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").