The Pelosi Effect

In these days of such duplicity and confusion, it's a wonder we don't clearly see the cracks as often as we should. Perhaps it's due to media bias. The cracks sometimes show themselves to be the chasms between self-delusion and reality, between lies and the truth. In order to maintain some face and composure under incisive questioning these days, a lot of work has to be done, to keep the dissonance of corrupting influences from showing their foul incoherence. It must be like keeping two counter-progagating positron/anti-positron storage rings from colliding their brains*. Every once in a while, when the right question is asked, the quarks fly.  At a press conference recently, Mrs. Pelosi was asked about the moral difference between aborting a child at 28 weeks (as some centers in Baltimore do) and bringing the child out of the womb at 23 weeks, stabbing him in the neck and killing him dead. This question comes at the time of the conviction of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell who performed the latter in his "house of horrors". Mrs. Pelosi firstly avoids the question completely and instead turns on the reporter, initially goading about deriving pleasure from asking the question in the first place (oh, would that Mrs. Pelosi derive some pleasure in answering it !).  She claims that the actions in the Philadelphia abortion mill were reprehensible because, in her reckoning, "those actions were reprehensible". Why ? Because, according to her, the abortionist "chose to disrespect a judgement made about her own body". But the difficulty with this is that Kermit Gosnell was exactly respecting what the poor and misguided women wanted. Their judgements made about their bodies (and the other body they were carrying) were entirely respected. I have no idea what Pelosi was trying to say here. If those actions were reprehensible, all abortions after 23 weeks of pregnancy are reprehensible. The only difference between what Gosnell did and what abortionists legally do, is that the baby was brought out into the light of day. Various ad-hominem attacks and self-contradictory claims of being a 'respectful Catholic' followed. Further absurd accusations of making abortion into a 'political' issue were raised, as if the Democrats don't use this issue to win over much of the electorate, specifically targeting women voters with flyers and propaganda material. The reporter was told by Mrs. Pelosi that he had an agenda and that he wasn't interested in getting an answer. What we learned, however, was that Pelosi wasn't interested in actually confronting the question. What is the difference between a pre-mature baby of 6 months in the incubator in the neonatal hospital facility and the aborted baby who ends up in a bucket in planned parenthood ? The contradictions of the pro-choice/pro-abortion cannot confront this question. For those who think that ascribing rights to a fertilized ovum is absurd, consider how absurd it is to maintain that a child in the womb can be killed up to some arbitrary gestational time-limit (24 weeks in most states). What happens to the child at that boundary to make it a human being, that would therefore forbid his abortion ? It's a critical boundary, getting it right is a matter of life and death. If it's not important to define it exactly, the limit can be re-drawn to justify infanticide. Whatever line is drawn in time beyond which it is considered a human being, there can always be a baby who develops faster and would have all the characteristics at 23 weeks (say) as another baby would have at 24 weeks. That life begins at conception is coherent, all the hallmarks of growing human life are there, and when left alone will grow as the human being we can easily recognize in ultrasounds and heartbeats. From conception, the growth is a matter of degree. If it doesn't, you have to somehow believe that the cells suddenly become a human being at 24 weeks, or some other arbitrary time which can be re-configured to justify infanticide.

* Thanks John Zmirak.

A Tale of two Catholics

Image Source : Getty
For those of you who caught the Vice Presidential debate on October 11th, you may have caught how both Mr. Biden and Mr. Ryan both professed to be Catholics. This flies in the face of the fact that their standings on abortion were at opposite poles. I am talking about their political standing, and as politicians, it's the only standing that matters. Mr. Ryan confessed that he believed life begins at conception and that his stance and beliefs on abortion were in line with the Catholic Church. This was a coherent position and a courageous expression of that standing. Then Mr. Biden made the amazing claim that, although he also believes what the Catholic Church teaches in this respect, that life begins at conception, but went ahead and said that he does not want to force his religious beliefs on others, and is politically in favour of abortion for all. But if you believe that life begins at conception, that makes abortion murder. Are we supposed to take from this that he sees standing up against murder, the deliberate killing of the innocent, the imposition of his own beliefs that he is talking and therefore something he is not willing to do ? I really hope not. If he doesn't stand up against the murder of the innocent, what does he stand up against ? Only in a post endarkenment, post-modern, relative-values world could this statement have been taken with muted acceptance. Only in such a world could there be such a double think, such a dissonance between what is said and what is believed and what is then acted upon, or otherwise. Well, does Mr. Biden hold his Catholicism cheap ? When it may cost Ryan political ground to make a courageous stand for the truth of what he believes, and act according to his conscience, it makes no sense for a man who claims to be the same thing, speak and act in direct discord with it. Not to speak out (especially if you're a politician) when given the chance against murder is to be complicit in it (which he may be materially, also). Still is he a good Catholic ? It's not really for me to say. He may become a better saint than any of us could be. But what he is doing is giving grave scandal, that a Catholic can somehow be pro "choice". And I would fear gravely, hearing the words of Jesus about scandal and the little ones, and the deep sea, and recant.

