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Philosophical Readings for "Protestant-Ethicals," by M D Stafleu

2009-11-07T21:34:00.000-08:00

readings in "Protestant Ethics"

Marinus Dirk Stafleu
Relations and Characters in Protestant Philosophy
electronic text 2006

outline

√ Introduction

Part I. Culture: What makes people different?

√ Labour - completed
Playing
Speaking and listening
Reasoning
Believing

Part II. Civilization: How should people deal with their differences?

Companionship
Mutual service
Leadership
Justice
Loving care

Part III. History: Experimental philosophy, a case study

Isolation of a field of science
Searching for objectivity
Technical progress
Searching for universal laws
The hidden structure of matter
Philosophy of experiment

Part IV. Evolution: Relations and characters in 20th-century science

Theory of characters
Sets
Symmetry
Periodic motion
Physical characters
Biotic characters
Inventory of behaviour characters

Cited Literature
Name index

Corporations USA: Healthcare Insurance industry's structure, allegedly makes inevitable a single-payer health system

2009-10-30T22:11:00.000-07:00

Part I -- Healthcare Insurance Businesses have Achilles Heal

"The inevitability of an American single-payer health system," by Rick Ungar. Ungar's article, vital to understanding the capitalism oi American healthcare appeared on the Policy Page, True/Slant (Sep20,2k9). This article, tho not from my own viewpoint, I recommend strongly as vital reading in these days.

Virtually all large health insurance companies are publicly held; and public companies have a life force that is unlike any other. They are driven by the desire of current management to show improved profits of about 10% each year so as to sustain share price increases for the shareholders and compensation increases for management. Also understand that while public companies like to talk about the “long term”, the phrase has no true meaning to them.

Management and shareholders worry about this year’s numbers with an eye towards next year’s – and that is as far as it goes. Most shareholders and managers have no expectation of being around in the ‘long term.’ [Especially at the scale of coporations that are "too large too fail."]

Thus, while current management [personnel] of the large health insurance companies may very well realize that they cannot sustain their business model for the longer term, this is not something they can afford to worry about.

Interspersed commentary by rW1, rW2 economics reporter / opinionater /ranter, EconoMix,
and Albert Gedraitis (rW publisher):

Here at last I/we found a clear, concise ins+t into the American economy -- such that the specific healthcare-insurance industry and its permissible corporate forms instance a valid exception to the general rule presumably established for enterprises otherwise ("free enterprises generally but not specifically in regard to healthcare-industry free enterprises").
Ungar:

Their shareholders want returns on their investment as management wants boosts to their compensation and they are looking for it now. The future will be someone else’s problem.

Take virtually any failed industry in America and you will see that the dynamic set forth above is inevitably true. Whoever ran General Motors before the CEO in charge when the industry fell apart probably knew what was down the road for the company. But it wasn’t his problem. An adept shareholder in GM who got out five years ago, really didn’t care where the industry was headed, nor did a CEO who had no plans to be around when the balls in the air crashed to the ground.

So, when the price of health insurance reaches the point where most Americans truly cannot afford it – and the numbers make it more than clear that the point will be reached and reasonably soon – what then?

Will ‘free marketers’ be out there arguing that we should just let the health insurers fail? After all,that’s how a pure, capitalist system is designed to work, right?

So severely distinguishing, Ungar has laid bare how the general capitalist investment ethos in North America, is deadly to the specific corporate interface between healthcare itself and insurance tailored to the task of the separate and sovereign sphere of providing that medical professional care (a signficicant part of "healthcare") in regard to the role of specifically medical healthcare insurance.

Unstated presupposition of the Ungar article: the only options for reform of American healthcare insurance is either the single-payer system (a socialist conception in origin -- but not necessarily socialist when advocated today, lest we fall prey to the genetistic fallacy [Albert Wolters] which often crops up in theoretical thawt and policy decision-making and -advocating) or an alleviated free-market system (on behalf of which many "conservative" public thinkers and rhetoricians are making extreme claims today--compare the social conservative duo of Russell Kirk and Hadley Arkes, cited as beyond the scope of David Koyzis in his piece "Why I am not a Social Conservative" aimed at moralistic "pet" issues, a citation supplemented by Francis Beckwith who lists George Gilder, Francis Canavan, Robert P. George). An unalleviated Capitalism, a system that generates human misery as a byproduct of its many good achievements, such a Capitalism ossified now into an absolutist ideology brayed aloud by some of the oxen on FoxNews -- regarding healthcare insurance, of all things!

Part II -- Dooyeweerd-style critique healthcare-insurance businesses

The necessity of disclosing the internal structural principle of an exceptional phenotype of a particular societal sphere, the sphere of business in its phenotype devoted to healthcare insurance by means of stockmarket-traded corporations; that phenotype will here be referred to simply as "American healthcare insurance companies" (but referring chiefly to megacorporations like Cigna, Aetna, Humana and similar entities traded on the stockmarket), this necessity presses upon all who are concerned with viable solutions in the present wave of interest in healthcare reform in the USA.

... The internal structural principle that typifies those business enterprises that have come to dominate the economics of healthcare as an industry, with spiralling costs to premium-payers in the USA is an important consideration when we are beset these days thawtless Conservatives and Liberals obfuscating the analysis that Protestant philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd has suggested. Practically, we all must face "the rising spiral of healthcare insurance costs."

But healthcare insurance is surely built around what Dooyeweerd woud call a typically hybrided entity -- where, in this case, the aspect of medicalcare costs (optimatic-economic aspect of medicalcare) are enkaptically intertwined with the general socioeconomic climate and, precisely, a specialty profit-driven finance industry, the healthcare-insurance speciality of the finance industry.

Not that all the enterprises in healthcare insurance are profit-driven. There are some splendid examples of non-profit healthcare insurance companies. A few authentic "mutuals," like Northwest Mutual Insurance (as advertized on FoxNews channels) and some successful other forms of co-op structures in this industrial sector and speciality.

But the greedy metacorps that interlope into what shoud be rather the zone of a type that is carefully regulated to balance the intertwined symbiotic enkapses that constitute it in its uniqueness of type (displaying a duality at its core, its internal structural principle [Dooyeweerd], a zone with legislated incentives to balance that intra-industrial contrast and tension, just as in D's celebrated citation of the hybrided phenotype of the family farm (a business enterprise hybrided with a specific family community and structure). Of course, sometimes a family farm proves itself dysfunctional as a family as a result of its particular configuration, but often family farms are quite functional as both family and as farm business, as one, aside from the rapidly changing economic climate and situation in which it is located, both societally and ecologically.

Awareness that the healthcare insurance company can be organized differently from the firms that Ungar puts his finger on, in regard to the current mis-structration and antinormativity of the main greedy capitalist corporations dominating the industrial sector for some time. These two moments of greed-capitalism today are keys to why the whole healthcare-insurance industry is unusually vulnerable to the determinants of stockmarket-traded corporations conceived more largely across all American industries.

I think Ungar locates two precise structuring principles that dominate the dominant type of megacorps in the health insurance industry; he shows what I mean by antinormative so-called "free enterprise" businesses gone amuck in the healthcare insurance field.

-- EconoMix

Pisteutics: Reformed denoms: South Africa's "Reformed family" in disarray

2009-10-30T21:39:00.000-07:00

I found this article of great value in working to understand the Reformed situation in South Africa. It originates with Ecumenical News International via Ekklesia (a UK liberalationist journal). "South African churches still living with difficult legacy of apartheid" (May27,2k9)

A South African church suspended in 1982 from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches because of its support for apartheid, is "still not ready for readmission", a meeting of the grouping's executive committee in Geneva has been told - write Stephen Brown and Hans Pienaar.

The Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika (Dutch Reformed Church of Africa), or NHKA, had been excluded from the global Reformed Alliance because of the theological and biblical backing the church gave to the system of white domination under which South Africa was governed from 1948 until the early 1990s.

The church has applied to rejoin WARC but the Alliance's executive committee said in 2005 that the NHKA first needed to demonstrate to the churches in South Africa and the world that it has renounced apartheid "fully and completely".

WARC general secretary, the Rev Setri Nyomi, presenting his report on 23 May to the 2009 executive committee meeting in Geneva, noted that a WARC team had visited South Africa in March to meet the denomination.

"Our discussions showed a deep division in the church about moving beyond apartheid," said Nyomi, a Presbyterian from Ghana, in his report. "It was our determination that they were not ready for readmission." In comments to the Geneva meeting, Nyomi noted, however, "There were a few voices that … were committed to challenge the leadership of their church."

Five of the NHKA's leading theologians, writing in an article in South Africa's Afrikaans-language press early in March declared their "shame and hurt" that the NHKA has not yet officially declared apartheid "unevangelical" and "evil".

In 2007 the NHKA's general commission, or synod, had a motion calling for such a declaration on its agenda. But emotions ran so high before the meeting even began, the matter was taken off the agenda.

The theologians called for other members of the NHKA to add their names to their dissident declaration, in which it is also acknowledged that apartheid was dehumanising and caused great suffering which had to be redressed.

In his report, Nyomi referred also to mediation by the team sent to South Africa in separate discussions about the "stalemate" in the reunification of the Dutch Reformed church family, which was divided along racial lines during the apartheid period.

These discussions involve the Uniting Reformed Church of Southern Africa [which brings together Black Reformed and Coloured Reformed] and the Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), which was the white Reformed church in South Africa with the biggest membership.

Confusion in the identity of the churches can derive from the fact that the full names of the NGK and of the NHKA, which is much smaller, both translate into English as Dutch Reformed Church.

Both of them had supported the system of apartheid but the much larger NGK later rejected the racist ideology and was readmitted to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

The NGK is seeking reunification with the URCSA, which is itself a union of the formerly black and coloured (mixed race) branches of the Dutch Reformed family.

One of the issues hindering unification is the status of the "Belhar Confession", a doctrinal statement issued by the coloured church and later adopted by the black church, which rejected the theological and moral justification of apartheid as being a heresy.

The NGK has acknowledged that the Belhar confession was biblically grounded but declines to accept it as a fourth confession of faith, as was done by the URCSA. While the NGK leadership has been amenable to the move and most of its leadership desires it, the NGK says there is no unanimity among its lay membership over the confession.

In 2008, the URCSA declined to recommend the NGK for membership of the All Africa Conference of Churches, and its general synod placed a moratorium on any further reunification discussions. URCSA leaders insist this decision can only be rescinded at its next general synod in 2012,thereby suspending further unification moves.

While the NGK has long been a racially open church with many non-white members, its membership, tested in surveys, overwhelmingly reject the Belhar Confession as false doctrine. Many adherents claim the Belhar document is grounded in "liberation theology", long demonised by many Afrikaners.

URCSA members, on the other hand, say it would be difficult to renounce the confession as the basis for church unity. "They have to understand where we come from. The deep racism from the past still figures strongly," a URCSA source requesting anonymity told Ecumenical News International. "The inequalities produced by apartheid are still the cause of much suffering."

In his report to the WARC meeting in Geneva, Nyomi said, "Regarding the unification process, we hear both sides. We were encouraged that both agreed that what is needed includes a process towards reunification that is based on truth, restorative justice and reconciliation. It was also agreed to put in place a process of studying the Belhar Confession."

[With acknowledgements to ENI. Ecumenical News International is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

History: Obscure Point: Coud RedCross' apparent meddling have resulted in only pseudo-legality for outlawing Jewish settlements

2009-07-31T12:51:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago Owlb posted on rW page 2, a blog-entry with the prefix "Pisteutics" -- but it was a largely political text about the Settlements, Obama's targetting them, and Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu then being forced to defend the Settlements in his own Parliament but also to the world. The 'silence' and the 'holocaustizing' of 4,000 years of Jewish and Judaic present in Israel

In the analysis following, Moshe Dann, previously an Israeli history prof, now a journalist, contributes to Jerusalem Post (jpost.com) an op-ed piece, How settlements became 'illegal'. For history buffs, the idea of an illegalization of the already-existing settlements, as well as those that followed, can become very intriguing. I certainly was intrigued. But I'm in no position to evaluate Dann's historiographical claims--about the International Red Cross, the legalities or lack thereof in the case of its dubious legality itself in judging the situation of the time, like a duly-constituted tribunal, but not. Here is Moshe Dann's important text in our Special Features for Christian political thinkers, Christian Democrats, and Reformed Political entities around the world:

In 1967, under attack, Israel struck back and conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, and Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem (the West Bank) from Jordan. Israel had been threatened with a second Holocaust, and few questioned its actions. No one spoke of a Palestinian state; there was no "Palestinian people."

Many legal experts accepted Israel's right to "occupy" and settle its historic homeland, because the areas had been illegally occupied by invading Arab countries since 1948.

One organization, however - the International Committee of the Red Cross - disagreed.

Meeting secretly in the early 1970s in Geneva, the ICRC determined that Israel was in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Based on the Hague Convention, GC IV was drawn up after World War II to protect innocent civilians and restrict brutal occupations. Unilaterally, the ICRC turned it into a weapon to delegitimize and demonize Israel.

As far as is known, the ICRC did not rely on any legal precedents; it made up "the law."

Judge and jury, its decisions lacked the pretense of due process. Since all decisions and protocols of the ICRC in this matter are closed, even the identities of the people involved are secret. And there is no appeal. Without transparency or judicial ethics, ICRC rulings became "international law." Its condemnations of Israel provide the basis for accusing Israel of "illegal occupation" of all territory conquered in 1967.

Although most of the international community, its NGOs and institutions accept the authority of the ICRC and other institutions, such as the International Court of Justice, as sole arbiters of what is "legal," or not, it's strange that some Israeli politicians and jurists cannot defend Israel's legal claim to the territories. And Israel's case is strong.

ADOPTED IN 1945, the UN Charter (Article 80) states: "...nothing in this Chapter shall be construed in or of itself to alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which members of the United Nations may respectively be parties."

This means that the designation of "Palestine" as a "Jewish National Home," incorporated in the British Mandate and established by international agreements adopted by the League of Nations and US Congress, guarantees Israel's sovereign rights in this area. All Jewish settlement, therefore, was and is legal.

Two years later, amid growing civil war, the UN proposed a division of Palestine between Jews and Arabs - changing the terms of the Mandate; the Jews accepted, the Arabs launched a war of extermination.

When Britain ended the Mandate and left, the State of Israel was proclaimed and local mobs who had been attacking Jews for years were joined by five Arab armies. The armistice in 1949 - for Jews, independence, for Arabs, nakba (tragedy) - did not result in a Palestinian state, because the Arabs did not want it. Arab leaders never accepted Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state - most refuse to do so today.

Pressured by Russia and the Arab states, the Security Council adopted Resolution 242, which spoke of Israel's military withdrawal from some - not all - of these conquered territories in the context of a final peace agreement. The question of sovereignty remained elusive and problematic.

