The Meaning of Estase

Why do I use a pseudonym?  I was reminded again last week when someone commenting on another blog called me a lying bubba Bellarmine.  Ah, the decency and fair-mindedness of liberals!  Where debate fails, use slander and insult, huh?  Catholic bloggers are not above outing a pseudonomous blogger.  The reason I don't blog under my Christian name is because people like this cannot be trusted. At all.  People aren't above lying about a blogger's activities to make them lose their job.  If they could, they would fill your inbox with gay porn.  Because that's just the kind of scum they are.  What does Estase mean?  I'm a stubborn S.O.B. that won't shut up, that's what it means.

Justice Thomas on Natural Law

"Howard Metzenbaum was the other kind of senator, and I already knew how he felt about me.  It would have been charitable to call him unlikeable, though he went through the motions of civility during my visit.  At one point he actually tried to lure me into a discussion of natural law, but I knew he was no philosopher, just another cynical politician looking for a chink in my armor, so all I did was ask him if he would consider having a human-being sandwich for lunch instead of, say, a turkey sandwich.  That's Natural Law 101:  all law is based on some sense of moral principles inherent in the nature of human beings, which explains why cannibalism, even without a written law to proscribe it, strikes every civilized person as naturally wrong.  Any well-read college student would have gotten my point, but Senator Metzenbaum just stared at me awkwardly and changed the subject as fast as he could (p.221-22)." "As for natural law, I knew perfectly well that it was nothing more than a way of tricking me into talking about abortion, since many Catholic moral philosophers saw the two things as intimately related.  But my interest in natural law was different, and I hoped I could quell any anxieties resulting from it.  If some senators found the subject silly or radical, I was prepared to oblige them by discussing the silliness and radicalism of the Founding Fathers who had written natural-law philosophy into the Declaration of Independence.  Why shouldn't a federal judge be interested in what the founders thought about natural law--and why shouldn't a black man be interested in the fact that the philosophical underpinnings of the Constitution had been in direct conflict with the peculiar institution of slavery, thus fueling the earliest efforts to free my forebears (p231)?"  Clarence Thomas,My Grandfather's Son

Neo-Con and Neo-Cath

A Jewish woman in Minnesota used several anti-Catholic phrases in reference to a judge dealing with her litigation, perhaps a result of the old, continuing problem with Catholic anti-semitism, which continues even today, as the representatives of the Vatican were the only ones not to walk out when the Iranian representative addressed a UN conference on colonialism with a tirade about how the Shoah didn't happen and Israel is illegitimate.  For anti-semites, the term Neo-Con refers to Jewish conservatives.  To the merely ignorant, a Neo-Con is anyone who isn't Ron Paul.

Neo-Cath is a term of abuse directed at anyone who is 1)Catholic and Republican,or 2) accepting of other faiths.  Estase isn't the biggest fan of the SVC, but if anything was good about it, it was the end of Catholicism claiming to be the only legitimate religion, something that in and of itself created hatred of Catholicism.  Perhaps Henry Morton Robinson, author of the novel The Cardinal, was the first Neo-Cath.  After all, Robinson's novel depicted a Catholicism that opposed racism and abortion, one that was consistent with democratic government.  The traditionalists haven't accepted the fact that we cannot rely on Hapsburg monarchs to rule us;  that day has come and gone.  Like it or not, democracy is the modern alternative to total authoritarian statism.  The Church should not spend too much time pining for monarchy, after all, Britain's monarchs made priests hide in cellars.

Continuing Deevolution

Bela Pelosi complained that by opposing the contraception coverage in Obamacare, the Catholic bishops are acting as lobbyists.  Which might be a good objection if the same Catholic bishops had been attacked by Mrs. Pelosi for supporting any measures she also happened to support, such as comprehensive immigration reform (amnesty) or Obamacare itself, which to a large extent was supported by Catholic bishops.  

The defense appropriations bill apparently authorizes the military to arrest any American, in America, and hold them without trial, until the GWOT is resolved.  The Constitution is dead, and Dick Cheney had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Endorsement

Mitt Romney for President!  Sure he's wishy-washy, created socialized health care in Massachusetts, and looks like a Ken doll, but he is soo acceptable to the people who write for east coast newspapers.  And you know who should be his veep?  Newt Gingerich!  Yes, Mr. Life-Begins-At-Implantation!  Mr. I-Left-My-Wife-On-Her-Deathbed!  There's a team America can believe in!

Whatever you do, primary voters, stay away from Bachmann and Santorum!  People of principle and integrity have no place in American politics.

Rights Preceeding Constitution?

First Things.com has an excellent Hadley Arkes column called "Natural Rights Trump Obamacare, or Should,"  wherein the excellent Mr. Arkes raises the excellent, and ignored, question of whether conservatives can/should go beyond black letter constitutional law in defending freedom and the right to life.  It is a pressing constitutional and moral question:  do our legal rights start and end with the constitution?  It is even more pressing, as the Balkinization blog offers a new piece of liberal obfuscation-- the term "sail originalism," which seems like living constitution under a different name.  It is a commonplace of conservative and libertarian legal commentary that the commerce clause has been perverted by Supreme Court decisions since the New Deal, but it is probably impossible to return to original intentions of only regulating interstate commerce.

Free Speech on Campus, British Style

Tip of the petasus to Biased BBC.  St. Andrew's University has a conservative organization,which, according to tradition, has something they call a heretic burning to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day.  Typically, political organizations pick a member of the other team to burn in effigy.  The Brit Cons chose Oh Blah Blah for the honor this year, and predictably the BBC pretended that this is racist.  Was it bigotry against WASPs to call George W. Bush Hitler, the Smirking Chimp, or a retard?  Civility in politics is all-important to the left, except where their opponents are concerned.

National Legislature

"'Tis not therefore for Kent or Sussex, Lewis or Maidstone, but for the whole nation, that the members chosen in these places are sent to serve in Parliament:  and tho it be fit for them as friends and neighbors (so far as may be)to hearken to the opinions of the electors for the information of their judgments, and to the end that what they shall say may be of more weight, when everyone is known not to speak his own thoughts only, but those of a great number of men;  yet they are not strictly and properly obliged to give account of their actions to any, unless the whole body of the nation for they serve, and who are equally concerned in their resolutions could be assembled."  Algernon Sidney Discourses on Government, p 565.

"If we degrade and deprave their minds by servility, it will be absurd to expect, that they who are creeping and abject towards us, will ever be bold and incorruptible assertors of our freedom, against the most seducing and the most formidable of all powers(p216). . . if we do not permit our members to act upon a very enlarged view of things;  we shall at length infallibly degrade our national representation into a confused and scuffling bustle of local agency."  Edmund Burke Guildhall Speech

Purple Shirts Against Walker

Estase just read that the recall election against Wisconsin Governor Scott Brown is costing the Cheeseheads nearly eight million Dollars.  A vendetta waged against anyone whose judgement counters the public employees' unions.  At least Wisconsin, unlike the People's Republic of Illinois, has politicians who can stand up to greedy public employees.  Illinois has been broken by the fact that it has to pay two or three pensions to some retired teachers.  No state can afford to pay one retired employee more than one pension, and it is immoral to expect the public to pay one person more than one pension.  Ask a military retiree whether anyone seems interested in paying for their healthcare, and then look at a schoolteacher living like a crowned head of Europe.

