Haj Amin al-Husseini, Part Two

"In consultation with the mufti, the Nazi leadership had created a special Einsatzgruppen Egypt, a mobile SS squad, under the supervision of Adolf Eichmann, which was to carry out the mass murder of Palestinian Jewry.  By the summer of 1942, anticipating a German military victory in the Middle East, the Einsatzgruppen Egypt had been standing by in Athens and was ready to disembark for Palestine, attached to German general Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, where it would have begun killing the close to half a million Jews then living in Palestine.  This Middle Eastern death squad was led by SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauff, one of Eichmann's most trusted deputies and a confidant of al-Husseini's(p60).  The mufti never attempted to disguise his Nazi beliefs or his wartime role as a mouthpiece for Hitler's genocide in the Arab world.  His role in the extermination of the Jews of Bosnia, and his oft proclaimed desire to exterminate all the Jews of Europe and Palestine, cannot be excused simply as anti-Zionism.  It may be a coincidence that the decision to carry out the physical extermination of the Jews of Europe followed soon after his arrival in Germany.  From the mufti's perspective, it was providential.  In fact, only two months after his initial meeting with Hitler on November 28, 1941, the infamous Wannsee Conference took place, in which the Nazi leadership produced their plan to systematically exterminate European Jewry(p62).  So, too, Marshal Tito's government in postwar Yugoslavia did not demand al-Husseini's extradition and indictment as a war criminal at Nuremberg, despite overwhelming evidence of the mufti's collaboration with the Nazis, his role in the murder of thousands of Bosnian Croatians and Serbs, and his recruitment and formation of the Muslim Bosnian Waffen-SS Division that had been instrumental in the extermination of 90 percent of Bosnia's Jews.  Tito understood that if he was to forge a united Yugoslav nation, the Muslims in Bosnia--many of whom had fought under the mufti during the war as members of the Handschar Division of his Bosnian Waffen-SS, and who constituted a not insignificant portion of Marshal Tito's constituency--must not have any excuse to resist his plans.  The Muslim community of Bosnia, Tito recognized, remained unswervingly loyal to the mufti, even after the defeat of Nazi Germany.  Thus, although there was a consensus that Haj Amin al-Husseini was guilty of war crimes, a convergence of political realities in the postwar world prevented him from being brought to justice(p64).  The mufti himself was one of the first to call for a holy war, ordering his 'Muslim brothers to murder the Jews.  Murder them all.'  This same call was made by his friend the sheikh of Al-Azhar.  'The hour of the holy war has struck,' proclaimed the sheikh.  'All Arab fighters must look upon the struggle for Palestine as a religious duty.'  As the Arab League's secretary general, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam Pasha,  candidly put it:'This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.'  Al-Husseini's spokesman Ahmad Shuqairy, later to become the first chairman of the PLO, announced that the goal of the new Arab war against Israel was 'the elimination of the Jewish state.'  Jerusalem, the mufti told his supporters and friends, would soon become Judenrein(p93).  Much to the anger and outrage of al-Husseini and his allies in the militantly anti-Israel Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's moderate prime minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha made it known that he did not want to send Egypt's army into combat against Israel.  For al-Husseini and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, this was an unforgivable sin.  For this crime, Pasha fell to an assassin's bullet as he left his office in Cairo on December 28, 1948.  A member of the Muslim Brotherhood fired the shot.  Al-Husseini and the Muslim Brotherhood had conspired secretly in his assassination, as they would conspire together in the assassination of King Abdullah(p96).  The impact of the jihadist ideologue Sayyid Qutb on the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon has been well documented.  Qutb had a particularly important influence on terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.  As a student at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah in the late 1970s, bin Laden first became associated with the Muslim Brotherhood while studying religion with Sayyid Qutb's brother Mohammed, one of the university's most prominent teachers of Islamic studies and the chief interpreter of Sayyid Qutb's written works(p98).  Icon of Evil:  Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann

Update (7 JAN 2013) Tip of the petasus to Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag.  An article in the Egyptian newspaper Rose-El-Youssef lists six prominant members of the Obama administration with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of which is Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development Arif Ali Khan, whom is described by Rose-El-Youssef as being a Qutb-ist.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, Part One

