Category: Leftism and Political Correctness

No Ammo to the Enemy: Defund the Left — and the RCC

Here:

“For fostering a true consciousness in liturgical matters, it is also important that the proscription against the form of liturgy in valid use up to 1970 [the older Latin Mass] should be lifted. Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here. There has never been anything like this in history; in doing this we are despising and proscribing the Church’s whole past. How can one trust her at present if things are that way?”

Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002), p. 416.

This is precisely right.

However, there are bishops who do despise the Church’s whole past. They want the past erased and buried. They want a new morality, especially. That way they can be popular. 

Bowman also quotes Edward Feser:

Preference for the Traditional Latin Mass is massively correlated with orthodoxy. This is precisely why certain people want it suppressed. They call the TLM “divisive” but the reality is, it’s TLM ‘s opponents who want to divide the Church from her liturgical and doctrinal past.

Unlike my friend Feser, I have serious reservations about elements of traditional RCC doctrine. But I have far stronger reservations and outright objections to the destructive Left, in particular, to their trademark erasure of the historical record. Pedant that I am, I will point out once again that the past cannot be erased or  buried, for it remains, tenselessly, what it was.  But the past can be sent into oblivion which is, practically speaking, the same thing: what has been sent down the memory hole can no longer inform or guide our action in the present.

The RCC should stand as a bulwark against the leftist insanity all around us.  So, to the extent that it becomes just another piece of leftist cultural junk, the RCC must be defunded. You are therefore a fool complicit with the forces of the anti-civilizational Left to the extent that you contribute to the RCC monetarily, in the same way that you are complicit fool and a useful idiot if you continue to contribute to those of your alma maters who refuse to  renounce publicly the destructive DEI agenda.

But what if the particular church you attend needs repairs, a new roof say, and a collection is taken up within that church for the funds needed. Go ahead, make a contribution despite the theological ignorance of the priests, their homosexual vibe, and the defective Novus Ordo liturgy.  If you need services on Sundays, Novus Ordo is better than nothing. If you take a harder line, and shun Novus Ordo, you may convince me.

Life is Hierarchical

An old lie of leftists is compressed into one of their more recent abuses of language: 'equity.' So-called 'equity' is wokespeak for equality of outcome or result. 'Equity'  in this obfuscatory sense cannot occur and ought not be pursued.

It cannot occur because people are not equal either as individuals or as groups. That is a plain fact. Leftists won't face it, however, because they confuse the world as they would like it to be with the world as it is. 

'Equity' ought not be pursued because its implementation is possible only by the violation of the liberty of the individual by a totalitarian state apparatus precisely unequal in power to those it would equalize.

Life is a ladder.  It is many ladders, as many as there are directions of achievement. On any ladder, some are above, some below. Look up without envy; look down without contempt. Climb as high as you can on as many ladders as you are on.  Lend a hand to those below; if any you help should surpass you, take satisfaction at your mentorship and pride in their accomplishment. 

Academentia Update: Harvard and Hillsdale

We of the Coalition of the Sane and Reasonable are rejoicing at Trump's treatment of Harvard. Once a great institution at the very top of the academic world, it has become a sick woke joke and a haven for antisemites and destructive DEI nonsense.  VERITAS (truth) remains emblazoned upon its seal, but truth, which has never been a leftist value, is now moribund if not dead in Cambridge, Mass., as witness the appointment of Claudine Gay, plagiarist, as president. (She has since been removed.) Truth and Gay's 'my truth' are toto caelo different. That she could be even proposed as president, let alone appointed, is indicative of deep institutional rot.

As a private institution, Harvard can do pretty much what it wants, including digging its own grave; but it is plainly wrong for it to receive taxpayer dollars to subsidize destructive leftist lunacy.  If you can't see that, you are morally obtuse.

For the view from Hillsdale, see here.  Excerpt:

Mr. Trump’s war on Harvard is largely about federal money, and Mr. Arnn’s Hillsdale “doesn’t take a single cent of it,” he says. “Nobody gives us any money unless they want to.” This means Hillsdale, founded by Free Will Baptists in 1844, isn’t bound by government mandates tied to funding, such as Title IX. Harvard, he says, was “exclusively funded by the private sector for—what is it?—it’s got to be 250 years.” (Harvard was founded in 1636.) “And now, in this progressive era, if my calculations are right, they get $90,000 per student a year from the federal government.” He recommends that Harvard, which receives about $9 billion a year from Washington, emulate Hillsdale and get off the government dole.

