Terrorist WMDs Found?
Hattip to Jammie Wearing Fool. The above could of course just be an official who fumbled an interview with a reporter eager to turn a routine story into something more, or it could be someone who inadvertently told some very alarming truth:
The Customs and Border Protection Department tried to dampen speculation over his remarks, but doubts remained over whether he had inadvertently revealed a dirty bomb plot to attack the U.S. mainland. Continue reading
Is America Satanophobic?
Oh, I don’t know Mr. Klavan. While vehemently opposed to Satan and all his works, not to mention his empty promises, I don’t know if I fear Satanists. Now if Satanists in various parts of the globe began to engage in suicide bombings, used mentally handicapped individuals and kids in their suicide bombings, started stoning women, undertook strenuous efforts to obtain nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, took over countries and proclaimed them Satanist States, beheaded captives and made snuff videos celebrating the murders, murdered 3000 of my countrymen and regularly called down the wrath of Satan on my nation and anyone who is non-Satanist, I guess a small particle of fear might creep in, along with a large amount of rage, at least in regard to those particular Satanists. Fortunately the Satanists are merely a small band of kooks, and my main emotion to them is pity. Thank God we are not faced with the type of moral quandries presented if a significant fraction of a global Satanist religion decided to launch a unholy war against unbelievers. We can all relax now!
Against Small Pox
There is a saying among logicians: one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens. In english, the idea is that different people often respond to the same argument by reaching opposite conclusions. If you see that an argument is valid, a logical response is to accept its conclusion. But another, equally logical response is to reject the argument’s premise.
That seems to be the situation with a recent post by David Curz-Uribe of the blog Vox Nova. David begins by contrasting two different views of the relationship between human beings and the rest of creation:
In the first account God tells Adam and Eve: “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.” The sense here is of total control, ownership, “dominion.” On the other hand, in the second account it says that “The LORD God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.” Here the sense is of stewardship: caring for something that they do not own.
I do not want to read too much into these short passages, but I think that this tension still affects our current understanding of the world around us. If the world is “ours” in the sense we have complete control over it, then we can do what we want, subject only to our prudential judgment of how to treat our property. On the other hand, if the world is God’s, then our decisions must show deference to God’s own plan. We are stewards, and presumably (like all stewards) have a great deal of autonomy and authority, but in the end we are constrained by the plan of the actual Master of creation.
In the abstract I am more inclined towards the stewardship interpretation than the dominion interpretation given above (if for no other reason than that “stewardship” sounds nice while “dominion” sounds bad). Yet as David notes, the stewardship interpretation has some unusual implications: Continue reading
History and Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 masterpiece Rashomon in which a murder is told from four differing perspectives, including that of the ghost of the murdered man, details a problem that always plagues historians: whenever you have more than one source for an event, they are probably going to differ, sometimes in small particulars, although not uncommonly in large ones. The larger the event, a battle for example, and the more sources, the more differences. What one reads in a typical history book often glosses over questions on particular points with the writer, assuming he is aware of the differing materials, picking, choosing and interpreting source material rather like an individual putting together a puzzle where some of the pieces have gone astray and some have been savaged by the family dog. It is not easy work, and that is why some “historians” merely repackage the various books on the subject they have skimmed and eschew actual research by themselves. If you read a lot on a particular topic of history, you can often tell what source is being used for a particular event.
On February 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois with his family to travel to Washington DC to be sworn in as President of a very Disunited States of America. He made a short and, for him, fairly emotional and personal speech to his friends and well-wishers at the train station. Three versions of his speech have come down to us:
Continue reading
First Graders and History
As we have learned, there was much hatred of Catholics by English Protestants in Maryland. One great Catholic man was able to overcome this hatred and he is one of our great patriotic heroes. His name was Charles Carroll. Charles Carroll was born in Maryland. His parents sent him to a Catholic school in France where Catholics were respected…Charles Carroll said that his greatest accomplishment was that he “practiced the duties of my religion.” Many Protestants began to realize that their prejudice against Catholics was unjustified.
