Sep

29

2003

Another Radical in our midst

Filed Under Internet and Blogging | Comments Off

http://www.theblackrepublican.net

I’m pleased to report that Richard Jones has accepted my offer to join the ranks of The Black Republican as a contributor, increasing the size of our staff by a whopping 100%. He has pledged that he will only post when the mood strikes him, which should allow him to fit in perfectly here.

Welcome aboard, Rick!

Sep

22

2003

“Hangers are only for hanging clothes”

Filed Under Law and Ethics, Religion | Comments Off

The title is one of the several reasons given by Planned Parenthood as the benefits of 30 years of legal abortion. If only Holly Patterson had been given the opportunity to choose between an “illegal back-alley abortion” that might leave her disfigured for life and talking to her father about her pregnancy, she might be alive today. Unfortunately, she trusted the “modern medicine” of the abortionists and the rest of the left-coast leftists in her hometown of San Francisco.

Holly Patterson, who lived in the San Francisco suburb of Livermore, visited a Planned Parenthood clinic Sept. 10 to take the pill. She followed the prescribed procedure for using RU-486, taking two more pills at home three days later.

After experiencing bleeding and cramps so severe that she was unable to walk, her boyfriend rushed her to the hospital the following evening, where she was given painkillers and sent home. Three nights later, she was back in the hospital. She died the following day.

An autopsy has been scheduled to determine the cause of Holly’s death. But Monty Patterson said he learned from an attending physician at the hospital that she had died after a massive infection caused by fragments of the fetus left inside her uterus caused her to go into septic shock. Planned Parenthood also said it is investigating Patterson’s death.

In the style of James Taranto, I have to ask, “What would Holly Patterson do without Planned Parenthood?”

Sep

11

2003

Never Forget

Filed Under War and Terrorism | Comments Off

Someone sent me an email yesterday. The author meant well in every way, but used one particular word that can send me into convulsions.

Tomorrow is… well we all know what tomorrow is, and while I don’t want to dwell on the tragedy, I also don’t want to forget.
Naturally, I responded, and with a slight bit of editing, this is what I said:

You’re falling into Newspeak. It wasn’t a “tragedy”. A “tragedy” is defined by Webster:

a disastrous event
“disaster”:
a sudden calamitous event bringing great damage, loss, or destruction
“calamity”:
a state of deep distress or misery caused by major misfortune or loss
“misfortune”
an event or conjunction of events that causes an unfortunate or distressing result : bad luck
What occurred two years ago today wasn’t a “tragedy”, a “disaster”, a “calamity”, or “unfortunate”. It certainly wasn’t “bad luck”. This was the intentional murder of 3,000 people and an attempt to intimidate all of Western Civilization. It was – and still is – terrorism. “Terror”:
violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands
The really insidious part of terrorism is that it continues after the event, by implication that it may occur again if the population doesn’t yield to the intimidation.

Of course, all this is semantics, which doesn’t do justice to the truth of the matter. It was the purposeful butchery of innocents by despicable, evil men.

Don’t let those who want to deny that evil exists reshape the language you use to diminish the atrocity of the crimes they are willing to overlook, and don’t allow your friends, relatives, coworkers, and casual acquaintances to be dumbed down by the stupidity of the timid and the cowardly. Show them the faces of the dead – like the man pictured above, CDR Patrick S. Dunn, who I am proud to say shared some of the blood in my veins.

Never forget. Never let anyone forget.

Cox & Forkum’s “The 184″

Pentagon Memorial

Flash Tribute

Tribute

Esquire: The Falling Man

Cox & Forkum: “That Day”

Sep

4

2003

Was apathy one of the teachings of Jesus?

Filed Under Religion | Comments Off

Almost 1,000 years ago, the Christian Church (as it was a singular institution in those days) passed a requirement that all priests take a vow of celibacy prior to ordination. In the feudal structure of the society at the time, too many young men were left without anything to do, having been deprived of land and position by the strict inheritance laws. Many of them, seeing the potential for power, influence, and upward mobility, were becoming priests as their choice of career, with barely a thought to the spiritual component to the profession. The heirarchical clergy of the time decided the most efficient means to separate the devout from the social climbers was to deprive all priests of the pleasures of the flesh – at least officially. It was a brilliant political maneuver, conveniently supported by Scripture. (“Each one should lead the life the Lord has assigned him, continuing as he was when the Lord called him.” 1 Cor 7, 17)

Some of the problems the Catholic Church has today are wholly man’s problem, and this is one of them. The very passage that supports the celibacy of its priests makes no requirement beyond that of “continuing as he was”. Paul goes on to say that it would be better if a man were unmarried, but admits all the other Apostles did not follow that path as he did, because “It is better to marry than to be on fire.”

