After barraging my personal blog with political rants, I have decided that the next step in improving my efforts in both scenarios I would shift my political writings to a fresh blog, truehopetruechange.com. Clearly the name of the blog represents a play on an administration that is providing us with less hope than we have ever had for our country: a nation that is increasingly marginalizing God and the unborn child — a clear recipe for disaster.
Thank you for following my writings here, at this blog, and I hope this presents an opportunity for you to focus on what you are most interested in: the personal side of my life, including my family interests, sports interests, etc., here at this blog, as well as the political philosophies at my new site. If you enjoy both, I appreciate it even more. You will notice, soon, that I will have an RSS feed from the other site posted on whichever site you are viewing. If anything piques your interest you can venture over to the other.
Please pray for my new efforts, that I may do God’s will in presenting a Christian political viewpoint.
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I am currently reading “Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life
” by Archbishop Chaput of Denver. I came across a very fitting two paragraphs, as they relate to events that are about to unfold in Washington D.C.
The Catholic Church has had many different relationships with many different states in many different eras. What we’ve learned is this: We will never build God’s kingdom here on earth. When people have messianic expectations about the state, when they ask politics to deliver more than it can, the story ends badly.
But neither will we ever be released from the duty to sanctify, humanize, and bring Jesus Christ to the public square in which we live. And it is precisely because of this duty that the American experiment is so hopeful—and so important. (emphasis in original)
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40 Days for Life will be holding teleconference next Tuesday night at 9pm Eastern. Make sure to register here.
In the last 40 Days for Life campaign (just before the election), at least 614 lives were saved and 8 abortion workers quit their jobs and got out of the abortion business. Please continue to pray, fast, and partake in pro-life activities when you can. Lives depend on us.
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Pope Benedict, in 1985, predicted the global economy collapse we are in the midst of in his paper, “Market Economy and Ethics.” He also says that Marxism is not the answer.
The full extent of this question becomes even more apparent when we include the third element of economic and theoretical considerations characteristic of today’s situation: the Marxist world. In terms of the structure of its economic theory and praxis, the Marxist system as a centrally administered economy is a radical antithesis to the market economy. 6 Salvation is expected because there is no private control of the means of production, because supply and demand are not brought into harmony through market competition, because there is no place for private profit seeking, and because all regulations proceed from a central economic administration. Yet, in spite of this radical opposition in the concrete economic mechanisms, there are also points in common in the deeper philosophical presuppositions. The first of these consists in the fact that Marxism, too, is deterministic in nature and that it too promises a perfect liberation as the fruit of this determinism. For this reason, it is a fundamental error to suppose that a centralized economic system is a moral system in contrast to the mechanistic system of the market economy. This becomes clearly visible, for example, in Lenin’s acceptance of Sombart’s thesis that there is in Marxism no grain of ethics, but only economic laws. 7 Indeed, determinism is here far more radical and fundamental than in liberalism: for at least the latter recognizes the realm of the subjective and considers it as the place of the ethical. The former, on the other hand, totally reduces becoming and history to economy, and the delimitation of one’s own subjective realm appears as resistance to the laws of history, which alone are valid, and as a reaction against progress, which cannot be tolerated. Ethics is reduced to the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of history degenerates into party strategy.
My point is not that religion knows best (though Pope Benecict — then Cardinal Ratzinger — is a intellectual giant), but that God does. In every instance, when we lose sight of God and lose sight of the priority for loving our neighbor over ourselves, our most reliable systems fail.
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Thomas Sowell hits yet another home run with his column today, discussing our entitlement to win:
Apparently Mormons don’t have the same rights as other Americans, at least not if they don’t vote the way gay activists want them to vote.
There was another gay activist mob gathered outside a Mormon temple in Orange County, California.
In the past, gay activists have disrupted Catholic services and their “gay pride” parades in San Francisco have crudely mocked nuns.
While demanding tolerance from others, gay activists apparently feel no need to show any themselves.
We often have joked that in Minnesota high school sports (and I highly doubt that our situation is much different than other states), the moment they went to 5 or 6 classes (no lie) in football, 4 or 5 in basketball, 3 in baseball and softball, and 2 in hockey, they might as well have just handed out a trophy to everyone before the season and then let them all play each other to find the best team. Apparently many of these activist groups have taken that caricature and run with it.
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If you get a chance, go check out my friend’s blog over at David Carlson Politics. I’m not a 100% on board with his politics, but there’s a lot of good, interesting, and insightful stuff there.
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“The common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.” –Pope John Paul II
I have been in numerous conversations and debates with friends and strangers on the upcoming election. The friends who know me often discount what I have to say because they know that I am a devout Catholic, as if my religious beliefs are so engrained in me that I cannot think critically about the other issues outside of religion (I could only wish). The strangers often will engage in some conversation to the point where they, too, find out that I’m Catholic. Well, I suppose it isn’t so much that I’m Catholic as that I’m pro-life, but often when one happens to be Catholic and leans conservative they are cast into a lot of irrational people who are “one-issue” voters. I suppose there is some truth to that, but it isn’t quite the whole truth.
