“How a Non-Catholic respectfully communes at Mass” - The Anchoress has a great post on the "communion etiquette" of President George W. Bush and Bill Clinton at Mass, and . . . news that Cardinal O’ Connor and the USCCB was targeted for surveillance by the Clinton Administration's VAAPCON (the Violence Against Abortion Providers Task Force).
Read all about it.
In our social debates, of course, we get all caught up in numbers: asking how many are coming in, how much money is this costing. It's part of our scientific, bookkeeping modern Western culture. But, sometimes, when all the empirical, numerical questions are asked and even answered we may have forgotten to ask the most important question: who? For Catholics and other Christians, "who" is a more important question to ask than questions about numbers. Our scale of priorities is and should be radically different from that of our technological, secular culture.
That focus on "who" is why when it came to Terri Schiavo, we did not just ask how much it cost to keep her alive. We focused on who she was: a human being with as much dignity as anyone else. We also focus on "who" when it comes to abortion. We don't focus on the economic burden on the mother. We focus on who the child is: a human person of equal dignity with the mother.
I submit that when considering Hispanic immigration we ask the "who" question more, and not just focus on numbers and statistics. Who are these, mostly darker, people streaming over our borders? They are members of the only culture on earth that I know of which names its male children "Jesus," after the Son of God.
I know of no other culture on the planet where children are intentionally named "Jesus" to signify the Son of God. All of which reminds me as a Catholic Christian of a very famous question: "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" (Acts 9:4; RSV). Saul then immediately asked the "who" question: "Who are you, Lord?" Before we get on our high horses and start going after the Hispanic poor coming across the border with the zeal of the Pharisee Saul, we had better meditate first on that famous and prophetic biblical dialogue. The "who" question and the related biblical question about persecution from Acts may be the most important questions for Catholics and other Christians to ask in the entire immigration debate.
As Catholics, our questions naturally overlap with those of our non-believing fellow citizens because we also rightly employ our common reason; but our question lists will, thank God, never be identical. We ask the "who" question when it comes to euthanasia and abortion. We need to ask the personalistic "who" question on immigration also. As Catholics, we always have more to ask. And in the Hispanic immigration debate, the "who" comes, uniquely among all cultures, with the name of "Jesus," the Son of God.
In an article on Bob Casey Jr.
...Casey, meanwhile, has flip-flopped on adoption of children by gays. (In a 2002 questionnaire submitted to the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference -- the state's Catholic bishops organization -- he said he opposed "legislation allowing homosexual couples to adopt children." In a 2004 questionnaire submitted to PCC, he reversed course, saying he opposed "legislation prohibiting homosexual couples from adopting children.")
...I don't support gay marriage, but I also don't support a constitutional amendment banning it," Casey told The Philadelphia Jewish Voice in October 2005. "However, I do support same sex unions that would give gay couples all the rights, privileges and protections of marriage."
That position put Casey at odds with the proposed Pennsylvania Marriage Amendment, which, like Ohio's, prohibits legal recognition of same-sex unions. The amendment was approved 137-60 in the Pennsylvania statehouse in June, but then stalled in the state senate when it was stripped of the language prohibiting recognition of same sex unions, before passing 38 to 12. (In Pennsylvania, an amendment cannot be placed on the ballot until it has passed both legislative houses in identical form in two consecutive legislative sessions.)
The Drudge Report at this link is publicizing Pat Buchanan's new book which apparently is another jeremiad with this subtitle: "The Third World Invasion & Conquest of America." I have not read the book, but here is a line quoted by the Drudge Report-- and I assume a line made available to the media by the publisher-- as carrying the big marketing punch:
“As Rome passed away, so, the West is passing away, from the same causes and in much the same way. What the Danube and Rhine were to Rome, the Rio Grande and Mediterranean are to America and Europe, the frontiers of a civilization no longer defended” (italics added).
