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It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday,
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay."
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree,
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with red dye number three.
He told his niece, "It's Christmas Eve, I know our life is not your style,"
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and its been awhile,"
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.
The food was great, the tree plugged in, the meal had gone without a hitch,
Till Timmy turned to Amber and said, "Is it true that you're a witch?"
His mom jumped up and said, "The pies are burning," and she hit the kitchen,
And it was Jane who spoke, she said, "It's true, your cousin's not a Christian,"
"But we love trees, we love the snow, the friends we have, the world we share,
And you find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere."
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And where does magic come from? I think magic's in the learning,
'Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans only pumpkin pies are burning.
When Amber tried to do the dishes, her aunt said, "Really, no, don't bother."
Amber's uncle saw how Amber looked like Tim and like her father.
He thought about his brother, how they hadn't spoken in a year,
He thought he'd call him up and say, "It's Christmas and your daughter's here."
He thought of fathers, sons and brothers, saw his own son tug his sleeve, saying,
"Can I be a Pagan?" Dad said, "We'll discuss it when they leave."
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.
Cloth $32.50 0-226-55663-8 Spring 2006
For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned[This article considers what feminist ethics might be able to offer public law and challenges the idea of ‘public’ law when strategically invoked by private interests. The article argues that ostensibly neutral phenomena, such as the public law–private law distinction, norms of universality and adversarialism are key technologies of power that facilitate the ‘new corporatism’. It is suggested that ‘care’, which is commonly assumed to be a corollary of feminist ethics, is problematic because it is associated with what is termed the ‘fictive feminine’, an impoverished notion of femininity within the popular imagination. An ethical feminist consciousness can nevertheless contribute to a new vision of justice by incorporating the perspective of the ‘other’, which involves effecting a dialogue between the universal and the particular.]
Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics by John Casey at Questia Online ...
Man as person is absolutely free to choose his
destiny, his values, even his nature. His existence as a person, and
hence as a moral being, is not determined by something called
'human nature'. Morality must be concerned with man in his
freedom, and the moral law is the law of freedom. Ideas such as
these we can associate with Spinoza, Kant, and Sartre. Kant argued
that since the moral law must apply to all rational beings generally,
then it must apply to man simply as a rational being. No truly
moral command could be based on man's 'empirical' nature -- upon
particular desires, strengths, or skills.
In fact, the concept of a person, and its consequences for values,
is a focus of ideological disagreement. 'There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor
female: for ye are all . . .' 5 persons. To insist that someone is above
all a person is to insist that all these other characters he may have
are irrelevant to that distinct pattern of response that is appropriate
to rational beings. To say that someone's colour, or sex, or caste is
irrelevant to his personhood is usually to say that it is inappropriate
or wrong to withdraw certain sorts of consideration from him
because of these features or accidents of birth, or to accord certain
sorts of consideration to him because of them.
Pagan Virtue: An Essay in Ethics. (book reviews)
This book presents the author's reflections on the "pagan" cardinal virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and practical wisdom (phronesis) as depicted by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. Casey sees these virtues as pagan because they "are undeniably worldly . . . , include an element of self-regard, and . . . rely on material conditions for their fulfillment" (p. viii). Christian virtue, by contrast, centers on the next world, emphasizes humility, and is independent of the vagaries of fortune because it depends (as Kant articulates in the Grundlegung) ...
The Sense of the Past:
Bernard Williams
Essays in the History of Philosophy
Edited and with an introduction by Myles Burnyeat
Bernard Williams' insistence that morality is about people and their real lives, and that acting out of self-interest and even selfishness are not contrary to moral action, is illustrated in his "internal reasons for action" argument, part of what philosophers call the "internal/external reasons" debate.
Philosophers have tried to argue that moral agents can have "external reasons" for performing a moral act; that is, they are able to act for reasons external to their inner mental states. Williams argued that this is meaningless. For something to be a "reason to act," it must be magnetic; that is, it must move us to action. How can something entirely external to us – for example, the proposition that X is good – be magnetic? By what process can something external to us move us to act?