Israel's political echelon and Supreme Court refrained from asserting full sovereignty over the newly acquired areas but, in the absence of any reciprocal gestures, agreed to allow Jews to return to Jerusalem's Old City and Gush Etzion, where a flourishing group of settlements had been wiped out in 1947. Striking a compromise, it allowed the building of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where the Jewish community had been wiped out in Arab riots of 1929; Jews were permitted to pray at the Cave of Machpela, an ancient building containing the tombs of Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs, for the first time in 700 years.

Although free to leave UNRWA refugee camps, with new opportunities and challenges, Palestinians did not call for statehood or peace with Israel. The PLO, which claimed to represent Palestinians, was dedicated to terrorism, not nation-building.

FOR SOME, this is not a "legal" issue, but a moral one: Jews should not rule over ("occupy") others. So Israel withdrew unilaterally from nearly all "Palestinian" cities, towns and villages and turned over vast tracts of land to the PA/PLO as part of the Oslo Accords in 1994 and a few years later in the Wye and Hebron agreements.

When Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, it became a bastion of Hamas. "Land for peace" in reality means "land for terrorism."

Influenced by these events, incited by Islamists, encouraged by Israeli concessions and seeking to undermine the state, Israeli Arabs identify as "Palestinians," demanding an end to "Jewish occupation" and discrimination, and the destruction of the state itself.

Others contend that "Israel's Jewish and democratic" nature will be threatened if it continues to include large numbers of Arabs who are not loyal and do not identify with the state. But nearly all "Palestinians" live under PA, not Israeli rule. The dispute now, therefore, is over territory, not people.

Predictions of an "Arab demographic time bomb" have not proven realistic or accurate. Moreover, allowing Arab residents full civil and humanitarian rights, without political rights, as exist in most other countries, could be considered in conjunction with resettling Arab "refugees" in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc., dismantling UNRWA camps and ending terrorism and incitement against Israel.

That a second (or third) Arab Palestinian state would be an existential threat to Israel seems obvious. "Land for peace" has failed. Why then promote it?

I think it's important to hear this viewpoint among Israelis, as expressed so succinctly and clearly by journalist Dann. Obama targetted the Settlements, speaking as tho a truly justic policy toward them coud be presupposed.

I am no Christian Zionist (I shudder at most of what they say and do).

I am neither typical of the Liberation Theology viewpoint in regard to Israel constructed as a "colonial settler state."

My analysis is based on my USA heritage of a historical connection between State, Church, and Synogogue. I'm thinking of President George Washington's letter to the Judaic synagogue in Rhode Island. In that document of one of the Founders, the historical root of a special friendship between two nations, America and Israel, may be seen. The relation of the USA to its own citizens of Judaic faith was carried over with a special force to support the establishment of the State of Israel.

"The equality of nations" does not apply to any nation's special closeness to the general welfare of another particular country and people. Friendship between two countries and nations allows room for unevenhandedness in America's forming a policy favouring Israel over any other interest in the territory.

America has not had such a friendship with any Islamic country, rather our Marines were put into service against the Arab Islamic pirates of the Barbary Coast. "From the hall of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli ..."

Literary: New Criterion litmag: Free Speech in an age of jihad -- a special pamphlet with a variety of writers

2009-07-05T03:30:00.000-07:00

Free speech in an age of jihad

The reprint is $4, and $2 shipping and handling (more for international orders). Additional copies will be shipped at $1 additional shipping and handling per copy. For education discounts on orders of 25 or more, please call our assistant to the editors at (212) 247-6980,

----------------- also ----------------------

Libel tourism, “hate speech” & political freedom

With essays by
Roger Kimball, 1; Stanley Kurtz, 5; Robert Spencer, 16;
Andrew C. McCarthy, 23; & Mark Steyn, 32

Responses from
Rachel Ehrenfeld, Brooke Goldstein, Ezra Levant,
Ibn Warraq, Steven Emerson, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.,
Claudia Rosett, Robert H. Bork, Daniel Kornstein
& John J. Walsh

Enviro: Christians: UK's Steve Bishop writes up some of his own struggle for a Christian perspective on ecological crises

2009-07-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

Steve Bishop, An Accidental Blog, reviews at considerable length the case made by an apparently excellent book, Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives - Past and Present edited by R. J. Berry (T&TClark International [ISBN 9780567030184] xii+348; £39.99).

Rather than discuss (argue with?) the book which is itself a collection of views, or with the presentation and critical observations and questions that this reformational thinker-reviewer offers, I thawt I'd just let readers know of Bishop's reflective take on this already reflective book. It may whet your appetite to get a copy for yourself. In any case, the review will go a long way in stimulating your own musings on this urgent set of concerns for the global home of humanity, God's good earth.

-- Albert Gedraitis, publisher, refWrite

Philosophy: Government: The idea of "Open Govt" based on new techs and seemingly absolute transparency

2009-07-02T18:37:00.001-07:00

Yeah, its all blamed on "technology enthusiasts" but there's more to this philosophical surge than the tech which enables it.GovernmentExecutive.com carries an engaging article by Robert Brodsky [rbrodsky "at" govexec "dot" com] Open government advocates map out future of citizen governance (Jun29,2k9).

>NEW YORK CITY-- Technology enthusiasts on Monday gathered at a jazz concert hall in Manhattan to plot ways to increase government transparency and accountability.

The young and technocratic audience at the sixth annual Personal Democracy Forum -- virtually every participant was working on a laptop or iPhone or Tweeting -- generally gave the Obama administration credit for moving the transparency ball forward with sites such as Recovery.gov and Data.gov.

The speakers, however, agreed that the new platforms are only the first step in a revolutionary change that will sweep across government in much the same way Craigslist and Wikipedia changed the private sector.

"We need for transparency to be the default government," said Jeff Jarvis, a columnist and blogger and the author of What Would Google Do? (Collins Business, 2009). "We need a government that is searchable, clickable and linkable."

I think the whole philosophoical underpinnings of this orientation are self-contradictory. It woud isolate communities, pulverize them electorally, and individualize citizens. From this the idea of every citizen forming an opinion on everything and voting on every issue, the very idea is exhausting. The model of "citizen" here is a super-informed and/or super-manipulated everyman, with no delegation of representation by voters who instead themselves must look at everything (transparency) and v?o?t?e?. Quite a notion of voter to be sure. So, having the notion of "open government" linked to that of "direct democracy" (so-called) is not only anti-representation but also anti-democratic except in the most extreme philosophically individualist concept of democracy. It only puts total responsiblity on everywoman/man, a responsibility I for one dont want to shoulder. This presupposition of "total individual responsiblity" in government, your responsiblity for everything that can happen or has happened in the governing of a given country is quite pernicious and intellectually dishonest. It is the preferred drug of activists, presently left activists, but if enacted woud become also the drug of r+twing activists. My point here: the direct democracy approach favors activists who have illusions about how much responsiblity they can take-on in an advanced h+ly-differentiated democratic society. So, under the transparency movement, beware of the other presuppositions of this advocacy that are the reverse of democracy, by destroying the importance of representation.

Now, representation does require reform. What we have now is representatives who dont even read the bills they compile. We've been lied to about a basic facet of transparency where a legal provision of posting on an accessible webpage woud protect us from tyrants who woud slip by us absurdly-written (rather, compiled) legislation, never posted a week in advance, and therefore opaque. Not transparent, not translucent.

Philosophy of Law: Case Study: New Zealand, in a forthcoming study by Alan Cameron

2009-05-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

integrative jurisprudence:

an interdisciplinary conceptual orientation
for the study of law

Alan Cameron's abstract, intro and outline (recent) to his forthcoming book. With some opening comments by Albert Gedraitis (May26,2k9)

Based at the School of Accounting and Commercial Law, under the Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand, Senior Lecturer Cameron locates his academic speciality in commercial law.

Perhaps even more importantly to many of us reformationals around the world, Cameron functions actively as a leading Juridical scholar, a professional in juridics who "reflects on the nature of law in relation to the distinctives of the New Zealand legal tradition and the wider legal developments around the world."

He is "a critical proponent of the Juridical philosophy developed by past professor of law at the Free University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Dr Herman Dooyeweerd." Cameron, in his forthcoming book Integrative Jurisprudence, presents a path-breaking, creative reading of a famous Dutch scholar's philosophy of law, as mentioned, a philosophy that is transforming itself into an international philosophy of law now invigorated by finely detailed study of the exemplary legal system of New Zealand -- where common law necessarily includes both the main public jurisprudence and the large-indigenous population's own rules-wisdom, the latter both in the oral tradition of the Maori people, and nowadays sometimes written down. The two systems necessarily have collided at times, but both systems must interact and learn from their mistakes along the way. [I've taken much of the foregoing material from the Wikipedia entry, Alan Cameron (legal scholar)."]

Cameron is well-acquainted with his mentor's Encyclopedia of the Science of Law [Volume I (English translation 2003, Mellen Press; Dutch original, Encyclopaedie der Rechtswetenschap (Studentenraad, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1946-1967).)] Encyclopedia I has been published in English now for 6 years. Further, Cameron has worked at studying the full shelf of remaining volumes (5 in total), accessing partial translations as the forward-work proceeds by a team headed by philosopher and Dooyeweerd specialist, Dr Danie Strauss.

In Cameron's forthcoming study of Dooyeweerd's law philosophy, the law scholar purposely thinks thru his own country's legal system in all its uniqueness (difference and sameness) in relation to the other states and conditions of the world to which New Zealand must relate; in the course of which he sets up a dynamic relation between D's thawt, C's own contributions where, besides appropriating ins+ts, he may go even beyond his mentor with many new juridical ins+ts, and he does all this in in building his multidimensional understanding of his country and its legal system.

Readers may also want to hunt down as a kind of sampler, Cameron's recent paper, "Dooyeweerd on Law and Morality: Legal ethics -- a test case" (available in .PDF format for digital download).

-------------- text -------------

INTEGRATIVE JURISPRUDENCE:
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONCEPTUAL ORIENTATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW

by Alan Cameron

Abstract
The book is an exposition of the jurisprudential perspective set forth in the Encyclopaedie der Rechtwetenschap (Encyclopedia of the Science of Law), a multi-volume jurisprudential conceptual framework and method developed by the late Professor Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977). It is found in dictaten (typed and bound notes) produced by the Student Council at the Free University of Amsterdam for his students during his tenure of the Chair in Jurisprudence and Old Dutch Law in the Faculty of Law at the Free University of Amsterdam from 1926 until 1964). The Encyclopaedie was itself a particular application of an original general philosophical system (Philosophy of the Cosmonomic Idea) that emerged from Dooyeweerd’s initial wrestling with neo-Kantian legal theory. Its maturest expression was published in English as A New Critique of Theoretical Thought.

This application of the encyclopaedic method in this book contains some revisions and refinements of Dooyeweerd’s philosophical categories and method. These are largely attributable to developments introduced by Prof. DFM Strauss to whom I owe a debt of gratitude in developing my own understanding of Dooyeweerd’s general philosophy and his philosophy of law. Only the introductory part of Dooyeweerd’s major jurisprudential work has appeared in English to date, Encyclopedia of the Science of Law: Introduction (Mellen 2002), the first of four substantial volumes to be published in English. This exposition however, draws heavily on the substantive parts of the Encyclopedia contained in the unpublished volumes.

The integrative jurisprudence and it method arises out of a critique of the main traditions of Western philosophy general, legal philosophy and its roots. It rests upon a particular account of the nature of theory and theorizing in relation to its subject matter. Applied to the field of legal study it results in an original legal epistemology (theory of legal knowledge) and ontology (theory of legal phenomena).

This main focus of this book is upon the ontology in order to achieve its chief aim of providing a conceptual orientation for the study of law. Unlike other jurisprudence texts it is not intended to be merely an introduction to different theories of law and/or to a few selected traditional topics involving debates amongst contending perspectives, that is, an introduction to jurisprudence as a distinct subject of legal theory within the legal curriculum. More ambitiously, it is intended to present a view of jurisprudence as a more or less comprehensive conceptual framework for the special academic discipline of law. For that reason it will devote less attention than other jurisprudential works to the detailed examination of different legal philosophies.

Briefly stated, the integrative perspective as an ontology of law comprises three central elements: the modal or aspectual, the entitary or typical-structural and the “enkaptic” or structurally interconnecting element. However, the most original and fundamental element is that of the theory of modal aspects. A key idea in this legal philosophy is that of the jural aspect as one of a diversity of irreducible but interconnected universal aspects of social reality.

Grounded in a cosmic law theory this theory of law, understandably, is prone to be categorised within the natural law tradition of legal philosophy. However, it will be seen that there are important features of this perspective that bear a strong similarity to, or are shared in common with, key features of other traditional (e.g. analytical legal positivism) and more recent movements or schools of legal philosophy including critical legal theories, law and economics and, especially in its underlying critique of Enlightenment rationalism, postmodern legal thought, central elements of which had already been anticipated in Dooyeweerd’s philosophical critique.

Finally, an auxilliary, but nonetheless important feature of this work, is the conscious attempt by the author to utilise, though not exclusively, a wide range of New Zealand scholarly legal material – sources of law, legal doctrine and theory - to both illustrate and explicate the concepts and method employed. In this way it is hoped to give increased relevance to the exposition of the theoretical concepts for the New Zealand student; contribute towards a distinctively New Zealand jurisprudence in both the theoretical and non-theoretical senses of jurisprudence explained in the first section of the introductory chapter; and further the existing inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary dialogue amongst New Zealand legal and non-legal scholars. Though there is a conscious New Zealand bias in the illustrative material this should only be regarded as localised application of an approach that thinks globally as befits a true philosophy of law. This work is intended to demonstrate the possibility of its application within the common law tradition by way of illustration within the local jurisdiction. The last section which includes a discussion of international law should help to deflect criticism of parochialism in the illustrative legal subject matter.

Part One: Introduction

Chapter 1: An Overview
Nature, role and function of jurisprudence

Within the study of law jurisprudence is a term that can be used with different though related meanings. When legal scholars refer to the jurisprudence of the Treaty of Waitangi they are referring to the actual law itself as well as the “wisdom” it contains, jurisprudence in its literal meaning (legal wisdom). Jurisprudence in this sense includes the learning, principles, concepts and doctrines contained within the formal legal sources of court decisions and legislation. It may also encompass learned scholarly commentary or treatises on the law itself. However jurisprudence, taught as a distinct subject within the law curriculum, has a narrower meaning that refers to theory of law. It encompasses, both general philosophy of law as found in the history of the ideas of leading thinkers, as well as more narrowly focused theories of specific areas of law such as tort, contract, public law etc. and the concepts associated with those branches of law.

