Paul Zummo
Catholic Vote Beclowns Itself for Romney
My friend Jay Anderson links to this story.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney scheduled a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser at the home of Phil Frost, the executive of the company that makes the Morning After Pill, on Wednesday night. Plan B One-Step is produced by Teva Pharmaceuticals, Frost’s company.
The pharmaceutical executive’s residence was one of several stops scheduled to increase Romney’s war chest during a two-day swing through Florida.
Well I guess if “Catholic” universities can honor the likes of Kathleen Sebelius, we shouldn’t be too upset when “pro-life” candidates go groveling for money from people who make pills that kill unborn children. After all, Romney desperately needs money to not air ads that criticize Obama too harshly, so we should be forgiving of this slight oversight.
In all seriousness, what made this story even more sickening was the response from an individual at Catholic Vote.org:
Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.org, didn’t seem troubled by the fundraiser saying, “What matters is whether a President Romney will end all taxpayer support for abortion-inducing drugs, repeal unconstitutional mandates that force private institutions to cover such drugs, and whether he will make progress in building a culture of life.”
I can understand why pro-lifers are willing to swallow their pride and back Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. There’s no possible way for a Romney administration to be worse than Obama, goes the thinking. Having set such an incredibly high bar for themselves, one woud like to believe that pro-life groups would still hold their candidate’s feet to the fire. There’s no excuse for Romney associating himself with those who profit off of the death of innocents. It is even more inexcusable for Catholic groups to completely shrug off this affair. I have to agree with Jay’s assessment that people of Burch’s ilk are nothing more than a ”Republican-first-pro-life-second political hacks.”
This isn’t about whether Romney is preferable to Obama, so save your breath there. If this is the kind of gutless pushback Romney is going to receive as a candidate, why would anyone expect him to respect pro-lifers once he is elected president? You can vote for him if that is what your conscience dictates, but please don’t make a fool of yourself by turning a blind eye to his misdeeds now, because you’re just laying out the carpet right on your back for President Romney to walk all over.
A Blogger’s Revenge
Duane Lester, a blogger at the All American blog, posted a story a couple of weeks back detailing the results of an audit of Holt County, Missouri. A small local paper in the county seat in Oregon, Missouri ran a story about the audit a few days later. And not just any story – they ran Lester’s post, word for word and without attribution.
Lester decided to pursue the matter and wrote a letter arguing for his copyright claims, demanding $500 in payment. Then Lester paid a visit to the newspaper’s editor, and caught it all on film.
Mr. Ripley’s demeanor suddenly changed once he realized that he was being filmed, and perhaps that’s the only reason he decided to eventually make the payment to Lester. Of course Ripley would have wound up paying a lot more in court costs had he decided to defend his plagiarism, so it was probably the right financial move.
What astounds me are some of the reactions to the video. There are people more upset that Lester videoed the confrontation than that Ripley blatantly plagiarized Lester. Yeah Ripley “goofed,” they claim, but that Lester is a meanie by intimidating a small-town newspaper editor.
You see this sort of thing on blog comments all the time, particularly on Catholic blogs where certain commenters spend roughly 20 paragraphs droning on about charity in what is a thinly veiled, passive aggressive attempt to say “I am better than you.” Justifying horrible behavior by focusing on the medium by which the behavior is exposed is almost as bad as the behavior itself. As I said, I’m not sure Lester would have received justice had the camera not been rolling, though he perhaps would have received a black eye. Maybe Ripley will now be more reticent about ripping off young bloggers in the future.
Kudos to Lester for standing up for his rights.
Political Thuggery
One of the hallmarks of the progressive left is its open-minded embrace of differing viewpoints, or so they tell us. They repeatedly hit us over the head with their loving compassion for all mankind.
Sometimes, though, I have to wonder how tolerant these beacons of liberty truly are. For example, how is deliberately trying to get conservatives blocked on twitter a demonstration of one’s warm embrace of contrary viewpoints? I’m also not really seeing the compassion of barring people from public places because of their stance on gay marriage.
Also, orchestrated efforts to falsely accuse conservative bloggers of criminal activity just in effort to silence them does not exactly scream “open-minded.”
And I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I am reasonably certain that issuing death threats and promising to burn down Churches because of their opposition to gay marriage is, well, rather intolerant.
