Jimmy Akin – Page 544

Jeb, Call Your Brother NOW!

It’s time for an intervention in the Bush family.

I know that, as governor of Florida, you are very concerned about the troubles your state is in as a result of Hurricane Wilma. You have a lot of troubles on your plate right now, and our prayers are with you and the Floridians who are suffering from this natural disaster.

But there is another matter that you and other family members must attend to. The Bushes are a political family that seeks to be one of the premier families of American politics, like the Kennedies used to be. But your brother, the president, is rapidly destroying the family’s chances of continuing to play a leading role in American politics.

Your father, it must be admitted, is not fondly remembered. He was elected in order to continue the conservative vision of Ronald Reagan but instead he is judged to be as a mediocre successor who made glaring mistakes that have permanently tarnished his reputation. Chief among these were raising taxes, failing to deal with Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, and appointing the walking abomination of David Souter to the Supreme Court.

Your brother is in the process of making parallel mistakes.

Though he was smart enough to pass tax cuts that have stimulated the economy, his flagrant and unconstrained government spending is likely to eradicate the good done by lowering taxes.

The current Iraq War is, as you know, a real political albatross. Your brother’s intentions may have been good and going to war may have been the right decision at the time, but the failure to find WMDs and the ongoing insurgency have given your opponents all the resources they need to use this war as a colossal embarrasment to your brother.

Now we come to the Harriet Miers situation.

As you know, it’s a catastrophic mess that was created when your brother went against the advice of his advisors and picked a stealth nominee who also plays into the cronyism charges to which your brother is vulnerable. The problems with Harriet Miers are so numerous that I can’t possibly go into them now, but the important point is that your brother has totally welshed on his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

He has stabbed the conservative movement in the back at a moment that should have been the culmination of thirty years of intense effort to take back the Court from the justices who have been usurping the democratic process in this nation and imposing their own values on the land.

Your father is ill-remembered for his "Read my lips: No new taxes" promise, which the then broke. Your brother is now in the process of similarly destroying his own reputation with conservatives by breaking his promise to appoint justices like Scalia and Thomas.

For further background on the scope of the disaster, please read

THIS ARTICLE BY JUDGE BORK

AND THIS ARTICLE BY THE WASHINGTON POST ON MIERS’ JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY

AND THIS ARTICLE (FROM YESTERDAY) BY ROD DREHER ON HOW YOUR BROTHER HAS REPEATEDLY BETRAYED THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT AND NOW THE CHICKENS ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST.

I mean, you read these things and it’s simply flabbergasting. The incoherence and inconsistency of Miers’ views cries out for explanation, and the likely explanations are not good ones. One of my blog readers insightfully commented:

When she sent back the pro-life questionnaire, she was running for
political office as a conservative in a conservative city. I think
political exigencies are enough to explain it, especially considering
the paucity of other evidence as to her being pro-life (like church
attendance and paying the minimum to attend a pro-life dinner once).
Choosing between the quesionnaire filled out while running for office
and the speech given while not running for office, I give the speech
more weight, especially since it is at a later date after the election
of Bill Clinton and after the Casey decision. At best, she plays to the
crowd she’s with and that is a very bad thing for a prospective justice to do.

Before reading that article, I thought she was probably O’Connor II
with fewer qualifications. Now I think she’s as likely to turn out to
be Harry Blackmun in a dress, both in terms of mediocrity and in terms
of judicial philosophy.

Blackmun in a dress is very possibly correct! She may actually be worse than Souter!

The longer her nomination remains in place, the worse things are for your brother. His bridges to his base get more burned with every day that goes by. It’s time for a swift and dramatic course correction.

This is not only for purposes of salvaging your brother’s reputation and his ability to accomplish anything in his remaining three years in office, it’s also for purposes of protecting the family’s legacy and political future.

I mean, your father was something that conservatives had to overlook in nominating your brother for the presidency. "Yeah, we know the first Bush was bad–a phony conservative–but this one is better–he’s a real conservative" was the message.

Now it looks like that is not the case and that your brother is a phony conservative, too.

Frankly, I don’t care what his personal views are as long as he delivers where it counts, and where it counts is the Supreme Court.

So let me tell you what will happen if the Miers nomination goes forward and (God forbid) she gets on the Supreme Court and turns out to be anything other than a firm originalist: Conservatives will not trust your family with the chance to run for the presidency again.