The sentences above begin and conclude a typical lesson in a Catholic homeschooling course on American History intended for first graders. This is not a genre with which I have much familiarity (we’re homeschooling for a few months to finish out the school year after a move), and so I thought it might be interesting to offer some comments as an outsider on the homeschooling materials we’ve received.
The most obvious (if superficial) feature of the homeschooling materials is that they are drenched in religious art, regardless of subject. As an alum of a mixture of public and parochial schools, I was surprised to find Spelling and Math textbooks adorned with (often very beautiful) religious art work. I don’t think there is anything right or wrong with decorating textbooks in this manner, per se, but it takes some getting used to.
As the passage quoted above suggests, the next thing that I noticed is that the history narratives tend to be awash in a type of Catholic triumphalism. I like a small dosage of triumphalism as much as the next guy, but it seems to me it should used (at most) as cream or sugar in coffee; the tendency with this particular textbook is instead to include a few (uniformly favorable) facts in the ongoing account of noble-Catholics-doing-good-things.
Blowing Out the Moral Lights Around Us
Something for the weekend. A tribute to our 16th President to the tune of Ashokan Farewell. Today is the 202nd birthday of Abraham Lincoln. As faithful readers of this blog know, I write quite a bit about him. I do not do so only out of historical interest, but because I also believe that Lincoln, and his fight against the great moral evil of his day, slavery, is highly relevant to our own time. Lincoln noted time and again that the pro-slavery forces, by their defense of slavery, were attacking the foundation of American liberty, the Declaration of Independence, and “blowing out the moral lights around us”.
Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody I ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on, layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction in all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your minds, now ripening under these teachings will be ready for all these things, and you will receive and support, or submit to, the slave trade; revived with all its horrors; a slave code enforced in our territories; and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery upon into the very heart of the free North. This, I must say, is by carrying out those words prophetically spoken by Mr. Clay, many, many years ago. I believe more than thirty years when he told an audience that if they would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, they must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thundered its annual joyous return on the Fourth of July; they must blow out the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the human soul and eradicate the love of liberty; but until they did these things, and others eloquently enumerated by him, they could not repress all tendencies to ultimate emancipation.
I ask attention to the fact that in a pre-eminent degree these popular sovereigns are at this work; blowing out the moral lights around us; teaching that the negro is no longer a man but a brute; that the Declaration has nothing to do with him; that he ranks with the crocodile and the reptile; that man, with body and soul, is a matter of dollars and cents. Continue reading
If I Weren’t Catholic, I Would…
As a Catholic, one is sometimes accused of being so mindlessly doctrinaire that one “accepts anything the pope says without thinking”. However, at other times, one is faced with the opposite challenge: Does your Catholic faith cause you to take any political or moral positions that you wouldn’t take anyway?
Typically, both of these objections are leveled by people who don’t like one’s political or moral stances, but while in the one case it stems from a belief that one would obvious agree with the speaker if only one’s head wasn’t befuddled by religious notions, the other seems to stem from the idea that if only one really took one’s faith seriously, one would agree with the speaker on the point at issue. (Or perhaps alternately, merely a skepticism as to whether anyone actually modifies his life at all due to religious beliefs.)
I think this is a pretty valid question, but if one attempts to think about it seriously, it is a very difficult question to answer, since it leaves one to try to puzzle out how much of one’s beliefs and character are the result of one’s faith, versus how much one picks one’s faith based on beliefs or tendencies one already has. Continue reading
Right-Wing Utopians
Ron Paul, God bless him, is out in front in his role as the Chairman of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology Subcommittee (part of the House Committee on Financial Services). He held a hearing on Tuesday to examine the Fed’s role in contributing to unemployment. His lead witness was Thomas DiLorenzo. You remember DiLorenzo from such tomes as The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War and Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe. DiLorenzo is to historical research what Lady Gaga is to music, so it was a curious choice by Ron Paul. Then again, we should probably thank our lucky stars that he didn’t select his buddy Alex Jones, though I suppose it would have provided some entertainment to hear him rail about 9/11 conspiracies and the role of the Illuminati in trying to secure a one-world state.
