McGurn’s WSJ Column Compares Cuomo with Quinn and Pat is the Loser. …Can We Dispense with Abe Foxman? Please? More.

                                              McGurn.

       A column Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal by William  McGurn, the paper’s chief editorial writer, points out  far more expressively than most—not all-- Chicago commentators the tale of two Democratic states and of two Democratic governors.  “Andrew Cuomo [the newly elected Governor of New York] and Pat Quinn offer strikingly different visions of the future,” is the subhead.  I thought I might quote it at some length.  

     “At yesterday’s inaugural in Springfield, Gov. Quinn delivered himself of an address that made ample use of someone’s Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations…I counted references to two presidents (Lincoln, FDR), two poets (Carl Sandburg and one-time Illinois  poet laureate Gwendolyn Brooks); his mother and father;’ the Book of  Wisdom; Isaiah; and St. Paul and the third verse of  ‘America the Beautiful.’

      “Apart from promising that `we will stabilize our budget,’  there was little hint that the taxpayers of Illinois  need any larger reform in the way the politicians handle  their money.

       “By contrast, before the first week of this new year was out, Gov. Cuomo had delivered separate inaugural and state-of-the-state addresses that would have drawn cheers at a Tea Party. Notwithstanding the occasional nod to certain progressive canons (e.g. same-sex marriage and public financing of political campaigns) the thrust was clear. If Mr. Cuomo were a Republican some of his metaphors—property taxes `killing’ New Yorkers, citizens feeling `betrayed’ by government—would  have him accused of contributing to America’s `climate of hate.’ He even used his first inaugural as governor to swipe from the Gipper’s first inaugural as president the quip that government today is more the problem than the solution.”

          McGurn notes how differently the two Democratic governors treat the House Speakers of their party saying it’s clear Cuomo can team with a Republican senate to offset the Democratic speaker “who remains the main obstacle to fiscal sanity in New York.”   In contrast,  Gov. Quinn “seems content to play junior partner to Illinois  House Speaker Michael Madigan whose iron grip over the public purse has put Illinois deeply in the red.”

           Bill McGurn gives us a taste of Cuomo tough rhetoric which sounds not  unlike Chris Christie: “[I]t cannot be underestimated.  Young people all across upstate New York who are leaving because they believe there is no economic future left.  The taxpayers on Long Island who are imprisoned in their homes because they can’t afford to pay the property taxes anymore but the value of the home has dropped so low that they can’t afford to sell the house because they can’t pay off the mortgage.  The laid-off construction worker in Brooklyn who can’t find a job and is fretting about what he’s going to do to feed his family when the unemployment insurance runs out.”

         In contrast McGurn cites the filmy rhetoric from Quinn, an outdated version of Kennedyesque dream-stuff, the worst example having been the cotton candy fluff spun up by Bob Schrum for Teddy’s 1980 convention  puffery which carries no nutrients at all: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die” …a quote from poet Gwendolyn     Brooks: “Today is our giant hour and nothing less than giant-hood will do for us in Illinois to confront our awesome challenge.” That’s same-old, same-old Quinn whom you are stuck with reportedly…not my view but the establishment media’s… courtesy of greying, over-privileged North Shore matrons drinking  mid-morning café latte at Starbucks, their reading glasses perched atop their expensive coiffeurs…who were scared that Bill Brady would steal their abortion rights by Personal PAC’s robo-calls  (notwithstanding  most of them are beyond the baby-bearing age and—most important—banning abortion is a federal not a state issue thanks to our dear Warren Court).

       Make it a point, will you to drop Personal PAC a line to thank them for giving us a Governor who as the willing tool of Mike Madigan is pledged to sign the  67% tax hike?  While you’re at it write and/or call Madigan’s and liberalism’s chief newspaper defenders— Carol Marin who’s just ecstatic with college girl auburn-head tossing excitement about everything liberalism does…and Mark Brown  who faithfully repeats the liberal line but who only yesterday, on discovering what it will do to his paycheck, complained about anonymous “pols” who overspend…not forgetting Neil Steinberg the yeah-yeah-yeah wise guy who at least has something the aforementioned don’t—a flair for writing. 

                                         Dishonest Abe.

       Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, is the ad hoc chairman of the group that scans the news everyday to determine what is offensive to the Jews.

       Occasionally good old Abe sees his job as a hunting license to support gay marriage, blister The Passion of the Christ and zero in on conservatives…even pro-Israel ones…if they offend his personal liberal sensibilities. .

      Of course Abe took out after Sarah Palin because in defending herself from the left-tilted mass media she did a TV statement mentioning “blood libel.” It would require a jingo Dem partisan like Foxman to feign cardiac arrest because she used a term from the medieval ages insulting to Jews—and so he issued a press release that strived to keep Palin animosity alive.  He was immediately joined by Andrea Mitchell of MSBC.   Happily however they were contradicted by Judaism’s greatest modern defender, Alan Dershowitz the Harvard lawyer who has come late in life to the truism that the Right is more sincerely friendly to Israel and the Left…particularly the Obama administration is abjectly pro-Palestinian. 

       Abe had to reach back to medieval times to call Palin anti-Semitic. In doing this he almost ties….almost but not quite…a black critic of Washington, D. C. mayor Anthony Williams….himself black…who was elected to his post in the 1990s.

      Williams was a notably successful mayor, an accountant, a fiscal conservative, a supporter of educational vouchers who would have been a splendid addition to any large corporation as a top financial officer.   One day at a news conference he stressed how much he had cut the city budget.  But…he stressed…he wanted to be sure that in so doing he had not shortchanged the city’s poor by slashing key social services.

      So in explaining the budget, he said We will not be niggardly to the poor.   The proper meaning of its etymology is, of course, “grudging or unduly sparing in spending.” Nothing to do whatsoever with race.

         The TV cameras showed this black mayor saying he would not be “niggardly” nd within an hour and a half a demonstration was held at his office, fortified by a number of council members protesting that he had tossed around the “n”word.

         It was very interesting to see Washington’s TV anchor people explaining the genesis of the word “niggardly.”  Finally their station managers told them:  Stop; it, will you?  People still don’t get it and they’re flooding our phone lines saying you’re justifying what Williams said! 

       Poor Williams never lived it down and his second term was his last.   Believe me after that no black…or white…or Hispanic…or Asian politician will use this honorable word again.

       All of which means that Abe Foxman and Andrea Mitchell are so sensitive they belong  with the group that demonstrated in Mayor Williams’ anteroom.

    

     

Western Civ-101: The Old-Time Benedictines vs. Harvard. The Romans: Paterfamilias…Aristocratic….Patriotic…Democratic.

