add featured images to posts

content/post/Bloom-on-liberal-openness.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Bloom on Liberal Openness"
 date: 2020-05-24T20:45:40Z
 tags: ["liberalism", "conservatism"]
 topics: ["philosophy","politics"]
+image: /img/allan-bloom.jpg
 draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "allan-bloom|/img/allan-bloom.jpg|Allan Bloom" >}}
-
 From: [The Closing Of The American Mind (1987)](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impoverished/dp/1451683200/), by Allan Bloom
 
 ----

content/post/a-conservative-starter-library.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "A Conservative Starter Library"
 date: 2021-06-15T21:35:23Z
 tags: ["conservatism"]
 topics: ["philosophy","politics"]
+image: /img/conservative-library.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "conservative-library|/img/conservative-library.png|Conservative Library" >}}
-
 Here are some 20th century books that guided me away from contemporary American Liberalism (and its Germanic progressive bias), and contributed to my understanding of Conservatism as an evolving worldview. I will offer four philosophical, and four political suggestions:
 
 Philosophical:

content/post/a-future-history-of-vice.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "A Future History of Vice"
 date: 2021-06-27T22:32:18Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "culture"]
+image: /img/vices.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "the-vices|/img/vices.jpg|The Vices" >}}
-
 We now live in an era in which Pride is Sovereign, and his two concubines Vanity and Lust are his apostles amongst men of weak will.
 
 He is the inevitable successor to the rule of his brother Greed and his two accomplices, Sloth and Gluttony.

content/post/a-mind-shaped-universe.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "A Mind Shaped Universe"
 date: 2020-05-09T18:06:01Z
 tags: ["mind", "metaphysics", "order", "intelligibility"]
 topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/pondering-the-sky.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "pondering-the-sky|/img/pondering-the-sky.jpg|Pondering The Sky" >}}
-
 As far as I can tell, when it comes to mind, there are four possibilities:
 
 1. Mind is an illusion. It doesn't exist at all. We only think we're experiencing ourselves consciously, because the particular arrangement of matter and energy that constitutes what we call the human mind, is constituted in such a way as to cause confusion between mere matter and energy and something else we call mind.

content/post/a-thought-on-the-transience-of-life.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "A Thought on the Transience of Life"
 date: 2021-06-24T22:19:52Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/the-tree.jpg
 draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "the-tree|/img/the-tree.jpg|The Tree" >}}
-
 > *For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.* - 1 PETER 1:24
 
 Christianity, Stoicism, Buddhism. All of them recognize the contingent transience of existence. Each of them offers a different vision, not only of what attitude to take toward this truth, but also the telos it implies.

content/post/a-visit-from-wormwood.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "A Visit From Wormwood"
 date: 2021-07-21T22:44:57Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "psychology"]
+image: /img/wormwood.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
- {{< fluid_imgs "wormwood|/img/wormwood.png|Wormwood" >}} 
-
 I had an odd little dream last night. I was walking along a road at dusk. In an ex-urban area. Not wilderness, but not suburbs either. Along the shoulders of the road, cranes or storks were standing knee-deep in what looked like long rectangle rice patches. The storks were all trying desperately to swallow elongated fish that protruded out of their beaks, and clearly did not fit into their bellies.
 
 I walked into the parking lot for a small free-standing commercial building. Red brick. Perhaps a supermarket, or a library, or a video store. In a dark corner, against a wall marking the boundary of the parking lot, something caught my eye.

content/post/anxiety-and-control.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Anxiety and Control"
 date: 2020-03-28T15:50:09Z
 tags: ["stoicism", "control"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "psychology"]
+image: /img/the-first-stoic.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "the-stoic|/img/the-first-stoic.jpg|Epictetus" >}}
-
 One of the things the stoics get right, is the insight that there is little an agent has any real power to influence. Even where it seems there is a great deal, that control is largely an illusion drawn from an overzealous interpretation of our experience of collective agreement.
 
