I’m coming your way!

This Friday, December 2 I will be in the Birmingham area for your friendly neighborhood Young Adults “Thank God It’s First Friday” whooptidoo at Our Lady of Sorrows parish in Homewood.

There will be Mass at 6:30, with dinner and the talk at 7:00. I’ll be talking about 101 Reasons Not to Be Catholic. Fun and some good discussion of the Catholic Faith will be had by all, as well as yummy food. Don’t miss it if you can.

Then, next week, from December 5-7, I will be speaking at Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Los Alamos, NM. Topics: 101 Reasons Not to be Catholic, Family as the Icon of the Holy Trinity, Mary, Mother of the Son.

Non-Birmingham and Los Alamos readers: This means I will be on the road and less accessible starting tomorrow to December 8. Please bear with me. I will be checking my email, but I may not get back to you.

Comboxers: Please play well with others. Your cooperation is appreciated.

He’s doing it to keep you safe. Feel safer or you might be an Enemy of the State.

on life issues. If your parish doesn’t have ‘em (or if you don’t) you should invest in a few since they are handy presentations of the Church’s common sense teaching.

Warning to Death Penalty Enthusiasts: The American bishops do, in fact, accept the Church’s whole teaching, not only about things displeasing to damn libruls, but even about things unacceptable to American conservatives. This is not, contrary to popular conservative conspiracy theory, due to a plot by the ghost of Cardinal Bernardin to destroy the prolife movement, but is in fact part of the Catholic tendency to be catholic. Hence the bishops address the whole of human existence and do not simply confine their teaching and commentary to the theory that opposition to abortion, contraception and euthanasia (and gay “marriage”) are the only aspects of Catholic moral teaching to which we need pay any attention.

as a sign of Hope. I do too, just as I saw the Tea Parties as a sign of hope. Both are protesting basically the same things. Insofar as they are opposed to the evil of the incestuous relationship between Big Caesar and Big Mammon, they are right and deserve kudos for trying to figure out ways to oppose this.

Daniel writes:

President Obama and other Democrats are already trying to co-opt the Occupy movement, just as the Republicans co-opted the Tea Party, but you’d have to be blind to fall for that, aside from the few Democrats who do stand up for the working class. And the Occupy movement, with its emphasis on consensus and deliberate lack of leadership, does not look likely to offer practical means of structural change. But it’s early, and who knows? The time is certainly ripe for a third party.

No one knows where all this is headed, but when was the last time that there was any hope at all for critics of capitalism?

I answer that i am not so sanguine about the human capacity for blindness as Daniel. The Tea Partiers, after all, were blind enough to get co-opted by the GOP and made into a wholly owned subsidiary of the giant corp known as FOX News (not to mention Goldline and whatever Glenn Beck was hawking that week) so I have no trouble believing it quite possible–indeed likely–that the OWSers will find themselves skillfully herded by professional molders and shapers of human clay who run the Democratic party (and their willing accomplices in the media who do nothing but shape public opinion.) Give them time. The OWS folk remind me of Voice of the Faithful: rightfully angry but unfocused. I shall be very surprised if they don’t, like Voice of the Faithful, wind up as a clearing house for every manipulator with an agenda.

That Eeyorish opinion vented, I do nonetheless agree that OWS, like the Tea parties, is a hopeful sign. Particularly hopeful to me is the fact that the OWSers appear to be quite open to Chesterton and Catholic social teaching, which is always a healthy sign.

Catholic Professionals of Seattle welcomes nationally recognized speaker Greg Wolfe. He’ll talk about the relationship between art and religion and its impact in the
public square.

Tickets for the December 2, 2011 breakfast are available online, see link below.  These meetings are terrific opportunities to meet fellow Catholic professionals.  We also enjoy a gourmet breakfast by SimpleFoods.  Space is limited at the UW Catholic Newman Center, so reserve your spot soon.

Please spread the word among your friends and relatives too!

• • 6:30 a.m. – Check-in, with registration, sacrament of reconciliation available
  • 7:00 a.m. – Mass celebrated by our Chaplain, Fr. Raymond Cleaveland
  • 7:45 a.m. – Breakfast and socializing begins
  • 8:30 a.m. – Our featured guest begins their  presentation
  • 9:15 a.m. – The event closes
  Membership: http://catholicprofessionalsofseattle.org/membership.html

Event tickets: http://catholicprofessionalsofseattle.org/events.html
Location, parking options and directions: http://catholicprofessionalsofseattle.org/directions.html

It’s over. You’re done. Goodbye.

And Whew. That guy could have been President. What kind of screwy party allowed him to get that close to the levers of power in the first place? And why is it now turning to an astonishingly terrible choice like Newt Gingrich as its last Great Not Romney Hope?