 

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         BTW for those who felt I was too right-wing on ancient Greeks anent homosexuality, read The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton [1930] and The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto [1950].  Remember this is not meant to be a scholarly disquisition…but is derived from notes taken long-long ago when the classics were not regarded as immaterial. 

     Q.  How did the Romans differ from the Greeks?

     A.  Markedly.  The males of ancient Greece were not especially family men because they congregated at male-only consortia…missed a lot of what we call “quality time” with their wives and kids while their women stayed home and raised the children practically alone.  It’s fair to say Greek kids were practically fatherless.

     Q,.  Not so the Romans?

1. To the contrary. Roman families were bound up in patriarchy.  In the Golden Age,  Roman fathers were much better than the Greeks on women’s rights  But this they believed:  The style they followed was paterfamilias where the father was indisputably the head of the household and his word was law. So much so that technically a father could kill a child—although this was very rare. Their governing style was aristocratic and democratic. The state was sacrosanct. The statement, “I am a Roman citizen” was a badge of honor.  When they conquered the Greeks in the 1^st century B.C. the Romans hooted that the Greeks were luxury-loving, soft because of riches, hedonistic, carnal.  The best line about Roman patriotism was delivered  by a youth captured in an ancient war whose lines impressed our old Benedictines hugely.

          Q.  Who was he and what were the lines?

          A.  The Romans were walled up while the Etuscan army was gathered outside and a kid…a teenager…named Mucius checked a plan out  with the town’s fathers…senators…and when he got their okay slipped outside the wall with a dagger hidden under his cloak.   He was looking for the squadron leader to kill him.  He perceived the leader and rushed him, sinking the dagger in his chest killing him instantly…only to discover it was the leader’s assistant.   He was quickly surrounded, tied up and brought to the very commander he had sought to kill.  His statement typified the Rome of his day.

         Q.  And in the statement he said what?

         A. A classic statement of Roman patriotism, cited by my history professor at St. John’s in Minnesota [1946-50] Fr. Vincent Tegeder OSB., whom we called affectionately “Smilin’ Jack” (after a comic strip hero of that name).  Here it is.  We had to copy it in longhand.

      “I am a Roman citizen.  Men call me Gaius Mucius.  I am your enemy and as your enemy I would have slain you; I can die as resolutely as I can kill: both to do and to endure valiantly in the Roman way.  Nor am I the only one to carry this resolution against you. Behind me is a long line of men who are seeking the same honor.  So if you think it worth your while, gird yourself for a long strong struggle in which you will have to fight for your life from hour to hour with  your armed foe always at your door.  Such is the war we, the Roman youths, declare upon you. Fear no serried ranks, no battle.  It will be between yourself alone and a single enemy at a time.” [Livy.  2-12]. 

      The virtues inculcated there were, in Fr. Vincent’s appraisal, were the ones that embodied Rome at its greatest, indeed patriotism today—subordination of self to country, unflinching unyielding to pain, courage in face of death, certainty in the right.

       This speech angered the Etruscan commander so much that he ordered Gais Mucius flung into a bonfire but Gais stretched his hand into the flames to illustrate that he was un-cowed, saying “Look how cheaply we value our bodies…we whose  eyes are fixed on glory!”

       Moved by the youth, the commander freed him. Tales of Gais Mucius went back to Rome and his family was honored as one of the noblest in Rome.

     Q.    You say Rome cherished aristocracy. How was it governed?

    A.   It started with the Senate which was invented by Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. The Roman Constitution…unwritten…provided for it. The Romans believed democracy was fickle and should be heavily diminished by aristocracy.   Don’t get me started about the intricacies of the thing because we’ll never complete this.  Suffice it to say that when the plebeians invaded the decision-making of government and usurped the patricians it was the beginning of the end.

      Senate means “elders” and the membership—100 in number who served for life…which spared them from pandering to the mob…with their service to end only if they disgraced themselves. Members came from the principal families of Rome…picked first by Romulus and thereafter by kings and emperors. The Senate represented the aristocracy from which the concept of the  U. S.  Senate was derived.  The U.S.  Senate was elected by the legislatures which kept members at armed length from the people.  Then in the “progressive” era, a constitutional amendment was passed—unwisely in my view—for direct election of senators by the people. Bad idea in my view.

        Two consuls…who had to be patricians…were elected each year by a group of patricians and aristocrats called theComitia Centuriata.  Each consul had a veto over the other.  The consuls had extensive powers in peacetime, administrative,  legislative and judicial.  During wartime the consuls were distinguished by military experience and statesmanship.   You can see the importance the founders gave to patricians and aristocracy.  

       Q. Did the people have any role?

       A.  Yes—but the power was guarded. Eventually they could propose laws and they possessed some veto power over actions of the Senate.

       Q.  How did the whole system start to go to hell with Rome?

      A.  With democratization where the mob expected to be pandered.  There was a slow acquisition of rights by the plebeians from the patricians. But the old adage as in I Claudius that rampant immorality did it solely is wrong.   So was Gibbon who said in his Decline and Fall that it was Christianity. This piece is already gone on too long so I’ll continue it….but I’ll give you a tip:  the welfare state played a big role.   This isn’t meant to be a last-word compendium but the synthesis I drew from classes 60 plus years ago.

         Q.  When will we get to Part II of this?

        A.  Whenever I get around to it.  I’ll also give a little summary of what they were teaching about this at Harvard circa 1977.

   

The Left Rises Above Principle to Cheer Bill Daley’s Ascension to the White House. Reason: Reelection’s All Important…After Which Obama Will Return As Of Old.

 

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       When Bill  Daley was named White House chief-of-staff, I thought: now we’ll see some fireworks from the Left—Barack Obama’s base.

     Why? Because Bill Daley is the antithesis of everything Obama and the Left had been saying about the fat-cat demons. Here’s a former bank president, earning $5 million a year who comes to the White House fresh from supervising the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’ s second biggest bank—JPMorgan/Chase. 

        He’s a director of Boeing, the giant military contractor which can only do well if we’re waging war or preparing to wage one…ideally fighting two wars at the same time viz Iraq and Afghanistan.   He’s a director of Abbott Laboratories aka Big Pharma which has a major stake in cutting a deal in ObamaCare to kill the tax on medical devices that would save it $20 billion.  He’s been opposing the consumer financial protection program and has been jiggling around trying to influence the appointment of a malleable agency head more sympathetic to banking interests.  He’s been up to his elbows lobbying to influence the payback feature of TARP to make it easier for his bank to pay back the money.  As a special assistant to Bill Clinton he got NAFTA passed. 

      He’s been a well-paid lobbyist for foreign corporations (Nestle and a Canadian oil company).  His appointment by Obama was saluted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.