 When I was young, I wasn’t particularly interested in who or what I could control, for its own sake. But I was interested in control over the world, insofar as it was an instrument to control over my own destiny. Many influences seemed to be constraining what was possible, including my parents, the requirements of public education, and my own peers. But there was one avenue of exploration that yielded very satisfying results: computing.

content/post/bork-on-ideology-in-the-court.md

@@ -3,13 +3,10 @@ title: "Bork on Ideology in the Court"
 date: 2020-09-30T19:38:34Z
 tags: ["supreme court", "law", "legislation"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/bork.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "bork|/img/bork.jpg|Robert Bork" >}}
-
-----
-
 From the book "{{< newtab title="The Tempting Of America (1991)" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tempting-America-Political-Seduction-Law/dp/0684843374/" >}}, By Robert Bork
 
 > ...It is somewhat unclear whether the modern Court is more politicized than Courts of previous eras. Certainly it makes more political decisions each year than was true in any year in the nineteenth century, but that is largely due to the number of occasions for such decisions presented to it. Before the post-Civil War amendments, particularly the fourteenth amendment, the Court had little opportunity to impose rules on the states. The development of substantive content in the fourteenth amendment’s due process clause, and subsequently the incorporation of the Bill of Rights in that clause, enormously expanded the Court’s power over the states. It is conceivable, though unlikely, that, the Courts of the nineteenth century, given the opportunities that this legal structure presented, would have appeared as activist and political as do the Courts of the past five or six decades.

content/post/bork-on-liberalism.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Bork on Liberalism"
 date: 2020-04-05T17:01:04Z
 tags: ["liberalism"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/bork.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "robert-bork|/img/bork.jpg|Robert Bork" >}}
-
 The following passage is a section from the introduction to Robert Bork's famous 1996 book, "[*Slouching Toward Gomorrah*](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slouching-towards-Gomorrah-Robert-Bork/dp/0060573112/)".
 
 ------

content/post/buckley-on-conservatism-and-modern-realities.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Buckley on Conservatism and Modern Realities"
 date: 2020-05-10T18:15:40Z
 tags: ["buckley", "liberalism", ]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/buckley.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "bill-buckley|/img/buckley.jpg|William F. Buckley, Jr." >}}
-
 From: "[Up From Liberalism](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Up-Liberalism-William-F-Buckley/dp/161427925X/)" (1959), William F. Buckley, Jr.
 
 >There is no conservative political manifesto which, as we make our faltering way, we can consult, confident that it will point a sure finger in the direction of the good society. Indeed, sometimes the conservative needle appears to be jumping about as on a disoriented compass...

content/post/cosmos-sagan-vs-tyson.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "Cosmos: Sagan vs Tyson"
 date: 2021-05-01T10:13:27+01:00
 tags: ["pop culture", "cosmos", "sagan", "tyson"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "culture", "science"]
+image: /img/helix-nebula.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/creativity-transcendence-and-love.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Creativity, Transcendence, and Love"
 date: 2020-05-15T20:20:58Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "psychology"]
+image: /img/kids-in-grass.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "kids-in-grass|/img/kids-in-grass.jpg|Children Playing In The Grass" >}}
-
 People tend to romanticize the inspiration of the artist, or the insight of the philosopher. It is often depicted as a kind of tsunami of creative passion, that washes over the mind and consumes the person. Archimedes in the bath, or Mozart on his deathbed (I hate you, Milos Forman) come to mind as examples. But this is pure fantasy, as far as I can tell.
 
 Instead, ideas are like drops of water falling from the sky, on an arid summer day. You have to catch them in something, as they fall, and preserve them in the soil of ink and paper. Otherwise, they evaporate as soon as they hit the ground.

content/post/cyprian-echoed-in-boethius.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Cyprian Echoed in Boethius"
 date: 2020-11-27T20:20:19Z
 tags: ["cyprian", "boethius"]
 topics: ["philosophy","theology"]
+image: /img/cyprian.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "cyprian|/img/cyprian.jpg|St. Cyprian" >}}
-
 Yesterday, I stumbled across a treatise of St. Cyprian to his congregation that might sound remarkably familiar, if you've been following the podcast at all. The letter is written from exile, during the Decian persecution (ad 250). A few years later (ad 258), Cyprian would be executed by Valerian for disloyalty to the emperor - albeit, exhibited by his refusal to participate in Roman religious rites. All of this echoes the life of Boethius in distant ways, but also with Socrates, who was executed in part for introducing false gods into the city.
 
