(3) Is there physical suffering and a worldwide calamity coming?
(4) Should I give up on politics? Who do I vote for?
Now, freedom from fear of repression and other injustice, is very tentative. It has mostly been this way, depending on who holds power. Ask the Martyrs in the Roman coliseum. Just ask the English Martyrs at Tyburn and in the Tower of London. In the age of kings and kingdoms there were just monarchs and the unjust. Good kings have been known to go bad, such as Henry VIII in England. Before he lost his faith and became an usurper of the Faith, he was an ardent defender of Catholicism, in fact, receiving the title from the Pope, "defender of the faith". He had a set of Rosary beads crafted by a silver artisan. He was once devout and married to a devout Catholic, Catherine of Aragon beloved by the people. They resented Anne Boleyn. The culture was unified and while English law was not totally equitable, the land was free of internecine bloodshed, most of the people were generally content during his Catholic reign. After he went into schism he seized Church property and had many innocent Catholics murdered by decree. Families were pit against one another. Those who refused to attend English services were subject to fines and the loss of household income. It was a crime to be a recusant. Fear of reprisal prowled about like a roaring lion. Many Catholics declared themselves Protestants outright to be secure, many others slowly became Anglicanized because of the confusion in the early days of the Protestant revolution in England. Small changes in the Mass by the Protestant heretics who had been validly ordained in the Catholic Church, resulted in those who, thinking they were still Catholic, ceasing to be. The bishops who had lost their faith devised a scheme to induce the people to take Communion in the Hand so as to destroy over time their belief in the Real Presence. Sound familiar? Eventually their holy orders became invalid as Pope Leo XIII decreed. The Anglican Church was not organized immediately as a distinct entity---parts of the Catholic population were deCatholicized and merged into the Protestant ascendancy. It was not until the harsh penal laws against faithful Catholics under Henry's daughter, Queen Elizabeth, that a completely separate religion was evident and recognized for what it was. I know of Anglicans today who consider themselves Catholic. Really. Over time England lost its mastery of the sea and saw its days of dominion dwindle. A direct cause and effect? Not completely, but the loss of grace always leads to a loss by degree of right judgment in other matters. This is but one example. The French Revolution and the decline of France, eldest daughter of the Church is another--- we will set this aside for now.
The same is happening here in North America with the devastation caused by the Novus Ordo Mass, which instills a false religion, a Protestant pick and choose spirit. Protestant churches do not sing traditional Catholic hymns still, but Catholic churches now sing all manner of Protestant hymns and songs. The church is a cafeteria of delights, ideas to tickle the fancy of every prideful heart and encourage insouciance. The devil is dancing with his unshackled chains all the way to doomsday. America began to lose its greatness as a world power with respect and superabundant competence when Churchmen, in their hubris unleashed the horror of the modern Mass and the country decided it would permit abortion by not impeaching the justices who approved it. The people retain the right of direct recall and impeachment through their representatives. The revolution by Churchmen came first, the second one was only a matter of time. It is the Church that sanctifies society at large, and when Churchmen desacralize what must remain inviolate, society suffers, though it may not realize it, often fails to recognize this. Like the eccentric crank who does not believe in the law of gravity.
Physical safety is a never a certainty. We have come to think that it generally is because of technology, inventions, farming changes, medical advances and the like. This, too, is an illusion. We are always one earthquake, one major flood, one war, one any kind of tragedy, natural or man-induced, sin-induced away from losing physical serenity and freedom from want. The vast computer network, if hijacked by terrorists would be worse than any topple of the Twin Towers, a colossal assault. We are not even guaranteed freedom from hunger, no matter how many people say otherwise. Let me cite the current situation. Because of international monetary manipulation, reckless government policy, our American dollar is artificially deflated viz. a viz. other currencies. You have heard of the greenhouse effect? How about the Greenspan effect? We are the bread basket of the world---grain production along with Australia. Our blind and or short-sighted government policy makers permit other countries to come here, purchase large stores of food commodities to our disadvantage; they do not limit exports and purchases by foreign combines; our import taxes are higher than our export levies. Madness. There is now expected the possibility of a food shortage of some grain products in the US in that the prices are artificially high, almost ensuring that some people will decide to horde, creating actual shortages here and there, a self-fulfilling series of events. Remember when meat was unusually high, preChina favored nation status? They told us to buy fish. For a while the whole country was Catholic on Friday. Within weeks we could no longer afford fish, so it was peanut butter. Eventually things settled down, but we did not have wars, border invasions, trade with an arch enemy posing as a partner, compounded by extreme ecocrats acting as czars. And the weather, the over all climate was more predictable.
