Monday, March 18, AD 2024 10:53pm

Donohue Continues to Beclown Himself

I especially enjoyed his attempted analogy of this situation with a woman who is beaten for twenty years and then blows her husband’s brain out.  Any of you who have ever contributed a dime to Donohue’s worthless organization should demand every cent back.  Discrimination against Catholics and general anti-Catholic bigotry are serious issues and Donohue, in exchange for a burst of publicity, has made certain that no one is ever going to take him seriously again.  Time for Donohue to find another means to earn his daily bread.

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Stephen E. Dalton
Stephen E. Dalton
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 7:41am

I would not care to read this magazine, but Donahue is way off base here. Islam demands the death of anyone who dares criticize it. The attack on Charlie Hebdo was not just an attack on that magazine, it’s an attempt to intimidate the rest of us into frightened sheep. Hebdo was chosen because of it’s prominence, but an outspoken person or institution that was also down on Islam could have been chosen as the target for tonight as well. Donahue is incredibly short sighted not to realize that.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 7:50am

. A woman abused for 20 years is in a addictive prison of sorts hence she has overstayed and not fled. The murderers in question had to hunt for this small newspaper in order to find abuse that didn’t exist in their lives …so that they could kill so that they could be martyred which is what they are asking of the swat team over night in France. They seek 72 “dark eyed houri”…they are fundy not sufis who take the houri metaphorically…. but the world and Donohue gives them more credit than that…ie that they are seeking Allah like sufis and are thus really offended. No…they are fundamentalists….you can’t seek God and 72 houri simultaneously. Fundamentalist Islam is a blasphemous concept of heaven for the males of Islam. It is carnality to the nth degree replacing the encounter with God. They hunted for the abuse so that it would lead them to a carnal paradise. I’ve never looked at one odd newspaper in my life and I once worked in Manhattan with its many news stands. They hunted in order to be offended….so that they could be killed by police so that they finally be rich and carnal in paradise. It has zero to do with reaching the real God.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 10:25am

Anyone of you who have ever contributed a dime to Donohue’s worthless organization should demand every cent back.

The organization antedated Dr. Donohue. They put out a satisfactory newsletter and some useful research reports. He’s just making a bad argument here. (And his conception of ‘anti-Catholicism’ is somewhat muddled). A better argument would be that vulgarians, like the rest of us, should get to die in bed.

The ‘free speech’ argument is problematic for reasons stated by Robert Bork a generation ago: the utility of free speech is something which derives from a public order characterized by deliberative processes, which is not the object of nude dancing at the Kitty Kat Lounge (or displays of arrested development or sexual perversion). In a healthy culture, there would not be much supply or demand for a publication like Charlie Hebdo, and what their would be would be constrained in its distribution by citations issued to news vendors by inspectors enforcing municipal ordinances against the trade in obscene literature, and so confined to adult book stores and mail delivery in plain brown wrappers. (Of course that refers to an older generation of technology).

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 10:51am

Art Deco

Charlie Hebdo is (was) for the most part a satirical magazine that, over the last 40 years has uncovered quite a number of real scandals. Its targets have been, for the most part, politicians, judges, bankers, financiers and civil servants. It is bawdy and scatalogical, rather than obscene.

It was one of the few publications in France that was prepared tp publish the Danish cartoonsof the “Prophet” and, in response to the reaction, started producing its own. It decried the hypocrasy of the rest of the Left-Wing press that gleefully produced rather dated anti-clerical attacks on what CH called a “moribund superstition,” whilst refusing to say a word against Islam, for fear of offending murderers for that is precisely what the rest of the press were afraid of.

CH knew the risks but, as Stephane Carbonnier said, “It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 10:59am

Sorry, misprint – I meant Stephane Charbonnier. The quotation is from an interview with La Monde in 2012, « Ça fait sûrement un peu pompeux, mais je préfère mourir debout que vivre à genoux. »

bill bannon
bill bannon
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 12:07pm

. All male suspects are dead…mixed reports on hostages as to safety.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 12:30pm