…of Gene Wolfe when a dunderhead attacks him.

Don’t get in the way of Wright’s pen with foolish blather written against a good man and great writer. You just end up like C.M. Hyde did when dared to spit on Father Damien of Molokai in the hearing of Robert Louis Stevenson. The only thing people will ever remember about you will be that you were the slob who got what he deserved.

One of the traitorous enemies of America in our Senate, Lindsey Graham, lies about the reckless and dangerous bill just passed by the Senate. Out of one side of his mouth he lies:

Several, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), noted that a U.S. citizen suspected of aiding al Qaeda would be given his or her right to trial.

“The idea that an American citizen helping al Qaeda doesn’t get due process is just a lie,” Graham said.

while out of the other he says:

“If you’re an American citizen and you betray your country, you’re going to be held in military custody and you’re going to be questioned about what you know,” he said, “and you’re not going to be given a lawyer if our national security interests dictate that you not be given a lawyer and go into the criminal justice system, because we’re not fighting a crime, we’re fighting a war.”

Translation: if the Ruling Class of the People’s Democratic National Security State of Heaven say so, any American citizen can be labeled a terrorist with no rights and can be arrested and jailed indefinitely.

It goes without saying that since all sorts of crimes can be construed as “betraying your country” with a little imagination, it won’t be terribly hard to expand “National Security” to protect us from everything from suspected murder to shoplifting as the state continues to find “penumbras” of meaning in the tyrannical powers it is granting itself. And since the clever GOP shills who have argued so passionately for torture abroad have done so in the interest of “national security” it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see that the people pushing for this tyrannical overreach domestically would also find torture a useful tool in “fighting evil” among the American citizenry they are increasingly treating like enemy subjects and not the citizens of a free republic.

That man is a traitor to these United States just as surely as a sworn member of al Quaeda is. So is every Senator who passed this bill. In a more civilized age, they would be defenestrated and put in the stocks to be pelted with mud. The traitors to the Constitution who just voted for this should be impeached and jailed as enemies of the United States of America.

No. Really. I’m not exaggerating when I say I fear our Ruling Classes much more than I worry about some guys in tents beating a few drums. Permit me to cut and paste this in full:

Senate Set to Vote on Bill that Defines the U.S. as a Battlefield

The Senate is set to vote on a bill next week that would define the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allow the U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own back yard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor Monday, the legislation will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Senator Mark Udall said in a speech last week. One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on U.S. soil. Section 1031 essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.”

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash, and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.
The ACLU is urging citizens to call their Senator and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of Congressional oversight.

(Thanks to David Cox)

UPDATE: David Cox emails:

Earlier I emailed you about the report from prisonplanet.com that indicated the new NDAA created a battleground in the entire US and would allow for the detainment of US citizens without charges. The section referenced was 1031 and 1032. Section 1032 follows and specifically exempts US citizens from detention in military custody. You should issue a correction…
SEC. 1032. REQUIREMENT FOR MILITARY CUSTODY.
……..
(b) Applicability to United States Citizens and Lawful Resident Aliens-

(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.

(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS- The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to a lawful resident alien of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.
UPDATE 2 from David Cox: After a third reading of sections 1031 and 1032 I recognized where I was misled… This paragraph is worded cleverly. Rather than stating: “Detainment of persons in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States” which would dissolve all authority of this section when a US citizen is concerned, it states, “The Requirement to detain” does not extend to US citizens. This means that the section does have the authority to be applied to US citizens but is not REQUIRED. Thus, this act does in fact open US citizens up to military detainment. I’m sorry for my earlier confusion…

UPDATE 3 Eric Phillips emails:

Concerning your update of the “Senate Set to Vote on Bill that Defines the U.S. as a Battlefield,” the ACLU is warning that the provision that exempts U.S. citizens doesn’t apply to the worst part of the bill. Here’s their response (http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/senators-demand-military-lock-american-citizens-battlefield-they-define-being):

Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1013 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.
But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”

There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial. And the Senate is likely to vote on it Monday or Tuesday.

Please note the bipartisan nature of this attempt by our Ruling Classes to transform the U.S. into a lawless police state overnight. It makes clear that the real power dynamic in the U.S. is not Dem vs. GOP, but Ruling Class vs. populace. It will be sold, of course, as “keeping you safe”. But it effectively allows the state to strip you of your rights by fiat and imprison you forever if Caesar so pleases.

A reader writes:

Please pray for my husband who is out of work for the second time in a year. A large part of this is due to his inability to deal well with difficult people (of whom he is one!). This last job loss was probably a God-send since it made him recognize how poorly he treats people and I’ve seen dramatic changes (for the better). His father is a very hostile and critical person; I believe my husband often transfers his anger for his father to others. Again, he has recognized this and is working on an ongoing forgiveness of his father and his bad behavior. I pray that my husband will find a job and that he can begin again as a kinder, more responsible person.