It’s easy to shrug off and even laugh at these idiotic attempts to silence people and intimidate others into not expressing their opinions in public. In one sense, these goons are indeed simply laughable. One envisions these scaliwags coming home after a long day protesting with 12 like-minded people, having caused thousands of dollars in property damage along the way without being charged. Somehow dressing up like a zombie and throwing feces at people did not cause Americans to rise up and demand that the top marginal tax rate be increased. Frustrated, there is now nothing to do except listen to the sound of your mom snoring in the next room. So what’s a frustrated 99 percenter do but do all they can in their power to make sure that the person expressing their first amendment right to free speech be silenced.
What’s even more laughable is that these goons think that their efforts at intimidation are actually going to work. You mean people with deep political feelings aren’t just going to shut up because some fool anonymously runs to twitter to block their account? Even death threats are having no effect. So it’s got to be frustrating that, as with most aspects of their lives, they can’t even do intimidation right.
Of course we shouldn’t so breezily dismiss what these thugs are doing. Even if the charges against Mr. Worthing are a complete croc, he still has to expend time and money defending himself. And it not exactly an easy feeling knowing that some psycho stalker is out there ready to pounce because he disagrees with your political opinions. All it takes is one deranged lunatic, and a person’s life can be ruined or worse.
Make no mistake, things will get scarier as the year progresses. Political tensions are always high during election years, and in the age of the internet and social media, we’re not about to enter into an age of reason and understanding. And while these sad individuals might lack the power to actually shut their opponents down, there are those in positions of authority who are itching to use that authority in a way that our Founding Fathers would never have dreamed possible.
Well, I don’t want to end my post on that macabre note, so here’s a fluffy pop song to play us out to the weekend.
The Totalitarian Mind at Work
It’s staggering to realize just how un-liberal so-called liberals can be. If you want to see how fundamentally incapable the left is of envisioning how to operate in a world without strict social controls, then check out this post from Amanda Marcotte, and in particular these paragraphs. (Language warning)
Incidentally, the sexual health debate suffers from the same problem. Even if you accept (which I don’t) the premise that abstinence is inherently good, and that’s what people “should” do, I have the same response: So what? You can say “should” until you’re blue in the face, and people are still going to #$%^. If you actually want to fix the problems of STD transmission and unintended pregnancy, you have to deal with people how they are, not how they “should” be. Same with food consumption and exercise. I guess people “should” exert often-extraordinary levels of self-discipline, but they don’t, because they’re human. Meet them where they are, not where they “should” be.
We can’t fix people’s impulse control, but we can fix their environments through collective action. Interestingly, we can fix their environments so that they are better able to exert self-control. Self-control is neither a fixed quality nor completely under (oh irony) our control. Research has shown that pretty much everyone’s self-control diminishes when they’re mentally exerting themselves or stressed out. Simple fixes that separate mental exertion from eating time could do a lot to reduce over-eating. If that’s not possible, reducing temptation is always an option. Self-control is often only as strong as the environment it presents itself in. (Incidentally, I also reject the way that the sin framework around eating treats eating, which should be a source of pleasure. Demonizing eating is not the best approach here.)
I find this incredibly fascinating. What’s interesting is that in some sense, this kind of thinking isn’t so completely far afield from traditional conservatism. I think Marcotte and I would both recoil at the atomistic individualism of Thomas Hobbes. In fact if we want to dig deeper into political philosophy, what unites Rousseau and Burke (the intellectual forebears of the modern left and right, respectively) is their mutual rejection of Hobbes’ notion that man is not a social animal. Both would agree that mankind is fit for communal living, and we can’t quite go it alone.
But where they diverge – and where conservatives diverge from the progressive left – is their conception of how to organize societies. The left seeks a sort of top-down control that “forces people to be free.” In other words, the social structure itself has to be manipulated in such a way so as to motivate individuals into certain kinds of acceptable behavior. If you read through Rousseau’s Social Contract or his work on political economy and the government of Poland you see how Rousseau carefully constructs a civil society that offers the fig leaf of freedom, but in reality is a tightly controlled totalitarian state that really only offers the illusion of freedom.
This was the kind of thinking that Burke found to be intolerable, especially as the French revolutionaries brought Rousseau’s philosophy to life. Burke and his ideological heirs seek to empower the individual. It’s a bottoms-up approach to governance. Individuals must be granted the freedom to change society, but to do so in a way that does not inhibit personal autonomy.