I especially enjoyed his attempted analogy of this situation with a woman who is beaten for twenty years and then blows her husband’s brain out.
I understood the analogy. It’s proper to focus on the crime of murder and carry it to its legal end, but don’t forget to discuss the issue of domestic violence.
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I think the confusion or divide between Megyn, Donald, et al is one side is arguing from legal ground and Donohue is arguing from moral ground. They take Donohue’s moral arguments, which are in agreement with many examination of conscience lists I’ve read, and extending them to legal conclusions, which is the wrong thing to do.
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The attack on Charlie Hebdo was not just an attack on that magazine, it’s an attempt to intimidate the rest of us into frightened sheep.
I didn’t hear anything to lead me to believe Donohue believes otherwise. He did call them “murders” and “Muslim barbarians.” He has spoken before about Islam influenced terrorism, but he is taking advantage of a window of opportunity to discuss hostility towards religion.
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The murderers in question had to hunt for this small newspaper in order to find abuse that didn’t exist in their lives.
If you narrow in on this single event, you’re missing the big picture Donohue is explaining, the hostility between religion and religion foes, which often appear in media.
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In a healthy culture, there would not be much supply or demand for a publication like Charlie Hebdo, and what their would be would be constrained in its distribution by citations issued to news vendors by inspectors enforcing municipal ordinances against the trade in obscene literature, and so confined to adult book stores and mail delivery in plain brown wrappers.
From what I hear, this is what Donohue wants to discuss, what makes a healthy culture. For this issue, he offers a remedy of “self censorship.” Bork goes a little further than what Donohue is saying, but it makes sense. Donohue is right in saying freedom of speech is not the end, but the means. For if it was the end, then anything goes.

Mike Petrik
Mike Petrik
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 12:45pm

I generally agree with Art and Kyle.
That said, Don is right that Donohue’s analagy is offensive. The relationship between a 20-year episode of abuse and the murder of the abuser by his victim is not comparable to the relationship between that of a gratuitously nasty and mean-spirited critic and the murder of the critic by his target. The former relationship involves a sensible and fair inquiry into the question of excuse or mitigation; the latter does not.

Clinton
Clinton
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 1:15pm

“Any one of you who have ever contributed a dime to Donohue’s worthless
organization should demand every cent back.”

According to Charity Navigator, for the fiscal year ending in 2012, Mr. Donohue’s
compensation was $407,000. That’s a lot of dimes.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 1:30pm

Clinton,
I think that’s 7 or 8 dollars more than Obama but Obama has bodyguards …albeit somewhat laid back ones.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 1:48pm

Any one of you who have ever contributed a dime to Donohue’s worthless organization should demand every cent back.

On Donohue, from Ace:

There is a kind of stupidity that does not exist naturally in the wild, which does not arise spontaneously in men’s brains, but which springs up only when people’s income levels depend on such stupidity.

You see this sort of stupidity all over official Advocacy DC, especially at, say, ThinkProgress and Media Matters.

Those people aren’t smart, but they’re not as stupid as they sound.
They are saying those stupid things because they’re being paid to say them.

Period.

As for Donohue’s claim being a legal, not a moral one, well, I think Allahpundit is correct:

Hewitt asks the correct question in response: What do you do when people defy that norm? How far are you willing to go to enforce it? Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate? His logic is conspicuously similar to the collectivist logic used by fans of “hate speech” laws, including his creepy reference to “abuse of freedom”: We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society, at which point it’s time to start carving out exceptions. It’s the “heckler’s veto” as social ideal. Provocative speech, which is hurtful to some slice of the public almost by definition, would have a tough time surviving in that moral ecosystem. In fact, years before jihadis decided to escalate the sanction, Charlie Hebdo was sued in French courts on grounds of “racism” for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They did survive, but as the entire world now knows, Charlie Hebdo was unusually dogged in its willingness to take risks for satire. Hewitt’s rightly suspicious here that Donohue’s system of “moral” sanction for blasphemy would calcify into a system of legal sanction. And you know what? Given the polling, he’s right to be.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 2:01pm

I would also note that Donohue’s smug little dig at the end about other outlets not publishing the offending images is rather rich considering he was appearing on one of the media outlets that has been willing to and has shown the offending images. Perhaps he could have learned that fact from one of the imaginary Bishops he talked to (listen to the Hugh Hewitt clip in that Ace link to understand what I mean).

