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Quote of the Day for Friday, December 10th, 2010:

Indiana Governor, and prospective 2012 Republican Presidential candidate, Mitch Daniels, on the propriety of the Indiana state legislature advancing some pro-life legislation:

“As long as it doesn’t get in the way of the really crucial (objectives) — keeping Indiana in the black, improving our economy and bringing big reform to things like education. As long as it doesn’t get in the way of that, there’s plenty of time and capacity.”

I rolled my eyes and felt discouraged when Daniels made a comment several months ago proposing a “truce” on social issues in order to focus on economic matters. My eyes aren’t rolling anymore, and I’m now not so much discouraged as disgusted. This is a man who truly doesn’t get it.

Men like this are often more of a threat to the commonweal than those who openly embrace those most horrific of misanthropic practices and policies, because he clearly views the human being through the same sterile lens of instrumentality, but masks it behind a smokescreen of conservative (read: bourgeois) respectability.

I’m OK with people like Mitch Daniels holding public office, as long as they stay in the background, and don’t get in the way of the really important work of securing a just public order.

Marveling after the recent election at how, as usual, every single candidate or question I supported on my election day ballot went down to defeat, I was doing a little post-election pundit reading, and was struck by another glaring contrast – one that got me thinking about the competing political visions that dominate our public conversation. This time, it was the tone of a pair of where do we go from here ruminations.

The first was from Michelle Malkin: the mischievously entitled “Take Your Olive Branch and Shove It, Democrats”. I find Malkin to be clever, shrewd, and insightful, but I cringed when I saw this article title. However, not having the fortitude at the moment to resist gawking at the car crash I expected to find, I read the article.

It was a bitter lashing-out, primarily directed toward President Obama, whom she observed had presided over “an Us vs. Them freefall” ever since conning his way into the Oval Office two years ago by passing himself off to a weary American people as The Great Uniter, uniquely qualified to lead the country into a post-partisan and post-racial promised land.

How anyone ever fell for that shtick, I’ll never understand to my dying day – every time I’ve ever heard him open his mouth, he has tried to carve out political camaraderie by marginalizing or demonizing some scapegoat or dissident group. During my adult life, I’ve never witnessed a more divisive character in that noble office – though I suppose he’d find a kindred soul in Richard Nixon, whom I remember as little more than a cartoon character from my youth.

But Malkin found worse than hypocritical the late-breaking calls from the Democrat party leadership for compromise, after their repudiation by “voters who have been maligned by the ruling majority as stupid, unwashed, racist, selfish and violent” for the past two years. She wasn’t buying it, and wasn’t hiding her disdain. I was sympathetic, but disturbed by her bitterness.

At that point, I was ready for the next article I found, posted by Joe Scarborough over at Politico, entitled: “Give Hyperbole, Partisanship a Rest”. He began with a customary conceit, wagging the finger at “extremists of all stripes,” and expressing his hope that a certain liberal political comedian can help the country bridge the breech that has opened up more and more in recent years between Washington’s political camps. It was a self-serving feel-good piece certainly, but I was worn out from the partisanship of the election push, and pretty sympathetic to the message as I read.

But then Scarborough started telling a story about how he, referring to himself as a “young, conservative Republican,” made a trip across the proverbial aisle in his freshman year to strike up a friendship with “60’s radical” Rep. Ron Dellums. Dellums asked him: “Why is it that all you guys with energy are conservative? Back in my day, you would have been on my side!” The answer Scarborough gave him floored me:

“When you think of Republicans, you associate us with Vietnam, Watergate and segregation. When I think about Democrats, I associate you with Iranian hostages, 20 percent interest rates and malaise.”

Now, it’s one question whether anybody old enough to remember which of the two major political parties was primarily responsible for U.S. involvement in Vietnam, or for that matter which was the party of the KKK, would actually associate Republicans with those things (my own experience with partisanship suggests: yes, alas; facts are of little consequence in these matters). But a better question is, how can any “young, conservative Republican” freshman congressman associate the Democrats with something as frivolous and irrelevant as the political failures of the Carter administration? Mind you, this conversation occurred in 1995! 

It may be another 15 years later now, and I may not be a Republican, but when I think about Democrats, I think about leftist policies; I think about liberalism leaning harder and harder toward socialism. And the first real problem I think about is legalized abortion, not political dilemmas. Politics have real consequences; it is not just a game to determine who gets to hand out the goodies, and who gets their pockets stuffed.

