Free Republic

I don’t agree with this article. Everyone need to take a deep breath.

To my eyes it is a biased diatribe, though I do agree that Pope Francis is inferior to recent popes.

Many commenters say he didn’t mention Christ. He did. He Mentions “God” nine times as in “Moses leads us directly to God and thus to the transcendent dignity of the human being. Moses provides us with a good synthesis of your work: you are asked to protect, by means of the law, the image and likeness fashioned by God on every human face.”

Since when isn’t Christ God.

Sounds like a sermon to my ears

“Capitalism” is not in itself a moral system, it must be animated and fused with one.

The wide-spreead quite blind supporters of “God”less Capitalism fail to realize that it is that “God”less Capitalism has destroyed our nations economy.There is a attendant failure of politics. I cite the greed that led us to sellout each other(we are our community) and even ourselves to China for cheap products and greater middle-man profits.

A king would not betray his own treasury, a democracy of “takers” would. This democracy of traitors has.

We are Economic Cannibals. If this is a political problem it is because we elected capitalists who are Economic Cannibals.

The Pope’s position on “Global Warming” has been grossly exaggerated. He asked in Laudate Si for a dialogue on the issue.

He often plainly says (and does in Laudate Si) that he is not sure of his position that climate change is not understood. He says we need to talk I am fine with that since we seem tobe talking past each other.

In this speech he mentions this issue exactly once in his over 3500 words.

“This common good also includes the earth, a central theme of the encyclical which I recently wrote in order to “enter into dialogue with all people about our common home” (ibid., 3).

So the liberals meed to listen.

It is not you fault that this misinformation is so common Check it out and you will see.
http://www.amazon.com/White-Cargo-Forgotten-History-Britains/dp/0814742963/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429216020&sr=1-1&keywords=white+slaves

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0895555948/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=3527155514&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_44gje6yhho_e

Boy are you misinformed. Read too many British oriented histories of America. The Roman Catholic Lief Ericsson founded a colony that had eventually had 14 Catholic parishes in the 11th century. Columbus, de Leon, and Champlain(etc) were all Catholics. The City of St. Augustine is the nation’s oldest permanently occupied European settlement, having been founded by the Spanish in 1565. It was Catholic of course. Stossell gets it wrong about the colonies. Twelve of them were intolerant and forbade Catholicism. The thirteenth , Maryland, which was founded by The Catholic Lord Baltimore had religious tolerance for all religions. It was the 12 other Protestant colonies that were intolerant. The majority of immigrants in the 17th Century to the 13 colonies were Irish Catholic SLAVES. There were more white (usually Catholic) slaves brought to the colonies in 17th century than Africans. They outnumbered the free residents but were not counted in census data. Canada’s large successful colonies of French Catholics (Arcadians)were there for 150 years, mostly before the late comer British arrived and conducted an ethnic cleansing of Catholics.The survivors are Catholic Louisiana’s Cajuns. Look it up.

Those commenters that want no rules of war, want to abandon virtue and abandon our culture’s foundational belief in the sacred dignity of every human being.

We do not need a situation of no rules. We may need to update the rules of Just War. We certainly need less hypocrisy from liberals who oppose the legitimate waterboarding of terrorists to save lives, while justifying the painful beheading and live dismemberment of 60,000,000 innocent persons in the womb because they are inconvenient persons standing in the way of our desire for more frequent orgasms.

This wonderful essay describes a great idea that would have worked in the 1860s. But only without Lincoln. As president Lincoln was certainly a great poet-politician, but by far our worst president who decided that chaining the unwilling together was worth 600,000 lives and the destruction of the South’s economy ( which persists). We needed more persistent diplomacy.

The problem is that from now on we have to do what China wants us to do, because they already own us. In addition they have bought off our elites who are the middle-men earning temporary windfall profit from millions of slave laborers in China’s laogai. (The laogai are a system of slave labor camps, many of whose inmates are political dissidents or genuine Christians living in unbelievably inhuman conditions. )

Our middle-men turncoats have slandered us in our youth culture/media until most of our younger citizens now have no religion, no intact families, and no genuine allegiances.

By this essay’s date of 2019 China may have called in our debts to them. China has too many people and too few resources. They are aggressive and racist and were our capable enemies in Korea(draw) and Vietnam (defeated us).