Williams argued that it cannot. Cognition is not magnetic. Knowing and feeling are quite separate, and a person must feel before they are moved to act. Reasons for action are always internal, he argued. If I feel moved to do X (for example, to do something good), it is because I want to. I may want to do the right thing for a number of reasons. For example, I may have been brought up to believe that X is good and may wish to act in accordance with my upbringing; or I may want to look good in someone else's eyes; or perhaps I fear the disapproval of my community. The reasons can be complex, but they are always internal and they always boil down to desire.
With this argument, Williams left moral philosophy with the notion that a person's moral reasons must be rooted in his desires to act morally, desires that might, at any given moment, in any given person, be absent. In a secular humanist tradition, with no appeal to God or any external moral authority, Williams' theory strikes at the foundation of conventional morality; namely, that people sometimes do good even when they don't want to.
The National Christmas Tree Association's Web site claims that real tree sales outnumber sales for artificial trees 32.8 million to 9.3 million. But artificial trees are used year after year, and studies commissioned by the artificial tree industry show that 57 percent of all Americans actually own fake trees.
Further, the NCTA claims that plastic trees are made in Chinese sweatshops, harbor cancer-causing and poisonous chemicals, and can go up in flames at the strike of a match.
Real trees, it says, are renewable, recyclable and biodegradable. Nurseries proudly tell customers that one evergreen tree produces enough daily oxygen for 18 people.
Sweat-free carols at Melbourne fashion retailer
by pc Tuesday December 19, 2006 at 07:06 PM
As in previous years, the FairWear anti-sweatshop campaign took its Christmas sweat-free carols to town, visiting this year fashion retailer Rich, one of far too many who have so far refused to sign up to the Homeworkers Code of Practice ...
Away in a Sweatshop
to the tune of Away in a Manger
Away in a sweatshop where no one can see
The immigrant seamstresses work constantly.
Conditions are awful, the pay is absurd
The boss he will fire them if they say a word.
Away in a fact'ry, an ocean away
Young girls making shoes for a dollar a day.
But please don't complain about worker exploitation
Cause this factory's in a Most Favored Nation.
Away in the Congress, the Senators fat
Count up their PAC dollars, pass NAFTA and GATT.
They couldn't care less about workers in need
These corporate whores traded their conscience for greed!
Slaving in a Sweatshop Wonderland
to the tune of Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Here is another reason why we need a social wage in Canada, one that would include wages for housework. Single family tax credits are for the rich, we need a real living wage for all workers including homeworkers.
Deck the halls with unpaid labour
For a certain Bethlehem-born babe, seasonal swag is all about gold, frankincense and myrrh. But for personal saviours closer to home - namely, Canadian moms - a new survey suggests the more appropriate gift is $10,017.
That's what the average mother would collect if her holiday efforts were remunerated in current market terms, according to data from Service Canada and the British drugstore giant Boots.
The five-figure payday draws from a British survey of 2,000 mothers of children age 16 and younger, each of whom was polled on the number of holiday hours she spends wearing 11 seasonal hats: costume designer, craftsperson, personal shopper, event planner, financial manager, public relations officer, interior designer, chef, chauffeur, nanny and housekeeper. Compensation was then determined using Canadian labour market information from Service Canada for each of the jobs.
See:The income trust sector plunged in the wake of the federal government's bombshell announcement of tax changes, and it dragged the TSX index down with it. Analysts described a bloodbath as income trust investors saw more than $20 billion in paper losses, and pulled out of companies that had planned on converting to the legal structure.
He fired Adrian Measner, the board's president and a 34-year veteran of the organization, on Tuesday.
"It's time for the wheat board to make a buck for Canadian farmers and to quit fiddling around in the political game," Strahl said.
The minister made his announcement at a staged rally west of Winnipeg. Farmers who oppose the wheat board's current monopoly on international wheat and barley sales surrounded him.
Greg Arason, a former wheat board president, is the interim president. Arason supports the government's plan to end the board's monopoly.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will shunt aside embattled Environment Minister Rona Ambrose early next month in favour of one of his top lieutenants, sources tell The Canadian Press.Jim Prentice, Indian affairs minister and head of cabinet's powerful operations committee, is expected to take on the pivotal environment portfolio.
He is to be replaced at Indian Affairs by Peter Van Loan, now heading up the Intergovernmental Affairs Department, say government and Conservative party sources
.
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose told reporters Monday: "I know that my position has been widely publicized by the media, but so far there doesn't appear to be any takers," she said
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