Burke and Kant Defended

Immanuel Kant takes a beating on the Accepting Abundance blog today that is predictable.  Immanuel Kant's catagorical imperative is a secularized form of Christian morality that AA (no, not the twelve-step group) finds fault with.  I will defend Kant because he was a contemporary of Edmund Burke who I always thought had some affinity with the thought of that great parliamentarian.  If you reject Christianity (and there were many such characters in the time of Burke and Kant, from Collins and Voltaire to D'Alembert and Bolingbroke), your arguments cannot be answered by simple recourse to "the Bible says thus-and-such" or "the Catholic Church says thus-and-such."  If there were no athiests and revolutionaries in the eighteenth century, there would not have been a need for a Burke or a Kant to try to defend Christian morals without explicit appeals to revelation.  Kantian ethics are one fork in the road, and the scary thing is that the second fork in it is Hegelianism--the unapologetic embrace of atheistic statism instead of traditional modes of government.  Incidentally, another favorite of Estase's, the great Samuel Taylor Coleridge was Britain's first popularizer of Kantianism.

Androgyny, Immaturity, and Alcoholism

A tip of the old petasus to Fr. Powell at Hanc Aquam:  Cardinal Bertone disowns the recent report of the Pontifical Council on Peace and Justice calling for a global economic authority.  Probably a smart move, as we all know how friendly to Catholic values the UN has been.

One book I should eventually pay some attention to is Kay Hymowitz's Manning Up, wherein she discusses the perpetual boyhood many men in the post-feminist world suffer.  We all know the grown men who seem uninterested in marriage until their thirties, or those with an obsession with pornography.  Reportedly, Ms. Hymowitz calls "Knocked Up" a fairy tale for child-men, wherein an immature drug-addled loser is saved by a beautiful woman he happens upon who teaches him to want marriage.  The subject of mature masculinity has always been something of a mystery to Estase, since he grew up without a father.  The maturity level of most other undergraduate men in the early 90s seemed pretty low.  Estase always saw most of his contemporaries as being so insecure about their own masculinity that the way they asserted themselves as men was by putting down other young men as homosexuals, and pursuing lives of drunkenness and repeated meaningless sexual encounters.  Happy Veterans Day!  The military may be one part of society where the god of feminism and the god of pornography have made only half-measure victories.

Friendly Fire, Part Two

Toure (don't you love people with only one name) has opined that Herman Cain making advances on a blond should be scary.  Yeah, if you're the Grand Wizard and you live in Missisippi.  What kind of a brother (oh yeah, the kind with one name!) brings up nasty racial and racist stereotypes?  Need I say, friendly fire?  Hat tip Adrienne's Corner.  Father Zuhlsdorf has another example--John Courtney Murray and Robert Drinan, both Jesuit priests and intellectuals, confabed with the Kennedys in 1964 to advise them on how to reconcile their opportunistic pro-choice positions with their ostensible Catholicism.

Archdiocese of Cincinatti Kills Blog

Rich Leonardi's excellent "Ten Reasons" blog has been silenced by his bosses at the Archdiocese of Cincinnati because he dared question his bishop's support for Campaign for Human Development, a left-wing fraud that pretends to be a Catholic charity, but actually gives money to bottom-feeders at labor, environmental, and even Marxist organizations.  As a result of the nature of CCHD recipients, the groups supported are usually pro-gay and pro-abortion.  (For more information, go to www.reformcchdnow.com)  See also the report by American Life League on CCHD.

Illinois' Entirely Wonderful Governor

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn gives an award to a woman who attacked the pro-life Republican opponent Bill Brady in the 2010 race.  The only hitch is it is an award for the pro-abortion Personal PAC.  This is another sign that Illinois will continue its official hostility to all opposed to abortion, a trend that kicked into overdrive when previous Governor Rod Blagojevich made an executive order that all pharmacists be required to dispense abortion drugs, conscience claims notwithstanding.  Cardinal George and the bishops of Illinois have registered their complaints, which count for very little in Illinois.

Kicking and Screaming

ACLU is making policy.  According to William Cox of the Alliance for Catholic Health Care, the mandate forcing Catholic hospitals and institutions to cover contraceptives and abortion in their health plans was DESIGNED to affect Catholic institutions.  The secularists strike again.  If you are a Catholic, and believe contraception and abortion are wrong, then you are just a flat-earther, and the liberals will drag you into the twenty-first century.  Hat tip to Elizabeth Scalia.

 Republicans must want no one but either liberals or scumballs as their candidates.  The obvious pro-life candidates, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum have been killed by the establishment types at Fox News.  Rick "Gardesil" Perry and Herman Cain have very real creditability problems.  Mitt Romney is Oh Blah Blah's doppelganger, virtually identical in politics to any liberal.  And who does Fox News try to resusitate?  Newt Gingerich?  You've got to be kidding me.  Gingerich is so much of a RINO, they have been talking about making him a zoo exhibit.  Mr. "Global Warming/Paul Ryan-is-too-far-to-the-right" is going to be the conservative knight in shining armor?  Mr. "I cheated on two wives" is going to speak about family values?  Maybe Jesse Ventura has the right idea--Obama is going to get reelected and this country is toast.

Democrats for Despotism

Reading The Education of Henry Adams has given me another analogy for Oh Blah Blah--William Ewart Gladstone, whose liberalism did not stand in the way of his supporting the Confederacy.

Gladstone replied the next day:"He was glad to learn what the Prime Minister had told him;  and for two reasons especially he desired that the proceedings should be prompt:  the first was the rapid progress of the Southern arms and the extension of the area of Southern feeling;  the second was the risk of violent impatience in the cotton-towns of Lancashire such as would prejudice the dignity and disinterestedness of the proffered mediation."(p155)As morals, one could detect no shade of difference between Gladstone and Napoleon except to the advantage of Napoleon.(p156)No one knew so well as he that he {Gladstone}and his own officials and friends at Liverpool were alone "making" a rebel navy, and that Jefferson Davis had next to nothing to do with it. . .Never in the history of political turpitude had any brigand of modern civilization offered a worse example.(p.157)

The erudite Mr. Gladstone, intellectual upholder of all things liberal and enlightened, proposed to help destroy the Union in order to let Napoleon pursue imperial expansion in Mexico.

The only resolute, conscientious champion of {Lord John} Russell, Napoleon, and Jefferson Davis was Gladstone.(p.163)

And what did Gladstone, the liberal champion and would-be classical expert have to say about almost destroying the American Republic?

I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all America to recognize that the struggle was virtually at an end. (p.165).

So, like Harry Reid and Obama wanting to wave the white flag in 2007, Gladstone wished for the defeat of the American arms for only the most noble of intentions.  And that thing of allowing non-democratic governments (France, Al-Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood) to triumph, well it was all for the best.  Don't you get it--they were pursuing despotism to vindicate democracy!  

Is Denis Leary Going to Hell?

Sure, his recent Comedy Central special called the Pope a Nazi.  But is his calling priests and nuns homosexuals really going that far?  Most convents stopped being about Jesus about the time that they stopped wearing habits, and started spending all their time at anti-nuclear weapons rallys.  Even I refer to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as the Lesbian Crack-addict Women Religious.  Last week, another blog I would hat-tip if I could remember which one it was, profiled a Dominican nun who escorts women into an abortion clinic.  Let me repeat this for effect.  A woman whose health care and living expenses are paid for by the Catholic Church spends her time making sure pro-lifers cannot annoy women about to kill their babies.  So is Mr. Leary too far off when he says nuns are lesbians?

As far as calling priests sodomists, Mr. Leary isn't doing anything the rest of the liberal media hasn't done.  Or anything gay rights activists haven't done.  Maybe one shouldn't drop the soap when showering with Mr. Leary.  The Jesuit rag America is always agitating for the acceptance of sexually active gay men as Catholic priests, so which came first, the chicken or the egg?   Sure Denis Leary is an irreverent slimeball, and an unfunny paddy, but what else is new?

The Mixed Constitution

Aristotle, as many of us know, said that of the three types of government, any one could be either wonderful or horrible.  A monarch could be very good if his unlimited power were to be used for the public welfare, but if he were a tyrant, there could be no greater nightmare.  An aristocracy could use their wealth and education to benefit all, or simply to benefit themselves.  Pure democracy could either be noble and benefit all (if its practitioners were in control of themselves), or base and self-destructive (if they worked to the least common denominator). 

