Still haven't found time for a real follow up, but here's a nugget from the new the new Messiah....the next Jack Kennedy...Arlen Specter's best political friend, talking about his support for contraception funding with Greta Van Someone-or-other....
Yep he's just like us!
SANTORUM:
...
I mean, the bottom line is my position is very clear. I've had a -- a consistent record on this of supporting women's right to have contraception. I've supported funding for it.
So -- I mean, this is a -- this is a -- in my opinion, this is an attack on someone's religious beliefs because I have a very strong belief, as does my family, in agreement with the Catholic church, somehow or another, that that's -- that's a -- that's something that people should be afraid of, shouldn't be afraid of it.
If you look at my record in the public, I've been clear about -- about that issue. I've had a consistent and long voting record on it. And I think this is the media trying to play -- you know, trying to play gotcha. It's -- it's absurd.
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
I (and dozens of other folks) received a political endorsement from a very nice, well-meaning woman from my traditional Mass group this week. She was excited that Rick Santorum was talking publicly about the problem of birth control, and she asked us all to support someone who “shared our values.” Her Santorum plea intrigued me—I haven’t seen a faithful Catholic run for highest office, except for Buchannan, who was in a way “before my time”—but I’m still not in Santorum’s camp, to say the least. The Ron Paul sticker is still on my car.
Anyways, I spent a couple of hours crafting a response to her endorsement. I haven’t “stretched my polemical legs” in quite a while, so I’m grateful she gave me the opportunity and the inspiration. Since I was moderately satisfied with how my response turned out, I’m converting it to a blog post. Here goes:
Santorum's personal rejection of contraception is admirable, of course, and it's somewhat in contradiction to...say...Ron Paul, who--as an obstetrician in the 70s and 80s--presumably prescribed contraceptives and performed sterilizations. I'm making that assumption because he's a Protestant, and if he hadn't wrote scrips for the pill, NARAL and Planned Parenthood would surely have found out and painted him as an extremist by now.
But I don't think Santorum's personal position on contraception...even in contrast to someone like Paul who must have personally promoted it (whether he knew better or not)...is enough to compel my vote. Why not? Obviously, someone like Ron Paul isn’t consistently pro-life. But at the most basic level, Santorum isn't consistently "pro-life" either. Santorum’s "pro-life" personal views didn't get in the way of his politics when it would have mattered most: his support of Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Senate primary a few years ago. When Santorum could have backed another pro-lifer, Pat Toomey, and tipped the scales, he didn't. Instead, he supported Specter, who was NOT ONLY a pro-abort who controlled the Senate Judiciary Committee (where the best pro-life judicial nominees need not apply, even in the GOP's best days), but was also a turncoat who switched to the Democratic party a couple years later. Every observer I've read agrees that if Santorum had stuck to principle and stumped for Toomey, Toomey would have won (instead of lost by 1.7%), we'd have had a better Judiciary Committee, hence better federal judges, and the Dems wouldn't have had a filibuster-proof majority in the next go-round. (BTW, Toomey did beat Specter the next time and go to the senate after Santorum lost his own seat to a Democrat!)
And really, the issue of outlawing contraception in national politics...it doesn't simply matter, and Santorum won’t pursue it. I'm not saying that it shouldn't matter. It should, but it doesn't. Maybe some day it will at least matter at the state level. It's like nationally outlawing all pornography or buggery or usury or no-fault divorce. They are all admirable goals but candidly, they are not achievable on a national level at our present time and place. Although the link between abortion and all that bad stuff I mentioned above is obvious to us traditional Catholics, most non-Catholics (and heck, perhaps most novus ordo Catholics) aren't intellectually or spiritually equipped to deal with the link right now. We laymen should work one-on-one to convert people away from contraception, and our Bishops and priests should preach against it. However, too much public talk of outlawing contraception by a national political candidate at the present moment will be counterproductive. It will be exploited by his pro-abort enemies and slow down all our efforts to stop the greatest and "most fixable" of these evils...abortion. On this issue, we will only succeed if we tackle only one thing at a time.