There are real serious reasons to oppose the Democrats, and I’ll happily put a separate post together to identify some of them. But I’ll say this much about Joe Scarborough’s crusade to span the great partisan divide: it’s a sham. He might be all smiles and handshakes, but he’s a completely empty suit with nothing but trivial platitudes to offer in exchange for his healthy paycheck. If you can’t come up with a serious reason to oppose your opponent, then what are you doing in the game – other than looking for an angle to cash in on?

In the end, even though Malkin’s snarl was off-putting, at least you know where she stands, and why she thinks its important to stand there. That is, at least you can trust her. Not so Joe.

In the on-going debate over how to improve the American healthcare and healthcare delivery systems, the professed intent of most of the players has been to increase “access” or “coverage,” by extending benefits to people who currently do not have such access. Ostensibly, this is because “access” and/or “coverage” is priced out of reach for these folks, on account of some combination of raw poverty, and unavailability of employer-provided/subsidized health insurance, which is the vehicle through which most non-elderly Americans access the healthcare system. I spent almost a decade of my life numbered among those without medical insurance, and I’m familiar with the significant limitations of the current model, from the distortions introduced by the prevalence of employer-sourced benefits, to the reluctance – especially among the young – to view healthcare costs as a necessary out-of-pocket expense, similar to food, clothing, or shelter.

In any policy debate, a central component of the debate is the question: Who benefits? Apart from identifying precisely what the need is, and how it might be met, we need to have an understanding both of who should benefit, as well as who actually would benefit under any given proposal. Perceiving that adequate healthcare, whatever its precise definition (which must be defined in order to make rational policy decisions), is a universal necessity for living a fully flourishing life, many public voices have taken to calling for the recognition of a universal right to healthcare, and, not infrequently, of identifying the various “reform” packages proposed by Democratic leadership with such a universal mission.

But what does “universal” mean when used in the current political context? Does it truly mean universal, or does it merely say universal while meaning something else? And if it says one thing while meaning another, what are the implications typically associated with the term that cannot be legitimately claimed under these current circumstances, given the reality of what is actually meant when the term is being used? In short: How can this idea be invoked honestly, and – hence – profitably?

Consistent with decades of Catholic social thought, the Catholic Church, at least in the form of the USCCB, has thrown its moral weight behind the idea of a program of universal access to healthcare (whatever that particular term might mean), but there certainly has not been a single proposal put on the table during this debate that would come close to meeting a catholic understanding of the term “universal.” However, I’ve seen no evidence of anyone in the American hierarchy pointing out that disconnect, with the exception of the particular incongruity confronted in the abortion problem.

To a Catholic, it is a breathtakingly cruel mockery to invoke the character of universality on a healthcare plan that not only excludes a subset of the human race from the scope of said care, but positively persecutes them to a violent death at the hands of those they love the most. Yet, to the progressives behind the current program, abortion is part and parcel of the initiating agenda. It is quite beyond me how the bishops think they can lie down with the whore of misanthropic progressivism, in a foolish attempt to sire a bastard offspring that will manage to obsolete charity through benevolent state power, yet avoid the stink that naturally arises (the public funding of abortion) when they do. The bishops, I trust, will continue to refuse to support any program that is remotely pro-abortion – I would not suggest otherwise – but until the architecture of reform is rooted in a philosophical and political view of the world that is not wedded to the legalized murder of innocents, it strikes me as myopic to think that there could be room for a legitimate cooperation, devoid of complicity in evil. I don’t get their willingness to be strung along.

Nonetheless, other problems remain at the gate. For example, it would be politically impossible to include health care coverage for illegal aliens in our policy implementation, but Catholic social doctrine in no way distinguishes among persons on the basis of citizenry. The Church’s legitimate voice in the argument must speak to the implications of the dignity each human person possesses as a creature formed in the imago dei. Not only does such a perspective transcend the status of citizenry, it by definition also transcends national boundaries altogether.

The truth of the matter is that if the issue is to be framed as one of universal social justice from a Catholic perspective, every right to healthcare ascribed to a “poor” citizen of Anytown, USA, must also be ascribed to non-citizens within our borders, as well as “the least among us” in the far-flung corners of the earth. I’m not proposing this as an ad absurdum argument against healthcare reform. To the contrary, I believe it is in fact entirely true that local illegals and the remote destitute have the same claims as the rest of us to anything that can be construed as a human right, including healthcare. Political rights can be circumscribed by politics, but not human rights.