I will discuss, in this chapter subsection, debates about the place of jurisprudence in the law curriculum: – should it be compulsory? should it be in a separate course? Or should it be an essential element of all law courses? This serves as a lead-in to 1.2 where I set forth the “integrative” view of the role of jurisprudence within the study of law generally

1.2 Relation of jurisprudence to discipline of law and legal phenomena:
Neil MacCormick’s Four Quadrants of Jurisprudence will be taken as example of a view of jurisprudence in its relation to the discipline law to which the integrative approach is compared.

1.3 Some key features of integrative jurisprudence
This will include comparison with features of other perspectives: interdisciplinary grounded in the coherence of reality and our experience of it “transcendental-empirical”a descriptive-normative/analytical theory oriented to fit an empirical normative jural reality that nonetheless exceeds (transcends) the ability of analytical/theoretical concepts to fully capture pluralist rejects “mono-legal”/positivist theories of law and identifies a rich plurality of expressions of the jural dimension in diverse societal spheres reflected in a socio-structural taxonomy of law normative coherence the interconnection of concepts expresses the inner coherence of the jural dimension of social experience in its plural expressions
open is open to revision within and outside of its perspective to engage in dialogue with other perspectives critical solidarity acknowledges commonalities with, and contributions of, other theories from different perspectives without abandoning its own standpoint commitment-explicit exposure of root beliefs underlying the theory – the failure of other theories to identify their own root beliefs is a self-critical deficit in those theories

PART TWO: AN INTEGRATIVE VIEW OF LAW

Chapter 2: Law, Discipline of Law, Legal Theory and its Roots

2.1 What is law?

Distinguish this descriptive/analytical (theoretical) question from a related theoretical question: What is a law? and from the question for the practitioner/scholar-doctrinalist/student of law: What is the law? Is this latter “practical” question connected to the former theoretical questions? If so, how? This section does not answer these questions so much as discuss what sort of questions they are in the context of the study of law and how they interrelate. This section therefore only provides preliminary intimations of the answers to the questions that are elaborated more fully by the integrative approach in the following sections and chapters.

2.2 What is the discipline (study) of law?

2.3 What is the role of theory in the study of law? Philosophy and the academic disciplines

2.4 The reason-transcending roots of philosophical perspectives in disciplinary theories – legal theory in particular

Chapter 3: Outline of An Integrative Conceptual Perspective on Law

3.1 Basic Jural concepts: the modal dimension of law
3.1.1 Basic jural concepts: elementary
3.1.2 Basic jural concepts: complex
3.1.3 The concept of law

3.2 Basic cosmic relations expressed in the jural aspect of reality
3.2.1 Universal side and individual side
3.2.2 Norm side and fact side
3.2.3 Subject-object relation
3.2.4 Origination-duration-termination
3.3 Jural ideas
3.3.1 Jural concept and jural idea: the concept of law and the idea of justice
3.3.2 Jural morality
3.3.3 Justice as a jural-moral idea

3.4 Jural entity-type concepts: jural entities and their inter-connections
3.4.1 The diversity of human (jural) type-structures
3.4.2 Basic (modal) concepts and entity-type concepts: the role of the sociology of law
3.4.3 Jural form and substance: originating forms of law and their material sources
3.4.4 The interweaving of laws having differing material sources
3.4.5 The private-public distinction in the light of jural entity-type concepts:

3.5.1 The interweaving of private and public law

Part Three: Applications of the Integrative Perspective

Chapter 4: Contract and Contract Law: Two Jural Realities

4.1 Contract distinguished from contract law
4.2 Doctrines of contract formation and their conundra
4.3 Private and public law of contract

Chapter 5: Indigenous Law: Legal Pluralism and the Role of Cultural-Historical Differentiation

Chapter 6: The University: Interconnected Jural Plurality

Part Four: Jurisprudential Challenges

Chapter 7: Law and Justice in a Global Perspective: International Law

Chapter 8: - Know Yourself: Law’s Need of an Integrated Theory of the Human Person

Sciences: Space Explore: NASA launches Kepler Mission (agency's 10th Discovery mission) to look for Earth-like planets

2009-05-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

KEPLER MISSION: A search for habitable planets. -- official website offers this succinct summary of the project (but don't miss the whole item "Importance of Planet Detection").

The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets.

Results from this mission will allow us to place our solar system within the continuum of planetary systems in the Galaxy.

Magnalia Dei!, as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) m+t be saying.

Kepler was forced to leave his teaching post at Graz [Germany] due to the [Roman Catholic] counter Reformation because he was Lutheran and moved to Prague [Czech Republic nowadays] to work with the renowned Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe. He inherited Tycho's post as Imperial Mathematician when Tycho died in 1601. Using the precise data that Tycho had collected, Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse. In 1609 he published Astronomia Nova, delineating his discoveries, which are now called Kepler's first two laws of planetary motion. And what is just as important about this work, "it is the first published account wherein a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich in foreword to Johannes Kepler New Astronomy translated by W. Donahue, Cambridge Univ Press, 1992), a fundamental law of nature. Today we call this the scientific method.

Do not miss, in the just-quoted text, how the scientific method is defined, while attributing this pioneering usage of its mathematics-enriched method to Dr Kepler: "a scientist documents how he has coped with the multitude of imperfect data to forge a theory of surpassing accuracy" (O. Gingerich, in the Forward).

Philosopher Benson fabricates some jejune generalizsations re PoMo's Derrida, but casts l+t on D's "Cambridge Affair"

2009-05-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

Philosophy Now pits philosopher Peter Benson against his Quinine mentors in favour of Jacques Derrida.

Here's the bombastic title:

Here's the blurb: "Peter Benson tries to clear Jacques Derrida’s unjustly infamous name, and shows how memes spread in modern academia."

Here's the opening foray by Benson:

The doorbell rings. I hurry to answer it and find, standing on the doorstep, a man and woman dressed in dark clothes, with bright smiles on their faces. “Good Morning!” they greet me, boundlessly cheerful, “We are visiting people in this area to bring you a copy of our magazine.” And they triumphantly hold aloft a flimsy publication entitled THE TRUTH! in large strident lettering.

I am immediately seized by panic. “I’m terribly sorry,” I hurriedly say, “I haven’t time to talk. I’m just in the middle of sacrificing a goat.” And I quickly close the door in their astonished faces.

I suspect that most readers of Philosophy Now would react in a similar way. Anyone who, out of the blue, wants to bring the Truth to me (or to bring me to the Truth) should be viewed with suspicion. I have got along just fine without this Truth of theirs, and I’m not so sure that I need it now. This cannot be attributed to a lack of curiosity. I am fascinated by facts of many kinds – scientific facts, historical facts, biographical facts – and I am well aware that I still have much to learn. Numerous truths, of various varieties, await my discovery. It is only when I am offered The Truth (with a capital ‘T’), singular and domineering, that I become wary.

I feel equally suspicious when a book of philosophy sets out to tell me Why Truth Matters (Continuum, 2006). On the face of it, this is not a mysterious puzzle. When we ask a question (such as “Where is the nearest railway station?”) we would generally prefer a true answer to a false one. The reasons are fairly obvious! But the authors of this book (Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom) are convinced that Truth is under siege, that its importance is widely denied, and that they need to come to its aid. Ought we perhaps to regard them with the same caution as we would bring to our pair of doorstep preachers?

So, this is a book review, after all.

----------------------------------------------
Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom,
Why Truth Matters (Continuum, 2006)
reviewed by Peter Benson
---------------------------------------------

Is Ophelia B. of any direct relation to Peter B?

The aims of the book may seem admirable enough, as the authors catalogue various examples of ideological prejudice and political correctness overriding established facts. These examples are mostly drawn from such fields as sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. Yet the authors clearly believe that the original well-spring of such challenges to truth lies within philosophy. They declare their principal targets to be “Postmodernism, epistemic relativism, anti-realism…. And so on.” (p.18) And they later suggest that the origin of these fashionable ideas may have been, in part, “just a brain wave in the head of Jacques Derrida” (p.167) They may be surprised, therefore, to learn that in the book he wrote in collaboration with Catherine Malabou ( Counterpath, Stanford University Press, 2004) Derrida speaks of attending “a meeting on ‘Postmodernism and Religion’ – two things which are foreign to me.” (p.95). Many similar disavowals can be found in his works.

But other perhaps even contradictory themes tells us that religion at least is not so absolutely "foreign" to Derrida, after all, as Catholic philosopher Caputo and Reformational philosopher Olthuis can attest.

Many books and articles in recent years have announced a desire to defend Truth against Postmodern attack. But who exactly are these postmodern philosophers, who treat Truth so lightly? And what exactly is postmodernism?

I've only read one book by Derrida, Of Grammatology which comes with a 70-page introduction by the translator that sets an ideological frame around the book that it isn't really justified. It was that book with that frame which blazed its way thru the American literary scholarship, starting within Yale University's litcrit culture of identity politics. Tho, there it wasn't emphasized how much Derrida was influenced by James Joyce whom the French-educated Algerian Jew read when he was 18, during an exchange year at Harvard. Something like that.

John Caputo (emeritus Villanova), the Augustinian Catholic philosopher-befriender of Derrida, and Caputo's colleague, James Olthuis (emeritus Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto) a reformational Christian philosopher, have written searchingly on Derrida and the religionality or not, of his philosophy and piety as an honest, playful human creature philosophizing. One of Olthuis' students, Jamie K.A. Smith, has become a big Derrida-booster at Calvin College, where he is a professor.

See also: Deconstruction-and-religion

Economics as a science has run stuck on 2 of its major modern generalities,'rational' investors & 'perfectly efficient' markets

2009-04-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

Anatole Kaletsky, in a major article in a UK online magazine Prospect, contributes a stunning set of thawts, "Goodbye, homo economicus" (Apr2k9). I shall quote only the tail-end of his piece here, but recommend a close reading of the entire piece to encounter its moments of truth.

Economics today is a discipline that must either die or undergo a paradigm shift—to make itself both more broadminded, and more modest. It must broaden its horizons to recognise the insights of other social sciences and historical studies and it must return to its roots. Smith, Keynes, Hayek, Schumpeter and all the other truly great economists were interested in economic reality. They studied real human behaviour in markets that actually existed. Their insights came from historical knowledge, psychological intuition and political understanding. Their analytical tools were words, not mathematics. They persuaded with eloquence, not just formal logic. One can see why many of today’s academics may fear such a return of economics to its roots.

Academic establishments fight hard to resist such paradigm shifts, as Thomas Kuhn, the historian of science who coined the phrase in the 1960s, demonstrated. Such a shift will not be easy, despite the obvious failure of academic economics. But economists now face a clear choice: embrace new ideas or give back your public funding and your Nobel prizes, along with the bankers’ bonuses you justified and inspired.

Related to Kaletsky's piece is a review in The New Republic:
[Judge] Richard A. Posner, "Shorting Reason," (Ap15,2k9) on the book by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, (Princeton University Press, 264 pp., USA$24.95).

If you want to pursue these issues in conjunction with "Capitalism beyond the crisis," you can do so by reading Amartya Sen's essay of that title in The New York Review of Books (Mar26,2k9).

Reformational Christian philosophy has already discarded propositionalism in Bible reading (Dooyeweerd, Hart, ICS Toronto generally, etc), so why should not our economists and sociologists also do so? -- all the while struggling in search of Christian philosophy's relation to "Scriptural religion" (Vollenhoven, Hart again, and most recently, interestingly and conservingly Albert Wolters, "No Longer Queen: the theological disciplines and their sisters" which is downloadable in PDF format). So, it is no surprise that the leading philosophizing economist of this school of thawt, Dr Bob Goudzwaard, at the same time uses scripture-bases to movitate his discussion of economic-modal norms. While devoted to his contribution over a lifetime, I'm not so sure he and my discussion-partner sociologist Dr Bruce Wearne have remained reformationally realistic, in Robert Joudstra's sense, Recovering Christian Realism in "Terrifying Times". Or, perhaps I'm reading intertextually with the echoes of Rheinhold Niebuhr's christian realism.

Theory of the State, Somalia's Status, World Situation regarding Pirate Bases

2009-04-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

A commenter, Life of the Mind, on Belmont Club at Pajamas Media, responding to a blog entry by Richard Fernandez, "Then there was one pirate" (July 12,2k9) gives us some keen observations around recent events off the Somali coast of Africa.

...a hypothetical. Let us say that the United States dispensed with the legal fiction that Somalia was a normal state with a functioning government possessing the attributes of sovereignty, including defined borders, a monopoly on violence and effective governance. At this time the United States holds that every land territory on earth outside of Antarctica, which is governed as is the Moon by a special treaty status, is part of some functioning nation state. Until fairly recent times there were three categories of territory and the inhabitants of them each were under a different status.

First were the Westphalian Nation States, responsible for their own conduct and that of their citizens. These included the European Empires, the United States, The Ottoman Empire (despite acknowledged problems) Japan, China (more problems) and Latin American countries (occasional problems.) Second were the dependancies, protectorates or colonies of the nations in the first category. To varying degrees the senior partner assumed responsibility for the conduct of these territories and of their inhabitants in international relations. For example, if a native of an Indian Princely State in treaty relationship with the British Crown got arrested in Berlin then the British embassy would see that certain basic rights were observed. The United States would I believe have been in a similar position for a member of an Native American Indian tribe before all Native American were granted citizenship. Third were wild and unclaimed territories inhabited by savages or aborigines who were outside the law of nations. There have not been any such territories that I am aware of since Africa was divided up at the Berlin Conference of 1884.

So if the United States declared that we held that Somalia had reverted to the status of unexplored Africa of 125 years ago what would change? For one thing it would change the status of Somalis who encounter the military or legal agents of another country. Right now if a Somali is in the United States they are either here pursuant to their being admitted with a visa or they are on temporary parole or they entered without inspection (EWI) but even in the last case they have some limited rights. Those rights are partly in US domestic law but also because both the United States and Somalia are signatories to treaties in which we agree to treat each others nationals with a certain level of courtesy. Right now if a police officer found a Somali in Minneapolis standing over a body with a gun in his hand the officer would be expected to politely disarm and apprehend the individual and then respond to his request for aide by putting him in touch with his country’s diplomats. In fact it is now almost unheard of for a law enforcement officer to inquire as to whether a suspect is legally in the United States. If the suspect was from a country whose government we did not have relations with, like Iran or North Korea, they would still have rights and some access to a diplomat who would act in their interest. If Somalia, or some other place, was considered truly lawless then that would change. In theory the officer could determine that they had entered without inspection and that would place the alien in the status of being an invading enemy combatant who was out of uniform and therefore not subject to the protections of the Geneva Protocols. The officer could then in theory kill the alien but it would probably not be a career enhancing move.

