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.