The first President Bush was a "fool me once" situation, and the second President Bush is turning into a "fool me twice"situation. There will be no third President Bush.

The message that will be driven home to the conservative base is: "You can’t trust the Bushes. They’re phony conservatives who will lie to get into office and then stab you in the back by breaking their most important campaign promises. They’re Big Government big spenders, they’ll get you into bungled wars in the Middle East, and they’ll put walking disasters on the Supreme Court. You simply can’t trust them. Find someone else."

Now, as a Bush, you presumably have a much more positive image of your family than this, but this is the image of your family that will be confirmed in the minds of the conservative base if things are put right in a hurry.

Your brother being notoriously stubborn, though, means that he may dig in his heels and resist putting things right.

That’s where you (and other family members) come in.

For the sake of your brother, the sake of your family, and the sake of the nation, it is time for an intervention in the Bush family.

Please, Jeb, pick up the phone.

A One-Way Trip To Boot Hill

Today–October 26–back in 1881, the gunfight at the O.K. corral occurred.

It’s the most famous gunfight in the history of the Old West, and it took all of thirty seconds. (During which thirty shots were fired.)

It’s also a source of enduring controversy.

The battle pitted Wyatt Earp (pictured), along with his brothers Morgan and Virgil, together with the dentist Doc Holliday, against the Clanton brothers, the McLaury brothers, and Billy Claiborne.

When the battle was over, the McLaury Brothers and one of the Clantons lay dead. They are now buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery.

The gunfight remains a source of controversy because of disputes about who fired first, who was justified, and whether the fight should have taken place at all.

It went on to be the stuff of film and legend.

Wyatt Earp himself moved around the southwest and ended up in Hollywood, where he came to know various stars of Westerns, including a young John Wayne, who based his portrayal of lawmen on Earp.

What history will ultimately decide about the story remains to be seen. In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

NOTE FROM 2005: I am SO kicking myself! Dang it! I just undertook a trip to Arizona and wanted to go to Tombstone, where the gunfight occurred, but I thought I’d wait until whatever historical commemoration of the event that the local community has. I visited the town’s web site in preparation for my trip, but it said nothing about the anniversary. I had NO idea that it was just FOUR DAYS after I’d been in the state! I would have totally changed my itinerary to be there for that! Consarnit! Next year, I tell you!!!

Propositions 1-4

HERE’S THE FIRST FOUR OF THE BISHOPS’ PROPOSITIONS FROM THE SYNOD ON THE EUCHARIST.

Proposition 1 basically does two things: It formally gives the pope certain synod-related documents for his reflection and it asks him to produce "a document on the sublime mystery of the Eucharist in the life and mission of the Church."

Proposition 2 praises the liturgical reform following Vatican II. It goes on, however, to note:

Abuses were verified in the past [i.e., following the liturgical reform]; they are not even lacking today,
although they have diminished greatly.

This is an interesting statement. From what I can tell, it’s true. I wasn’t a Catholic back in the 1970s and 1980s, but my understanding is that liturgical abuses were MUCH worse back in the wild and wooly days following the reform. Folks were doing things that are virtually unheard of today, like reading passages from Jonathan Livingston Seagull in place of the gospel and such.

I can verify that, in the thirteen years I’ve been Catholic, the celebration of the liturgy HAS improved. There are still abuses, still things that really rankle, but they’re better than they were before. The release of the new GIRM did a lot to improve things, as has the steady hand that Rome has been exercising the last number of years in liturgical matters. Cardinal Arinze is definitely the right guy to have at the helm of the CDW right now for helping to guide the celebration of the liturgy in a continued positive direction.

No, compliance is not what it needs to be. Yes, there is still much improvement to be made. But the number of outright, flagrant abuses is down–at least in this country.

The second proposition goes on to say that the abuses don’t mean that the liturgical reform was bad or not a valid decision but that they call for greater attention to the way liturgy is celebrated, with the goal of fostering the "actuosa participatio" of the faithful–which is a technical term meaning that the faithful should pay attention and absorb what is going on at Mass.

Propositions 3 and 4 begin a section on the theology of the Eucharist. Now, I must confess that this is a style of writing that does not natively appeal to me. I don’t know why, whenever there is a document like this, the pastors of the Church feel the need to recapitulate the whole theology of whatever subject they’re dealing with.
They seldom say anything new in this part of the document, and it’s at this point that my eyes start to glaze over and I find it a long hard slog to get through to the interesting developments.