       He’s held the jobs and cut the deals that Obama excoriated when as the darling of the Left he ran two years ago. Yet if the Left has raised a stink about Bill Daley taking this job I haven’t seen it. Sunday I had as my guest on the radio Bob Creamer whose progressive credentials for the last forty years are beyond question.  I read off the above list of Bill Daley’s jobs, directorships and the high regard in which he’s held by the pinstriped people on Wall and LaSalle streets.   All Bob said was…well, Daley’s an excellent manager and will perform superbly in the White House.

        Yesterday Don Rose whose liberal and left-wing pedigree is impeccable.  He wrote a column in The Chicago Daily Observer praising the Daley appointment.

        If a Republican president had named Daley to the post The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Nation, The Sun-Times, broadcast media: ABC-TV, NBC-TV, CBS-TV, public radio… and those on the staff of The Chicago Reader. Those that is who unlike contributor Dan Savage aren’t single-mindedly  joyous giving their children sex toys to turn them into perverts…everyone else would be screaming the fix is in with Big Business, Big Banks.

       Why not the fix is in with Barack Obama via Bill Daley, corporate plutocracy’s lapdog? 

     Because, dear friends, the fix is only temporary.  The deal is jiggled to make it look like the Center has taken over—but it hasn’t. The game is this:  Obama’s in such dire shape that his friends on the Left understand he needs to take a sabbatical from the everyday struggle in behalf of progressivism and do a little right-wing dance…until election day 2012. The following four years in Term 2 he’ll revert to the old 3^rd world faculty lounge dreamer, inept, flaky, visionary…and bids Bill Daley goodbye .  You’re supposed to fall for it.

        The same-old same-old Lefty Obama is scheduled to last to 2016.

       If that is we still have a country in 2016.

  

Whom Should You Thank for the 75% Income Tax Hike? Personal PAC ! More.

         Q.  Why Personal PAC?  That’s one of the state’s most potent PACs dedicated to “preserving women’s reproductive freedom”!

        A.  Because most political pundits agree that no-tax-hike advocate Bill Brady was on the way to being elected governor in late October…leading in most polls…when Personal PAC dumped a whole lot of dough into the race—targeting the luxuriant suburbs (Winnetka, Wilmette, Lake Forest et al)—maintaining that because Brady is pro-life, these matrons sipping coffee latte at Starbuck’s with their reading glasses perched atop their expensive coiffures would…gasp!...lose their right to abort!   These pundits generally agree (not I) that this bombshell mailing and flood of robo-calls elected Quinn.

        Q.  …Did they or didn’t they?

       A.  No one knows for sure.  But in the digestive follow-up of the election generally liberal pundits said “nyaa-nyaa-nyaa, that’ll teach Republicans to run an unvarnished pro-lifer!” and all the “smart people” urged Personal PAC to take the bows…which it assuredly did, justifying to their contributors that they met their pro-life enemies and vanquished them.    Since then it’s become an article of faith in establishment GOP circles that if  you run a pro-lifer for statewide office it’s curtains.   But then…on the record at least…George Ryan was elected as a pro-lifer.  Yet he was very-very quiet about it and later along with everything else, he ditched it.

          Q.  But governors can’t do anything about abortion!

         A.  Exactly.  That’s why I say this: If the elite pundits are right, especially Capital Fax, supposedly the self-acclaimed gold standard of political news here,   Personal PAC should get the credit for electing Quinn on a spurious issue at the last minute,, misleading voters to believe that an Illinois governor can strip women of their “reproductive freedom”—which means that they should gladly fork over 75%+.

         Q.  Maybe Personal PAC  will like the attention.

         A. No Way.  75% state income tax hike is so unpopular voters are bent on revolution. But the dear over-privileged rich pro-aborts on the North Shore should know whom to thank for the tax increase—Personal PAC which gulled them, using any opportunity to sell its wares, even against state candidates whom aside from being personally pro-life can do nothing to affect abortion.   You can call this hype unjustifiable exaggeration whipped up by pro-abort zealots and sanctified by the  media to elect a fellow liberal  (Quinn) by any means available.

      Q.  What do you think about the charge made by the Tucson, Arizona sheriff that “vitriol we hear inflaming the American people  by people who make a living off of doing that” may have played a part in the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner?

     A.   I think it’s an abjectly political parlay by a liberal Democrat who refused to enforce the Arizona immigration law and who takes cynical advantage of a tragedy to reinforce his credentials with the partisan jingos of his party—making sure his words are snapped up by The New York Times and made national buzzwords by the Left….which makes it sure he’ll be popping up on the Today show this morning,  interviewed by a wide-eyed Matt Lauer and by Good  Morning America’s news anchor Ann Curry.   It’s popcorn “analysis” instead of nutrients, arguing that vitriol comes only from the Right…not Ed Schultz of MSNBC…with the goal to get the  FCC to bring back “equal time” to stunt robust expression on radio and TV. for mind control over the Right which without any basis at all is being blamed for the shooting… despite the fact that the assailant boasted of reading Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler and burning flags.

       One leader in this lynching bee is Yahoo! News which has invented a theorem identical to the one used after the assassination of John Kennedy.  Harvey Oswald was supposed to be a far-right loon when in fact he was a far-left loon, having gone to Moscow and working as a street-corner demonstrator for the  “Fair Play for Cuba” committee.  The Left in this country doesn’t let facts get in the way: it’s the same mindset that wants gun  confiscation and unconstitutional squashing of conservative comment.

           Q. You really believe this?

            Already The Sun-Times editorials have picked it up to be followed by the watery, on-one-hand-then-another Tribunewritten by that bold Bruce Dold  that’ll run something like this. “Well er, ah, nobody wants censorship but…er…ah…maybe we ought to balance “extreme” positions with dishwater opinions.  Er, ah, nobody thinks Sarah Palin encouraged the shooting but,er, ah, you see she had that website that put Giffords in the cross-hairs which may have encouraged the shooter.  Of course er, ah, maybe not. Who knows?”   Then just in time for the 2012 election we’ll see Michael  Moore producing a “documentary” with a coterie of far-right knuckleheads conferring about Giffords’ appearing at the Tucson store.  Followed by Oliver Stone’s 3-hour extravaganza starring Alec Baldwin playing Fox News’ Svengali.

Lipinski Voted for Marcy Kaptur for Speaker: Good Choice! More.

                                            Good for Dan!

         My favorite Democratic congressman, Dan Lipinski [IL-3] voted for Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) for Speaker over Nancy Pelosi but understandably given the leftish tinge of the media here, very little  was made of it. (As a matter of fact, for an immediate House Speaker to lose 19 members comes close to repudiation—but the media are mum about this).

      Dan is a courageous guy who stood up to all the pressure the White House and Mme. Pelosi could make and voted against ObamaCare. Moreover he was much smarter than Bart Stupak [D-MI] who sold out for a meaningless piece of paper to justify his vote for ObamaCare.