I want to pause here, for us to examine the notion of global warming because I mentioned the climate. The mean temperature of the earth is mostly dependent on sun spots, which have nothing to do with us. The result of the activity of sun spots is the cycle of warm and cold temperatures and related weather patterns. What are sun spots, in laymen's terms?
Sun spots are dark spots or small "storms" that migrate across the surface of the sun. They can be as large as 60,000 miles across, and are caused when magnetic fields under the surface of the sun are twisted and poke through the sun's photosphere. At present this activity is causing more cloud cover, reducing the average temperature by a percent of a percent for the foreseeable future. Not much, but it is not an increase.
Al Gore's movie, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH IS a scam. Those in the corridors of power want income redistribution on a scale until now unimaginable; scaring us goes a long way in persuading us to become the equivalent of a Third World country. Gore rakes in big bucks selling junk science. Junk scientists who are ideologists first protect him. The major media are first and foremost ideologists. Profits are the means. Did you know that Gore took a page out of another science fiction film, and used styrofoam and photographic trickery to depict the melting ice caps? This is the really inconvenient truth. His scenario is a convenient lie. Actually, the earth is entering a cooling period as indicated above. People have been subjected to mass hysteria and propaganda so they do not know how many scientists say that global warming is not what the PC scientists say.The earth has always had periods of global warming and cooling. If not, how come Greenland is called by that name? This is one kind of insecurity. Will we learn to adapt in a reasonable manner? or will we mandate rules that compound the problem, impoverishing everyone but the elites? We shall look again at the new religion of saving the earth in a few moments.
Every effect has an opposite effect. Bread costs much more than it ought to, factoring in the usual inflationary criteria. At the present rate we will have actual food shortages and rationing in our lifetime, unless policy reverses or there is some massive intervening event beyond our control. Corn and other staples are used in manufacturing non-food products, which compounds the normal effects of supply and demand. We cannot depend on nature helping the farmer, all bets are off in the current climate configuration, droughts, forest fires, cold temperatures that should be warm and intermittent hot temperatures that should be cooler---El Nino forces and sun spots, not methane gases. For some people this is frightening enough.
At this time Red China is matching us with food production for export; we purchase a lot of prepared foods from them, enriching them, while they give us shoddy goods as they persecute Catholics, even murder them, torture them, enslave them and others. You did not know about this persecution? Oh, well, it must be all the hoopla over the Dalai Lama who is in exile and his monks in Tibet. The media always has time for the persecution of anyone except devout Catholics. Now these thugs are still limiting each couple to the one child per policy and forcing abortions. The claim is that they have to because they do not grow enough food. If so, why are they exporting so much to us? With the wealth the Red Chinese turned entrepreneurial, surpassing us, accruing, they purchase our debt so that they hold a large IOU over the US, thanks to the internationalists in office and in the various agencies who long endure administration after administration, and the media members who have been persuaded by the paradigm of the Council of Foreign Relations and the International Monetary Fund. The CFR is the new journalists' club. Even Bill Buckley of NATIONAL REVIEW belonged, so it was not surprising to see the conflicting array of articles that erstwhile journal has hatched. Everywhere, everywhere the blind leading the blind. The plan is for us to no longer be red white and blue, but green and blue, green for earth day every day and blue for the helmets of the United Nations, soon to be called something else once the nation state is made obsolete.
Is the CFR a conspiracy? No, not in the sense you probably mean. [See further below for more detail.] Conspiracies are by nature small and secretive, for nefarious purposes, otherwise they could not remain concealed. The CFR is nefarious but expansive and it operates in the open; it does need the conspiratorial approach, the media is part and parcel of their enterprise. Most of our news is filtered through the CFR lens and those who are predisposed to approve of them if they are not actual members. When it was first formed, it could be said to be a conspiracy. Now it is legit and more deadly than ever because people say to themselves, well, if it isn't a conspiracy, what's to worry? Human nature. It is always an advantage to not be a conspiracy, while planning for world conquest.