What’s ironic about Marcotte’s sentiments about “realism” is that it is the conservative approach that is grounded in reality when it comes to the human condition. Conservatives recognize that no amount of social engineering is going to alter human nature. So we work from the premise that humanity is what it is, and seek to establish laws that work within that framework. While Marcotte is claiming to do just that, in reality she wants to use the government to transform man and make people more conformable to a certain preset ideal. Remember, these are the people that insist they’re all about choice and liberation. Sure they are, but only so long as they can manipulate the environment in order to prod individuals into certain behavior.
What’s more, leftists cannot conceive of a political order in which the state does not dictate a desired outcome. She is incredulous that there could be social conservatives who do not seek to impose their will by government fiat. It is inconceivable to her and to many on the left that people should advocate for certain positions but leave it up to free individuals to make those changes. This isn’t a problem that is confined to the left. The major problem with modern society is that we politicize everything to such an extent that most people cannot fathom how to operate outside of the context of government control.
Jeff Goldstein offers his own rebuttal to Marcotte in how own delightful way (language warning).
The Wisconsin Recall Vote
I haven’t discussed the Wisconsin recall vote. It should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with my disdain for populism that I find recall elections to be complete shams, and this goes whether the affected officeholder(s) are Democrats or Republicans. Had I been blogging in 2003 I would have said the same for the recall vote that ousted Gray Davis in California. Voters know going into an election that they are voting people into office for a certain amount of time, and they have to live with the consequences of said vote. Barring glaring corruption or malfeasance, elected officials should remain in office for the duration of their terms. If recalls became regular features of the democratic process, elected leaders would never enact meaningful change lest they be booted out of office at the drop of a hat. And while as a society we have grown cynical and jaded regarding politicians, there is something to be said about stability in office. After all, we can vote the bums out every two, four, or six years depending on the office – as the voters in Indiana have done with Senator Richard Lugar, who I believe was first elected shortly after New Hampshire ratified the Constitution.
In the specific case of Wisconsin, the unions have led the effort to boot Governor Scott Walker out of office. It is looking more and more like this will be a futile effort. What’s more, it looks like the DNC has rebuffed requests by the Wisconsin Democrats for help with the election next month. The local Dems asked for $500,000, and so far the DNC has sayed, “NYET!”
Leaving aside your feelings about this recall effort, is this a smart move by the DNC? Yes, there is this little election coming up in November, and the party’s fundraising hasn’t gone as spectacularly as hoped. And even though the polls have been close, it is a better than 50/50 proposition that Scott Walker holds onto his seat. It would arguably be better for the Democrats to funnel their resources where they are needed, like potentially closer than originally thought House elections in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District.*
*Okay, that might be the thing of fevered fantasies, but you never know.
That being said, a Democratic victory in June would be a colossal shot in the arm for the party. Polls indicate that President Obama has a very narrow lead over Mitt Romney in Wisconsin, and this is certainly a state that Republicans could capture in November. I wouldn’t suggest that there is a direct correlation between the recall election in June and the general election in November, but it doesn’t hurt (usually) to have the incumbent governor campaigning for the presidential candidate. By bypassing this election the Democrats could be hurting Obama’s chances in the state later on in the year.
Archdiocese of Washington Speaks Out Against Georgetown
Msgr. Pope linked to this editorial from the Catholic Standard. It condemns Georgetown’s decision to invite Kathleen Sebelius to speak at a commencement, and does so in unequivocal terms. Here’s one key graph:
Founded in 1789 by John Carroll, a Jesuit priest, Georgetown University has, historically speaking, religious roots. So, too, do Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Over time, though, as has happened with these Ivy League institutions, Georgetown has undergone a secularization, due in no small part to the fact that much of its leadership and faculty find their inspiration in sources other than the Gospel and Catholic teaching. Many are quite clear that they reflect the values of the secular culture of our age. Thus the selection of Secretary Sebelius for special recognition, while disappointing, is not surprising.
And then this:
With all of the people struggling so hard to preserve freedom of religion, and with all that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has said in defense of this important value, Georgetown’s choice of the architect of the radical challenge of such freedom for special recognition can only be seen as a statement of where the university stands – certainly not with the Catholic bishops.