Nor am I trying to make the perfect the enemy of the good – suggesting that the Church cannot or should not support a plan that partially solves a problem without solving the whole thing. Provided that a plan does actually show promise of making progress toward a legitimate goal (in my opinion, a dubious assertion in this case), it would certainly be appropriate to propose its provisional value. But invoking the symbolism of absolute terms like “universal” upon what is at best contingent is misleading, a situation particularly deleterious when it involves spiritual leaders entrusted with the task of distinguishing the contingent from the absolute. It not only lulls the gullible into a false sense of sanctity, but as in this case of Obamacare, it obfuscates the absurdity inherent in the project of reducing human brotherhood to a political program.

Of course, if the American people had to consider the possibility of tax-payer funding of a system of healthcare (whatever that means) that would serve the whole word, it would be (rightly) laughed down as a cruel hoax that was utterly impossible to fund, staff, administer, or police. But even if we proscribe the vast majority of the world’s needy, and limit participation to Americans, these practical absurdities, so readily evident when we consider the prospect of a genuinely universal scope, are hardly resolved, and common folk know that – as is evident from the steadily growing disapproval of Obama’s project among the American citizenry.

Nevertheless, supposing we get beyond the Catholic bishops’ amalgamation of the Church’s social doctrine regarding the universal dignity of man onto what is (of necessity) a much less ambitious undertaking – that of the forcible redistribution of particular resources among a recognizable elite (e.g. U. S. citizens and documented aliens) – we’re still faced with the hard reality that the finite inputs available to any such system will be far exceeded by the output demands that are implied in the expectations of pro-“reform” arguments calling for the expansion of “coverage” to some many thousands of people who are presently not covered.

Not only does this program threaten to bankrupt the country by redirecting huge sums of money from other needs and uses into the already financially bloated healthcare market, it is counting on the availability of services that often do not exist, both of which influences will only serve to increase the cost of healthcare, defeating the very purpose that the program allegedly seeks to serve. This is pretty basic arithmetic. We do not presently have a meaningful surplus of “health care,” and it will not be possible, within a rational universe, to provide additional goods and services without either increasing their supply, or reducing their availability in some other quarter.

This is precisely the prospect being faced by the elderly dependent upon Medicare, which is expected to lose half a trillion dollars in funding in order to make subsidy dollars available elsewhere. This funding shift can only exacerbate the problems providers like the Mayo Clinic already face with Medicare, and will surely accelerate the current movement by these providers out of the Medicare system. This is a pending elderly healthcare disaster being facilitated by the Democrats, even while the President himself is singing the praises of the very providers finding themselves forced to get out from under the abysmal government system. Incredible.

A knave, at this point, might be tempted to accuse me of thinking that those presently going untreated “don’t deserve” treatment, or some such hogwash, but that is not the case at all. I am merely pointing out what should be an obvious fact: that health care, like all goods and services, operates in a complex economy in which price and availability are strongly influenced by the levers of supply and demand. This influence is not a capitalist invention imposed upon hapless society by mean-spirited businessmen; it is an explanation of how economies really work. You can’t reduce costs by imposing a tax structure that reduces supply, increases demand, and depresses cash flow in the general private sector. And price-controlling healthcare services would ultimately have the same effect on healthcare as rent controls invariably have on housing: it’s a disaster for the poor, and for society on the whole.

I have yet to hear a proponent of progressivist “solutions” admit that this economic reality might possibly pose a difficulty to the healthcare socialization project. In their determination to believe the rightness of their cause, they seem to have convinced themselves that there is no real cost to any of this, that the problem of inequitable distribution is simply one of “unfairness” in which scarcity plays no role, and that they can even achieve better than market-optimal results while actively sabotaging market incentives, such as lowering the payments made to doctors under Medicare. Sheer delusion.