The new breed of incestuous entanglements---business, journalists, policy makers, some State Department careerists and even those in the Defense Department, and internationalists are not patriots, no matter how many flags their partisans sport in the lapels of their Saville Row knockoffs or uniforms. They no longer believe in national homelands, called a country or nation with a recognized border and its own culture and set of laws. We are now in alien territory in our own homeland, men and women without a country, a flag, for now, but not a country, just a facade.
This is why a Mexican can come here, acquire citizenship, but still prefer to be called a "Mexican national" and have his former country try to influence our laws over him as if he is still a Mexican citizen. We are just pawns in a big chess game---one world, one rule, their order, their orders. In a saner time the pawnbrokers of the world who are American would be charged with sedition and treason. I need say no more, here.
The complex nature of the fuel supply is somewhat similar but involves environmental policy that is draconian and profiteering. Our situation is quite precarious. Oil is also used for many products other than heating and transportation, including food production, thereby increasing demand exponentially. Moreover, we are spending billions in Iraq to upgrade its infrastructure. Iraq is gouging us on oil to the tune of 70 billion a year. They ought to pay for their own internal development. What insanity on our part! Meanwhile the mean rule of "green" dictates that we cannot use the massive reserves we have here or use nuclear energy which is safe [France for example]. Insanity ratcheted up a couple of notches! It is reasonable to expect rationing with personal tragedies because of the inevitable inequitable method of apportionment at some point, with the environmentalists who prefer the earth to people---and their pagan gurus---dominating the policy think tanks and the media---FOX News's Rupert Murdoch and Newt Gingrich are two such trojan horses. The "elites" or insiders never go hungry. Western style sovietism.
Gingrich poses as a conservative with "real" ideas. But he is a consummate super green in disguise and was an enthusiast of the futurist Alvin Toffler. I do not know if he still is. Either he does not know himself or does not want you to know that: the liberals' favorite fuel, ethanol, is destroying the world's rain forests---and could cause global food shortages because ethanol sucks up corn crops at least a fourth, currently; that Rachel Carson's victory over DDT has cost the lives of millions in Africa---disease bearing insects are back bigger and "better"; that the environmentalists cover up how contraceptive and chemical abortion drugs are polluting our rivers and streams, and might be polluting us; that the Endangered Species Act actually endangers species. You see, nature has its built in balance of the species. When the ecofreaks take over they contribute to an imbalance because they are manipulating nature. As if they know better than God! Like the Chinese who prefer male children, so the one-child policy leads to the infanticide of baby girls. The sexes are out of balance in China. Men will have to forego wives in too many cases, in this generation at least; that Al Gore's vision of greater state control over the economy has already produced some of the greatest environmental disasters in history. [See the book, A REALLY INCONVENIENT TRUTH.] Hubris goeth before a fall. Gingrich and leftist Nancy Pelosi have banded together to make common cause against the American way of ordinary life.
FOX News is pushing the agenda, subtly, skillfully, under fair and balance. Watch one of the pundits there who fawns all over the smiling Grinch persuade himself to become "a convert". Better to rationalize on the incremental plan than lose one's spot in the sun and forget sun spots. When wrong is given the same pulpit as right, there is neither equity nor balance by definition. The first to suffer will always be the normal family, the little guy without resources in reserve and friends in high places. Do not let Gingrich's wiles and command of the political lexicon mislead you, which can easily happen---he is on point about sovereignty and taxation. His God-talk is a talking-points tactic; I do not mean he is deliberately deceiving us necessarily, he does believe in Christ; however, he has his own set of rules for action, above that of the non-elites, only he does not see that he, too, is part of the elite. I have known a number of ardent Christians who were rabid abortionphiliacs, so this ought not surprise us. When I use the term elite, I am, of course meaning to be pejorative. Elitism in of itself is not a bad thing, but a very good attribute, if by it we mean to be the best we can be and to expect this of others. I want the elite or the cream of the crop in the local fire department to put out my house fire and likewise my family physician. Elitism as I use it refers to those who live in rarefied atmospheres and who have "an out" if their schemes go bad, very very wrong. My father who was once a liberal Democrat, but an honest one, told me that he could afford to be one because he had an extra chicken hidden in another pot. He was not an elitist and finally woke up in time. This was because he knew, admired, and worked among other ordinary people with common sense when that attribute was still plentiful.