Now, from this one line, again which I assume the author and his publisher want to put up front as telling us what the book is about so that we will want to buy the book, we have a big argument for NOT buying the book. This line put forward by the author's media blitz is proof of deep confusion, obtuseness, and ignorance on the part of Buchanan. In a less public forum, I would use a less diplomatic word than obtuseness.
What this quote says is that the enemies of the West are coming over the Rio Grande into America and over the Mediterranean into Europe. As to Europe, I have no argument if Buchanan is referring to the Moslems from North Africa and elsewhere who are crossing the Mediterranean. The Moslems flooding Europe do not share any of the languages or the historic religion of Europe. While Western religion arose from Judaism, Islam came several centuries after the Incarnation. Moslems are, in my view, non-Western, although there have been important intellectual links in past centuries.
But only someone utterly oblivious to the obvious can put the Mexicans and Central Americans on the other side of the Rio Grande in the same non-Western category as the Moslems flooding Europe. I do not believe that Buchanan is a racist, but I do think that a strong case can be made that his analysis of Hispanic immigration does indeed have a racist component. Why?
Let's get to the point: Buchanan is saying that the Mexicans are not part of Western civilization. Why not?
1. Their native language is a Western European language, the language in which the first novel of the Western world was written: Don Quixote by Cervantes. Spanish is a child of Latin, the quintessential language of Western culture for centuries. In fact, in my personal opinion, compared to French and even Italian, Spanish is much closer in form to Latin than these other two Romance languages are.
2. They are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. The Catholic Church is the mother of Western civilization. The central trunk of Western civilization is Catholic. In the broad scheme of Western history, the Protestant nations of northern Europe are a peripheral offshoot--some might say an aberration--from this main Catholic central trunk of Western culture.
So the Mexicans speak a Western European language closely related to Latin, they are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, yet these are the hordes who signal the end of Western civilization? Forgive me for putting up two other possibilities for Buchanan's view that the Mexican hordes signal the end of the West: 1.) they are poor and 2.) they are dark-skinned.
If Buchanan's objection is poverty, then it is absurd given that it is precisely poor immigrants who have strengthened America. If it is skin color, then Buchanan better make it clear if he wants people to think that Western culture requires a white skin. In my opinion, the promotion of his book implies a racist analysis whether he is aware of it or not. The promotion also explicitly shows great historical ignorance of Western civilization and history. A civilization should have defenders that are familiar with the history of that civilization. Those are the most effective defenders of any civilization.
What Buchanan misses (how could he miss it!) is precisely the big difference, very fortunate for us, between the U.S. and Europe: the immigration problem in the U.S. is Catholic, while that in Europe is Moslem. Now, certainly, immigration is a big problem that must be addressed with a renewed emphasis on law and order and, in my personal opinion, with a guest worker program such as the one we had in the fifties under Eisenhower. But Buchanan does not contribute to a solution by making such an obvious and gigantic cultural and historical blunder in confusing Mexicans with Moslems. Instead of promoting his book, this blunder will lead readers with any basic education to question ever taking the time to read the book. And, even worse and more embarrassing, Buchanan is, I think, of Catholic background--although I would be more certain of that if his last name were Gonzalez or Alvarez.
Q&A with Sen. Sam Brownback, by Dan Gilgoff. U.S. News & World Report August 17, 2006:
Sen. Sam Brownback is widely regarded as a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, a label he lived up to recently in vigorously opposing Congress's attempts to provide funding for expanded embryonic stem cell research. But the Kansas Republican has made common cause with liberals by drawing attention to the genocide in Darfur and irked some conservatives by championing comprehensive immigration reform, which includes a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. As he mulls over a presidential bid-he says he'll make the decision soon after the midterm elections-Brownback sat down with U.S. News for a wide-ranging interview. . . .