As Greg Garrison at Red State notes, it’s kind of funny, but also kind of sad.
This subcommittee hearing is a great example of Paul’s inappropriate oddness. With all that government needs to do, and all that it needs to stop doing, the last thing we need is a series of hearings on how the Federal Reserve is causing massive unemployment. That’s probably what Dr. Paul will “uncover”, and while there’s obviously a relationship between monetary supply, inflation, unemployment, and the like, blaming all of our problems on “The Fed” (which he asserts we need to end) is lunacy.
But that’s Ron Paul. He wants to end fractional reserve banking. He claims that gold is “real money” and paper is not (to say nothing of debit cards), without thinking of how uncomfortable mattresses are when stuffed with gold coins instead of dollar bills. He blathers on about 9/11 cover-ups” and comes pretty close to blaming 9/11 on America (Many say that he crosses that line).
The last part is a bit more debatable, but that’s neither here nor there. I think a commenter nails the problem with Paul and those who are of like mind.
Essentially, Rothbard, the anarchistic libertarians, and some Objectivists are on the utopian right: they essentially envision worlds and systems that have never, and will never, exist, existing solely by virtue of their intellectual consistency. They then attack extant society from the mistaken notion that its demise will lead to anarcho-capitalism… somehow.
This squares with what I’ve long believed about the paleo-conservative right.
Now originally I was going to just write about Paul and the utopianism of his movement, but then Continue reading
Egypt and the Obama Doctrine
I was inclined to cut the Obama administration some slack initially in regard to the crisis in Egypt. It is a tough situation and it was difficult to see anything that the US could or should do. Mubarak has been a friend to the US during his 30 years in power, faithfully kept the peace with Israel, and worked with our intelligence agencies against Islamic terrorism. However, there is no doubt that he is a dictator, albeit one of the best of a very bad lot in the Middle East where dictatorship is the norm outside of Israel, Turkey and Iraq, and no American can weep for his fall. However, what replaces him could be far worse. A tough situation and not a whole lot the US can do to influence events. Therefore I was initially sympathetic to Obama’s dilemma.
However, the utter cluelessness of his administration throughout this mess has ended my sympathy. Endless, feckless posturing, combined with impotence, is not a foreign policy but rather a vaudeville act. This was on full display yesterday when Leon Panetta, CIA director, stated publicly that he had reports that indicated Mubarak would be stepping down yesterday. This was completely erroneous as events proved, but it made worldwide headlines. It then turned out that Panetta was not basing his prediction on intelligence gathered by his spooks, but rather on media reports. I can think of few better illustrations of the level of amateurish bungling that has been the hallmark of the Obama administration in regard to everything they have touched. The Obama Doctrine consists of the following elements:
1. Speak loudly and carry no stick.
2. Watch a lot of tv to find out what is going on in the world.
3. Make endless statements to the press and, never, ever, have a plan as to what to do if you actually have to back up the statements.
4. Always remember to never let a crisis go to waste and attempt to get maximum positive press coverage out of it, because that is what all crises are truly about.
5. Obama needs another Nobel Peace Prize to keep his first one company. Continue reading
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
I’m going to follow up my post on Live Action and Lila Rose with a more general post on lying, because it sparked quite a heated debate. At the outset I want to say that I don’t condemn people outright who believe it is morally acceptable to use deception to expose evil, but I do believe that they are wrong. Moreover, I believe that the ferocity of some people in defense of this position is completely unwarranted and unreasonable; there have been notable Catholic saints and thinkers on both sides of this question throughout history, and so it hardly seems right or fair to violently denounce a fellow Catholic for taking up one position or the other.