Rupert Murdoch is a Red-Sinophile, in the vanguard of international policy favoring Chinese warlords and mercantilian mercenaries over that of the interests of the US. He has struck lucrative deals with the butchers of Beijing, who force women to abort their children and pay an entire class of people slave wages. One would think that this does not comport with common reason because he is Western. He is an internationalist---he cares not from where his coffers are filled, he favors borderlessness and profits over that of the common good, the natural law of sovereignty and the moral law. His allegiance is to power, not patria. FOX News, complains incessantly about leftist radical billionaire George Soros and his shenanigans to effect policy, while their own boss is using his network as the perfect setup for a subtle implantation of his goals. It is claimed that he does not influence content. Ask yourself, if this is true, why so few in-depth stories on China are covered. Ask yourself why since the launch of FOX News, it has hired more liberals than conservatives and more middle of the road "conservatives" than real ones with unflinching principles. Better to have fake news programs featuring lurid gossip, macabre escapades by cultural icons, and depraved crimes so the people don't discover all the truth all the time. Comrades in arms, such as Guilfoyle and Geraldo pitching sanctuary cities under the guise of "journalistic" gusto. If a country implodes from within so much the better. Geraldo is the bad cop, she the good cop, a fake-out. Guilfoyle is the ex-wife of San Francisco's mayor Newsom, sanctuary city incorporated's ambassador. Geraldo is an open borders zealot and a limelight hog and the crass exploiter of nepotism. FOX News is now a family affair, so to speak, at long last.
We must not overlook that Murdoch has purchased the Wall Street Journal. It is no longer worth the paper it is printed on. It hasn't been worth much in recent years, but it is useless now, except for those who orchestrate our funeral dirge under the cover of business. He made a lot of his money from investments that were fed from profits in the pornography trade. It is not coincidental that FOX is pornography central in cableland. His television channels are skillful masters of illusion and diversion for misdirecting the people; these channels are among the most vile in content. The souls of loyal, devoted viewers have been savaged by a steady stream of the raunchy and prurient, including so-called news stories. They no longer have the purity of character to resist the sewage---the bait and switch, fair and balance means all the filth, too, and for longer exposure. Let me give an example.
I do not like MS-NBC or CNN either because they slant the news too much---despite the good instincts and decency, the class of Wolf Blitzer and Candy Crowley of CNN, and sometimes even Jack Cafferty who shows promise---and can scarcely hide their aversion to authentic Catholicism except with these three, blessedly; sadly, Lou Dobbs may shelter strains of hostility to authentic Catholicism, despite his understanding of the battle for the border. These two networks are as far to the left as they can get away with: such as the former's Mika B. who hates Christians who put their faith into action if that action is in support of conservative principles. She loves Barack Obama who wants to put his socialist "Christian" principles in practice and Nora O'Donnell, who never met a Catholic doctrine she liked unless it matched her own desires. Mika is the daughter of Zbniew Brezinski of the Trilateral Commission, a committed one-worlder. I doubt if she would have the position she has if it weren't for dad's global-leftist credentials. Under her tutelage the affable, "kind of " conservative Joe Scarborough has been reduced to an absolute panderer, a milquetoast with all the piquancy of a parsnip to keep his job. It is to weep at his self-inflicted wounds. NBC cable and CNN also cover the same repulsive stories that FOX does, complete with imagery. CNN the least of all, to its credit. For every second that an impure or savage image is televised on those two networks, it is three seconds on FOX, sometimes five. Vivid images are much more difficult to eradicate from the mind and soul than strong words can be stripped from the heart. And FOX airs more garish, sleazy, stories to begin with, more time allotted them and presented by Barbie doll retros who are almost half naked half of the time, so the actual, cumulative effect is more than 3 to 1, it is probably 4 and 5 to 1. [In case you missed the prurient the first time around, the girls are there to hit the pornball out of the park.] That is huge and devastating to the moral order. Good Catholics are sucked into the unnatural, carnal wind tunnel, misjudging that they can use FOX as a forum for good. Let me cite one case here. It should suffice to illustrate the scope of the massive amoral swamp. Oh, for the vast right-wing conspiracy! I have been searching in vain for years to find it so I could enlist. If there are any sightings let me know immediately.