Siding with (and citing) Pat Buchanan, Mark Shea takes issue with the (neo)conservative embrace of Sen. Joseph Lieberman:
Last year, Joe's rating by Americans for Democratic Action was 80. The ACLU gave him an 83, the NAACP an 85, the AFL-CIO a 92, LULAC a perfect 100. In 2004, Joe got a 100 rating from the National Abortion Rights Action League and a zero from National Right to Life. His American Conservative Union rating was zero. His Christian Coalition rating was zero. The National Rifle Association, which grades by letters, gave Joe a big, fat "F."Mark links directly to Buchanan's editorial, but fails to provide readers with the original essay by Kristol (Anti-war, Anti-Israel, anti-Joe: The New Democrats, Weekly Standard 08/14/2006, Volume 011, Issue 45). I'd like to forego the paraphrasing and examine what William Kristol actually thinks:But as long as you support war in Lebanon, war in Iraq and a "war-fighting Republican Party," in the Weekly Standard's phrase, you get a pass on everything else. Beat the drum for permanent war for global democracy and against Islamo-fascism, and all other sins are forgiven you.
Such is the state of conservatism, 2006. [Source: The meaning of Connecticut", Pat Buchanan World Net Daily August 10, 2006]:
The key point in Kristol's essay is that "You fight the global war against jihadist Islam with the political parties you have." Not necessarily, he might have added, with the political parties you desire.
As Kristol observes, we have the Republican Party, led by President Bush, whose "heart and mind are mostly in the right place. Its performance as a governing party in time of war is, admittedly, another matter." Despite some legitimate criticisms on what he perceives as a dearth of leadership (Kristol has strong words for Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and has sharply criticized the Bush administration's handling of the war in the past),
". . . at least we have a president who knows we are at war with jihadist Islam. And he is willing to stake his presidency on that fight, and to support others, like Israel, who are in the same fight."Kristol goes on to recognize a similar disposition in the person of Joseph Lieberman, who has distinguished himself from a Democratic party which -- to quote William Bennett -- "think[s] they can become a national party by taking their cues from Howard Dean, George Soros, MoveOn.Org, the Daily Kos, and George McGovern’s appeasement-first philosophy."
Kristol concludes:
There is a political opportunity for the Bush administration if the Democrats reject Lieberman. If he's then unable to win as an independent in November, he would make a fine secretary of defense for the remainder of the Bush years. If his independent candidacy succeeds, it will be a message to Bush that he should forge ahead toward victory in Iraq and elsewhere. Either way, the possibility exists for creating a broader and deeper governing party, with Lieberman Democrats welcomed into the Republican fold, just as Scoop Jackson Democrats became Reaganites in the 1980s. Is it too fanciful to speculate about a 2008 GOP ticket of McCain-Lieberman, or Giuliani-Lieberman, or Romney-Lieberman, or Allen-Lieberman, or Gingrich-Lieberman? Perhaps. But a reinvigorated governing and war-fighting Republican party is surely an achievable goal. And a necessary one.William Kristol - "Money and Power-Firster"?
I can't say I share William Bennet's or William Kristol's personal enthusiasm for the good Senator and will refrain from indulging in speculation on a presidential ticket. At the same time, I think Mark Shea and Pat Buchanan, in their venting against the dreaded neocons, are being more than a little unfair in their portrayal of Mr. Kristol.
In July 2006, Mark Shea professed his indecisiveness or agnosticism on whether "William Kristol and other neocons are warmongers untethered from reality", on account that "I distrust the reliability of the information I'm getting and I just don't know enough yet to make a judgment that's worth any thing."
Yet, in August 2006, Mark quotes approvingly Pat Buchanan's depiction of William Kristol as one willing to sacrifice core moral principles and "give a pass on everything else" to anybody who "beat[s] the drum for permanent war".
Presumably Kristol is included as well in Shea's description of the current political debate as a struggle between the "God first conservatives and the Money and Power First Conservatives":
And it's quite clear that, for the neocons, the only thing that matters is war and the entire prolife movement and social conservative types can drop dead. The Neocons are All About Power and Realpolitik. Conservatives are morphing into the mirror of their postmodern nihilistic Leftist opponents.
