There was no clearer demonstration of this fact than the HHS mandate regarding health insurance coverage of abortificants, contraception, sterilization, and other grave evils.  The impact of this ruling has been stunning.  Not only has the decision outraged conservative Catholics, but even erstwhile left-wing Catholic defenders of the president have taken this decision to be the last straw.  Bishops, often reticent to enter the political fray, have issued clear condemnations of this decision, even suggesting that Catholics engage in civil disobedience.  The mild-mannered visiting priest at our parish offered a blistering homily, discussing how this mandate violates the very principles that this country was founded upon. Like the ents awakening from their slumber, Saruman and his orcs – meaning President Obama and his allies – have awakened a sleeping giant.

But our anger is not enough, nor are our prayers.  Patrick Archbold puts it all in perspective today.

As I said, this is just the latest battle, but it’s one we must win.  We can’t win the war here, but we can lose it.  And to win a war you don’t just need chaplains, you need generals.

In the wake of the Obama Administration’s decision to force contraceptives on Catholic institutions many Bishops have been calling for prayer and fasting, and that is right and just.  But when faced with an existential threat, you don’t just pray the Nazis away, you have to fight on all fronts.

It is fine to pray that the Nazis will stop being Nazis, but it is also right and just to pray for good aim.

Our Bishops need to realize what is at stake here and act accordingly.  Many Bishops have already written letters and made videos condemning the unconstitutional actions of the administration.  That is good, but more is required.  Open and vocal defiance is required. The Most Reverend Joe S. Vásquez, Bishop of Austin issued a letter this Sunday in which he proclaimed “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.” That is a good start.  Every Bishop needs to do the same. It must be made clear that we WILL NOT COMPLY.

Yet even more will be required. Some have called for very visible civil disobedience by the Bishops to the point of getting arrested.  I think this may be a good idea. Yet even more.  Kathleen Sebelius is at the spear point of this war on our Church promoting and now forcing abortion and contraception at every turn.  If the scandal caused by this “Catholic” woman does not merit excommunication, the remedy is meaningless.  Any Catholic who is complicit in this war must be held to account, publicly.  This is a war.

We will not comply.  We should never have to choose between being a Catholic and being an American.  This is an existential threat for the Church in this country as well as for the life of the country as a whole.  If we are to win the war, we must win this battle and we need generals willing to fight to the last.

If you are not convinced that we are in the midst of an all out assault on religious values, here’s another story to consider.

Demonstrators from the Occupy Wall Street movement threw condoms on Catholic schoolgirls, refused to allow a Catholic priest to give a closing prayer, and shouted down a pro-life speaker at a Rhode Island right to life rally on Thursday, according to its organizer. The event marked the third time protesters associated with the movement have disrupted a pro-life meeting in a week.

About two-dozen members of Occupy Providence hiked from Burnside Park to the 39th Annual Pro-Life State House Rally organized by the Rhode Island State Right to Life Committee on Thursday.

The pro-life organization’s executive director, Barth E. Bracy, told LifeSiteNews.com that, near the end of the rally, the Occupiers “strategically fanned out with military precision.”

That’s when they “started showering condoms down on some of the girls from a Catholic high school.”

They threw condoms on Catholic school girls.  This is what passes for civilized debate for a portion of our country.  Not only do they contemn religious values, these individuals have absolutely no regard for the human beings on the other end of their temper tantrum.

And this is not a mere partisan issue.  Look at the comments on the National Review Article about Chris Christie’s appointment of a gay marriage advocate to the New Jersey Supreme Court.  Take a gander at some of the vitriolic rhetoric being spewed against proponents of traditional morality.  And many of those commenters are people who consider themselves to be right of center.  Here’s somebody calling himself “FAR52″ laying down some logic.

My guess is that Christie will be defiant and call out homophobes like Maggie for what they are — hopelessly stuck in the past.

Who can argue with such well-examined reasoning?

One of the unfortunate lessons of this primary season is that there exists, even within the conservative movement, people who are either contemptuous of or who fear those of us who stand up for traditional morality.  They see us as proponents of big government on the right.  What they fail to appreciate is that conservatives are often fighting a rearguard action.  We’re the ones trying to prevent government interference.  We’re not looking for more government intervention in our daily lives, because often that intervention is done to the detriment of traditional values.  The last thing we need is more government interference, and yet we are painted with the brush of being advocates of expanded government in social affairs.  In almost all cases, the opposite is true.  We’re continually fighting various encroachments against religious liberty, and the HHS case is but the latest example.

