Hugo Decker

Legal theory & all things evolutionary - amateur gardener & baroque connoisseur

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

https://t.co/3Kt1rqYIhs

[the thicc husband & father @lukeisamazing]

one of history’s great ironies is that every person who’s studied Ancient Greece has had this exact same reaction upon visiting Greece for the first time. the Ancient Romans were so annoyed by this that they forced the Greeks to reenact their old epic histories for tourists

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

One last thing. I think that, having belatedly done the honourable thing, we should leave Arday alone for him to fade into obscurity.

We shouldn't allow the academics and managers who promoted him as a PR exercise, then threw him under the bus, to get away with it.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

@DavidWootton69 So much of academia runs on trust. If you read a footnote with some document in an obscure archive, you take for granted that it's not being misrepresented, and that it exists. I'll be sorry when we lose that culture, but maybe we have already.

[James Diddams @JamesDiddams]

I can’t believe how misled I was about @FukuyamaFrancis’s “End of History” thesis. The whole last 1/3 is him ruminating on whether liberal democracy can sustain the thumos needed to defend democracy and make life worth living. Not a smug treatise about how liberalism won forever.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

@blagden_david The entire History faculty of the University of Hertfordshire just got fired. And this will continue for as long as the sector is unable to gain political support. And this stuff doesn't help, at all.

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

Iets met airco’s in de WZC’s…?

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

Een luciditeit die volstrekt afwezig is in de lage landen waar “Wilsvrijheid” (waar we niet van weten wat het precies is) het “argument” is van iedere discussie.

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 BREAKING: Andy Burnham says the assisted dying debate should wait until after palliative care and social care is fixed

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

He's right, you know.

[Yuan Yi Zhu @yuanyi_z]

Yes, the bit where they hang the slave girls makes sense in pagan morality but not in Christian morality. You've got it, champ.

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

Euhm, there is no necessary contradiction between them, i.e., “less misogynistic” may also mean “more Christian”?

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

For a week conservative Nolan apologists have claimed that his adaptation was secretly based and “Christianized.” Now here is Nolan himself saying he changed the story to make it less “misogynistic.” Hate to say I told you so. I will now be accepting retractions and apologies.

[Jeremy Christiansen @TradVat2]

"[T]he Pandects are the greatest repository of sound legal principles, applied to the private rights and business of mankind, that has ever appeared in any age or nation."--James Kent, Commentaries on American Law

[Fr. Gabriel T Mosher, OP @lukei4655]

This is correct and it upsets me when Catholics forget how the Church has inculturated these sorts of things since the beginning.

Now, this happening during Mass would be a different story. That’s inconsistent with the tradition. But coming from New Mexico this sort of celebration in honor of our Lord, Our Lady, or the Saints has been common for 500 years+. Look up the history of the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo Pueblo as a prime example of a major dance in honor of St. Dominic that has been going on longer than the existence of most (if not all) modern nation states.

[Steve Stewart-Williams @SteveStuWill]

The V-Shaped Perception Gap: The stronger people’s political commitments, the less accurate their understanding of what the other side thinks. The politically disengaged have the most accurate picture of their fellow citizens’ views.

https://t.co/yHPuTwBS7T

[King of Megcenae @agameganon]

They said Spider-Man was a fake story.

Until they found the ruins of New York, exactly where the story said it was.

[Hans-MartientenNapel @hmtennapel]

“Als normale partijen normale standpunten niet op een normale manier vertegenwoordigen, gaan abnormale partijen het op een abnormale manier doen.” #democratie #migratie https://t.co/jBBSr2vpCL

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

Wat voor prachtig wetenschappelijk onderzoek hadden we kunnen voeren met al dat geld voor, pakweg, Deurne? Hoeveel airco’s hadden we kunnen plaatsen in wzc’s?

[Hugo Decker @HugoDecker]

Tikkeltje wereldvreemde opinie wanneer premies (zorgpremie maal hoeveel?) omhooggaan om verlieslatende luchthavens te sponsoren.

[Matthias Diependaele @MDiependaele]

𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘇𝘄𝗲𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻

Het debat over openwaterzwemmen gaat in werkelijkheid over veel meer dan zwemmen alleen. Het gaat over hoe wij als samenleving omgaan met vrijheid, verantwoordelijkheid en risico.

