UT Austin Anscombe Society

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Liberalism’s Logic and America’s Challenge: A Reply to Schlueter and Muñoz

March 6th, 2013

The Founders’ vision of the “common good” was not the pre-modern natural law conception of an objective human good, but a conception of “mutual advantage” shaped by the social contract framework. This logic of liberalism has driven our country to its current political and cultural problems.

I am again gratified and grateful for this debate about the American experiment with my friends Nathan Schlueter and Phillip Muñoz. Of course, a subject of this importance deserves sustained attention, and I can only hope that this discussion will continue in many venues, as this, our last round atPublic Discourse, concludes. While I am given the last word here, clearly the last word on the matter hasn’t been spoken.

Today I challenge Schlueter’s view that the founders sustained the pre-modern natural law tradition. Even then-contemporary opponents of the founders’ handiwork recognized that they relied too much on social contract theory, thus presuming a false view of human nature that over time would encourage private interest over public weal, and undermine virtue and religious belief. I also respond to Muñoz’s charge that a recognition of liberalism’s internal logic constitutes a form of Marxist determinism. My analysis has a different pedigree, particularly Platonic and Tocquevillian analyses of democracy’s tendencies.

It’s tempting to point out that Schlueter and Muñoz seem to disagree more with each other than with me: Schlueter insists that “natural law liberalism” grounds the founding as the continuity of ancient and medieval political philosophy, while Muñoz stresses the revolutionary consent theory of political legitimacy—with its defense of “natural rights”—as the founding’s basis. Schlueter admires the founding for building on a centuries-old development of natural law theory; Muñoz admires it for introducing consent as a new and just way to legitimize governments.

While one must grant to Schlueter that many documents of the founding era use the pre-modern language of “common good,” these invocations are often still made in a contractual context, as Muñoz highlights. That is, the pre-modern language has been re-defined by a new philosophical frame.

Read more at Public Discourse.

Nine Percent of Yale Students Surveyed Said they Have Accepted Money for Sex

by NATHAN HARDEN - FIX EDITOR on MARCH 5, 2013

"Sexologist," Jill McDevitt (Image by Jill McDevitt)

Nine percent of Yale University students who participated in a recent survey on sexual behavior reported having been paid for sex at least once. Three percent said they had participated in bestiality, and more than half said they had “engaged in consensual pain” during sex.

The survey was administered to a group of about forty students on Saturday, during a workshop meant to prompt students to “reconsider their idea of ‘normal’,” according to the Yale Daily News.

The workshop was taught by Jill McDevitt, a 27-year-old “sexologist” who also owns a sex shop in West Chester, Pennsylvaina, which sells vibrators and various sex toys.

She has posted videos of her educational workshops online, including one in which she demonstrates oral sex on a carrot.

“People don’t think a college student at an Ivy League university would accept payment for sex but I’ve never had asked this question on a college campus and not had ‘yes’ answers,” McDevitt told the Yale Daily News.

It is not clear to what extent the participants in the survey represent the student body as a whole. However, it will come as a shock to many that a significant number of students at an elite Ivy League school have accepted payment for sex, or have engaged in bestiality.

McDevitt’s workshop was part of a series of sex-themed events held at Yale University over three days, called “Sex Weekend.”

Another event during Sex Weekend included instruction in sadism and masochism, based on the book 50 Shades of Gray.

McDevitt also asked students to report on their “incest fantasies.”

One student who participated in the McDevitt workshop, Alex Saeedy, spoke favorably of the event. In a statement to the YDN, he said he felt the point of the event was “to bring up things we thought were so taboo and desire or urges we criticize are just regular parts of sexual psychology.”

Tuesday, 5 March 2013

Police chaplain sacked for defending traditional marriage on personal blog

BY HILARY WHITE

LONDON, March 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A volunteer chaplain for a Scottish police force has told MPs he was removed from his post after expressing his views opposing the government’s plans to create “gay marriage.”

The Rev. Brian Ross, a former minister of the Church of Scotland has told a Commons committee that he fell afoul of the “equality and diversity policies” of the Strathclyde Police after he said on his blogthat marriage is between a man and a woman.

Rev. Brian Ross

Now, in a written submission to the Commons committee examining the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, Rev. Ross warned that there would be more such cases should the government’s gay “marriage” bill, passed in the House of Commons last month, be made into law. Ross said that his dismissal from his volunteer position is “typical of the kind of situation that could, and would, arise” under the proposed law for believers working in any publicly funded venue, such as hospital chaplaincies.

“Just before the summer, a senior officer in one of the divisions read my personal blog and objected to my expressed support for traditional marriage as, it was claimed, it went against the force’s equality and diversity policies. I was summoned to a meeting, the end result of which has been that my services have been dispensed with,” Ross told MPs.

Yale hosts workshop teaching sensitivity to bestiality

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By Katherine Timpf, on Mar 05, 2013

On Saturday afternoon, Yale hosted a “sensitivity training” in which students were asked to consider topics such as bestiality, incest, and accepting money for sex.

Sexologist Dr. Jill McDevitt.

During the workshop, entitled, "Sex: Am I Normal," students anonymously asked and answered questions about sex using their cell phones, and viewed the responses in real time in the form of bar charts.

The session was hosted by “sexologist” Dr. Jill McDevitt, who owns a sex store called Feminique in West Chester, Pa.

Survey responses revealed that nine percent of attendees had been paid for sex, 3 percent had engaged in bestiality, and 52 percent had participated in "consensual pain" during sex, according to an article published in the Yale Daily News on Monday.

Event director Giuliana Berry ’14 told Campus Reform in an interview on Monday that the workshop was brought to campus to teach students not to automatically judge people who may have engaged in these sorts of activities, but rather to respond with “understanding” and “compassion.”

"People do engage in some of these activities that we believe only for example perverts engage in,” she said. “What the goal is is to increase compassion for people who may engage in activities that are not what you would personally consider normal.”

McDevitt referred to the range of activities discussed in the workshop as “sexual diversity.”

Teenage rapist was obsessed with online porn, says judge

A judge has said a teenage rapist wanted to “experiment” after days of “trawling through” online porn when he attacked a 14-year-old girl.

This comes as the NSPCC has warned that children as young as five are committing sexual offences because internet pornography is warping their views of normal behaviour.

Meanwhile, an investigation in Scotland found that children as young as eight are sharing sexual images with each other via social media.

Exploitation

And the deputy children’s commissioner for England has told a committee of MPs that head teachers are failing to tackle sexual exploitation over fears about their school’s reputation.

A 15-year-old boy bound, gagged, beat-up and raped a 14-year-old girl in an attempt to re-enact hardcore porn he had seen on the internet.

Teeside Crown Court heard how the boy was led by a more forceful, younger friend to carry out the attack in April last year.

Internet

The Judge told the boy his “interest in sexual matters was heightened” having spent many days “trawling through internet pornography”.

He sentenced the teenager to three years in prison.

The victim’s father said action should be taken to prevent youngsters being able to view hardcore pornography.