Congressional Amnesia
From the only reliable source of news on the net, the Onion. I don’t know, I think we would be better off if Congress had forgotten how to pass a law a few years ago. At any rate, I always attempt to come to the assistance of fools, drunks and the United States Congress, so here is a little reminder as to how a bill becomes a law: Continue reading
Lincoln Lives!
Andrew Ferguson, author of Land of Lincoln, recounts in the video above some of the zany, and touching, ways in which people recall our 16th President. You get a lot of both when you live in Illinois! For example, if you see a bust or a statue of Lincoln you rub his nose for luck. At the U of I at Champaign-Urbana, Lincoln Hall has a bust of Lincoln with a very shiny nose as generations of Illini taking tests have sought any help they could get! Continue reading
Servant Of God Father Patrick Peyton CSC, Leader Of Rosary Rallies, Founder Of Family Theater
Many have heard the term, The Family That Prays Together Stays Together. Yet, how many are familiar with the life of Father Patrick Peyton, his rosary rallies which drew millions, and Family Theater which he started in Hollywood in 1947 and is still going strong today? How many are aware that Father Patrick Peyton drew over 1,000,000 people to several rosary rallies in the 1950s. He even drew over 550,000 to a 1961 San Francisco Rosary Rally, six years before the city became a focal point for the 1960s counter culture revolution and subsequent 1967 Summer of Love. As you can see, when we turn our back to faith, we find ourselves going down a very slippery slope. Yet, Father Patrick Peyton was a true visionary. He saw the slippery morals in tinsel town long before the 1960s and knew he needed to do something to counterbalance what was going on. He knew of Hollywood’s bad influence and moral collapse long before most realized it, and yet he truly believed that Family Theater would one day bring faith back to Hollywood and all who are influenced by her.
Who was this Renaissance man, a man of wealth and privilege, a man of many letters? Hardly, Father Patrick Peyton CSC came to the US during his teen years, penniless, uneducated and according to the world’s precepts harboring little potential. However, before he left the docks of Ireland his mother told him in no uncertain terms that with the Blessed Mother’s aid, he could do great things. After doing manual work for the Holy Cross Fathers he was allowed to enter the seminary at Notre Dame. Yet, shortly before he was to be ordained, he received a dire medical prognosis and it appeared that not only was his ordination in question, but his life itself was in peril. He did the only thing he could, pray unceasingly. His prayers were answered and he thanked the Blessed Mother along with St Joseph, both of which he had a strong devotion. He along with his brother was ordained in 1941. Continue reading
United States v. Satan
A scene from the classic movie, The Devil and Daniel Webster, based upon the short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, in which Daniel Webster bests Satan in a jury trial to save the soul of New Hampshireman Jabez Stone. Prior to the trial, Daniel Webster attempts to get Jabez Stone out of the contract on the ground that the Devil is a foreign prince. Satan denies this:
Foreign!” said the stranger. “And who calls me a foreigner”? ”Well, I never yet heard of the dev−− of your claiming American citizenship,” said Dan’l Webster with surprise. “And who with better right?” said the stranger, with one of his terrible smiles. “When the first wrong was done to the first Indian, I was there. When the first slaver put out for the Congo, I stood on her deck. Am I not in your books and stories and beliefs, from the first settlements on? Am I not spoken of, still, in every church in New England? ‘Tis true the North claims me for a Southerner and the South for a Northerner, but I am neither. I am merely an honest American, like yourself and of the best descent for, to tell the truth Mr . Webster, though I don’t like to boast of it, my name is older in this country than yours.” “Aha!” said Dan’l Webster, with the veins standing out in his forehead. “Then I stand on the Constitution! I demand a trial for my client!”
This story is actually cited in a federal legal opinion which may be read here, and which is riotously funny in a very dry sense. I submit it to establish that some judges do have a sense of humor, at least of a sort.