Now, if you listen to the chatter from the anti-war left (antiwar.com, daily kos) and the "paleoconservative" right (The American Conservative), you might recognize William Kristol as a member of the Project for the New American Century, editor of the Weekly Standard, and one of the grand architects of the neoconservative-Zionist conspiracy for perpetual warfare. Others, however, might recall another side to his political career:
In 1996 he signed his name to The America We Seek: A Statement of Pro-Life Principle and Concern, a joint statement by Catholics, evangelicals and conservatives. In his opposition to human cloning, Kristol has allied himself with Charles Colson, William Bennett, Fr. Neuhaus, James Dobson, George Weigel and other major pro-life religious and conservative voices.
Kristol has demonstrated a personal interest and keen grasp of the issues involved in the recent debate over ESCR (embroyonic stem cell research) and human cloning. In February 12, 2001 he authored an editorial "The Future Is Now" in that infamous neocon propaganda machine otherwise known as The Weekly Standard. Drawing from C.S. Lewis' prophetic The Abolition of Man, Kristol concluded that
"Before this prospect [of genetic human conditioning], before this possibility, every other issue pales not into insignificance, for many other issues are significant, but at least into lesser significance. The challenge of the scientific revolution in genetics and biotechnology, of scientific "progress" loosed from natural, human, or religious moorings, is the challenge we face."
Together with Eric Cohen (editor of the Ethics & Public Policy Center's journal New Atlantis), Kristol co-published The Future is Now: America Confronts the New Genetics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), providing a substantial introduction to the debate (see contents and excerpts here).In May 2004, he co-authored another article with Eric Cohen, "The Politics of Bioethics: Playing Defense is Not Enough", The Weekly Standard, Volume 009, Issue 33.
It's because of Kristol's thought on these issues and the overall nature of his writing that I can't help but take umbrage with Pat Buchanan's -- and Mark Shea's -- depiction of him. Frankly, I think the choice of phrase tells us more about a personal animosity toward the elusive neocons and the war in Iraq than it does about Kristol himself.
Lieberman's Pro-Choice Credentials
Shea/Buchanan base their criticism of Lieberman largely on his pro-choice credentials. But, correct me if I'm wrong, Ned Lamont's record on the life issues is no more admirable than Lieberman's -- and if you happen to read some of the more liberal blogs, they're characterizing NARAL's support of Lieberman as a scam, calling into question his loyalty to the pro-abortion cause:
There is much one could -- and should -- rightly criticize about Lieberman's record on the life issues, but at the same time we should recognize that his "pro-choice" credentials, as touted by Buchanan, aren't as stolid as he makes them out to be. In the end, given as how Republicans haven't exactly offered any contenders with a fighting chance against the Democrats, we are left with the choice of Lieberman or Lamont in Connecticut. Which leads us to the question:
What's wrong with Ned Lamont?
Everything for Mark to dislike about Lieberman is there in Lamont, except that he's anti-war.Forgive me for the lengthy quotation, but Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has put it best:The problem is that based on comments like "we are strongest when we negotiate with our enemies", he's against the entire war, not just the part in Iraq. Lamont isn't necessarily going to stop with a withdrawal from Iraq. He shows no signs of willingness to do anything about Iran's onward march to nuke Haifa.
Spin it as he may, the central plank in Lamont’s platform is for the U.S. to accept complete and utter defeat at the hands of terrorists and insurgents in Iraq — and, by implication, before long, elsewhere too. It does not fool most of the people to say, as Lamont did, that he will bring the troops “home to a hero’s welcome.” In the real world, that is not what awaits those who suffer defeat — however painful their wounds, however great their courage under fire.In the end, we are faced with the question: Is it possible for Kristol to appeal for possible cooperation and common ground between "Lieberman Democrats" and Republicans on the issue of national security without sacrificing pro-life principles?The war we are fighting — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere — is nasty and bloody and we are not doing very well. But this is the face of war in the 21st century. We either learn to win such battles or we get used to getting whipped; maybe we even start to like getting whipped. Think of John Murtha almost bragging about the retreats he has favored in the past, from Beirut in 1983 and Somalia in 1993 — as though those retreats did not pave the way to 9/11/01.
