Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

The Man in White Fails the Ladies in White

By David Smith

Any non-Catholic who presumes to judge the Catholic Church stands a considerable risk of sticking his nose where it does not belong.  I am not a Catholic, so I have no standing to criticize the Church’s internal decisions, or beliefs, or anything else internally Catholic.  (Of course this does not really apply to bloggers, or any other media opinionators, but I like to try to follow it anyway.)

However, the actions of the Church in the world, and especially of its pope, reach far beyond the Church’s Magisterium.   And the past few popes have cast giant shadows on us all.

John Paul II was a great voice, one may even say fighter, for human freedom and dignity.   He had positive impacts in many areas, but nowhere more than in the struggle against totalitarian dictatorship.  With his personal experience of both Nazism and Communism, he seemed immune to the modern disease of moral equivalency.  Nor was he inclined to speak in the soothing voice of a diplomat from a neutral state trying to coax the great powers to play nice.  He was a moral leader, and he knew that the fight against totalitarianism was first and foremost a moral fight. Continue reading ‘The Man in White Fails the Ladies in White’

Condi Rice for Vice President!

I don’t know what Mitt Romney’s political calculations will tell him about who he should select as his running mate.  But I know the ticket I’d like to see.

Condoleezza Rice is one of the most accomplished non-politician people in America today.  Former Secretary of State, former National Security Adviser, author, concert pianist, professor and Provost of Stanford, etc., etc.

Politically, the election will likely come down to a referendum on an incumbent, as these things usually do.  And the true partisans among us always want the other party to field the weakest, lamest candidates possible.  That is what separates partisans from plain, non-political citizens, who want to see the best possible candidates square off.  Partisans don’t worry about how bad things will be for the country and world if the US elects a fool; the only risk is that it might not be their fool.  If the other party wins, it means the end of the world anyway.

But for us non-political types, I can’t imagine a better Republican team than Romney-Rice.   Of course I don’t know if she would accept.  She flatly rejected an attempted draft in 2008.

Is the West Still Judeo-Christian?

[It's not that I'm getting lazy or anything.  It's just that my friend Ben Finiti keeps putting up good stuff that I feel the need to share with you (his audience being much smaller than mine.)  Anyway, here it is.]

Good Show, Cameron!

British Prime Minister David Cameron has made a most important speech.  Unsurprisingly, our media didn’t notice.

On Dec. 16, he spoke at a Christ Church, Oxford celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.  He proclaimed the Bible as still relevant, and admitted (confessed?) that Britain is in a very real sense a “Judeo-Christian Nation”  He further articulated the Biblical origins of modern values such as equality, human rights, and morality.

The Judeo-Christian roots of the Bible also provide the foundations for protest and for the evolution of our freedom and democracy.  The Torah placed the first limits on Royal Power.   And the knowledge that God created man in his own image was, if you like, a game changer for the cause of human dignity and equality.

He also offered a sharp critique of modern “diversity” doctrines which have changed moderate tolerance into a disastrous abdication of responsibility.

I am grateful to George J. Marlin at The Catholic Thing (www.thecatholicthing.org) for shining a light on this speech.  Marlin’s analysis is excellent, as is the rest of TCT.

Cameron’s full text is online at http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/king-james-bible/.

The Forgotten Books of Witness

[Note:  My philosophical friend Mr. Finiti just put this up on his website, and as usual it is pretty good.  And since it seems more political than most of his stuff, I post it here in full.  If you want to leave a comment, do it on his page: www.benfiniti.com.]

by Ben Finiti 

Over the recent years, I have developed an interesting new hobby. (Well, I find it interesting.)  I prowl through thrift stores in search of forgotten books by forgotten authors.  And then I liberate them (usually for a dollar) and read them.

I pass quickly over certain types of books.  For instance, I have never bought a 20th or 21st century work of fiction. In my humble opinion as an accomplished literary snob, the last great writer of fiction was Anthony Trollope.  (I do not classify Orwell, Huxley, Waugh, or Koestler’s works as quite fiction.)

I do pick up curious books on subjects in which I have neither interest nor background.  For instance, I just finished a book called Let’s Talk About Port, by J.C. Valente-Perfeito, published in Portugal in 1948.  The author explains the varieties of port, sings (gushes, actually) its praises, and complains of how little his fellow citizens drink of it.   He offers eloquent warnings about the modern scourge of cocktail-drinking, and effectively rebuts those medical cranks who claim that alcoholism is a bad thing.  I had great fun reading it, and I may even try some of the stuff one of these days.