Returning to the short story, I have always treasured this passage: the closing argument of Daniel Webster to the Jury of the Damned, which I think contains wisdom about patriotism and the human condition: Continue reading
Lila Rose Revisited
Some time ago I wrote a post expressing some of my reservations about the activities of Lila Rose and her organization, Live Action. In light of their most recent undercover sting operation, it is a good time to revisit some of the objections and debates that came up earlier. Initially I believed that Live Action’s activities were morally questionable in some cases, and definitely wrong in others.
I have to say that I stand by this assessment today, for several reasons I will state below.
First I want to make clear that I am 100% pro-life; I make no exceptions for rape, incest, or “to save the life of the mother”, for it is never permissible to kill an innocent human being to save another human being. At the legislative level I would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, in which case many pre-Roe abortion bans would immediately regain their full force in many states.
Considering American Exceptionalism
There has been discussion in the public square lately about American Exceptionalism. The term is one of those which, it seems, causes visceral reactions in many people, either positive or negative. Some immediately declare that the United States is one of the greatest nations that has ever existed. Others insist either that the US is entirely un-exceptional (and its inhabitants delusional for thinking otherwise) or that it is exceptional only in that it has been an unusually bad influence upon the world.
One of the problems is that there are a couple of different meanings one can assign to the term “American exceptionalism”. Some use the term to mean that 19th century Protestant idea that the United States is uniquely selected by God as a new Israel to play some pivotal role in the world. This view strikes me as sufficiently wrong as to be uninteresting, so I won’t discuss it further. However, this does not necessarily leave us to conclude that the US is either unexceptional or evil.
Continue reading
Finding Truth in Nate’s Post
The blogosphere had a lot of reaction to Nate of VN’s post in which he criticized America (to put it gently), to which my co-blogger Mr. McClarey has already responded. Nate has wisely revised his post so that the main sentence reads:
America is one of the greatest forces for evil in the world in the history of mankind.
I think there is some truth in this statement. Continue reading
The Catholic Left and America the Evil
Thomas Peters took the usual suspects, including Vox Nova, on the Catholic Left to task for ignoring Lila Rose’s new expose last week about Planned Parenthood a\k\a Worse Than Murder, Inc. Mark Shea joined in. In response Morning’s Minion at Vox Nova went on the offensive and blasted everyone to the right of Joseph Stalin after a pro forma condemnation of Planned Parenthood. Nate Wildermuth made a more interesting contribution:
Like the blind men grasping at different parts of an elephant, we should waste less time denying what the other sees, and more time putting together the pieces, no matter how horrifying the conclusion.” Continue reading
That’s a General not a Waiter
Obama adviser Valerie Jarett mistook a four star general, in full dress uniform, for a waiter at a party in Washington. Army General Peter Chiarelli got her a glass of wine, and later defended her, saying it was a mistake anyone could have made. Since I don’t work for the President as the General does, I don’t have to be as tactful. It is a mistake that anyone could make who possesses both a huge sense of entitlement and is completely and hopelessly clueless to all things military. I would caution Ms. Jarett not to make the same mistake in regard to anyone dressed like R. Lee Ermey in the clip at the top of this post.