"The Mufti's close working relationship and friendship with Adolf Eichmann, as well as with Heinrich Himmler, is well documented and indisputable.  Following the capture of Eichmann in May 1960, the speculation about the relationship between these two men became a subject of active public discussion.  In a press conference held at the time of the Eichmann trial, on May 4, 1961, al-Husseini denied any connection with Adolf Eichmann during World War II.  Indeed, he claimed at this press conference that he did not even know who Eichmann was until he read about his capture in the newspapers.  In fact, the mufti and Eichmann not only knew each other, but collaborated actively in their years of service to the Third Reich.  At the Nuremberg trials, Dieter Wisliceny, one of Eichmann's senior deputies, would testify that the mufti "was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.  I heard him say that, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz."  On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly urged the guards in charge of the chambers to be more diligent and efficient in their efforts.
     One can only imagine how the mufti must have rejoiced as he toured the Auschwitz death camp complex.  What he witnessed was indeed, in his mind, the final solution to his Jewish problem.  With a sweeping audacity that was almost too bold to grasp, Hitler had determined simply to eliminate his perceived enemies.  As he examined the details of the process that led to extermination, al-Husseini realized that he would not have to transport his Jews anywhere.  The Jews were concentrated in the Tel Aviv/ Jaffa region of Palestine.  No railroad cars would be needed for transport.  No "selection" would be necessary.  No Jew would be needed to work or labor in any way for his Arab state of Palestine.  All that the mufti would need would be the technical assistance of his good friends Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann to construct factories of death to eliminate the Jews from Palestine once and for all.
     As the mufti left Aushwitz to return to Berlin, he could only marvel at Germany's ruthless efficiency in solving its Jewish problem.  With a smug certainty, he marveled at his good fortune in living at a time when he was blessed with such a superb ally and friend in the person of Adolf Hitler.
     Eichmann and al-Husseini admired each other tremendously.  Eichmann, as Dieter Wisliceny recalled in his testimony at Nuremberg, "was very strongly impressed with the Mufti."  The mufti, in turn, reciprocated this admiration.  When he spoke of Eichmann in the presumed privacy of his diary, al-Husseini observed that he was a "very rare diamond, the best savior of the Arabs(p51-52)." 
     "For the mufti, as for al-Gaylani, however, the common enemy was not just Great Britain, but the entire Allied cause.  The mufti often called upon the Muslims of the world to help Germany in the holy war it was waging against the British and their Western allies, especially the United States.  Some of his radio broadcasts were devoted specifically to condemning American policy in the Middle East.  In a radio broadcast from Berlin in March 1944, he denounced American policy with regard to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine:  "No one {would have}ever thought," he thundered, "that 140 million Americans would become tools in Jewish hands. . . . How could the Americans dare to Judiaze Palestine?"
     Many of his most passionate radio broadcasts were classically anti-Semetic, designed to incite hatred and violence against radical Islam's greatest enemy, the Jews.  On November 2, 1943, at the public rally to protest the Balfour Declaration, al-Husseini used German radio to broadcast one of his most virulently anti-Semetic messages:  "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other people are animals," al-Husseini declared, "makes them incapable of being trusted."  In this broadcast, which included an inflammatory tirade against both the Jews and the British, interspersed with citations of Koranic texts against the Jews, the mufti said of the Jews:  "They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals. . . . The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews(p53-54)."" Icon of Evil:Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann 