 Cyprian was a prolific writer whose works were widely circulated among early Christians, and as such, he enjoyed a stature among them at the time that was only demoted after Augustine appeared on the scene much later. This is interesting, because as a well-educated Roman Christian, Boethius most assuredly would have been familiar with him.

content/post/equality-is-fake-news.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Equality Is Fake News"
 date: 2020-05-22T20:35:48Z
 tags: ["equality", "nozick", "rawls"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/equality.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "equality|/img/equality.jpg|Equality" >}}
-
 I want to make a bold claim: I don’t think there is any such thing as ‘equality’.
 
 Now, just to clarify: clearly, arithmetic and geometric equality is real. Otherwise the “ = “ wouldn’t exist. What I am referring to, is the sense of the term that gets applied to human social and political relations. This kind of equality is a phantasm; a will-o-wisp; a unicorn, in *all* its varieties. If we look at particular examples of what people tend to call “equality”, what we find are hidden changes in the meaning of “equal”. Changes so significant, that only the application of entirely different concepts could make those examples intelligible. What are those examples? Well, I think they can be boiled down to four: comparisons of economic condition, comparisons of ‘opportunity’, comparisons of legal status, and comparisons of social status or relational concern. Each of these descriptive terms is further colored by a prescriptive connotation that needs to be understood separately. Let’s explore each of these forms of so-called equality, to discover why they’re not what they appear to be.

content/post/for-whom-the-pot-clanks.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "For Whom the Pot Clanks"
 date: 2020-04-19T17:30:48Z
 tags: ["christianity", "secularism", "social contagion"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "sociology", "psychology"]
+image: /img/pot-clankers.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "pot-clankers|/img/pot-clankers.jpg|Pot Clankers" >}}
-
 During the collective neurosis that is this coronavirus quarantine, it has become customary in the Anglo-American west, to stand outside at 8PM once per week and bang pots in gratitude for the work of the various healthcare institutions of our countries. This, I think, has implications that extend far beyond the annoyance of watching everyone marching mindlessly in unison for reasons they barely understand.
 
 When I was a boy growing up in Chicago in the 70's and 80's, attending church on Sunday was a near-ubiquitous phenomenon. It might be the case that your block was randomly littered with Irish or Italian Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists, and Episcopalians. But one thing you could be certain of, was that, between 9AM and 1PM on any given Sunday, you would only find those people by looking in their respective churches.

content/post/freedom-and-its-betrayal.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Freedom and Its Betrayal"
 date: 2020-03-29T15:55:08Z
 tags: ["freedom", "Rousseau", "enlightenment"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: isaiah-berlin.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "isaiah-berlin|/img/isaiah-berlin.jpg|Isaiah Berlin" >}}
-
 The following is from Isaiah Berlin's book, "[Freedom and It's Betrayal](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freedom-Its-Betrayal-Enemies-Liberty/dp/071266842X/)", wherein he has some very mean things to say about Rousseau ;)
 
 > *In theory Rousseau speaks like any other eighteenth-century philosophe, and says: ‘We must employ our reason.’ He uses deductive reasoning, sometimes very cogent, very lucid and extremely well-expressed, for reaching his conclusions. But in reality what happens is that this deductive reasoning is like a strait-jacket of logic which he claps upon the inner, burning, almost lunatic vision within; it is this extraordinary combination of the insane inner vision with the cold rigorous strait-jacket of a kind of Calvinistic logic which really gives his prose its powerful enchantment and its hypnotic effect. You appear to be reading logical argument which distinguishes between concepts and draws conclusions in a valid manner from premisses, when all the time something very violent is being said to you. A vision is being imposed on you; somebody is trying to dominate you by means of a very coherent, although often a very deranged, vision of life, to bind a spell, not to argue, despite the cool and collected way in which he appears to be talking. The inner vision is the mysterious assumption of the coincidence of authority and liberty. The coincidence itself derives from the fact that, in order to make men at once free and capable of living with each other in society, and of obeying the moral law, what you want is that men shall want only that which the moral law in fact enjoins. In short, the problem goes somewhat as follows. You want to give people unlimited liberty because otherwise they cease to be men; and yet at the same time you want them to live according to the rules. If they can be made to love the rules, then they will want the rules, not so much because the rules are rules as because they love them. If your problem is how a man shall be at once free and yet in chains, you say: ‘What if the chains are not imposed upon him? What if the chains are not something with which he is bound as by some external force? What if the chains are something he chooses himself because such a choice is an expression of his nature, something he generates from within him as an inner ideal? If this is what he above all wants in the world, then the chains are no longer chains.’ A man who is self-chained is not a prisoner. So Rousseau says: ‘Man is born free, and yet he is everywhere in chains.’ What sort of chains? If they are the chains of convention, if they are the chains of the tyrant, if they are the chains of other people who want to use you for their own ends, then these are indeed chains, and you must fight and you must struggle, and nothing must stand in the way of the great battle for individual self-assertion and freedom. But if the chains are chains of your own making, if the chains are simply the rules which you forge, with your own inner reason, or because of the grace which pours in while you lead the simple life, or because of the voice of conscience or the voice of God or the voice of nature, which are all referred to by Rousseau as if they were almost the same thing; if the chains are simply rules the very obedience to which is the most free, the strongest, most spontaneous expression of your own inner nature, then the chains no longer bind you – since self-control is not control. Self-control is freedom. In this way Rousseau gradually progresses towards the peculiar idea that what is wanted is men who want to be connected with each other in the way in which the State forcibly connects them.*

content/post/kant-vs-anselm-vs-cary.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Kant vs Anselm vs Cary"
 date: 2021-02-07T20:56:50Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology", "culture"]
+image: /img/philosophy-and-religion.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "philosophy-and-religion|/img/philosophy-and-religion.jpg|Philosophy And Religion" >}}
-
 I have been listening to {{< newtab title="this lecture series" url="https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Philosophy-and-Religion-in-the-West-Audiobook/B00DEQO5US/" >}} to supplement the readings in my philosophy of religion course.
 
 In the first Kant lecture, Cary says that Kant argues against Anselm on the ground that being isn't a property. It goes a little something like this:

content/post/living-dangerously.md

@@ -3,9 +3,8 @@ title: "Living Dangerously"
 date: 2021-09-05T22:49:33Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+image: /img/timothy-radcliffe.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
- {{< fluid_imgs "timothy-radcliffe|/img/timothy-radcliffe.jpg|Timothy Radcliffe" >}} 
-
 > *"...Christians must dare to challenge this fearful, risk-averse society, with its stifling multiplication of 'health and safety' regulations and its fear of life. In the sixteenth century, missionaries from Catholic orders - Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit, Carmelite, and many others - travelled in great numbers to Asia to preach the gospel. Half of them never arrived. They died of shipwreck and disease; they were captured by pirates, suffered martyrdom, and yet they dared to continue without any health or travel insurance. Today, such adventures would be condemned as crazy..."* - Timothy Radcliffe, 2019

content/post/marxism-as-false-religion.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Marxism as False Religion"
 date: 2021-05-30T21:21:56Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics", "theology"]
+image: /img/marxist-professors.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "marxist-professors|/img/marxist-professors.png|Marxist Professors" >}}
-
 The 'marxist professor' (Glenn Bracey, Villanova) highlighted by {{< newtab title="the video linked in this article" url="https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/05/busted-professor-admits-critical-race-theory-build-church-marxism-video/" >}} is not wrong in the most broad outline, about Marx's theory of alienation, as a critique of commodity markets. He just so mangled and misapplied the concept that it's almost unrecognisable.
 
 The theory of alienation is about the separation of human activity from fundamental human nature. It's a metaphysical theory about where value derives from in the products of human labor. It is not a "spiritual concern" (whatever that means). Marx was a materialist, not an idealist. Marx rejected Christianity as just another ideology (one that, on his view, appropriated the problem of suffering to its own ends). So this guy's attempt to incorporate liberal Christian sympathy into his analysis is purely cynical. What's more, this 'professor' is clearly differentiating between multiple human natures. Note how and where he says "our species being!" - he means, black people have a fundamentally different nature than white people, and that living in western society is alienating black people from their nature, because western society is 'white'.

content/post/negotiating-the-value-of-a-single-life.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Negotiating the Value of a Single Life"
 date: 2021-06-17T22:00:46Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "psychology", "sociology"]
+image: /img/omelas.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "omelas|/img/omelas.png|Omelas" >}}
-
 In 1973, Ursula Le Guin wrote a short story about a utopian city called "Omelas". The story is, at its core, a philosophical thought experiment. To summarize: Let's just accept for the sake of argument, a city that is so self-sufficient, and so devoid of want or suffering or strife that the people of the city were able to live in an unceasing state of joyous bliss. Every season involved weeks-long festivals of celebration, and nobody was deprived of any need, material, moral, or psychological.
 
 After spending three pages describing this blissful demos, and making a philosophical defense of the pleasure of happiness itself, she then says this:

content/post/neo-and-aristotle.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "Neo and Aristotle"
 date: 2021-04-29T07:43:12+01:00
 tags: ["pop culture", "hylomorphism", "dualism", "matrix"]
 topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/matrix-neo.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/obedience-and-the-intellect.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "Obedience and the Intellect"
 date: 2021-07-14T22:42:57Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+image: /img/aquinas.jpg
 draft: true
 ---
 

content/post/paul-and-the-rivalry-of-reason-and-faith.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Paul and the Rivalry of Reason and Faith"
 date: 2021-03-15T21:09:21Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "religion"]
+image: /img/conversion-of-paul.jpg
 draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "conversion-of-paul|/img/conversion-of-paul.jpg|The Conversion of St. Paul" >}}
-
 On the rivalry between philosophy and religion, Paul has this to say:
 
 > 1 COR 1:19-29 *For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.*

content/post/pride-is-nothing-to-celebrate.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Pride Is Nothing to Celebrate"
 date: 2021-06-22T22:14:07Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+image: /img/satans-fall.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "satans-fall|/img/satans-fall.jpg|Satan's Fall" >}}
-
 > "...It was Pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels..." - St. Augustine
 
 The layers of inversion involved in "pride" month are breathtaking when you really look into the matter.

content/post/social-theory-of-american-politics.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "Social Theory of American Politics"
 date: 2021-04-27T08:03:46+01:00
 tags: ["high culture", "low culture", "cultural evolution"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/rockwell-politics.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/the-flag-of-greg.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "The Flag of Greg"
 date: 2021-09-20T22:55:41Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "politics"]
+image: /img/flag-of-greg.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
@@ -10,9 +11,7 @@ I never used to think much of manifestos. Marx made them notorious, and subseque
 
 But I'm beginning to change my mind on the topic. I think there is utility in commiting to a cause or a set of values that give shape an direction to one's life. I just think that one ought to refrain from doing so, until one is fully prepared to explain oneself. I'm pretty close to being able to do that, now.
 
-In preparation for subsequent pronouncements on the way the world "ought to be", I think a good start would be to produce an emblem or coat of arms or flag that symbolizes the core principles and ethos of that manifesto. Here's my first draft:
+In preparation for subsequent pronouncements on the way the world "ought to be", I think a good start would be to produce an emblem or coat of arms or flag that symbolizes the core principles and ethos of that manifesto. The first draft is pictured above.
-
-{{< fluid_imgs "flag-of-greg|/img/flag-of-greg.png|The Flag of Greg" >}} 
 
 The Red-White-Blue overlapping diamond pattern is meant to harken back to the American flag, but the colors have new meanings, made explicit in the flag's central standard. The best life, and a stable society is only possible where truth is sought. The pursuit of truth is possible only where virtue is cultivated. The cultivation of virtue is only possible where liberty is guaranteed. And liberty is only guaranteed where the pursuit of truth is possible. Underlying all of this, is the bedrock source of all truth, virtue, and liberty: the supreme goodness, truth, and beauty of God. 
 

content/post/the-four-boxes.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "The Four Boxes"
 date: 2020-11-09T20:05:38Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["politics"]
+image: /img/bidens.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "bidens|/img/bidens.jpg|Biden Boys" >}}
-
 The following metaphor is an adaptation from South Carolina Senator Stephen Decatur Miller.
 
 Modern liberal democracy is made up of four boxes. Each box represents a fundamental individual liberty, but it also represents a level of escalation in the quest for individual sovereignty in a liberal state.

content/post/the-garden-of-liberty.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "The Garden of Liberty"
 date: 2021-07-04T22:39:18Z
 tags: []
 topics: ["philosophy", "culture", "politics"]
+image: /img/monticello-garden.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/the-linux-alternative.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "The Linux Alternative"
 date: 2021-11-20T13:42:36Z
 tags: ["linux", "software"]
 topics: ["technology"]
+image: /img/penguin.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "glorious-tux|/img/penguin.jpg|Glorious Tux" >}}
-
 Since 2005, I've been working almost exclusively on Apple products. My first was an iBook G4. My last is the Macbook Pro 2015 on which I am typing this post. This coming February, I'll be taking delivery of my first new computer since 2015, and it will not be a Mac. I chose the Dell XPS 8940 for its excellent balance of price and performance. But the real reason, is because I know it will work with several of the more modern distributions of Linux, and it is engineered in a way that I can still do with it *as I wish*.
 