Thomas Jefferson: The Miniseries
A very well done fan made “trailer” for a Thomas Jefferson miniseries, with the trailer consisting of clips from the John Adams miniseries. Such a miniseries would be challenging. Jefferson was one of the most complicated of the Founding Fathers, and there is plenty of his legacy to fight about still. I love the Declaration of Independence, yet I think clearly Alexander Hamilton had the better plan for the economic development of the country. I agree with Jefferson on his concern about too much federal authority over states, but he loses me with his embrace, prior to his presidency, of nullification. Jefferson spoke and wrote against slavery his entire life, yet he made no plans, as did Washington, to free his slaves after his death. A man who railed against government debt, he was so profligate in his personal finances that all of his property, including his slaves, had to be sold after his death to pay his debts. A man who deeply cherished the teachings of Christ, yet denied His divinity. A man averse to standing armies and war, yet he supported the French Revolution at its bloodiest, and could talk glibly about the blood of patriots watering the tree of liberty, while he never served a day in the Continental Army. Continue reading
The Coming Open Rebellion Against God Part II
In my first article The Coming Open Rebellion Against God, I spoke of a time where God would reveal his omnipotence and some would simply leave their faith behind. Why? Because just as in John 6, some would say it simply doesn’t make sense and walk away. Some have prayed that if only God would show His omnipotence; many would fall on their knees and believe. I truly believe the time is coming when some of our intelligentsia, including clergy will see the hand of God and say; “No thanks, this doesn’t mesh with my worldview.”
Father Dwight Longenecker recently wrote a review of the movie The Rite Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, a movie somewhat inspired by a real life Italian exorcist. The movie was given praise by many Catholic writers including Father Longenecker for actually showing the Church in a positive light. Perhaps this was due to the film’s producers using a California based exorcist Father Gary Thomas who actually was present at the filming of the movie. In a key passage Father Longenecker pondered the fact that far too many in this modern rationalistic world see the idea of the devil and demonic possession as beyond them, even though if they truly followed their rationalistic approach, they would come to see that there simply was no medical or scientific explanation for some cases. Sadly, for too many the sin of pride all too often is their downfall.
Recently Father Gary Thomas was interviewed by Leticia Velazquez of Catholic Exchange; some of his remarks about the way in which the teachings of the Church with regard to evil were defiantly rebuked by some within the Church including bishops were more than a little disconcerting. This movie review of The Rite by Father Raymond Schroth SJ associate Editor of America Magazine is one such example. As you can see, the devil is so passé to Father Schroth SJ. It hardly jibes with the high mindedness of those to which he and his urbane friends associate. Check out the comments section in the article, some of the comments left are as elitist and depressing as his treatise on who God is and who He should be.
George Weigel has noted the sad state of some quasi dissident bishops that Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict XVI have had to confront. They came from a mindset that preferred the adulation of the dissident intelligentsia of the Ivy League rather than the working class Catholic roots from which many came.
With regard to Jesus and the devil, Jesus spent a good deal of his time fighting the devil and his minions, but alas those who don’t believe in such things seem to indicate that Jesus and the Gospel writers got it wrong, Jesus was not fighting demonic powers but those who were dealing with bouts of depression and epilepsy. According to these liberal dissident elites, Jesus was the precursor to Dr Phil and Deepak Chopra helping those poor seemingly possessed people get their groove back and find their Zen destiny. Never mind what the Church teaches on the subject or the fact that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have specifically spoken of evil and the needs for more exorcists in the Church, these elites know better. Talk about hutzpah, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have been labeled as intellectually brilliant, even by their detractors, but no matter to those who don’t believe in such archaic things as the devil. Perhaps we should ask those in the Church, especially in the Church Hierarchy, if you don’t believe what Jesus said about the devil and the manifestation of evil, what else don’t you believe? Continue reading
Orwell Warned Us Of This
There are a pair of companions bills working their way through the Maryland legislature. HB 55 and SB 116, titled “The Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act” will soon be coming up for debate. Religious freedom and marriage protection – must be a law that good Catholics can get behind. So what do the bills provide for:
Altering a provision of law to establish that only a marriage between two individuals who are not otherwise prohibited from marrying is valid in the State; prohibiting an official of a religious institution or body authorized to solemnize marriages from being required to solemnize any marriage in violation of the constitutional right to free exercise of religion; etc.
So it’s a gay marriage bill. Oh sure there’s a little codicil about protecting religious officials from having to perform gay marriage, but this is a bill about altering the definition of marriage.