First the unborn, then the elderly - who will be next ?

The goodness of a society can be judged in many ways by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. When the 1973 Roe Vs. Wade Supreme court decision was passed, it sanctioned the persecution of the most innocent, voiceless and vulnerable citizens. It is the groups who that are weak who get persecuted first in a society which is dominated by the strong, wherein 'might is right'. But in a world where might is right, there is no place for love or what the Greeks would call 'Agape'. There is only raw power where those who are on the margins of society are pushed to the outer limits to make way for the relentless march of the well-to-do, healthy, go-getters, jet-setters and people who contribute. So this grim utilitarian picture of human personhood would be seen to make less and less room for the elderly. Being pro-life does not just consist in standing up for the voiceless unborn, but also for the aged. A society which starts to eschew a supernatural and metaphysically important understanding of human life will not see the importance and value of a human being as it nears its time to exit stage left on the stage of life.
So this brings us to the physician-assisted patient suicide H H 1468 bill which is currently pending legislation in MA. A bill of this kind has already been passed in Oregon and it's instantiation in legislatures across the country may follow in an infective invective against the aging elderly (yellow states have passed the legislation like Montana, Oregon and Washington, red have pending bills)):


Now the euphemism-generating language engineers have been playing with the phrase 'death with dignity', the only merit about which I can see is its alliteration, and which serves to establish the exact opposite. The legislation would allow doctors to give elderly patients with terminal conditions, apparently hopeless prognoses or painful quality of life the opportunity to end their own lives with a lethal dose of poison which their doctor can give them. I'm not sure how this con coexist with the Hippocratic oath to uphold the patients well being. Further, I can imagine a person who is heavily dependent on care-givers, relatives, and others feeling far worse about themselves when their doctor presents them with this option. It would lead to a complete eclipsing of their sense of value as human being and their dignity.
As Archbishop Cardinal Sean O' Malley said in an open address to the Boston Archdiocese : "a vote for [this bill] is a vote for suicide". Oregon passed this type of legislation in November 1994, and since then, the overall suicide rate has reached a level 34 %
higher than the national average (see Oregon's state website). Suicide is the number-one metric of human discontent and unhappiness and a clear indicator that we are not at a level of human flourishing that we should want for our future.
A common attempt at justifying physician-assisted suicide is to point out that it puts an end to the pain and suffering which a person might feel, psychological and otherwise, towards the end of their lives. But surely it is not for any of us to put a person out of their misery. When we allow the patient determine it, it's suicide. We put animals out of their misery, and we are not just animals, we are human beings. Today, with pet stores, pet psychologists and pet spas, it seems we are treating the animals we like as humans and the humans we find inconvenient are being treated like animals.

Steps of the Supreme Court, 23rd January 2012

Censoring one thing and doing another.....

In Germany, the Album "Butchered at Birth" by death metal band Cannibal Corpse was banned when it was released in 1991, however a year later a law was passed leading to the de facto legalization of butchering at birth, or close enough to. It is a twisted world out there.