I live in a populous area, just outside of Boston, which is also one of the world’s premier hotspots for health care technology. I suspect the supply-to-demand ratio for health care around here is about as high as it is anywhere, and it’s already not easy getting timely appointments, at least if you are not already a patient. Knowing what we know about the notoriously long waiting periods afflicting patients in Canada and other countries that have socialized their systems, how can we think we are seriously addressing any kind of lack-of-healthcare problem when we’re not attempting to find a way to increase the availability of healthcare itself? Trying to frame the healthcare access problem as one simply of inability-to-pay on the part of a victim class is both wrong-headed and counter-productive – unless your goal has less to do with caring for people than it does with establishing state control of healthcare. Clever slogans might be politically expedient, but they tend to be economic time-bombs.

The Democratic proposals put forth by each Congressional house would significantly raise healthcare costs across the board, fail to provide healthcare consumers with any needed new options outside of government controlled exchanges, destroy market incentives for both third-parties and healthcare providers, discourage providers from serving the elderly and other less affluent segments of society, discourage entry into the healthcare field at both institutional and personal levels, encourage artificial demand for unnecessary services by frontloading costs into taxes and premiums, create the typical government feeding trough and corruption that doling out tax dollars invariably creates, facilitate the continuation of enormous wastes of time, money, and resources as a consequence of medical malpractice law abuse, and, of course, exclude the most vulnerable members of the human race from even the most fundamental of protections. To call these plans “universal” in any sense at all – even provisionally – is an utter farce.

So who benefits? Beyond the advocates for unlimited state control of human society, I don’t see how anyone benefits. Sure, there will be rent seekers of various stripes who line their pockets – it’s impossible to spend $2.5 Trillion without making somebody rich – but the net result to the healthcare system- and the people it serves, will be a certain loss.

There’s sure been a lot of chatter over the past week or so about the Ted Kennedy funeral, and Cardinal O’Malley’s participation in it. This is hardly surprising, given how divisive a character Kennedy was. Cardinal O’Malley, in what strikes me as a surprising move in several respects, has gone public with an explanation of his decision, in response to extensive criticism that undoubtedly ranged in impetus from befuddlement to anger. I appreciate his attempt at explaining himself – as I appreciate the difficulty of this whole problematic affair – but there are some elements of this episode I find deeply troubling.

I was among the many who were dismayed at certain aspects of the handling of the affair, though I didn’t feel it was appropriate to comment on at the time. Then there were  a couple thoughts in the Cardinal’s comments that struck me as diverting focus away from the real issue at hand, and my trouble with the whole matter was compounded when I read this article by Madison (Wisconsin) Bishop Robert C. Morlino. At that point, I’d had enough.

Both men went out of their way to praise Senator Kennedy for the good work that he had done in various areas over the years. Now, whether or not the state-centric, “give a hungry man someone else’s fish” social problem solving approach, endemic to contemporary progressive liberalism which Kennedy exemplified, is truly good work, Kennedy clearly believed it was (as do so many others, including, apparently, both of these bishops). I’ve been to enough funerals to know that it seems to serve a legitimate pastoral purpose toward the bereaved to lionize even the most insignificant of contributions of the deceased, so I can certainly understand the approach in that respect (even if it obscures the real point of the funeral Mass), but not without simultaneously realizing that this was an exceedingly public situation, with a scope of pastoral impact that was not only far broader than the vast majority of funerals, but also decidedly more complex.

One of the more eyebrow-raising comments in Bishop Morlino’s piece was his assertion that the funeral Mass was a source of scandal in that it led people into sinful expressions of un-charitableness toward Kennedy. Archbishop O’Malley also seemed to use the opportunity to take umbrage at the angry, though without his brother bishop’s sharp dramatic flair. These accusations may be true, but they are made at the expense of the recognition of the profound betrayal felt by many good people within the Church – including not only those who fell into vindictiveness, but also many more who held their tongues and prayed for humility – at the sight of Church leaders seeming to shrug their shoulders at the most important spiritual crisis facing our culture. Bishop Morlino’s assertion, in particular, seemed designed to undercut, by anticipation of argument, any valid expressions of criticism stemming from the more obvious interpretation of the scandal attached to this Mass, namely: the projection of the heretical idea that the culture of abortion is – or can be made – compatible with the sacramental life of the Church. It’s not as if the Church is not deeply embroiled in this very heresy on an on-going basis!