First of all, I am not a one-issue voter, I’m currently a five-issue voter. There are five issues that America faces today that simply are more important than all of the rest. It is rather disgusting that they even need to be issues, that there is someone – and actually many people – on the “other side” of these issues. The issues: abortion, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, euthanasia, and gay marriage. And the reason it is so disgusting is because these five things are intrinsically evil — evil in every case. Because of that, the serious Christian, Jewish, and member of any other religion (and even atheists) that hold to morality and ethics must discount anyone who is in favor of these evil things. A political leader who supports a culture of death is disqualified from representing us in office.
So, you’re saying, “Yes, we know all of that – where is the misconception?” The misconception is that if all things were equal on that front, or if we decided that nothing was going to change no matter who was elected, or even if Pope Benedict XVI himself declared that we should not use the five non-negotiables as a basis for making our voting decision that we would automatically jump at the opportunity to vote for Al Gore, John Kerry, or Barrack Obama. We wouldn’t. We aren’t stupid. We understand the rest of the issues, too, which is why we also are informed enough to cast our vote in a primary election where any number of the candidates might be pro-life, but where they differ on other issues. For instance:
On taxes and spending: Many pro-life voters believe they are better at spending their own money. These voters believe that we should be taxed as little as possible, that there are some things we need to contribute to (like a strong national defense and good roads), but that the government should stay out of things it isn’t very good at. We disagree with the idea that government should require us to be “charitable” toward issues we aren’t as sympathetic to. We disagree with liberals that we should have government programs for things that other institutions, including faith-based institutions already do well for. We disagree that the government needs to take the reward for hard work from the wealthy and give it to people who haven’t worked quite as hard. We believe that the reward for hard work motivates the American worker to be better than any other worker in the world.
On the economy: Many pro-life voters feel that the government should serve us by keeping big business transparent to the public and providing regulations with the aid of advisers from big business, but should not get into micromanaging businesses. Again, the government has enough trouble balancing their own budget – they should stay out of the budget of other business. Along with that, there should be no redistribution of wealth as the liberals often try to sell. The wealthy aren’t stupid – if you raise taxes on them they will make up for it by raising prices or cutting jobs.
On terrorism and national security: Many pro-life voters are willing to pony up big bucks to make sure wars are not fought on our soil. Many pro-lifers have children who are fighting wars and/or keeping peace in other parts of the world and it is important to them that the soldiers have the best and most advanced equipment for keeping them safe. We question the lack of support the liberals in our government have for our troops.
On gas prices and energy: We believe in a comprehensive solution to lowering fuel costs to affordability. That means drilling in our own country, developing other fuel sources, and, yes, applying international pressure on those sitting on large oil supplies simply to cause prices to skyrocket. We believe in a common sense approach to environmental policy – policy that preserves our situation as best as possible while not crippling our economy with unreasonable standards.
On health care: Many pro-lifers believe that, like other business, health care is best left for competition. Universal health care would mean long waiting lists, basic procedures that wouldn’t be covered by UHC, and an overly large burden on the taxpayer. Just look to our northern neighbors if you want an example. In a 2005 ruling by the Canadian Supreme Court, Chief Justice McLachlin stated “access to a waiting list is not access to health care.” Many people suffer in pain and even die before they get the treatment they need. Instead, many pro-life voters support cracking down on frivolous law suits against health care providers. That will lower their insurance costs and the cost of health coverage in turn. Liberals have repeatedly stood against a cap on law suits, continually standing in favor of making health care unaffordable to us common folk.
On illegal immigration: Many pro-life voters are against the free-ride of illegal immigrants. Many of them are here doing the same things and working the same jobs as us, but have no tax burden. Yet, they use all of the services that are funded by the legal citizens’ tax dollars. This needs to be cracked down on, and many liberals consider this discrimination. Many pro-lifers wonder how illegal immigrants get better treatment by our government than they do, and have more rights than the unborn and the elderly.
The point of all of this is that there are five issues, outlined in the Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics, that qualify or disqualify a person from receiving a vote for office in our country. I encourage you to read the guide (http://www.caaction.com/pdf/Voters-Guide-Catholic-English-1p.pdf) to see that the Church does not endorse specific candidates, but instead disqualifies (regardless of affiliation) anyone who stands against life. However, one should not assume that we would even consider voting for a Gore, a Kerry, or an Obama even if all of these issues were equal. There are undoubtedly some who would otherwise vote for a candidate like those three (and even more credit goes to them for understanding what is most important and going against how they would otherwise vote), but many of us pro-lifers think the liberals are going about most issues in the wrong way, not just the five non-negotiables. It just so happens that our consideration can only be for those five issues until something drastically changes on the left.
"Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being “chooses” to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name.” –Cardinal Egan
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Pat Buchanan sums it up perfectly.
The reason this election is the last chance for life is the Supreme Court. For it alone — given the cowardice of a Congress that refuses to restrict its authority — has the power to reverse Roe, and because that court may be within a single vote of doing so.
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