Blogrollin' again

On the supposition that there are people who would prefer my blog to Bill Donaghy's, what's wrong with you?

I never come up with fabulous stuff like this.

"I'm from the government, I'm here to help"

The cavalier use of brute government force has become routine, but the emerging story of how Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke forced CEO Ken Lewis to blow up Bank of America is still shocking. It's a case study in the ways that panicky regulators have so often botched the bailout and made the financial crisis worse.

In the name of containing "systemic risk," our regulators spread it. In order to keep Mr. Lewis quiet, they all but ordered him to deceive his own shareholders. And in the name of restoring financial confidence, they have so mistreated Bank of America that bank executives everywhere have concluded that neither Treasury nor the Federal Reserve can be trusted.

Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America's financial system couldn't withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn't complete the deal. ...

The Wall Street Journal

The title of this post was described by President Ronald Reagan as some of the most frightening words in the English language. Gun owners and dealers have long known that the Federal regulators who oversee them are the enemy; it looks like bankers have now learned the same hard truth.

Angels and Demons

As anyone who heard about The Da Vinci Code could reasonably expect, Ron Howard and Dan Brown are again claiming that their latest project, Angels and Demons, is in no way anti-Catholic, and that our indignation at their portrayal of the Church is silly.

The Curt Jester skillfully skewers this conceit.

Imagine ....

This humor column by Tom Purcell is funny because we know how close he hits to the mark.

Now, is there really any reason to think that "the Department of Government-Backed GM Warranties" would be too much different from, say, "the Department of Government Funded Health Insurance"?

Tax Day

Today is the deadline for filing US income tax forms.

One of the most telling scenes from the Tom Clancy novel where he had Jack Ryan as the new President was where Ryan's Secretary of the Treasury had the ENTIRE FEDERAL TAX CODE brought before the Congressional committees that oversee such things. The pile of books and documents was so massive that it destroyed the table, before they even got it all on there. Given Clancy's penchant for exhaustive research, I have no doubt that this is an accurate representation of the sheer verbiage regarding taxation and revenue to be found in the Federal Register.

It is not possible for the tax code to be so vast without those corrupt politicians who are drawn to the power that legislators wield inserting laws and regulations that favor themselves and those who contribute to their coffers.

It really needs to be scrapped, and completely. I doubt very much that the people in Congress will let the power cravings which drew them into that job be thwarted in that manner. I understand more and more why Claire Wolfe believes that it is too late to save our current system, though I must agree when she says it is too early to start shooting the bastards.

I also understand why the Catholic Church has never regarded democracy as much of a friend to the people. Democracy led to anti-Catholic purges in The Vendee. Democracy isn't much of a friend to the Catholic Church now, except perhaps in Poland, Malta, and to some degree in Ireland.

There is no reliable guarantor of liberty in an amoral society.

Condoms and HIV

Anyone, regardless of which side they take in the debate about whether condoms are the best prophylactic against HIV, should start by reading the plethora of links in this post. There is a LOT of information to be had there.

Victory!!

I remember reading once that the only reason that Star Wars didn't win the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976 was that so quintissentially American a picture as Rocky came out the same year.

But Rocky is not so much quintessentially American as it is Christian. Christ's victory comes only through His destruction at the hands of His enemy. If He had not died, then He cannot be risen. If He is not risen, then there is no ressurrection. Without His ressurrection, there is no victory over sin and death.

The exultation and glory we feel when Rocky Balboa returns to again challenge and then defeat Apollo Creed, is but a pale, blurred and indistinct shadow of the exultation and glory we feel in the Resurrection of Christ.

And it is because Rocky Balboa is a type of Christ, one whose victory over his opponent is born of his defeat at the same opponent's hands, that Rocky is so powerful a film.

A Profile in Heroism

Salute to NYPD Green, of the Catholic Cavemen.

Would that all of our clergy would confront the egregious evils tolerated and even celebrated in our society with the courage of Karl Malden's Father Barry, in On the Waterfront.

Two Americas

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This article documents the accelerating decline of the rule of law.

More and more, I am beginning to think that F. Paul Wilson's An Enemy of the State is a work of prophecy.

Genocide In America

I've commented on this before.

Noting the statistics on abortion of African Americans, Rev. Hoye writes: "Brothers, in Black America alone every seventy-two seconds a black baby is murdered in the womb of his or her mother. This holocaust is genocidal to the point that today a black child has less than a fifty-percent chance of being born. According to the 2006 U.S. Census, Black Americans are below the replacement level.

"In other words, death in Black America outpaces life. Abortion alone accounts for three times more deaths in our community than HIV/AIDS, Violent Crimes, Accidents, Cancer, and Heart Disease combined. There is no question pre-natal murder, abortion, is the number one issue in not only Black America, but in all of America today."

Read more here. Read the entire letter here.

Pius XII and the Jews

I left the religious and political debate community mentioned in the Obligatory Journey Post over a debate on infallibility. That debate was what first led me to formulate the argument used in my post here, Regarding Doctrine.