The lady said Santorum “shares our values.” Well, leaving the pro-life issue and moving on to look at Santorum's other values? I honestly can't say they're the same as mine:
FIRST Santorum's an interventionist, looking to keep a huge United States military presence throughout the world--running up more debt, getting more American boys killed, and making more foreign enemies. For Santorum, patriotism is about geopolitical power. For me? Nope, patriotism is about loving ones’ land for what it is, not loving one’s government for the power it can project over other governments. Patriotism for me doesn't include going from one undeclared war to another….especially when the next one will be against a huge, prosperous country with a large, well-organized and educated populace that can really fight back—i.e., Iran. Nor does it involve the same bankrupting globalist busybody strategy as that other recently-collapsed empire: Great Britain.
SECOND, Santorum loves Israel--a state and a society which is absolutely hostile to the Church, and which is the very cause of that the "Islamo-Fascism" that Sean Hannity and Billy O’Reilly and the other neoconservative blowhards denounce. I, on the other hand, recognize that Israel is not a reliable ally, and that Moslems don't hate us for our freedom--they hate us because guys like Santorum vote to send Israel the guns and tanks and planes (and bombs marked "Made in the USA") that are used to kill their co-religionists, or if they’re lucky, merely expel them from their ancestral homes and leave them fenced in and starving.
THIRD, Santorum also believes in centralization of government, for example, federalizing education and doubling the number of education bureaucrats (99% of whom probably hate homeschooling). I adhere to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity--that is, the exercise of power by the lowest level capable of doing so (the family, the local church, the community, the state, and only where absolutely necessary, by the feds).
FOURTH, Santorum loves the police state, having voted for all sorts of restrictions on our ability to travel and communicate, and all sorts of new mechanisms for monitoring the daily activities of people in the United States. I value freedom of movement and (in my 30 or 40 flights a year) recognize that the TSA goons, the humiliating porn scanners, and the other monitoring of our activities don't keep us "secure"--they are simply part of a subtle retraining US residents to be sheepish and compliant subjects of the totalitarian state.
Neoconservatives like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich love the general growth in government as much as "moderates" like Mitt Romney and liberals like Hillary Clinton and Barry Obama. While their rhetoric is couched slightly differently, all of them want more government, more federal intrusion on our daily life, more perks for their friends (be they Obama's Chicago Daly Machine wonks or Mitt's Goldman Sachs pals or Santorum's military contractor donors or Newt's insurance company lobbying clients). Santorum won't make it easier for the Church to pursue its mission. He won't make it easier for faithful Catholics to raise holy families. He won't make it easier for our boys to find good jobs. He won't create the conditions necessary to rebuild Christian culture in the United States. And of course, he won't outlaw contraception. He has so many "backs to scratch" that he probably won't even get around to nominating judges that will unwind the nonsensical web of Constitutional "privacy" jurisprudence that prevents states from regulating contraception, prohibiting abortion, and discouraging buggery.
A friend of mine who’s since moved out of state—a very well-formed guy--once recommended Frank Sheed's book, Society and Sanity. Sheed is on solid Catholic ground, and he's an eloquent apologist. One of the central points of the book is a consideration of Christ's answer to the Pharisees, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's...." He approaches modern politics (circa 1960, I think) in the form of two questions about government which should be distinct in everyone's mind, but which are often muddled...they are paraphrased by me as "Who gets to be Caesar?" and "What things are Caesar's?" which I'll further rephrase as "How far does Caesar's authority extend?" My friend also pointed me to where St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the same issues, but I found Sheed to be much more accessible.
So here we are in 2012: this is an election which should be more about the second question than it is the first. All but one of the candidates is focused entirely on the first question. They all want me to believe that if they're Caesar, I can trust them because they share my values, and they can do more for me, and they can do it better. The organs of the federal government will be more efficient and stronger, but they’ll serve my interests. Only one of the candidates has anything substantive to say about that second question, and only one wants you to think about the limits of Caesar's reach. And unfortunately, it ain't Catholic Rick Santorum. It's Protestant Ron Paul.
