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?
- 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 2nd 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.
“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 20th 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?
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 3rd 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.
Bravo! Also like your new writing style- jazzing your material up with a light-hearted yet surreal premise....
ReplyDelete