Taking George Washington’s name in vain. What he would have thought of sending a warship named after him to the other side of the world to push a small country around.
US Civil War revisionism. Lincoln was a dictator, the South had the right to do what it did, Lee, no racist, was a hero and Sherman a criminal. And it wasn’t fought to free the slaves.
First principles, right and left. “Common opposition to leftism, particularly in its present day ‘cultural Marxist’ manifestations, would explain why the alternative Right includes, on religious matters, Catholic traditionalists, proponents of Orthodoxy, Protestants, atheists, pagans, Nietzscheans, and Evolans,” and “why our ranks include both proponents (e.g. Austrians) and critics (e.g. Catholic distributists or the European New Right) of capitalism, and proponents of political systems ranging from authoritarianism to anarchism to monarchy to theocracy to constitutionalism to ethno-states.”
Orthodox means “right teaching” and “right worship.” That’s right, both, not or.
The opposite of Catholic is heretic, which means “I choose.”
The opposite of orthodox is heterodox, which means “different teaching” and “different worship.”
In other words, the concept we use with children to prepare them for confirmation comes into play: objective reality. Objective reality are just a couple of big words we simply explain as meaning “real thing.” The sacraments have objective reality = the sacraments are real things. Likewise, truth has an objective reality = truth is a real thing. To quote one of my brilliant daughters: “some things are just true, whether you think they are or not.” The truth is a reality. Reality doesn’t need my agreement in order for it to exist; likewise, truth doesn’t need anyone’s agreement in order for it to be true.
Cable news was full of happy reports yesterday that the government airports were full and working just fine, thanks to the TSA, and that the cattle were happy to be fondled and x-rayed, in the cause of State Security. Otherwise, The Terrorists Will Get Us! (I loved Ron Paul pointing out that since Federal Total Failure Day [9/11/01], more than 400,000 Americans have been killed on the government roads.) In fact, the TSA opened us all to terrorist attack, or so they would otherwise have us think, by shutting off many of the nudo-scanners (which they claim are essential to foil The Terrorists), so the State would not look bad.
‘Freedom fondles.’ They’re serious. There’s never a need to parody neocons. Recently proofed an article from an 80-year-old travel writer, who once waxed nostalgic about the glamour of air travel in the ’50s, now defending this outrage ‘for our own good’. I can’t see Sterling and Draper taking this; can you?
The silly old C of E: you can personally teach against the Trinity and as a denomination put anything, such as the matter and form of the sacraments, up for a vote but never diss the royals. Because its reason to exist has always been: nobody can tell the royals who they can’t sleep with (as long as they don’t marry Catholics).
I watched Brian Williams interview the Prince of Wales last week. Almost met Prince Charles and his wife once; if they’d turned the other way I would have. Beliefs in traditional architecture, a natural order and harmony, and good stewardship of God’s creation. The means he wants may be fashionably leftist but I like him. (The producers tried to manufacture a conflict between his innocuous PCness – will he have to give it up as king? – and the establishment.) After being a dork most of his life, now he looks distinguished.
Sure, I’m happy for the young royal couple and don’t give it a second thought.
...and occupying it with 250,000 troops and mercenaries. I first heard about this unbelievable outrage on Morning Jingo, where the assembled chickenhawks were outraged that the Afghans did not seem to be reading the NY Times. Those poor, benighted foreigners do not know that the US is Free and Good—Lockheed and Boeing too—and that anyone tortured or killed deserves it. Those primitive, ignorant Afghans think the US is just another imperial overlord, interested in pipelines and domination, and they do not want it running their lives. Why, those backward Muslims probably wouldn’t submit to the enhanced pat-down either, though it would be interesting to see the TSA try it.
Bad sign of this depression: Muppets tell kids to get used to not having money for food From the government’s PBS and ‘Sesame Street’, which also brought you ‘So Your Dad or Mom Is Being Sent to Iraq’. (The hippies who started much of this weren’t against the state: they wanted to bulldoze the older culture and take over the state.) How about pulling the plug on PBS, the DoE etc., so people can keep their money, start and grow businesses etc. so they can... buy food?
No expensive political theatre to make the boomers and swipples feel even better about themselves. (That goes for ‘hate crime’ laws too. How you feel is none of the government’s business.) Stick to existing laws, protecting oneself and one’s property, for all.