I’m not suggesting that the matter of whether or not Senator Kennedy should have been afforded a Catholic funeral is one for you or I to consider, for it is not only not our decision to make, but is dependent in large part upon that which we cannot possibly know – namely his relation to Christ and His Church at his death, a matter ultimately hidden in the interior forum of conscience. Besides, it hardly seems charitable to even consider denying a Catholic funeral to anyone who desired one. But there is an exterior forum as well, which the Church – the episcopacy in particular – has a duty to attend to, and if a latae sententiae excommunication is incurred by a woman procuring an abortion, her abortionist, and any others formally collaborating in the crime, it is awfully hard to see how a legislator who was an open and unapologetic  promoter of abortion “choice” would not also be guilty of formal cooperation when said “choice” was inevitably made. Senator Kennedy’s views and actions in defiance of the moral order – and the Church’s clear teaching – were so well-known as to be notorious. He was the poster child for pro-abortion Catholics.

So while it’s all well and fine for a bishop to presume reconciliation, it seems to me a great disservice to the many looking on, who see only the public record, to make no attempt to publically acknowledge that the crimes committed by Kennedy required repentance and forgiveness. That might be a delicate thing to try to do under the circumstances, but I’m hardly suggesting I think the funeral was a good idea to begin with. And frankly, it would seem to be a pastoral imperative to make it very clear that this rampant heresy of rationalized murder is a clear and present danger to the immortal souls of everyone in the Western world (and beyond). Charity may demand that we assume Ted Kennedy died in a state of grace, but whether he did or not, there is nothing anyone can do to change it now. In other words, the real pastoral issue (e.g. the saving of souls) has little to do with Ted, and much to do with those who have yet to face their own, certain, judgment. If participation in this abortion holocaust is a mortal sin, it is by no means “compassionate” to make it appear that it doesn’t really matter in the end. Who benefits from that, except the devil?

Bishop Morlino complained about a perceived lack of mercifulness coming from the critics within the Church, but the truth is that the notion of mercy was largely missing from the proceedings themselves. I think most of the critics would have been satisfied if the proceedings had reflected a communal plea for God’s mercy upon the soul of a brother sinner; indeed, it could have been a great teaching moment. Instead, we were treated to a polite evasion of the most crucial matters, a liturgical rite lamely disconnected from the spirit of the proceedings, and the public lionization of a notorious sinner within the context of the Mass (some have referred to it as a canonization, and with good reason – it was embarrassing listening to people speak of Kennedy as if he were already in heaven, expressions that were not only vacuous, but, coming during a funeral, violations of canon law).

But what bothers me the most, both in the subtler words of Cardinal O’Malley, and in the harsher words of Bishop Morlino, is the insinuation that those who hold and proclaim the sure and ancient teaching of the Church are responsible for a state of division within the Church – or at least of perpetuating it. It reminds me of the way people blame Pope Paul VI for dividing the Church at the end of the 1960s by publishing Humanae Vitae – as if the dissenters weren’t the ones responsible for the division!

I imagine the bishops are frustrated by the exposure of the rift, but let’s be very clear: there is visible division in the Church stemming from the liberal abortion license because some people support abortion rights in dissent from Church teaching, yet claim to be in Communion with the Church nonetheless. (Actually, the fact that any of the baptized assert abortion rights creates division in the Church, but that takes the matter to another level, beyond the scope of our consideration.) If people get angry at such injustice being done to the Church they love, perhaps it is with good reason, and perhaps they deserve to be treated with a bit more kindness than their shepherds have managed to muster here. God help us if we begin appeasing the demands for unfaithfulness to the truth, for the sake of avoiding uncomfortable conflict.

At the end of the day, though, the real issue seems to me to be the ability of the Church to fulfill her mission to proclaim the Gospel, where the question of her credibility is of paramount importance. The Church may be widely admired for her good works, but she is otherwise seen by many (including more than a few Christians) as just another political player on the world stage – and a clumsy one at that. Nothing in the handling of this matter provided evidence to the contrary, as far as I can see. By disregarding the great moral crisis that hung over the event like a storm cloud, the Church gave the impression that abortion is just another political issue, subject to the ebb and flow of circumstance and expediency. And that plays right into the hands of her enemies, eager to paint the Church’s outrageous claims to moral authority as fraudulent. That might be the most tragic scandal to emerge from this mess.

Still thinking tonight about the assassination of George Tiller; a few things have surprised me. I lead a busy life, and don’t spend a lot of time perusing news sources and other media outlets, so my sample size is rather small, but it seems from my limited perspective that the press coverage has been strangely muted. There is no serious debating that the journalistic class almost purely represents the cultural elite that embraces abortion, and I really thought they would be harping all over this.