Battle of the Books: Liberty as the Absence of Force

Thus the word {liberty} is either a misleading appeal to passion, or else it embodies or rather hints at an exceedingly complicated assertion, the truth of which can be proved only by elaborate historical investigations.  'The cause of liberty, for which Hampden died on the field and Sydney on the scaffold,' means either that Hampden and Sydney were right in resisting Charles I and Charles II, respectively, or else merely that they did as a fact die in resisting those kings.  The first assertion obviously requires, before it can be accepted, a full account by way of proof.  The second tells us nothing worth knowing except a bare matter of fact, and would be consistent with Hampden's having been shot when trying to rob on the highway and Sydney's being hanged for highway robbery(p121).  Yet this definition of liberty, which is in exact agreement with Mr. Mill's own views as expressed in his chapter on Liberty and Necessity, in the 2nd volume of his Logic,  is the very foundation of my book.  Liberty is a eulogistic word;  substitute for it a neutral word--'leave', for instance, or 'permission'--and it becomes obvious that nothing whatever can be predicated of it, unless you know who is permitted by whom to do what.  I would ask Mr. Morley whether he attaches any absolute sense whatever to the word liberty, and if so, what it is?  If he attaches to it only the relative sense of 'permission' or 'leave,' I ask how he can make any affirmation at all about it unless he specifies the sort of liberty to which he refers?  Of course, liberty may have positive effects.  Give all men leave to steal, and no doubt some men will steal, but this does not show that liberty itself is a definite thing, with properties of its own, like coal or water(p233, James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Liberty Fund ed.) 

Catholic Marxism

Petasus tip to Catholic Herald.UK.  Bishop Reinhard Marx, author of Das Kapital (not to be confused with the Das Kapital written by Karl Marx) says that it is time to abandon capitalism.  The article did not give any specifics about how or where Bishop Marx was educated.  If his education was, as is typical for clergymen, in theology, one wonders why the Bishop is holding forth on a topic he lacks familiarity in.  This is an all too common problem with the Catholic episcopacy, which holds forth strongly held opinions about biology, economics, law, politics, and other topics they really shouldn't specialize in.  A good example of this is the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), who offer an opinion about virtually every topic under the sun, which only means that their emphasis on vital issues like abortion is drowned out by the plentitude of remarks they make about everything else.

Estase actually has something positive to say about an Illinois Democrat.  Dan Lipinski voted to outlaw sex-selection abortions, something that putative pro-life "Republican"  Ron Paul voted against.  While I still consider the Democrats The Abortion Party, at least the idea of targeting little girls for abortion strictly because of their sex gives some people pause.

Mark Kirk Update

And on the topic of Illinois' RINO Senator, with a petasus tip to Andy Martin. . .

www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-met-mark-kirk-20120529,0,46660129,full.story 

Michael Fumento, on an unrelated topic, apparently repents having been a Republican in a Salon.com piece.  Estase has ridiculed the hyperbolic excesses of Ann Coulter for years, but why Fumento decided to praise George Will and air his grievances at the same site that called Will a "hack" who promotes "toxic Republicans" escapes me.  Is the Occupy movement any less crazy and hysterical than the worst right wingers?  Was moveon.org particularly moderate when they called G.W. Bush Hitler?  

Update:  Monday, June 18th is the day the Senate is scheduled to vote on Andrew Hurwitz, architect of Roe v. Wade.  This man must be kept off the Ninth Circuit Court.  Senator Kirk?

Battle of the Books: Persuasion and Force

This quote is also from James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

On the other hand, when a priest says,'Vote as I tell you or you will be damned,' he employs force just as much as if he held a pistol to his parishioner's head, though the arguments through which the force is applied are more elaborate than in the other case.  A surgeon tells a patient that he will die unless he submits to a painful operation.  Is this persuasion or force?  No man would lose a limb if he were not forced to do so by the fear of losing what he values even more, but the surgeon would usually be said to persuade his patient, and not to compel him(p77).  There is one other point in Mr. Harrison's article which calls for notice.  He totally misapprehends the object of my chapter on the distinction between the temporal and the spiritual power, and he naturally misrepresents what I have said on the subject.  As to his misrepresentations, I have dealt with them as far as I thought necessary in foot-notes to the passages misrepresented, and I will only say here that they may be summed up in a few words.  Mr. Harrison supposes me to teach 'the paradox' of 'the essential identity of material and moral power,' in order to establish the conclusion that the 'State ought to be the Church,' that it is not to be a Pope-king, but only a King-pope.'  If Mr. Harrison had read the chapter in question with any care, he would have seen that I said nothing of the sort.  I admit as fully as anyone can the difference between temporal and spiritual power.  The one I say is the power which rests upon temporal sanctions, and the other the power which rests upon spiritual sanctions, and I think that when for this expression, Mr. Harrison substitutes the word 'hell,' he does me great injustice.  I mean by spiritual sanctions all the hopes and fears, all the feelings of various kinds which may be excited by the prospect of a future state.  What I deny is the right of positivists, who do not believe in spiritual sanctions at all, and who do not accept the distinction between spirit and matter, to make use of the word 'spiritual,' and I say that their theory becomes nonsense without it.  Again I do not deny, but assert, the distinction between persuasion and force.  What I deny is that this distinction corresponds to the distinction between temporal and spiritual power.  I observe indeed, in passing, that persuasion and force run into each other, as do many dissimilar things, but the whole of my argument shows that I recognise the distinction, as, indeed, Mr. Harrison himself proves from other parts of my book, thinking to catch me in a contradiction.  This, however, is unnecessary to my argument, and the passage which Mr. Harrison refers to as if it conveyed the substance of the whole chapter might have been struck out of the book without interfering with its principal positions.  The whole chapter forms a carefully constructed argument, and it is difficult to answer it without an equally careful consideration of it as a whole(p244-45).