But the real goal of my pursuit is a category of books which was invented and flourished in the dreadful 20th century:  the survivor’s tale of witness to the inhuman atrocities that reached such a peak (so far) in the recent past. Continue reading ‘The Forgotten Books of Witness’

Can You Love Freedom and Hate Israel?

I was discussing philosophy recently with my friend Ben Finiti.  The queston arose of whether it is repressive “political correctness” to consider a person’s extreme prejudices (in this case, anti-semitism) when evaluating their position on a philosophical question.

Our initial reaction was that, if at all possible, the philosophical question should be considered separately.

This got me thinking about a question I often ask myself:  how can someone who does A also do B?  Specifically on the question of Israel and Zionism.

How can one preach democracy and hate the most democratic state ever to exist in the region?

How can one value freedom and yet hate the freest, arguably the only free state in the region?

How can one espouse peace and yet hate the only state in the region willing to establish peace with all its neighbors?

And finally, the most perplexing of all: How can one love God and hate Israel?

I know, I know.  Anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel is not the same as anti-semitism.  Supposedly, not every anti-Zionist advocate of return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders hates Jews.  Not every pious critic who screams “Apartheid” and “Imperialism” at Israel’s every measure of self-defense is an anti-Semite.  Not every college professor demanding disinvestment from all Israeli companies would be happy to see Hamas achieve its bloodthirsty dreams.  Not every anti-Zionist wants to see Israel swept off the map, or even the more moderate proposal of allowing Hamas missiles to be positioned 11 miles from Tel Aviv.

But still…

When I hear someone say “I am not anti-Semitic; I am just anti-Israel” I wonder.  Continue reading ‘Can You Love Freedom and Hate Israel?’

Gulliver on Fiscal Stimulus

I don’t write much about the economy and various remedies for its present ills.  That is for two reasons:  First, I believe economics, especially on the macro side, is so far from being science that it is closer to being a conventicle of witches, with multiple schools promoting various spells and potions.  And second, because I don’t really understand it all (despite having taken my Masters degree in economics.)

Anyway, I stumbled across the following passage in Gulliver’s Travels, which I think sums it up.

When Gulliver visited Laputa, the land of the philosophers, he complained of “cholick”.  He was introduced to “a great physician who was famous for curing that disease by contrary operations of the same instrument, a pair of bellows with a slender muzzle of ivory; this he conveyed 8 inches up the anus, and drawing in the wind, he affirmed he could make the guts as lank as a dried bladder.  But when the disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in the muzzle while the bellows was full of wind, which he discharged into the body of the patient…

“I saw him try both experiments upon a dog; but could not discern any effect from the former.  After the latter, the animal was ready to burst, and made so violent a discharge as was very offensive to me and my companions.  The dog died on the spot, and we left the doctor trying to recover him by the same operation.”

Thus Dean Swift’s eighteenth century view of stimulus and other remedies for financial cholick.

Ben Finiti Among the PABGoos

by Ben Finiti

I have traveled a long road from my Methodist childhood, into my atheist, Marxist radical youth, and into the world.  There I battled through a lifetime of real-world practicality decreasingly comforted and cushioned by the shreds of an ideology that no longer worked or made real sense of anything.  And I end up here.

I now find myself on the doorstep of a return to the truths of my childhood belief, still unable to cross the threshold.  (Of course, I wonder just how fully I ever really believed back then.  Tolstoy wrote somewhere about his religious beliefs evaporating in an instant when his older brother, seeing him kneeling by his bed, asked “You don’t still pray, do you?”)

Anyway, here I am.  Like Chesterton, I wanted always to be in the vanguard of new thought, always ahead of my time, only to discover that I was 20 centuries behind the truth.

I now find that there are only two consistent philosophical standpoints that are not in serious conflict with the facts of human nature.  Two tenable views.

Either God made us with souls, with a purpose.  Or we exist as accidental results of random materialistic evolution.

If we have souls and a purpose, then morality is a possibility, a choice that our souls can make to be in conformity with our purpose.  If we are evolutionary accidents, then we have no souls, no real purpose, and morality is whatever works.  So real morality, with legitimate authority, becomes impossible.  Moral anarchy is the only possible outcome.

