From a great post by Steve Hayward at Powerline that focuses on the views of Martin Luther King. There we find this quote from King:

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

“Eternal law.” “Natural law.” Supplemented in the comments by this.

From Rabbi Mordechai Finley on origins of moral law:

“The being that created the universe had the power to bring into being a universe – the one we know of – with the energy and mass of 140 billion galaxies. This being created the laws of the universe that scientists and mathematicians have discovered. I am committed to believing that the God who created the laws of light, energy and matter also created a moral law, that reveals itself to those who study it, just as scientists have discovered the laws of nature. I am a moral realist – there really are better and worse answers to moral problems.”

There is right and wrong. Our duty is to discover the moral law and act accordingly.

Henry Ergas’s column on the war on the West, When faith takes up arms silence is no option, has drawn a number of letters which I thought were of interest and supplements his points quite well. First this although published last:

Henry Ergas’s article urges frank discussion. The thrust of the article could be simply stated in Greg Sheridan’s pithy comment last year on Iran, that no one in the West takes the idea of God seriously any more and cannot conceive of a government whose behaviour is determined by theological goals. It is somewhat amusing to think that a society that has jettisoned God could presumptuously give a movement with a god advice on changing its theology. The West is so satiated with its own righteousness it does not recognise all it has comes from the precepts of the God it has abandoned.

There is then this, also out of the published order.

The sickness of silence (don’t mention the war) and appeasement (peace in our time) that have infected Western politicians signal the death of Western civilisation. They will bring victory to barbarian invasions. Western politicians have become a supine tool through which the barbarians, not just Islamists, achieve their goals. There is no point continuing to jaw-jaw when you are losing the war-war.

Secular liberal democracy is the jewel in the crown of Western civilisation. It has taken centuries and millions of deaths to achieve it. To watch it being eroded by such idiocies as multicultural relativism and German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s naive Willkommenskultur is sickening.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, according to Edmund Burke. Our politicians should remember that. There is going to be hell to pay.

The consequences will be experienced by others, not us. They will see the new world order as a victory since they will describe it for themselves. But it is not likely a world in which I would like to live. But then again, I won’t have to. And just one more:

Some of those who ridiculed Tony Abbott for his Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture have gone remarkably quiet. Perhaps a retraction is too much to ask. But acknowledging the wisdom of Abbott’s conclusion — we are rediscovering the hard way that justice tempered by mercy is an exacting ideal as too much mercy for some necessarily undermines justice for all — would not go astray.

If you would like to see an image of Christian Europe in a hundred or so years, the best template may be found in Constantinople post-1453.

This is a quite remarkable article: Campus turmoil begins in high school. It deals with the deadening effect on free speech of various PC codes that are rigidly enforced, and which begin in high school. The problem is described as a lack of “viewpoint diversity”. Its pervasive existence may be why Donald Trump has been so successful, since he can and does say what no one else can get away with in public life, and as the article suggests, in private life as well. Well worth a read. This comes from somewhere near the end.

High schools and colleges that lack viewpoint diversity should make it their top priority. Race and gender diversity matter too, but if those goals are pursued in the ways that student activists are currently demanding, then political orthodoxy is likely to intensify. Schools that value freedom of thought should therefore actively seek out non-leftist faculty, and they should explicitly include viewpoint diversity and political diversity in all statements about diversity and discrimination. Parents and students who value freedom of thought should take viewpoint diversity into account when applying to colleges. Alumni should take it into account before writing any more checks.

[Found at Instapundit]

For no reason at all, I have begun to study ancient Greek. I am hardly systematic and it’s only just to put me to sleep at night. It serves no purpose other than to allow me to pretend that my life has infinite extension and everything can be done. I therefore noticed this story when normally it would not even have caused a flicker of interest: Beginning Greek, Again and Again. It is by someone who is teaching Greek to reluctant students, but I am not so sure that it is much different for someone teaching economics. Some people get it and some don’t and if there were some way to change the balance to a larger net surplus, we would all do it. At least I had done Latin in high school so understand cases and declensions and how they work. But let us share Professor Romm’s frustrations.

Reading Greek (or Latin) depends, first and foremost, on recognition of case endings. A student must develop an instinct for seeing the word “anthrōpou” as “of a man,” “anthrōpois” as “for men,” and similarly with eight other forms of the same word. To look for meaning rather than case, to see only “man” in either word, is what readers of English are programmed to do. My task, as a teacher, is to defeat this impulse. The experience of reading without reference to word order, once students “get it,” can be exhilarating, like being freed from a kind of gravity.

But for reasons I don’t understand, some take far longer than others to “get it,” and a few never will. Lack of intelligence isn’t the problem; it’s more about adaptability, acceptance of change. How long should such students go on in the language, hoping for an epiphany? Should I encourage them to continue? And if I do, is it only to assuage my own sense of failure?

Cheer up. John Stuart Mill started Greek at age 3, but many people born in Greece start even younger. To be learned is tough, and we can only be knowledgeable in a minutely narrow range of things.