Good stuff to mull over, not least of all should you, like me, follow generally Dooyeweerd's theory of the state as expressed in his monumental New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Along those lines, I also note references I encountered recently on the Internet that have added the category "failed states" to the widely used term "rogue states" (North Korea long being the outstanding case of the latter). At least two categories are needed in addition to LifeoftheMind's well-defined and historical definition of a "normal state." Somalia may not be a state at all, but it needs some designation for the completeness of the theory; Somalia is quite different from the rogue state of North Korea.

I'm grateful this Easter Day that Captain Richard Phillips and the US Navy SEAL sharpshooters who rescued. Piracy is the product of extreme poverty and lawlessness in the ungoverned zone called Somalia, run by warlords. The major industry there is khat cultivation, the marijuana-like product is sold openly in public marketplaces in Somaliland. May God have mercy on this weapons-overloaded poor country and its people.

-- Owlb

CPJ document: 7 Guidelines for Economic Justice

2009-03-18T23:44:00.000-07:00

New download documents "7 Guidelines for Economic Justice."

1 Human beings are created in the image of God with many talents and capabilities that, with maturation and development, make possible the exercise of a wide range of responsibilities—in personal relationships, families, economic enterprises, schools, churches, the media, non-profit organizations,
politics, and government.

2 Essential to the proper exercise of every responsibility is the opportunity to be responsible. Oppression or forced marginalization that stifles or destroys a person’s opportunity to exercise responsibility violates human dignity.

3 Economic activities, which entail the production and exchange of goods and services, comprise one kind of responsibility. Many economic activities are conducted through for-profit companies and market exchanges.

4 In order for both profit-making and not-for-profit activities to flourish, the government of every political community bears responsibility to uphold a just legal framework for recognizing, protecting, and encouraging the full range of human responsibilities. The constitution or basic law of a political community should recognize the dignity of every person and protect the independence of nongovernment
organizations and institutions. Government’s calling is to establish and maintain public justice for the common good.

5 Making public room for the independent exercise of profit-making production and exchange is what the Center for Public Justice recognizes and supports as a market economy. Constitutions and laws establish the conditions for such an economy, but government’s responsibility is not confined to the protection of private property and the promotion of market freedom and economic growth. Market economies exist as part of complex societies under public law and increasingly within an international context.

6 Since the market itself is part of the public domain, it properly falls to government to establish weights and measures; provide the legal definition of corporations, labor organizations, and property; determine tax and tariff policies; mandate health and safety standards; and guard against restrictive monopolies and other dangers to public health and well-being.

7 With the continuing growth of international economic interdependence—and interdependence of many other kinds—governments bear ever-increasing responsibility to work together to build international institutions and protocols that will strengthen justice, including economic justice, among all peoples and states.

The Center for Public Justice
P.O. Box 48368 Washington, DC 20002-0368

Phone: 866-CPJUSTICE
Email: inquiries@cpjustice.org
Web: cpjustice.org

Christian political programme emerges as Europe-wide manifesto

2009-03-16T20:27:00.000-07:00

The following document is the most-recently adopted Programme (perhaps the first) of the European Christian Political Movement. The document is dated Oct2k8; it was posted on the ECPM website, copyr+t 2k9.
refWrite readeres will want to take note of the ECPM 5th Annual Members Congress in the late Spring this year.

The ECPM Members Congress will this year take place in Bern, Switzerland on 11 and 12 June. The congress will be organized in cooperation with the Swiss ECPM members, the EDU and EVP.

The theme of the Congress will be: "A Christian answer to the credit crunch". Speakers will discuss the world economy and the current economical crisis and will try to find clear political answers derived from Christian-democratic and Christian-social thought.

The first speakers that can be announced are Dr. Andreas Walker from Switzerland and Prof. Dr. Bob Goudzwaard from the Netherlands.

Programme of the European Christian Political Movement

A Christian-Social Contribution to Europe

We are the members of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM). This movement includes Christian-democratic and Christian-social parties, NGO's and thinktanks in Europe. We have come together to promote a Christian perspective on democracy. In our continent and the nations within it, we face growing problems. Neither the individualistic conservative-liberal nor the technocratic social-democrat approaches are able to give an adequate response or produce robust solutions.

People distrust political institutions and their work. There are growing tensions between different religious and ethnic groups in Europe. European nations are supporting each other less when we need solidarity to deal with our social, economic security and environmental problems.

We want to promote the Christian-democratic perspective on these 21st century questions. They affect individuals on their relationships in the community. They also affect our common responsibility for our society. We are convinced that Christian-social thought can generate political solutions. These can contribute to the well-being of the people of Europe. Christian-democracy made it's contribution since it's beginning in the 19th century with politicians like Groen van Prinsterer. Christian-democrats like Robert Schuman and Alcide de Gasperi laid in the 20th century the foundations of the European Union. We are convinced that Christian-democracy has also an important role to play in the 21st century.

As members of the ECPM we believe that Jesus Christ calls us to follow Him in every area of our lives. This includes the realm of politics. The Bible is not, and does not provide a political programme. Its basic teachings provide the fundamental elements for just government. There is a call on political authorities, including those at the European level, to work in this spirit and serve the people of Europe. They are to pursue justice and freedom. We recognise that we cannot identify the Kingdom of God with any specific political cause. We affirm that this Kingdom of God demands the pursuit of just government and the promotion of a well-ordered society.

We reject the idea that religion is just a private affair for individuals. The Christian faith has been fundamental to European society. It has been irreplaceably important and influential in the processes of shaping the character of our continent. This means that we bear a responsibility both to challenge and to affirm the social and political order. This we will do according to the way that we understand Christian-social principles.

The Christian understanding of the person

The Christian-democratic tradition of thought takes its bearings from Christian convictions about the person, society, and political authority. These principles include the notion that the basic worth of each human being comes from their creation in the image of God. We understand true human fulfilment as a responsible freedom. We live in relation to others and creation. We find fulfilment in the development of relationships in society. This relational vision of humankind is a key element for the Christian-democrat and the Christian-social policy of the ECPM.

The Christian-social view of society and government

A healthy society has a morale that results from mutual respect. The pursuit of private satisfactions should not interfere with our common duty to protect other members of society. On the other hand, the demands of the State or any other collective body, should not damage the rightful claims of the individual. This means that for a society to flourish it must create and nurture a spirit which respects the freedom and integrity of social and cultural institutions. It must encourage and nurture good relations between those institutions and people. Key social and cultural organisations include the family, school, religious organisations, and representatives of employees and employers. People build a society by developing their mutual relationships and becoming involved in communities and their common concerns.

The fundamental role of political authority is to ensure justice in the public realm. The state must create conditions that promote the common good and social connectedness. The exercise of power by the state must always be equitable and limited. The state must promote just relations between individuals, associations, communities, and other groups. The state must also respect their proper independence and interdependence.

Bearers of political authority are responsible to encourage the good, and rectify injustice. Governments are not required to attempt to remedy every social ill. Government must not undertake tasks that are the responsibility of family, church, or other spheres of authority. They should be able to deal with their own affairs. We believe that churches and other religious organisations can have an essential contribution to make in society.

Democratic participation enlarges the horizons of people. It empowers them as citizens and increases their influence on governments. A responsible democracy requires the expression of opinion through representative elections, political parties, public debate and loyal opposition. These together with respect for political office and open and accountable government are essential.

The responsibilities for public affairs should be at a level as close to the citizens as possible. This is our view at subsidiarity. We stand for this balance in power between the various nations and the European Union. We must protect national identity and respect the sovereignty of states. The European Union needs solidarity between nations and peoples. The European Union also needs subsidiarity to keep its solidarity alive. The ECPM recognises the different peoples of Europe.

No party or grouping may claim special legal privileges. Christian-democrat thinking strongly rejects secularism as a public ideology. The ECPM warns of the damage that fundamentalist secularism can inflict on a society. We are weary of such fundamentalist secularism in any kind of governing role. We also do not seek a governing role for any single church denomination. We recognise the role of the Christian faith in shaping the liberties that our continent enjoys. We affirm that the state needs to acknowledge the rights of religious and cultural minorities and to treat them equitably in public policy. We welcome the diverse faith communities present in Europe. Individuals, communities and organisations must have full freedom of religion and expression of thought. This must be a priority within Europe and in European foreign policy.

A Christian-democrat view of government will always have a global perspective. All the earth is God's creation, and God made all humans in his image. This means that Christian-democracy aims to have a foreign and defence policy that works in this spirit. It promotes fair trade as well as peace and protection of the environment.

We must not allow the state, business or finance to control the economy. Democratic responsibility requires this. The state should build up the contribution and sense of mutual responsibility of all parties. Economic activity is to serve people rather than dominate them. The full personal, social and ecological implications of national and international market activity need to be recognised and should not be merely a matter of private or accounting calculations that do not recognise these implications. The state must attempt to redress inequitable and unfair patterns of trade and distribution. Christian-democrats emphasise the state's responsibility for justice, right structures and social connectedness, rather than economic performance alone.

Basic themes in Christian-social policy

As Christian-democrats we do not imagine that we possess simple solutions to the problems of Europe. We do however firmly believe that Christianity can make an important contribution to the well-being of our society. For this reason, we commit ourselves to the following seven guiding principles which highlight some basic themes of Christian-social policy:

Justice

Social justice is a fundamental Biblical teaching. That makes it the basis for Christian-social policy.

All men and women are due equal respect and treatment. Men and women have responsibilities to one another and to wider society.

Social justice demands an equal regard for all. That implies a special concern for the needs of the poor, refugees, those who suffer and the powerless. It requires us to oppose exploitation and deprivation. It requires also that appropriate resources and opportunities are available. In this way, we meet the basic requirements of all and each person is able to take part in the life of the community.

We firmly believe that governments have a special responsibility for those who cannot support themselves in our own countries and abroad. Opposing and eliminating social injustice asks for more action by the government than only to provide just structures. It is also important to stress the need of healthy families, good education and health-care to prevent poverty and social injustice.

Respect for life

God created human beings his image. The right to live is the most basic of all human rights. It is an intrinsic value of every human being. We especially affirm the fundamental dignity of those who are unborn, infirm, mentally or physically disabled, elderly, or unable to speak for themselves. Such respect for human persons also requires a commitment to maintaining a decent quality of life for all. It requires that our communities meet the needs of all those who, for whatever reason, do not have the essentials of life. Some implications for this policy are promoting care for pregnant women, supporting hospices and prohibiting euthanasia. It is our conviction that cloning of humans and animals is contradictory to respect for life.

Priority for the family

A healthy family life induces the wellbeing of people as relational beings. For that reason, we affirm that the family is the cornerstone of society. It is the place where children should learn responsibility, values and proper ways to live as responsible citizens. We should give families all the space they need to fulfil such responsibilities.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is a task for individuals, social and economic groups, and also for those engaged in politics. We must work towards reconciliation and healing at local, national and international levels although we recognise that we will never achieve all such goals in this world.

Humility, repentance, patience and forgiveness are political as well as personal values. They are essential in the process of replacing conflict by common understanding. These principles require that we renounce all armaments that are incompatible with the pursuit of just peace.

Active Compassion

God calls human beings to active loving service of others. This is to replace indifference to the distress of others due to passivity, self-concern or ignorance. Such compassionate love inspires an attitude not only of detached justice but also of open-hearted generosity. We all bear the responsibility, individually and corporately, for such service to one another. Governments should seek to motivate individuals, families, charities and other associations to active compassion. The state should prompt and assist the community to meet the fundamental needs of the poor before satisfying the preferences of the rich.

Wise stewardship

Human beings and creation are related. All economic activity involves responsibility before God and for the world that He entrusted to us. We affirm that concern for God's creation is a major part of Christian-social politics.

Creation and environment

Locally, nationally and internationally governments need to prevent the over-use of natural resources. We all need to be good stewards of the created world. This means that it must be a priority to achieve a balanced and sustainable environment and economy. Dealing with climate change is one of the greatest international challenges that we face today.We must reduce the use of non-renewable resources. We need to reduce carbon emissions and implement climate-friendly energy resources.

We need to stop destruction of ecosystems in oceans and forests. We need to allow them to heal. We must give priority to real and practical environmental protection measures. We need to develop robust climate and preservation policies.

Economy

God gives economic resources to serve people's needs. He does this to help in developing capacities particularly for justice, co-operation and mutual care. These resources should be used creatively and with responsible concern for others (including future generations) and the environment. Markets are not a law unto themselves. People shape them by their decisions. This means that we need to structure them so that those who conduct economic transactions are fair and do them in good faith. The needs of the community must be in mind.

Concentrations of wealth and power erode responsibility and may cause market distortion. We seek an economy where banks, businesses, trade unions, professional groups and government departments work together with greater mutual understanding and public accountability. Economic development is only a means. It should not dominate over social justice and protection of the environment.

The primary task of government in relation to the economy, is to oversee the establishment of just structures in all areas of economic activity. This kind of justice includes maintaining a sound currency against inflation or deflation. It encourages wealth creation by gainful employment. Christian-democrat parties discourage gambling and continuing dependency on state welfare provision. This is to encourage and equip all to participate fully in the economy. We need to use our communal and individual resources in a manner that respects the created order of the world.

Empowerment

Sometimes the accumulation of power may be necessary. This may be for the satisfactory performance of certain tasks. Undue power may also encourage patterns of control and domination. For this reason, it is wrong to assign to larger organisations what smaller and local associations can do adequately. We need to call to account those in whom much power is concentrated. Power concentrations may be with individual owners of wealth, professional interest groups, trade unions, multi-national corporations, national governments, or leaders of political blocs. They have great potential for working responsibly or irresponsibly, for or against the common good. They need to be held accountable for the exercise of their power.

People in Europe and beyond need to be empowered to be able to overcome poverty. Poverty often results from circumstances that are beyond the individual's control. They need to be able to participate in the decision-making process. People need to be educated. They need good literacy, numeracy and public services. People need these tools to restore their self-esteem and hope of possibilities. Governments can support individuals and communities in this process. Preventing corruption and discrimination are important in this struggle for the wellbeing of all.

Final statement

We, Christian-democrats will promote our Christian-social values. We will do this in our own continent and beyond. We will try to implement Christian-democratic policies in our local, national and European political institutions.

We acknowledge the questions and challenges ahead. We look forward with trust and hope. Our Christian faith gives us a perspective that defies negativism and pessimism. This means that we are able to work in Europe and beyond and share Gods love and so work for a better future

Wiedeman encountered by accident, a most welcome suprize!

2009-02-19T01:44:00.000-08:00

I just found a seminal philosophical paper by Dr Albert Wiedeman, the South African applied-linguistics thinker, Unit for Academic Literacy, University of Pretoria. It's the first time I had read any of his work that relates his philosophizing to his specialist discipline of language-learning design and the field of applied linguistics.