       The paper was an Obama “executive order” saying that abortions are not to be covered in the legislation—but, of course, they are…and executive orders are impotent when legislative intent is clear-- so Stupak was snookered on that one, for which he justifiably paid the price by declining to run for reelection because of the outburst in his pro-life district.   A pro-life Republican physician has taken his place.

         In contrast, Dan Lipinski took heat from both quarters…the Democratic Left represented by the White House and Speaker Pelosi who urged him to join other Blue Dog Democrats, accept the worthless piece of paper which they argued would give him cover for supporting ObamaCare…and from his more conservative  Blue Dog colleagues like Stupak who urged him to stick with them because of the paltry piece of paper.    He resisted both sides and won reelection by a comfortable margin of 69% in his  southwest side district composed of hard-working blue collar residents of bungalow belts. 

          It’s good to see that Dan didn’t rent out even in this largely ceremonial vote when pressure was undoubtedly put on him to “go along” and make nice-nice with Mme. Pelosi.

        His choice was superbly consonant for the Congressman Dan has become. He voted for Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, 64.  She has   represented Toledo, Ohio and has for 14 terms,  being the longest serving woman in the House.  She’s pro-life all the way including anti-embryonic stem cell experimentation, is of Polish extraction, is single, never married, lives with her brother in the family’s original Toledo home, is Catholic, has a formidable pedigree in urban planning, a master’s degree.   Before going to Congress, she was an assistant to the late Msgr.  Geno Baroni who ran the National Center on Ethnic Affairs and served with him in the Carter White House. 

        She is a very articulate opponent of free trade and was asked, then virtually begged,  by Ross Perot to be his running-mate in 1992 whom she turned down.   Had he been able to land Marcy, Perot would have fared better in the election. His second choice was Vice Admiral  James
Stockdale, a much-decorated Vietnam ex-POW.   Unfortunately Stockdale shouldn’t have been dragooned into running because in the midst of a debate he is famous for saying, “I’ve run out of ammunition!”  

                                     The Foolish Mark Twain Bowdlerizing.

       To bowdlerize is to be fastidious for the most eccentric of reasons. Such as to attempt to paint bras on representations of unclothed women who appear on unearthed priceless ($1.2 million each)  Grecian vases from the late Archaic Age.

         Or to change the ethnic derivation of Shylock in Shakespeare’s  Merchant of Venice from Jew to Syrian lest by teaching the play we appear to be anti-Semitic.

       Or to introduce a city ordinance to put diapers on horses to draw fashionable tourist carriages downtown to spare citizens the sight of the animals defecating… as happened a few years ago (the ordinance was defeated which spared Chicago more shame).  Thereupon it is downright disgusting to note that a reputable publishing house has turned out a “modern” edition of Mark Twain’s enduring classic Huckleberry Finn with the original “n” words obliterated and changed to “slave.”

        I ask—are the sensibilities of the African American community so delicate that a classic piece of literature which was fundamental in changing attitudes of poor blacks, by the way, cannot be republished? My guess is that this is the work of phony guilt-ridden white liberals. Anyhow whomever is responsible, this bowdlerization is repugnant and absurd  political correctness run amok.

                          Catholic Liberals Urge Leftwing “Tea Party.”

      In this blog, I’ve been discussing the possible formation of a Catholic Tea Party to use the tools of publicity to infuse some steel in the spines of flabby bishops and priests to proclaim without bowdlerizing the vibrant truth of the Catholic Church.  Now the Catholic Left is urging the laity to pressure bishops to be more liberal than most of them are (hat tip to Jim Bowman for calling attention to an article covering this suggestion in The National Catholic Reporter).

     The article covered a panel before some 300 Catholics at a recent Woodstock forum in Philadelphia that “urged lay Catholics to grab the reins and set the course for the Church’s future.” Meaning a left-wing course.

       Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, formerly editor of America, called for laity to perform this task, pushing prelates to more “progressive” positions (although Tea Party as such was not mentioned).   He was joined in this sentiment by Delores R. Leckey, former longtime head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Secretariat for Laity, Family, Women and Youth” whom The Reporter describes as “a noted writer on spirituality.” Hmmm.   Leckey mourned the fact that pre-Vatican II laity’s “one duty” was “to allow themselves to be led like a docile flock to follow their pastors.”

       “Our bishops are scared,” she said. “You don’t act defensively like that unless you’re scared to death. Their defenses are high.  They weren’t high in the days right after the Council.”

      Intriguingly without meaning to, she makes our case for an authenticist Church Militant.

II: Benedictine Monks Teaching Western Civ: 101 65 Years Ago Spotlighted Relativism as Key to Civilization’s Downfall. Not So Harvard.

 

         Q.  You promised to detail the teaching you got from Benedictine monks circa 1946-50 in Western Civ 101 which has stayed with you ever since.

       A.   That’s because then the Benedictines were proud that they conserved the intellectual treasures of the West from the barbarians.    As well they should—since what we know about ancient philosophy, art, drama and poetry comes from the monks. I drank in their reasons for the West’s greatness and reasons for some civilizations’ decline.  Then 30 years later when I was teaching politics at Harvard as a Kennedy Fellow I audited its own Western Civ.  So  I got the liberal view of the same works from the standpoint of   fin de siècle relativism at its highpoint (1977).   The Benedictines loved the ancient Greeks for one reason: their surety…and Harvard detested them for the same reason: their surety.   

       Q.   You side with the old Benedictines assuredly.

       A.  Yep. And Harvard’s relativism didn’t do a thing for me.   

     Q.     How would you describe the ancient Greeks at their high point, before the collapse?

    A.     Easy.  The world is an ordered place…beauty is not relative or “in the eye of the beholder”…love is a fragment of the eternal, not carnal…physical and moral laws are governed by the same logic.  There were all sorts of relativists in ancient Greece’s time—but Plato like his  student Aristotle a theological thinker, dedicated his entire career to disproving relativism. Slavery? Greece had it but found the wisdom to end it.   Understand Greece was not heaven on earth. Plato erred by condemning music as leading to a softening of moral resolve.  And It had its hippies—Diogenes for one, who eschewed bathing, extolled free love.  But in its golden era the uniting feature of ancient Greece was its surety that man can attain certainty and we were not created to be passion’s plaything.

     Q.  Then how do you explain the homosexuality of ancient Greece?

     A.  Its practice in Athens’ golden years—not the decadence that came later--has been exaggerated by our contemporary pro-gay politics.  At its highpoint, Athens was not Boys Town Chicago, nor San Francisco nor Saugatuck.

       Granted, one undesirable aspect of ancient Greece was that women were sheltered, either under the control of their fathers, elder male relatives or husbands.  They played no role in politics—did nothing but homemaking.   This led to exclusive male congregants…and that occasionally, not often but occasionally--led to excess.