What China did to Tibet they will do to us, that is, replace the people with Han Chinese and take over the land and resources. China even rerouted a major Tibetan river into China desiccating a large area of Tibet.
In 2029, if you are lucky, you may be alive but exist in a Laogai camp doing deep mining in Kentucky,etc.

It is WWIII, of course. but it is better described as a series of interacting civil wars,wars within nation-states that are economic in motivation but suicidal in effect and manipulated by the global elite.

I like the article’s phrase “…types of contemporary warfare — religio-ideological and nation-state economic”. This is a an adequate description of the old reality that is still with us.

Now maybe we can peer into the mist ahead and see the real WWIII.

It is the war of the “non-national elite” against the rest of us. In our American case the war of rich and powerful Americans against the rest of us, the most of us, the working class.

The international corporations (pseudo-persons) have no allegiance to any nation or any individual because they are are amoral and devoted to their own survival against every other consideration.

They are self-serving and are only real in cyberspace, the new reality that has already over-powered the old reality. If cyber-space were to collapse, they would be crippled.

The enemy is diaphanous. The only component of the enemy we can punch in the nose is anyone who owns stock and insists upon profit over tribalism..

WWIII = “non-national elite” versus us.

This is a shallow and addled analysis.

The statement” George W. Bush, perhaps inspired to rescue the family name, or to do something bold to remake the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 attacks, led an invasion of Iraq …” is false and unfair. Bush Two merely resumed Desert Storm under the conditions the world community had agreed upon, over and over AGREED UPON.

Every day for years after Desert Storm Saddam violated the CEASE FIRE ! (shouting intended) and SIXTEEN United Nation’s RESOLUTIONS that said comply OR ELSE!!!

9/11 came later and was only one of a crowd of motivations for the already planned Desert Storm Part Two.

Saddam signed the Cease Fire in order to not be deposed. He led the WMD inspectors on a merry game of fox-and-hound to hide the WMDs we now have proof he had.

Some of us are men with memories-intact in a nation of pot-damaged amnesiacs.

What indeed is it about Popes?

If you realized what it is, you would become Catholic.

The Tabernacles are now back on the altar. It was a mistake as you say.

You have valid criticisms, but don’t throw the baby out with the…Etc.

There has always been corruption in the Church…from the first.

Don’t shun Peter because of Judas.

I join you in not being altogether pleased with Vatican II. But most of Vatican II was just moving the furniture around and starting to celebrate Mass in the local language. The criticisms are just quibbles.

For 2000 years the Catholic Church has always varied from country to country in non-essentials and surface appearances. In essentials it is unchanged and thank God for it and its lone stand against the extensive depravity of modernity. Most of the martyrs in this new Age of Martyrdom are Roman Catholics though the media insist on the generic term “Christians”.

The essential Mass is the same.

As Scott Hahn has clearly demonstrated in “Consuming the Word: The New Testament and The Eucharist in the Early Church” the “New Testament”is actually not part of a a book. The “New Testament” is the Catholic Mass.

The Mass is the opera, the Bible is just the libretto.

Anthony Cekada, this author is not a Catholic Priest and never was.

He may be a clergyman in some small Christian group (there are over 36,000 sects presently) but he is not what he claims to be; a Roman Catholic Priest. Thus he is not to be believed no matter how much he feeds the misinformed prejudices on display here.

If Mister Cekada had made his status clear at the beginning of his post I would give his harsh criticisms enough respect to inspire my close examination and refutation. These claims to be clergy  are everywhere lately. In Kentucky we even have have women claiming to be Catholic Priests and holding ordinations. The Lexington Herald-Leader presents them as priests. Dishonest women and dishonest newspaper.

Cekada was “ordained” by an infamous ex-Bishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1977. Levebre had been forbidden in 1976 by  Pope Paul IV to ordain priests and had his other clerical powers removed.( see note below) It was not a Catholic ordination.

There is a tidal wave of disinformation about the Catholic Church in the public square. Many delight in believing and repeating these clever lies, but such people lack industry and virtue.

If these opponents of the Catholic Church have valid points they could have used the truth.