The paper: "A systematically significant episode in applied linguistics" (2006) PDF secured. It was published in a symposium Time and context relevant philosophy, a special edition of Journal for Christian Scholarship #42 (Nov 2k6) pp 231-244. The editors for this special were LOK Lategan and JH Smit.

I found Wiedeman's analytic piece impressive from two angles. First, I have a TESOL Certificate, for training to be teacher of English as a 2nd language (I tawt for a while; and I was a public-performance poet for a while). Second, Wiedeman is an advocate of reformational philosophy as established in the life-works of Doooyeweerd and Vollenhoven (who disagreed on a whole lot, despite their foundational labours toward a non-biblistic Protestant Christian philosophy for all ("reformational-ecumenical"). The foregoing formulation acknowledges a certain religious particularity. Not often well regarded these days, but not illegal either. Language-wise, this refilosofy (my coinage, AFG) was born in Dutch (Nederlandse), leaped into English (the more-or-less World Language) and is blogging in these two of its main languages, now blogging also in Spanish. Of course, language-diversity and the criss-cross of politics of change were simultaneously part of the South African experience for the small group who participated in reformational philosophizing there. Not only are the English and Afrikaans languages present, but of greater historical duration and mutation the many tribal languages of South Africa challenge a practioner and theoretician of applied linguistics.

Albert Gedraitis

With belatedness (as usual), a few notes on the enterprise and the economy

2009-01-05T04:24:00.000-08:00

I still do not understand economist Bob Goudzwaard's reading of Herman Dooyeweerd regarding the enterprise. Usually, there's a problem of scale in reformational theory when its articulators talk about "the enterprise." One is often not sure with a phrase or two in the reformational economics discussion, whether the phrase's referent is a "mom&pop" (corner store, urban or rural), a 1stgen selfmade entrepreneurial enterprise (stereotype model distorted behind sloganeering versions of "free enterprise" and "freedom of enterprise" -- both phrases often further degraded by being equated -- an enterprise for which the son typically is not, from the management standpoint, competent to inherit the entrepreneurial role). By inheritance, the son should have the equity that, liquified, would have been his father's until the latter's death. Or, if not liquified, a non-managerial party in the firm's ownership that, at the very least, closely monitors the company's Chief Executive Officer and other officers, as well as rank and file of the workforce (those not included in the category of management workers), a presence in the corporation's life that, were the entity to "go public" with stocks sold on the regulated stock market, that kind of development virtually calls forth a caucus of stockholders that identify with the inheriting sons' leadership.

A third kind of enterprise might be a small group of partners, perhaps over time with junior associates, as in a law firm. Decades ago now, I remember being stunned upon being informed that a law firm located in the American north central states, this partner-owned firm had 3,000 lawyers in its employ. All along perhaps, totally digitalized, technics-ly uptodate (technology is the science of one or more techniques, capable of reflexive thawt on its own history/ies, presuppositions, and presumptions...but technics is a modal science with its foundation concerns in regard to all effective perceptions of techniques, usually inclusive of "hands-on" training in the skills necessary to the transmission of the skill-set which the technique itself requires for its own continuation from the present to the oncoming generation (many techniques are learned and maintained by lore, rather than science ... see Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge). A new generation of certified Apprentices, Apprentice Electricians become Master Electricians, having become trained linking a new skyscraper's myriad cords and plugs to the cement floors and ceilings, up and down cement columns and pylons, each with its own core of steel girders. I stray....

Another type of enterprise may be a corporation with a government-recognized board of directors (either self-continuing or elected by investors who have bawt shares and have a claim that the enterprise make a dollar profit.) In this usage, "enterprise" covers even the huge technocratic-bureaucratic internal-political organizations otherwise known as "mega-corporations"; often these enterprises are transnational to one degree or another.

Too often we are unspecified, ignorant of a knowlegeable Vollenhovian problem-historical grid for mapping the techniques of humans over time, a charting competent to illuminate a Dooyeweerdian typology of kinds of enterprises. By the way, an enterprise is not an economy. Yet both can be measured by common indeces based on the quantifications and ennumerations that, for instance, accompany a monetary system. Such as: Dollars. Pounds. Euros. Yens. Yuans. International currency matters and currency exchange are a vital economic function in the sense of "the economy," the juridics of the economy by which the government presents and maintains the integrity of the currency.

There is no reason to consider any kind of enterprise as untypable, either as to its technical aspect, its economic aspect (for instance, in its dollarability, profitabilbity, and productivity, among several other key features) as well as its sociality as a place where people work together [samenwerking], with intergroup health or without it).

By the way, you can now download a digitally-scanned set of Dooyeweerd's epochal work, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought in two PDFs, as offered by Steve Bishop's blog entry "At last...." (All of life redeemed blog, Dec25, 2008).

Yes, at long last, thru Kerry Hollingsworth at The Reformational Publishing Project, Steve has been given permission to republish digitally a scanned edition of D's NCTT. A hearty thanks to both Kerry and Steve, and to coworkers and especially the donors who made this long-sawt digital version possible. Potentially, the PDFs will open to many new readers the massive, pensive work (3 volumes in print plus a fourth volume, that being a volume of Index). And, of course, full-throated thanks to Dooyeweerd himself for this wonderful gift, he being dead now these several years.

Of course, a classic example of Dooyeweerd's thawt on the enterprise occurs when he cites the hybrid type of business/family blended structure known as "the family farm," a form of farming[business] that is losing ground in Europe and North America, in favour of engrossment of corporate and mega-corporate farming and dairying. It's this model that prevails among the membership of the very astute discipleship within farming constituted by Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario.

What is the reigning political philosophy nowadays, Obama days.

2008-12-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

The truth is that many people have discarded George Will's notion of socialism in American government, and policy on the Federal level at least. Please see Will's thawts on American socialism well-entrenched, as quoted in the preceding blog-entry (refWrite page 3, Nov19,2k8). Now, Obama is preparing to take office, to become Mr. President, no mean appellation in the USA.

A salute to Barack Obama, President Elect who is about to become Mr. President USA. Notice that we've added a cropped pix from the cover of TIME on the sidebar of refWrite's frontpage. You have to scroll down the page somewhat far to get to the column of worthies (at the top of which totempole is the grand benign visage of Her Majesty, Queen of Canada). After the Canadian leaders, come the Americans. Bush and then the man of the hour in the national politics of the country. It's a great mugshot, grinning with only a wiff of the gathering cares and burdens of nation and world. And carries forward the series of images metaphorically structured to constitute a totempole for today. May God in grace bless the person we all want to call "Barack," but who hesitate because we also want to maintain the decorum of this office of service thru this institution of/for public justice, the American State, the Federal Government, so we set any over-familiarity aside as a matter of refWrite's own editorial policy.

Albert Gedraitis, refWrite publisher

George F. Will on "Socialism" USA today.

2008-11-19T16:59:00.000-08:00

George F. Will, celebrated and often lacerated for his somewhat conservative views, ever so idiosyncratically holds forth on "Socialism? It's already here," Washington Post (WAPO) Nov16,2k8.

Conservatism's current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket's end-of-campaign crescendo of surreal warnings that big government -- verily, "socialism" -- would impend were Democrats elected. John McCain and Sarah Palin experienced this epiphany when Barack Obama told a Toledo plumber that he would "spread the wealth around."

America can't have that, exclaimed the Republican ticket while Republicans -- whose prescription drug entitlement is the largest expansion of the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society gave birth to Medicare in 1965; and a majority of whom in Congress supported a lavish farm bill at a time of record profits for the less than 2 percent of the American people-cum-corporations who farm -- and their administration were partially nationalizing the banking system, putting Detroit on the dole and looking around to see if some bit of what is smilingly called "the private sector" has been inadvertently left off the ever-expanding list of entities eligible for a bailout from the $1 trillion or so that is to be "spread around."

It's in vain that one would hope for a consistently public-justice policy from either Republicans or Democrats during the next election cycle, and perhaps well beyond.

Bruce Wearne initiates an Exchange on Public Justice and Emerging World Society

2007-03-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

Introduction to an exchange: Dr Bruce Wearne is a sociological theorist who has been working for decades toward a new approach that would encompass an overall historical/critical communal sociology, the philosophy of society, and a sociological-philosophical introduction to the various social sciences, including diverse and often-contradictory special-science methodologies. All this preoccupies Dr Wearne in linking the ensemble of his specialist concerns, to the best directions discerned thru a dialogical reformational-Christian philosophy as such.

As an Australian with such a vocation, among Wearne's related endeavours have been some promising efforts to offer advisory comment (articles, interviews with leading refChristian thinkers, and editorials)--a number of which have seen publication in the public press, not only in Australia but elsewhere also in the SouthWest Pacific--notably most recently in the Republic of Fiji press, where a military coup has eroded democratic parliamentary and electoral process. Along with his avenue of articulation in the press and his more fully academic studies, Dr Wearne aims to help the reformational intellectual community clarify the key idea of public justice, and help cultivate more widely a sense of normative direction for Christian-democratic sentiment wherever it appears around the globe and for the far-flung small groups now existing and emerging in the future, around the philosophically-rich reformational version of Christian Democracy.--Owlb

Some Ideas toward a Clearer Christian Democracy contributive to Emerging World Society by Bruce Wearne, PhD

We are ... confronted with cumulative problems that derive from how we typically understand the world in which we live - so we have to find a path that will allow us to make a contribution to public justice while also critically uncovering the taken-for-granted political dogmas that we have inherited and by which we, in repentant retrospect, confess we have been compromised and would still be content with that compromise if God Himself hadn't spoken into our lives His love and reassurance.

The perspectives that have been proffered in recent years by such colleagues as Jon Chaplin, Jim Skillen, Bob Goudzwaard and Paul Marshall [all with earned doctorates, the first two in political studies, the third in economics, and the fourth in political theory - Owlb] are important but I think we'd agree with them and say that such work is but a beginning. The main thrust of their many critical questions raises for me from the prior question of how we are to develop social political analysis from a normative perspective, that is from a standpoint that accepts our God-given stewardship. I'm not so sure that we can say that reformational social-political theory has made much of an advance in this regard, even though I think the "beginning" is itself extraordinarily profound.

Bob Goudzwaard made this comment back in 1978 regarding "Norms for the International Economic Order" :

Thinking from the perspective of norms creates the greatest certainty concerning the steps which ought to be made at the beginning; the thinking from the perspective of future goals renders uncertain precisely those first steps which ought to be taken. However, in thinking and acting from the perspective of norms, the final future remains considerably more vague than in thinking from the perspective of goals. (This holds at least on paper; after all, how many goals that were set have ever been achieved?) Yet if we should begin with turning in these concrete directions, and comparable ones; the question arises whether anything at all can then be said about the possible structure of world society.

The best characterization of such a world society that might possibly emerge - whose more specific content we shall consciously omit - would be that of a decentralized responsibility. To clarify that characterization it may be meaningful to contrast it with two other possible types of constructing the world society - decentralized freedom and centralized responsibility.

As I read our situation, that approach 30 years on is still only barely developed. Part of that is due to the lack of engagement with social-science thinking that has burgeoned since that time. But though our movement may have big ideas, we are still a small and slender outfit.

Jim Skillen made this comment in 2000. "Politics in One World" (Philosophia Reformata 2001):

In contrast to liberalism, Christians should view the state as a genuine community of public-legal solidarity that ought to protect the diversity of non-political responsibilities and organizations through which the image of God also expresses and develops its capacities of service to God. In contrast to socialism, Christians should see the state as a differentiated, public-legal institution, which exists to recognize and uphold human freedom and responsibility to the God who always transcends the limits of political solidarity.

Jon Chaplin's recent Cambridge inaugural is another discussion which would allow us to put such questions into a framework where meaningful answers can be sought.
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Notes

1.) Jonathan Chaplin "Speaking from faith in democracy"
URL: [ http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/KLICE/pdfs/Inaugural.doc ]

2.) Bob Goudzwaard and John van Baars "Norms for the International Economic Order" in Justice in the International Economic Order - Proceedings of the Second International Conference of Reformed Institutions for Christian Higher Education; Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (Aug13-19,1978: pp. 223-253) with replies by J D van der Vyver (pp 254-267); and James Skillen (pp.268-271). My cited text of Gouzwaard, at p.247. Skillen refers to the same material at p.268 (it is slightly different and gives strong indication that Goudzwaard's Dutch English was edited from an earlier version - but then the editing was somewhat uneven).

4.) James W Skillen "Politics in One World" Philosophia Reformata [66:1 2001 pp.117-131); with replies by Turaki (pp. 132-138); Jeong-Kii Min (pp. 139-141). Quote at p.121.

5.) Paul A. Marshall. Essay > "Liberalism, Pluralism and Christianity" in Marshall and Chaplin eds Political Theory and Christian Vision: Essays in Memory of Bernard Zylstra (University Press of America: Maryland, 1994; pp. 153-162). Book > Thine is the Kingdom: A Biblical Perspective on the Nature of Government Politics Today (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986). Address > "Human Rights Theories in Christian Perspective" (ICS Inaugural, Toronto, Ontario; 1983). See also his more recent material on Islam, Christian life-style.

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A reply from Albert Gedraitis, publisher, refWrite blogs (Apr28,2k7)

The idea of an international economic order is a welcome one to me, because to my mind it brings into a single concept several structures and dynamics that have been present in the world for a long time, but which already have undergone such extensive restructuration (without an inner reformation of humanity's communal economic life) that we must think in terms of something newly arrived, yet of which we "ain't seen nuthin' yet." The dynamics hurtle on, thresholds appear and are surpassed, and structures are impelled to further change, further restructurations.

But coming to that conclusion as a student of the Vollenhoven-Dooyeweerd Cosmonomic Philosophy and the expansive explication of its value for economics by Dr Bob Goudzwaard puts one in the awkward position of looking at other "totality" terms in Herman Dooyeweerd's New Critique of Theoretical Thought. My caution on this score arises from a longtime struggle with the NCTT's text in regard to Dooyeweerd's apparent rejection of both the term "society" and the term "universe" as indicative of totality-concepts. Compared to the totality-concept of, say, Marxism regarding "society," Dooyeweerd can look momentarily much like a nominalist. However, of course, Dooyeweerd in regard to a normative concept of society is neither a conservative (organic society) nor a liberal (each human individual is real but everything else societal is only nominally so, except insofar as group words denote contracts between sovereign individuals). "International economic order" or, as I prefer, "global economic order" would have similar problems in the V-D's Cosmonomic framework. The key to their difference of conceputalization--different from Marxism, conservatism, and liberalism all at once--is the two philosopher's idea of sphere specificity (with sphere universality and sphere sovereignty).