After I made that argument, the debate quickly degenerated into an endless series of ad hominem attacks against every member of the Catholic clergy and religious to make the news for their grave and egregious sins. I am very sorry that I wasn't wise enough to point out that these were in fact ad hominem attacks, that the sinfulness of the clergy has nothing to do with whether the Church's doctrines are correct, and that the burden of proof was on the other person to demonstrate that the evil those people did was in fact supported by Catholic Doctrine, rather than letting stand my opponent's contention that their vows of obedience to the Church were prima facie evidence that everything they did was supported by Church doctrine. Instead, to my lasting regret, I made the mistake of trying to defend the indefensible. This mistake made the debate so horrible for me that I left the community over it.

Perhaps part of the reason I found myself on this path is that one of the first victims of these attacks was Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII. The attack against him was the libel first accepted because of Rolf Hochhuth's defamatory play, The Deputy: that Pope Pius XII had been deliberately silent regarding the Shoah, because he was an anti-Semite.

I was able to refute this argument quite easily, even then. Between Rabbi David G. Dalin, Professor Ronald J. Rychlak, and Sir Martin Gilbert, there was plenty of material from non-Catholic sources. From learning about Pope Pius XII's actions during WWII, and from reading his encyclicals regarding the Third Reich (particularly Mit Brennender Sorge, which he wrote for his predecessor), I came to love him greatly. It gives me heartache that the lies against him are so much more widely believed than the truth.

One of the most telling arguments I had was a pair of maps.

This one shows where the NSDAP got their votes in 1932:



This one shows where the 1934 census found Catholics:



Still, it would have been very nice, back then, to have had this article on Catholic Exchange, which cites and quotes much of the historical evidence (and here I mean testimony of his contemporaries) that Pope Pius XII was one of the best friends that Jews had, during the Shoah. My love for the Jew-loving Pope (as he was called by his NSDAP enemies) drives me to post these links.

More Blogrollin'

Salute to the Western Confucian, as he does it again: I sincerely hope that each and every law enforcement officer and member of the armed forces would take this oath, and defend these principles.

Needless to say, I'm cross posting this to the Catholic Cavemen and adding them to the blogroll.

A Splendid LOL!

In case I haven't made it clear, LOLSaints has become one of my favorite blogs. This post should make it clear why; to get the joke, pay close attention to the color coding.

Still No Material of My Own

Salute to The Western Confucian

I hope everyone reads this article by Walter E. Williams, and then writes their state legislators, urging them to follow his suggestions. I have been trying to imagine how we could put some teeth into the Ninth and Tenth Amendments for some time. They are vital safeguards of liberty, but our courts have made them dead letters in American jurisprudence for far too long.

Further Blogrollin'

I'm not playing b/c downloading the 3.1.0 Patch to Wrath of the Lich King is a demanding enough from my processor that I'm unwilling to try playing at the same time. As a result, I'm catching up on lots of blogs.

This two-hour video, suggested by the Western Confucian, is something I'd like to see -- IF I could download it via torrent. My family isn't crazy about somebody using all the bandwidth for extended periods of time. If you know where a bit torrent seed can be found, please mention it in the comments.

Kudos to Fr. Longenecker

I want you to go and read this excellent post by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, explaining and defending Christian Patriarchy. It's really long, but the payoff is most certainly worth it.

Kudos to Eegah

EEgah, Inc. has produced a supremely timely post about the culture of death. Who would have thought so lousy a film as Cherry 2000 could be so prescient?

The Best of 2008

Clearly I've been having a dry spell. I won't go into the reasons for it. But I suppose I can once again make my first post of the year, a review of the year that's just past.

Last year didn't have many posts, so I'm not aiming for a top ten list. I'm just going to put up a link list for the best posts, in my own opinion, in reverse chronological order.

The Vital Issue
First Principles
Salvation for ET?
On Serving
The Blegroll
Too Funny To Not Post
Paying to Starve the Poor
Abortion
Spiritual Malaise

And, just because: The Best of 2007

Just Look

This article is taken, lock, stock, and barrel, from Edward Cardinal Egan's column of 23 October, 2008. While I haven't taken the time to get permission from him or Catholic New York Online, I trust they won't mind; if they do, a post in the combox will suffice to get me to cease and desist.

The picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.



Have you any doubt that it is a human being?

If you do not have any such doubt, have you any doubt that it is an innocent human being?

If you have no doubt about this either, have you any doubt that the authorities in a civilized society are duty—bound to protect this innocent human being if anyone were to wish to kill it?

If your answer to this last query is negative, that is, if you have no doubt that the authorities in a civilized society would be duty—bound to protect this innocent human being if someone were to wish to kill it, I would suggest—even insist—that there is not a lot more to be said about the issue of abortion in our society. It is wrong, and it cannot—must not—be tolerated.