Jeffrey S.
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 2:37pm

As someone I know put it very well:

“Sure, people can talk about whatever they want, but it’s just not true that time and place are irrelevant considerations. It’s a commonplace nowadays to dismiss people who want to “tell me what I ought to be talking about,” but people’s priorities really are often indicative of something important about their moral formation. In Donohue’s case, it’s that he is a fanatic according to Churchill’s definition–that is, he can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject, which for him is whether somebody’s religion should be insulted. “

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 2:40pm

As for Donohue’s claim being a legal, not a moral one,
Other way around.
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Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate?
I think Donohue wants heads cut off or public stonings. Why not assume the worst? It’s Donohue afterall!
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His logic is conspicuously similar to the collectivist logic used by fans of “hate speech” laws
Yes, because “self” censorship is completely the same as legislated speech and prosecution. What’s that quote about smart people saying stupid things?
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We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society
Wait… so Allahpundit IS for legislating free speech. That’s further than what Donohue says about the Charlie Hebdo situation. Of course, assumptions always trump facts.
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“Hurting”… rather subjective. I think the legalists, e.g. Allahpundit, and the moralists will have different but overlapping definitions of what hurts.
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Hewitt’s rightly suspicious here that Donohue’s system of “moral” sanction for blasphemy would calcify into a system of legal sanction.
It’s not IF there is legal sanction. It’s WHAT is legally sanctioned. Legal sanctions are already here. We’re just debating what is sanction and how it’s administered.
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Given the polling, he’s right to be.
Oh. Well, the polls have spoken. Nothing more to be said I guess. Polls now have authority to insert words into people’s mouths.
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I would also note that Donohue’s smug little dig at the end about other outlets not publishing the offending images is rather rich considering he was appearing on one of the media outlets that has been willing to and has shown the offending images.
Two points:
1) A challenge to someone claiming all speech is equal to demonstrate their beliefs is not smugness.
2) He gave no approval of showing the images. He is on the show to express the opposite. Will Fox anchors represent his opinion if he does not appear?

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 2:45pm

Lots of snark Kyle, but not a single rebuttal. Cheers.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 2:55pm

Rebuttal can come packaged in different ways. Labeling arguments as snark is no refutation. Addressing the points presented would be a good start.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 3:03pm

I’m afraid I don’t understand the clip. Were they debating the meaning of the First Amendment with regard to France? As for Donohue and his group, I’ve always stayed clear of him. I didn’t know the word “troll” when I first ran across him, but he always seems to be feeding the trolls and not doing much else.

Subvet
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 3:24pm

I’ve always thought of Donahue as a bit of a loon, this only confirms that.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 3:33pm

As for Donohue and his group, I’ve always stayed clear of him.
I think that is how people are seeing his message. They are judging the personality before they judge what he is saying.
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I only see or hear of Donohue every once in a while. I know he has an aggressive style. I try to separate style or personality, the messenger, from what’s been said, the message. In this case, I don’t really see anything earth shattering shocking.

Pinky
Pinky
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 4:11pm

Kyle – It’s a lot easier to stomach aggressiveness when it’s effective. I’ve never gotten the impression that Donohue’s group has ever been successful. As for his message in this case, I don’t think any of the individual sentences are necessarily wrong, but it’s hard to imagine anything less effective, unless his intent was to boost secularism and Islamic fanaticism at the expense of Christianity.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 4:16pm

Addressing the points presented would be a good start.

You first.

