Deja Failure

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com In his paper of 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger simply went the extra step, to tell us what that regime is. He reminds us that "Western Civ" created free markets, and not vice versa; and inevitably, that the Roman Catholic Church created Western Civ. Like every other component of a high civilization, the market economy is, in itself, a mixed blessing, therefore a dangerous idol. All my adult life, it seems, I have been explaining to libertarians that this is the difference between us: that we're both in favour of free markets, but only one of us is also in favour of civilization. I am not a social liberal, like most of them, but rather an intense social conservative. Moreover, I hold that all civilizations remain "socially conservative" until such time as they begin to collapse: as true of Confucian China as of the Christian West. The rebuilding we need begins with church and family.