NOTE from wikipedia:

“In January 1975 the new Bishop of Fribourg stated his wish to withdraw the SSPX’s [Th is Lefebvre’s “Society of Saint Pius the 10th] pious union status. Though Lefebvre then had two meetings with the commission of Cardinals, the Bishop put his intention into effect on 6 May 1975,[52] thereby officially dissolving the Society.[Notes 16] This action was subsequently upheld by Pope Paul VI, who wrote to Archbishop Lefebvre in June 1975. Lefebvre continued his work regardless.[55] In the consistory of 24 May 1976, Pope Paul VI criticized Archbishop Lefebvre by name and appealed to him and his followers to change their minds.[56]
On 29 June 1976, Lefebvre went ahead with planned priestly ordinations without the approval of the local Bishop and despite receiving letters from Rome forbidding them. As a result Lefebvre was suspended a collatione ordinum, i.e., forbidden to ordain any priests.”

I avidly collect criticisms of the Catholic Church. They are usually  99.9% just wasted emotion inspired by misinformation. When I first saw this post I salivated over the opportunity to knock another anti- Catholic softball out of the park. 

But the article was a major disappointment, having a premise but no cogent supporting argument. An argument this confused it would require a long essay to counter.

It is an all-bread-no-meat sandwich. 

More of a random tangle than a knot.

An opinion so confused it is tedious to refute.

I really wanted an opportunity to brag about the Catholic Church developing the idea of free market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith.( Tucker does acknowledge a small bit of this). The Catholic Church’s ideas haven’t really changed that. they are much same today, despite what Tucker and many in the press claim.

Credit the Scholastics (mostly Catholic clergy) with anticipating the best of modern economic thought; economic liberty and free market economy, the best defined ideas of prices, wages, money, and value theory. 

Also note that the among the few economically successful Communistic societies were the Reducciones,  South American aboriginal societies run by Jesuits. Christianity can make things work, even defective economic practices. I endorse capitalism, but it is not as effective as the Gospel.

There are a lot of laughs to be had in contemplating Tucker’s tangle. His position that “ideas” and “tunes” are free for the taking violates the capitalist theory of copyrights. He sounds like a man who is either a Marxist or doesn’t understand economics and writes an article accusing somebody else of not understanding economics. 

Tucker cites that he is is with the Acton Institute. Not encouraging. Lord Acton was a sort of a Pelosi of a previous age, claiming to be a Catholic while distorting and slandering Catholicism.

Finally, Tucker is not arguing against Catholicism but Jesus.

King James Bible Mt 19:21
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

Sure all this makes me mad. But I get volcanically furious to see the beloved Michael Reagan pen a list like this that omits the two foundational material problems that separately and together dwarf these items. How can someone construct a list of problems and leave out the main problems? This editorial was not worth writing and certainly not worth reading when it omits the two most vital and simultaneously the most ignored problems.

Everything Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan have said has been erased. We are must be deaf or dumb.

This crippled list comes from inside the hermetically sealed bubble of the media, right and left. Anyone with common sense and a fragment of independence from the tube and paper bubble should see that our two real material problems are;

1) Our so-called “free” trade relations with China who intends to swallow us.
2) Our Open border.

Or to put it in even more foundational non-material language;

Our problem is that we have fallen out of love with ourselves, each other, our country, and our God. We have become Gehenna !

I am sort of disheartened that we don’t even seem to know our own culture.
Clint Eastwood’s speech was a masterful demonstration of the technique of communicating called Method Acting, pioneered in this country by Lee Strasberg. Does anyone recall the Brando-James Dean technique of delivering a speech. It is a naturalistic style that inspires intense concentration on the part of the audience, And it worked again this time didn’t it.

If you think it is easy, just try it. Eastwood’s expert use of the technique was refreshing and communicated better than the usual political speaking style which is quite theatrical and thus artificial.

Offense was taken because Obama supporters can ignore messages delivered in the usual stiff and artificial language style.

Re: Economic Chaos Ahead

This author and the “experts” he quotes all display an invincible blindness and a lack of any attempt systems analysis.

Adjusting taxes and spending are only two of the means to attack the problems (plural).

Of first importance is the evil twin; our trade deficit and its Siamese twin, the practice of shipping jobs out of the country. Tax revenues come from these jobs, duh!.
Commerce with China is immoral, to begin with. We are getting what we deserve in the matter in trade with China. It is the prime cause of our problems.

Other possibly more important factors are illegal immigration (the wrong immigrants) and their huge net drain on our economy, the declining birth rate,
the deterioration of the family and religions, and the lack of a robust and healthy American tribalism.