In a field of imperfect candidates (all either statists or liberals), Ron Paul not only opposes abortion, but he is the one who is the most likely to REALLY give new momentum to the life movement (perhaps more momentum than he himself intends). He'll install judges who read the Constitution as it is (imperfect though it may be) and throw out the reasoning in cases like Roe and Doe and even Carpenter (the case that invented the "right to privacy" that prevented states from regulating contraceptives) and Lawrence (the case that prevents states from outlawing buggery). He’s not touting a huge program of federal prohibitions in their place like some pro-life lobbyists want, but really, such a prohibition is a pipe dream. Returning the life issues to the states (where the battle can be fought and won at least in most places over time) is really the best we can hope for—and the best we should hope for. The several states, after all, are where the plenary power to punish offenses against life and property properly rest.
Also, even though Paul's economic positions aren't perfect, there isn't a Rerum Novarum candidate to compare him to. His Austrian economic theory (BTW, at least he can speak intelligently about economics--the other candidates can't) is a much more sound basis for economic policy than Obama's soft socialism or Romney's Goldman Sachs TARP capitalism or Santorum's military industrial cronyism. In the absence of a candidate with a workable Distributivist program (if there is such a thing), quoting or at least plagiarizing Hillaire Belloc, Pope Leo XIII, and GK Chesterton, Paul's the one candidate who will at least redirect the country in a general direction that could ultimately be refined to a Catholic economic order.
As for militarism and interventionism—Paul’s obviously not a jingo. And as for subsidiarity--that big question about the scope of Caesar's authority--it's clear that a Ron Paul administration will have a smaller federal government--leaving more room in our society for families, the Church, communities, and states to operate and seek the Good on their own. I don't think anyone would argue that point.
The restoration (or rather reformation) of American culture on sound Catholic principles won't be easy. Barring a huge cataclysm, it won't happen in my lifetime. But whenever and however it happens (if it happens at all), it can only come back if we clear away the choking roots of our out-of-control, anti-Catholic, antagonistic federal government, and leave some open ground for the shoots of a civil society where Catholic principles to grow and flourish. A Catholic Humanae Vitae candidate (or…for the pre-Vatican II crowd…a Casti Conubii candidate) who otherwise promises more central government control of society, more war, and more spending, isn't going to do that. But a Protestant obstetrician will do it, even if he may not really appreciated what he was doing with his prescription pad a few decades ago. Ultimately Ron Paul is not the best possible candidate, but this is a multiple-choice test, not fill-in-the-blank.
As I said before, the question is "Who understands what things are really Caesar's?" In each case, Ron Paul is the answer that comes closest to the correct one.
OK, before I begin, suspend disbelief.
Let’s make some assumptions…assumptions that you and certainly I don’t take for granted.
The Curmudgeon Cabal doesn’t have silver bullet to immediately kill the serious moral and cultural monsters that haunt our society. Admittedly, those moral and cultural problems are far more important than taxes, spending and the economy. There just isn’t a quick fix--except perhaps outlawing television, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. What’s been destroyed since the 1920s (or since the French Revolution, or the days of William of Occam) will need to be rebuilt over generations, not months or years.
But there IS a quick fix to the temporal, material problem, and the fix might actually be a first step (or a second step, after fervent prayer and mortification) in addressing the moral/cultural problems. The quick fix is what I’ll call the Curmudgeon Reform Act of 2011. There are 5 elements—so far:
Here are the details:
1. Replace the Social Security scheme with a real savings and disability plan. Eliminate payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare). Instead, require, for the first ___ years after the elimination, that every wage earner put 10% of his income in a privately managed, competitive but somewhat regulated welfare plan that provides disability and retirement income. Create a self-funded pension insurance program among the welfare plan providers to ensure at least a subsistence pension. Allow voluntary participation in Social Security and Medicare for people over 45 or so. Continue the employer-side taxes for a short while to help fund the folks currently on, or about to go on, the old system. Eventually, as the people’s savings ethic is restored and our charitable infrastructure is rebuilt, we can eliminate the mandatory savings plan. Or maybe we can’t.