What’s worse is that Lamont and his supporters believe America deserves defeat. They don’t say it the way Ward Churchill does but you can read it between the lines. They claim it will not be them or the U.S. that is defeated; only Bush and the hated neocons will be vanquished by the forces formerly led by Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. That is akin to a passenger on a ship saying that when the vessels sinks, only the captain and crew will drown.
So this is a bad day for America, too. There was a time when Americans united against their enemies. But our enemies in this war have been allowed to divide us. Bush may deserve some of the blame for that. But disunity has been the goal of the Lamont/Sharpton/Jackson/Murtha/Soros/Sheehan/Moore/Kos wing of the Democratic party., the wing that triumphed last night in Connecticut.
If only as a courtesy to serious figures from the papal biographer George Weigel to the Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, we need to consider the possibility that pure political calculation isn’t the only cause for the recent fusion of social conservatives and neoconservatives.
The mentality of appeasing is alive and well in the Democratic Party and in other parts of American society. It is a scenario eerily familiar to that of England in the nineteen thirties which appeased the world right into World War II rather than snuffing out the Nazis in their initial forays to take over the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia. We have the super-rich Ned Lamont in Connecticut who is now the new Democrat icon. Pardon me, but let me be honest. Lamont comes across as the effete, shrill, and haughty product of a decadent, excessively affluent society.
But let me move quickly away from the personal and get to ideas which are always the better things to discuss. Today, the seminal "good war" is World War II: the struggle against the demonic movement of Nazism and its allies. Yet, also today, we have many who explicitly or implicitly would have advised us to sit out World War II. In fact, they would have advised us to appease Hitler throughout the thirties, the approach that made World War II an inevitable reality. How can that mentality still exist just sixty or so years after the end of World War II? These are not just people who opposed war in Vietnam or Iraq. Many, whether they are willing to admit it today or not, would have opposed a strong stand even against Hitler.
The irrationality of the appeasers remind me of some people who strongly criticize Israel. At first, you listen politely assuming that they are rational; and then, not uncommonly, the other shoe drops: they descend into an anti-Semitic reading of history or similar anti-Jewish tirade. Then your eyes open, and you realize that there was nothing there worth listening to in the first place. A similar eye-opening experience occurs when you realize that today's appeasers would have appeased even Hitler.
Thank goodness that St. Michael and the angelic hosts are not appeasers, or else the book of Revelation would end quite differently. In the face of irrational evil, there comes a point when you fight. That is reality, a reality that is part of the tragedy of evil. The better way is non-violent resistance. But the better way is not always possible. Gandhi could do it in the face of a civilized, democratic British Empire in India. Martin Luther King, Jr., could do it in the face of a civilized, democratic United States. But the Germans could not do it in Hitler's Germany. The Iraqis could not do it in the face of Saddam Hussein. And Israel cannot do it in the face of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran whose stated goal is to destroy Israel--whose absolute hatred for the very existence of Israel is so great that some of them even refuse to pronounce the word "Israel": they use the circumlocution "Zionist entity." My friends, that refusal to even utter the word "Israel" is a sign of the demonic nature of Israel's enemies.
What can Christianity do? Is Christianity inevitably pacifism? Or is Christianity just an indifferent bystander to the tragedy of war? I can share only my personal opinion which is not official Church teaching. The Christian is a knight, a happy warrior, who seeks to advance the Kingdom of God on earth. As such, he or she is a knight for the conditions of peace and for nonviolent resistance. Nonviolent resistance works between and among democratic nations that respect individual rights. That's why it worked against British imperialists and American racists. But nonviolent resistance does not work against Hitlers or Middle East dictators. So the Christian knight struggles to promote democracy and human rights as the arena where war can become unnecessary because nonviolent resistance is feasible in that context.