This is not about elections, at least not primarily.  This is about preserving our cultural heritage.  This is about fighting for the religious liberties that are the absolute bedrock of our civil society.  Truly, enough is enough.

This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone.

My goodness.  I can just see Santorum delivering these remarks on a balcony with a hammer and sickle proudly displayed behind him.  Did he also poound a shoe on the podium, because the man must surely be just shy of being an out and out Communist.

Jeff Emanuel has unearthed two more shocking quotes that reveal Santorum’s obvious Stalinist tendencies.

What was my vision? I came to the uncomfortable realization that conservatives were not only reluctant to spend government dollars on the poor, they hadn’t even thought much about what might work better. I often describe my conservative colleagues during this time as simply ‘cheap liberals.’ My own economically modest personal background and my faith had taught me to care for those who are less fortunate, but I too had not yet given much thought to the proper role of government in this mission.

I mean is there any difference between this and Mao?  Frightening words – compassion for the poor?  Don’t you remember those lines in the Constitution about how we’re supposed to treat the poor?  ”Are there no prisons?  Are there no union workhouses?”  It’s in there, right next to the stuff about the right to privacy.

That is nothing compared to these lines which gently echo The Communist Manifesto:

I suspect some will dismiss my ideas as just an extended version of ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Some will reject what I have said as a kind of ‘Big Government Conservatism.’ Some will say that what I’ve tried to argue isn’t conservatism at all. But I believe what I’ve been presenting is the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned. One that fosters the opportunity for all Americans to live as we are called to live, in selfless families that contribute to the general welfare, the common good.

Opportunity for all Americans?  Selfless families?  Common good?  What, is Rick Santorum advocating for the American version of the Great Leap Forward?

Lucky for us, Jeff Emmanuel is here to shine a light on Santorum’s dastardly plot to make us all slaves to the great leviathan.

This is wrong on several levels. While there is absolutely a role for government in creating and maintaining a social safety net (Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) for the population that cannot take care of itself (whether that should take place at the federal, state, or local level, and in what measure each, is a different discussion), Santorum’s instinct appears to be to use government to expand that safety net to all who may be in need or want of charity.

So, government should create a safety net, but Santorum is wicked because he wants to actually provide a safety net to those who need it.  Yes, that is cunning plot on the level of fluoridation.

Further, he accuses conservatives in Congress who disagree with a significantly expanded role of government in enforcing redistributive charity and welfare of being “cheap liberals” who haven’t “though [enough] about” the issue of “the poor” to recognize that making decisions about charity is clearly government’s job to do.

Hey, are we in Nebraska, because that’s a really big strawman.  But not as big as this one:

I’m not criticizing Rick Santorum for being concerned about his fellow man. However, instinctively turning to government to cure all that ails our society and individuals within it – and calling that a “conservative” instinct – shows a lack of understanding about the role of government itself within our society

Yes, from these three pull quotes it’s patently obvious that Santorum wants to turn to the government “to cure all that ails our society.”  Arguing that there is some role for government to provide a safety net to the poor, arguing against hyper-individualism, and defending the role of the family in shaping our society are all clear signs that Santorum is a utopian statist.

I don’t agree with every single word in the three highlighted passages, but there is absolutely nothing in them to justify the caricature of Santorum that has emerged on certain right-wing blogs.  Santorum is not a libertarian, and that’s a good thing, because libertarianism and conservatism are not the same thing.  Santorum understands the nexus between social and fiscal conservatism, and gets that without strong families we can’t have a flourishing economy.  What Santorum rejects is the atomization of society.  We can’t go it alone.  Communities are the backbone of society, and the modern state has displaced these communities.  When libertarians disparage these local institutions, it is they who wind up promoting the very kind of big government welfare state that they supposedly oppose.

Edmund Burke wrote about the little platoons in the Reflections on the Revolution in France.

To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.

This is precisely what Santorum is getting at when he speaks of families contributing to the general welfare.  This is not big government statism.  It’s in fact the very opposite of it.

Santorum seems to me to be a Hamiltonian in his attitude towards government.  Hamilton did want an energetic, efficient government.   But he also wanted the federal government to be a government involved in relatively few affairs.  A government that dipped its hands into too many different agendas would wind up being a less efficient government.  And why did Hamilton want government to be efficient?  To defend individual rights.  This is where Santorum is coming from.  Unlike leftists and even some right-wingers, Santorum doesn’t want government to grow so that it can simply make everybody happy.  His “big government” conservatism, if you want to call it that, is one meant to protect and defend the natural law.  There can be some disagreement about how government should go about accomplishing this, and I think that at times Santorum can be over-zelous.  The point is that this is not some utopian, statist vision being promulgated here.

