrast, have no claim either to society's concern or its resources. In this vein, Trump focuses above all on 'illegal aliens,' whom he routinely describes as 'vermin' and 'animals.' By defining any 'de-nationalised' class of 'others' as a discrete sub-species, Trump places them beyond law's safeguards. Trump's tariffs reflect the MAGA movement's broader anti-Enlightenment impulses. He may claim to be concerned with 'rebalancing' global trade, restoring America's manufacturing industries, and raising revenue. But, more fundamentally, his tariffs are an expression of the will to power – spiked with a jolt of metaphysics. The embrace of irrationalism in Europe during the 1930s facilitated the rise of fascism. Today's mythic narratives, from AI-enhanced 'evolving' consciousness to Russian Cosmism and Vladimir Putin's 'Noöcracy' (which lays claim to a species of Russian nationalism likewise rooted in man's destiny to evolve, and which shares Musk's desire to colonize other worlds) – serve a comparable function: totalizing power. What Putin's Noöcracy has in common with billionaires like Musk and the MAGA movement (including its New Age 'MAHA' (Make America Healthy Again) contingent led by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) is the cult of personality that lies at their center. Only Putin can serve as the Russian people's savior. Only Musk can take his acolytes to the next level of evolving consciousness. Only Trump can make America great again by breaking the old order and ushering in the new. Submission to the leader is what makes it all happen. Yes, the populist 'spirit of the people' faction and Musk's libertarian/Silicon Valley faction embody contradictory interests and goals. The intense rivalry and jockeying for influence within MAGA between Steve Bannon (for the populists) and Musk is the tip of the iceberg. But this division has so far been modulated, and arguably exploited, by Trump and his loyalists. After all, it is the leader who exclusively embodies the mystical, creative-destructive spirit whose power can guide the nation to its destiny. Whether that destiny empowers the masses (as Bannon insists) or billionaire libertarians like Musk and Peter Thiel remains to be seen. It cannot be both. For now, as Trump's tariffs make clear, sound trade policy takes a backseat to both sides' goal: the consolidation of autocracy. 'Liberation Day' has put everyone who has thrown in their lot with MAGA on notice that without Trump at its center the movement that has promised them so much will collapse. Richard K. Sherwin, Professor Emeritus of Law at New York Law School, is a co-editor (with Danielle Celermajer) of A Cultural History of Law in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury, 2021). Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2025. Page 2
Ammon
08-04-2025
- Business
- Ammon
Trump's Tariffs and the Will to Power
Ammon News - NEW YORK – In the days since US President Donald Trump unleashed his tariff tsunami on the world, economists, investors, and business leaders have almost universally questioned its rationality. As a policy matter, they are right to be scratching their heads. But Trump's tariffs are not simply about policy. They are of a piece with the animating features of his MAGA ('Make America Great Again') movement: contempt for science and the rule of law, persistent lying, and a propensity for irrational theorizing. We have witnessed this embrace of unreason before, accompanied by similarly grandiose assertions of power. Hitler's well-known fascination with Theosophy, Gnosticism, and eugenics was not an isolated phenomenon. During the 1930s, psychoanalyst Carl Jung's idea of self-growth or 'individuation' was viewed by many (including Jung) to be the special destiny of the Aryan race. The well-known Eranos gatherings during this period, which included esteemed scholars such as Mircea Eliade (who publicly supported Romania's fascist Iron Guard), Henry Corbin, and Gershom Scholem, have been shadowed (not entirely fairly) by the taint of anti-Enlightenment politics. For Trump, tariffs are about much more than a change of economic policy. They are part of a toolkit for political and cultural transformation. April 2 was 'Liberation Day.' Trump sees himself as single-handedly and fundamentally altering the global order by a Herculean act of sheer will. To be sure, Trump's tariffs are likely to make life materially worse for people around the world – not least Americans. But the particulars matter less than the heroic spectacle itself, the leader's