The so-cons have a point, however poorly articulated. A man pretending to be a woman in a women’s locker room probably isn’t dangerous but the real women have the right not to have that forced on them and certainly the right not to have the state force this person’s (chemically enhanced) game of pretend onto reality (the gay agenda: real tolerance and your other dead-white-male values aren’t good enough for them). Be polite; call people what they want to be called etc., but their freedom ends when it infringes on ours. (This man has the same right to go about his business without being assaulted etc. as I do.) The state’s bad enough but when it takes leave of both common sense and reality itself like this, things are getting really bad. (Reality is why I say sex, something we don’t create and is unchangeable, not gender, which implies something changeable.)
Pope changes Catholic faith completely! Making fun of media coverage of the condom story. Actually the liberals think he can do that. That’s right: they accuse him of being a tyrant then demand he use power he doesn’t have.
OMG, the North Koreans are going to get us! All over cable today, there was scaremongering about North Korea, a socialist poverty patch, Threatening The World!, but no one has asked why any disagreement between North and South Korea is any business of the US.
Ron Paul meets the TSA. This is one of the most well-mannered men I know, but after four very hard jabs to his genitals, he asked the blue-gloved TSA agent: “How can you live with yourself, feeling up strange men all day long?” “I love my job,” sneered the goon.
The TSA have had Sam Wolanyk arrested for two offenses: one, entering the Blue Shirt zone and refusing to engage in either of his two authoritarian choices: go through the naked x-ray photo machine, or be molested. Instead, he took all his clothes off, except his briefs, and told the assembled handlers that they could see he had nothing to hide, and they were free to go through his clothes and bag, but not his body. Two, he used his phone to record the encounter. Boom! He was frogmarched through the airport in his underwear to the waiting cops. And the cops also arrested a woman who used her cell phone to record the event. Federal employees, unlike the people, have the “expectation of privacy.” Of course, Sam’s real crime was making fun of the government.
Boycott GE and Johnson & Johnson? This is all to the good. Corporate welfare, whatever its form, is more damaging to the national fisc than that for individuals (it is telling the most heinous villains in Ayn Rand’s novels are rent-seeking corporate chieftains). It is high time captains of industry, the putative champions of free markets, are called out for sticking their hypocritical snouts in the public trough. An additional benefit in calling for corporate boycotts is it further flummoxes the left which, in its unceasing creation of cardboard-cutout villains in order to tear them down, has yet to get a full grasp on Tea Party libertarianism.
He gets it about the Pope and condoms. This does not seem to me the big deal the media will surely make it out to be. Since I am reasonably certain male (as well as female) prostitution falls outside Church teachings and since I am also reasonably certain prostitutes generally do not look to the Holy Father or the Holy Catholic Church for moral guidance, the undoubted clamorous reaction to this statement of the Pope by media and birth-control advocates will be wildly out of proportion to its significance. It seem to me all the Holy Father is saying is: “Don’t compound your already egregious sin by passing along disease to someone else as you commit it.” If liberals somehow construe that to mean the Church’s eventually blessing of the use of condoms by Catholics, they are bound to be disappointed.
...four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their cumulative impact guarantees that the United States will cease to bear any resemblance to the country once outlined in our Constitution. First there will be a state of perpetual war leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a growing reliance on weapons of mass destruction as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights as the presidency fully eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from an ‘executive branch’ of government into something more like a Pentagonized presidency. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there will be bankruptcy, as we pour our economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchange the education, health, and safety of our fellow citizens.
Ordinariate news: The votes are in: St. John’s, Calgary — overwhelmingly, YES! St. Barnabas, Omaha — overwhelmingly, YES!
Damian Thompson is more or less right about the Pope and condoms. It’s a sin but if you choose that, then better not to spread deadly disease; that’s a step in the right direction. His extraordinary comments reflect his charity and common sense. The plain, common-sense reading of them is that he regards the use of a condom as a lesser evil than the transmission of the virus. Wise, humane, carefully balanced – and another reminder of the 83-year-old pontiff’s ability to surprise the world by refusing to conform to the stereotype of “hardline conservative”. Hardline conservatism when talking about the Catholic faith may not be what you think.
Extraordinary Form Low Mass at Our Lady of Lourdes. If every RC parish since 1970 had done this – one per Sunday, first thing in the morning – it would have done a lot of good and saved a lot of grief. Fr Brannan again. I’ve never seen a server dressed like that before; I think he’s a Knight of Malta (there’s a white outline of a Maltese cross in front).
The story about Pope Benedict and condoms. In context it makes sense and doesn’t compromise: everybody knows the activity is sinful (grave matter) so there’s no question of not condoning it; better not to spread disease.
Ron Paul on the TSA. Glad I’m a small-town newspaperman who doesn’t fly.
The NYT sees the RC Church as a threat but not the TSA. Or state-school teachers, who have a worse track record on molesting kids. (Think about it: priests don’t deal mostly with kids; teachers do.) Surprised? Me neither. BTW when will they give back that Pulitzer for lying about Stalin killing people in the Ukraine? ‘Never forget.’ Sure.