I recognize that there can be a catechetical value to such material and that people need to be reminded of the basic beliefs of the faith, but this was written as a private document for the pope, and of all people the present pope is least in need of such basic catechesis.

I think, instead, that what they’re trying to do is offer to the pope suggestions for the themes they want him to hit in the apostolic exhortation–as well as trying to show their appreciation for the Eucharist by celebrating it through the recapitulation of its theology in a meditative manner.

My own lack of appreciation for this style of writing I therefore take as revealing myself to have a more practical rather than meditative bent. Instead of wanting to meditate on the recapitulation, I find myself wanting them to cut to the chase. So this may say more about me than anything else.

My commentary on propositions of this nature is thus likely to be rather sparse.

Proposition 3 stresses the novelty of what Jesus did in instituting the Eucharist, as well as a number of other themes.

Proposition 4 stresses that the Eucharist is both a gift from God and a right of the faithful–that is, it is a gift to which God has given the faithful a right that the pastors of the Church must strive to accomodate so that the faithful can partake of the gift God wishes them to have.

More as more propositions become available in English.

A-Slippin’ An’ A-Slidin’ With His New Shoes On

In the Doc Watson bluegrass classic "Way Downtown," there’s a stanza that goes:

It was late last night when Willie came home
I heard him a-rappin’ on the door
He’s a-slippin’ an’ a-slidin’ with his new shoes on
Mamma said Willie don’t you rap no more

The line in blue may not be overly meaningful to a lot of folks today since they don’t wear shoes with leather soles, but it’s instantly intelligible if you do.

The reason is that when you buy leather-soled shoes, the leather at first is slick. It’s cured in a way that toughens it up to serve as . . . well . . . shoe leather, and the process makes it quite smooth. As a result, when you first put on a new pair of leather-soled shoes, you really have to watch your step because you’ll go slipping and sliding if you’re not careful.

It takes a day or two of walking around (particularly on asphalt and rough concrete) to get the bottoms of your shoes scuffed up enough that the slipperiness goes away. After that, you’re all set.

(Until you wear through the shoe leather and it’s time to get your shoes re-soled.)

I was put in mind of all this because on my Arizona trip my boots finally wore out. I’d already had them re-soled, and the leather on the sides had cracked where my little toe is. I’d had that patched, but on the AZ trip I hiked around so much that the patches broke and the leather ruptured in a way that made it impossible ot patch them again without the patch being obvious.

So it was time for new boots.

It had been for a while anyway, and I’d planned on getting some new ones before the Catholic Answers cruise in a couple of weeks (wouldn’t do to be going to fancy dress dinners with worn out boots!), so I went out yesterday after work and bought some.

As a result, today I was in the period where I was a-slippin’ an’ a-sliding with my new boots on.

But that’ll be over by tomorrow at the latest.

Oh, and here’s a picture for any who are curious (figgered I’d better explain them or I’d get questions when I post the next footfall mystery photo).

A Pope Of Surprises

B16 is such a cool dude. His papacy, thus far, is shaping up as a series of refreshing surprises. He’s marking his own course as pope, either breaking with papal tradition or restoring old papal traditions that have lapsed, and thus far I’ve been really delighted with the direction he has been moving things.

F’rinstance:

Following the recent Synod on the Eucharist, B16 did something unprecedented. Now, he’d already done some unprecedented things in terms of how the synod ran–allowing bishops to have "open mike" time for three minute speeches, for example, to better foster discussion amongst them–but at the close of the synod he did something really amazing.

He released the document of private recommendations that the bishops gave him regarding the Eucharist.

Y’see, normally each synod draws up a list of recommendations that are given privately to the pope. At the first few synods, that was ALL that happened. The pope got the recommendations and that was it. Then, after the Synod on Evangelization, Paul VI decided to write an apostolic exhortation (the one now known as Evangelii nuntiandi), and that became a new papal tradition. At the end of each synod the bishops would turn in their private advice to the pope and then he’d write an apostolic exhortation based on the private advice.

But this time B16 has made that private advice public.

YEE-HAW! KEWL!

There were rumors that this might be ALL that B16 would do–that he might just release the advice and not follow up with an apostolic exhortation (despite the fact that point #1 in the advice was to ask him to write an apostolic exhortation). That’s apparently not going to be what happens. B16 has announced that he plans on offering further elaboration on the points raised by the bishops in the exhortation, so we should be getting one.