But when irrational evil raises its head, we cannot bury our heads. We must be willing to give our lives for the oppressed. We must be willing to come to the rescue of others. And that means that armed conflict is inevitable against the forces of irrational evil. Recognizing that inevitability early is the best way to avoid world wars.
Many today still have not learned that lesson. Yet, it is a reality all around us everyday. A reality we depend on, especially in daily life in the United States: the policeman is armed and is willing to stop the criminal with force if necessary. We could not live in the United States without that daily, unquestioned threat of force by police departments throughout the nation. Yet, the same people who are able to live in peace and security in the United States only because of the threat of force against the irrationally evil refuse that same peace and security to millions throughout the world threatened by irrational evil. The policeman has the right and duty to resist irrational evil with force for the sake of our lives. The policeman cannot be a pacifist or a full-time practitioner of non-violent resistance. Yet, in a world full of irrational evil, many spout the fantasy that no policeman is necessary in the affairs of nations.
We have long heard that, for Christians, we are both body and soul. We cannot be indifferent to our bodies in sexual morality because our bodies are essential to our full humanity and personhood. We must also hear again that we are also rational creatures. We cannot be indifferent to common sense because rationality is also essential to our full humanity and personhood. And common sense recognizes that the use of force to fight evil is in many tragic situations a moral obligation. Yes, thank God, that St. Michael and the angelic hosts are not pacifists.
The defeat of Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary further confirms that the contemporary Democratic Party is the party of defeatism that cannot be trusted to fight the war against Islamist fanatics. Of course, some Democrats will try to paint the Lieberman defeat as a bad sign for President Bush because "the voters" rejected Lieberman due to his support of the Iraq war. That predictable spin effort by the Democrats is a grand deception. The "voters" involved here are the liberal Democrats that dominate Democratic primaries in most, if not all, states. Liberal Democrats rejecting Lieberman because of his support of the Iraq war is a non-story. In fact, the real election comes in November when Lieberman runs as an independent. Some predict that Lieberman will win as an independent. Bottom-line: the Democratic Party is the defeatist party that rejects any attempt to win in Iraq and drives out anyone who favors victory in Iraq.
Interestingly, former President Clinton actually campaigned for Lieberman. Senator Hillary Clinton gave Lieberman tepid support. Whom will the Clintons support in the general election: the official Democratic candidate or independent candidate Lieberman? The Clintons live for power, not principle. So they will likely seek to make a calculation on how to minimize the number of Democrats they displease balanced with an urgent concern to appear strong on national security issues. The Clinton calculation will be a sham based on expediency and not on principle or conviction, a sham focused on getting the wife elected President in 2008. If she wins in 2008, the former President can then return to White House policy-making. He will likely seek the role of a special Middle East negotiator who will try to rehabilitate himself in political history by seeing if, this time around, he can finally win the Nobel Peace Prize denied to him when he failed to broker a Middle East peace accord during his administration. Let's see how many, if any, are fooled by the sham Clinton balancing act that will unfold this fall in Connecticut and beyond.
What is of urgent peril to the republic is that one of our major parties is the defeatist party, the best ally that our terrorist enemies have. The Democratic Party is the modern fifth column that our enemies can count on to undermine and sap with constant harping criticism the will to win the war on Islamist imperialism. This trajectory began with the 1972 campaign of George McGovern: that year the Democratic Party went anti-American. Thirty-four years later the trend continues in full force, except that now the enemy is not limited to the small country of Vietnam but is a worldwide Islamist assault that aims to attack both here at home and overseas.
Update: Go to RealClearPolitics.com where John McIntyre gives great political analysis about the Lieberman fiasco for the Democrats. McIntyre hits the nail on the head.