Because of these good characteristics, my friend M. Tullius Cicero called for the mixed constitution, something that was a little of all three.  Wisely, the American founders took the advice of Tully and Aristotle, and gave us a Constitution with three elected bodies.  The President was the executive--an elected King, if you will.  He would do the thing that kings used to do to so great an effect--make foreign policy.  Madison et al also gave him the right to approve (with exceptions) laws made by the other, parliamentary bodies.  The first of these parliamentary bodies created by Mr. Madison and the boys at Philadelphia was to be a purely democratic element--Congress.  Congressman would serve shorter periods, so that they would be in touch with the old vox populi.  Since spending money is the most dangerous thing any government does, Congress would be entrusted with that.  So for aristocracy, the Senate was created, a wise body of old lawyers who would be elected by state legislatures for longer terms. (That is, before a huckster named Lorimer made the process seem inherently corrupt, and there was a Constitutional amendment to change to popular election.)  The bailiwick of the Senate is confirmation of Judicial appointments of the President.  Of course, the Senate also ratifies House bills, but in analog to the House of Lords, it is the role in counterbalancing the President's power that is the Senate's raison d'etre.   The President, House, and Senate are supposed to be the mixed constitution of the United States.

Sunday Mornings With an Eugenicist

Hat tip to Aliens In This World.  Wallace Kuralt, father of CBS personality Charles Kuralt, was a North Carolina Welfare official who forcibly sterilized women in the 1950s and 1960s.  And never had any regrets about it.


And on an unrelated topic, here's a message to Democrats.  Extraconstitutional means ILLEGAL.  Estase thought it was an abberation when Governor Perdue of North Carolina wanted to suspend 2012's elections (see my previous blog, "Septennial Act Redux"), but now Congressman Jessie Jackson Jr. is advocating that Oh Blah Blah overrule Congress and act as a dictator, claiming that the legally elected U.S. Congress is on a par with the Confederacy!?!   OK, Congressman, let me explain this to you.  We have two elected branches of government under a little thing called the CONSTITUTION.  The idea of it is that neither can act independently of the other.  See also "Checks and Balances."  What you are calling for is a dictatorship, pure and simple.  Were you elected by the dupes of Shiitown to create a dictatorship?  Why don't you shut the hell up and let your father be the only idiot in your family? 

From Burke to Kirk and Beyond...: Obama and Catholics

From Burke to Kirk and Beyond...: Obama and Catholics
This says everything that needs to be said on the subject.

Weird Priorities

Estase was watching Pop-Up Videos on VH1 when he heard something bleeped out of a video that he was surprised at.  I've noticed that many networks (IFC) do not even bother to bleep out the sex verb beginning with "F" and ending with "K."  Another network (Spike) thinks it is acceptable to use the misogynistic and obscene word "pussy" to describe weak men.  So when a Gwen Stefani song where she self-deprecatingly refers to herself as a "whore" was edited so that word was no longer in the video, it made me really wonder.  What exactly makes "whore" more obscene than "pussy?"  The first word appears in the Bible, whereas the second most surely does not.  It seems really nuts to censor a word meaning prostitute in a world that seems OK with prostitution (think academics who want to call them "sex workers").

Septennial Act Redux

The Governor of North Carolina has suggested the extraordinary and bizarre step of skipping the 2012 Congressional election to allow the current Congress to continue its work.  While Estase is the last person who wants a return to Pelosism, this is so obviously unconstitutional I can't believe a Governor would even hazard such an opinion.   What it reminds me of is the Septennial Act that skipped the Parliamentary election due in 1716, and allowed the Parliament elected in 1713 to continue until 1720.  The reason for this move was overtly to prevent the anarchy of a change in power in the wake of the 1715 Jacobite uprising, and covertly just an attempt for the Whigs to keep their enemies out of power.  Most historians are dubious about whether skipping an election was legal for eighteenth century Britain, even considering the Stuarts were on the cusp of starting a civil war in England, one that conceivably could have either, according to your point of view, rescued her from Hanoverian domination, or imposed French-style absolutism.

Real Problems Unaddressed

Two topics present themselves today.  The first is the article referenced in This Ain't Hell, But You Can See It From Here where a NYT writer referred to military retirement benefits as a "welfare program," as though military retirees were like Social Security recipients, or, worse, welfare recipients.  This is truly odd, almost like the liberals I've heard who act like people in the Army are no different from people in some make-work program like Americorps.  It is a characteristic of modern liberals to pretend that those who are police, firefighters, or military are somehow nothing more than those so stupid that the only way they will have anything is if liberals deign to pay them for putting up with all the crap involved in keeping the rest of us safe.   See also Michael Bloomberg's decision to keep first responders away from the 9/11 Commemoration.

The second is Mel Gibson, who apparently is involved in making a film about the Maccabean uprising.  ADL made a strongly worded statement about Mr. Gibson that reiterated the false claim that Passion of the Christ was anti-semetic.   I am not defending Mel Gibson, because he has since proven himself to be something quite unlike what you would expect from someone who makes a religious film.  I saw Passion of the Christ.  The villain was me.  The point of the film isn't who called for His execution (Saducees), or who killed him (the Romans), but how He died because of human evil, which lurks in every one of us.  No one ever said that the film inspired us to hate Italians, though some of the most sadistic cruelty was done by Roman soldiers.  But the saw is out!  Anti-semetic!  Anti-semetic!  The people in this world who hate Jews either live in places like Saudi Arabia, or are the denizens of certain faculty break rooms at major universities. 

What these stories have in common is the common thread of finding enemies where there are none, while the real problems go unaddressed.

Diligite iustitiam: Robert George: Remarks on Natural Law at Notre Dame

Diligite iustitiam: Robert George: Remarks on Natural Law at Notre Dame
George and Finnis brought Natural Law back into repute.

Friendly Fire

Coming right off of the John Corapi scandal, now Fr. Frank Pavone is under financial scrutiny.   He apparently has been forbidden to administer the sacraments outside his own diocese.

The Tucker Carlson circus "The Daily Caller" stoops to a new low--attacking Sarah Palin by sharing a crude sexual remark made by boxer and numbskull Mike Tyson.  Hat tip Riehl World Politics.  Now, is it just me, or is a political blog a strange place for any type of sex joke?  And why is it the business of a conservative to demolish other conservatives?  Aren't there enough lefties to do the job?  If a conservative has a problem with another conservative, isn't there a more constructive mode of discussion than character assassination?  This comes after similar unfair slams by Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. 

Facts, Schmacks!

Semper Vigilans tells us that PBS is covering up for Oh Blah Blah's history gaffe Thursday night, where he claimed Lincoln founded the Republican Party.  This is the kind of thing that would have been big news if it were Michele Bachmann who said this. PBS has become an instrument of public indoctrination, bereft of token conservatives like Ben Wattenburg and William F. Buckley.  Only the hard left would mourn the loss of PBS. 

The Black Biretta: 9/11 STAY SOBER AND ALERT

The Black Biretta: 9/11 STAY SOBER AND ALERT
This is the best 9/11 commentary I have found today.

A Modest Proposal

If you give me 400 billion dollars to screw away, the world will be sunshine and roses!  If we build new schools (while many of America's prisons are over 100 years old and obsolete), the Israelis will make peace with their neighbors!  If we employ construction workers to build new schools, the Chinese will forget about how much we owe them!  I know the first stimulus was an absolute failure but, hey, let's try it again!

The world will reach nirvana!  Dogs won't chase cats!  People will eat food from a gas station and not get diarrhea!  Don't you get it?  Everything will be perfect if we just pass the bill now!