Father, hear our prayer for your son that he would find work swiftly and that he would, by your grace, be able to forgive his father and master his temper. Mother Mary and St. Joseph, pray for him. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

… is that he is the soul of chivalric courtesy, generous wit, and intelligent engagement. Here he is, f’rinstance, irenically replying to somebody whose worldview is utterly foreign to John’s in many ways, and doing it with grace and aplomb and with a generous appreciation for what can be held in common between them.

And here he is, again very graciously and thoughtfully, replying to what he takes me to be saying about the OWSers.

My good friend Mark Shea is convinced that the Occupy Wall Street mob represents an honest protests against the excesses and dishonesty of bankers and capitalists, and that the bad publicity they have been receiving in the media is due to an ideological slant trying to make them look bad.

He points out how badly the Tea Party protesters were and are portrayed, and cautions his readers not to take the media presentation as unbiased.

Since I used to work in the newspaper field, both as writer and editor, for two newspapers that were both bankrupt (I suppose hiring me acts as the reverse of the curse of Midas) I am not hasty to dismiss Mr Shea’s complaint of news bias.

John is almost right about what I think, but not quite. I’m not sure I would call OWS an “honest” protest any more than I would call the Tea Parties that. I would say that both are, by and large, understandable insofar as they are protests and that is simply because I think the evils that provoke them are so open, naked and obvious that I would be astonished at a civilization that did *not* react in some form of protest. I emphatically do *not* believe the bad publicity they have gotten is due to an ideological slant. The stories of rape, excrement, silliness, hypocrisy, shallowness, refusal to report sex crimes and so forth have all been documented, as have the cringeworthy stuff about down twinkles, female-bodied persons, trust fund brats whining for somebody to pay their tuition and the rest. It ain’t “bad publicity” when you actually get caught on camera being a smelly hippy, nut, creep or criminal. It’s your responsibility and you own it, OWSer.

That said, I do think that the OWSers and Tea Partiers have a point and it’s not hard to grasp: gross and growing economic injustice exists because of an incestuous alliance between Caesar and Mammon. The problem, as I have noted before, is that (as Chesterton says), people in revolt against an evil generally have a pretty good idea what the evil is. What they seldom have a clear idea about is what to do about it and they typically advocate remedies worse than the disease unless they have really thought things through (meaning, “Thought about things in light of Catholic teaching”). This is on full display with both the OWSers and the Tea Partiers. In both cases, you often have people who are stunningly confused and/or stunningly dishonest about their goals (much more the former, I think). Both, for instance, are chockablock with people who protest the power and immensity of the Caesar/Mammon incest while lobbying hard for the state to fix it (either through a massive and wasteful empire enforced by a bloated military and through entitlements they pretend to hate, as the Tea Partiers often do) or through some other wild scheme of utopian state intervention as many OWSers advocate. Tea Partiers tend to fall for Ayn Rand’s poisonous snake oil; OWSers for Marx’s.

But (you knew there would be a but) neither the Tea Partiers nor the OWSers are wrong about the central thing: our system is grossly unjust and getting more so every day and I sympathize with them in much the same way as I sympathize with any other mob of ordinary people who denounce a serious wrong, particularly when the people who regard them with the most focused enmity are enormously wealthy and powerful and own all the guns and pepper spray. The Tea Parties were largely co-opted by the GOP and the Dems look to me like they are striving to co-opt the OWSers, such that these rogue forces of nature will be harnessed used, yet again, to drive the chariots of Powerful People and, in the end, loving Big Brother. If so, it will be a loss, I think, and not one our Republic can afford at this hour. On the other hand, both movements (who are largely angry at the same thing) still have the potential to do great and terrible damage too, particularly if the OWSers on the Left and fans of leg-breaking thuggery on the Right (described by Greenhut below) achieve a violent synergy that erupts into Beirut-style urban warfare (a real possibility if the economy seriously tanks and people get desperate and radical).

