Ally for Anti-Abortion?

Fr. Sinisa, While appreciating your zeal for anti-abortion---we both share this---I've noticed that many well meaning folks use an argument similar to the one posted above which seems to make allies with an ideology that is to say the least, problematic. I was compelled to write why I think this ally, the source of the quote, is detrimental. The following is my rejoinder, I respectfully submit for your consideration: 
On a # Women's Rights video posted by a friend who is likewise against abortion I have to raise an objection. My friend who is a priest is certainly well-meaning but I think he is mistakenly swayed in his zeal against abortion (which I share) in using a video which is subscripted with the quote:
"Gender equality starts in the womb. We can't advance women's rights if we kill our littlest preborn women. Our advancement as women comes through recognizing the dignity of every person."
I take issue in the reason it gives. I reads to me as if its primary motive is advancing the 'women's movement'. I am compelled to answer: No, both preborn men and preborn women are the subjects of our crusade. The quote moves the issue into identity politics as if this aspect of Marxism is an ally. Our Lord once said concerning the doctrine of the Pharisees: "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." I would argue that feminist arguments still come from an evil tree. The quote also makes it sound that advancing women's rights are the reason for fighting abortion. In fact it is feminism's poisonous ideology (originating in Marxism's identity politics) which made and continues to make abortion such a thriving industry. I would likewise maintain that we shouldn't use a # Third Reich Rights argument against the gas chambers because after all it will not in the end advance the cause of Germany. Does this not sound condescendingly faulty reasoning even though the end, the end of gas chambers, is what we both seek? To me the reasoning why is just as important, and if we get this wrong I think we are sleeping with a strange bedfellow that will eventually turn on us as we sleep.

David Hogg's Ideological Oratory...History Repeating?

Does this remind you of someone? And some era in history? If you are in high school perhaps your history is a little rusty so I will provide some hints. Such speeches and responses seem to me quite a kin to a little political movement that happened in Germany in the 1930's. And a similar demand was made of the populace: to give up instruments of protection, otherwise known as confiscation. Maybe it's just me but there seems to be an eerie parallel to our current march for our lives movement. And by the way maybe it's me again but the young man speaking seems to not only bare an attitudinal resemblance but also a physical resemblance to another well known personality of that time of political upheaval in Deutchland. The young man happened to be Reich Minister of Propaganda. His name was Josef Goebbels. Sometimes history does seem to repeat itself. Hopefully we will awaken before it repeats itself more than anyone would wish.

Further Reflection on the Omnibus

I've been hearing from more than a few friends on the Omnibus post. From what I've been gathering from them is that the Omnibus really means nothing...I have to ask though: if it means nothing really, then what does it mean? And by the way, I do hope that I'm the one that doesn't understand this complicated game of chess. I do hope that the President is the master and I am the dunce.

Omnibus Lamentation

Dear Mr. President: I am only a laymen in the pews and though there is no way that you will ever read this, I must nonetheless express disappointment in this omnibus bill. I think I share many of my fellow conservatives' view that such a bill will only increase massive government; I understand you were concerned about the military. But what I would argue is that more important than planes, tanks, and infantry is to have the favor of the Almighty on this country. A constant theme in the Good Book is that the Children of Israel and Judah didn't do so well when they abandoned God. Though I applaud you for, in many ways, orienting this country toward God I think that signing a bill that gives 500 million (anything over a cent is too much) to Planned Parenthood (should it rather be called Planned Un-parenthood?) is something in which vetoes any blessing God can give to this country. Of course there are many other expenditures that seem quite foolhardy and part of the agenda of the Left to make the United States a Globalist rather than a sovereign nation. Not to mention the economic fact that we are in a little debt----thus, how is it we can be so free in our altruism? It escapes me and seems to contradict everything I learned in Economics 101. Nonetheless it is the line item to PP that really transgresses what this country used to stand for.

The other thing that is quite detrimental to this omnibus decision is the fact that you threatened not signing it and then capitulating. This is analogous to a parent saying, "No ice cream until you have finished the broccoli on the plate" and the child in open defiance leaves the broccoli untouched and gets not only the ice cream but an extra large helping and then being told, "I really don't like the fact that you didn't eat the broccoli and I won't ever give you ice cream again when the broccoli is untouched." If I were the child I wouldn't believe my parent ever again. I would no longer respect him carrying through with his word. This seems to me a lamentable loss of authority that plays right into the hands of those that will seek to manipulate you the rest of the way. All this being said, and though I still support you, the vigor and zeal has departed my spirit over the swamp being drained. I expect instead it will spread to the point where no dry ground will be left for a citizen to walk across, and Making America Great Again was only ever the most gratuitous illusion.