This anti-Santorum sentiment is a reflection of a couple of things.  On a very raw level it represents resentment of a candidate getting further than one’s preferred candidate.  Red State, by and large, is a very pro-Perry site.  Ace of Spades, another blog that has all but called Santorum a socialist, is another pro-Perry blog.  As you all know I am a Perry supporter myself.  But I never put all of my eggs in this one basket the way that others have.  I didn’t join in the chorus of those who wanted to transform Newt Gingrich into a progressive socialist (though I do share some of the concerns about his philosophy, and have criticized them).  I am sure not going to join in the Santorum bashing in some foolish attempt to raise the stature of a candidate who is, let’s face it, going nowhere.

More importantly, this represents the division within conservatism between traditionalists and the more libertarian-inclined.  I had started writing a post about how this also represents a fundamental difference between conservatives who have children and those that don’t.  While I think there’s something to that as well, I don’t want to overly complicate matters.  In the end, as I’ve said before, there are those on the right who take the work of Any Rand seriously and those that don’t.  Those that are either Randians or who are at least sympathetic to her therefore view Santorum as some wild-eyed religious freak who is no better than the other non-productive members of society.  They don’t really understand his talk about communities and his disdain for hyper-individualism.  They interpret this as an embrace of the nanny state.  That is not what Santorum means, but in today’s era of government interventionism I can see why they would misunderstand Santorum.

What’s really aggravating about all this is that in being so quick to destroy every conservative that even hints at some kind of “impurity,” conservatives have all but guaranteed the nomination of the man they most despise.  So congrats, purists, you’ve managed to do it again.

The moment that encapsulated my evening was the appearance of Howard Stern as “Fartman.”  For those unfamiliar with the character, well, here’s a description.  You see, at the ripe old age of 15 I thought Howard Stern was the height of comedic genius.  And here was my idol appearing on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards.  But what should have been the greatest part of the night was ruined by my father’s ranting about the absurdity of Howard Stern and his ridiculous costume.  Oh, how Howard Stern represented the decline of western civilization.

I was actually relieved when the night was over.  It was more unendurable than the evening a month earlier when my father repeatedly yelled at the television during George Bush’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention.*

It should be understood that I spent many an evening watching television with my dad, and most of my memories are quite happy.  But when it came to MTV, we just didn’t see eye to eye.  When we finally got cable early in 1990, my father initially threatened to get rid of MTV.  It was a rather empty threat, but it nonetheless indicated early on that MTV was the station that should not be named.  Many a time I’d tune into MTV to watch videos – yes, once upon a time they did play videos – and I’d have the volume as low as I could possibly have it while still (barely) being able to hear it, just so that my father didn’t know I was watching.  Not that he would have actually done anything about it.  He was kind of all bark and no bite when it came to such things, but it was better to avoid any unnecessary and unwanted commentary.

Fast forward seventeen years.  I was listening to Laura Ingraham discuss the 2011 MTV Music Awards.  I hadn’t watched it – in fact I haven’t watched the show since about 1995.  I’d like to say that the cultural rot finally got to me, but my original reasons for turning off the show were much more shallow.  Once TLC of all bands won best video for their insufferable “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” nonsong, I realized that I had no use for the network.

Through the years it seemed that things only got worse.  Britney Spears was making out with Madonna on stage, Lady PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!! Gaga was wearing meat suits and dressing like a man, and a bunch of crap bands that I never heard of won best video.  (Seriously, I had to look at Wikipedia to find out who these bands were.)  And as I listened to Laura play “highlights” of the show, all I could do was shake my head in disgust.

In other words, I have become my father.  Only, I don’t have some idiot son forcing me to watch this crap.  No, my sweet two-year old is content to make me watch Ponyo and Shrek repeatedly.  And I will be sure that’s all she, her sister, and whatever other siblings may come will ever watch.  Of course by the time they’re of age MTV will have gone to an all reality format, so it will be a moot point, although I’ll have to ban them from watching Season 20 of Jersey Shore.

It’s funny, but I just happened to come across this video the other day.  It’s from the humor site College Humor, and it’s called The Six Ways You’ll See Your Dad.  I have to admit that for most of my life I was stuck on number one, though at times I definitely viewed him as number three.  But right now, I definitely identify with the sentiment at the 3:44 mark.