Nate Nelson has fired up a new blog called Catholic? Rudy Watch. His mission? Oppose the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani for president. As many know, Rudy "disagrees" with Church teachings in re: to abortion, protecting marriage, and ESCR. Looks like Nate wants Catholics to get to know the real Rudy. Great idea Nate!
Reminds one of Catholic[?] Kerry Watch which Christopher, Jeff, and Oswald contributed to during the 2004 presidential campaign.
A friend has relayed news of South Dakota's battle for life:
Pope John Paul II once said: "[W]e are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life”. We find ourselves not only “faced with” but necessarily “in the midst of” this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.” (Evangelium Vitae, "The Gospel of Life", 28).This past legislative session, the South Dakota legislature passed the Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act (HB 1215). Pro-abortion individuals and groups, including Planned Parenthood and the inappropriately named "South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families", have collected enough signatures to place this bill on the November 7, 2006, ballot for a vote of the people. The bill will be entitled "Referred Law 6", and a "Yes" vote will affirm the bill, while a "No" vote will kill it.
South Dakota is "in the midst of" a great spiritual battle against the culture of death, as HB 1215 has brought the issue of abortion to the forefront in our state.
The Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls' Catholic Advocate Network has put together a page for more information on HB 1215, along with the following prayer and educational aids:Knights of Columbus pledge to fight for marriage, life, ‘under God’
ORLANDO, August 04 (CNA) - The Knights of Columbus have adopted, this week, significant resolutions on a number of critical social issues including marriage, the sacredness of life, the Pledge of Allegiance, school choice, and support for military men and women.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Senator Sam Brownback yesterday introduced the Assisted Suicide Prevention Act, which would prohibit doctors from prescribing federally-controlled substances for the purpose of physician-assisted suicide.“When the law permits killing as a medical ‘treatment,’ society’s moral guidelines are blurred, and killing could gain acceptance as a solution for the chronically ill or vulnerable,” said Brownback. “Doctor-assisted suicide could actually create a financial incentive for insurance companies to encourage prematurely ending the lives of those in need of long-term care.”
Last May Brownback chaired a Judiciary Committee hearing to examine the impact of physician-assisted suicide in places where it has been widely practiced. . . .[read more]
Brownback Introduces Bill to Fight Assisted Suicide LifeSiteNews.com. August 4, 2006.
For more on Senator Brownback, see Catholics for Brownback.
As usual, the mainstream media is full of opinion columns and analysis pieces saying that Israel is losing the war or is in a box or offering crackpot diplomatic non-solutions. As usual, the mainstream media is wrong. They will always cry "defeat" whenever Israel or the U.S. takes strong action against the Islamist fanatics. Why? My personal opinion is that people who embrace moral relativism find any strong action against evil distasteful and repulsive. They believe that since good and evil are just matters of where you sit, you can't really condemn what the Islamist fanatics do and can't really justify strong military action to put the terrorist organizations out of business. In the morally relativist mindset of the mainstream media, the only exception to their canon of relativism is this one absolute: the U.S. and Israel are always wrong, especially if the non-relativist George W. Bush is involved. Moral relativism in international conflict equals defeatism. The mainstream media is the propaganda arm for that defeatism. It's a curious disease of the soul, but we saw it before in the West when for years Britain and France appeased Hitler, thus inducing Hitler to gamble on World War II. Fortunately, today Britain's prime minister is more Churchillian. But France, to this day, has never regained her nerve. The French moral malaise appears, right now, to be eternal.
Catholic social teaching strongly embraces a healthy pluralism in society, that is, the free, respectful expression of a diversity of views. In that vein, I offer my own analysis of the current Middle East War: Hezbollah and its patrons Iran and Syria have made a major and grave miscalculation. Iran is the leading force in this cabal. By giving Hezbollah the green light to attack Israel, Iran took the same gamble Hitler did in putting German troops back in the Rhineland region of Germany that had been demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles as a way to protect France from future German attack. Here is how one reference source summarizes what happened: "Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland in 1936. It was a dangerous venture, for Britain and France could have overwhelmed Germany, but, resolved to keep the peace, they took no action. Emboldened by this success, Hitler intensified his campaign for Lebensraum (space for living) for the German people" (Encyclopedia American s.v. "World War II"; original italics).