APSA Agrees--Smurfs Belong to Tea Party

Like their less intelligent equivalents, the sociologist, the American Political Science Association convenes to opine that the Tea Party is racist.  And as we all know from the previous blog, the cuddly Smurfs are the apex in racist authoritarianism.  Remember the Smurfs cartoon where the Smurfs let the Chipmunks have it with a fire hose?

Ya liberals wanna kill us?
Get at me dog!

Going Way Too Far!

Alabama State Representative Scott Beason proposes a law that would define giving Communion to an illegal alien a crime.  Yes, we all know the problem with the illegals is that they cross our southern border to go to Mass.  Can you say ignorant hayseed bigot?  Hat tip to Catholicvote.com

Dishonoring Heroism

It is the policy of NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, first, that no clergy will be at the 9/11 commemoration (the first to die at WTC was Father Michal Judge, the fire department chaplain killed by falling debris), and second that no first responders will be allowed to attend.  This is a stunning insult to both people of faith and the first responders who risked their lives to bring order to the chaos of the September 11 attacks.

There must be some reason why Mayor Bloomberg has turned this event into a recounting of death instead of a reaffirmation of who Americans are.  Or perhaps Bloomberg doesn't think Americans are of any particular character.  They don't exemplify heroism or stand for anything other than their material existance.  They are just cattle, who need people like him to provide them with such essentials as guides to shooting up heroin.  Bloomberg is the kind of mayor that typifies the large American city.  Shiitown isn't any better now with Rahm "The Borg" Emmanuel leading that cesspool of violence and corruption to even greater failure.

Homosexuality and Catholicism

The HHS has decided, predictably, to try to force Catholic hospitals to dispense contraceptives, not surprising as it is headed up by "Abortion-bitch" Kathleen Sebelius.  This comes upon the heels of Illinois forcing pharmacists to dispense contraceptives, irrespective of their moral beliefs.  The blog "Accepting Abundance" has been bombarded by hate for expressing the point of view that it isn't helpful for gays to PDA in public.  The most interesting thing about this is the hopes that Catholics die off, rantings about pedophile priests, and general ranting about "intolerance" the blog has engendered.  Which brings up a certain question of priorities.  In a world in which extra-marital sex has been raised to the level of a sport, is complaining about gays kissing productive?  Is homosexuality new?  No, I remember my good friend M. Tullius Cicero kicking around the question of whether homosexuals were capable of true love.  Plato wrote two dialogues (Symposium and Phaedrus) that positively dripped with homosexuality.  That didn't stop Catholic philosophers from reading and making use of Platonism, and its step-child neoplatonism.  Obviously, the discomfort people feel at seeing behavior we disapprove of should not be too great.  Only an extreme co-dependent feels actual guilt about other people's sins. (Estase knows whereof he speaks.)  I don't expect to recieve a similar deluge of combox junk, but if I do, so what?  This is America, and if someone wishes to wish for my death because I think homosexuality is wrong, that's their business.  Oh, and don't give me the "Hitler didn't like gays" nonsense.  The history community knows about that book written by the Austrian art student from before WW I who wrote his memoirs about his gay relationship with the future Fuhrer.  Does that form evidence against gays?  Of course not, but Hitler didn't oppose homosexuality because of morality, but because he hated himself.

Paulian Creep at Imaginative Conservative

The Imaginative Conservative has given space to some creep I've never heard of before who is a Ron Paul dupe.  This Church guy was attacked for his idiocy by Mark Levin, and Church's rebuttal was marked by an attack on Justice Scalia and a reference to the Civil War as (I am not making this up) "the War of Northern Aggression."  I am debating whether or not to continue following a site that perpetuates the racism of an M.E. Bradford under the guise of conservatism.

M.E. Bradford reminds me of another bete noire of mine, Russell Kirk.  I remember when I was an undergraduate hearing people rave about Kirk.  I bought a first-edition of The Conservative Mind at a used book sale.  Most of it was unremarkable enough, other than the strange confusion of Kirk's classifying that idolizer of Henry St. John, Benjamin Disraeli, as though he were a typical conservative.  The thing that really creeped me out about Russell Kirk was the fact that he said at one point that Lincoln was wrong to have emancipated the slaves, that being a sudden change.  Wow, that's horrible, I thought!  Why would people think Russell Kirk was a great thinker, when he wrote something like that?  My university's conservative student organization had a later edition of the book on hand.  I looked for the passage in question, and found it had been expurgated from later editions.  And that is why I have never been a Kirk fan.

Are the Smurfs Members of the Tea Party?

One of the truly typical things about modern life is trying to find political messages in places where they don't exist.  I read about a French (ahem) academic who believes that the Smurfs are fascists, based on the fact that they share everything and do what Papa Smurf tells them.  This reminds me a lot of the theory Jerry Falwell had about how the Teletubbies were pro-homosexual because Tinky Winky was purple and his antenna is an inverted triangle.

Today I read a similarly befuddling piece detailing a report by sociologists (ahem) that claimed that the Tea Party movement are small-minded, superstitious authoritarians.  My question now is, in light of our esteemed sociology friends, do the Smurfs belong to the Tea Party movement?

The thing that makes this so utterly ridiculous is that another theory is that the word "Smurfs," coined by a Frenchman, is an anagram for "Small men under red forces."  If the word Smurfs was an anagram for anything, wouldn't it be a phrase in French?

Father Farrell on Genesis

Estase remembered, in light of the creationist tendencies of Governor Perry, this passage from Vol. 1 of Father Farrell's Companion to the Summa:

The rejection of the fact of creation is a violation of the reason of man;  it is unreasonable in the sense of being mad.  The rejection, on scientific grounds, of the Scriptural account of the distinction and adornment of the world has a petty meanness about it for it is definitely unfair.  The purpose of Moses in writing the account given in Genesis was to instruct an unlettered people in the fundamental truths of the religious and moral order.  He wrote that they might know the obligation of adoration and gratitude to Jehovah, the author, governor, and conserver of all things;  that he might preserve his people from idolatry in recalling to them that every creature has its reason of existance in a superior cause, that every creature is destined to serve man, the crown and masterpiece of creation, and not to be served by man.

Thus, Genesis is true in a sense which is not necessarily the sense of physical science.  If Governor Perry wants to believe in creationism, that is his own business, but that may disqualify himself from being the Republican candidate.  One can be a believer without disbelieving scientific facts.  Liberals love to pretend they are more scientific, and a creationist like Perry would be grist for their mill.

Perry, Whether You Like It Or Not!

It seems to be the trend right now to impose a false dichotomy on Republican voters.  Liberal Romney or Rick Perry.  Neither, please?  It seems rather unbelievable, but the almighty Fox network seems to have put a hit out on Michele Bachmann.  Last night, their ticker told us that the Congresswoman mistakenly referred to Russia as the Soviet Union.  That's your idea of a big mistake, when the present POTUS doesn't know how many states there are, nor does he know how to pronounce "corpsman?"  Also, what about Herman Cain?  Surely he is more responsible in his economic claims than Gov. Perry, who said that Bernacke was a traitor?  Mr. Cain has actually run a successful business, which trumps any other Republican.  Rick Perry does not have pro-life chops like Rick Santorum, either.  Make Perry the nominee and that will be the wet dream of every liberal activist, because they already like to pretend that Republicans are all southerners with a race issue anyway.

Lesbian Crack-Addict Religious Women At It Again!

LCWR gives award to Sister Carol Keegan (you know, the Pennsylvania nun who backed Obamacare knowing it would drive her hospitals out of business by reducing Medicaid reimbursements), presumably for sabotage.  Stickin' it to the pro-lifers--the LCWR way.  Hat tip to Father Zuhlsdorf.