* Oh, did I tell you?  My father was a lifelong conservative – the kind of guy Archie Bunker was probably modeled after.  But in 1992 he, for some reason, decided to vote for Bill Clinton.  For about ten months I simply could not talk politics with my father.  Then my father was probably the first person to hop off the Clinton bandwagon.  In fact I’m not sure he even made it to the inauguration before regretting his vote, and by March his hatred of the man had surpassed my own.

No, none of that.  Evidently there are too many commercials.

I am not making this up.

TV watchdog groups say the Federal Communications Commission needs to better target kids’ programs that have too many commercials, and they want the commission and Congress to strengthen oversight of the Children’s Television Act.

Fueling the drive is a Government Accountability Office report issued last week that highlights FCC shortcomings in enforcing the landmark 1990 law intended to raise the quality and educational value of children’s programming while also limiting advertising. The report said the FCC has been lax in ensuring compliance from cable and satellite providers and questioned the commission’s guidelines for determining the educational value of children’s shows.

You mean to tell me there is a law out there that dictates the amount of commercials that can be shown during children’s programming?  Surely you jest.

Congress crafted the law in response to a decrease in educational shows during the 1980s that corresponded with an uptick in commercial blitzes during children’s programming. To shield youngsters from excessive commercials, the law restricts advertising during children’s programs to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays.

I repeat: there is a law, passed by Congress, signed by a President, that actually dictates the amount of commercials that are to be shown during kids’ shows.  The government of the United States deemed this an issue worthy enough of oversight.

Moreover, there are people who think the government isn’t doing enough.

During the Clinton administration, the FCC was “paying attention to children’s education, and the quality of children’s programming improved,” said Dale Kunkel, a child media expert and a communications professor at the University of Arizona.

“We slowly moved to a posture in the 2000s where they completely ignored the issue and the broadcasters offered whatever they want,” he said.

Wait a second.  Broadcasters can offer programs that viewers have the option to watch, or not watch?  What is this, a free country or something?

Look, I’m all for making sure that the airwaves are generally clean for kids.  While parents have the ultimate responsibility for watching their children and making sure that the content of what they’re viewing is appropriate, it’s helpful to be assured that they’re not going to watch all the animals from Franklin get a little too friendly (and at least they’ve finally had the decency to put some clothes on little bear).  But do we really need the government to dictate the quality of educational programming available, or the precise amount of commercial time airing on television?  Is there anything that busybodies won’t ask the government to oversee?

“Before [today], the fact is that primarily, a 20-year-old woman would have been a wife and a mother,” author Kay Hymowitz told the crowd of about 100 for the Manhattan Institute in New York City. Men would have been mowing lawns and changing the oil in their family sedans instead of playing video games and watching television. In previous decades, adults in their 20s and 30s were too busy with real life for such empty entertainment, Hymowitz says. “They didn’t live with roommates in Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Dupont Circle in D.C.

Hey, I didn’t have a roommate when I lived in Dupont Circle.  All 400 square feet of that place were entirely mine!   And I’ll have Kay know that I broke up my Madden playing and television watching with at least 20-30 minutes of work on my dissertation per day.  Hmmm, maybe that’s why it took me five years to finish it.

In all seriousness, this is a fairly innocuous statement, or at least it is for those of us who don’t have a secularist perspective on happiness.

Cue the angry liberals.

Amanda Marcotte, famed for a writing style that makes Maureen Dowd look like George Will, as well as for her way TMI-laden posts about her sex life, is none too pleased:

I think it’s important to remember that no matter how much huffing and puffing and rationalization goes on, a great deal of conservative ideology can be summed up as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy”. Or even just the fear that someone might just be having fun, at least without clearing it with the authorities first that they’re the right race and income level to feel pleasure.

…I often find myself wondering, and today more than most days, how things can get this bad. It seems to me that if wingnuts put a tenth of much effort as they do into resenting others into improving their own home and sex lives, they’d be too busy being happy and blissful to give a f*ck what anyone else is doing. It’s just basic logic, and I wonder why not just do the math and go for it.

As Hawkins rightly points out, the irony of this statement is that studies show that “married people are happier than single people, religious people are happier than non-religious people, and conservatives are happier than liberals.”  I would also point out married people have more sex than single people, so if anything conservatives are the ones pushing people to more fulfilling sex lives, an observation I heard Alan Keyes make when he was running for President in 1996 (before he lost his mind).  Evidently in Marcotte’s world the only good sex to be had is when you get good and loaded at some slimy bar in the downtown DC, take some random stranger to your bed, and never see the guy again.  Boy that really sounds joy-filled to me.