Proposing fixing things by the taxes and spending route while not even mentioning these possibly more important factors is simplistic.

Now for today’s onslaught from this barnyard Solzhenitsyn.

Before admiring Walter Russell Mead’s fresh insight , where were the warnings from this journalist in 1972 when Nixon went to China and set the currently unfolding disaster up with immoral posturing.
I said “Don’t awake the slumbering dragon” in 1972 and I say it now.
I said in 1972 that commerce with China is immoral and I say it now.

Bill Buckley gave a 2 and 1/2 hour speech, after he returned from China in 1972 (Boca Raton), saying the much same thing and making me think that perhaps I wasn’t crazy.
Nixon was wrong because he forgot ethics and morality in favor of a suicidal “Realpolitok”.
He was behind kicking Taiwan (the real China) out of the UN and gave their seat to the People’s Republic.

Immoral.
Interacting with China did not have to mean giving away the family farm.
Or dancing with Mao, Pat Nixon.
Most of us are still asleep about China. We will wake up and be dancing with Mao’s ghost during the exterminations.

CRC

I agree that the unemployment statistics are self-serving factoids. Some unemployed people I know may be off the books because they are not looking for work. They are turning down real job offers because they are receiving two years of free tuition to go to school, plus money for expenses, and the standard unemployment income. Many of these may be eligible for “food stamps”. They would be worse off with a job. I doubt they are included in the “Unemployed’ while they are in school. I can also make a case for including the illegal immigrants in the unemployed and employed population since: 1) Illegal immigrants, by my actual sampling in Florida, use all our government and private facilities and "welfare services" at a significantly greater rate than the legitimate population. They have an off-the-books negative economic impact by often evading paying payroll taxes and using more of others people tax contributions. In Florida the federal school funding for each Hispanic child is six times the amount of the funding for each “Anglo” child. I did the reports to the feds for part of Florida so I am my source. Nobody knows which children are citizens. 2) Any statistics on this area are guesses since it is obvious that "illegals" are off the books. There is no valid count of illegals, Sherlock. You come counting; they hide. So the biases of the "Guessers" strongly affects the official SWAG of the number of and unemployment rate of illegals. 3) The guess in the media was, most often, 20 million illegals during the Bush administration. It is usually quoted as 11 million now. Presumably, during The Obama administration, the missing mythical 9 million are living within the hollow walls of the mythical border fence. We are a nation accustomed to accommodating statistic-dealing liars. Anyone who gives a unemployment statistic, without red-tagging it as a wild estimate, is mendacious.

This author doesn’t understand Islam.

He says, “Muslims have lived for 14 centuries in denial of their own blood-soaked history that became the template of their political culture.”

What denial?

There are:

1) Religions

2) Political systems

3) Politico-religions

Islam is the third, their politics and religion are one indivisible thing.

The correct practice of Islam is to strive to replace other political systems with Sharia law and a Global Caliphate.

Islam is as subversive as international communism and should be illegal in the USA.

I am greatly amazed to see some dawning of weak support in the press for this position.It may be too late.

Competitive Trade is just another form of war.

Like strategic terrorism is another form of war.

Like pushing drugs into our country is another form of warfare.

Like sick popular music, movies, TV, etc. Is another for of warfare.

Like pushing Illegal immigrants up across the border is another form of war.
Think of Castro's 125,000 Marielitos pushed into Miami in 2 weeks.

We are at war with China now!

“Free” trade is the Nuke of Economic Warfare.

When Nixon went to China, William Buckley went along and noticed that everyone went around smiling all day.
What the Chinese people think about doing business is of no account to Peking who massacred the 60 million of their citizens who failed to smile all day..

Remember what happened to the Dodo birds that couldn't figure out that those sailors with clubs were their enemies.
They had lived in peace on their remote island so long they had lost their fear. Extinction came quickly.

Even Jim Lacey that wrote this article says,”With a little luck and a lot of skill, Chinese and American diplomats will peacefully navigate the predictably treacherous waters ahead.”

To the contrary, China is pursuing hegemony!

Backed by what will soon be the greatest military on earth, China is buying us.

From this article:
“Unfortunately, some were steeped...in what I now understand to be the boiler-plate, early 20th Century European Far-Right world view, along with the guilty tendency of shutting their minds to the tragic consequences.”

Do you mean Far-Left?

Were not the Nazi's Far-LEFT! National Socialism and all.