2. Institute a low, simplified tax on ordinary income and long-term capital gains. Reduce taxes on ordinary income and long-term capital gains to a flat 5% or so on all income above the poverty level for each family. No deductions. Simplify the business tax rules so it’s easy to get to a net taxable income, and eliminate things like tax credits, accelerated depreciation, and the like. Tax every individual person and every limited liability entity (corporations, LLCs, LPs and LLPs) that function as a separate legal person. (Yes, this is double taxation, but at 5% / 10%, it’s a reasonable price to pay for the privilege of doing business in a non-recourse entity).
3. Retain or increase high taxes on short term speculation. Keep taxes on short term capital gains at a high level. Let's say 25%. Disallow the write-offs of short term capital losses. Yes, this would be said to “punish” short term investors. Why? Because they’re not really investors; they’re traders. We’ve gone from a society of investors to a society of speculators. Some speculation is necessary to ensure liquidity in our markets and to reward, in some degree, risk taking (that is, taking risks with ones’ own resources). However, high taxes on speculators will hopefully realign our capital markets.
4. Restore revenue generating tariffs on imports and adjust excise taxes to cover certain public goods. Institute modest tariffs on all imported goods. Not 40% or 50%. More like 5% or 10%. The tarriff should be a revenue mechanism, not a protectionist one. We won’t need protectionism if the Curmudgeon reforms are in place. Once again, it will pay to actually make things in the USA. Also, adjust excise taxes on things like motor fuel, as well as fees, to fully recover the cost of providing public goods like highways, so the taxes and the cost of those public goods are balanced and self-supporting.
5. Institute a new Culture, Welfare and Education tax (“CWE”) that will never be collected. Here’s the capstone of the plan: In lieu of all federal welfare, cultural and education programs, the Curmudgeon Cabal will institute a 10% tax on all income above the poverty level for the support of culture, welfare and education (sounds suspiciously like a tithe, doesn’t it?). The beauty of the CWE tax is that if it works, it will never be collected. We will allow a 100% tax credit (not a deduction…a dollar-for-dollar credit) for donations made to qualified charitable organizations. You know….organizations which are now referred to as 501(c)(3)’s. Although we hate bureaucracy and regulation, we acknowledge that we’ll need a few rules about this. Organizations will be subject to some minor regulation, somewhat as they are now, in order to assure legitimacy. They’ll also be classified: the big categories will be (a) physical welfare/poverty, (b) religion, (c) the arts, (d) the environment, and (e) education. Moneys flowing to these organizations will rebuild the societal infrastructure that was in place before the New Deal and the Great Society. The beauty is that the taxpayer--not the government--will decide how to allocate those donations between categories and which organizations within the categories to support. The only substantial restriction on the taxpayer is that no more than half of that 10% tax can go to any one category. Overtime, churches can restore hospitals, private education, and the like. Communities can support the arts (hopefully a restoration of true art, and nothing involving the use of feces). The cost of higher education can come down for those who should pursue it. Private conservation groups can buy and preserve habitats. Yada Yada.
In Conclusion
Now, I didn’t say The Curmudgeon Reform Plan wasn’t crazy. It is.
I didn’t say it would cure instantly the cultural malaise. It won’t.
I didn’t say it would bring about the Catholic confessional state. It can’t.
The plan (and the radical cuts in the federal and state government that go along with it) it be vigorously opposed by the greater DC real estate industry--not just the machine of government itself. The housing and office markets in DC, Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia will be devastated as out-of-work bureaucrats leave to find private sector jobs in the Heartland. But heck, maybe it will help the real estate market in Detroit?