“They should give it all up,” Mr. Arnn says. “They should make an honest living.”

Related:

Peter W. Wood, Harvard Against America

Peter Berkowitz, Harvard Law Professors Politicize the Rule of Law

Interesting development: "Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a mass uprising to oppose President Donald Trump, going so far as to quote The Communist Manifesto." 

Politics by Assassination, Anyone?

Von Clausewitz held that war is politics pursued by other means. What I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means. David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.  Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.  But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

You have only thirty seconds to make your point.  Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it.  Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life.  Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.  Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case.  You are politically dead.

Politics is war.  Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

A semantic stretch is involved in Horowitz's "Politics is war." On a very strict definition of 'war,' war is only between states.  To put it pedantically, the only admissible values of the variables x, y in 'x is at war with y' are states. If so, there cannot be a war on drugs, on terror, on Christmas, a war between political factions or parties, between sub-state entities, or between a sub-state entity such as Hamas and a state such as Israel.

Critical thinking requires close attention to extended (stretched) uses of terms. Nevertheless, some semantic extensions are justified: politics is sufficiently like war to be called war.  In war sensu stricto assassination is often justified. 

This brings me to Luigi Mangione and his (alleged)  assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Health Care.  Mangione has been charged with the premeditated murder of Thompson whom he shot in the back, not for personal reasons, but for political ones. So, with a bit of a stretch, we may call Mangione's (alleged) killing of Thompson a case of political assassination, despite the fact that Thompson was not a politician.

Now to the point: if you have no problem with Mangione's deed, then, by parity of reasoning, you should have no problem  with some right-winger assassinating U. S. District Judge James Boasberg.  Recall:

Mr. Trump signed a proclamation under the Alien Enemies Act last month, claiming that Tren de Aragua is "perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion" against the U.S. and declaring that all members of the gang in the U.S. unlawfully were subject to immediate detention and removal. [. . .] 

The day after Mr. Trump's proclamation, five Venezuelan nationals who were being held at a detention center in Texas filed a lawsuit that alleged Mr. Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act violated the terms of the law and asked a federal district court in Washington, D.C., to block their removals.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg swiftly agreed to stop their deportations for 14 days and later expanded his temporary order to prohibit the administration from removing all noncitizens in U.S. custody who are subject to Mr. Trump's proclamation.

So: Do you have a problem with assassinating U. S. District Judges who unconstitutionally presume to put themselves about the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief who quite reasonably ordered the deportation of vicious Tren de Aragua illegal aliens?  I do! 

This is why I consider the death penalty to be what justice demands in the Mangione case, should he be convicted.  If he is found guilty, he should be made an example of and executed within a 'reasonable' period of time (two years?), time enough for a 'reasonable' number of appeals (two? three?).  I'm all for due process and the presumption of innocence.

We are doomed if we do not take a strong stand against  assassination.

Unfortunately, a majority of leftists, according to this article, think political assassination is a societal good. Excerpt:

Before the 21st century, Democrats were mostly working- and middle-class Americans who believed in the rule of law and loved America. The murderous ones—the violent Black Panthers and Weathermen—existed on the fringe. Now, though, the fringe has moved to the heart of the Democrat party, which is a death cult. And like all death cults, it’s requiring greater sacrifices. The latest manifestation is that a majority of self-identified leftists believe that assassinating people for political ends (e.g., Donald Trump and Elon Musk) is fully justified.

One of the things that radical Muslims and leftists have in common is that they are death cults. The Islamic penchant for rape, torture, and murder on gleefully sadistic scales (e.g., the Yazidis, Israelis, and Christians in Africa) speaks for itself. However, we in the West have been indoctrinated not to recognize the Democrat death cult for what it is.