You almost have to hand it to the Democrats here in Maryland. They recognize that while Maryland might be a deeply blue state, there is a very large segment of social conservatives that don’t fully embrace social engineering and attempts to subvert traditional morality. So how coy of them to slip this issue under the radar in the guise of protecting religious liberty.
The phrase “culture of death” has been employed the anti-life agenda of the radical left. I think the “culture of deceit” might be equally as apt. From the shenanigans on abortion statistics to this action undertaken by the Maryland legislature, progressives continue to use obfuscation in order to advance their political agenda. Thus the debate over abortion is morphed into one about choice, privacy, a woman’s “control over her body.” Gay marriage becomes a civil rights issue.
We complain about the left utilizing the Courts to advance their agenda, and that is indeed a problem. But they’ve also advanced their agenda simply by lying through their collective teeth, or creatively using and abusing the English language.
George Orwell may have gotten some things wrong, but he certainly prophesied correctly in this regard.
Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation
There are no easy answers but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
Ronald Reagan
Today is my 54th birthday. I am pleased that I share my natal day with the man I consider the greatest president of my lifetime: Ronald Wilson Reagan, who was born one hundred years ago today in Tampico, Illinois. I greatly admire Reagan for many reasons: his wit, eloquence and good humor; his prime role in bringing about the destruction of Communism as a ruling ideology in the former, how good it is to write that adjective!, Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; his restoration of American prosperity by wringing inflation from the American economy; his rebuilding of the nation’s defenses; his restoration of American pride and optimism. However, there is one stand of his that, above all others, ensures that he will always have a special place in my heart, his defense of the weakest and the most vulnerable among us, the unborn.
In 1983 Reagan submitted an essay on abortion to the Human Life Review, then and now, the scholarly heart of the pro-life movement. He entitled it, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation. Go here to the Human Life Review’s website to read it.
Reagan in the article attacked Roe on its tenth anniversary and stated that Roe had not settled the abortion fight:
Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court’s result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right. Shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision, Professor John Hart Ely, now Dean of Stanford Law School, wrote that the opinion “is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” Nowhere do the plain words of the Constitution even hint at a “right” so sweeping as to permit abortion up to the time the child is ready to be born. Yet that is what the Court ruled.
As an act of “raw judicial power” (to use Justice White’s biting phrase), the decision by the seven-man majority in Roe v. Wade has so far been made to stick. But the Court’s decision has by no means settled the debate. Instead, Roe v. Wade has become a continuing prod to the conscience of the nation.
Reagan saw that abortion diminished respect for all human life and quoted Mother Teresa as to the simple truth that abortion is the “greatest misery of our time”:
We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life. We saw tragic proof of this truism last year when the Indiana courts allowed the starvation death of “Baby Doe” in Bloomington because the child had Down’s Syndrome.
Many of our fellow citizens grieve over the loss of life that has followed Roe v. Wade. Margaret Heckler, soon after being nominated to head the largest department of our government, Health and Human Services, told an audience that she believed abortion to be the greatest moral crisis facing our country today. And the revered Mother Teresa, who works in the streets of Calcutta ministering to dying people in her world-famous mission of mercy, has said that “the greatest misery of our time is the generalized abortion of children.” Continue reading
Viva Roma No. V!
Something for the weekend. From those endlessly talented folks at History for Music Lovers, Viva Roma No. V to the tune of Mambo No. 5.
Civis Romanus sum said Saint Paul, or its Greek equivalent, and even while Christians were savagely persecuted by the Roman Empire many of them remarked about what a wonder in human affairs it was.
Tertuallian, Christian Apologetics
Saint Augustine, living in the twilight of the Roman Empire in the West, with savage Vandals besieging Hippo at the time of his death, in his City of God raised the eyes of men to the imperishable City of God, while also yet acknowledging that God was the cause of the rise of the Roman Empire, along with the traditional Roman virtues: Continue reading
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