It also never ceases to amuse me when I hear religious conservatives derided as being uptight about sex, the implication being that we’re not getting laid enough.  Yet, at the same time, we’re mocked for having such large families.  Hey, geniuses – how do you think we got those large families?  Biology may not be your strong point, as evidenced by Andy Sullivan’s deranged rants about Sarah Palin and the maternity of Trig, but try to put two and two together.

As dumb as Marcotte’s rebuttal is, Matt Yglesias takes the cake:

Hymowitz’s argument, essentially, is that not only has feminism opened up new doors of opportunity to women, but it’s helped contribute to the growth of a society in which young men are less crushed down with family and household obligations and are spending more time enjoying themselves. Except she means this as a bad thing! In both cases the conservative conceit seems to be that a decline in human suffering is a bad thing because it leads to a corresponding decline in admirable anti-suffering effort. John Holbo memorably dubbed this Donner Party Conservatism.

I’ve bolded the key part because it is the perfect distillation of the modern secularist mindset.   According to Yglesias, having a family, owning your own home, working for a living and doing all those things that human beings have been doing for thousands of years is “crushing.”  His idealized life is the very one that Hymowitz is mocking.

Well excuse me Matty boy.  I’ve lived the single life in two of the hippest places to be single: New York and Washington, DC.  I’ve done the going to he bar and hanging out until 2 in the morning thing.  I’ve done the burden-free existence, replete with video games and other time-wasting activities.  I’ve lived in the studio apartment in the center of the city.  Now I live in suburbia with my wife and 2 children (one of them on the way), going to bed at ten because I have to get up at six in the morning to go to work.  Okay, so I still get to play video games, but that’s only because I have a two-year old that insists on it.  Only now when I’m done playing I’m going to have to change a dirty diaper and get a very hyper little girl to go to sleep.  And I wouldn’t exchange my current life for my former life if you gave me an additional 400 feet for that studio apartment.  Am I happier now?  It’s not even close.

Maybe it’s just me, but I do not find having real responsibilities to be crushing.  A crushing existence is a loveless life seeking out another lay and waking up at noon before writing a blog post that will be forgotten by the time the Jets are up 42-0 on the Pats in Madden. If that’s what you prefer, Matty, I guess you can knock yourself out.  I’ll put my joy up against yours and we’ll see who the real enemy of happiness really is.

“I’m very offended,” he announced. “Very, very offended. And do you know why I’m offended?”

“Why sir?”

“Because I am a Christian and when I look around here four days before Christmas I don’t see a single Christmas decoration. Do you know how long I’ve been a customer here? I want to talk to your manager.”

At this juncture I ceased half-paying-attention and began full on spectating, since in the customer service hierarchy dealing with a shouting customer ranks higher on a manager’s list of priorities than signing off on the large cashier’s check of a quiet couple holding a sleeping baby, and thus we wouldn’t be going anywhere until this fellow was dealt with.

The manager attempted to smooth things over, pointing to a few red bows and fake evergreen that decorated the branch, but the man would not be pacified.

“Those aren’t Christmas decorations,” he declared. “Christmas is a religious holiday. It’s about Jesus. And I don’t see a thing in here to show that it’s happening this week.”

Further attempts of the manager to placate got nowhere, as the fellow demanded, “Look up my account. Look how long my wife and I have been banking here and how much money we have with you. If you don’t care about Christmas I’m closing out my account and taking my money elsewhere.”

At last, the manager apparently decided that reasoning wasn’t getting anywhere, so he took his soon-to-be former customer off to one of the side offices while one of the tellers brought out a bill counting machine in order to fulfill the customer’s request that his money all be withdrawn, “In large bills.” Our spectating ended, as the manager signed off on our cashier’s check as he passed, and so we were able to leave shortly thereafter. As we passed the closed door of the glassed-in office, I could see the man still gesticulating and talking inside as the manager nodded in the pained way that those tasked with taking care of disgruntled customers do.

As we drove off, I couldn’t help feeling depressed about the whole spectacle. Though a nominally Christian country, at least as the polling data goes, people who are in any way serious practicing Christians are increasingly a minority in our culture, and as such ripe for being understood primarily based on their loudest representatives. That one of these should be a man angry that the local branch of Chase didn’t have religious Christmas decorations on display seemed, if anything, a way of making people more averse to Christianity rather than the contrary. Indeed, if I were to list the difficulties that Christianity faces at this time, the failure to be endorsed by J. P. Morgan Chase does not seem high on the list.

Though as the saying goes: You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family. This goes as much for brothers in Christ as for blood relatives.