To the leftist fools who call for political assassinations, whether in plain English, or under cover of such formulations as "Take down Elon Musk," I say:  Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind! (Hosea 8:7)

Related:  Paul Gottfried, On Democratic Party Violence

Sponsorship and Censorship

Lefties often conflate lack of sponsorship with censorship when it suits them. It is not that they are too dense to grasp the distinction, but that they willfully ignore it for their ideological purposes. If a government agency refuses to sponsor your art project, it does not follow that you are being censored. To censor is to suppress. But there is nothing suppressive about a refusal to fund.

If you are a serious artist, you will find a way to satisfy your muse. On the other hand, if you expect to dip into the public trough, be prepared to find some strings attached to your grant. Don't expect the tax dollars of truck drivers and waitresses to subsidize your violation of their beliefs.

William Kilpatrick’s Turning Point Project

Mission:

The Turning Point Project is dedicated to educating Catholics and other Americans about the threat from Islam by arming them with the information and analysis necessary to meet the challenge.

As I have argued many times, Islam and Leftism, especially in synergy, pose a major threat to us.

This from December 2017:

The Leftist-Islamist Axis of Evil and Divine Sovereignty

James S. writes,

Your point about the twin threats coming from the Left and from Islam reminded me of an email I received from Fr. Schall some months ago when I shared a draft of the Syllabus with him.  He made the same point, as both the Left and Islam are voluntarist systems where will is exalted over reason.  He called the parallel between them the main issue of our time.  Many of the points in the Syllabus were paraphrases of an earlier Schall essay on voluntarism. 

Fr. Schall is right. But the issue may be a bit more complicated than the good father appreciates. As I say in Pope Benedict's Regensburg Speech and Muslim Insensitivity:

Benedict is not denigrating Islam or its prophet but setting forth a theological problem, one that arises within Christianity itself, namely, the problem of the tension between the intellectualism of Augustine and Aquinas and the voluntarism of Duns Scotus. "Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?" Roughly, does the transcendence of God — which both Christianity and Islam affirm though in different ways — imply that God is beyond our categories, including that of rationality?

Perhaps a better way to put the question would be in terms of divine sovereignty. Is God absolutely sovereign and thus unlimited in knowledge and power? Or are there logical and non-logical limits on his knowledge and power?  For example, is a law of logic such as Non-Contradiction within God's power? In his 2012 Creation and the Sovereignty of God, Hugh McCann argues that God is not only sovereign over the natural order, but also over the moral order, the conceptual/abstract order, and the divine nature itself. That seems to give the palm to voluntarism, does it not?

I consider McCann's view to be highly problematic as I argue in my long discussion article, "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1 (Winter 2014), pp. 149-161. 

Related: Muslim Atrocities Against Christians and their Churches 

 

Leftists as Political Retromingents

A retromingent is an animal that urinates backwards.

Posturing as 'progressive,' the leftist pisses on the past, seeking to erase its memory by destroying monuments and redacting the historical record.  There is no piety in the leftist, no reverence. Try using those words at a Manhattan or Georgetown cocktail party and see what happens.

This political retromingency helps explain the leftists' lack of respect for language. 

If you erase history, however, not only will you not be able to learn from it, but you won't have anything left to piss on, either.  Your retromingency will cut counter to your benighted and backwards  modus vivendi et micturendi.

Instructive story here. 

The Battle is Just Beginning

Walk the line. Don't back down.  It's going to be a long twilight struggle against the forces of darkness, my friends. (Wo)Man up, gear up, but be of good cheer. Long live the Republic!

JFK Inaugural Speech, 1961:

Now the trumpet summons us again–not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation'–a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

Of the four, tyranny is greatest threat at the present time, the tyranny of the deep state operatives who control the Democrat Party and pull the strings of the puppet-in-chief, Joe Biden, and who desperately tried, but failed, to replace him with the puppet Kamala Harris.  Despite the stinging rebuke visited upon the anti-democratic Dem cadre, they will not give up. Their nihilism has deep and mephitic sources.

I was hoping to uncover an etymological connection between mephitic and Mephistopheles, but I found no evidence of one.

…………………..

UPDATE (12/18).  Further political 'infusions' to 'get your blood up' in this season of peace and joy. Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Why They Hate Kash Patel.  They hate a 'person of color'? What racists  they are!

