Search results for ""St Augustine's Press""

First published in 1980, The Meaning of Conservatism is now recognized as a major contribution to political thought, and the liveliest and most provocative modern statement of the traditional “paleo-conservative” position. Roger Scruton challenges those who would regard themselves as conservatives, and also their opponents. Conservatism, he argues, has little in common with liberalism, and is only tenuously related to the market economy, to monetarism, to free enterprise, or to capitalism. It involves neither hostility toward the state, not the desire to limit the state’s obligation toward the citizen. Its conceptions of society, law, and citizenship regard the individual not as the premise but as the conclusion of politics. At the same time it is fundamentally opposed to the ethic of social justice, to equality of station, opportunity, income, and achievement, and to the attempt to bring major institutions of society – such as schools and universities – under government control. Its root conceptions are those of loyalty, allegiance, community, and tradition. The conservative vision of society is one in which autonomous institutions and private initiative predominate, and in which the law protects the shared values that bind the community together, rather than the rights of those who would blow the community apart.

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Global temperatures have increased since 1880. New data show that solar impacts (radiation and magnetic flux) have increased by the same amount and follow the dips in temperature from 1938 to 1970. The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that, based upon computer models, increased solar absorption by CO2 and other greenhouse gases (GHG) are overwhelmingly the basis for temperature increases. But zigzag increases in global temperatures do not track with minor straight-line increased energy absorption by GHG. Rather, such increases follow closely the major zigzag changes in solar impacts emanating from our sun, no different from the past millions of years, as has been supported by multiple climatologists and other scientists. In short, if GHG play a role, it is minor in the 0.26% warming since 1880. The sun is responsible for the primary change, and political fixes such as envisaged in the Kyoto Treaty will not change global temperatures measurably but will mean a drastic decrease in worldwide output of goods, with calamitous effects on millions of people who are ill-prepared to suffer immense decreases in their standards of living. John Zyrkowski begins with the irrefutable, uncontested raw data available from government sources on temperature fluctuations, solar impacts of radiation and magnetic flux, and CO[subscript 2] absorption rates. He then uses Excel functions to demonstrate that the IPCC report used by proponents of the human cause of global warming is fatally flawed. The data doesn't provide the answer the IPCC said it would. The evidence is in. Before we go bankrupt, read It's the Sun, Not Your SUV and make up your own mind.

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Originally published in Polish in 2019 by The Lethe Foundation, this book demonstrates the relevance and importance of Paul Elmer More (1864–1937) and Irving Babbitt (1865–1933). Their collective legacy is one of responsible and truly thoughtful living. Their treatment of Humanists and their diagnosis of modernity is an important theme in this work, and the indication of the political consequences of humanism. This is a protreptic book. Its main goal is to encourage people to undertake independent studies or more generally, simply to think independently. If we want to think for ourselves, and not like preprogrammed humanoids, we can’t do so in a vacuum. We have to lean on something. In the Author’s view, the more than century-old writings of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt are perfectly suited to the role of such a support for us, living in the here and now. They make it possible for us to dig ourselves out from underneath the heaps of opinions, “principles” or “theories” that allegedly can’t be rejected, that we’re obliged to follow, but that have a paralyzing and dumbing-down effect on us, making our lives from the outset seems like the dream of a childish old man." ––Taken from the Preface by Pawel Armada

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“The Analytic Thomist,” Rob Koons, delivered the 2021 Aquinas Lecture at the University of Dallas. Here he engages the possibility of a bridge between philosophy and metaphysics proper. Koons boldly lays out his position: without Aristotelian metaphysics, there is no Aristotelian philosophy of nature, and there is no philosophy of nature in Aristotle without acknowledging his natural science. His lecture thus challenges Thomists and their respective approaches to hylomorphism and their all too frequent quickness to discard it. (Koons lays down the gauntlet. if one denies hylomorphism there can be no transubstantiation!) A bonus addition to this volume in the Dallas lecture series is Koon's “Aristotle, god and the Quantum.”

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