demonstration of MAGA's capacity to rivet our attention by arousing shock and awe. To borrow the Silicon Valley mantra (which echoes in Gnostic reveries), one must move fast and break things to release creative energy, including the spirit of the homeland. Mystical leaders liberate crippled instincts from conventional cultural shackles – like the 'wholly incongruous Christianity' that, as Jung put it, had been 'grafted upon the stumps' of the Aryan spirit. Who else could mobilize such transformative forces but the great leader – the one who, as Nietzsche put it, carries chaos within to give birth to 'a dancing star'? That's the MAGA pitch. The test follows: Are you willing to accept the pain that ensues? This is less an implementation of policy than a collective initiation rite, or a massive psyop. As Soviet propagandists understood, inducing friends and foes alike to repeat obvious falsehoods is a reliable test of power. So is declaring a state of emergency, as Trump did in order to justify his tariffs. Declarations of this sort embody a claim to ultimate sovereignty. As the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt wrote, the executive decision to initiate a 'state of exception' determines what sovereignty means in practice. It is a self-fulfilling act: declaring an emergency is the emergency. It is one way in which the rule of law ends. A state of emergency addresses both how the nation will survive and who will survive. That is why Schmitt separates people into friends and enemies. For example, Elon Musk's definition of friends can be inferred from the companies he owns, such as Neuralink, and SpaceX. On this reading, Musk's friends are the evolving vanguard of humankind: those who are the most AI-informed, even cyber-enhanced, and perhaps destined to colonize Mars. Enemies, by contrast, have no claim either to society's concern or its resources. In this vein, Trump focuses above all on 'illegal aliens,' whom he routinely describes as 'vermin' and 'animals.' By defining any 'de-nationalized' class of 'others' as a discrete sub-species, Trump places them beyond law's safeguards. Trump's tariffs reflect the MAGA movement's broader anti-Enlightenment impulses. He may claim to be concerned with 'rebalancing' global trade, restoring America's manufacturing industries, and raising revenue. But, more fundamentally, his tariffs are an expression of the will to power – spiked with a jolt of metaphysics. The embrace of irrationalism in Europe during the 1930s facilitated the rise of fascism. Today's mythic narratives – from AI-enhanced 'evolving' consciousness to Russian Cosmism and Vladimir Putin's 'Noöcracy' (which lays claim to a species of Russian nationalism likewise rooted in man's destiny to evolve, and which shares Musk's desire to colonize other worlds) – serve a comparable function: totalizing power. What Putin's Noöcracy has in common with billionaires like Musk and the MAGA movement (including its New Age 'MAHA' (Make America Healthy Again) contingent led by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) is the cult of personality that lies at their center. Only Putin can serve as the Russian people's savior. Only Musk can take his acolytes to the next level of evolving consciousness. Only Trump can make America great again by breaking the old order and ushering in the new. Submission to the leader is what makes it all happen. Yes, the populist 'spirit of the people' faction and Musk's libertarian/Silicon Valley faction embody contradictory interests and goals. The intense rivalry and jockeying for influence within MAGA between Steve Bannon (for the populists) and Musk is the tip of the iceberg. But this division has so far been modulated, and arguably exploited, by Trump and his loyalists. After all, it is the leader who exclusively embodies the mystical, creative-destructive spirit whose power can guide the nation to its destiny. Whether that destiny empowers the masses (as Bannon insists) or billionaire libertarians like Musk and Peter Thiel remains to be seen. It cannot be both. For now, as Trump's tariffs make clear, sound trade policy takes a backseat to both sides' goal: the consolidation of autocracy. 'Liberation Day' has put everyone who has thrown in their lot with MAGA on notice that without Trump at its center the movement that has promised them so much will collapse. Richard K. Sherwin, Professor Emeritus of Law at New York Law School, is a co-editor (with Danielle Celermajer) of A Cultural History of Law in the Modern Age (Bloomsbury, 2021). Article source:
