A Rose by any other name?
Mal years ago PC was called manners or treating people with respect.
These days if you like the "rule" you call it manners, if you do like it you call it PC.

Just like the "rules" about which fork to use, or what title you should call someone by, or even which door you should walk through. What set of rules someone chooses to live their life by is up to them.

However for civil society to work we must agree on the basics.

I would suggest to anyone that our modern western culture is removing more rules then its applying when it comes to expected behavior. The key deference is they a being codified in law rather then in social circles these days.

In more general terms about your article...
Two things to think about, the old saying a fish rots from the head, and the observation the civilization fall from within.
We will all get better political leaders if we all take a keep interest in local politics.
Western Civilization will continue if we continue to be adaptable and have good sewers to remove the waste.

I reckon Mal that you should not utilise acts of murder by terrorists to push some political barrow against "intellectuals'.

More seriously - Just wait for the avalanche of reports of Shiites revenge slaughtering Sunnis in Mosul...

yep secularism failed miserably in seeing the corruption that was inherit in its founders and hence its followers. They were to busy demonising Christ and His followers to face the truth of their own and other warped ideologies. Oh thats right gw is the biggest moral challenge of the century. And they call these people educated.

Come on now *Runner* I would be surprised to think that you thought there were and or is, or perhaps will be again "carcinogens" coming out of the "Garden of Eden."

And, by way of my own interpretation, it is not "G.W." as you put it that is the "moral crisis" in and of itself, but rather as there is no real capacity in the world to deal with the mass of potential victims as a consequence of the potential devastation, that soon enough it will result in a "dog eat dog" and every nation out for themselves situation.

Thus the moral crisis is the choice to either go all out or not to avoid that particular unpleasant deterioration in human civilization.

Too dramatic for you perhaps *Runner?* .. How about we roll the clock a bit further till this rock of "ours" is fully crisped by our own Sun. .. So, we either grow wings or otherwise get to another life supporting planet or we are all ultimately doomed anyway.

Mayhaps if the "New Physics" prevails or there is otherwise some "miraculous" intervention for the continuity of humanity in some form .. but as for this place *Runner* .. in the grand scheme of the multiverse, this place is scheduled for demolition .. albeit still a long length as humans reckon time ...

Hi DreamOn,

Yes, it's terribly concerning about global warming.

Sorry, climate change.

Sorry, extreme weather.

It's terrifying to think that sea-levels will rise by more than an inch in the next century - I live near a beach, so I'm planning on getting a rubber dinghy ready in the back-yard and stocking up on basic food supplies for the awful day.

And think of the catastrophe that global warming will bring to crop-growing across Canada, western Europe and Siberia: imagine the damage caused by an extra degree warmer in Scotland or Finland: grog sales will plummet, even if admittedly it may be possible to grow grapes again like in the Middle Ages. Hmmmm, a nice little Finnish chardonnay would go down well.

We have vastly better (or more) news services than even fifty years ago, let alone one or two hundred years, so we now know of tectonic, weather or climate events much more comprehensively and more often. Maybe level-8 earthquakes hit, say, Tibet, many, many times over the past thousand years but that raises the old philosophical question: if an earthquake occurs but there is no journalist to report it, did it happen ? If a South American volcano blew its top long before humans arrived there, did it make a noise ?

Of course not !

Cheers,

Joe

Yeah Joe

We of the tiny Micronesian SUE-THE-WORLD (because of Climate Change) CAMPAIGN reckon youse should be very sorry.

One inch in one century means we'll be underwater in 1,000 years in 3016. So start paying-up now!

Yeah most of us live in the US already but we expect big bickies from you rich countries*

* NOT including the biggest global warmers, China or India, of course. They're rightious, poor and under-developed like us, aren't they?

Poida