I suppose it’s early yet, and it could still become a cause célèbre over the next few days, but it seems odd to see it low on the ratings totem pole of major liberal news outlets. Of course, that could very well be explained by the likelihood that the web site layouts, unlike the newsprint of old, are driven much more by visitor interest – by clicks – rather than by pure editorial agenda. That would suggest that the readers of these sites have more interest in plane crashes, and in Susan what’s-her-name who sings on British television. Strange, that, and it doesn’t fill me with a new optimism for my country or my countrymen.

The biggest surprise, though, was reading yesterday that Tiller had been killed while serving as an usher at church. In what kind of church could such a man possibly be a member in good standing, one might reasonably be tempted to ask? A community of devil worshippers? We’re not talking here about some clueless, complicit politician without moral spine, or something like that, we’re talking about a man who actually killed the babies with his own hands – thousands of them – and who was proud of what he’d done. But no, this was a Lutheran church. That is just staggering. Was the money he made from abortions put into the collection basket as the Lord’s portion? Did this guy have it in his head that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ? How could the condition of the Church ever have been brought to such scandalous woe?

So, “Tiller the Baby Killer” has met his demise – assassinated this morning during church services. I can only groan over the anticipated avalanche of righteous indignation cascading from the heights of the pro-abortion ranks. Like the proverbial mandatory pinch of incense for Caesar, everyone who is publicly pro-life will be required to preface any and all remarks on the matter by condemning the assassination. I am not an advocate of violence – assassination or otherwise – so I have no personal  problem with condemning the act, but I do have a problem with the screwball notion that apologists for the legal and shameless murder of literally millions of “unwanted” innocents can somehow paint as morally irredeemable anyone who fails to sufficiently condemn the extra-judicial killing of a mass murderer. That is simply perverse. I’m sorely tempted to say “I’ll condemn his murder as soon as you condemn his daily murders-for-profit.”

There is no doubt, however, that abortion proponents will quickly and loudly hoist the flag, charging hypocrisy against not simply the man who carried out this act, but the pro-life movement as a whole. This is an absurd assertion, for even if the entire pro-life movement endorsed assassinating notorious abortionists (as opposed to just the tiny fringe who do see their way clear to such lethal vigilantism), it is surely faulty logic to assert that it is hypocritical to resort to murdering a mass murderer in order to protect countless further innocent victims.

Bonhoeffer, for example, is not considered a hypocrite for his involvement in the attempt to assassinate Hitler, but is rather admired for his courage and conviction – regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the act itself. Furthermore, history hardly finds fault with him, despite the gross violation of legal and moral norms his actions represented from the perspective of the Nazi system of thought. He (rightly) saw Hitler as a mass murderer and lethal threat to civilization, and (rightly or wrongly) determined that the best way to deal with him, under the circumstances, was to assassinate him. Was he right?

There is a vicious war being waged against the innocent unborn, and it should come as no surprise that some folks are tired of talking about it; tired of waiting for a political solution that never seems to really get any closer, but often seems to be permanently hardening into the kind of legal insanity that turned Bonhoeffer’s Germany into the textbook example of evil that it serves as today. Frankly, given what is at stake, I think it is a real testimony to the moral quality of the pro-life movement that this sort of thing is not much more commonplace.

This killing may not have been righteous, it may not have been wise, it may not have been prudent, it may not have been faithful to the spirit of the pro-life movement, it may have been an instance of despair triumphing over hope, but it sure isn’t a sign of hypocrisy. The basic pro-life principle is that human life is sacred, and must be defended from exploitation and destruction. That means that exploiters and destroyers must somehow be stopped. The ends cannot justify the means, but we should not be conned into believing (let alone declaring) that the killer has violated the core principles of the movement – therein confusing the guilty and the innocent. It is sufficient to say that there is a better way.

Hypocrisy? …The murder of unborn babies is a “personal choice” matter that we should all be able to disagree over amicably, while the murder of a notorious abortionist is beyond the pale? I don’t think so… talk about hypocrisy!

I suppose there are crazy things going on all the time, but there seems to be a concentration of them happening all at once. Every day brings news of more layoffs, and I wonder how many people will be unemployed before the spiral stops – and of course, I wonder if I will be among them. Meanwhile, more and more Ponzi schemes and other financial wrongdoing is being unearthed daily. Stewards of funds are being revealed as thieves, and countless reckless investors are finding out that the investments they gleefully thought were too good to be true, actually were.