Battle of the Books, Part One

Here is an account, similar to Finnis' Incommensurability thesis, but informed by Hume, thus without a Natural Law potential.  It comes from James Fitzjames Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

To give a specific illustration, Hume's doctrine,'that personal merit consists entirely in the usefulness or agreeableness of qualities to the person himself possessed of them, or to others who have any intercourse with him,' and that,' every man who has any regard to his own happiness and welfare will best find his account in the practice of every moral duty,' is quite independent of religion in my sense of the word.  That up to a certain point 'true self love and social are the same' does not admit of serious dispute(p176).  Happiness has a very different meaning to a fierce pastoral tribe in Central Asia;  to an ignorant husbandman in Bengal;  to a cultivated modern European;  to a naked savage in Central Africa, to say nothing of the different conceptions of happiness which are formed by different individuals similarly situated.  But what does this prove?  Merely that morality is not fixed but varying, that there is no such thing as absolute, unchangeable morality, and that it is hardly possible that there should be moral intuitions, and this is the plain truth and the ultimate result of these speculations.  Bring any considerable number of human beings into relations with each other.  Let them talk, fight, eat, drink, continue their species, make observations, form a society, in short, however rough or however polished, and experience proves that they will form a conception more or less definite of what for them constitutes happiness;  that they will also form a conception of the rules of conduct by which happiness may be increased or diminished;  that they will enforce such rules upon each other by different sanctions, and that such rules and sanctions will produce an influence upon individual conduct varying according to circumstances(p225, Liberty Fund ed.)

Not Because Hume Didn't Try

The last post discussed John Finnis' claim that the Thomistic theory of desirable ends as the source of natural law, vis a vis the later opinion of Suarez that morals are rationally discernable and based on divine command.  It seems to have been the opinion of Finnis that somehow the desirable ends theory of Natural Law was impervious to the Hume's Dictum distinction between the way things are and the way things should be.  Of course, even Suarez was not really saying that Natural Law is simply doing things as they are currently done, he was saying that morals can be rationally inferred from nature, and there is a difference.  Estase sees a huge difference between the theory of Suarez and the theory that morality is somehow what is typically done.  What is typically done is customary, and Suarez would blush at the customary practices of the Jersey Shore.  What Suarez is getting at may be what Cicero implied in his works, a morality of realism based on what is naturally offensive, although Estase admits to little familiarity with Suarez.  Does Thomism survive Hume's Dictum?  If so, it's not because Hume didn't try.

Finnis on Hume's Dictum, etc.