“German authorities said Friday that a laptop case carrying bomb components found at a Namibian airport was an American-made device designed to test airport security.” Makes you wonder about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab... and all the others.
Here’s my tip: Now that it appears that 1) It is possible for airports to fire the TSA, and 2) at least 90% of the public thinks the TSA is an outrage that should be abolished, kick the TSA goons out of your airport immediately and hire a private security firm. Let the airlines take care of their own security. No one has a greater incentive to excel at that endeavor. As F.A. Hayek said, private-sector competition is a “dynamic discovery process.” The airlines and private security firms will compete to discover better and better ways to make air travel secure without turning all their employees into porn addicts and sexual assailants. If the TSA has proved anything, it has proven once again that the process of government, in contrast to private-sector competition, is a dynamic stultefication process. Of course, this advice will become moot if the U.S. government gives up on its crusade to invade and occupy the entire Middle East (and much of the rest of the planet), the effects of which have been to create endless enemies — and endless profits for the military/industrial/congressional complex.
Being clever, the communist leadership simply created out of whole cloth a “democratic opposition” of “former” commies who could actually support the regime by challenging it. Like our two-party system. The statists’ proposal to “privatize” the TSA’s “gate rapes” to federally approved Blackwater-type security firms, cutting out the unions and enriching Republican party donors in the process. And your next airport security screener, whose salary is now three times the salary of the old TSA screener, may well have had a few tours at Abu Ghraib under his belt. Enjoy your opt-out!
By a 5-4 ruling, in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, the court decided in late June that if a Christian group wants to be recognized at an American university, it does not have the right to restrict its membership or leadership to practicing Christians. Such restriction, according to the court, constitutes unjust discrimination.
In the spirit of this horrible woman trying to mock Christians on government property and lecturing a black man on ‘diversity’.
White harridan berates black official for not being diverse enough Including, gasp, tolerating Christianity and Judaism on government property. Is anybody surprised? Such is the left. ‘Free thought.’ Not so much. That said, of course I’m not a fan of state support-our-troops propaganda hijacking Christmas but would rather see a generic winter-cheer Christmas display in front of the West Chester courthouse than this woman getting her way.
USCCB politics: the seamless garment unravels? Fire the Bernardin left but here are standard disclaimers: peace issues and charity are also parts of the real seamless garment (war and the death penalty are last resorts); the platforms of left-wing political parties not (not heretical, just wrong). So the answer is still no to warmongers (what Mark Shea calls the rubber-hose right) who happen to be right about abortion and to the well-meaning Catholics who have been co-opted by this issue into the mainstream Republican Party. I didn’t blog anything about this at first because bishops’ conferences have no apostolic authority. From Dr Tighe.
It seems that the Democrats used to be socially conservative (rather like Owen describing the CPUSA) so they were very Catholic (and Jewish) whilst the old mainliners were often Bob Taft/Barry Goldwater real Republicans (I understand my town used to be like that: the people who long ago created the many beautiful buildings; the upper class is now boomer and swipple). Alas. The Dems still own the now mainline RCs and now own the mainline Protestants too (FWIW; as such, politically they don’t matter any more); the GOP are evangelical soldiers (literal and figurative) run by cynical secularists and neocon Jews.
How to shut down Fannie and Freddie. The Treasury doesn’t need Congress or an academic assessment in order to tackle the most important reform goal: eliminating the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and moving their activities to the private sector.
Every crazy thing is promoted in the name of fighting terrorism. But there is one reform would actually end terrorism, not just fight it, and do so immediately: Withdraw all the troops from Muslim countries, and abolish the CIA. Stop interfering in other countries’ lives. Stop murdering, controlling, manipulating. Feds, mind our own business.
The DC attempts to co-opt what good there is in the T-parties will not be supported by Ron Paul, who will not join Michele Bachmann’s pro-police state, pro-war, pro-empire, “limited-government” T-party caucus.
Reid Buckley. Surprisingly blunt (but imperfect: he’s a Krauthammer fan) — and points to the deterioration of education as a major contributing factor to national decline — and not just in the Left.
Predictable. A.N. Wilson’s comments are at least interesting: convert England or just be a mission for foreigners? Of course the converts aren’t picking and choosing doctrine; that’s Protestant. The Anglicans seem to be hoping for Modernist allies in the ‘magic circle’ (‘we don’t want your “conservatism” or high churchmanship so don’t try to tell us what to do’) to try to bully (‘you have nowhere to go’) the would-be converts into being liberal Protestants like them. Better than their old way of enforcing their ‘Reformation’ literally by force. Hope the Pope clears out that ‘magic circle’ soon. Part of what the ordinariates will be for.