The chorus of condemnation and accusations of greed that were trotted out by all the politicians and their media hacks against “Wall Street types” during the campaigns have been inconspicuously replaced by hand wringing over the fate of the “Main Street victims” who in fact acted just like their Wall Street counterparts in an irresponsible quest for a quick and cheap buck. And the government’s response to all this has been to throw “bailout” money at every squeaky wheel with political connections, meaning that the rest of us get to pay for the profligate spending of others, instead of being able to keep our savings. What are the odds that someone will eventually get angry about this?

It might help the cause that the “bailout” plans call for things like nine-figure sums of money for Nancy Pelosi’s “Family Planning” crusade, even if she couldn’t come up with a coherent justification for the outlay if her life depended on it (it saves the states money down the road? Where exactly is the state supposed to get its money if its citizens are being murdered in the womb?). Meanwhile, the anti-child theme is intensified with the President’s putting aside of the Mexico City policy, freeing baby exterminators to push their brutal abortion “solution” around the world with American tax receipts.

American culture has been immoral, in many ways, for a long time, and none of this is really new. But it’s too often too easy to look beyond the day-to-day prevalence of an enabling immorality when the end result is a comfortable living. I wonder if maybe the difficult character of these days might give sufficient moral energy to enough of us, that an adequately forceful cry of “enough already” might actually be raised to a point of carrying some political weight? Could it be that the time is finally ripe for some serious opposition to the status quo to arise?

Being not only the day after the day after President Obama’s inauguration, but also the anniversary of the dreadful Roe v. Wade decision, I was thinking quite a bit today about the abortion problem. Being well aware of his earlier statement to Planned Parenthood that could be interpreted to mean that the first thing he would do after obtaining the Presidential office would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, I’ve been warily eyeballing some news sources for the past couple days, waiting to see if the President picks up on the theme. Not that I think it likely too soon – I just can’t imagine the President wanting to roil the waters at this time – but I have little doubt the Congress will drop the bill on his desk for signature in the not-too-distant future, leaving him no choice but to deal with it. And his world will change that day, one way or another.

From what I can gather, he made no mention of it today. releasing instead a canned remark on Roe v. Wade that made the remarkable claim that the decision “stands for a broader principle: that government should not intrude on our most private family matters.”

Last I knew, Mr. Obama was quite supportive of governmental intrusion into the very heart of the family itself through the issuance of licenses of marriage and certificates of divorce, as well as of intrusive governmental oversight of the welfare of children (even to the point of the government taking child custody if it deems it appropriate), and intrusive government oversight of the quality of domestic relations between husbands and wives in the form of applying laws relating to domestic abuse, and intrusive governmental oversight of family finances, in the forms of both establishing and enforcing alimony and child support arrangements, and in the a priori prioritization of massive family expenditures through taxation, and of course – last but hardly least – government control of the education of children.

But perhaps Mr. Obama is suggesting that these other things are private family matters of a lesser sort, as opposed to the killing of children, which qualifies as being a most private family matter – and that therefore he knows to draw the line of governmental intrusion at the killing, because – Ba’al knows – we can’t have governmental interference in the killing of children, except perhaps to pay for it with the money of those who find it morally outrageous.

All the fawning that’s fit to publish…

It’s been a rather surreal two days, focused around the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of these United States. The people around me all seemed to be grounded rather normally, but every time I’ve braved the elements and exposed myself to the mainstream media, it’s as if somebody (me? them?) has entered another world.

I’ve stayed far away from TV for the most part, but I was walking through the living room last night while Joyce had MSNBC playing, and I heard popular historian Ken Burns tell Keith Olberman that, if MLK’s “I have a dream” and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address speeches were 10’s, he would rate Obama’s inaugural address an 11. Aside from vanquishing whatever professional respect I might have had for this made-for-TV intellectual, it was just plain embarrassing. Obama – at his best – is vacuous compared to those two men, and from all other accounts, the inaugural speech was not even vintage Obama.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe’s web site today offered the following tease for an inauguration-related “human interest” story:

Residents were frozen in place yesterday, spellbound by the unifying spectacle on their televisions.