Mary De Voe
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 5:08pm

bill bannon: “They hunted in order to be offended….so that they could be killed by police so that they finally be rich and carnal in paradise. It has zero to do with reaching the real God.”
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These comments are starting to finally bring wisdom. The wisdom is this: That the First Amendment (and our purpose on earth) is to find God. Our Constitution, and especially the First Amendment, is to be our servant in finding God. The freedom to worship God, to speak to God, to write about God and to peaceably assemble for God and not be prohibited from the free exercise thereof.
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It pained me to hear Megan Kelly deliver that Larry Flint decision since the court has abandoned the true reason for its being, to fulfill the Constitution. Larry Flint was shot and crippled. He wears the American Flag as a diaper. He attended court altogether naked except for his diaper, our American Flag. The American Flag is a symbol for our purity, white, courage, red, and truth, blue. The American Flag is our symbol in joint and common tenancy for all people for all time, “We, the people” now and our constitutional “posterity”…those future generations still to be conceived.. Larry Flint is a despicable traitor to every American citizen, stealing and defacing our Flag and contemptibly using our freedom to violate us. and we think that we are brave and smart for letting him. Larry Flint ought to have been escorted out of court until he read the Constitution and developed some respect for the rest of us, one at a time. and this goes for those imbeciles burning the American Flag…get a life.
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And George Washington patted Larry Flint on the head and said, nice boy. Go rest in peace on Mount Suribachi.
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So the Supreme Court called atheism a religion. Atheism is unconstitutional. Pornography is free speech. Ponography is a lie about human sexuality and perjury in a court of law. Babies are “blobs of tissue” without human souls with free will and intellect. Imposing atheism as a religion is unconstitutional. Inflicting ignorance, perjury and vice is unconscionable. Every aborted person has a lawsuit. Every raped person has a lawsuit and every citizen has a lawsuit against the Court for demeaning the human person and inviting crime.
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Courageous? the Eiffel Tower? “Who am I to judge?” William Donohue “explains it all”
and bill bannon you brought clarity to the conversation.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 5:09pm

It’s a lot easier to stomach aggressiveness when it’s effective.
Maybe. I don’t think he was aggressive in that video, especially when compared to what is usually on Fox News. He was quick paced because he knew the segment would not be long.
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but it’s hard to imagine anything less effective, unless his intent was to boost secularism and Islamic fanaticism at the expense of Christianity.
Saying we should show prudence or discretion when exercising the right of free speech so as to be more tolerant of one another, especially toward religions, won’t go down well with everyone.
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PZ, You first. Done. Point by point… Father Z style. 🙂

Mary De Voe
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 5:26pm

Kyle Miller: “We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society ”
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The newly conceived, legally and morally innocent virgin, the sovereign person in the womb from the very first moment of conception (Oh, if we could only respect our innocence and virginity and maintain these virtues!) who is the standard for Justice and morality for the State, our constitutional posterity, does have a claim on the defense of virtue and decency. Pornography at eye level, viewed, has a negative impact on the individual, especially the mother carrying our posterity. (but we do not have to care about her or our posterity because we are the great society, the progressives, the illuminati, the enlightened ones.sarc.)on the funeral pyre more sarc.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 5:42pm

I’ve never gotten the impression that Donohue’s group has ever been successful.

As much as he’s beclowned himself with this episode, I have long struggled with whether his role is necessary or helpful, and despite what Ace, there may be some value in that guy who is willing to be aggressive and kind of straddle that line between being a strong defender of the faith, and well, a blowhard. Unfortunately it seems of late that he’s been too much the latter, and I’m not just referring to this incident.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 6:22pm

It is bawdy and scatalogical, rather than obscene.

So much for Scottish taste and sensibilities.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 6:23pm

CH knew the risks but, as Stephane Carbonnier said, “It perhaps sounds a bit pompous, but I’d rather die standing than live on my knees.”

While plagiarizing La Pasionaria to boot.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 6:35pm

What do you do when people defy that norm? How far are you willing to go to enforce it? Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate?

See Sandra Miesel’s explanation for the demise of the Index: the Holy See did not have the manpower to maintain it given the avalanche of published material issued each year. What you got was a fairly haphazard collection of items, and embarrassing for being haphazard. Technological innovation has effectively killed much that might have been done to create legal buttresses for the culture. To the extent that it has not, it has made the performance of such tasks a function of the central government, which is a cure worse than the disease. ‘Community standards’ should mean those of an actual physical place with people who interact face-to-face. The best you can do nowadays is statutes on indecent exposure, statutes on disorderly conduct, statutes on harassment, statutes on prostitution, statutes on public lewdness, and local ordinances which enjoin stage performances, cinema, and the commercial traffic in old technology and sexual implements. Because such ordinances are a legal buttress to a cultural expectation (that certain aspects of domestic life stay domestic), they are distinct from ‘hate speech’ laws, which apply to public speaking and published material on social relations which make use of terminology or arguments of which the arts-and-sciences faculty disapproves.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, January 9, AD 2015 6:41pm

While we’re on the subject of free speech, it has been the contention of the sort of people who produce verbiage and images for a living that they should have plenary discretion to do so, a franchise which does not apply to ordinary commercial enterprises (who are regulated up the wazoo about their hiring practices, compensation, and the dimensions of their custom). Some of the liberty posturing is annoying.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 12:11am