Return of the Mohocks

Last night PM Cameron said that the riots caused by angry British leftists will cause the insurance industry to pay out around 200 million pounds in claims.  It is much like the Tory Mohocks of the eighteenth century, whom Defoe suggested dealing with through the "Protestant Flail".  Closer to our own time, it is also like the 1926 General Strike, which is a sometimes-forgotten class war, also started by the left.

The YouCat, created for young Catholics has some detractors:  see www.recallyoucat.com.  On a similar note, Estase's decision to stop following Improperium Christi, the blog of slime artist Ron Conte has been solidified by a long tirade he published against New Theological Movement where he hypocritically claims Father Erlenbush insulted him, this after Conte tried to get him in trouble with his bishop, and routinely described him as a heretic.  I do not remember Father Erlenbush saying anything about Mr. Conte until after he started to out his true identity.  (He had, as I do, published under a pen name.  I have absolutely no objection to this.  In the real world, people have some right to their opinion without worrying about the professional implications of their opinions.  I think outing a blogger is pretty contemptible--about as bad as gay rights weirdos outing closeted homosexuals.)   Conte has some pretty heavy baggage to begin with, as he still regards as significant the Medjugorie apparitions that the local bishop declared heretical.  The final straw is his use of the term "extreme-right" to describe conservative Catholics.  Estase nominates Ron Conte as an honorary Mohock.

Is Abortion a Tenth or Fourteenth Amendment Issue?

Lisa Graas blogs today about Rick Santorum being better than Rick Perry, which she is right about, although the constitutional argument she uses may not be right.

Lisa says that Rick Perry says that states have the right to make abortion legal or illegal, whereas she says that the Fourteenth Amendment trumps the Tenth Amendment.  But if everyone agreed that unborn children were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment, there never would have been a Roe v. Wade or legalized abortion in the first place.  Is abortion killing?  Of course it is.  But the reason why abortion is a Tenth Amendment issue is because you will never get states like New York, Illinois, or California to sign on to the theory that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the unborn.  This idea, the idea of a constitutional amendment that will protect the unborn, is a political impossibility.  It can never happen.

Wouldn't it be much better for the future of the pro-life movement, if the Supreme Court were to respect Luther v. Borden, and invoke the political questions doctrine (which is what it should have done instead of Roe v. Wade), and let at least the most conservative states (Montana, the Dakotas, Tennessee) make abortion illegal?  That way, it would at least be in the public mind that not everybody condoned legal abortion, some states deigning to outlaw it, and no one could any longer use the fallacious argument of "If abortion were really immoral, it wouldn't be legal in all 50 states?"  I don't think Lisa Graas is more pro-life than I am;  what Estase says is that if it is all or nothing--nothing is what you will get.

Michigan Bishops Endorse Anchor Babies

Hat tip to Kresta In the Afternoon
The Catholic Bishops of Michigan have opposed immigration reform, apparently such as that created in Arizona.  Significantly, they say that no children of illegal immigrants should be deported, an apparent endorsement of illegals who intentionally have children in America so that their children will be American citizens, and thus they cannot be deported.

It would be very interesting to see what Protestants and Jews think of Catholic bishops who place the health of their sect over the economic well-being of their community.  I predict there will be, if there is not already, a backlash against the selfishness of the institutional Catholic Church in the United States.

BBC Endorses Comic Who Calls Palin's Kid "Retard"

Hat tip to Biased BBC.

The BBC recommended a film clip of a Doug Stanhope (Who apparently isn't as cool as James Stanhope, the eighteenth century Whig), who refers to Sarah Palin's vagina as a "retard-launcher," which obviously means that the BBC endorses abortion, as that's the only way Trig wouldn't have been born with Down's Syndrome.  It is good to know where the BBC stands.

Archbishop of Lyon Endorses Eighteenth Sura

Hat tip to Rorate Caeli.

The Archbishop of Lyon, who holds the red hat, attended a ecumenical service that ended in the eighteenth Sura of the Koran.  This is very odd, since this Sura says that Allah cannot have had a son--a clear repudiation of the Catholic faith that makes the Cardinal's presence wholly inappropriate.

Tacit Disapproval

This post deals with the Georgian era, when non-jurors were still not crazy about the Hanoverian succession.  The following appears on p. 138 of the Norton edition of Samuel Richardson's Pamela.

"And though it was a thing to be lamented, yet when he and I should set about to reform mankind in this respect, we should have enough upon our hands;  for, he said, it was too common and fashionable a case to be withstood by a private clergyman or two:  and then he uttered some reflections upon the conduct of the present fathers of the church, in regard to the first personages of the realm, as a justification of his coldness on this score."

Thus, the way in which it was appropriate for the state-dominated church to deal with those it could not approve of was by keeping its silence.

Impending Government Shutdown

Obama will shut down the government to piss off as many people as he can.  To mobilize a vast army of people dependent on government, he must convince them that, instead of trying to impose some sort of rationality on government spending, what Boehner really wants is to cut off government help entirely.  Which is really ironic, since the spending spree going on since Pelosi became speaker in 2006 has been what really threatens the basic ability of government to continue to provide assistance to the poor.  But perception, not reality, is what is important to politics, and Obama must make it the perception that Boehner is trying to hurt the poor, not that he is trying to destabilize the government through unlimited spending.

Thus, despite any efforts Obama may pretend to make, the shutdown is as inevitable as the death of Amy Winehouse.

On a completely different topic, the Vatican bitch-slapped RealCatholicTV's event at World Youth Day by making an unusual press release stating that the conservative's function is not sponsored by the official church.  On a similar note, slime artist Ron Conte defends the undefensible by claiming the Calvinist hymn Amazing Grace is totally consistent with Catholic Mass, despite the fact that it says that belief , not sacraments, are the source of grace.  Mr. Conte's war with New Theological Movement is becoming an unseemly display of his pretended orthodoxy winning out over Christian charity.

Michele Bachmann and the Question of Antichrist

It is very amusing to see the same left-wingers who mocked conservatives by questioning how many of them believed Barack Obama was the Antichrist (Fu*king Nascar retards:  there's no such thing!) bringing up Michele Bachmann's childhood Lutheranism.  They believe the Pope's the Antichrist, after all! 

Pitiful, isn't it?  The press thinks they can hoodwink pro-lifers into not voting for Bachmann by pointing out Lutherans don't like the pope.  Neither do the neo-Marxist press, who, unlike Bachmann, think that abortion is terrific, controls overpopulation, and is fun to blog about.

And if you think I'm being insulting to developmentally disabled people or racing fans, that little gem above was what Eric Alterman called those of us who believe that the non-Fox media only lets one side present its case.  The same goes about blogging abortions:  a liberal did that too.

Abortion:  the big liberal issue since the days of J.S. Mill (who would have approved of it had he been consulted).

Update:  As of May 29, 2013, Michele Bachmann announces she will not run for reelection.  Ms. Bachmann still has apparently not resolved the many disputes about unpaid bills from her unsuccessful presidential run, and continues to be the subject of liberal hatred from her work against Rep. Keith Ellison and Huma Abadin.

No Wonder We Lose Wars

"Well might I say, he that manages your treasure is the general of your generals, and the soul of the war."  Daniel Defoe, 1709

It's Called Trade...Look Into It!

"It is trade has made your commons rich, your merchants numerous, your poor able to maintain themselves.  It is trade has made you great, strong, terrible abroad, and busy at home.  It is trade has kept your people from wandering like vagabond on the face of the earth."   Daniel Defoe, 1711

Whig Journalism

"I saw a parcel of people caballing together to ruin property, corrupt the laws, invade the government, debauch the people and in short, enslave and embroil the nation;  and I cried, 'Fire'!"  Daniel Defoe

I love Defoe, as any regular reader of Q.E.D. has probably surmised by this point.  Defoe is in the literary world what Burke was in the political.  Defoe was the Whig writer of the greatest eminence for the eighteenth century, and is ignored by many conservatives who prefer the Tory Johnson.  (N.B. Johnson had a low opinion of Burke.)  Of course liberals idolize out of all proportion Jonathan Swift, who was a friend of a friend (Pope) of the scandalous Jacobite Tory Henry St. John.