 Sure, there are a number of pragmatic reasons I am extricating myself from the Apple ecosystem. Among them, include several of the technology design decisions Apple has made over the last five years. But, more significantly, the change in mindset that has accompanied those design decisions. Apple no longer sees itself as creating high quality technical tools for creative professionals (including software developers), but instead sees itself as producing boutique personal appliances, whose utility is secondary to its fashion status (in particular, the cleanliness of the political messaging implicit in the ownership and use of their devices). To be fair, there is an industry-wide tendancy toward "virtue-signaling" as corporate policy, and Apple is just jumping on the bandwagon. But they're going above-and-beyond this in a number of ways. In the coming two years, owners of Mac computers won't have any access anymore to the root user, they're already losing access to the kernel, as the OS is slowly being tightened up around the new Apple M processors. We're all already familiar with the walled-garden approach toward software applications they adopted some time ago. Now, they're going to be closing all the remaining loopholes.

content/post/the-parable-of-the-invisible-gardener.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "The Parable of the Invisible Gardener"
 date: 2021-05-02T23:50:09+01:00
 tags: ["logical positivism", "empiricism", "falsification", "belief"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+image: /img/invisible-gardener.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/the-pope-of-platitudes.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "The Pope of Platitudes"
 date: 2020-11-28T20:26:17Z
 tags: ["francis", "covid", "great reset"]
 topics: ["theology", "philosophy", "culture"]
+image: /img/pope-of-platitudes.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "pope-of-platitudes|/img/pope-of-platitudes.jpg|Pope Of Platitudes" >}}
-
 Today, I had a little extra time, so I was going to write a response to the {{< newtab title="Op-Ed piece that Pope Francis recently published in the New York Times" url="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/pope-francis-covid.html" >}}. Seeing as how he's such a prominent figure in the culture today, I thought it might spice up the feed to delve into current events and do an analysis. However, after reading through this twaddle twice, I have to say I found it utterly vapid and unworthy of anything like a serious critique.
 
 Reading this piece was like listening to my 85 year old grandfather grouse about a random litany of personal and social problems ("you kids, these days!!" ), with no real point other than to vent frustration. There wasn't even an attempt at deploying any coherent theology in this missive. It was just one sentimental bromide after another.

content/post/the-world-in-1967.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "The World In 1967"
 date: 2021-08-09T13:17:45+01:00
 tags: ["society", "change", "nostalgia"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "psychology", "technology", "history", "autobiography"]
+image: /img/chicago-1967.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

content/post/two-visions-of-justice.md

@@ -3,9 +3,9 @@ title: "Two Visions of Justice"
 date: 2021-04-21T21:06:08+01:00
 tags: ["justice", "equality", "liberty"]
 topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/lady-justice.png
 draft: false
 ---
-{{< fluid_imgs "justice|/img/lady-justice.png|Lady Justice" >}}
 
 In 1974, Robert Nozick wrote a lengthy response to John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, called "Anarchy, State, and Utopia". One of Nozick's core critiques of Rawls, centers around a characterization of the kind of Justice that Rawls was advocating. Nozick called it, the justice of "patterned distributions".
 

content/post/why-a-right-to-self-defense.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Why Do You Have a Right to Self Defense?"
 date: 2021-11-23T23:16:16Z
 tags: ["rights", "self-defense", "law", "ethics", "nihilism", "gorgias", "imago dei"]
 topics: ["philosophy","politics", "theology"]
+image: /img/rittenhouse.png
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "kyle-rittenhouse|/img/rittenhouse.png|Kyle Rittenhouse" >}} 
-
 I doubt there's anyone in the anglo-sphere this week, who isn't aware of the case of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Probably, a good chunk of Europe was paying attention to that trial, as well. Why? Because of the fundamental question that the trial symbolized, at its core. 
 