But on the bright side, I note that the experience of those Catholics who have tried to engage OWSers with actual Catholic social and economic teaching has largely been positive and met with great interest (though I don’t know what, if any, has been the experience of those who tried to engage Tea Partiers with that teaching. My own experience has consisted often of hearing Chesterton, St. Thomas and the Magisterium denounced as “socialist” by comboxers who have no clue what Chesterton, St. Thomas, the Magisterium or socialism is. But comboxes are not very good samples of general opinion oftentimes.) This suggests to me that this is a teachable moment and that Catholics interested in turning all that OWS/Tea Party energy toward implementation of “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” should take it as an opportunity to bring the Church’s sophisticated magisterial teaching to OWSer’s and Tea Partiers rather than scorn them. Are a lot of them muddled pagans? You bet! But nobody knows better than the wise, courteous, generous and insightful John C. Wright what terrific Catholics pagans can make if you just meet them where they are and teach them the gospel their own background has been preparing them for. Will they all respond favorably? No. Some modern pagans, like ancient ones, will hate the gospel. But the game is still worth the candle. Any movement where Chesterton is given a warm and engaged hearing is a movement that Catholics should regard as field white for harvest, not as enemy territory. I think large percentages of both the Tea Parties and the OWSers fit that bill.

can be found in this sensible and humane piece by Steven Greenhut, on the ridiculous police state tactics deployed by campus security thugs against peaceful protestors at UC Davis (and the lies unsuccessfully deployed to try to excuse those tactics).

His critique of the growing love of fascist violence by the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism is particularly pointed. Also striking is the repeated and persistent use of the word “animals” by alleged conservatives (many of them no doubt Christian) to describe people who were doing nobody any harm, but whose tribal affiliation and dumb ideas place them on the wrong side of an ideological divide from the alleged champions of limited government and the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Greenhut nicely sums things up:

What’s really disgusting is the natural instinct of so many conservatives to stick up for the police. They don’t like the Occupy protesters, so they willingly back brutality against them, without considering the possibility that conservatives at some point might be on the receiving end of this aggression. Then again, this common, vulgar form of modern conservatism almost always sides with the state, even as it champions the empty words of limited government.

In a rapidly dechristianizing society, you’d think that conservatives and Christians would have the modest foresight necessary to ask themselves, “Gee, what if the state and its militarized police decide that we are menaces who deserve to be treated like lawless rioters when we are just sitting there posing no threat and exercising the right to peaceably assemble? Suppose they blinded me with pepper spray or took the advice of more fascist minded ‘conservatives’ and started beating me or fracturing skulls with rubber bullets all while lying that I was a ‘threat’?” But, as the huge ‘conservative’ support for torture has demonstrated, the Thing that Used to be Conservatism seems to be dominated by an awful lot of people want to live in a police state and who seem to have no conception that a post-Christian police state will not keep them safe.

I see basically no difference between these tactics:

and those of Bull Connor:

Does this mean I agree with the OWSers confused and their mixed up goals? Generally, no. Greenhut speaks for me pretty well:

I disagree with most of what the Occupy protesters are saying, quite obviously, but when I see lines of riot-gear-clad officials standing in front of these unbathed wretches, my heart goes out to the wretches. They need a lesson in economics and politics. The policies they advocate – to the degree that many of them have any well-defined grievances – range from the silly to the disastrous. They are inconsistent, foolish and hypocritical. Many of them are lazy freeloaders. Such is life. They do create filth and chaos in public parks, but if one cannot protest in a public park, there are not many places to have a protest. It’s in everyone’s best interest for the authorities to provide as much latitude as possible for protesters of any political persuasion. We still do pretend to live in a free society, right?

As a matter of common sense, I think it wiser for a Catholic in a rapidly dechristianizing culture to be more worried about vast concentrations of power and wealth in an unaccountable pagan crony capitalist state ruled by a God King who grants himself the power to kill any American citizen he chooses. I think it more sensible to be concerned about the intensely incestuous relationship between Big Caesar and Big Mammon. I think it more sane to keep an eye on legislators from two parties who are about the amassing of vast personal wealth as they contemplate how to force veterans to sacrifice more. I am much more concerned about militarized police who have power to casually pepper spray unresisting protestors and lie that they were a “threat” than I am about a few disorganized people living in tents and playing drums, who are open to reading Chesterton and hearing some Catholic social teaching (as many of them are). Are OWSers sinless victims? Of course not. We all know the stories of the smelly hippies, nuts, creeps and criminals among them (sort of like the smelly hippies, nuts, creeps and criminals who occupy the pews–and sometimes the altars–of the Catholic Church). Arrest ‘em if they break the law. But do be sure to arrest them for actual lawbreaking and not merely for being annoying or standing next to a smelly hippy, nut, creep, or criminal. Otherwise the jails fill up and the state has to figure out something else to do, like ask itself if the whole crony capitalism thing is really panning out as planned, when its manifold and manifest failures are generating this much unrest, not only among OWSers but Tea Partiers as well).

But unless there is a real threat, this police state crap must go. Like James Madison, I am generally of the opinion that we have more to fear from the state than from a bunch of people peaceably assembling. There used to be a time the Thing That Used to Be Conservatism knew that too.