"The substantive differences between the theory of natural law espoused by Vasquez and Suarez (and most Catholic manuals until the other day) and the theory espoused by Aquinas are scarcely less significant and extensive than the better-known differences between Aristotelian and Stoic ethics. . . .We can put Hume's attack on the ethics of his predecessors into perspective by the following summary remarks:(i)Aristotle and Aquinas would readily grant that ought cannot be deduced from is (whether or not Hume really formulated and adhered to that principle).  (ii)Both would go along with Hume's view that the speculative discernment of "eternal relations," even relations of "fitness of human nature," leaves open the question what motive anybody has for regulating his actions accordingly.  (iii) Aquinas would deplore the confusion (shared by Hume and Suarez!) of obligation with impulse or influence, and Hume's failure to see that reason is an "active principle" because one is motivated according to one's understanding of the goodness and desirability of human opportunities, including the opportunity of extending intelligence and reasonableness into one's choice of actions.  (iv)Aquinas would reject the assumption of Clarke, Grotius, Suarez, and Vasquez that the primary and self-evident principles of natural law are moral principles (in the modern sense of "moral"), or that they are initially grasped as principles concerned  with self-evident relations of conformity or dis-conformity to human nature.  (v)Aquinas, like Clarke and Hume, would reject the view that the will or imperative of a superior accounts for obligation;  like Hume he would reject Clarke's view that obligation is essentially a matter of avoiding intellectual inconsistencies;  and finally he would reject both Hume's view that it is a matter of, or intrinsically related to, a peculiar sentiment, and equally, the recent neo-Humean view that statements of obligation are merely prescriptions expressing a certain sort of commitment or decision."  John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, II.6, p47-48

The Fifth Column: Solidarity... With the USCCB

The Fifth Column: Solidarity... With the USCCB
If anybody wants an example of why I follow Steve Kellmeyer, this article says it all.

Hume's Dictum

"In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning and establishes the being of a God or makes observations concerning human affairs,when of a sudden I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought or an ought not.  This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the last consequence.  For as this ought or ought not expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained, and at the same time that a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconcievable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others which are entirely different from it.  But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers, and am persuaded that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality and let us see that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relation of objects, nor is percieved by reason."  David Hume A Treatise on Human Nature, Section I, pgs. 247-248 Modern Library ed.

Kant's Dictum?

"He who would derive the concept of virtue from experience, and would change what at best could only serve as an example or an imperfect illustration, into a type and source of knowledge (as many have really done)would indeed transform virtue into an equivocal phantom, changing according to times and circumstance, and utterly useless to serve as a rule."  Immanuel Kant Critique of Pure Reason p233

Can You Be Half-Secular?

Salon.com had a strange article by Mary Elizabeth Williams, entitled "Where Are All the Normal Christians," which might have been entitled, "Where Are All the Liberal Christians?"  Williams attacks Rick Santorum by saying something along the lines of, "As a Catholic, most people associate my church with child molesters and Rick Santorum," which sort of implies (I think) that she thinks Santorum is about as reputable as a child molester.  She goes over the moon to say that, even though she claims to be Catholic, she sees nothing wrong with birth control.  But, I have to admit, she did actually make some good points.  She sees grace and forgiveness as important parts of faith.  And she did find fault with those on the left, who with Dr. Dawkins, dismiss all people of faith as ignorant rubes.  The only problem is, Ms. Williams fails to see that people on her ideological side usually do see religious people as ignorant rubes, and they see objecting to birth control as a perfect example of being an ignorant rube.  So she concedes half the point just in the fact that she herself sees contraception as being the mark of sophistication.

Stop Bein' Greedy

Bobby Rush on the floor of the House looked like DMX in the video for "Stop Bein' Greedy."  It is so typical for a Chicago legislator to resort to cheap theatrics.  Which may explain why Illinois is the most broke state in the union.  "Two glowin' red eyes/everything else is black."

A liberal legal blog now bemoans the fact that unelected SC justices are poised to overturn a democratically created law.  Which is a fine objection, had the same liberals been consistant enough to feel the same way about courts overturning laws (pornography, traditional marriage, etc.) that their opponents created.  The fact of the matter is that liberals are fine with courts overturning democratically created laws, so long as those laws are "prudish," "heterosexist," or "patriachal."  The same people that created a constitutional right to privacy out of thin air now object to the Supreme Court they have used to their own ends since the FDR years.  "Y'all have eaten long enough now/stop bein' greedy."