The failure of Britain and France to respond to Hitler's blatant defiance of a binding treaty obligation led to his further adventures: invading Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally Poland. Only when he invaded Poland did Britain and France wake up and enter the war their appeasement helped bring to reality. Eventually, Britain got Churchill; and the rest is history. Hitler won his Rhineland gamble, but lost the war. Yet, tragically for millions, Hitler could have been put out of commission much earlier without a full-scale World War II.
Iran took the same gamble as Hitler did in the Rhineland. In defiance of a U.N. resolution, Iran and Hezbollah remilitarized south Lebanon to make it a formidable threat to Israel, as the almost daily shower of rockets on Israel proves. Israel could do nothing to meet this looming and mounting threat without a provocation. Then Iran miscalculated and allowed Hezbollah to provoke Israel by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers and killing several others in an attack on Israeli territory. Unlike Hitler, Iran has lost the gamble of her "Rhineland strategy" because Churchill was, so to speak, already in place as the prime minister of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Olmert is not considered as hawkish as some other political leaders in Israel; but he reacted strongly, responsibly, and like Churchill in the face of the Hezbollah attack on Israel.
In fact, some of Olmert's recent remarks telling Israel to expect more pain and blood in the current war and declaring that Israel will fight on by every means echo Churchill's famous speeches when Britain stood alone against Hitler in 1940 in the Battle of Britain after Hitler had conquered France. The Israeli Prime Minister is defiant of the enemies of Israel and refuses to go along with the appeasement recommended by the lamentable U.N. and by the reflexively appeasing French. Hitler won in the Rhineland because Churchill was not yet the British Prime Minister. Iran has lost in the current war because the Israeli Churchill was already in place. That is a major miscalculation, but fanatics are prone to such major miscalculations because hatred is blinding.
So Israel is not losing this war. Iran and her proxy Hezbollah are losing big: they jumped the gun and gave Israel the green light to destroy their military buildup in Lebanon. In fact, the latest news is that Israel has just taken a welcome and overdue strategic leap and attacked the Hezbollah stronghold in northeast Lebanon. Hezbollah has no place to hide and has opened itself to a full and wide-ranging attack by Israel that is fully justified. And notice that Iran cannot openly join in assisting Hezbollah. Iran must limit its participation to covert action and to its typically hypocritical and anti-Israel rhetoric. The other Hezbollah backer, Syria, is frigid with fear that Israel will take the battle to Syria and finish off the last remaining Baathist regime in Damascus once and for all. All of this would not be possible if the appeasing forces (the U.N. and most of Europe) were in charge. All of this is possible because the Israeli Prime Minister and George W. Bush are both Churchill-like in their grasp of reality: fanatics understand only the strong and fearless application of force. When the enemy miscalculates, forcefully exploit the miscalculation to the full to prevent future attacks. If the West had done that in 1936 when Hitler put his soldiers into the Rhineland, millions would likely have been saved from the casualty lists of World War II.
And remember this: just as Britain's lonely fight against Hitler in 1940 (after France had fallen to Hitler) was really America's fight, so today Israel's fight against Iran is America's fight. Neither Hezbollah nor Iran would hesitate to send the same rockets they are dropping on Israeli towns to Chicago, Detroit, or New York, if they could. Iran is crazed enough to use even a nuclear weapon against Israel and against the U.S. So Israel is fighting our battle there, so we won't have to fight it here later at a much higher cost in lives. Let's pray daily that Israel is swiftly victorious against the forces of evil who seek her annihilation and ours. Our faith allows us to engage in self-defense, and so we can pray for a swift victory for Israel.
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