{"id":318067,"date":"2017-07-19T19:36:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T18:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/my-cane\/"},"modified":"2017-07-19T19:36:49","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T18:36:49","slug":"my-cane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/my-cane\/","title":{"rendered":"My Cane"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Two years ago, after foot surgery,\u00a0I started walking with a cane. The ankle has healed, but I\u2019ve kept the cane. I like it. It helps my balance, it\u2019s funny, and it strengthens my faith.<\/p>\n<p>In this allegedly Darwinian world, where life is a ruthless competition for survival, my cane is magic. It causes young people, fitter than I am for physical existence, to call me \u201csir\u201d and hold doors and show me a respect I\u2019ve never enjoyed before. Nobody ever told me a stick of wood could exert such spiritual power. I think I\u2019ll keep it.<\/p>\n<p>Admit it, you atheists: the sight of an old geezer with a cane brings out something sweet in you that, according to Darwin, can\u2019t be there. The truth is that love for others is a profound instinct, a powerful atavism so to speak, harder to resist than hate.<\/p>\n<p>Of course we all want to survive. But we want just as strongly for others to survive too. Darwinism can\u2019t explain the environmentalist movement (though I think it\u2019s misguided). Nor can it explain why we write wills giving all we can to those who outlive us. Nor the Bill Gates foundation. Nor the sacrifices of parents who give their lives for their children. Nor the willingness of some people to suffer so that other people won\u2019t kill unborn children. Nor nuns and priests who consecrate themselves to God in lives of charity and chastity (the pay isn\u2019t all that good). Nor a hundred other forms of altruism.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cmi-gold-silver.com\/specials-gold\/?utm_source=LRC_Text_Ad&amp;utm_campaign=gold_specials\"><em><strong>Buy Gold at Discounted Prices<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Altruism sticks in the craws of the reductionists who think man is, and ought to be, selfish. Ayn Rand tried in vain to persuade us that Moses and Jesus were wrong, that altruism is bad, and that selfishness is a virtue. She failed to make much of a dent in the popularity of St. Francis of Assisi.<\/p>\n<p>Frustrating, isn\u2019t it? We\u2019re all&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2017\/07\/joseph-sobran\/my-cane\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two years ago, after foot surgery,\u00a0I started walking with a cane. The ankle has healed, but I\u2019ve kept the cane. I like it. It helps my balance, it\u2019s funny, and it strengthens my faith. In this allegedly Darwinian world, where life is a ruthless competition for survival, my cane is magic. It causes young people, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-318067","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}