Jarenlang gold het principe: zwemmen mag enkel waar het uitdrukkelijk is toegelaten. Met deze hervorming draaien we dat om: zwemmen mag overal, tenzij het verboden is. Sommigen zien daarin vooral de risico’s. En die zijn er uiteraard. Open water is geen zwembad. Stromingen, temperatuurverschillen en onverwachte gevaren vragen voorzichtigheid en gezond verstand.

Maar de echte vraag is daarom niet óf er risico’s zijn. Die zijn er. De vraag is hoe we daarmee omgaan. Moet de overheid zoveel mogelijk risico’s proberen uit te sluiten? Een samenleving wordt niet weerbaar door elk risico vooraf uit te sluiten. Integendeel. Weerbaarheid ontstaat wanneer mensen risico’s leren inschatten, afwegingen maken en verantwoordelijkheid opnemen voor hun keuzes.

De beslissing over openwaterzwemmen staat daarom symbool voor een bredere maatschappelijke keuze. Vertrouwen we burgers voldoende om zelf verantwoordelijkheid te nemen? Of vertrekken we steeds vaker vanuit het idee dat elke mogelijke fout vooraf door de overheid moet worden voorkomen?

Vrijheid vraagt verantwoordelijkheid. Maar verantwoordelijkheid kan alleen bestaan als mensen ook de vrijheid krijgen om keuzes te maken. Natuurlijk moeten gevaarlijke locaties verboden blijven en moet er duidelijke informatie beschikbaar zijn. Risico’s verstandig beheersen is een kerntaak van de overheid. Risico’s volledig uitsluiten is dat niet. Want wie elke vorm van risico uit het leven wil bannen, beperkt uiteindelijk ook de vrijheid van mensen om te leven, te leren en sterker te worden.

Misschien is de belangrijkste winst van deze hervorming zelfs niet dat meer mensen zullen zwemmen. Wel dat we opnieuw erkennen dat burgers meer zijn dan mensen die beschermd moeten worden. Het zijn mensen die verantwoordelijkheid kunnen dragen. En precies daarin schuilt de basis van een vrije en weerbare samenleving. #opinie

[Ben Shapiro @benshapiro]

IMHO, a lot of conservatives are missing the Biblical forest for the woke trees in Nolan's Odyssey. Yes, the casting of Elliot Page is silly and egregious. But here's the thing: Nolan's "The Odyssey" is an apologia for Christian morality poured into a Greek vase.

The entire movie is rooted in what Nolan terms "Zeus' law." That law is: "Treat others as you would want to be treated, because anyone might be a god." Now, clearly, there's nothing like that in Greek mythology. It's not implicit in Homer. It's a direct rip from Biblical morality, substituting "because anyone might be a god" for "because man was made in the image of God."

Nolan then takes this rule and uses it as his moral glue: the idea is that Odysseus, in utilizing the Trojan Horse, violated Zeus' law and led to full-scale slaughter. That sin has led to the unleashing of broader globalized sin (the "sea peoples" who don't respect Zeus' law and are invading surrounding areas). This is a highly Biblical message: that sin is infectious, and that sin also affects the world at large, not just the sinner.

Odysseus has sinned, and he must atone for that sin through self-imposed exile. He must also sacrifice his own aspirations to restore the possibility of a moral universe: because he has unleashed catastrophic violence and violation of Zeus' law -- manifest in the suitors' cynical use of Zeus' law to eat Penelope out of house and home -- he must violate Zeus' law one last time and then accept the penalty, which is exile.

This is a not only a movie that will make millions of people go read classical literature again. It also reinforces the idea that violation of the Golden Rule has disastrous consequences.

I dunno. I'd consider that, on balance, a large-scale win for civilizational values, when weighed against the woke casting of Elliot Page or the dumbass discussion over whether Lupita Nyongo is good-looking enough (she is, and for the record Diane Kruger is German, not Greek).

[David Criekemans @DavidCriekemans]

Nu begrijp ik pas dat van de pudding. Amaai, veel, en smakelijk. 🙄

"Het is maar 38 miljoen euro." Hoeveel moesten de universiteiten ook alweer besparen? Juist ja. #kerntaken

https://t.co/5mUdPvMbUb