Of course, even Tories of the eighteenth century look like members of the Rotary Club compared to the Jacobins who now constitute the Democratic Party.

The Glorious Uncertainty of the Law

Hat tip to Boniface at Unam Sanctum Catholicum:  The Grand Duke of Luxumbourg is divested of his veto power for having stood up to the leftist euthanasia law created by Parliament.

Thus, as in America, the constitutions of nations can always be altered for the furtherance of abortion and euthanasia.  In 1973, a previously unknown constitutional right was created as "the prenumbra of a shadow."  You see, constitutional rights do not have to appear in the black-letter law--they can be invented!  The Supreme Court can essentially act as though they were a nine-man Constitutional Convention, and they do not even have to send their creations back to the states for ratification.  The theme song for the international left may as well be Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law."

Not Fit to Lead

Hat tip to Catholic Herald.  Father John Corapi, according to the Society of Our Lady of the Trinity, is "not fit for the ministry" due to sexual behavior, substance abuse, and violations of his vow of poverty.  Wow.

This ought to torpedo his BlackSheepDog blog enterprise.  It also makes it clear that anyone who generates a cult of personality, whether it is a politician or a priest, will inevitably let down their followers.  This definitely applies to Oh Blah Blah, whose reputed ability to fix the economy has yet to show itself, and whose ability to accumulate crushing debt through a combination of stimulus, monster budgets, and a third unneeded war in Libya has been shown. 

Note on Eighteenth Century Wars

Tag team wrestling and eighteenth century European foreign policy:
1)The odd Triple Alliance that linked usual enemies France and Britain (1716-1744)
2)The gradual abandonment of Austria in favor of Prussia by Britain

Thought for consideration:  What nations are we relying on for when the sh*t hits the fan?  Is it Britain, whom Obama has given the middle finger?  Is it Germany?  It certainly is not Russia, a problem Obama has yet to guard against.  We are cutting Israel loose, prey to the jackals that surround her.   Our current foreign policy seeks chaos.  It undermines all our traditional allies, and takes no heed of the economic crisis that confronts us.

Ding! Time's Up For Libya!

The Obamanator is in kill mode.  Despite the fact that the sixty days Oh Blah Blah was free to fight in Libya without Congressional authorization is up, the planes are still flying, at a cost of 716 billion Dollars so far.  Just as how Obama chooses to ignore the District Court decision that Obamacare is unconstitutional, he also chooses to believe that he has the right to go to war without Congressional approval.

Who we are helping in Libya still remains a mystery.  My guess is that it is the Muslim Brotherhood, or some faction similar to the rebels in Egypt that will take power.  Advancing the International Caliphate--the Obama foreign policy.

New Address

My blog will now be at
http://www.quodestasedixit.blogspot.com/
The previous address was an attempt at the phrase "Last Fool" which turns out to be bad Latin.  The new evolution is based on a reworking of Quod erat demonstratum, a classic abbreviation used in scholasticism.  My phrase is perhaps less stupid than Denique Fossor was.

Riding Your Donkey, Or Failing to Do So!

I am not Jewish, but I do recieve the e-mail newsletter from Torah.org.  I learned something from it today.  It gave an anecdote about a Talmudic scholar who was insulted while riding a donkey.  The article said that in Jewish stories, riding a donkey is a symbol of being perfectly in control of your bodily desires.  Wow!  So when Jesus rode into Jerusalem astride an ass, he was doing more than avoiding walking;  he was using a rich symbolism too.  With the present scandal involving a certain NY congressman, many have basically seen this as a political goldmine who should see it instead as a cautionary tale of human sexuality run amok, which is something we saw with Newt Gingerich too.  Many if not all men have very serious issues with sex.  Not all of us go as far as lecherous pols do, but I often think of that Mellencamp song "Paper on Fire" as one of rock and roll's most insightful comments on how sex can destroy your life.

The Primrose League Versus Palin

This blog is not written in mindless adoration of Sarah Palin, as she has done things I don't particularly approve of, such as supporting pro-abort Republicans.  It is, however meant to comment on the adversarial attitude of George Will and Charles Krauthammer towards her.  I used to really respect George Will as an educated conservative.  During the years of Bush 43, I started to realize that Will has not liked any actual conservative politician in my lifetime.  Will did not like Reagan.  Will did not like Bush 43.  Will did like William Weld, who was so far to the left he scarcely deserved to be called a Republican at all.  George Will continues to write for Newsweek, which has devolved into a leftist propaganda organ.  (Remember their cover, which declared "We are all socialists now?"  And the hit pieces they have done on Palin?  Time is no better, with their smear on Benedict XVI.)

Krauthammer is somewhat better, but Estase remembers a letter full of bile Charlie wrote the venerable William F. Buckley that was reprinted in the latter's Right Reason.  Krauthammer seems to be the voice of RINO respectability, and like Will, a Republican that the Joe Kleins and Eric Autermans can feel comfortable with.

The combination of Will and Krauthammer are the modern equivalent of the Disraeli cult who called themselves the Primrose League.  Palin is not my idea of a perfect statesman, but the likes of Will and Krauthammer have no constructive alternative.

Change of Heart?

The fact that Obama renewed the Patriot Act is yet another example of the vast difference between Senator Oh Blah Blah and President Oh Blah Blah.  Wasn't the Patriot Act a fascist plot by George W. Bush to listen in on the conversations of any and all Americans?  Weren't we told that 9/11 was nothing but a nefarious pretext for taking away our freedoms? (Think Emperor Palpatine at the end of Star Wars episode three.)  If the superb Obama renewed it, either Bush was something other than Hitler, or Obama, like Bush, is another Hitler. 

Why We End Up With Leftist Judges!

Today lying pro-abort Mark Kirk was on The Mary Griffith Show on WTAD Quincy, and opined that confirming judges to the Federal bench was "a waste of time."  Excuse me?  The oversight of our judiciary is a vital constitutional function of the Senate, and hardly a waste of time.  I remember Professor Lino Graglia on Firing Line back in the 90's saying that the Republican choices for the judiciary were often something he was unwilling to apologize for.  The fact that Illinois' junior Senator would say something like this is another sign that Kirk is unqualified and unsuited for the Senate.  The unwritten constitution says that Senators are supposed to be lawyers, and the fact that Kirk is not explains his bewildering disregard for a vital part of his job.

Green Thomism and Other Nonsense

Thomism gives a simple view of the world--question and answer, right and wrong.  Similarly, liberals believe that right and wrong can be defined as liberal and conservative.  So when you give a liberal Thomism, it is like walking into a room full of natural gas with a lit cigarette.

Thus Catholic liberals can excommunicate their opponents with a breathtaking self-assurance because they have two forms of totalizing ideology--liberal statism and medieval scholasticism.  Think of MSNBC married to the Spanish Inquisition.

Adrienne's Corner: Pelosi: One of the most shameful persons to call herself Catholic...

Adrienne's Corner: Pelosi: One of the most shameful persons to call herself Catholic...
Bela Pelosi--who claims her favorite word is "the word." Ugh.

Uncomfortable Similarities

Why do I have issues with Novus Ordo, when it is basically the only kind of Mass Estase is old enough to remember?  I started thinking about this when I read Malachi Martin's The Keys of His Blood,where Martin questions whether the NO is similar enough to the Tridentine to actually be, theologically, a Mass.  Then there was my study of history, particularly Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars, which describes the English Reformation.  Three similarities:  1)The turning of the priest towards the congregation,2)Use of a table rather than an altar, 3)Use of vernacular instead of Latin.  If SVC did the same things as the English Reformation, how can one be good and the other bad?