The Art We Sometimes Miss

The art that we sometimes miss: the lichen on a tree, the pattern of fissures on the bark, the form of an ancient elm, the dark stillness in a stand of hemlock, a squirrel scampering across a rail fence, a cardinal perched in the snow caught in the crevice of a pine, a chickadee skittish among the dormant twigs of the barberry, the sound of snow crunch underfoot, the mosaic of the moods of clouds, the countenance of the nor'easter, the blush of green on the first leaves, the slate wrath of the harbor before the storm.

Possible Fallout From Austin

Now the latest. The bombings in Austin. It's funny isn't it how we don't hear ad nauseum of the confiscation of bombs, and the zoning of "Bomb Free Zones" by the new constitutional scholars that seem quite common now in the schools. And funny, no blame put on fertilizer manufacturers, and companies that sell wire. And are there any walkouts?

The Left the Lovers of Children

I need someone on the Left to explain something to me. As the Leftist brain is utterly foreign soil to me and I don't understand even a syllable of the speech of that distant country I must ask help to understand. I have heard from translators that the Left love children so much---much more of course than the party of Hate that we on the other side of the globe represent. Well ,hearing how much they love children and continually bring up children and children's safety which of course we, the party of Hate, have no feeling for---I wouldn't have known such a fact if I hadn't heard high school constitutional scholars lecture me and the rest of us on it. I just have a minor, insignificant difficulty---I who certainly need schooling on the meaning of the amendments and thus am willing to be schooled by these sophomore sages. All that to say, my difficulty is concerning the teacher who just was put on administrative leave for bringing up the idea that perhaps a walkout---since the schools seem to be condoning, even advocating such social justice actions---that perhaps a walkout of an anti-abortion stand could happen. Such a liberality seems logical.

Well, all this to say, you would rightly expect the Left who love children would not confine their love to those children that happen to have the fortune to be born and to be alive outside the womb. You most assuredly rightly expect these lovers of children to be rising up for this teacher who had the temerity to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, a walkout could happen in favor of the child in the womb. One would think that the phone would be ringing off the wall, that text messages would be flooding the computers over at the ACLU. I would expect the Leftist lover of children would be rising up in force against the forces that seek to shut down the free speech of this teacher and her little suggestion that perhaps the child in the womb might be worth a walkout. After all, the kids and the Left in general love children and how can I doubt such a thing that seems so evident, especially in the political arena? This love is certainly the reason that the schools allow the high school constitutional scholars to be truant and school us on the proper compassionate interpretation of the second amendment. Of course the fact that they love children is partly evidenced in how forcefully they advocate such things as public education and common core and making sure anything resembling superstition like God is kept out of learning institutions while deities as Darwin remain.

Thus, I wish to understand this foreign language of love. I wish to understand why the NRA and Donald Trump are implicated in the crime when the actual perpetrator is hardly mentioned. I wish to understand why the students, who, I assume, were all fetuses at one time (if my biology is correct) why they weren't all emigrating from schools en mass against such child-cleansing clinics as Planned Parenthood. I wish to understand why such walkouts are not happening by those---who by their own claims---love children and don't want to see any left behind and wish there were just more gun free zones like the one that was such a catalyst for the change we are now seeing by these new constitutional scholars who, by the way, seemed quite silent when the baptist church and casino made the news.