Kicking and Screaming, Part Two

Nicholas Hahn claims that being a good executive won Romney the Catholic vote.  Mr. Hahn also says Santorum caught "Potomac fever," whatever that is.  Well, Mr. Hahn, if being a Catholic means loving good executives, they must be mightily displeased with the ecclesiastical politicians calling themselves bishops.  The bishops put their weight behind Obamacare only to have the Contraceptive Mandate shoved down their throats.  If Santorum has Potomac fever, what disease do the other presidential candidates have?  After all, if wanting public office is wrong, then Mitt the Shit and Newt Gingerich have the same defect.  Estase has already given up on 2012.  He voted for Santorum, and the rest of the Illinois GOP chose someone who forced Catholic hospitals to hand out Plan B.  Mitt then lied about it, claiming that this provision of Romneycare was voluntary when it wasn't.  Like Lisa Graas, I see absolutely no difference between Obama and Romney when it comes to freedom for the Catholic Church, and if the Catholic vote went with Romney, that shows how stupid Catholics are. Petasus tip to Kresta in the Morning.

My thought is that if the water is too poisoned between Romney and Santorum for the latter to be his VP, Romney might gain some creditablity as a pro-lifer (where he has none now) by making Michele Bachmann his VP.  I might actually give a damn about whether or not Romney wins in that case.

Update: Justice Stephen Bryer sees nothing wrong with the government forcing people to buy burial insurance.  The 1930s threw most of the freedom to make contracts out the window--vide Wickard v. Filburn, the Social Security Act.  The 30s also were the decade that killed Common Law, and replaced it with an infinitely flexible constitution.

Reading the Riot Act About Burke

The following is from The House of Commons in the Eighteenth Century by P.D.G. Thomas (Oxford, 1971):

His{Hartley} rising always operated like a Dinner Bell. One day, that he had thus wearied out the Patience of his Audience, having nearly cleared out a very full House which was reduced from three hundred to about eighty persons, half asleep;  just at a time when he was expected to close, he unexpectedly moved that the Riot Act should be read, as a document necessary to elucidate, or to prove some of his foregoing assertions.  Burke, who sat close by him. . . laid hold of Hartley by the coat, "The Riot Act! my dear friend, the Riot Act!  To what purpose!  Don't you see that the mob is already completely dispersed?"(p221)

That Burke was a natural target for interruptions can be seen from Wraxall's pen-portrait of him in action:  'Burke constantly wore spectacles.  His enunciation was vehement, rapid, and never checked by any Embarrassment:  for his Ideas outran his Powers of Utterance, and he drew from an exhaustless Source.  But his Irish Accent, which was as strong as if he had never quitted the Banks of the Shannon, diminished to the Ear, the enchanting Effect of his Eloquence on the Mind.  The dazzling oratory of Edmund Burke, adorned with metaphors and similes, makes magnificent prose:  but it must often have been incomprehensible to a large part of his audience.  He spoke too long as well as too fast, and it was part of his practice to speak late in debates.  He lacked the personal or social stature to command respect.  His views were often predictable, and usually unpopular with the majority of members present.  Attempts to stop him were therefore frequent, and sometimes mentioned by Burke himself.  On 10 December 1770 he made this comment during his speech:  'I must address myself to some gentlemen, and I will do it with humility, that they have a disposition, when any gentleman gets up, they don't choose to hear speak, to endeavor the best they can, to drown him with noise, and clamour.  I never knew it was formed into a regular system till today.' Later in the same session Burke reported to Rockingham that on 13 February 1771 he had 'waited for the general reply, until after twelve;  a detachment of Macaronies endeavored to prevent me from speaking, but they did not succeed.'  During his speech Burke remarked, 'I am very glad that the House is full;  but there is another point not so easy to gain--a patient attendance, a very full and patient House.'  Even age and experience did not give Burke immunity from such treatment.  Carl Moritz noted this incident during a speech by him on 9 July 1782 in praise of the recently deceased Lord Rockingham:  'As he did not meet with sufficient attention, and heard much talking and many murmors, he said, with much vehemence and a sense of injured merit, "this is not treatment for so old a Member of Parliament as I am, and I will be heard!"  On which there was immediately a most profound silence.(p225-226).

Edmund Burke was not always popular with his contemporaries, and it is nearly certain that the superficial over at Fox News would have zero use for an Edmund Burke today.

I Coulda Been a Contender!