The Pro-War Pacifist

With the death of Osama Bin Laden, we may be tempted to forget that it was revulsion against the Iraq war more than anything else that propelled Obama to the White House.  Even still, liberal talking-heads decry the GWOT as misbegotten bullying, unilateralist arrogance, and at bottom, war-mongering.  But what was multi-lateral about Bin Laden's killing?  While it is comforting to see that the swords haven't all been turned to plowshares prematurely, it cuts no ice with Estase to say that the Libya mess is a good war just because the French like it.  Not to beat a dead horse, but where is the exit strategy that was so vital in every discussion of Iraq?

The Anti-War Network?

PBS certainly lives up to the last two letters of its name.  Their dreadful Frontline was nothing more than a hate-on for Dick Cheney for several years.  I made the mistake of checking out PBS last night, only to see a piece of one-sided anti-war pap that would have made Michael Moore proud.

The Judas Party

Hat tip to Christina King:  Lady Gaga has a new "song" called "I'm in Love With Judas,"  where she declares her undying devotion to Christ's betrayer.

NOW, point of fact:  Senator Frank Lautenberg and Senator Tom Harkin have both used the promotion of offering to go to a Lady Gaga concert with anyone stupid enough to give them a huge campaign donation.

SO, is it reasonable to assume that Senators Lautenburg and Harkin like Judas Iscarius better than Jesus Christ?  After all, the President said we are no longer a Christian nation.  So Oh Blah Blah, Harkin, and Lautenberg all like Judas better than Jesus?  Are the Democrats the Judas Party?

Burke: Where to Look?

If anyone out there is looking for a good biography of Edmund Burke, MP, I would heartily discourage anyone from reading Isaac Kramnick's The Rage of Edmund Burke, which makes a thoroughly bizarre attempt to psychoanalyze the Irish Whig through Freudian exegesis of his writings, and concludes he was a homosexual who didn't really believe his own principles.  Much better is Conor Cruise O'Brian's The Great Melody, which makes no such attempts at psychoanalysis, choosing instead to focus on his Irish heritage as an explanation for the great statesman's reactions to human exploitation.

It occurs to me that homosexuality is like racism--something one really might accuse anyone of, and which it is impossible to disprove in inclination in either case with any certainty.

Consistency, Please?

If it is sauce for the goose, is it not sauce for the gander?

When politicians of one party make a gaffe, it ends up being a punch line for eight years, and when politicians of the other make one, it doesn't even get reported on.  When politicians of one party start a war, it's Vietnam all over again, and when politicians of the other party start one, it is "humanitarian."

If the Catholic Church was able to throw away 300 years of tradition in four years by discarding the Tridentine Mass, then why is it the end of the world when the Novus Ordo gets a tune-up?  If the teachings of the Church never change, then why can't B XVI at least agree with Veritatis Splendor?

Opportunists Emerge

Why would anyone take Donald Trump seriously as a political candidate?  I'm just curious, why would anyone take this fraud seriously?  If anyone thinks Palin lacks gravitas, this guy wouldn't even know what the term means. 

I suppose that some Americans didn't learn the lesson of Ross Perot.  Just having money and a big mouth doesn't make you a politician/statesman. (Estase learned a long time ago that there is no difference.  People call you a statesman when they like you, and a politician when they don't.)

Just War Baloney From USCCB

When Barack Obama was starting out in Chicago, one of his first admirers was Joseph Cardinal Bernadin, the effeminate creator of the "seamless garment" theory, that said that the pro-life issue could be shelved in favor of social welfare, anti-war, and other liberal causes.

So it should come as no surprise that, unlike the Iraq war, which was condemned by the Vatican and American bishops as a violation of Just War theory, when Barack Obama chose to engage in military action against Libya, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared it to meet Just War criteria.

The Iraq War came after the genocidal regime of Saddam Hussein spent twelve years trying to shoot down the American and British planes enforcing the no-fly zone over Iraq, a clear violation of the cease-fire ending the 1991 Gulf War.  No matter;  American bishops declared that because Iraq had not invaded any other country, it was not a just war.

Fast forward to 2011.  The mere suggestion that Muammar Quadafi might kill civilians in his own country means that military action is justified.  But what about the bishop's position that military action is only permissible when a country has invaded or attacked another country?  Apparently, that no longer applies.  Or could it be that military action is immoral when a Republican does it, but when the bishop's own Barack Obama does it, it is moral?  The murder of the Kurds apparently didn't make war to unseat Hussein moral, but the possibility that Quadafi might kill civilians makes this war moral?

Clintonesque Use of Force--D Plus Eight

Well, the misadventure in Libya proves to be more than just a few Tomahawk missiles-- it seems to be turning into a third war.  This war has been engaged upon by a President elected out of disgust over Iraq, and engaged upon without any Congressional approval.  The war is being waged without any clear objectives, and without a timetable for withdrawal.  Remember back in 2007, when a timetable for withdrawal was Obama's sine quo non for Iraq?  And Libya is being engaged in while the Afghanistan misadventure looks more and more hopeless.  The high irony of Iraq and Afghanistan is that Iraq was always the controversial war, the one that was a quagmire.  Now it is Afghanistan, the "good" war that is becoming Vietnam all over again.   In Serbia (you know, that first Clintonesque use of force, the one that was intended to take everyone's eyes off the Monica Lewinski scandal?) it was not that we left off bombing of our own volition, it was that the Russians informed us that if we didn't quit bombing Sarajevo, they might explode an Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon over America.  I wonder how long it will take before the Russians end our misbegotten wars in Afghanistan, and now Libya.

A Clintonesque Use of Force, and Other Onanism

I'm going to talk about masturbation, both in foreign policy and elsewhere.

First, we are using Tomahawk missles against the Libyan dictatorship, about five days after it crushed the uprising trying to unseat it.  I'm no military expert (but then again, neither are Hillary Clinton or President Obama), but I don't think that a few blown-up air defense assets will of themselves get rid of Quaddafi.

Recently Mark Shea reminded us all of the moral peril of masturbation.  While masturbation is a sin (whether mortal or venial, I'll let my priest decide), and has great laugh value, in light of Benedict XVI's recent remarks on condoms, I don't see how it could be a big deal anymore.  After all, in Catholic moral theology, use of contraceptives and masturbation both count as Onanism--sex without potential for procreation.  If B XVI thinks that contraceptives can be morally preferable to spreading AIDS, it is hard to see why masturbation is not morally defensible because it is preferable to causing pregnancy, fornication, adultery, and any number of problems entailed with having sex with other people.  I don't know--the Stoics thought that masturbation allowed the distancing of sexual impulses, allowing the sage to remain calm and detached from the world. 
It is the sexual equivalent of firing a Tomahawk missle--it doesn't really achieve much, but it relieves the pressure to do something meaningful.

A Misconception Challenged, and Madison WI Too!

The old solon who blogs as Ciceroanus had an interesting blog recently.  This fellow claims to venerate both Cicero and John Dewey, which seems to me rather contradictory, as Cicero was a moral realist and John Dewey was a pragmatist.  Hence the titular misconception.  The solon said he had a sympathy for natural law, and (rightly) said that natural law can exist even if there is no God.  So far, so good.  He went off the rails when he suggested that natural law can exist without moral absolutes, which is a preposterous claim.   Natural law is tied to the idea that things that are wrong one place are necessarily wrong everwhere.  This is what Plato and Cicero were emphatic about.  Now, if something can only be moral or immoral in all places, I cannot see any way in which morality can be anything other than absolute.  This is the problem;  someone like John Dewey would say that what is useful is what is true, but Dewey was a moral subjectivist, not a natural law thinker.