        But don’t let the current gay rights propaganda mislead you.   Contemporary gay activism has a need to show that everybody significant was either gay or permissive in order to justify gay liberation’s current lifestyle.  They put out the story that because Lincoln, when as a lawyer travelling the circuit, stayed at Inns where there were sometimes two to a bed, was queer. Not so. That was the custom in those days. Or because John Adams and Ben Franklin when traveling for the Continental Congress bundled up at colonial Inns, they were queer.   No one but a fervent gay rights zealot would buy that. The only interaction Adams and Franklin had in their bed was that first Franklin would hop out and raise the window to get fresh air—and later Adams would trundle over and slam the sash.  

          And nowhere has the scenario been more hyped than with the ancient Athens in its golden age.   At its decline, yes—but then that’s not what current Gay Rights advocate want or need to gain currency.

        Q.  What role did homosexuality play in Athens’ golden period?

       A.  At its intellectual summit, ancient Athens despised effeminacy which it interpreted as carnal pursuit of hedonism.  Men loving men were abhorrent and rejected by the upper classes.  What was tolerated in some—not all—male councils was occasional romantic pursuits between adult men and beardless youth…occurring because women had been downgraded as mere home workers and baby-bearers.  Still, men having intercourse with other adult men was seriously frowned upon since those who so participated  were viewed as venereal disease carriers—hence abhorred with invectives and visible discrimination,  far more virulent than was exhibited by U.S. gay-bashers of yesteryear.  But here’s the important part—scarce adult-boy relationships expanded to widespread promiscuity as Greece declined. 

      Q.  What was the signal virtue of ancient Athens?

     A.  The signal virtue was the quality we most seriously lack today…Socrates, Plato and Aristotle believed we can discern truth, and that it’s possible to find it.  They believed in a natural law above man’s ability to legislate. No nihilism or Sartre’s meaninglessness for them. None of this stuff that Obama has prattled about abortion and his shrug—“it’s above my pay grade.”   Here I will digress.

      He lied there because as Illinois state senate judiciary chairman he deprived infants born alive from botched abortions the solace of receiving love and medical care for the short time they are to live—a disgusting decision which shows his true paganism hidden by his sly Sidney Poitier drawing room sophistry that has confused many…including Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks, the latter titillated because “Obama talked to me about Niebuhr!”… with intellectuality.  He is not smart, in fact is about as conversant in the lore and traditions of the West as a high school sophomore.

        Q.  Indeed here as with everything else bearing upon you, abortion is uppermost.

            A. Of course and that issue is foremost in how I decide for whom I vote.  But there is no one…no one…more callous and willful about abortion than Obama.

             Getting back to the ancient Greeks, the Athenians, the father of medicine Hippocrates was pro-life. (“I swear by Apollo the Healer” runs his oath, “…I will not give a fatal drought to anyone if I am asked [assisted suicide] not will I suggest any such thing. Neither will I give a woman means to procure an abortion. I will be chaste and religious in my life and in my practice”).  The Hippocratic Oath has been dropped by the venal AMA because of the worst of reasons—sophistry reigning as political convenience.

       Q. ….and Athens’ end?

       A.  Rich and luxuriant, Athens overextended itself into undue military expansionism largely through its populist demagogue Pericles who was as much an expansionist as Wilson and the Roosevelts of our era…which should give us pause. Forceful in pushing popular social policies he led the city-state to build great welfare programs for the poor.  Once jurors worked free as an ideal to serve the polis. Then Pericles insisted jurors be paid.   Very popular.  On and on including a provision that the poor should be allowed into the theaters free.   The program sapped Athens’ pride in itself, spurred the cult of every man for himself and decadence spread.

        Athens expanded its populist voting, coming to believe the voice of the populace was the voice of the gods, thus worshiping voting rather than the ideals of sound governance.  Here comes a digression.

     Q.  Go ahead.

     A.      This also pertains to us. I have never been a fan of democracy but rather the republican system that our Founders designed with checks on the rule of the mob—such as the provision that the states themselves were to select the U.S. senators by the legislatures rather than by direct election.

        Washington himself illustrated the ideal republican system by pouring hot tea from his cup to a saucer to cool, saying the cup of boiling tea was the House and the saucer was the Senate.  Direct election of the Senators gives too much reliance on the people directly.   The old system sent to Washington senators who respected the rights of the states—whereas the House the proclivities of the people, a brilliant balance.

         Q. Back to Athens.    Athens’ end?

        A.  As the richest of the Greek city states yearning to be an empire and she got other states to pay for protection.  This expansionism  was accompanied by relativism run amok.

          Q. How so?

          A.  The idea was born that “man is the measure of all things”—spawned by the sophist Protagoras…the credo supplanting natural law with ultra-pragmatic rulings constructed for personal convenience.  Translated it means there are no absolutes: what may seem good today might well not work for tomorrow.  Sound familiar?   Think of the dying days of the 110^th Congress…the Lame Duck…where to appeal to the mob Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed without the benefit of hearings…to allow the fast-fading majority to savor the cheers of the populist mob.

        Q.  And then…?

       A. Concurrently with “man is the measure of all things” as a social policy to pander to the mob, came unwarranted expansionism of Athens to the detriment of its sister city states, notably Sparta and Corinth.  Athens threatened its great rival Sparta by competing on all its trade routes from Sicily to Russian ports on the Black Sea. The Spartans moved on Athens and burned its countryside. Pericles who was elected general (yes that’s right: elected)  counseled patience.  He ordered  that, since the city-state could not recruit an army as formidable as Sparta’s, residents of the countryside move within the city’s walls and rely on the Athenian navy to fight Sparta and its allies.

        Thousands thronged into Athens. The overcrowding produced a plague spread by rats from ships returning from the East.   The plague killed thousands including Pericles.  While Pericles was a demagogue he was also prudent as a strategist and determined that Athens not try to match the Spartans and their allies but wait them out.

        But after his death real zealotry of the Left took over and set a course of recklessness and with the populace egging them on made botch after botch of the war. For comparison, think Carol Moseley Braun running this country.

           Q. Ugh. Scary!  I see what you mean.

           A.  Athens’ greatness ended with the once heroic Athenian fleet betrayed by its officers, surprised by the Spartans and destroyed.  The Spartans then invaded the city and put more than 4,000 to death.    Thus arrant relativism produced liberalism that led to moral laxity and decadence.  

