Cudos to Steven Rummelsburg for stepping up and doing a yeoman's job of defending his article!

The RCC takes the analogy and builds on it, with the gift of a Son and elevates another mortal to near godly Mother, to build this more directly and politically tractable analogy of a family. I think this a piece of inclusive PR genius.

At the upper reaches of grammar we find analogy and metaphor followed by the highest aspect of grammar, the art of exegesis

I was considering the difference between analogy and metaphor and what this difference implies for God-talk.
When somebody says "This man is a lion when it comes to defending his family", nobody will think that this man is a real animal with manes and a tail and a frightful roar (analogy). Everybody will interpret the sentence as a metaphor: this man fights LIKE a lion, i.e. courageously, but he might just as well have been compared to any other icon that represents courage.
The difference between analogy and metaphor has, I think, huge implications for God-talk. When Christians say: "God, our Father" are they using an analogy or a metaphor? If it is an analogy this means that God really is a father in the literal sense of the word: he is male and has all the characteristics that are attributed to a father but in the most perfect way. If it is a metaphor, this is a completely different matter. God is admittedly compared to a father, but s/he might just as well be compared to a mother or to any other icon that represents love and care. It is only because Christianity found its origin in a male dominated world that the image of "God, our Father" became the prevailing image and is being interpreted as an analogy, and not as a metaphor.

Libertarianism had an honourable history up until Ayn Rand when it became that badge of the selfish that Hitch dismissed saying that selfishness was in no need of further endorsement.

My Political Moral Aesthetics (hard-wired...I have no choice in the matter...perhaps early parental indoctrination) are entirely left of centre with concerns for only harms and fairness (per Haidt's moral features).

My choice of political solutions I seek though are, I hope, pragmatic and demand a degree of consensuality. The right are always with us and their political moral aesthetics (per Haidt) are harms, fairness, loyalty, purity (uncorrupted institutions etc.), authority (acceptance of) are simply the values of the more anxious half of society, the threatened folk seeking to conserve social capital. Solutions that achieve a degree of tolerability or even support from from both sides will work better and Better is what we should seek to carry us smoothly on our collective adventure. Political stability encourages investment of all kinds.

I am entirely capitalist but expect parts of our services to fail if left to the market due to the longevity of the investments needed or, further due to the primary nature of those services and their demand of democratic controls also. Education and health, for example, are long term societal investments we should make in all available human capital.

I tolerate and expect big government, or at least a large and expert civil service. (I see many of us working at least part time for our own institutions as AI will free us of much drudge and company taxes may be the process to create the rich enough consumers on which companies depend.) I tolerate high tax, compassionate societies like those of northern Europe, but am acutely aware of that it risks cultural flattening and reduction in enterprise both of which must be fought against.

I expect to take lots of consistent data about performance and people's satisfaction with their various lots. I expect policy to evolve pragmatically on the basis of a highly informed populace who can see in great detail the boons and harms of earlier policy outcomes.

Oh and I count myself a low level anarchist to keep the opportunity for change ever present. Is this idealism? Only insofar as its a statement of preferred mechanisms.

Too late. Its gone now. But anyway Latin cured my stammering FWIW.

In the meantime it's almost 8 a.m. and the penny dropped! :)

I am. completely lost...maybe because it is only just after 4 a.m.