After Penny.  Excerpt:

Instead, the left and the weaponized government institutions under its control used Penny’s race, gender, and courage to try to make him a national pariah and a living symbol of its twisted ideas of “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” He had to entertain daily the possibility that he could spend up to 20 years in prison for protecting himself and others, and then live out the remainder of his life as an ex-con whose alleged crimes were rooted in purported racism. He had to live in the knowledge that the elected judicial authorities of our country’s largest and supposedly greatest city—with the unreserved support of many civic leaders, criminal justice theorists, and major leaders of one of our country’s two major political parties—did everything in their power to impose just that outcome on him. He likely realized that if they succeeded—and even if they failed, as they did—they would be emboldened to  punish others with the same process.

Tucker versus Pompeo

Trump's Vengeance Tour?  

Last week, I noted with alarm that House Republicans were shrugging off—or even approving of—Donald Trump wanting to jail some of their past and current colleagues who served on the January 6th Committee. As it turns out, I underestimated their bloodthirstiness.

Apparently these embittered losers are incapable of distinguishing between revenge/vengeance and retributive justice. Are these two-bit Bulwark journos unaware that 'retribution' has two importantly different senses in English? 

Whence drones?

I am not able [not able, Rod, or not willing?] to tell you where this idea comes from, but I can assure you that, from my sources, it’s not idle speculation. Thesis: the drones are from China.

China is taunting us, showing us how advanced its technology is, and that it can violate US airspace with impunity. We don’t have the ability to detect these things before they arrive, and they can cloak themselves from our radar. I had wondered why China or any nation would reveal its advanced technology in this silly way. A possible answer: it could be a display of power in advance of an invasion of Taiwan, as a kind of “Are you sure you want to mess with us, Yanks?” way. Doing this could be a shrewd way of firing a warning shot.

Is Dreher suggesting that Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of Homeland (In?)Security, has been lying to us, along with the rest of the Dementocrat regime about the provenience of drones? Dreher's thesis is the most plausible explanation I can think of.  

Stealth Ideologues: Hillary and Kamala

On 21 October 2016, I laid into Hillary for lying about the Heller decision. The post concluded:

Hillary is a stealth ideologue who operates by deception. This is what makes her so despicable. If she were honest about her positions, her support would erode. So not only are her policies destructive; she refuses to own them.  She is an Obamination both at the level of ideas and at the level of character.

'Kamala' is substitutable for 'Hillary' salva veritate as the philosophers say.  In plain English, if the first name is substituted for the second in the above passage, its truth is preserved.  

If you complain that my tone is polemical, I will reply that of course it is, and justifiably so: we are at war with our political enemies. The cadre Dems I have just mentioned are not mere political opponents who share with us a commitment to the principles and values of our great constitutional republic, but revolutionaries out to replace that republic by way of a "fundamental transformation," as Barack Hussein Obama put it. To imagine that we are  engaged with them in a gentle(wo)manly debate under the umbrella of shared commitments is to play the useful idiot as so many rank-and-file Dems still do. You are a superannuated sucker if you still think it is 1960 or even 1980.

I leave undecided whether Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus was right when he wrote, "Polemos (Πόλεμος) is the father of all and the king of all . . . ." (Fr. 53 from G. S. Kirk and J E Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge UP, 1969, p. 195)

And then there is this from the same date (21.X.16):

Leviticus 19:15: The Lord versus Hillary

“You shall not do injustice in judgment; you shall not show partiality to the powerless; you shall not give preference to the powerful; you shall judge your fellow citizen with justice."  Alternate translations here.

In the third and final presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said the following about Supreme Court  nominations.  "And the kind of people that I would be looking to nominate to the court would be in the great tradition of standing up to the powerful, standing on behalf of our rights as Americans." 

This is the sort of leftist claptrap according to which the judiciary assumes  legislative functions and the Constitution is a tabula rasa on which anything can be written.  The purpose of the court is not to stand up to the powerful or take the side of the powerless, but to apply the law and administer justice.  

 There must be no partiality to the powerful. Might does not make right.  But neither does lack of might. There must be no  "partiality to the powerless." 

(Credit where credit is due:  I am riffing on a comment I heard Dennis Prager make. Plagiarism is another mark of leftism.) 

Related: Weakness does not Justify