Tragic Consequences

Tragic Consequences was written for Americans who are concerned about the cultural decline they see all around them, people who watch the nightly news and ask themselves, “What is happening to our country?” It seems we have become a nation of people who are offended by everything but sin. What is happening to our country is simple to explain but sad observe: We are seeing what a culture of sin can do to a country. It is a culture of darkness and depravity, a culture lacking in moral restraint, and a culture where life has little value. When a nation rejects God and accepts sin, the lurid stories carried on nightly news programs are the inevitable result. Within the problem is the solution. Biblical morality reestablished in America by an uprising of God's people standing for righteousness will bring God's forgiveness and our healing.

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Nowhere are clashes between competing ethical perspectives more prevalent than in the realm of International Relations. Thus, understanding tragedy is directly relevant to understanding IR. This volume explores the various ways that tragedy can be used as a lens through which international relations might be brought into clearer focus.

This book focuses on expressions of the tragic in Spanish cinema. Its main premise is that elements from the classical and modern tragic tradition persist and permeate many of the cultural works created in Spain, especially the films on which the book centers this study. The inscrutability and indolence of the gods, the mutability of fortune, the recurrent narratives of fall and redemption, the unavoidable clash between ethical forces, the tension between free will and fate, the violent resolution of both internal and external conflicts, and the overwhelming feelings of guilt that haunt the tragic heroine/hero are consistent aspects that traverse Spanish cinema as a response to universal queries about human suffering and death.

The conflict in Ukraine has deep domestic roots. A third of the population, primarily in the East and South, regards its own Russian cultural identity as entirely compatible with a Ukrainian civic identity. The state’s reluctance to recognize this ethnos as a legitimate part of the modern Ukrainian nation, has created a tragic cycle that entangles Ukrainian politics. The Tragedy of Ukraine argues that in order to untangle the conflict within the Ukraine, it must be addressed on an emotional, as well as institutional level. It draws on Richard Ned Lebow’s ‘tragic vision of politics’ and on classical Greek tragedy to assist in understanding the persistence of this conflict. Classical Greek tragedy once served as a mechanism in Athenian society to heal deep social trauma and create more just institutions. The Tragedy of Ukraine reflects on the ways in which ancient Greek tragedy can help us rethink civic conflict and polarization, as well as model ways of healing deep social divisions.

This volume brings together the recent essays of Richard Ned Lebow, one of the leading scholars of international relations and US foreign policy. Lebow's work has centred on the instrumental value of ethics in foreign policy decision making and the disastrous consequences which follow when ethical standards are flouted. Unlike most realists who have considered ethical considerations irrelevant in states' calculations of their national interest, Lebow has argued that self interest, and hence, national interest can only be formulated intelligently within a language of justice and morality. The essays here build on this pervasive theme in Lebow's work by presenting his substantive and compelling critique of strategies of deterrence and compellence, illustrating empirically and normatively how these strategies often produce results counter to those that are intended. The last section of the book, on counterfactuals, brings together another set of related articles which continue to probe the relationship between ethics and policy. They do so by exploring the contingency of events to suggest the subjective, and often self-fulfilling, nature of the frameworks we use to evaluate policy choices.

The ability of human beings to feel compassion or empathy for one another—and express that emotion by offering comfort or assistance—is an important antidote to violence and aggression. In ancient Greece, the epics of Homer and the tragic dramas performed each spring in the Theater of Dionysus offered citizens valuable lessons concerning the necessity and proper application of compassionate action. This book is the first full-length examination of compassion (eleos or oiktos in Greek) as a dramatic theme in ancient Greek literature. Through careful textual analysis, James F. Johnson surveys the treatment of compassion in the epics of Homer, especially the Iliad, and in the works of the three great Athenian tragedians: Aischylos, Euripides, and Sophokles. He emphasizes reciprocity, reverence, and retribution as defining features of Greek compassion during the Homeric and Archaic periods. In framing his analysis, Johnson distinguishes compassion from pity. Whereas in English the word “pity” suggests an attitude of superiority toward the sufferer, the word “compassion” has a more positive connotation and implies equality in status between subject and object. Although scholars have conventionally translated eleos and oiktos as “pity,” Johnson argues that our modern-day notion of compassion comes closest to encompassing the meaning of those two Greek words. Beginning with Homer, eleos normally denotes an emotion that entails action of some sort, whereas oiktos usually refers to the emotion itself. Johnson also draws associations between compassion and the concepts of fear and pity, which Aristotle famously attributed to tragedy. Because the Athenian plays are tragedies, they mainly show the disastrous consequences of a world where compassion falls short. At the same time, they offer glimpses into a world where compassion can generate a more beneficial—and therefore more hopeful—outcome. Their message resonates with today’s readers as much as it did for fifth-century Athenians.

Sowing the Mustard Seed is a story of unflinching bravery. It is the story of unwavering search for a true, revolutionary and development-oriented leadership. The Ugandan President takes the reader on a tell-all journey of the sacrifice that he and other young Ugandans decided to take in order to liberate their country from the jaws of helplessness to which the first post-independence governments had conspired to consign it. In this spell-binding tale, told in the first-person voice, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni traces the journey of his life from his first few months on earth, through his education, after which he and other patriots embarked on a journey of seeking empowerment to overthrow the despotic regime of Idi Amin Dada. It also delves into other wars, such as the long-drawn-out bid to neutralise Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army and professionalising the Ugandan army, after many years of sectarianism. Besides illuminating the struggles of the past, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni shares his vision for Uganda and the pillars he has over the years put in place as President to ensure Uganda’s future is secure both economically and socially.