           Q. What did your monks see as the reason for Athens’ decline?

           A.  I’ve just described it.

          Q.  What did Harvard see as the reason?

          A. That first of all there was no moral laxity.  In fact a professor responded to me question by asking: what is moral laxity? Everyone in the class chortled.  I asked again: What about the possibility of moral wrong? He responded:  Wrong?  What is wrong? What is right?  There is no such thing as wrong.  No such thing as right.  And then: It was the rats that killed Pericles and the thousands.  Insufficient rodent control and substandard sanitation obviously, a failure of the city’s planners due to conservative coin-pinching instead of investing in the infrastructure.

           Q.  What’s next tomorrow? The Romans?

           A.  The Romans, yes—but not tomorrow.  Soon.

Why a Catholic Tea Party? Two Bishops are the Reason.

          Q.  It’s been suggested….by you and others… that there be a national Catholic Tea Party with a different name—to start churning out criticism to erring bishops--and accolades for bishops who stand their ground for the Faith.   But the Church is not a democracy--so what good can an organization like this do?

         A. A whole lot. Bishops…particularly liberal ones… are preternaturally sensitive to bad press because they are covert….sometimes overt…secularists.  Like politicians they want to be loved—and by all.   Take two liberal Catholic bishops who have made a regular habit of running with secularism.  So far as I’ve heard, they haven’t gotten any criticism for it.   Without criticism it’s a cinch that the “tolerant” Catholic Left will feel free to try it again and often.

       Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, N.Y. celebrated Mass earlier this week at the diocesan cathedral where New York’s newly elected Catholic Dem pro-abort governor, divorced and father of three, Andrew Cuomo, sat in the front pew with his live-in girlfriend Food Network chef Sandra Lee who watched while Cuomo received Communion.  Also receiving Communion was the Catholic Dem pro-abort lieutenant governor Robert Duffy.

        Bishop Hubbard “used the Mass” it is fair to say to salute the two pro-abort Catholics.  In his sermon he said this: “We know they, over the next four years, will be deeply immersed in the work of evangelization [sic] by bringing about the transformation of our state and our society—and we assure them of our prayers, of our support and of our best wishes for challenges they will face.”  

       Bishop Hubbard was named by Paul VI and…I like this…was named as a member of the Vatican Congregation for Unbelievers!  Somebody in Rome at least had the smarts to place him in the right category.  You tell me that a national Catholic organization raising the roof wouldn’t have an effect?

         The second one is Bishop Joseph Pepe of Las Vegas who celebrated a special Mass for Nevada’s new pro-abort Catholic Republican governor, Brian Sandoval.   Concelebrating was retired bishop Philip Straling of Reno.   An assistant to Gov. Sandoval said later “the governor takes his faith seriously. It’s important to him.” On his website Sandoval proclaims he’s “pro-choice.”

           Q.  What should happen?

          A.  All kinds of legit things: letters…pickets with banners ourside his cathedral…letters to Rome….letters to the editor.   Hubbard is coming to the age of retirement and there ought to be public notice of his flabbiness in messages to Rome.   He should be forced to make a public statement.  Finally you hit him where it hurts—at the collection plate.

          Q.  Why don’t you start one up then?
         A.  Are  you kidding me?   At this age…82…I don’t even buy green bananas.   Someone else has to. I’ll advise but the ideal founder should be a woman—preferably hyper-thyroid.  A workaholic, fluent in Church doctrine, fearless, articulate.  

Watch Out for Bill Daley in the White House. This Guy Can’t Lie Straight in Bed. More.

                                       Slippery Billy

            The report that Bill Daley may be named Obama’s chief-of-staff leads to the expectation that the Obama administration could be more conciliatory to the new Congress—which has a Republican House and a sharply reduced Democratic majority in the Senate. I don’t like it.  Working acceptable agreements is one thing—but with Daley there always comes the entreaties to snuggle up, “compromise to get things done.” Sounds good but coming from Bill Daley it usually means selling out principle.

       I remember the last time Bill Daley was in the news—in Florida with the long recount between Gore and “W.” Daley, campaign manager for Gore, undertook to explain to the media the necessity of examining hanging chads that threatened honest voter intent.    It sounded good until Cheney said “what the hell—we’re being instructed on the ideal of honest vote counting by the son of old Boss  Daley?”

        Daley is a lot like Dickie Darman whom I met often…starting with the Nixon administration and later Ford when he and his mentor Jim Baker were ensconced in the Commerce Department. From then on the chameleon wriggled up and up, sucking his way this way and that through the Reagan White House and into the GHW Bush Oval Office.

            Once there, Dickie Darman convinced the old man to sell out his “read my lips: no new taxes” pledge which the senior Bush later said was the worst mistake of his life.  Although a mystery to the end the old guy kept on maintaining Darman was a close friend.  Close friend my eye. 

            Dickie Darman’s not with us anymore,  having gone to a place where the Just Judge weighs different assets than maneuvering.

            I say watch Bill Daley. Slippery as a wet eel.

                                         Wild Card Carol.

          I hope this time the liberal media will not allow Carol Moseley Braun to play them like an ocarina using race and feminism as bait. Equipped with a 50,000-watt smile she has all the chaotic masterly inattention to detail and principle to turn Chicago into another Detroit in one term as mayor whereas it took Coleman Young eleven years to do the same.

          A true demagogue she promised yesterday to break the parking meter contract.  When reminded of the stiff financial penalties it would cost the city, she retreated.   And a masterpiece of reasoning, she said she won’t release her tax returns until after she’s elected.  Why?   Because, she said, I don’t want to!

          I hope the media will get over its love affair with her that began in the Recorder of Deeds office and continued beyond her Senate election.    She has an unique ability to generate sympathy for the most undeserving people.   No one in my memory has felt sympathy for Neil Steinberg until she started in on him.  This obnoxious little strutter will probably get a raise now that she has called him a drunk and wife-beater.   He was both but if she keeps it up she’ll make this guy an object of pity so that we’ll never hear the end of it from him. Early in my Minnesota years I treasured the story of Governor Floyd B. Olson, a rascally demagogue and the first governor elected on the Farmer-Labor ticket.

       Floyd had long tussles with Demon Rum but it came to a head at a widely attended Town Hall.  A lady raised her hand, was recognized, stood up and said: Governor Olson, I want to change the subject now. It is my understanding that you drink yourself into insensibility every night! How do you expect us to vote for you with habits like that?

        A hush of embarrassed silence.  Then the governor said:

       Ma’am I don’t know about you but I am an often failed, faltering Christian, fighting, then falling but getting up again.  Jesus Christ has called me to His side and I intend to do that—continuing to fight with my temptations every single day and night. And I will just say this—if you can’t vote for me due to my human frailties, do me a favor and just pray for me! 

       When the papers carried the story, he won by a landslide—so strongly that he was mentioned as a third party rival to Franklin Roosevelt.  Huey was flirting with running against FDR for the Dem nomination in 1936.  Roosevelt knew he could beat Huey and wasn’t a bit afraid—but he was concerned about Olson depriving him of victory by running 3^rd party as a Farmer-Laborite, a powerful combination during the Depression.