All and all, the Curmudgeon Reform Plan can’t be worse that what we’re doing now. And, since this is a sorta, kinda Catholic blog (or at least a blog by a Catholic), I point out that it will be good for Holy Mother Church. I eagerly await the USCCB endorsement.
OK, I’ve already thought of one necessary change. Five percent on ordinary income may be a pretty high rate, considering that President Curmudgeon will be eliminating the federal welfare system, reducing the military to its proper role national defense (instead of imperial domination), ending foreign aid, reinstituting modest revenue-producing tarriffs, and otherwise moving to a consumption-based tax system for roads, etc. Let’s make it 3%.
Cheers!
Gosh, what a wonderful country this would be if you could walk onto a plane again in the "land of the free" (insert guffaw here) without being accosted, stripped, sexually assaulted, and irradiated by those bastards.
Man, Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot would have wet their pants with glee if they'd have been able to be as intrusive into the lives of their ordinary subjects as our government has managed to be.
Do me a favor, and when you fly next time, and some TSA goon expects you to answer politely when he demands you speak to him, ask him point blank when he's going back into the fast food industry.
As I was desperately looking for comfort, rationalizaton and self-justification for myself and Mrs. Curmudgeon, what with the fact that more than half of the little Curmudgeons are illiterate, I stumbled upon a passage from an "old friend" from graduate school, Richard M Weaver:
What the defenders of present civilization usually mean when they say that modern man is better educated than his forebears is that he is literate in larger numbers. The literacy can be demonstrated; yet one may question whether there has ever been a more deceptive panacea, and we are compelled, after a hundred years of experience, to echo Nietzsche’s bitter observation: “Everyone being allowed to learn to read, ruineth in the long run not only writing but also thinking.” It is not what people can read; it is what they do read, and what they can be made, by any imaginable means, to learn from what they read, that determines the issue of this noble experiment. We have given them a technique of acquisition; how much comfort can we take in the way they employ it? In a society where expression is free and popularity is rewarded they read mostly that which debauches them and they are continuously exposed to manipulation by controllers of the printing machine…. It may be doubted whether one person in three draws what may be correctly termed knowledge from his freely chosen reading matter. The staggering number of facts to which he today has access serves only to draw him away from consideration of first principles, so that his orientation becomes peripheral. And looming above all as a reminder of this fatuity is the tragedy of modern Germany, the one totally literate nation.
--from Ideas Have Consequences (1948), pp. 13-14.
Take THAT, Barbara Bush!
"Holocaust deniers like Williamson will find no sympathetic ear or place of refuge in the Catholic Church, of which he is not—and may never become—a member," said a commentary signed jointly by Mahony, head of the nation's largest archdiocese, and two officials of the American Jewish Committee.
"The cardinal wishes to send a clear signal to the Jewish community that Williamson is not a member or even welcome in the Catholic Church until he renounces his views," said Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the archdiocese.
Conahan, who along with Ciavarella faces up to seven years in prison, did not make any comment on te case.The only hope is that they get sent to some prison where there's a once-innocent teenager, ruined by these bastards, with an axe to grind (yes, a literal axe).
The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress'd and kill'd:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
But of course, we aren't governed by a conscience any more...either a good one like Shakespeare's King Henry or a bad one. We're governed by the mob, and by the corrupt men who are its master. So we can expect these guys to get off with a weekend of picking up trash all the same. It will be curious to hear if this gets meaningful attention in this age where government is good.
On the other hand, it would be delightful if perhaps we could imprison 1,000 to 2,000 judges for parking tickets, minor offenses and arrogant behaviour. Turnabout's fair play!
$10
Metro on Craigslist. Project car, anyone? - Fuel Economy ...
Radio has "William Shatner Christmas carols" cassette tape stuck in deck, enjoy. ... must tow (preferably on a trailer with a solid deck and sides to avoid ... MPG - 2006
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