Our concept then is one of an economy as a specific differentiated sphere still underoging development in the 21st century, a universal sphere that pervades all of life without defining the whole of that life (as there are other spheres with which it must interact without destroying them), and a sovereign sphere with its own internal but not absolutely autonomous law, governance, and decision-making by responsible persons.

How do we get to a normative concept of "the economy" (or, in order to avoid any tendency toward reification or platonizing, perhaps we should prefer to speak simply of "an economy." Until now it has been easiest to conceive of each national economy as "an economy" (tho in external relation, perhaps formatively so, with other national economies). One important reason for that priortization of national economies has to do with the determinative power of a modern state by various means to constitute the leading formative power in constituting a national economy within its territorial jurisdiction (contra reformational political philosopher Jonathan Chaplin, I still think along with Dooyeweerd of a national state as territorially specific at any given time, normatively speaking ... but contra Dooyeweerd, I think of its specific territoriality as a good candidate for indicating the "foundational function" of a state, despite Chaplin's suggestion that Dooyeweerd's entire line of thinking about "foundational fuctions" is obsolescent). A national economy has tended for a long time to receive prioritization among economic levels, with a specific national state as the leading formative power over each such economy--yet without any exclusion within a national economy of subeconomies, or regional economies, and/or local economies. You gather my drift I'm sure.

Local economies, regional economies and/or subeconomies, national economies, the global economy. You will also understand from the very starkness of the term "the global economy" that national economies under constraint of one or another nation-state, do not entirely control the h+er reaches of our present constantly restructurating global institutions of economic qualification (here I'm using V-D's notion of qualifying function typifying each societal sphere). In theorizing this way, of course, no judgment is implied that "everything is in order" in the continually emerging and restructuring global economic order. "Order" here does not imply normative realization of what could and should be an empirically normative global economic order, God willing.

Can we get there from here? In turning both "norms" and "goals" into technical terms in the language of christianly-motivated economic theorizing, and then assigning "goals" to Enl+tenment-originated conceptualizations (could this be a case of what Dr Albert Wolters has called "the genetic fallacy"?), I tend to wonder just how I may use that word at all in expressions like "economic goals." The immediate concern for Goudzwaard, you, and myself is how best to take a communal stance vis a vis the UN's Millenium Development Goals, which were adopted to move humanity toward a more just global economic order, in part by making sure every human being has clean air, clean water, and poverty is reduced by one half by the year 2025, let's say.

If I understand Goudzwaard correctly, he is uncomfortable with prioritizing, in our economic discussions and theorizing, human-set goals that we (all the people and institutions of earth) may or may not meet, or be able to meet. He insists that we stress what should be: breathable air, drinkable water, enuff food and adequate shelter for all humans, and sufficient income to enable functioning adequately in our contemporary monetized economy/ies. From the standpoint of the coming of the Kingdom of God, the summum bonum of a Christian ethos, according to Herman Bavinck, that's what starting with norms, rather than goals, in economics, is all about: simple justice due to each human person by way of communal caring.

Beyond that, when I look at this stance--this principial stance in regard to the global economic order--I find myself faltering in regard to the shouldness of Goudzwaard's formulation. I have no problem with deontological ethics as such. But what about the road from should to will, do, achieve. Don't we need to translate our ins+ts into all-embracing norms of simply economic justice for all, translate them into some kind of goals, with a lesser standing perhaps than norms in our economics systematics, but with some sort of standing somewhere? I note in passing that Paul Marshall presented a lecture a decade ago on the difference between norms and goals in the task of the state, and he did not find the norms of/for the state to include elimination of poverty. For him, that could become a state's main goal, but its normative task was more purely juridical and swordful. (Sorry, but I can't document this lecture-text at present and haven't begun to do justice to Dr Marshall's thinking at the time in these regards. Here's a guess at the source > Paul Marshall, "Two Types of Rights" Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 661-676; 16 pages.)

Having outlined some of my questions on the subject matter of your initial mini-essay, I now must mention my strong doubt about the normativity of raising the hopes of the 2/3s world living in poverty by campaigning to end poverty by such-and-such a date. Rather, the mentioned agenda is a perfect example to me of goalism--whether of the UN's MDG variety, the Make Poverty History variety, or the Micah Challenge variety. I find myself bewildered as to whether these are designed to whip middleclass people into activism with delusional schemes, or to offer soporific hope to those multiplied millions who are living at death's edge each day for lack of food, or are simply designed to salve the consciences of those who create these programs and the people they hire to man their activistic campaign-and-propaganda institutions, thus qualifying to name themselves a "movement." Other than such presumably subconscious motives, I don't want to call into question the good intentions of any.

But a problem leads me to such bewilderment: The number of poor grows daily and exponentially. Those with the least means, or even with no means, to feed, clothe, shelter, and educate offspring, these are the most fecund segment of the human population as to reproduction of our species. It seems to me that the best activism would teach people in dire straits to restrict the number of offspring they bring into the world of guaranteed misery, humanly speakingm and remaining respectful of those who make it out of the morass into an economically participative life, with help or without.

My other sense of a program and the utility of proximal goals would have to do with creating an economic non-charity non-state movement of enterprises that can help influence the global economic order from the inside, toward its more normative structuration. There are many forms of enterprise that could be created or could be renewed thru inner reformation of already-existing enterprises. Such enterprises, when committed to working together, could link to do what can be done to provide education for work and income also in the 2/3s world, and jobs. A whole host of questions of development would then have to be answered in regard to each and every particular, as is the case for every other notion of global economic order. But when businesses and corporations of christian-motivation are competently qualified for economic leadership (as aside from political leadership as such), some of the millions of souls in poverty's miseries can "move on up" to participate in expanding opportunities for others born into poverty.

But not all. Very far from all of those born into poverty can be drawn into productive economic life, however modest. Besides greed, demographic realities also play their anti-normative roles. Sad to say. And campaigns offering false hope must be confronted, and hopefully re-directed.

Another round in the discussion: Bruce to Albert (May1,2k7)

Thanks for your extensive comments on my reflection - I hope we can stimulate some further comment from any readers who pass by.

The issue of economics in a needy world immediately raises questions about the "leisure" we have to do the kind of work we are now discussing. Pierre Bourdieu has developed a concerted sociological critique of the assumptions of the scholarly leisure basic to 20th century social science (skholè) and when we consider the momentous problems you have outlined we begin to sense how certain ideas about scholarly "leisure" undermine a "normative" social scientific calling in service to all our neighbours. "Academic freedom" becomes a goal we want to preserve (see Bourdieu Méditations pascalienne 1997; Pascalian Meditations 2000). This is right at the heart of the topic at hand when we realise that ours is now a scholarly stewardship which has been internationalized and globalized and even if we remain a tiny fragment - let alone remnant - of helpful scholarship, we still need each other to prod us into good works with the hope of our calling in Christ. So thanks for your efforts and your prognostications.

But to specifically comment on your reply:

1. Totality Concepts

Dooyeweerd's 1950 address on the concept of sovereignty (a good candidate for a totalizing concept I'd think) discusses how the UN functions in relation to "the law of nations". He writes (my pidgin translation) "The realization of the idea of a civitas maxima would have entailed the termination of international law. The latter displays, as soon as it has developed, like all law, a correlation of coordinational and communal functions." Now here is one totality concept - civitas maxima - that Dooyeweerd suggests is purely speculative. His critical route around that scholastic doorway involves his preliminary transcendental "structural distinction between communal and interindividual or inter-communal relationships." (New Critique III pp.176-177). In this sense the global economic market-place - whatever that structure is - coincides with an incredible diversity of communal social relationships and inter-relationships at many levels. It will take much research and careful analysis to identify trends and to understand the issues before us in any one locale.

2. You are right to observe that so much of this builds historically upon the intense post-industrial revolution nation-building via the strengthening of national/ regional economies by national governments. And I would suggest that any attempt to identify the leading characteristics of the international or global economic order, not only has to also give an account of how international law is formed, and how it functions in national polities and international organisations, with their rich fabric of international "cross-stitching" but also rediscover the norm of stewardship in that context. If I read you right you seem to be asking, "OK how then should we interpret the normative demands that arise because of a globalised economic order and what are our responsibilities within that?" I'm not sure I have the thorough grasp of what is actually going on - in terms of financial investment, investment, trade agreements, the policies of WTO and WB and other such institutions, how banks and other financial institutions are locked into the system of "touring capital" (as Zygmunt Bauman refers to it) - to give much more than merely reiterate how we should begin such analysis. (As I pour myself a cup of PNG "Fair Trade" coffee).

3. The distinction between a goal-oriented and a normative approach to social science. You are right to suggest that a normative analysis of goal-setting (in organisations, by governments, at a personal level) is indeed part of the (reformational) scientific task. In that sense we wouldn't want to deny that the development of such an analysis is indeed a valid goal for Christian social science. As to the UN's Millenium Development Goals, I suppose that the problematic managerial goal-oriented ideology has worked its way into what is, after all, a highly commendable effort to reduce world poverty. But it is not only a matter of setting a goal to change the "global economic order" but also implies a reorientation (repentance!) in our "comprehensive economic responsibility"? According to Calvin it is not the Pope and certainly not Christian Philosophy, no matter how purged of pagan notions, that is Christ's representative on earth. No, it is the poor and needy who have that role, he says. It is with them that Christ identifies Himself in his lowly standing among us. That leaves us well and truly exposed with our trousers around our shoes, doesn't it! But then the prophets enjoin us to gird up our loins and get to work with deeds of righteousness.

4. I'd say the distinction between norms and goals - as formulated by Bob Goudzwaard - should be understood in terms of where we start the goal-setting process. If goal-setting is autonomous then norms are simply stuck in that autonomous treadmill we have decided for them. Then they become a kind of meta-goal, don't they? But then we need also to address that kind of perfectionism that gets obsessive about starting right, and instead undertake the kind of research that needs to be done to understand the situation we are claiming to address .... In A Christian Political Option Goudzwaard makes a plea for thorough and comprehensive research before political program formulation. In other words what was needed was "basic research of needs" in the political landscape.

5. Where you find yourself faltering with regard to Goudzwaard's "shouldness" I still would suggest that criticism of the neo-Kantian basis for contemporary economic theory needs to be done in a more thorough and complete fashion as well as ongoing thorough immanent critical analysis of J K Galbraith's theory of countervailing powers (and other prominent economic theorists as well).

6. I agree with you with regard to the UN Millenium Development Goals and the various efforts by our evangelical brothers and sisters and other Christians to wake up their fellow church members to their God-given global responsibilities. They confront the spiritual lethargy that results from "possessive individualism" having such a hold on churches but even such worthy efforts need careful and sustained understanding and analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of debt forgiveness and the Grameen Bank initiatives and the theories of Joseph Stiglitz.

I think Bob Goudzwaard got it right in the Preface to Capitalism and Progress: "Perhaps we are afraid of a genuine reflection because that would inevitably lead to a confrontation with ourselves" - ie the complexity we dare not confront is made impenetrable by the progressive hardness of "our" own hearts ... with our own makeshift solutions ...

Bruce

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Albert will reply in this second round, in due course.

Is global warming an absolute truth, now that an apparent preponderance of scientists and movie stars say so?

2007-03-14T16:03:00.000-07:00

A new orthodoxy has emerged to be widely treated as an absolute truth, itself a truth brawt home to me as I watched a chirpy super-enthusiast former politician argue in her irrepressibly-ditzy manner that climate change = global warming can not now be denied by anyone but nuts. There's a holocaust coming that will burn alive all life on Earth, except critters like those that may survive on Mars.

Obscure obscurantists like Marilyn Churley NDP, former Toronto Councillor, former Member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly, and now general gadabout, has received the final revelation--apparently. But hold! Just yesterday I noted that climate change in the direction of global warming (they are not quite the same thing) has already tken place on Mars, and that some astrophysicists now claim similarity for both the Earth's present problems and those of Mars in times past. The patterns of changes on the two planets are part of a macro-effect of changes on the Sun, at the center of our solar/planetary system.

This latter eventuality would bracket how we weit the factor of our human species' own contribution to climate change, regional warming and simultaneous regional freezing in patterns contrary to what has long obtained, etc. Among scientists, there remain those who claim that global warming and global freezing are mixed together in a simultaneous overall shift in weather changes generally on our planet, that are altering climates in several directions at the same time. Some bring in at this point, or independently, the shift of the magnetic North Pole from its location in polar Canada to a new place in Siberia.

Being quite interested in these developments and viewpoints, refWrite is committed to the much more sure point, distressing and literally sickening as it be, that pollution of the air and water must be addressed massively by society, economy, businesses, government. each family, and each individual. Pollution of air and water makes the air of my city unbreathable, in season makes taking a walk impossible. Maybe the same thing holds in all its debilitating effects also for you. Carbon-emissive transportation in all its forms, and factories which massively discharge carbon into the atmosphere are key offenders in stealing our clean air and water. Maybe that too includes you.

But what of all the rhetoric and competing activists who make the issue one greater than pollution (which is huge enuff), who ask us to dismiss counter-intuitively all of the increased cold, snow, ice, and winter wind in favour of a one-way doctrine of global warming? What of the intuition that climate change does not equal global warming? They are importantly different concepts. A sustained counter-discourse, both scientific and lay, is developing to the full-load scientistic doctrinalism now trying to stifle the critical spirit on all these issues. More within the laity's grasp, however, are the arguments that Christopher Horner brings forward in his recent dissenting tract, published below with permission of Human Events, where Horner's piece originally appeared. Horner is author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism (Regnery, 1957).-- Owlb

Christopher Horner, "Top 10 Global Warming Myths" (Feb20,2k7) Human Events:

10. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and global warming.

Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol’s energy-rationing scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the world’s population, economic activity and projected future growth. Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others, none of whom is in fact presently reducing its emissions. Similarly, claims that Bush refused to sign Kyoto, and/or he withdrew, not only are mutually exclusive but also false. We signed it, Nov. 11, 1998. The Senate won’t vote on it. Ergo, the (Democratic) Senate is blocking Kyoto. Gosh.

Don’t demand they behave otherwise, however. Since Kyoto was agreed, Europe’s CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the climate-criminal United States, a gap that is widening in more recent years. So we should jump on a sinking ship?

Given Al Gore’s proclivity for invoking Winston Churchill in this drama, it is only appropriate to summarize his claims as such: Never in the field of political conflict has so much been asked by so few of so many ... for so little.

9. Global-warming proposals are about the environment.

Only if this means that they would make things worse, given that “wealthier is healthier and cleaner.” Even accepting every underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably affect climate. Imagine how expensive a pact must be -- in both financial and human costs -- to so severely ration energy use as the greens demand. Instead, proponents candidly admit desires to control others’ lifestyles, and supportive industries all hope to make millions off the deal. Europe’s former environment commissioner admitted that Kyoto is “about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide” (in other words, bailing them out).

8. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world's poor.

Climate -- or more accurately, weather -- remains one of the greatest challenges facing the poor. Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however. Climate and weather patterns have always changed, as they always will. Man has always best dealt with this through wealth creation and technological advance -- a.k.a. adaptation -- and most poorly through superstitious casting of blame, such as burning “witches.” The wealthiest societies have always adapted best. One would prefer to face a similar storm in Florida than Bangladesh. Institutions, infrastructure and affordable energy are key to dealing with an ever-changing climate, not rationing energy.

7. Global warming means more frequent, more severe storms.

Here again the alarmists cannot even turn to the wildly distorted and politicized “Summary for Policy Makers” of the UN’s IPCC to support this favorite chestnut of the press.

6. Global warming has doomed the polar bears!

For some reason, Al Gore’s computerized polar bear can’t swim, unlike the real kind, as one might expect of an animal named Ursa Maritimus. On the whole, these bears are thriving, if a little less well in those areas of the Arctic that are cooling (yes, cooling). Their biggest threat seems to be computer models that air-brush them from the future, the same models that tell us it is much warmer now than it is. As usual in this context, you must answer the question: Who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes?

5. Climate change is raising the sea levels.

Sea levels rise during interglacial periods such as that in which we (happily) find ourselves. Even the distorted United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports refute the hysteria, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of increase over the past century of man’s greatest influence, despite green claims of massive melting already occurring. Small island nations seeking welfare and asylum for their citizens such as in socially generous New Zealand and Australia have no sea-level rise at all and in some cases see instead a drop. These societies’ real problem is typically that they have made a mess of their own situation. One archipelago nation is even spending lavishly to lobby the European Union for development money to build beachfront hotel resorts, at the same time it shrieks about a watery and imminent grave. So, which time are they lying?

4. The glaciers are melting!

As good fortune has it, frozen things do in fact melt or at least recede after cooling periods mercifully end. The glacial retreat we read about is selective, however. Glaciers are also advancing all over, including lonely glaciers nearby their more popular retreating neighbors. If retreating glaciers were proof of global warming, then advancing glaciers are evidence of global cooling. They cannot both be true, and in fact, neither is. Also, retreat often seems to be unrelated to warming. For example, the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro is receding -- despite decades of cooling in Kenya -- due to regional land use and atmospheric moisture.

3. Climate was stable until man came along.

Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and science text, just as “witches” were burned in retaliation for changing climates in ages (we had thought) long past. The “hockey stick” chart -- poster child for this concept -- has been disgraced and airbrushed from the UN’s alarmist repertoire.

2. The science is settled -- CO2 causes global warming.

Al Gore shows his audience a slide of CO2 concentrations, and a slide of historical temperatures. But for very good reason he does not combine them in one overlaid slide: Historically, atmospheric CO2, as often as not, increases after warming. This is typical in the campaign of claiming “consensus” to avoid debate (consensus about what being left unspoken or distorted).

What scientists do agree on is little and says nothing about man-made global warming, to wit: (1) that global average temperature is probably about 0.6 degree Celsius -- or 1 degree Fahrenheit -- higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen by about 30% over the past 200 years; and (3) that CO2 is one greenhouse gas, some level of an increase of which presumably would warm the Earth’s atmosphere were all else equal, which it demonstrably is not.

Until scientists are willing to save the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 billion per year thrown at researching climate, it is fair to presume the science is not settled.

1. It’s hot in here!

In fact, “It’s the baseline, stupid.” Claiming that present temperatures are warm requires a starting point at, say, the 1970s, or around the Little Ice Age (approximately 1200 A.D to the end of the 19th Century), or thousands of years ago. Select many other baselines, for example, compared o the 1930s, or 1000 A.D. -- or 1998 -- and it is presently cool. Cooling does paint a far more frightening picture, given that another ice age would be truly catastrophic, while throughout history, warming periods have always ushered in prosperity. Maybe that’s why the greens tried “global cooling” first.

The claim that the 1990s were the hottest decade on record specifically targets the intellectually lazy and easily frightened, ignoring numerous obvious factors. “On record” obviously means a very short period, typically the past 100+ years, or since the end of the Little Ice Age. The National Academies of Science debunked this claim in 2006. Previously rural measuring stations register warmer temps after decades of “sprawl” (growth), cement being warmer than a pasture.

It isn't necessary to endorse the positions implied by Horner's line of argument on the several issues being contested in his article. But the idea that science has spoken definitively by some massive majority of its qualifed practioners just does not hold; it's contrary to the nature of science ever to finalize the mass of evidence which is never complete, contrary to the mandate of science to stop the argument so that activists can have a full endorsement beyond question. Activists should not try to stop science's argument, which is basically with itself, with the schools and pools of practionarers in all their diversity of disciplines, new ones constantly emerging.

The role of activists is different. When they absolutize a course of action, and try to prevent all deviation, as was the case of the imbecility of the Kyoto Protocols which gave Communist China a carte blance to become the world worst unrestrained polluter, activism displays its own limitations. At the same time, this may be a moment for a united effort of many societal-spheres in concert to reduce drastically the pollution that violates our lungs with health-destructive particles and emissions, the pollution that poisons our drinking water, the pollution that makes both air and water expensive commodities that many of us can't afford any longer. -- Owlb

Fiji Today -- Two Infosources

2007-03-04T14:10:00.000-08:00

Special Feature on the Military Coup in Fiji Today

For the materials below, I thank Dr Bruce Wearne, a sociologist of Christian-democratic political outlook, based in Australia. The first item is a note from him, while the second is a legal document filed in the Fiji courts by the Prime Minister who was ousted by the military coup that is proving so destructive to all aspects of life in the Republic of Fiji. -- Owlb

Bruce writes:

Phew. It must be pretty humid in the Suva Court Precincts. I think that Laisenia Qarase is acting on the assumption that it is possible to resolve this matter through the courts and hence bring about some kind of stable constitutional resolution.

My reading is that any genuine Christian-democratic CD movement in Fiji is hedged in not least by interpretations that regard Christian as nationalist (ie ethno-nationalist). [There are nearly 500,000 Fijians whose ethnic origins are located in India, a demographic that is ethno-religiously connected chiefly to Hinduism. -- Owlb]

I take it that the CD seed is planted in the SDL [main political party of the govt coalition, Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua] but is actually slow growth with lots of other hybrids etc etc. [A knowledgeable correspondent] has said to me that his advice over the last three years to [SDL leader] Lesenia Qarase and his advisors on just this matter has been ignored, and [my correspondent's] piece which asserted that the SDL had betrayed the trust of the Fijian people and is going to need a decade to rebuild themselves as an authentic party for good, should be read in that light.

The second item of this refWrite page 3 Special Feature on Fiji Today, as mentioned, is a legal document the concerns of which are currently being tried in court.

AFFIDAVIT - Qarase’s challenge to the Interim govt: 2
Affidavit of Laisenia Qarase in support of an Originating Summons.

I, Laisenia Qarase of Mavana Village, Vanuabalavu, Lau, Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji Islands make oath and say as follows:-

1. That I am the lawful and democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji Islands.

2. That I make this affidavit on behalf of myself as Prime Minister of the democratically elected and lawful Government of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, and I am able to depose as follows –

(a) on the basis of personal knowledge of the matters contained herein, correspondence exchanged between the First and the Second Defendants and me or other members of my Government; or,

(b) where matters are not known to me personally, from information derived from the various forms of mass media and from sources specified.

3. That I make this affidavit in support of an Originating Summons filed by the Plaintiffs seeking this Court’s declaration that:

(a) the removal of the democratically-elected and constitutionally appointed Prime Minister, his Cabinet, other Minister, and members of Parliament by the First and Second Defendants by force of arms on or about the 5th December, 2006 was and is unconstitutional and unlawful;

(b) the usurpation of executive authority and power by the First Defendant on or about 5th December 2006 was unconstitutional and unlawful;

(c) the decisions and actions taken by the First Defendant in the purported exercise of executive authority, including the dissolution of the Parliament, the dismissal of a number of senior Government officials, the dismissal or termination of senior executives of statutory boards, the dismissal of members of statutory boards and Boards of some Government Commercial Companies; the suspension of the Chief Justice and the placing of the Chief Magistrate on forced indefinite leave are unlawful and unconstitutional, null, void and of no effect;

(d) the reliance by the First and Second Defendants on the doctrine of necessity to justify their removal of the lawful and democratically elected Government of the Republic of Fiji when and in the manner they did were, in all the circumstances prevailing in the country at the time, constitutionally and legally misconceived and unjustified, and therefore contrary to law and the Constitution;

(e) the actions taken by the First and Second Defendants in the purported exercise of their powers and roles contained in the repealed provisions of Section 94(3) of the 1990 Constitution is legally and constitutionally misconceived and inconsistent with the Constitution;

(f) the appointment of the first Interim Prime Minister, Dr Jona Senilagakali,, made by the First Defendant in the purported exercise of executive powers and authority of the President, along with the appointments by the first Interim Prime Minister of various persons to certain senior positions in the Public Service were and are unlawful and unconstitutional;

(g) the appointment by the President on the advice of the First Defendant of the First Defendant as the second Interim Prime Minister and other persons as members of the Cabinet of the Interim Government was an is unconstitutional;

(h) the declaration by the First Defendant of a state of emergency effective from 5 December 2006 and the subsequent promulgation of the Emergency Regulations in the purported exercise of the powers contained in Chapter 14 of the Constitution and the application and continuing application by the Second Defendant of the special emergency powers contained in the said Regulations were and are misconceived in law and fact given the circumstances prevailing immediately prior to the coup and are therefore contrary to law and the Constitution;

(i) the First-named Plaintiff remains the lawful and constitutional Prime Minister of the Republic of the Fiji Islands, and the members of his Cabinet, other Ministers and his Government remain the lawful and constitutionally constituted Government of the Republic of the Fiji Islands;

(j) any legislation proposed or promulgated by or under the unlawful Interim Government to grant immunity from all criminal or civil liability to the First and Second Defendants and any person who can be proven to have been accessory before or after their treasonous acts, is made contrary to law and unconstitutional, and is null, void and of no effect; and,

(k) the current Interim Regime cannot rely on the doctrine of effectiveness to ensure its legitimacy, and it remains an illegal regime because its defacto control of the country was imposed and continues to be imposed on the people by force of arms and not by popular acceptance or voluntary acquiescence. Defects in affidavit

4. That since the events of 6 December 2006 detailed below, I have been confined to my home village of Mavana on Vanuabalavu in the Lau group. I have made various attempts to return to Suva by air but have been denied passage by Air Fiji. I know of no reason why Air Fiji has denied me passage from Vanuabalavu to Suva, and although Air Fiji has denied this, I believe that they have been threatened or ordered by the First and Second Defendants not to transport me to Suva. Moreover, I received a phone call on or about 4 January, 2007 in which a person who identified himself as a Major in the Second Defendant threatened that I would be arrested by the Second Defendant, if I returned to Suva.

5. That as a result of these difficulties –

(a) I do not have easy access to my lawyers in Suva;

(b) I do not have access to official papers which could or should be used as exhibits;

(c) It has been very difficult for me to provide my lawyers proper, clear and full instructions for the preparation of my affidavit as a Plaintiff in support of our Originating Summons;

(d) I have been informed by my lawyers and friends in Suva that the Second Defendant is monitoring closely various arrangements which may enable me to access assistance from Suva, including the possibility of any Commisisoner for Oaths traveling to Vanuabalavu; and it has not been possible to find any Commissioner for Oaths to bring the original form of my affidavit to Vanuabalavu to enable me to have the same property sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths, as they all fear reprisal by the First and Second Defendant;

(e) It is, therefore, logically extremely difficult for me to properly swear and deliver an original affidavit as, I am advised and I sincerely believe the advice to be true and correct, the form of the High Court Rules requires; therefore, this affidavit is declared before a Justice of the Peace (because there is no Commissioner for Oaths on Vanuabalavu) and delivered to my lawyers by facsimile, and I undertake to abide by any direction from the Court which will address any evidential or procedural issues arising from this or any other non-compliance with the rules of the Court on account of the restrictions imposed on me and my travels by the First and Second Defendants;

(f) I have requested my lawyer in Suva to make whatever arrangement he consider proper and acceptable under the Rules for regularizing the form of this affidavit for filing as soon as possible; and,

(g) I hereby notify the Court that it may be necessary for me to file supplementary affidavits once normal access has become available to me. Background A: Results of 2006 general election and my appointment as Prime Minister.

6. That on 18 May 2006, I was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Fiji by His Excellency, the President of Fiji, Ratu Josefa Iloilovatu Uluivuda pursuant to section 98 of the Constitution, following a general election held in Fiji between 6 and 13 May 2006 in accordance with the Constitution and the Electoral Act.

7. That the results of the general election saw my party, the Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua (SDL) winning 36 seats in the House of Representatives. Following the agreement of two independent candidates to join the SDLP as a coalition, the total number of seats in Parliament held by the SDL and its independent coalition partners came to 38 out of 71 seats.

8. That as required by section 99 of the Constitution, I invited the Fiji Labour Party (FLP) through its leader to join my Cabinet to form a multi-party Cabinet and government. Upon his acceptance of my offer, I formed the first multi-party Cabinet and Government formed under the Constitution.

B. RFMF long-standing opposition against Plaintiff’s Government

9. That the First Defendant in particular and other members of the Second Defendant’s hierarchy have on various occasions since 2003 publicly opposed the Plaintiff’s Government and a number of its policies. Their public utterances against Government and its policies have differed in subject matter, style and intensity as and when issues arose over the last five years, but I believe that it cannot be seriously disputed that the First Defendant in particular and certain members of the Second Defendant’s hierarchy have developed a clear pattern of deliberate and constant opposition against Government.

10. That I append hereto marked Annexure LQ 1 a summary of most of the principal events of opposition referred to herein, including copies of the various correspondence and records of oral communication in meetings between the First Defendant and me, and I understand that other persons named as Plaintiffs in this Action and others will be producing other relevant documents the contents of which they have personal knowledge of.

11. That the local media has also widely reported the First Defendant’s public utterances of his open criticism and opposition against my Government over the last five years or so. I append hereto marked as Annexure LQ 2 the copies of various articles, randomly selected, published by local daily newspapers, radio and television outlets published in the past five years which attribute comments made by the First and Second Defendants in opposition to my Government and its policies. Such information has not been subsequently rebutted or denied by the First or Second Defendant.

More Info:

Is Russia beginning a move on Fiji?