       Roosevelt breathed a little easier when Long was assassinated but then Long had never been a threat.   However he breathed a whole lot easier when Floyd Olson checked into Mayo for a purported ulcer operation and then died under the knife after a 4-hour surgery for newly discovered extensive stomach cancer….dying a legend at age 44.               

IV. Ask Me Your Questions About the Pope’s Talk on the Sunset of the West.

  

        Q.  The Pope made an interesting observation tucked into his Christmas message that hasn’t been covered much by the media—the general sunset of the West which reminds him of the dissolution of the Roman empire.  Why hasn’t that been covered?

         A.  Easy answer: Because it’s not  politically correct. And if it wasn’t for Michael Voris not many would have spotted it. The pope spoke of an Advent prayer of the Church:  Excita, Domine,potentiam tuam, et veni that is translated  Stir up your power O Lord and come [that You may save us!].  He says this invocation was “probably formulated as the Roman Empire was in decline.” Then he describes the disintegration of the Empire in terms that resemble today’s decadence of the West.

        Q.   Such as…?

         A.  I’ll quote:  “The disintegration of key principles of law and the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them…burst open the dams which until that time had  protected peaceful coexistence among peoples.  The sun was setting over the entire world. Frequent natural disasters further increased this sense of insecurity.      There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent, then, was the invocation of the power of God: the plea that He might come and protect His people from all these threats…”

         Q. Does he specifically tie those symptoms to today’s?

1. Indeed. Continuing: “Today, too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function”  [italics mine].”   He ties a vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen where “the face of the Church is stained with dust” and its garments are torn “by the sins of priests.” But he extends this vision to general decadence of the West.

          Q.  Do you do the same—view the West as declining?

         A.  Yes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Spenglerian who says we’re an empire for which there is no corrective other than we turn to isolationism and discard free trade for protectionism. Or a Ron Paul who wants us to disband the CIA, pull out all troops overnight throughout the world, insisting that by being a friend of Israel we deservedly got 9/11, proving that extreme libertarians are first cousins to the radical Left. 

         That’s nutty stuff. My wish is to adopt the enlightened self-interest principles of Robert Taft where the aim of our foreign and defense policies are twofold: to protect the (a) peace and (b) liberty of the American people.  I simply wish we would kick free of modern liberalism which has gotten us over-extended throughout the world, has drawn us into wars and expensive interventions and which in social policies has infected us with a spiritual disease that has plummeted us into moral decadence. 

         When I started to write about the moral decadence a liberal columnist suggested my trouble is that I have lived too long. Imagine that: I’ve lived too long so I can’t adjust to the temper of these modern times!  Maybe he’s right when you look at what I’ve seen.

          Q.   Give me a rundown.

        A.    I’m 82. This relatively long life means that I have seen enough of liberalism to split the planets, with strong memories as a child of living through the Great Depression, seeing the inculcation of liberal New Deal legislation vividly portrayed as beneficent that was perceived of ending it which it did not…of then as a high schooler the 2^nd World War where I am still not sure our manipulations prior to Pearl Harbor were on the up-and-up.  I well remember where during the war we were promised formation of the UN with the prospect of obviating future wars by subjecting them to mediation which it did not.  Then as a young man I served as a congressional aide to the powerful ranking member of House Foreign Affairs where he anticipated Reagan’s policies to strengthen us militarily and diplomatically to win the Cold War (I benefited from CIA security clearance required to work with him).  Liberalism cut him down eventually after I left and he lost reelection to a peace-at-any-price liberal*.  Shall I continue?

        Q.  Please do.

         A.  To shorten this, let me adopt a James Joyce stream of consciousness. After I left the U. S. House staff post for state government where I worked for a governor who understood unemployment on  the Iron Range could only be improved by providing an incentive to the mining companies to expand—for which he was defeated by liberalism--Big Unions and Hubert Humphrey demagoguery portending a state scandal that didn’t exist.

      Then switching to national politics again there came Johnson who believed that because he “lost Walter Cronkite”s support he had to settle for defeat in Vietnam propelled by the liberal media. He was succeeded by Nixon who ingeniously spit the Sino-Soviet bloc with his negotiations with China—constituting the first real thaw in the Cold-Hot Wars. 

        Tragically he was pushed by liberals to resign under threat of impeachment-- not because of what he did but because of what in an unguarded moment he said on tape…notwithstanding that illegal activities similar to and worse than Watergate had been used by every president since FDR—including Bobby Kennedy’s and Bill Moyers’ illegal taping of Martin Luther King’s bedsprings when the bed was occupied by his mistresses.

         During Nixon’s time,  I was an assistant commerce secretary where to show you how liberal I was, I was infected and implemented affirmative action set-asides which are with us yet, a dreadful mistake. I have long since concluded that we should treat blacks and other
“minorities” as adults and end government’s  overt discrimination like affirmative action which has been in effect far too long.  It’s about time we begin to treat them as adults and give them equal opportunity instead of reverse discrimination.

         Later as a foreign service officer with CIA clearance akin to Pfc. Bradley Manning’s although a patriot not a traitor like Manning, I fought an unruly cadre of Peace Corps “Returned Volunteers” storm and take over our building whereby I was deputized to negotiate them to leave. Returning home I watched Ford unable to muster the guts to meet with the hero Alexander Solzhenitsyn fearing it would alienate the USSR. I saw Ford defeated because he correctly pardoned Nixon…then watched Carter side with Iranian militants, denying the Shah medical care here….following which I saw him capsize when the militants took over the U.S. embassy—with six helicopters failing at the same time in an abortive rescue attempt of U.S. hostages….

          Following which as a respite came Ronald Reagan, the finest president of the 20^th century (second place: Coolidge who produced prosperity without government subsidies).   Reagan, assaulted by the Left, defeated the USSR through negotiations via his skillful use of the nuclear defense shield, saw him seduced by the liberals aided by liberal aide Jim Baker who convinced him to raise taxes based on a spurious pledge by liberals that they’d cut government in proportion to the taxes  hiked—a lie which he acknowledged in his memoirs.  Then to see more war rise under GHW Bush who declined to pursue Iraq War I by stopping short of capturing Saddam and who was swayed by liberal aide Dickie Darman into breaking his pledge not to raise taxes (note: by which time I retired to spend time thinking, teaching and writing)…then Clinton with our excursion into Bosnia to spare ethnic cleansing of Muslims, a move unjustified by our national interest or safety which should have been done by the UN…you want more?