Mass Walkout by Students

Alas, today a mass walkout by students. I find it interesting that the previous mass shooting was a baptist church and before that a casino and neither churches or casinos staged walkouts over the lack of effort to delete the second amendment. Hmmm... I just have to suspect the organizing of students because one: I admit to being a conspiracy theorist---I think even high school students would admit to sometimes conspiring say, to get a better grade or get into a preferred college; or perhaps boys conspiring in how to ask a certain girl out, or girls conspiring in how to get noticed by a certain boy while not appearing at all interested. Anyhow, all that to say, conspiracies happen and thus I don't see any reason why those who wish to undermine the Constitution would not seek ways to do so, even in the use of children in which to get their agenda across. (I realize this last charge of mine is a difficult one to believe---the idea of using children for political means...) Regardless of whether the Left would ever stoop to such a low, I must ask whether it seems at all likely that emotion be used as a lever---especially in our age that lacks logic? I have even suspected conspiracies in the fetish there seems in our day with 'movements'...the Me-Too movement, the Climate Change (aka Global Warming) movement, the Racism is Rife movement, Immigration and No Borders movement---all however it seems weren't quite strong enough to capture the adolescent's preoccupation from his and her smart phone...until...this most recent shooting which happened to be at a school instead of a baptist church or a casino. But does it strike anyone as the oddest thing that the NRA or Donald J. Trump, or the Tea Party incurred more adolescent (here I include adults as well) wrath than the actual perpetrator himself? I suppose I will not be surprised that these same self-righteous advocates for social justice, the new secular crusaders who wish to crucify the NRA, Donald J. Trump, the Tea Party will I predict fight to the utmost for the sparing of Nicholas Cruz from the death penalty, this fellow who with his own finger and his own aim and his own mind turned a neutral gun into a malevolent means to end the lives of as many as he could. Yes, they who would, at least in their tolerant diverse compassionate spirits seek the crucifixion of members of the NRA and those conservatives that still think the Constitution is important and shouldn't be meddled with would I suspect fight against Cruz's death penalty as cruel and unusual. Such is indeed the schizophrenia of the Left.

I do not blame the kids. They are being played upon. Their emotions are being employed to enlist them as a standing army against the present administration. These community organizers are organizing these kids, perhaps your own kids, into little Saul Alinsky radicals. One question had I a chance I would ask these kids. Should you call 911 against someone with ill intent who has entered your place, whether school, church, or casino would one of the things you would hope the rescuing police to have--- be, by any chance, a gun? And why?

Make America an Endless Expanse of Old Growth Forests and No Certain Borders Again (Sign in Bookstore Window)

This is the kind of non-think that goes on today. This a sign in a bookstore which I imagine has borders itself. Probably has walls, a door and I would bet locks the door when it closes up shop for the day. But that of course doesn't register as a microcosm of the macrocosm that is a country.

"Hope in the Age of Climate Change"

This morning I notice a poster on the bulletin board at Gordon college. The poster announces an upcoming lecture: "Hope in the Age of Climate Change". Couple of things. It first of all assumes that "Climate Change" is (what we are continuously being told) is "settled science". I find it telling the poster doesn't read "The pro and cons of the Climate Change debate" which I think would be more indicative of open intellectual inquiry. Instead it seems as though colleges (not just this one) have adopted what I see as closed and slavishly unquestioned agenda driven movements and more and more abandoning the intellectual freedom places of higher learning once espoused. It is almost as if we are seeking to shut up the boy who in the face of societal and political ridicule was the only one to point out the Emporer's lack of clothes. All you have to do it seems these days is call the clothes, "new", and you have unquestioned allegiance to the new science, unquestioned as if it was emperically verified in a petri dish on the laboratory bench.

The New Vocabularies

In our men's group we've talked quite often of the artificial language that has been produced to further a political agenda. One of these words is "homophobe". It is the result of the joining in what I will call a forced marriage of "homo" (Gk. same) and "phobia" (Gk. fear). I resist the use of such words as they are meant to give credibility to one of the movements currently gaining not only respectability, but also complete unequivocal conformity, and even celebratory kudos. What provoked this post was that I happened to be listening to Catholic radio and the very intelligent apologist advised a man who had been labeled because he did not agree with this new secular orthodoxy. He wondered about this concept of homophobia. The apologist replied that yes, we should resist being homophobes and that we could pray that we don't display homophobic characteristics. Such a statement--- from an apologist and a very intelligent one no less---was disconcerting to say the least. It certainly undermined my belief that intelligence and even biblical knowledge are safeguards against the manipulation of propagandic language. How, I wondered, could an intelligent apologist, as this man is, not recognize the use of new coinages meant to manipulate the mind and conform it to the world? Unfortunately, my dear friends, these new vocabularies are finding welcome upon our tongues which can only bring us not into conformity to Christ, but to Hollywood.