 The principle at the center of that case was the right of self-defense. As a matter of law, that meant demonstrating in the trial that the material facts of the event conformed to Wisconsin's own statutory definition of an action that constitutes self-defense. That's one way to interpret the question 'why'. But - apart from its importance in establishing grounds for Rittenhouse's exhoneration - that's not the interpretation that *really* matters here.

content/post/yes-virginia-there-is-meaning.md

@@ -3,11 +3,10 @@ title: "Yes, Virginia. There Is Meaning."
 date: 2021-05-15T14:52:43+01:00
 tags: ["metaphysics", "realism", "God", "truth", "meaning"]
 topics: ["philosophy", "theology"]
+image: /img/gods-truth.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 
-{{< fluid_imgs "gods-truth|/img/gods-truth.jpg|God's Truth" >}}
-
 In a [recent exchange between Douglas Murray and N. T. Wright on the Unbelievable? Podcast](https://unbelievable.podbean.com/e/nt-wright-and-douglas-murray-identity-myth-miracles-how-do-we-live-in-a-post-christian-world/), Douglas poses the following conundrum:
 
 Is it the case that we are meaning-seeking beings, or, that we are meaning-seeking beings *and there is meaning to seek*?

content/post/your-whole-self.md

@@ -3,6 +3,7 @@ title: "Bringing 'Your Whole Self' To Work"
 date: 2021-04-03T08:03:49+01:00
 tags: ["wokism"]
 topics: ["culture", "worklife", "politics"]
+image: /img/corporates.jpg
 draft: false
 ---
 

themes/blackburn/layouts/partials/post_meta.html

@@ -1,25 +1,32 @@
 <div class="post-meta">
 
   <span>
-    <div style="float:left; font-size:medium; font-weight:normal;">
+    <div style="float:left; font-size:medium; font-weight:normal; padding: 2px; margin: 2px">
       <i class="fa fa-calendar fa-fw"></i>
       <time> {{ with .Site.Params.dateFormat }}{{ $.Date.Format . }}{{ else }}{{ .Date.Format "02 Jan 2006, 15:04 BST" }}{{ end }}</time>
     </div>
-    <div style="float:right; font-size:small; font-weight: normal;">
+    <div style="float:right; font-size:small; font-weight: normal; padding: 2px; margin: 2px">
       <time><em>Updated: {{ .Lastmod.Format "02 Jan 2006, 15:04" }} </em></time>
     </div>
     <br/>
+  </span>
+    <span>
+    {{ if isset .Params "image" }}
+    <img src="{{ with .Params.image }}{{ . }}{{ end }}" width="800px" height="385px"
+         style="border-color: #777777; border-width: thin; border-style: solid"/>
+    {{ end }}
     </span>
 
     {{ $baseUrl := .Site.BaseURL }}
-
+    <br/>
     {{ if isset .Params "topics" }}
     {{ $count := len .Params.topics }}
     {{ if gt $count 0 }}
     <div>
         <i class="fa fa-folder fa-fw"></i>
         {{ range $k, $v := .Params.topics }}
-      <a class="post-taxonomy-topic" href="{{ $baseUrl }}topics/{{ . | urlize }}">{{ . }}</a>{{ if lt $k (sub $count 1) }}&nbsp;&#47;{{ end }}
+        <a class="post-taxonomy-topic" href="{{ $baseUrl }}topics/{{ . | urlize }}">{{ . }}</a>{{ if lt $k (sub $count
+        1) }}&nbsp;&#47;{{ end }}
         {{ end }}
     </div>
     {{ end }}
@@ -31,7 +38,8 @@
     <div>
         <i class="fa fa-tags fa-fw"></i>
         {{ range $k, $v := .Params.tags }}
-      <a class="post-taxonomy-tag" href="{{ $baseUrl }}tags/{{ . | urlize }}">{{ . }}</a>{{ if lt $k (sub $count 1) }}&nbsp;&#47;{{ end }}
+        <a class="post-taxonomy-tag" href="{{ $baseUrl }}tags/{{ . | urlize }}">{{ . }}</a>{{ if lt $k (sub $count 1) }}&nbsp;&#47;{{
+        end }}
         {{ end }}
     </div>
     {{ end }}