         Q.  Yes-yes, go on—more Joyce stream of consciousness; it’ll make it better for me to   understand.

         A.  Then  George W. Bush with Afghanistan and Iraq caused by faulty intelligence caused by the liberal evisceration of the
CIA by Frank Church who sundered our once impeccable clandestine intelligence operation, which could have informed us Saddam had no WMD… and now Barack Obama whom I first interviewed as a state senator with all the followed his election and the implantation of socialism into a sixth of the economy and the disintegration of traditional Judeo Christian values in social policy and our being bogged down in Afghanistan…with Obama virtually handing away our wise reliance on the nuclear shield… only to have my contrary-ness  greeted by a modern liberal journalist whose conclusion is perhaps I have lived too long.  Had enough?

             Q.  Not at all.    You say liberalism itself is a spiritual illness?

            A. Yes indubitably. In every single case liberalism and its well-wishers in the media were wrong. Take The New York Times from which every liberal journalist draws  his/her mindset.  It has been penultimate in its judgments—because it has substituted liberal nihilistic thinking for analysis.   And I mean wrong.  Wrong about presidents it liked-- FDR,  Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama. Catastrophically wrong about presidents it disliked: Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, the two Bushes and Reagan.     Liberalism has been called by some a mental disorder but essentially it’s a spiritual illness.

          The liberal columnist’s conclusion that perhaps I have lived too long obviates the fact that in one human lifetime…mine…the spiritual malady of liberalism has caused this country to pretty much go to hell —domestic policies transforming us into a variant of a European state socialism,  foreign policies returning us to near-appeasement and apologies for presidents past who saved Europe from Nazism and Russian domination…and social policies that eschew traditional Judeo Christian beliefs and have incardinated sexual practices at variance with 5000 years of tradition in western civilization.

          Social policies’ decline under Obama were endemic because of his first-hand role as state senate Judiciary Chairman in killing the “Born  Alive” bill which sought to supply  nutrition,  medicines and comfort to babies born from botched abortions—the most wanton and callous treatment ever denied which makes Obama the reincarnation of King Herod.

         Returning to foreign policy, under Obama we got denial that America is exceptional, apologies to the world for this country abjuring a patriotism every  president has held.  This liberal epidemic of godlessness…I will go back into Joycean stream-of-consciousness again…has crested with abject apologizing by our president for actions of his predecessors—the apologies…

              Q.  …continue…

              A.  …scattered throughout the 3^rd world by the consummate liberal-nihilist-socialist Mr. Obama, nihilistic views of which he is first-hand very familiar, replacing public adherence  of  Judeo-Christian values with the agnosticism of the Harvard faculty lounge with which I who used to sip sherry there and dispute am very familiar…perceptiveness of which he is credited as an honest-to-god intellectual (by of all people Charles Krauthammer in whom I have come to lose some faith) when Obama’s highly acclaimed acumen is that of roughly that of…in my time…a C+ high school grad preparing to take Western Civ 101 – the same Western Civ that the…ahem…Reverend Jesse Jackson paraded against shouting “ho-ho, western civ’s got to go!”

              Q. Through all this time where was your Catholic Church?

              A.  For the most part…with a few exceptions…. hiding under the bed, either embracing liberalism or pathetically fearful of antagonizing public opinion because of political correctness.  Probably the most bitter disappointment to me has been the stealthy takeover of the Catholic church by liberal theologians.  They influenced the appointment of liberal bishops (you have to try hard to exceed the mysterious Bernardin whose history is as masked by liberals in the Church as is Obama’s school grades and early life) under the false rubric of “the Spirit [sic] of Vatican II.” 

      When I criticized my own bishop for allowing the USCCB, the bishops’ trade association which he headed, of cutting a deal to support ObamaCare he called me a “hate monger” the same week he conferred a reward on Fr. Pfleger for “social justice”—the same Fr. Pfleger who went on a tirade before a crowd gathered in front of a legally constituted gun shop, demanding the legitimate owner come outside or “we’ll come in and drag you out like the rat you are!”   Then announcing over a loud-speaker that he—Fr. Pfleger—“will snuff you out!”—a threat of murder.  

        My bishop criticized me for using my own personal blog to express my views and urged advisory council members of a Catholic organization to get rid of me. This same bishop and the USCCB issued not a single word of complaint about the Congress’ repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell…while the organization lobbied extensively on its website and personally for passage of the DREAM Act. 

         Now, having fought these things, I’ve been nicely dismissed by a very good contemporary liberal writer as having lived too long. 

            Q.   You know what?

             A.  What?

             Q.  Maybe the columnist guy is right.   The fact that you’ve lived this long makes you dissatisfied with what’s going on now in the way of politics, geo-and domestic, economics, philosophy, theology and what have you.   If you had checked out at the end of the Reagan administration when you were…let’s see…60 you’d have died happy. Or maybe at the onset of George W. Bush who singled out his favorite philosopher as Jesus Christ—when you were 72.  Or in 2004 when you had that triple bypass at 76 when “W” was reelected. Am I not right?   And now you’re 82 and see no hope for changing this liberalism that you see as a spiritual illness?

            A.  Wrong!   There’s very definite hope.  Events are turning our way.  The once solid liberal media is being supplanted.   I’m 82 and want to live to be 100 to not only see the end of this Obama craze, the malady of liberalism repudiated and seeing a rebirth of the old verities.  One more thing.  The repeal of Don’t Ask,  Don’t Tell by the Lame Duck and the tickertape parade of celebration spurred by the media….the acquiescence of Glenn Beck,  the tumble of CPAC over its acceptance of GOProud, the astounding declaration by Krauthammer…a growing disappointment to me as a commentator…that support for flagrantly public homosexuality is inevitable since it’s a  “generational “thing is the final straw in the what I hope is the temporary victory of paganism over Judeo Christianity.    So my goal is to reach and exceed 100 so as to see this nation reclaim Western Civ’s   verities.

             Q.  Wonderful!   Verities identical with what you were taught by those old the black-robed monk-professors you had at St. John’s before the corruption of Vatican II with its phony heretical “spirit,” taught you not just theology and philosophy which makes you dissatisfied with the pap we get today.

               A.  Bingo!

              Q….but also I dare say these old monks gave you the real works on Western Civ  that’s likely not taught now since  liberal universities including so-called “Catholic ones” scrapped it for Race-Gender Diversity Fundamentals 101.    Now give us some regurgitation of old-fashioned Western Civ. 101 and show us with examples how     liberalism is a spiritual disease, will you?  Before you accede to what I would guess is your liberal columnist’s verdict that you have lived too long, perhaps his subliminal wish that you shove off for what he would probably call “The Great Perhaps”?

          A.  Okay.  But this piece is already too long.   Soon.

         Q.  Promise me you’ll do it for tomorrow’s piece?

       A.    Can’t go that far but soon.