First article of illogic:  The claim that if polls show that religious freedom isn't at issue with the Contraceptive Mandate, that no such problem exists.  I am sure that if you ran a poll on racial justice in Mississippi in 1920, the poll would have shown that black people there were treated just fine.  Civil rights by opinion poll, anyone?

Second article of illogic: The other blogger, who supports Ron Paul, who called Rick Santorum a crazy right wing extremist.  OK, people, you need to get your story straight.  Either Santorum is a big government Republican, or he is a right wing extremist.  You cannot have it both ways.  By the way, Ron Paul has an isolationist, Pat Buchanan foreign policy, so I think most people would consider him a strong contender for right wing extremist of the current election cycle.

Gutting the Catholic Church

Gary Gutting, philosophy professor at Notre Dame, says that since Catholics often contracept, the Catholic Church no longer teaches that contraception is wrong.  Which sort of implies that any sin, if practiced commonly enough, ceases to be a sin.  How I long for Ralph McInerny to come back from the dead and beat some sense into this guy!  Petasus tip to Cardinal Newman Society.

ATTENTION WAL-MART!  You need to stop selling Jane Fonda workout videos--now!  Sam Walton would spin in his grave if he knew Hanoi Jane was being peddled in his store.  The following is from Robert Coram's book American Patriot:The Life and Wars of Bud Day,
While near Hanoi, Fonda put on the helmet of a Vietnamese soldier and sang antiwar songs.  She sat in the gunner's seat of a AAA battery to "encourage" North Vietnamese soldiers fighting against "American imperialist air raiders."  She made numerous broadcasts over Radio Hanoi--broadcasts the POWs were forced to listen to over "CBS" {Camp Bull Shit} as she denounced Richard Nixon as a "true killer" and lamented his "crimes" against the Vietnamese and said he was "lying" when he said the war was winding down.  Over "CBS" the guards played a tape of Fonda and a group of women outside an army base in New Jersey singing a song called "Fuck the Army." 

Fonda came to Hoa Lo and met with seven POWs.  One of them, Navy lieutenant commander David Hoffman, was tortured until he agreed to appear.  (McCain says he was "knocked around" in an unsuccessful effort to make him meet with Fonda.)  Among the POWs who showed up voluntarily were Lieutenant Colonel Edison Miller {collaborator of the infamous "Bob and Ed Show" the camp inmates were forced to listen to} of the Marines and Commander Walter Eugene Wilber of the Navy.

The legal definition of "treason" includes a phrase about providing "aid and comfort to the enemy." Bud Day and, for that matter, almost all of the POWs say that Fonda had done just that and should have been tried for treason.

They would never forgive her.

Nor should Wal-Mart.

Petasus tip to Gateway Pundit.  They actually have the temerity to cast Hanoi Jane as Nancy Reagan.  Hollywood is shameless.

BEAR TO THE RIGHT

BEAR TO THE RIGHT
Aminoff really outdid himself here.  I especially liked his comment about the KKK, which also was aligned with labor unions in the Herrin, IL riot in 1924.  The people who act as though the Klan was somehow unlinked with Democrats are revisionists, although it is unfortunately true that Governor Len Small coddled the Klan in those same 1920s.

Fake Issues: 1996 and 2012

State Senator Judy Eason McIntyre poses with a sign saying "If I wanted government in my womb I'd F**k a Senator" at a rally against the Oklahoma personhood bill.  Ha ha. If I wanted government in my church, I would vote for Mitt Romney.

Petasus tip to the Clue Batting Cage.  Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill is now claiming that she is supporting the Contraceptive Mandate and opposing the Blunt Amendment because she wants to reduce the number of abortions.  Hilarious!  And I'm sure that's why Dick Durbin, Kirsten Gillibrand, and all the rest of the pro-aborts want to make the Church violate her own teachings too!  It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Obama and the liberals have made birth control the star issue of the 2012 election, and want to pretend that anyone who doesn't want government to force the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptives really wants no one to have contraceptives at all, would it?  Just like how the liberals made cigarettes the fake issue of 1996, and kept acting as though Bob Dole's whole raison d'etre was to make elementary schools hand them out like candy?  No, changing the subject from real to fake issues is never a liberal tactic!

Ask Pepsi to stop contracting with Senomyx!