There is of course another, much cheerier world view, one which believes that People Are Basically Good (hence “PABGoo”).  Continue reading ‘Ben Finiti Among the PABGoos’

US to Israel: “You’re on Your Own”

It is reported by Eric Trager on Contentions that Defense Secretary Gates, obviously speaking at the president’s direction, has announced that the US has no military ability to destroy the fast-developing Iranian nuclear program.  All we would do would be “send it further underground.” Continue reading ‘US to Israel: “You’re on Your Own”’

Pirates given stern lecture, then released

OK, here is a priceless news story from the West’s War On Piracy. Continue reading ‘Pirates given stern lecture, then released’

Gaza Is Not San Marino!

On a late drive home the other night I found myself listening to the “BBC World Report” on an NPR station. (Don’t look at me like that – it was a remote area and that was the only station I could get.)

There was a story about a delegation of British MP’s visiting Gaza to inspect the humanitarian crisis. The MPs were already on record as condemning Israel for the crisis and the war, so their comments were unsurprising. They called on Israel to relieve the suffering it had caused by closing off the Israeli-Gaza border crossings.

Continue reading ‘Gaza Is Not San Marino!’

W, Hail and Farewell

George W. Bush is about to become officially only a memory. (Though in all likelihood he will become the kind of obsessing memory that Nixon immediately became for liberals.) 

His tale is of course complicated. Many knocks against him are legitimate.  So what can you say to his credit?

Simply this.  George W. Bush fought hard against the enemies of his country, and never let popularity or politics distract him from doing so.

That accomplishment will be put in perspective by the subsequest performance of his successors.  Let us pray that it comes to be seen as a matter of course.

Dear Wikipedia: About those Democrats…

The Democratic Party is… the oldest political party in continuous operation in the United States and it is one of the oldest parties in the world.

“The Democratic Party traces its origins to the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other influential opponents of the Federalists in 1792.”

–Wikipedia

 

 

Dear Wikipedia:

 

The above-quoted information is incorrect.  You have apparently confused the currently-existing Democratic Party with its predecessor, the Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ.  That party was driven out of existence by the new Democratic Party founded by George McGovern in 1972.

  Continue reading ‘Dear Wikipedia: About those Democrats…’

Democrats win another domestic election

I know the election is over and it is time to, as they say, “Move On”.  But not quite yet.

 

Presidential elections can fit many patterns, and this one was no exception.  In retrospect it has a certain (and false) sense of inevitability.  Unpopular president, bad economy; these things don’t bode well for an incumbent party.   Yet nations, like individuals, possess a kind of free will, and formulaic determinism will always fall short.

 

But one pattern jumps out.  This was an election in which the domestic economy was the “top topic” on voters’ minds.  When that has happened recently, Democrats usually win. Continue reading ‘Democrats win another domestic election’

“Employee Free Choice Act” Bad For Unions

 

I am a lifelong union man: an organizer, negotiator, staffer and leader.  I believe in unions and their importance for our society.  That’s why I think HR 800, the Orwellian-titled “Employee Free Choice Act” is an abomination.  And more than that, it is not good for unions.

  Continue reading ‘“Employee Free Choice Act” Bad For Unions’

President Pandora

It appears that the answer to Melanie Phillips’ question (see below, “Is America Really Going To Do This?” is “Yes we are, because Yes we can” (or something).

Electing Obama is like electing Pandora, in the hope (there’s that word again) that when the box is opened good things will fly out.  That’s a heck of a hope, given the glimpses we have seen (through the media blackout) of Obama’s background and past associations.

And, once opened, the box will keep on giving.  Court appointees will determine our laws for decades to come (you thought congress did that?) The foreign policy results may take years, and fortunes in blood and treasure, to undo – if they can ever be undone.

One Sermon, One Sunday; Sen. Obama in Church

 

As I ponder Barack Obama sitting in church listening to his pastor’s hate-filled sermons, I cannot help but think of my mother.  I imagine her sitting in the next pew.  I know what she would have done.   Continue reading ‘One Sermon, One Sunday; Sen. Obama in Church’

I’m Afraid Obama Isn’t Scary Enough

Halloween looms and I am scared.  Not of the trick-or-treaters, but of the very real monsters lurking in the world.

 

And of Obama.  I am afraid that he isn’t scary enough.  To the right people.

 

It’s all about America’s place in the world.  Paradoxically, many consider this Obama’s strong suit.  The rock-star reaction to his world tour suggests that the world loves him.  And we like that.  We want our country and our leaders to be loved. Continue reading ‘I’m Afraid Obama Isn’t Scary Enough’



Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.