So-called "birth-control", freedom of conscience and Catholic hospitals

One Friday morning there was a news feature carried on some public radio outlets regarding the apparently surprising
revelation that the United States Congress of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) would not allow certain clauses in the new health care legislation which mandated that Catholic hospitals should give out artificial birth control of various kinds even though this policy would not not be in line with Catholic teaching since they are believed to be destructive forces in the world, damaging to family and damaging to women. Yet the Congress was criticized, not so much for holding to Church doctrine, but for having the nerve to impose this doctrine on others via the way Catholic hospitals minsters to the patients. Now hospitals don't impose on people, except in so far as they try to serve the best interests of the whole human person. And Catholic hospitals especially try to serve the human person in such a way as to promote the greatest human flourishing. Their patients are not all Catholic of course, and this is generally the point of Catholic witness - come one come all. Yet certain media outlets were outraged that they hospitals would not break their rules about handing out birth control pills or abortifacients for the patients who did not hold to the beliefs that these things are bad. This is not who hospitals work. The patients don't run the hospital. If you don't like the fact that the Catholic hospital rejects the idea that birth control pills are bad for people and society, you can go somewhere else. You can't very well criticize a Catholic hospital for holding to ....Catholic principals. You would never say that a hospital should not impose cancer screening on patients who do not believe in its efficacy. They were criticized for having employees who don't hold to these doctrines. This is not the point. The Catholic Church is itself a hospital for sinners more so that a museum of saints. Believing and knowing what's right and doing what is right are connected (one should lead to the other) but many times we get tricked by lies or we trick ourselves by selfish deceit into adopting behaviors which are unloving and destructive. It's members are not perfect, but they do have an idea of human perfection - a saint. They want all human beings to follow towards that exemplar. Likewise they cannot control what a person does or does not do, they can only serve in the best way they know how. The government should respect their freedom of conscience to do that, just as patients who disagree with their ethics can go elsewhere. But the Catholic Church or the USCCB cannot be responsible when people substitute the gifts of fertility and the flourishing of the human family for cheap and hollow sexual thrills. Rendering women as lust objects and submitting many to the slavery of trafficking, pornography , abuse and prostitution while culminating in the social apocalypse that is abortion - which is back up birth control. That is why the Catholic Church and her hospitals are against birth control. Perhaps if we dropped the euphemisms for a bit, we might be able to see how we have ben deceived by this term 'birth control'. 'Birth control' does not control births any more than a rain mack controls dampness. It prevents births. But try to find a newspaper that will print that headline - 'Federal law mandates birth prevention'. Now, it starts to sound much more like the personal eugenics program that it really is. G. K. Chesterton wrote in his essay "I despise Birth-Control": G.K. Chesterton on Babies and Distributism (From The Well and the Shallows, From Ignatius Insight.) - I despise Birth-Control first because it is a weak and wobbly and cowardly word. It is also an entirely meaningless word; and is used so as to curry favour even with those who would at first recoil from its real meaning. .... It only makes sure that there shall never be any birth to control..... the very word Birth-Prevention would strike a chill into the public, the instant it was blazoned on headlines, or proclaimed on platforms, or scattered in advertisements like any other quack medicine".

Herman Cain speaks out against the eugenicist Sanger ; gets attacked by allegations next day

Last week, (on Hallowe'en) republican president hopeful Herman Cain courageously spoke out against the founding ideology of Planned Parenthood and the aims of its foundress Margaret Sanger. He said that these abortion mills target poor minority neighborhoods, especially black neighborhoods, and this thinking is along eugenic lines and a logical outworking of the eugenic policies of Margaret Sanger.

Some newspapers and agencies of a lefty persuasion found these comments less than sanguine and felt that these comments were unwarranted and and and unfair. Alex Sanger (Margaret's grandson), who was not aborted, criticized Cain's comments in The Guardian newspaper on All Saints Day (November 1st), saying that many African-American leaders were supportive of Sanger's birth control (read : prevention) regimes and that the numbers don't support Cain's comments in that 36 % of abortions happen to whites while 30 % happen to black people. This is a statistical sleight-of-hand - black people in America account for only 12 % of the population, making their 30 % fraction much more significant. Per capita, abortion is much more widespread attack on the African-American family of today. This is the same fallacious conflagration of numbers that distorts the truth that Planned Parenthood gets over half their revenue from abortions, and purports to show that only 3 % of it's services are on abortions. It would appear that numerical and moral obfuscation go hand in hand. Life Site News presented information that slipped past the left-wing fact checkers studies that in fact, Mark Crutcher's presented data that showed that- " of the 116 ZIP codes found to have more than one population control facility, 84 were disproportionately black and/or Hispanic."
Whether PP's agenda is making revenue from abortions and capitalizing from the fear and parental negligence of young people who find themselves pregnant, or whether they are promoting eugenics (but not in word, since it's reputation was completely darkened after WWII) for its sake, or whether it really is purely (or rather impurely) an agent to bring about the moral corruption of human beings and the destruction of their own children, it's difficult to say, but the aims of it's founder were rather clear.

According to the website Dian Edew, Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial "purification," couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech. This thinking is not too far away from the ring of Planned Parenthood's more up to date manifesto : "PP has encouraged homosexuality and advocated compulsory sterilization of all who have two children" (Family Planning Perspectives (a PP publication), June, Oct. 1970). Referring to poor immigrants and blacks, she called them
"...human weeds,' 'reckless breeders,' 'spawning... human beings who never should have been born." Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, referring to immigrants and poor people. Margaret Sanger was a Klu-Klux clan meeting-attending eugenicist who said "More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control." Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12.
Be that economic, medical or mentally unfitness, it is still the eugenic except in name-only attempts of a federally funded machine for deceiving a generation to allow innocent children to be crushed under the cog of a machine that, like the holocausts of previous governments and peoples, coldly treats them as non-human.
By a startling coincidence, the next day Mr. Cain was accused of sexual harassment. These alleged events were said to have taken place in the 1990s. It could be coincidence of timing, but its rather strange that the only person who visibly came forward did not seek justice straight away but appears had to wait well over a decade to feel hurt and seek wrath.