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Entry: Pagans are devout; Straussians not so much Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/pagans_are_devout_straussians_not_so_much#23249 Post contents: Let's define some words: PAGANISM: The pagan cultus is <i>do ut des</i>: I give a sacrifice to a god, so that he may give good things ("sacraments") to me. I manipulate the god. The pagans kept the <i>ordo</i> of their liturgy secret, lest enemies could manipulate a god against them. The Judeo-Christian god cannot be manipulated. The Jewish cultus (Exodus 25ff and Leviticus) and the Christian cultus ( Holy Mass) is eucharist = "thanksgiving". EQUALITY. Equality does not mean "sameness", as it does for Cultural Marxists. It means, following that Personalist philosophy that develops out of Realist Phenomenology, that each person has the ontological status -- personhood -- as each other person. See John Crosby, <i>The Selfhood of Human Persons</i>. RIGHTS. I follow Hohfield: rights are (1) three-term, not two as in Locke and Hobbes: a) the right to something, b)he who holds this right, and c) he who has the duty to provide the something. (2) Thus the right of one is combined always with the duty of another. Hohfield says there are four kinds of such rights: claim rights, liberties, liabilities, and immunities. Under communal justice, some rights are indeed held by everyone, and to deny this is to deny the Common Good itself; under distributive justice some are held only by certain people on the basis of merit (desert), need, ability, position with respect to the common good, and degree of risk taken. Again following the Personalist tradition of Crosby, by his ontological status as person, a person has rights, and these rights are thus "universal" to the extent that person is found everywhere. If the wise Dr. Fleming and others wish to attack the rights tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, I'm with them. But there is another rights tradition. I agree with Burke that obviously when rights are also a particular culture's tradition and patrimony, they are obviously more secure. That doesn't make them any less "universal". See Burke on the rights of the people of India. Sent at: 2008 11 23