An Inclusive Church

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict:

The Pontiff referred to Augustine's commentary on this composition of the Jewish people, noting that this "Father of the Church introduces a surprising element of great timeliness." Augustine "knows that also among the inhabitants of Babylon there are people who are committed to peace and the good of the community, despite the fact that they do not share the biblical faith, that they do not know the hope of the Eternal City to which we aspire," Benedict XVI stated. "They have a spark of desire for the unknown, for the greatest, for the transcendent, for a genuine redemption," explained the Pope, quoting Augustine.

For all of those out there who say the Church is exclusive: God's greatest reward is available to all people, even those who do not and will not know Him during their time on Earth.

"With this faith in an unknown reality, they are really on the way to the authentic Jerusalem, to Christ."

On this day in 1804

Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, was tried for political bias.

Although he opposed adoption of the U.S. Constitution, he later became a strong Federalist and President Washington appointed him (1796) to the U.S. Supreme Court. A series of brilliant and influential decisions established his leadership in the court until he was eclipsed by the rising genius of John Marshall. Chase was impeached (1804) by the U.S. House of Representatives for discrimination on the bench against Jeffersonians. Tried before the Senate (1805), he was found not guilty. This verdict discouraged further attempts to impeach justices for purely political reasons.

I guess partisanship is at least a couple thousand years old.

Real Progress

Senator Joe Lieberman:

I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn. Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.

You don't have to take it from us, rednecks.

Bill Cosby and Accountability

There is a very interesting post over at the Real Clear Politics blog about Bill Cosby and those who criticize his message. Tom Bevan points out a paragraph in an article from the Princeton Alumni Weekly, which quotes Friedrich Hayek.

“It is often contended,” Hayek wrote, “that the belief that a person is solely responsible for his own fate is held only by the successful. Its underlying suggestion ... is that people hold this belief [only] because they have been successful. I, for one, am inclined to think that the connection is the other way around and that people often are successful because they hold this belief. ... And if the smug pride of the successful is often intolerable and offensive, the belief that success depends wholly on [individual effort] is probably the pragmatically most effective incentive to successful action, whereas the more a man indulges in the propensity to blame others or circumstances for his failures, the more disgruntled and ineffective he tends to become” (The Constitution of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1960)

This is a very important point, and one that shows precisely why it is disingenuous for the left to claim moral superiority when it comes to minorities. While I don't advocate an all-out "let them be and they'll learn" type of attitude with the poor (of any color), there does have to be some individual accountability in all Americans that is not only failed by government programs, but is actually worsened by them. The Princeton Alumni Weekly is right when it states that Cosby's view is far more liberating for minorities than that of his critics.

Evil Wal-Mart?

The Troglodyte shows why maybe Wal-Mart isn't as bad as people like to suggest. He was in a jam during a torrential rain-storm and needed something to keep his house from flooding any worse than it was.

Beginning to feel frantic, I went to a 24/7 Wal-Mart and headed straight for the garden/patio section. Me: Do you have any sand bags? My house is flooding and I really need some. Employee A: No, we are all out. Me: How about dirt? Do you have bags of dirt? Employee A: We have potting soil on the patio, but we just closed the patio and the registers on this end of... Now looking at me, she continues, Employee A (to me): You don't care, do you? Your house is flooding. How many bags do you need? Me: I don't know, maybe about 20 of the big bags. Employee A (to Employee B, who had been standing there): Go ask the manager to come back and re-open this register and see if we can have Employees C, D, and E punch back in. I'm going to go get a flat bed cart. At Wal-Mart, instead of shutting the door in my face, they re-opened a register just for me and paid three employees overtime, two of whom went out to the patio with me, getting completely soaked in the pouring rain. They loaded almost a $100 worth of potting soil onto two flat bed carts, took them out, and loaded them into the truck for me.

This was after Home Depot turned him away because they had just closed shop for the night.

Personal Opinion as redundant

Whether it be Samuel Alito or John Kerry, there always tends to be some kind of an idea about how someone can be personally pro-life or personally something else but, yet, somehow distant from their "personal beliefs" when judging or voting. Matthew Franck at Bench Memos points out the problem with this idea:

I have to pound on my students about this all the time. "Well," they timorously offer in today's namby-pamby PC world, "this is just my personal view, but . . ." They are so conditioned by the prevailing relativism, which instructs them not to "impose their views" on anyone, that I have to disabuse them first of the idea that they can ever avoid such "imposition" if they are going to be citizens, voters, lovers, parents, workers, what have you. The question is, in what roles they will play are they entitled to "impose" what kind of views? We expect voters and elected officials to impose political views, and judges to impose legal ones. Another way to put this is that the adjective "personal" just doesn't do any work in front of the noun "opinion" or "view." What other kind of opinion can I have but one that is personal, that is mine?

This is a very important point. It is also a "personal opinion" that one should not use a particular "personal opinion" to help make his judgment or vote. That is a personal opinion in and of itself. For a specific example, it is the personal opinion of John Kerry that even though he is pro-life and doesn't believe in abortion, he would rather side with the popular opinion of those who voted for him. At some point he prioritized (whether it be selfless or for personal gain) others' opinions over his own. At risk of sounding redundant myself, that prioritization is also an opinion.

On the subject of abortion, one can have a variety of opinions — moral, political, and legal or constitutional — and all of them "personal," of course. One might simultaneously think that every abortion is a great misfortune and a grievous immorality, that politically the wisest public policy is to permit women to make this choice for themselves, and that constitutionally the case for a "right" to abortion is completely fraudulent.

I think it's safe to say that pro-choice/death Democrats (at least those who hold this issue to be most important) voted for John Kerry despite his personal opinion that abortion is wrong. I'm sure they were fairly confident that he would side with the pro-choice ideology when he had the chance (he has a great pro-death track record). So, I wonder, why is that Samuel Alito is unfit for the Supreme Court simply because of his "personal opinion" about abortion? "They are so conditioned by the prevailing relativism..."

For better or worse

Scott is posting again at the Election Projection. He points out that while President Bush's approval ratings leave much to be desired, more approve of him than Republican Senators. On top of that, approval numbers for Democratic Senators are even worse. I didn't hear about this on CNN. I wonder why.

Despite Hugh Hewitt's moment in the dark, he's on the right side again, pushing for Luttig.

Ideological Loyalty vs. Party Loyalty

Marc Comtois at Anchor Rising has this on the Miers resignation:

Finally, this episode has illustrated that there is a difference between ideological loyalty and party loyalty, after all. In practicing and promoting the latter, the President and his supporters alienated those who prioritize ideals over political expediency. (This could serve as a lesson here in Rhode Island).

I couldn't have said it better. Bush will have my support anytime he does something that deserves it -- not more or less. Let's see who the next nominee will be.

Bush Apologetics and Hugh Hewitt

Blanton at RedState.org talks about Hugh Hewitt selling out to be a shill for the administration:

He says we should give no weight to Miers' support of affirmative action in her position with the Texas Bar. It was, after all, a personal action and a "private setting." How then can we square this with Hugh's support of Miers? Hugh's support seems to be, beyond trusting the President, based on the fact that people who know MIers say she'll be right on life, she'll have a conservative judicial philosophy, and that she is personally conservative and evangelical. This makes no sense. If Miers is personally supportive of affirmative action, Hugh believes that will not affect her judicial philosophy. But, because we're told Miers is personally conservative, Hugh believes her judicial philosophy will be just what we want. I dare not even contemplate the pains Hugh will go through to explain how personal support of affirmative action and a conservative judicial philosophy mess.