But you might protest that all of this is too easy. Why, you might inquire, have I not delved into the opinion of philosophers and theologians about the matter? And even worse: Why have I not raised the usual questions about what a "human being" is, what a "person" is, what it means to be "living," and such? People who write books and articles about abortion always concern themselves with these kinds of things. Even the justices of the Supreme Court who gave us "Roe v. Wade" address them. Why do I neglect philosophers and theologians? Why do I not get into defining "human being," "person," "living," and the rest? Because, I respond, I am sound of mind and endowed with a fine set of eyes, into which I do not believe it is well to cast sand. I looked at the photograph, and I have no doubt about what I saw and what are the duties of a civilized society if what I saw is in danger of being killed by someone who wishes to kill it or, if you prefer, someone who "chooses" to kill it. In brief: I looked, and I know what I saw.

But what about the being that has been in its mother for only 15 weeks or only 10? Have you photographs of that too? Yes, I do. However, I hardly think it necessary to show them. For if we agree that the being in the photograph printed on this page is an innocent human being, you have no choice but to admit that it may not be legitimately killed even before 20 weeks unless you can indicate with scientific proof the point in the development of the being before which it was other than an innocent human being and, therefore, available to be legitimately killed. Nor have Aristotle, Aquinas or even the most brilliant embryologists of our era or any other era been able to do so. If there is a time when something less than a human being in a mother morphs into a human being, it is not a time that anyone has ever been able to identify, though many have made guesses. However, guesses are of no help. A man with a shotgun who decides to shoot a being that he believes may be a human being is properly hauled before a judge. And hopefully, the judge in question knows what a "human being" is and what the implications of someone's wishing to kill it are. The word "incarceration" comes to mind.

However, we must not stop here. The matter becomes even clearer and simpler if you obtain from the National Geographic Society two extraordinary DVDs. One is entitled "In the Womb" and illustrates in color and in motion the development of one innocent human being within its mother. The other is entitled "In the Womb—Multiples" and illustrates in color and in motion the development of two innocent human beings—twin boys—within their mother. If you have ever allowed yourself to wonder, for example, what "living" means, these two DVDs will be a great help. The one innocent human being squirms about, waves its arms, sucks its thumb, smiles broadly and even yawns; and the two innocent human beings do all of that and more: They fight each other. One gives his brother a kick, and the other responds with a sock to the jaw. If you can convince yourself that these beings are something other than innocent and living human beings (perhaps "mere clusters of tissues," as one national newsmagazine suggests), you have a problem far more basic than merely not appreciating the wrongness of abortion. And that problem is—forgive me—self—deceit in a most extreme form.

Adolf Hitler convinced himself and his subjects that Jews and homosexuals were other than human beings. Joseph Stalin did the same as regards Cossacks and Russian aristocrats. And this despite the fact that Hitler and his subjects had seen both Jews and homosexuals with their own eyes, and Stalin and his subjects had seen both Cossacks and Russian aristocrats with theirs. Happily, there are few today who would hesitate to condemn in the roundest terms the self—deceit of Hitler, Stalin or even their subjects to the extent that their subjects could have done something to end the madness and protect living, innocent human beings.

It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers. We know full well that to kill what is clearly seen to be an innocent human being or what cannot be proved to be other than an innocent human being is as wrong as wrong gets. Nor can we honorably cover our shame (1) by appealing to the thoughts of Aristotle or Aquinas on the subject, inasmuch as we are all well aware that their understanding of matters embryological was hopelessly mistaken, (2) by suggesting that "killing" and "choosing to kill" are somehow distinct ethically, morally or criminally, (3) by feigning ignorance of the meaning of "human being," "person," "living," and such, (4) by maintaining that among the acts covered by the right to privacy is the act of killing an innocent human being, and (5) by claiming that the being within the mother is "part" of the mother, so as to sustain the oft—repeated slogan that a mother may kill or authorize the killing of the being within her "because she is free to do as she wishes with her own body."

One day, please God, when the stranglehold on public opinion in the United States has been released by the extremists for whom abortion is the center of their political and moral life, our nation will, in my judgment, look back on what we have been doing to innocent human beings within their mothers as a crime no less heinous than what was approved by the Supreme Court in the "Dred Scott Decision" in the 19th century, and no less heinous than what was perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin in the 20th. There is nothing at all complicated about the utter wrongness of abortion, and making it all seem complicated mitigates that wrongness not at all. On the contrary, it intensifies it.

Do me a favor. Look at the photograph again. Look and decide with honesty and decency what the Lord expects of you and me as the horror of "legalized" abortion continues to erode the honor of our nation. Look, and do not absolve yourself if you refuse to act.


Edward Cardinal Egan

Archbishop of New York

The Vital Issue

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

We are not yet to that last, here in these United States of America, but an Obama presidency could change that. He could easily sweep aside a doctor's right to refuse to perform abortions or even euthanasia on the basis of conscience by executive order. But have no doubt, we are required at times to help pay for abortions. Never mind that every federal dollar that goes to Planned Parenthood allows them to divert a dollar from a different source to abortion. Check the health care budgets of your state, county, and municipality.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether the government will prevent the strong from killing the weak.