It’s gotten to the point where Bill Donohue has become nearly as insufferable as Phil Donahue (the former talk show host). A debate/brawl between them would be almost as entertaining as pitting Dan Savage against Michael Savage… 🙂

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 5:49am

“We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society, at which point it’s time to start carving out exceptions.”
Which is what we do, leading some jurists to argue that “freedom of speech” is not a substantive right, but an application of the principle nulla pœna sine lege – no punishment without a law.
Obvious exceptions to the supposed right would include falsehood, fraud and wilful imposition, breach of a contractual or fiduciary duty of confidence, breach of the Official Secrets Act, infringement of copyright, injurious falsehood producing patrimonial loss, incitement or conspiracy to commit a crime, certain threats, publications likely to prejudice a fair trial that is pending and so on. It would be difficult to reduce them all to a single principle.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 7:59am

I think Art that the solution would be more liberty not less.
And have more posturing? (Ex: narcotics legalization and marriage redefinition proponents.) And no liberty can be taken to excess of course because… liberty. I read your comment just before reading about the U.S. government possibly overthrowing the will of the people again for the sake of more liberty, the redefinition of marriage. Before that, I read about Justice Kagan’s struggle with the Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association where extremely violent video games cannot be regulated by the local & state governments because… free speech. Rape women for points! (The case helps solidify my opinion of Justice Thomas as the greatest legal mind and justice on the bench in decades.)
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Liberty is a gift from God, a means to an end. It’s not a license for anything goes. Use responsibly.

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 8:07am

Forgot to mention the state the U.S. government is attacking on marriage. It’s Texas of all places. The left is working hard to make it blue.
http://www.texastribune.org/2015/01/09/appeals-judges-appear-skeptical-texas-gay-marriage

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 8:39am

Liberty is a gift from God, and it is a gift that is increasingly under attack from the State
This has been a popular story strengthened by baby boomers coming from the 60s, where “The Man” is around every corner. There is legitimate concern, but the concern is to the neglect of being wary of a government used to dissolve legitimate and reasonable traditions, standards and laws. Now we have people creating “rights” out of thin air, the will of people ignored and law makers and chief executives choosing what laws to enforce or defend in court. Why? Liberty.
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At what point, if any, does liberty become an idol? At what point, if any, does the disagreeable become destructive?
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If Donohue wasn’t such a publicity seeking idiot he might wonder where the prime threat to Catholicism comes from: private groups like those who published Charlie Hebold or Caesar. The right to not be offended…
His organization has taken on both. For Donohue, this is larger than merely being offended.
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What happens when those innocent private groups use their influence to manipulate Caesar or his courts against the people? No man is an island. No private group is an island. Nothing operates in a vacuum.

Mary De Voe
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 9:43am

“Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate? I think Donohue wants heads cut off or public stonings. Why not assume the worst? It’s Donohue afterall!”
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Thomas More said of blasphemy: “If he offends God, then let God arrest him” Separation of Church and state.
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I corresponded with Father Virgil Blum, founder of The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights before Dr. Donohue. The Catholic League was formed on the same principle as the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, and takes the same approach. Somebody must stand up for Religious Freedom in America and Dr. Donohue does, not always palatable and not always successful, but then there is Corpus Christi, the play about Jesus sodomizing His Apostles and the multitude of disgusting things said about Catholicism that if left without challenge, you and I, as Catholics would be dead meat in the street. Did you know that the Know Nothings (rightfully named ) tried to drown Catholics?

Kyle Miller
Kyle Miller
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 10:09am