But having the advice in hand at this stage gives us a greater insight into what the pope is likely to say in the exhortation. He will go beyond what they said, offering his own personal thoughts, but we still have an unprecedented insight into what the final document will be like.

Unfortunately, the complete text of the advice is only out in Italian right now.

Fortunately, Zenit is releasing it in English in a series of parts over the next few days (or that seems to be the plan).

The advice consists of fifty numbered "propositions" (though they’re really short passages rather than single propositions), and I’ll be taking the opportunity to comment on them as they’re released.

More later.

No Bowling For Rome

Did you know that goldfish bowls make fish go blind? Well, Romans aren’t too sure that such a factoid is true, but it was floated in the press in Italy. Other experts posit that such bowls do not provide enough oxygen. Rather than allow Junior and his parents to discover that Jaws lives longer in an aquarium than in a goldfish bowl (presuming that such is true), Romans have outlawed the bowls altogether.

"The city of Rome has banned goldfish bowls, which animal rights activists say are cruel, and has made regular dog-walks mandatory in the Italian capital, the town’s council said on Tuesday.

"The classic spherical fish bowls are banned under a new by-law which also stops fish or other animals being given away as fairground prizes. It comes after a national law was passed to allow jail sentences for people who abandon cats or dogs.

"’It’s good to do whatever we can for our animals who in exchange for a little love fill our existence with their attention,’ said Monica Cirinna, the councilor behind the by-law.

"’The civilization of a city can also be measured by this,’ she told Rome daily Il Messaggero."

GET THE STORY.

The civilization of a city depends on the welfare of its goldfish? I do hope that Romans sleep easier knowing that their elected officials have made the streets of Rome safe for goldfish.

Rod Dreher Has A Really Good Op-Ed Piece

It’s about President Bush and how a tipping point has been reached with the nomination of Harriet Miers.

Bush has, frankly, bungled an awful lot of stuff, and conservatives have been extremely forgiving of this on the promise that Bush would appoint justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.

Now that Bush has welshed on that promise, a whole lot of unforgiving is going on. If Bush doesn’t fix matters right quick, he’s in deep trouble.

EXCERPT:

American conservatism is in crisis at the moment because the bizarre Harriet Miers nomination imposed a surreality check on the right, forcing us to consider just how much nonsense we had gone along with for the sake of party discipline.

Where to start? With the LBJ-level spending? The signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which candidate Bush had denounced as unconstitutional? The race-preferences sellout in the University of Michigan cases?

There was also the cynical use of the federal marriage amendment, which the administration dropped after turning out the social conservative vote in 2004. And grass-roots conservatives cite the president’s intent to liberalize immigration policy with Mexico.

Then there is the Iraq quagmire, which, even if initially a worthy cause, has become a rolling disaster.

On top of this came the Katrina debacle, which further damaged conservatism’s claim to competent governance.

Conservatives, consciously or not, looked the other way for far too long, mostly because we felt it important to back the president in wartime and because nothing was more important to the various tribes of Red State Nation than recapturing the Supreme Court. For the first time in a generation, a conservative Republican president and a Republican majority in the Senate made that dream a real possibility.

Whatever else Mr. Bush might fumble, we trusted him to get that right.

Instead, he gave us a crony pick of no extraordinary constitutional expertise or discernible vision, except for love of Our Lord and George W. Bush, and support for racial preferences. This is what we drank the Rovian Kool-Aid for? The Miers selection was no isolated incident, but the tipping point in a series of betrayals.

I’d like to say that I agree with every word in Rod’s piece, though there are two things I don’t.

I, for one, never drank any Rovian Kool-Aid. I’ve been willing to ignore Mr. Bush’s flaws in order to get good Supreme Court nominees, but that’s not the same thing.

I also have to disagree with a specific word in this statement:

Mr. Bush has
alienated both a significant portion of his base and all of his
opposition, so he cannot hope to triangulate his way out of this one.
With his political blood in the water and toothsome challenges making
ever-tighter circles around his presidency, Mr. Bush should give his
mutinous mates a reason to toss him a life preserver.

This is almost entirely correct, but one word is wrong: toothsome. "Toothsome" means "delicious, agreeable, or attractive" (as in "a toothsome dinner" or "a toothsome wench").

Rod means "toothy." Other than that he’s on target.

One thing I definitely agree with is this:

Conservatism
is in an unhappy place now, but the movement is still bristling with
intellectual ferment and ideological confidence and is beginning to
look past the Bush era to new leadership.