The unifying spectacle? I appreciate that a lot of people are excited about what happened yesterday, but a victory party on the part of those who feel they have won – as much of a spectacle as it may be – hardly constitutes a unifying moment. Unification would seem to require the establishment of some sort of common ground among adversaries, not a simple reversal of political fortune. Those of us, for instance, who see the current abortion holocaust as the gravest moral evil this nation has ever perpetrated (and there is no small number of us) are horrified at the prospect of this man becoming President, because of the positions he has taken, and has pledged to maintain, on matters of the most profoundly serious social morality. I hardly feel like part of the party today, and I’m surely not alone in that.

Beyond the social politics and other policy storm winds of Obama, there is another element to the hoopla I find deeply disturbing. At one point today, I clicked through a few links and was browsing a forum discussing the Event, and a commenter opined that the Event was of almost unprecedented historical importance, because a Black man had been elected President of the U.S.A. He then instructed those who disagree with him to “stop being such haters.” Now, I am getting so completely fed up with the relentless insults coming from the radical left wing and their allies, in the form of accusing anyone who disagrees with them of “hating,” that I almost lost my cool at that moment. But that aggravation aside, I think there is an even more perverse intellectual error going on in this person’s thinking, and it is representative of what I see all around me today.

To a certain extent, I can understand the excitement around the symbolism of a Black man being elected President – especially among those considerably older than me. Having been born in 1960, I don’t really remember the Civil Rights movement of the mid-sixties. I was vaguely aware of the “Black Power” movement that came a bit later, but I came of age in the era of Equal Opportunity laws and Affirmative Action; a time when the Black man clearly became the worst enemy of his own people. Those with longer memories, who remember the systematic mistreatment and the struggle for basic justice and respect (and especially those who experienced it), will understandably place more importance on the symbolism of Obama’s ascent to the Presidency, but I think there is a serious danger in allowing symbolism to overshadow reality, such as we’re witnessing in the media’s interpretation of the “spectacle.”

After all, "a Black man" was not elected President, Barack Obama was. If Colin Powell had been elected President, I would be a much happier camper today. If Alan Keyes had been elected President, I would be happier still. Symbols do not get elected to public office, men and women do, and who those men and women are is of far greater import than what they are. I’m glad the United States has come to the point where a Black man can get himself elected President, but it fills me with a certain shame that the Black man we chose is one who embraces such misanthropic, unjust, and outright evil policies. Not because he is Black, but because – whether out of political expediency or a genuine but perverted moral conviction – he is committed to a radical support of a policy that involves the extermination of “undesirable” human beings. I couldn’t care less what color he is, and I’m disappointed that so many people do care – and care intensely.

But regardless of the motivations behind Obama’s support – and I have no doubt that it is quite complex – there remains this tendency to focus on the symbolic at the expense of the real. Politics is prone to this, of course, and Obama himself was shown to be a master of substituting symbolic language for substantive argument or suggestion during the campaign. Television in particular thrives on it, being as it is so poorly suited for intelligent discourse. As much as I wish people would reject Barack Obama’s politics, and as much as I admire Alan Keyes (albeit with reservations), I genuinely hope that the “spellbound” folks celebrating this inauguration would have been far less enthusiastic if it were Keyes being sworn in, because budgets and policies succeed the inauguration, and these things are crafted by men and women, not symbols. I hope they’re naively celebrating a misguided policy direction, and not a dangerously mindless accretion of the power of public sovereignty and devotion to a symbolic vessel. That, indeed, would be nothing but the most primitive form of idolatry, as Moses very clearly told his people many, many years ago. We do not need to go there.

Today was the feast day of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, whose profoundly wise words grace the title of this post. It’s hard to overstate what she meant to the world during the last years of her life. Everyone, regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof), saw her as a living saint. Just the idea that someone like that can exist in our cynical times is a testimony to the truth, one that quietly cuts through the fog of modern despair with a beacon of hope.

I can do no better tonight than to let her speak here in her own words:

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”

“Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor… Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”

“The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.”

“Abortion is murder in the womb…A child is a gift of God. If you do not want him, give him to me.”

“It is poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”

“Jesus has made Himself the Bread of Life to give us life. Night and day, He is there. If you really want to grow in love, come back to the Eucharist, come back to that Adoration.”

“We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. ‘I will be a saint’ means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.”

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle; I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”

ΑΩ