The editorial is not mincing words. It is plainly stating that Georgetown is, for all intents and purposes, no longer a Catholic university. As Msgr. Pope notes, these words come from the Archdiocese’s official newspaper, and therefore had to be signed off on by the Cardinal’s senior staff.
There’s much more, and Msgr. Pope also adds his own take on the editorial.
Msgr. Pope on Obama’s Use of the Golden Rule
Of all the things in Obama’s performance interview where he came out of the closet and ended his farcical opposition to gay marriage, his citation of the “golden rule” as one the impetuses behind his “evolution” was most revolting. Msgr. Charles Pope details why Obama’s usage of the golden rule as a prop was problematic.
It is a common problem today that people often present simplistic portraits of Jesus Christ to support a variety of agendas. And the portraits of Jesus are not only simplistic, they are incomplete (usually intentionally so), and fail to accept that Jesus cannot be reduced to a simple sentence or two.
I would argue this is what the President is doing here. As if to say, “Jesus, was basically a nice and affirming person, who spoke of Love, and so beautifully and taught us to do unto to others as we would have them do to us. “Surely,” the thinking goes, “this Jesus would affirm and rejoice over two Gay people getting “married.”” It is as if this were all Jesus was or said, “Love…Do unto others”. Never mind that he had some pretty high standards when it came to sexuality (Matt 5:27-30; Matt 15:19; Mk 10:11; Rev 22:15; Rev 21:8) Never mind that he told his apostles he had other things to teach them and would send his Holy Spirit, and never mind that His Holy Spirit inspired the Epistles writers like Paul to speak clearly in the ancient Biblical tradition about the sinfulness of homosexual activity, fornication, and adultery [2] “Never mind all that,” says the modern world, and our President, “I chose the Jesus who said only, ‘God is love, and be kind to one another.’”
Msgr. Pope also touches upon something that has always annoyed me, and that is the left’s depiction of the hippy Jesus.
The modern tendency on the left, from which the President speaks has been to reduce Jesus to a rather harmless hippie who went about talking about love and inclusion and healed people. Gone from this harmless and politically correct Jesus are volumes of verses that help complete the picture: a Messiah who claimed authority in our lives, who spoke quite clearly of sin, yes even sexual sin, and who warned repeatedly of the coming judgment, and the reality not only heaven, but of hell.
But Jesus is not either of these descriptions alone, he is both. Orthodoxy is in the balance, not choosing one or the other or tipping in one direction.
Much more at the link. Msgr. Pope discusses at length the heresy of picking and choosing the parts of Scripture one adheres to. Clearly the cafeteria is open, and Catholics aren’t the only ones at the buffet.
Georgetown Invites Sebelius to Deliver Commencement
If you’re still clinging to the fiction that Georgetown University is a Catholic institution then this should disabuse you of that notion.
In what can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops, Georgetown University has announced that “pro-choice” Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and lead architect of the Obama administration’s assault on religious freedom through the HHS contraception mandate, has been invited to speak at one of Georgetown’s several commencement ceremonies.
The Cardinal Newman Society has posted a petition to protest this outrage here: GeorgetownScandal.com. It has also alerted Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and sent a letter to Georgetown President John DeGioia urging him to immediately withdraw the invitation.
It is a scandal time any time a Catholic politician who so publicly breaks with Church teaching is invited to speak at a nominally Catholic institution. That Georgetown has decided to invite Sebelius after all that has taken place can only signal that Georgetown is laying down the gauntlet, and they are firmly in the camp of the dissident left.
H/t: CMR.
Point of Clarification: Sebelius will be addressing the Public Policy Institute, not the university generally. This hardly diminishes the university’s guilt. Somebody high up still had to approve of her speaking to the school, and her appearance at any university function as an invited speaker is a disgrace.
Womb to the Tomb
In the early days of the Clinton presidency, Rush Limbaugh ran a song parody to the tune of “Whoot! There It Is!” called “Womb to the Tomb.” It was a reaction to the proposed “Hillarycare” healthcare reform efforts. The idea being that Democrats were hoping to create “womb to the tomb” government entitlement. Well, Barack Obama evidently didn’t realize that the song was a parody, because his campaign has now created a little slideshow called “The Life of Julia.” The slideshow presents the life of a fictionalized woman named Julia (perhaps the long lost lovechild of Barack and his fictional girlfriend Genevieve Cook) and contrasts how wonderful her life will be under the benevolent, loving care of life under Obama and contrasts it with the hollowed-out, wreck of a life that she will lead under Mitt Romney.