Events in Madison, Wisconsin show that the radical Left is denying reality.  All the people of Wisconsin need to see what will happen to their state if public employee benefits are not reigned in is look south to Illinois, Estase's state, which is in worse financial shape than Iraq.  I remember a loony economics professor I had that claimed (I'm not making this up) that wages were "like the song Alice's Restaurant;  you can have anything you want."  The problem with public employees is that they BELIEVE their wages can be whatever they want.

Ramen Noodles--Worse Than Death

The Other McCain reports that Rep.  Gwen Moore of Wisconsin has said that the horrible alternative to Planned Parenthood is, drum roll and ominous music, eating Ramen noodles because of poverty. 

I intend to spend more time on epistemology in the coming weeks, not because Estase has to, but because the current political scene is becoming so dark and unreasonable that philosophy seems better for one's mental health.  I don't know what to make of a world where people can actually argue that dismembering fetuses is better than eating ramen noodles.  I don't know what to make of a world where a left winger with a gun becomes a reason for villifying right wingers.  Estase does not want to sink into the habit of thinking that politics is everything, or is a justification for being hateful. 

CHD Linked to Pro-Aborts, AGAIN!

Estase has blogged before about Catholic Campaign for Human Development, its partisan background, and its ongoing links to pro-abortion politicians.  Former CHD head John Carr was also associated with Center for Community Change, a progressive group that advocated abortion.  Center for Community Change is associated with the Tides Foundation, a Soros front group. 

The new head of CHD, Ralph McCloud, acted as campaign treasurer for Planned Parenthood-endorsed, pro-abortion candidate Wendy Davis.  (Hat tip to Lisa Graas.)

Real Life Hannibal Lectors

Hat tip to Father Zuhlsdorf, from whom the following comes.  This creature is polluting the internet with his evil, and ask yourself if this pro-abort doesn't sound like a serial killer.

First, never quote Mother Theresa at me--she was an evil hag who worshipped poverty, who did not help people except to encourage them to suffer more for her faith, while she lived in comfort and traveled far and wide to recieve the accolades of the gullible.  I would never find the words of that wicked woman persuasive.  Second, the standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I'm a biologist. I've guillotined rats.  I've held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors.  I've used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog.  I've opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I've been elbow deep in blood, I've split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle.  I've extracted the brains of mice. . . with a pair of pliars.  I've scooped brains out of buckets, I've counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.  You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures?  I look at them unflinchingly and see meat.  And meat does not frighten me.--PZ Myers

Well, I think that if Dr. Gosdell ever reopens his abortion mill in Philadelphia, PZ Myers would be more than willing to help him collect more baby feet.  "When your daughter is lying on the slab, Senator, what part of you will feel pain?"  Hannibal Lector has nothing on PZ Myers.

Ordered Liberty: Judge John Roll: "greater love hath no man..."

Ordered Liberty: Judge John Roll: "greater love hath no man..."
Estase has been thinking about this situation a good deal. In eighteenth century England, there was hardly unanimity about religion. High church versus low church, Tories versus Whigs; the whole Henry Sacheverell deal. But I haven't seen anything quite as strange as the Tuscon memorial service in a long time. If a public figure in eighteenth century England was murdered, you never would have seen a Druid brought in to worship a tree, which was essentially the kind of religion the White House endorsed two weeks ago. Roll was Catholic, Giffords was Jewish, and they brought in a Native American Shaman to offer the blessing?

But what is Obama's history with religion? Obama described conservatives famously as bitter people who cling to their God and guns. He also declared that America was no longer a Christian nation. To top it all off, he even endorsed the building of Muslim Jihad Land a block from the site of World Trade Center! For someone who has a really poor record of defending the Judeo-Christian tradition, President Obama didn't really make things better in Tuscon.

Metaphysics for Liberals

Last week, someone at Salon.com wrote a really sophomoric piece entitled "Bill O'Reilly:  An Idiot in Search of a Village" in response to a debate Loofa Man had with an idiot from some athiest group.  In the debate, O'Reilly explained that he believed in God, saying, "The tide rolls in, the tide rolls out.  It always happens."

What Loofa Man was obviously getting at was that there is order and regularity to the universe;  something you would never expect if the world was the result of chance or happenstance.

The brilliant soul at Salon, however, claimed this discussion as evidence of Loofa Man's idiocy, saying that THE MOON and not God was the reason for the tide coming in and out.

In Aristotelian Metaphysics, there are four types of causes. (Final, Material, Formal, and Efficient)  Of these four causes, the Moon indeed would constitute the Efficient cause of the motion of the tides;  that is, the proximate reason for water to be pulled in this way is the gravity of the Moon.  In this case, the Formal cause is somewhat irrelevent, as a Formal cause is that which orders the material shape or design of a thing.  The formal cause of things made by men are the minds of their designers.  A Material cause is, in this case, the law of gravity, because in this case that is the "subject out of which or in which the actuations of causes occurs."  (The Philosophy of Being, Smith and Kendzierski, p. 121) This leaves the Final Cause, the reason for all things, which theistic Aristotelians associate with God. 

So of the four causes of Aristotle, the only one that Salon recognizes is the Efficient Cause, leaving blank spaces for the other three.  Salon allowed a variety of comments of the nature of "Right wingers are stupid, and they don't know anything about science," so apparently the only religion tolerated by liberals is Islam.  One of the comments said something snide about "the Pope's invisible friend," but no where did anyone cite Islam as a "stupid" religion.  My previous blog "Obama's Catholic-Bashing Speechwriter" talked about Jon Lovett, who joked that TSA positions were designed to give defrocked Catholic priests a job opportunity.  Mr. Lovett would of course never make a joke about the systematic abuse of women in Islamic societies.  So we see a distinct double-standard, where athiestic liberals hold their fire on Islam, but let Catholics have it with both barrels.  (Estase now expects to be blamed for any incidents where Catholics are shot.)

Pope Appoints Pro-Abort to Pontifical Academy of Science

Hat tip to Rorate Caeli.

A doctor from Communist Brazil, Miguel Nicolelis, who is also a pro-abortion fanatic, was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academy of Science.  Why a pope would want a pro-abort as an advisor escapes me.

Daniel Hannan to the Illinois Republican Party

OK, so he wasn't specifically talking to the corrupt oligarchy that gave us Mark Kirk, but he could have been.  In his excellent new The New Road to Serfdom, he remarks on page 33

"How extraordinary, I thought, to have a system where politicians see their role as being to represent their constituencies in their parties rather than the other way around;  where policy is made bottom-up rather than top-down.  My own electoral division, South East England, is, like Georgia, a pretty right-wing place--certainly in the sense of being fiscally conservative.  But, whereas both parties in Georgia try to reflect the temper of the local populace, Labour candidates in South East England are, if anything, further to the left than in the rest of the country, reflecting as they do the prejudices of tiny selection committees."

Of course, since Illinois' Republicans have been unable to elect the members of the state's Republican central committee since 1979, the direction of the party is by the same sort of clique that Hannan complains of being the bane of the British party system.   When Illinois Republicans are goaded into making a lying pro-abort their Senate candidate, can we really say they have an open primary?  Time can only tell, but it is entirely possible that Alexi Ginnoulias' positions on abortion would have been identical to those of Mark Kirk.  Kirk is Illinois' answer to Aqua Buddha Rand Paul.  Is it a good thing that I can say that about my Senator?

Taking on Huck Haters

This is to all the conservative bloggers who made ridiculous statements about Mike Huckabee being a "big government Republican" because he defended Michelle Obama's anti-obesity efforts--GROW UP! ! ! !

Being reflexively anti-Obama doesn't make you conservative.
Being reflexively pro-Palin doesn't make you conservative.
Being a thoughtless drone makes you identical to the people who make the liberal side so boring, monotonous, and ridiculous.

And who is better than Huckabee?
The undependable Palin (sometimes pro-life, sometimes not)?
The even worse Mitt Romney (pro life before pro choice before pro life)?