Truth to tell, Mr. Bush needs conservatives a lot more than conservatives need him.

Darn, tootin’!

Suck it up and fly right, Mr. President! Swallow your peevish pride, can the Miers nomination, give us what you promised, and get back to business!

GET THE STORY.

Keep Your UN Off My Internet (Part 2)

The Bush administration deserves a lot of kicking for the Harriet Miers nomination, but there’s one thing it’s doing right at present: Taking a firm line against internationalist yahoos who want to seize control of the Internet and give it to the most hypocritical, corrupt, ineffectual political body on the planet . . . the United Nations.

EXCERPTS:

Three lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives called on Friday for the Internet’s core infrastructure to remain under U.S. control, echoing similar language introduced in the Senate earlier this week.

The resolution, introduced by two Republicans and one Democrat, aims to line up Congress firmly behind the Bush administration as it heads for a showdown with much of the rest of the world over control of the global computer network.

"Turning the Internet over to countries with problematic human-rights records, muted free-speech laws, and questionable taxation practices will prevent the Internet from remaining the thriving medium it has become today," said California Republican Rep. John Doolittle in a statement.

Countries including Brazil and Iran want an international body to oversee the addressing system that guides traffic across the Internet, which is currently overseen by a California nonprofit body that answers to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The European Union withdrew its support of the current system last month, and the issue is expected to come to a head at a U.N. summit meeting in Tunisia in November.

The Bush administration has made clear that it intends to maintain control.

What would the consequences be if we don’t hand over our Internet to the UN?

If a settlement is not reached, Internet users in different parts of the globe could potentially wind up at different Web sites when they type an address into their browsers.

And that would be unfortunate for people in other countries, but it’d be nothing compared to what would happen if control of the Internet were ceded to UN kleptocrats so that it could be turned into the same kind of sterling success as every other project the United Nations has touched in recent years.

U.S. lawmakers have backed the Bush administration’s stance, arguing that a U.N. group would stifle innovation with excessive bureaucracy and enable repressive regimes to curtail free expression online.

Amen to that!

GET THE STORY.

Harriert Miers: Not A Catholic.

Okay, y’know how Harriet Miers is a fallen-away Catholic who became a born again Evangelical?

NOT!

I mean, she’s an Evangelical alright, but it turns out that (despite claims to the contrary) she was never a Catholic.

Catholic News Agency is reporting:

The Diocese of Dallas has confirmed that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers is not Catholic; neither did she receive any of the sacraments of initiation in the Catholic Church.

The diocese reviewed its records after the media reported that the longtime Dallas lawyer reported that she had attended Catholic mass as a child. Acquaintances of Miers had also said she worshipped as a Catholic and attended Episcopalian and Presbyterian services.

So the good news is that we don’t have to worry about Harriet Miers having turned her back on the true Church.

The bad news is that she also isn’t a member of it (at present).

GET THE STORY.

One Nation Under … Christ?

It’s 1860 all over again … if Cory Burnell and his group Christian Exodus have anything to say about it. You’ve heard Revelation 18:4 ("Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins") used in reference to the Catholic Church, right? Mr. Burnell’s group has identified a different woman who should be abandoned.

The United States.

"Cory Burnell wants to set up a Christian nation within the United States where abortion is illegal, gay marriage is banned, schools cannot teach evolution, children can pray to Jesus in public schools and the Ten Commandments are posted publicly.

"To that end, Burnell, 29, left the Republican Party, moved from California and founded Christian Exodus two years ago with the goal of redirecting the United States by ‘redeeming’ one state at a time.

"First up for redemption is South Carolina.

"Burnell hopes to move 2,500 Christians into the northern part of the state by next year and to persuade tens of thousands to relocate by 2016. His goal is to fill the state legislature with ‘Christian constitutionalists.’

[…]

"Burnell picked South Carolina partly for its Christian majority and conservative politics.

"’Historically, Southerners do have a states’ rights mentality,’ he said. ‘Christians in the North are experiencing the most liberalism, or you could say persecution.’"

GET THE STORY.

Uh huh.

One of these days I’m going to write that essay I’ve been thinking about on the evangelistic value of silence. One of the major points of that essay will be to discuss how credibility can be destroyed when someone makes public an "outside-the-box" pet brainstorm that, as they say on "Saturday Night Live," is not yet ready for primetime.