Soon-to-be GOP House Majority Leader Eric Cantor met on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the same day when the actual U.S. Secretary of State met with Netanyahu – and vowed that he and his GOP colleagues would protect and defend Israeli interests against his own Government.
This pertains to the new rite [actually a use of the Roman Rite], in which women have been reading the lessons for decades now as a widely overlooked abuse. Eucharistic ministers are supposed to “extraordinary” – used only in cases of necessity, such as bringing the eucharist to the sick – but have now become routine at the new liturgies, an untouchable symbol of “lay participation”. The new rite is plagued with these and similar abuses.
So, if women are admitted to office of lector, it’s kind of like immigration amnesty: they’re already doing it, this just makes it legal. [Like how the Modernists pushed their yucko version of Communion in the hand on pathetic Paul VI.] What’s frustrating is that many Catholics have been hoping that such abuses would be eliminated from the new rite instead of ratified – the “reform of the reform” movement. Traditionalists generally have not held out much hope for the “reform of the reform”, but I have tried to be optimistic about it.
Unlike Bishop Morlino, most bishops are on board with the whole feminist-dominated “lay participation” racket. [The church can’t change its teaching, which I give the late JPII credit for repeating, but liberal-Protestant-minded folk have been trying to soft-sell women’s ordination to RCs for 40 years.] Among those who might be opposed, few have a stomach for the fight.
TV comedies and dramas are depicting our half-brothers the Tea Party Who else caught ‘Law & Order: SVU’ and John Slattery (Roger Sterling) on ‘30 Rock’ this week? Predictable perSteve Sailer: anything remotely anti-government and pro-liberty is really neo-Nazi or at least anti-Muslim (and a con too) and of course the whitest people in NYC commit most of the rapes and other violent crimes on ‘SVU’ (that’s why its called fiction); of course Slattery’s character was a crazy, poorly educated provincial to make fun of.
I don’t hate the military in principle but... LRC contributor Don Cooper, a veteran:
I always laughed at how the military advertises that it wants only the best and the brightest recruits but then the first thing they do to you in basic training is try and break you down and reshape you into a mindless obeyer. Why do they need the best and the brightest for that? If they’re going to reshape who you are then it doesn’t matter if you’re the best and the brightest or the worst and the dumbest.
And it’s true. I served with guys who could barely read or write. Guys with criminal records at 20 years old. Immoral? You have no idea. Anything and everything went: drugs, stealing, sex, lying, scapegoating. Hell, half the base got busted for drugs down there [in Panama in the late ’80s].
I don’t think the ecumenical movement is so much fading...
...as it is being redefined with a more realistic approach. It is no longer looking at one world religion (of the liberal Protestant brand) but rather towards mutual respect and tolerance fostered by better understanding. In short an agreement to work together where we can on matters of mutual interest but to respect theological differences provided it does not compromise core Christian tenets.
I had a few people today try to play the Ron Paul card with me regarding the military... because Dr. Paul favors having a strong national defense, believes in taking care of our military, and has received the support of veterans.
Of course he favors having a strong national defense. Who doesn’t? What he and I don’t favor is a strong national offense – which is what our military is constantly used for (for more on this see Walter Block). I have never written, said, or implied that I don’t believe in taking care of our military. I don’t advocate throwing wounded veterans out in the street. I think the U.S. government is obligated to give the highest care possible to those who took a bullet for Uncle Sam. However, I think the best way to care for our military is to keep it out of foreign wars not by giving it the latest and finest weapons to kill foreigners. I have received the support of so many veterans that I have lost count. Some of them say more radical things about the military than I do.
And John J. O’Sullivan:
This day was set to commemorate the end of a horrid, evil, anti-human war. May we celebrate this day properly by working to truly support our troops — by getting them out of dangerous places where they don’t belong in the first place.
Having grown up accepting the received history of WWII as gospel I’m now a complete revisionist but still like the Greatest Generation as much as Brokaw does. So here’s to them and to the noble cause of ending mission creep and empire (a problem WWII worsened of course), and restoring a strong military, just large enough and no more, to the true calling of defence: guarding the homeland.
Photos: Army ground and air forces, 1942: M-4 tank crew and A-20 bomber. From here.
2012: exploiting Islamophobia to win big From antiwar.com. Sure, don’t fix our foreign policy; just blame the towelheads and rally your way into power and more wars. That said, the protty right’s overrated as a power. Both sides use scare tactics; that one’s for the anti-Christian left.