Politics: Military coup: More on the troubles of the Republic of Fiji in the southwest Pacific

Politics: Coup: SouthWest Pacific island-state of Fiji undergoes coup, dismissing constitutional government

Obama the Presidential Hopeful tests the waters, he'll let us know by February 10

2007-01-19T23:59:00.000-08:00

refWrite has previously published an article and also a newsbit on the Junior Senator from Illinois--who now seems poised to run for US President. A leading reformational political thinker/activist in the Christian-democratic tradition makes some observations and near-prognostications regarding Obama's political future in Capital Commentary. With appreciation: "The Capital Commentary may be photocopied or retransmitted in its entirety but not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission. The commentaries do not necessarily represent an official position of the Center's but are intended to help advance discussion." Center for Public Justice. -- Owlb

Obama for President?
by Dr. James Skillen, Center for Public Justice USA (Jan19,2k7)

On February 10 he will tell us if he's running. Then he'll have about 20 months to tell us what he wants to do if elected president. Who is this political phenomenon and what does he have to offer?

Illinois Senator Barack Obama is exciting because he looks new and sounds different. Millions of Americans are tired of politics as usual—increasingly partisan and nasty. He appears to be as dissatisfied as many of us are with Washington's tiresome, unproductive games and liturgies. And he speaks of Christian faith as part of his reason for dissatisfaction.

He says in his speeches and in his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope that he wants to transcend "the smallness of our politics" and lead a "project of national renewal." In his web-site announcement on January 16, he identified himself with those who are hungry for "a different kind of politics." It is not clear, however, what Obama means by a new politics. He sounds like a creative moderate, but his voting record is that of a traditional liberal Democrat.

Former Senator Gary Hart says that "truly great leaders possess a strategic sense, an inherent understanding of how the framework of their thinking and the tides of the times fit together and how their nation's powers should be applied to achieve its large purposes." Obama's new book "is missing that strategic sense," says Hart (New York Times Book Review, 12/24/06). Will the Senate newcomer be able to develop that sense in the coming months?

The challenge Obama faces is considerable. A vast majority of Americans is dissatisfied with the George W. Bush administration, and a narrower majority expressed its distaste for the Republican-controlled Congress last November. But only 12 years ago a majority was fed up with the Democratic-controlled Congress. Americans can more easily say what they don't want than what they want. And when they express their desires, it is usually in the contradictory language of asking government to elevate the nation and solve big problems but without raising taxes or burdening them with too much red tape.

Obama must do at least three things to become a leader and not blaze and fall like a shooting star.

First, he will have to cast his Senate votes during the next two years in ways that give us a glimpse of his creative plans for the future. The Senate provides him with a large platform on which to craft bills and amendments, explain his votes, and build on those actions to define his campaign for national renewal. If his Senate performance does not reveal something unusual, I'll predict that he is going to rely on personality and rhetoric to try to win a popularity contest in 2008. But that's not new; that's old politics.

Second, Senator Obama needs to begin to identify and shape the team he wants to work with if elected president. Only foolish or forgetful voters believe that a popular lone ranger can change Washington and the world after entering the White House. Who will help Obama fashion his policy agenda? Who will help him work in a bipartisan way with Congress? Who will help him break the chains of the old politics? Without answers to these questions, there is little reason to expect much that is new.

Finally, Obama must show what he intends to do about the critical condition of our national electoral and legislative systems. The reason today's politics is so "bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence" (as he says in his book), is that interest-group politics, congressional management, and the electoral system reinforce one another to produce the outcomes we experience. Obama winning an election will change none of this. As president he will have little power to advance a new politics unless during the campaign he declares his intention to reform systems and then, after victory, leads Congress to make substantial changes. If he doesn't do that, today's voters will again—and quickly—be searching for someone new to redeem the nation in 2012.

Senator Barack Obama life as a teenager, rather wild

2007-01-04T21:28:00.000-08:00

.
Click up this one with the recently-publicized teenage story of the fascinating Illinois Senator (D, Liberal Christian).

--Owlb

10 scholars explicate local perspectives on Islam and Human R+ts

2006-12-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

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The following is from an ad of the book-notice type sent out as an email by AfricaFiles, a leading source of information on Africa by Africans. --Owlb

Islam and Human Rights
studies directed by Abdullahi A. An-Na'im, Prof of Law, Emory University

Islam and Human Rights: Advocacy for Social Change in Local Contexts reflects the outcome of the Islam and Human Rights Fellowship Program, a three-year project at Emory University School of Law, Atlanta, USA. The Program brought ten scholars and activists together to explore the relationship between human rights and Islam, with the objective of helping people within Islamic societies promote and protect human rights from an Islamic perspective.

The book begins with a Foreword by Prof. Abdullahi An-Na'im, Director of Program, which explicates the idea and approach of the program and the ten studies. This introduction is followed by an article authored by each Program Fellow, reflecting the theoretical framework, research methodology, and fieldwork experience of their particular project. The ten articles cumulatively cover a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, and advocacy issues and perspectives on engagements between Islam and human rights in diverse local contexts.

The articles in the collection are divided into three categories:

1. The category Gender Justice, Sexuality, and Health Rights
includes (an) article on: Islam and women's rights in Senegal;

2. The category of Civil and Economic Rights
consists (mainly) of articles on: Shari'ah in Northern Nigeria; and the
rights of slum dwellers in Morocco;

3. The category of Commentary on Islam and Human Rights
includes: an evaluation of a rights paradigm beyond secularism and Islamism
for Nigeria; and an examination of human rights in Islam between universalistic
and communalistic perspectives.

The individual articles and the collection as a whole represent a rich engagement between human rights scholarship and human rights advocacy, in keeping with the program objective of promoting the protection of human rights in Islamic societies and communities around the world.

This book marks an innovative and original contribution to:
the discourses of human rights theory, practice, and advocacy;
Islamic law;
Islamic studies;
women's rights, gender studies; and
fieldwork methodology.

It is an invaluable resource for scholars, rights activists and advocates, NGOs, policymakers, and anyone with an interest in issues of Islam and human rights.

About the Author:

Abdullahi A. An-Na'im is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law and Director of the Religion and Human Rights Project at the Emory University School of Law, Atlanta , USA. He is the author of Toward an Islamic Reformation: Civil Liberties, Human Rights and International Law (1990) and the editor of numerous books including Human Rights Under African Constitutions: Realizing the Promise for Ourselves (2003); Cultural Transformation and Human Rights in Africa (2002); Proselytization and Communal Self-Determination in Africa (1999); and The Cultural Dimensions of Human Rights in the Arab World (in Arabic) (1993).

He is a visiting professor with the International Institute for the Study of Islam at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. Before joining Emory in 1995, Prof. An-Na'im was executive director of Human Rights Watch/Africa in Washington, D. C.

About the Book:

ISBN: 81-88869-18-X,
Pages, 477, Price Rs 800 (India),
Elsewhere US$ 40/-

Published by:
Global Media Publications,
New Delhi, J-51-A, 1st Floor, AFE,
Jamia Nagar,
Okhla, New Delhi-110025,
India
Tel: 91-11-55666830, 9818327757;
E-mail: info@gmpublications.com

Tags: Barnewall on USA dollar

Economics: Currency: Experienced banker Marilyn Barnewall reflects on America's dollar in a time when crisis looms

2006-12-27T18:25:00.000-08:00

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ChristianBusiness.com had done us all a favour by publishing Marilyn Barnewall's article of December 4, 2006. The article is concerned with economic problem of the American dollar, about which there has been much commentary in recent months. The USA dollar is of the h+iest order of world-economic significance, and a fundamental crisis of the dollar affects all national economies--beginning with the monetary values of imports, exports, and foreign aid. Perhaps the last term "foreign aid" underscores the strong American orientation of Barnewall's piece. But she has a wider range of concern, even perhaps of nostalgia for an age where a different ethos made economic nationalism a definite force for American prosperity that benefitted the working class and the smallfarm owner-worker. The article is digitally republished here with the permissions of the author herself and of the editor of the original publisher,ChristianBusiness.com, Chris Rowley.

The Drama of the Dollar
by Marilyn Barnewall
Here we are entering 2007 on what looks like a very strong economy. Everyone who is supposed to know says it is a very strong economy.

Maybe someone can explain to me why on December 1, 2000 Ford Motor Company stock was selling for $24.19 per share and on December 1, 2006 it is selling for $8.04 per share. The dollar took a beating this week. It deserved it. I believe it is priced from 40 to 50 percent too high and foreigners are tired of holding dollar debt on our international trade imbalance while watching the dollar depreciate.

Housing sales and re-sales are down at record levels across the country. I don’t give investment advice and am not an investment advisor, but if I owned Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac stock, I’d find another investment. People have forgotten the warnings of Alan Greenspan last summer. He said neither entity should be carrying loan portfolios in excess of 300 to 400 billion dollars… both carry mortgage portfolios of close to a trillion dollars.

During Thanksgiving week, the dollar lost three percent against the Swiss franc, 2.2 percent against the euro, 2 percent against British Pound Sterling, and 1.8 percent against the Japanese yen.

What does it mean?

I think it means, as Congressman Ron Paul said in a recent press released, “There are quite a few reasons a relatively free country allows itself to fall into such an ethical and financial mess.” I think it means we are reaching the end of the 200 year cycle democracies usually have before failing. Remember, our founding fathers hated the concept of democracy and even avoided use of the word. America was founded as a republic, not a democracy.

Why do democracies fail every 200 years? Because they evolve into a form of government wherein the wolves outnumber the sheep and everyone is about to vote on what will be served for dinner. Guess what’s going to be on the menu?

When people find they can gain access to the public treasury by voting for this party or that, and one party makes bigger and better promises as to what give-aways will be to this group or that, the most “generous” party (wolves) gains the votes of those (sheep) who view government as Big Daddy with Big Pockets.

One of the free Internet newsletters to which I subscribe is Bull (Not Bull). It is written by Michael Nystrom. In his October 3, 2006 issue, he discusses the Dow’s new high… he says it is phony high. It is a very thought-provoking article and I recommend it.

Basically, Nystrom points out that an average – like the Dow Jones average – only has value when placed in some kind of historic context. For example, when we speak of the average temperature this winter, we need to run a comparison with temperatures from past winters for the statistic to have any meaning.

The stock market deals in dollar values, but does not take into consideration the value of the dollar – the temperature of the dollar, if you will – over a period of years. Nystrom did a study based on a comparison of the value of the dollar and the impact it has on the wonderful new records being set by the Dow Jones.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is composed of thirty stocks. When a new high of 11,754 was reached on October 3, 2006, Nystrom says it was a phony high. No consideration was given to the value of the dollar or inflation… and he is right. Both do impact the value of everything… not just the actual, real value of stock, but bacon and gasoline and housing, too.

In his article, Nystrom points out that of the thirty Dow Jones Industrial stocks, one-third of them posted their all time highs in the last century… before 2000 Another ten stocks achieved their all-time highs in 2000. Only seven stocks made their new high in 2006. Of those, only three were within five percent of their 2006 high on October 3rd., the day the new Dow Jones record was set. To make a long story short, 70 percent of the Dow Jones stocks used to calculate this average are down by 20 percent – or, more. So, how can Dow Jones set a new record?

Using the Federal Reserve’s own Consumer Price Index Inflation calculator, to equal the 11,750 Dow of 2000, the Dow Jones average would have to attain a high of 13,817.

Nystrom also draws a comparison of actual Dow Jones value by utilizing gold as a comparative. Gold has always reflected actual economic value of all assets. Nystrom says: “Measured in gold, today’s Dow is equivalent to only about 5,100! Using an average gold price of $275 in 2000, we establish our year 2000 benchmark: 10,750/275=39. Using today’s gold price of $580, we have 10,750/580=18.5. From 39 to 18.5 is a 52.5 percent drop, which is equivalent to only Dow 5,000.”
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Why is Ford stock at $8.04 today when it was at $24.19 six years ago? Will Ford be able to turn the company around in the current economic climate?

Any one of the automobile manufacturing companies could turn their companies around very quickly with one simple change in the way they do business and in the way they advertise it. How many of us would buy nothing but a Ford product if we heard the following message:

“The Ford Motor Company announced today that it is going back to the Model T roots created by the company’s founder, Henry Ford. The company will be putting out for bid only to American-owned companies the purchase of all parts used in its automobiles. According to the company, Ford will once again be a car made in America for Americans and by Americans and with American materials. Contracts will be awarded on the basis of hard costs – no consideration will be given as to whether the provider is a union or a non-union shop.”

I have said in prior articles about the airline industry that the management capabilities at our largest companies are non-existent. The guy or gal with the best educational pedigree is recruited for senior and executive management positions. If you graduate from Harvard or Yale or Stanford or Wellesley or some other expensive university, you are viewed by major corporations as the cream of the crop.

The problem with that logic is, the costly universities and colleges are all run by “educators” I have in prior articles termed “passive/market investors.” They are usually liberal, secular and progressive. Their primary motivator in life is security -- that is why they become tenured professors. The twenty-year research project I did on these groups prove they are security-driven people. Thus, our corporate leaders were taught and are being taught theories of business by education leaders who have no understanding of risk management.

Guess what? The success of free enterprise is dependent upon managing risk. The success at the Ford Motor Company is dependent upon good risk management. The company’s leaders just don’t know how to do it… and, like those who educated them, are probably risk-averse.

And that’s what is wrong with the Fortune 500 companies in America. They would be better off finding bright, innovative risk managers among the labor pool and giving them the necessary management training to lead their organizations. Those people currently sitting in executive management offices have not been trained in how to manage risk in a free enterprise environment.

But there is a down-side to that concept. Labor unions do not allow innovative risk managers to emerge from the labor pool.

If the government wants to stimulate industrial production in America, let them pass legislation that rewards companies for creating more jobs in this country for (proven) American citizens. Reward them how? Remove any capital gains tax penalties for the stockholders of companies who create more jobs in America for Americans rather than non-Americans. The investment in such a company’s stock would immediately soar out of sight (as would the price per share).

The truth is, there are a number of things that could be done to straighten out the financial mess in which we find ourselves. All that is required is a little risk management skill and an understanding of the American marketplace… two skills being bred out of our young people who attend university and who are told throughout their lives they should depend on Big Daddy government to do things rather than take control of their own lives.

Pogo was right. “I have seen the enemy and it is us.”

Author's Bio:

Marilyn Barnewall, in 1978, was the first female to be named vice president in charge of a major loan and deposit portfolio at Denver's largest bank. She started the nation's first private bank, resigned to start her own firm and consulted for banks of all sizes in America and other countries. In June 1992, Forbes dubbed Barnewall "the dean of American private banking."

Author of several banking texts, she has written extensively for the American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, and was U.S. consulting editor for Private Banker International (Lafferty Publications, London/Dublin).

Marilyn can be reached at marilynmacg "at" juno "dot" com.

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