Rubbish. It is the truth in that the State now reaches into areas of life in ways that tyrants of the past could only have dreamed of.
Let me restate. The idea of a tyrannical government has been around for millennia and was reinforced during the 60s by “The Man.” As you apparently missed, it’s a legitimate concern. For many years, we have been focused on what the right hand is doing while ignoring the left hand, which is undermining the country by dissolving what works. This can’t be more clear than under the Obama administration. You can create a long list of fundamental transformations rationalized on liberty arguments. Before the knee jerks, this does not mean Obama is a big pro-liberty president. It means he’s undermining the nation under the guise of liberty. And if one buys into liberty being license to do anything, most of Obama’s decisions appear legit.
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Freedom of speech and of the press are not rights created out of “thin air”, but rather basic human freedoms with very long pedigrees.
Think big picture. This is about more than freedom of speech.
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Hardly, but rather the desire of the people to have a benevolent Nanny looking over them, which leads to the election of people like Obama.
I have often experienced the Protestant failing to understand Catholic teaching because they take Scripture and interpret it one way. Nothing wrong with their interpretation. But, they do not realize their interpretation and the Church’s can both be true. The truth of one does not refute the other.
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Just because the people have elected a benevolent Nanny or a soft tyranny, as Mark Levin says, does not mean the tyrant can’t be used to undermine the social mores in order increase its power. One way to do this is by the dissolving I mentioned earlier.
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Yep. 400K per annum larger.
This Charlie Hebdo/Donohue affair shows why conservatives and the religious right lose battles in the culture war. We eat our own. Rather than focusing on the arguments, we focus on how someone sounds, looks and even how much they make. This is typically the behavior of the left, those who fail to substantively address what is being said and resort to personal attacks.
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Donohue saw a window of opportunity and took it. He didn’t invent this. Social commentators and policy wonks have done this time and time again. He wants to examine the conditions which led to the unjustified killing. Oh, what a scandal!
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Look how the left handles when there is a shooting. The talking heads begin talking about gun control. They open the conversation about what contributes to a shooting and push policy makers for changes. (Donohue did not go as far as calling for state action as some initially believed.) They’re usually wrong, but nonetheless talking without barely a critique about talking. Criticism about their arguments? Sure, but not talking. Does the left eat their own or let them advance the ball? Even if a Democrat disagrees, he’ll keep quiet unless it’s something really egregious. What’s so egregious about Donohue asking the equivalent of loving thy neighbor through self control? Oh, his paycheck. [eye roll]

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 10:12am

(Ex: narcotics legalization and marriage redefinition proponents.)

The advocates of homosexual pseudogamy are confused or pulling your leg if they fancy they;re advocating liberty. The issuance of a marriage license recognizes a status and confers obligations. They’re no more free to conduct parody wedding ceremonies than they were before. What they have a franchise to do is demand recognition from state agents and some private parties, which may be about their freedom to be an obnoxious nuisance, but there’s no benefit to anyone else. The mentality is the standard one for practitioners of identity politics.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 10:17am

If Donohue wasn’t such a publicity seeking idiot he might wonder where the prime threat to Catholicism comes from: private groups like those who published Charlie Hebold or Caesar.

State agents are your problem only when they’re doing the bidding of a social nexus which wishes to abuse you. In this country, that’s not the sort who write for Charlie Hebdo, who tend in our time in place to be juvie libertarians. It’s also not police officers or DMV clerks. It’s the educational apparat, the social work apparat, and large slices of the legal profession and the press corps.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 10:23am

Hardly, but rather the desire of the people to have a benevolent Nanny looking over them, which leads to the election of people like Obama.

I don’t think Social Security recipients have registered abnormal levels of support for the Democratic Party in recent years and BO’s level of support is most pronounced among sectors of the population defined by communal distinctions, marriage, and points in the life-cycle. Young people generally do not qualify for much in the way of public subventions bar the double-edged sword of student loans. There is TANF, of course, but the TANF clientele I believe amounts to 5 million people in toto (and I’d wager a three digit sum consists largely of non-voters).

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 10:35am

“You term Religious Liberty a God-given right. So it is. Let me add. You need not thank anyone but God for it.”

https://the-american-catholic.com/2012/04/22/religious-liberty-you-need-not-thank-anyone-but-god-for-it/

The more things change….

Mary De Voe
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 11:04am

Kyle Miller: “Before the knee jerks, this does not mean Obama is a big pro-liberty president. It means he’s undermining the nation under the guise of liberty. And if one buys into liberty being license to do anything, most of Obama’s decisions appear legit.”