Here are some of the highlights:
Under President Obama: Julia is enrolled in a Head Start program to help get her ready for school. Because of steps President Obama has taken to improve programs like this one, Julia joins thousands of students across the country who will start kindergarten ready to learn and succeed.
Under Mitt Romney: The Romney/Ryan budget could cut programs like Head Start by 20%, meaning the program would offer 200,000 fewer slots per year.
At the risk of drawing Bob Beckel’s ire, Head Start isn’t quite the success liberals like to pretend it is, but this is just the beginning. At every stage of her life, Julia is helped by some big government program. According to team Obama, Julia would be a whimpering mess without the aid of big brother to help her. Yes, this is the party that pretends conservatives are waging a war on women, yet they seem to be under the impression that women are fragile flowers completely incapable of caring for themselves without the beneficent aid of a bloated government guiding their every step.
As revealing as this little slide show is about how Obama and his minions view the role of government, I think this part, showing Julia at age 31, is most significant: Continue reading
Has the U.S. Government Betrayed Chen Guangcheng?
Matthew Archbold as well as the folks at Hot Air have done a fantastic job covering the story of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. Matt discussed this story a few days ago.
Chen Guancheng is a blind human rights activist who has protested his country’s forced abortions and sterilizations. After months of beatings at the hands of his guards, Chen pretended to be sick and laid up in bed. He and his wife studied the movements of the guards, according to ABC News. In the middle of the night, Guancheng slipped past nearly 100 guards stationed around his home and escaped into the night.
Matt detailed the U.S. government’s less than enthusiastic embrace of Chen, and today we have learned more troubling details that indicate that the administration has betrayed Chen. Ed Morrissey relays this:
Blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng says a U.S. official told him that Chinese authorities threatened to beat his wife to death had be not left the American Embassy.
Speaking by phone from his hospital room in Beijing on Wednesday night, a shaken Chen told The Associated Press that U.S. officials relayed the threat from the Chinese side.
Chen, who fled to the embassy six day ago, left under an agreement in which he would receive medical care, be reunited with his family and allowed to attend university in a safe place. He says he now fears for his safety and wants to leave.
Chen says that the U.S. government lied to him.
An American official denied that account. The official said Mr. Chen was told that his wife, Yuan Weijing, who had been brought to Beijing by the Chinese authorities while Mr. Chen was in the American Embassy, would not be allowed to remain in the capital unless Mr. Chen left the embassy to see her. She would be sent back to Mr. Chen’s home village in Shandong, where no one could guarantee her safety.
“At no time did any U.S. official speak to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children. Nor did Chinese officials make any such threats to us,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, said in an e-mailed statement. “U.S. interlocutors did make clear that if Chen elected to stay in the Embassy, Chinese officials had indicated to us that his family would be returned to Shandong, and they would lose their opportunity to negotiate for reunification.”…
“At no point during his time in the Embassy did Chen ever request political asylum in the U.S.,” Ms. Nuland said. “At every opportunity, he expressed his desire to stay in China, reunify with his family, continue his education and work for reform in his country. All our diplomacy was directed at putting him in the best possible position to achieve his objectives.”
As Allahpundit says, this is a distinction without a difference. One way or the other Chen was led to believe that his wife’s life was in danger, or at the very least was threatened with physical harm. Either way, Chen was clearly upset.
“The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me at the hospital,” he said. “But this afternoon, as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone.”
He said he was “very disappointed” in the U.S. government and felt “a little” that he had been lied to by the embassy.
At the hospital, where he was reunited with his family, he said he learned that his wife had been badly treated after his escape.
“She was tied to a chair by police for two days,” he said. “Then they carried thick sticks to our house, threatening to beat her to death. Now they have moved into the house. They eat at our table and use our stuff. Our house is teeming with security — on the roof and in the yard. They installed seven surveillance cameras inside the house and built electric fences around the yard.”
At this point it’s impossible to determine exactly what has happened, and whether or not the State Department and the Obama administration sold Chen out just to remain in China’s good graces. One would like to think the best of this president and assume that he would not betray a heroic dissident in order to keep an evil,authoritarian government happy. One would also have to be hopelessly naive to blindly make such an assumption.
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