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)?

The Fifth Column: The AP Is Bewitched

The Fifth Column: The AP Is Bewitched
Leave it to historians to call sacraments "magic". I find many things academic historians teach to be intrinsically anti-Catholic. When Estase was an undergraduate, he used the book Charles II: The Last Rally by Hilaire Belloc to prepare for a debate on the Restoration. My professor, Caroline Hibbard told my not to consult Belloc, sniffing that he was "a victorian." Hibbard found fault with much of what I argued, despite the fact that it was entirely consistent with what Eamon Duffy argued a few years later in The Stripping of the Altars, and with documents in the collection The Stuart Constitution. Anti-Catholic historians? Next you'll tell me journalists like Obama.

Obama's Catholic-Bashing Speechwriter

Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett spoke to a crowd recently, joking that the TSA groping was designed to give defrocked Catholic priests a job opportunity.  Well, which is it?  Either the TSA searches are a proper law enforcement move, or they are akin to sexual abuse.  And why is the same regime that continually tells us that Muslims cannot be offended so quick to make a defamatory joke about Catholic priests?

Once Upon a Time in the West - Exposing the Twenty-First-Century Communist Conspiracy

Once Upon a Time in the West - Exposing the Twenty-First-Century Communist Conspiracy
Golitsyn has a point-- if the Cold War is over, why would the Russians be making nice with Cuba and Nicaragua? If communism really were dead and buried, why would relations with Cuba matter?

Thomas and TEA

Is Catholicism incompatible with the TEA party ethic?  Many prominant churchmen and the usual CST drones say no. Frederick Copleston's A History of Philosophy,Volume Two says of Aquinas,

"If this principle, that the part is ordered to the whole, which represents St.Thomas's Aristotelianism, were pressed, it would seem that he subordinates the individual to the State to a remarkable degree;  but St. Thomas also insists that he who seeks the common good of the multitude seeks his own good as well, since one's own good cannot be attained unless the common good is attained, though it is true that in the corpus of the article in question he remarks that right reason judges that the common good is better than the good of the individual.  But the principle should not be overemphasized, since St. Thomas was a Christian theologian as well as an admirer of Aristotle, and he was well aware, as we have already seen, that man's final end is outside the sphere of the State:  man is not simply a member of the State, indeed the most important thing about him is his supernatural vocation.  There can, then, be no question of 'totalitarianism' in St. Thomas, though it is obvious that his Aristotelianism would make it imposssible for him to accept such a theory of the State as that of Herbert Spencer:  the State has a positive function and a moral function.  The human being is a person, with a value of his own;  he is not simply an 'individual'."

The first remark I would make is that Aristotelianism cuts both ways.  Maybe Aristotle wasn't Ayn Rand or Herbert Spencer, but he was certainly no collectivist either.  Read the Politics, and you will see somebody who thought that spending money on others was praiseworthy, but always saw private giving as a sign of moral worth, and certainly never would have endorsed a monolithic government of spoils and largesse.

The second remark I would make is that St. Thomas also would never have approved of tolerance for Protestant sects, much less the easy access to pornography that distinguishes modern America.  In other words, Thomas's dream of a government that helps us to Heaven is rather inconsistent with the American system.  If government is supposed to get us to heaven, how do public schools and housing projects do that, other than by seperating our bodies from our souls?