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Tag: Discipline
Quote of the Day: The Path to Freedom Is Discipline
“Discipline means to prevent everything in your life from being filled up. Discipline means that somewhere you’re not occupied, and certainly not preoccupied. In the spiritual life, discipline means to create that space in which something can happen that you hadn’t planned or counted on.” – Henri Nouwen
Discipline, especially in the 20th century, got a bad rap. The word seemed to remind people of rigid, prim people who always wanted to follow the rules, and who had no imagination. It was a way of life that some eschewed because they believed it limited their freedom and enjoyment of life.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Vermeule’s Gleeful Illiberal Legalism
Few have been brave enough to flesh out what the Ahmarist, or “anti-Frenchist,” vision of the common good should be. Some have said articulating specifics is beside the point, that Ahmarists’ refreshing achievement is unapologetically asserting a common good exists, even if they decline to say what, exactly, it is. And then, there are guys like Adrian Vermeule, writing in The Atlantic, brave enough, at least, to flesh out a vision of sorts. Vermeule calls it “common-good constitutionalism”, which he describes as “an illiberal legalism that is not ‘conservative’ at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.” When Vermeule writes,
[U]nlike legal liberalism, common-good constitutionalism does not suffer from a horror of political domination and hierarchy, because it sees that law is parental, [emphasis added] a wise teacher and an inculcator of good habits. Just authority in rulers can be exercised for the good of subjects, if necessary even against the subjects’ own perceptions of what is best for them—perceptions that may change over time anyway, as the law teaches, habituates, and re-forms them. Subjects will come to thank the ruler whose legal strictures, possibly experienced at first as coercive, encourage subjects to form more authentic desires…
In our Newsmaker Interview, Bob talks with Max Eden, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the gravely misguided policies that he believes are contributing to shocking tragedies such as the Parkland school shooting, the subject of his new book, Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students.
Stories of the Week: At Edison High School in Philadelphia, students are in the building – but not in the classroom. Is the district gaming the attendance tracking system? Does the competition from charter schools drive up overall student achievement – in charters and traditional district schools – in cities? A new report from Fordham’s David Griffith sheds some light. In Arkansas, a Little Rock school board member calls for decertifying the teachers union. Is this legal? Bob checks in with Patrick Semmons of the National Right to Work Foundation about the rules around monopoly bargaining.
Restoring the Patriarchy?
I think it would be a good idea. Oh, not the legal aspects of it: with two narrow exceptions, I think men and women should be treated the same under the law. Rather, I think we should restore the cultural aspect of patriarchy, the idea that the father has a special authority and a special responsibility within the home, and that men, in general, have special obligations within society.
Men are, in general, more powerful (by which I mean more powerful than women; all the comparatives here refer to men relative to women because there are only two kinds, male and female). Men do most of the creating and most of the destroying, impose most of the structure, cause most of the mayhem. Men are the principal actors in society by virtue of their greater drive and aggression and strength, their lesser interest in people, their greater interest in things and in the manipulation and control of things.
Biology made us that way. We don’t have to like it, but not liking it doesn’t make it untrue.
Susan’s Free Guaranteed Successful Dieting Plan!
I know. Losing weight is hard. When you get older, it’s even harder. You think that maybe the latest fad diet might do the trick, although in your heart you know that best-selling writer has no magic to offer for your weight struggle.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you can do it! Throw away your diet books, your internet print-offs, and the latest recommendation from a friend who is the worst example of a well-managed diet. (Don’t you hate people who tell you how to eat as they gobble down a cheeseburger and fries?)
My recommendations are not easy. They are not based on government dictates of a healthy diet. They will not feed your wounded spirit or reduce your over-active appetite. You probably won’t like them. But they will work. No measuring. No groups. No counselors. Just li’l ol’ me and my time-tested cooking and practices. So here goes:
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In Defense of Discipline
If you’re fortunate, at some point in your life, you’ve played a sport on a championship-level team. Luckily, I have. However, if you’ve played a lot of team sports, you’ve also played on mediocre or bad teams. Unluckily, I have.
You can tell the difference.
On good teams, the players compete to make themselves and their teammates better. They run the extra mile. They don’t jog when they’re supposed to be sprinting. They urge each other on, and pay attention to what everyone is doing. They criticize — not attack — each other when they fail. They encourage each other (although soft pleasantries aren’t required). They push. They strive. When you’re surrounded by champions, you can’t help but push yourself. And when you fail, on championship teams, your teammates pick you up. Get ‘em next time. Don’t give up.