Here are some people who agree with you:
Peter Kreeft Ph.D. (age 78) Professor of Philosophy at Boston College, Angels and Demons, The Existence of God, author of 78 books. Socrates meets Jesus. Peter Kreeft’s voice is like mother’s lullaby.
Ryan Timothy Anderson MA, Ph.D. (age 31) Heritage Foundation, Witherspoon Institute, Public Discourse, (Elizabeth) Anscombe Society at Stanford University, author of What is Marriage with Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of Princeton University.
Ben Shapiro (age 30) Breitbart News, Truth Revolt, Young People of America, Radio host, Islam, author of Bullies, defender of the Second Amendment.
Ben Shapiro has a lawsuit against Obama.
The young people have figured out this Obama and refuse to be bullied.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 11:20am

Good Points All Around. Something not mentioned, the inability to understand the Islamic Jihadist mentality on the part of a secularized generation in the West. Albeit, the radical Islamic take on religion is nutty but the Obama types seem to have no idea. They are bereft of history and understanding. Obama himself seems blinded by an attachment to a Marxist worldview that should be buried in the very dust of the history he doesn’t understand.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 11:33am

Pinky- on “feeding the trolls”– my grandmother called it “instigating.”
*******
The problem with the “battered wife shooting her husband” thing is that it falsely models the situation. A closer setup would be that reservation kid in North Washington that shot several people, including his cousin and the girl he liked. Supposedly the girl he liked and his cousin did do some real jerk things– that does not justify, excuse, cause or do anything more than indicate what his reasoning might have been, ie, “I feel bad so I am going to KILL PEOPLE.”
A more accurate version would be someone who goes to the “Coffee and Insults Cafe” every day for his coffee not liking the insults, coming back and shooting the folks who run it.
Don’t like the insults? Don’t go there. I don’t care if you really like the coffee, if you can’t take the insults that come with it, leave, don’t kill people.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 12:23pm

Obama himself seems blinded by an attachment to a Marxist worldview

I doubt Obama knows Marxism from marmalade, or has any thoughts which would be unconventional outside a certain circle. Hold a series of cocktail parties and invite faculty and administrators from various schools around Chicago, apparatchiks of the Joyce Foundation and like organizations, psychotherapists, mainline protestant clergy, lawyers not engaged in common-and-garden solo and small partnership practice or working as public prosecutors, and journalists not working the sports page. You might leaven it with a scatter of school administrators or social workers. Listen to their table talk. That’s him.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 1:54pm

Concerning – faculty, administrators, apparatchiks of the Joyce Foundation and the like, psychotherapists, mainline protestant clergy, lawyers of a certain ilk, most journalists, school administrators or social workers – one might be tempted to say, Marxists all. But I see your point. Most are probably just climbing the moneyed mountain of politically correct garbage to success. Power and money go together like the horse and carriage. But Obama is said to have had a doctrinaire Marxist mentor in the card-carrying Communist Frank Marshall Davis. Communism is a misnomer anyway. The Soviets were simply socialists of a criminal variety. Forgive me, I ramble and delving into the taxonomy of it all is fruitless. It changes like the flu virus.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, January 10, AD 2015 3:33pm

Frank Marshall Davis was a buddy of Stanley Dunham, their avocational activities including toking and playing checkers. He was an elderly divorce with five children of his own and it’s a reasonable wager he had after nearly 30 years residence in Honolulu long since gone native. I would not read too much into his presence.

I think you’d have to scrounge to find many Marxists in contemporary academe, and the one’s you find will be literary critics or congealing in the theoretical wing of sociology (though there’s a little rat’s nest in what’s left of academic geography as well). The one Marxisant character I knew the last place I worked was an agreeable and someone diffident man not too interested in the fads which sweep over academic institutions. He was a student of Marxism and an admirer of Keynes. Never heard one word out of him suggesting he had any investment in the race-class-gender yap which is the Official Idea most places.

I’ll wager you also that the attitudes you refer to are among academics like the clothes you wear, status and identity markers. I never saw much evidence in their table talk that they deliberated on the much (though the ones who did were ideologues). They may be anxious about giving voice to dissenting opinions, but careerism sustains such a nexus of ideas by inhibiting discussion; it does not generate those ideas or make them attractive. Also, the financial ambition of people working in the occupations named is demonstrably circumscribed bar perhaps attorneys. You do hear professors complain about their salaries, commonly comparing them to family members who are not professors. You want to earn like a lawyer, you have to practice law, generally a more uncertain and anxiety provoking way of earning a living than is working as a tenured professor.

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