Is a balanced-budget amendment desirable? Actually, it’s just Republican eyewash, since the federal government does massive “off-budget spending.” That is, the official deficit is always far smaller than the increase in the national debt. I do not believe there is any political solution to what the evil entity in DC has foisted on us, nor am I fan of process reform in general, but here is one idea that, if it could ever be enacted by some fairy godmother, would make sense: freeze the national debt. But even that wouldn’t cure our ills. We need to follow Ron Paul’s advice and end the wars and the empire. That is step one to fiscal and moral sanity.
Creepy quotes. “More people that go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade; ya know, and what is that compared to this one here [the Veterans Day parade]. You wouldn’t have them if you didn’t have this, you know, people who served in the military.” That’s right — there would be no United States of America if we didn’t fight World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq I and Iraq II Wars, the Afghanistan War. In reality, the only things there would not be if we hadn’t fought those wars are the big bank accounts of the Banksters who own the Federal Reserve which prints the money for those wars.
Reason I’m glad I stayed home. The presumptive new Republican chairman of the House Armed Services committee, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), has announced that he will push for an increase in defense spending.
Within a year of the adoption of a U.S.-style Constitution, Africania would be branded a “failed state” and its President, thoroughly committed to the liberal values of Western civilization, would be branded as a Saddam Hussein. Calls would be made for an invasion and overthrow that would give the Africania a more “democratic” Constitution with “social rights” that guarantees a large and ever-present government beholden to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
This would be done because, if left alone, within two to three years foreign investment in Africania would skyrocket since it would be the most business-friendly environment in the world.
And when the invasion is accomplished, progressive and neoconservative pundits on the PBS Newshour would look back on Africa’s George Washington and say, “Sure, the Constitution he had was good, but he made the mistake of following it literally.”
In their eyes, belief in the rule of law makes you a barbarian.
Is the Constitution divinely inspired?
Progressive: Of course not, silly: there is no God!
Liberal: Of course not, because it was mostly written by slave-owners.
Conservative: No. It was the product of wise but imperfect men.
Anarchist: Are you serious?
Libertarian: Actually respecting the limits the Constitution places on power would be a good thing, but there was no reason to create it and the Articles of Confederation was better.
Neoconservative: Of course not: it doesn’t mention anything about support for Israel.
He has trained teachers as well as corporate, government, media and law-enforcement officials... and has served as an consultant for plaintiff’s attorneys in federal discrimination cases in New York and Washington State. Wise ... has appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows worldwide.
He probably really means he hopes his kind of whites will rule the other kind. The non-Asian minorities (yeah, like he cares about Catholic Hispanics for all the Spanish he speaks) are probably just human shields, pawns etc. (Who of course can and probably ought to be contracepted and aborted according to leftist doctrine.)
Somebody who hates your wrong-kind-of-white guts is training state officials including cops and the people who indoctrinate your kids. Super.
From Steve Sailer. Standard disclaimer: his theories are right – the magic words are ‘on average’ not ‘all’ — but if he wants racial collectivism, writing the law based on race because he famously doesn’t like Mexicans for example, he’s just as wrong.
Raleigh, N.C. – Students have vowed to protest or block North Carolina State University’s Free Expression Tunnel until the university’s chancellor gives guarantees that no hate speech will be allowed there.
“We’ll be out here until we get an answer that we can guarantee that we don’t have to walk through this tunnel and worry about what’s written on the wall,” Bonds said.
If the Republicans weren’t dishonest, and entirely in the pocket of the big banks, Ron Paul would be taking Barney Frank’s place as chairman of the finance committee.
Did freedom win? But the Tea Party is supposed to be different. It stands for fiscal responsibility, spending cuts and deficit reduction. A New York Times poll found that 92 percent of tea partiers said they would rather have a “smaller government providing fewer services” than a “bigger government providing more services.” That’s encouraging. But when it comes to specifics, the results aren’t as good. The poll found that 62 percent thought “the benefits from government programs such as Social Security and Medicare are worth the costs.” A Bloomberg poll found that most tea partiers “want more drug benefits for Medicare patients.” And when was the last time you heard tea partiers complaining about the exploding military budget?
I do hope 2010 is 1994 (same result: president and Congress cancel each other out -> prosperity) but again the left probably won’t move to Canada. Why not? The Euro-socialist-style countries are rediscovering the laws of economics and cutting back.
Ted Sorensen and the missile crisis. (The man old Joe paid to make Jack look smart.) Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Most people still thought in pre-ICBM terms but by ’62 there were silos and boomers (subs) so missiles in Cuba didn’t matter really.
Some jottings about the news