Oh, how prescient that statement is for us today – yet, the church leaders deny it. Why? They say it is just because we’re not holy enough, that if more more Catholics were more devout, we just wouldn’t have a problem.

‘The problems in the church today are not caused by the teaching of Jesus and of his church, but by lack of fidelity to them,’ Archbishop Dolan wrote. ‘The recent sad scandal of clerical sexual abuse of minors, as the professionals have documented, has nothing to do with our celibate commitment.’

As the bishops reaffirmed a requirement that has been part of church practice for nearly 1,000 years, priests and laypeople added their voices to those in Milwaukee calling for change. According to the National Federation of Priests Councils, associations of priests in Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Charleston, and in the states of New York and Illinois, are all considering issuing manifestos like the one issued in Milwaukee.

Bishop Gregory and Archbishop Dolan both argued that the shortage of Catholic clergy has little to do with celibacy, and is a problem shared by many Christian denominations and even Jewish synagogues.

However, Dean R. Hoge, a sociologist at The Catholic University of America who has studied clergy in Catholic and Protestant churches for more than 30 years, said that the shortage of priests in the Catholic church is ‘far more severe’ than any other denomination in the United States. He said that for every 100 priests who die or leave ministry today, Catholic seminaries are now training only 30 or 40 to replace them.

So it would seem that the Church leaders believe we get what we deserve. If no one wants to live under the yoke they say Scripture imposes, we have no one to blame but ourselves for our lack of fidelity to the Word.

I have some different ideas. Too many young Catholic men, who could lead holy and sanctified lives in the Holy Orders, have made a decision that is right for them and better for the sanctity of the Church. Yet they are being held back by a political calculation that hasn’t existed in our society for over 400 years. (Meanwhile, too many of those who do conform are rediculously unprepared for the Fire that awaits them, and they submit to the temptation of Satan.) This isn’t a problem caused by not having enough faith – it is caused by a combination of apathy and blind adherance to a rule of man. God’s people need help, and the changeless culture of the priestly class cares more about maintaining man’s rules than doing God’s work.

Sep

2

2003

Keeping ‘The Dream’ Dead

Filed Under Race and Prejudice | Comments Off

It was just last week that we were discussing the 40th anniversary of that moment in American history when a man with determination, courage, and hope declared, “I have a dream”. In the years following, one of the rallying cries of the civil rights movement was, “Keep The Dream Alive”.

Some how, some way, the meaning of that dream changed at some point from one of Christian love and fellowship to a screed of hate and retribution. The tired old rhetoric drones on like a heart monitor recording the autonomic reflex of a comatose patient. But the Supreme Court administered some new drugs to the patient last spring….

Today the University of Michigan, having been told its undergraduate admissions policy was unconstitutional, unveiled its new segregationist regime:

Jonathan Alger, assistant general council for the university, called the policy a “living document” that would be under constant review. “I’m very confident that we have examined all the different types of alternatives and found that race is something we need to consider currently,” Alger said.
Yes, you read that right. The Michigan admissions staff learned their lesson from the Supreme Court: just say the document (like the Constitution) is “living” and you’ll imply a status of progressivism on it, while still judging a man’s skin color over his character – and all the while avoiding Constitutional trip-wires like “quotas”.

I can still hear the dry scrape of the brain activity monitor as it measures and records nothing. The Dream is still dead.

Sep

2

2003

Andrew Sullivan

Filed Under Religion | Comments Off

I’ve always had a link to Andrew Sullivan because I’ve respected his work during the war, and I’ve actually enjoyed the occasional piece about gays and gay marriage, in that I could see what some who aren’t strict conservatives are saying about such issues. But recently I haven’t seen anything that makes me want to applaud him, and he’s become very strident on gay issues again. (Not that he ever probably slowed down off the website, but a man only has so much time in the day to write and we’ve had more important things to talk about lately). And add to this, he’s now gone to such an extreme as quoting the “slavery” section of the Catholic Encyclopedia to support his case. That just about sent me into fits, so I’ve decided to remove his link. It’s not that I’ve suddenly gone anti-Sullivan. I just don’t care to associate myself that closely with him at the moment and imply endorsement of his entire agenda.

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