The popular radio show host and non-fiction author, Laura Ingraham, a convert to the Catholic Faith, has a wide following; she is also a big draw for advertisers. In other words, a ratings getter. She is good for America and good for business, too. Her show is syndicated on our local Fox radio affiliate as it is across the country in various markets. She sparkles, while "telling it like it is", appealing for her no-nonsense approach, wholesome sense of humor, a firm grasp of most of the issues of our day---perhaps the most winsome and stimulating of commentators, a formidable warrior for righteousness and just plain sanity. The FOX News channel now features her on various political talk shows, one of which is the O'Reilly Factor where she not only has a regular segment, she fills in as host, a welcome, refreshing change of perspective and personality, the only time I can stomach the program anymore. O'Reilly is a contrarian gadfly who can't seem to find a place to land. For instance he will spend weeks on a topic, analyzing it with precision; then he will ask a guest a question to confirm his previous conclusion, then backtrack, suggesting the opposite or a "moderation", when reality and reason do not warrant it. He calls this independence. I call it spitting in your own face to blur the truth. In fact he did this recently with Laura, on abortion [the topic was Black genocide], undercutting his own supposed position, interrupting her briefly. I could tell she was a little put off for less than a second, but true to character she just persevered in getting the point across without making him look insipid. She helps to boost FOX's ratings. In her latest book, POWER TO THE PEOPLE, Miss Ingraham writes about what she has coined "the pornification" of our culture, exhorting those of us who care about ourselves and our children to create a safe haven at home, because it is not possible to avoid the cesspool altogether since we do not live in self-sustaining enclaves. Now, FOX News is without any doubt a major contributor to the miasma and the insatiable appetite for "soft" porn that is fed by the national lassitude, the dissipation of the moral will, and in so-called family hours. I am not thinking of the programming here, but the commercials! I can't mention some of the products without committing a mortal sin. Today, there is no such thing as a family hour in those environs except Geraldo and Bro.
2013 Addendum: I should have mentioned this in my original work: I disagree with Miss Ingraham's use of the title of her book, for the Popes have consistently taught throughout Tradition that power does not lie with the people or their representatives, but with Christ alone. The democratic process can only be morally employed to select representatives or delegates of the people, which is not the same as granting them power in of itself. Of course the founders of the Republic were decidedly not Catholic and had no desire to bring into being a Catholic state of affairs, just the opposite. However it could be argued that Miss Ingraham meant the proper Catholic use of power, although the choice of phrase can lead to an erroneous conclusion.
To continue where we left off before the insertion of the addendum:
Laura Ingraham is well-intentioned; yet she helps to build up FOX so that it can continue to boast of its ratings and thereby entice more sordid advertising and attract viewers to desensitize and demoralize with its hideous porn-corn and the grotesque. Like PP using its fungible funds care of you and me. Of course, she is able to engage the national debate in a positive and constructive way, but at what price? I do not know if she has ever considered this or not, but it occurs to me that she may be naive. I am not slighting her in writing this because she is pure of heart, honestly pure of heart. Sometimes people who are as good as Miss Laura is do not see the entire picture or if they do, they think the cost is worth it.
She was interviewed on EWTN by Raymond Arroyo, speaking of her conversion among other milestones in her life and about culture: she wore a see-through bodice with an under garment that did not cover her shoulders. What a traditional Catholic would never do as this is indecent, even at a party. Now, being a noble and clean hearted person, a lady of dignity and grace, and a recent convert, I do not think she knows what she looked like, and would be stunned if she understood. She is also in the habit of addressing priests she knows well by their nickname in public, not Father So and So. Bad form. She does not know this, apparently no one has had an opportunity to tell her. She, too, as we all have been, is affected by the cultural meltdown, its descent away from decorum and good manners, and modest dress into decay of the most common of courtesies. Expletives are now daily fare; so is the expletive of the immodestly garbed body. I know she does not know and that she does not know she does not know. She is what I refer to as "a dear innocent".
FOX News is misnamed, it should be called FOXY, for Fair [and Balance] an Oxymoron. There is no obligation to pump raw sewage into someone's living room in order to balance the news. None. The radio portion of the media conglomerate is fine---regular talk radio, sports, news, business reports, local issues and the like, normal healthy radio during the day if you discount the incessant rock music intros, I know nothing of the evening programs. It is the televised portion that is lethal. Having said this, I am convinced that there are many people who work for Fox News as reporters, hosts and producers who are morally upright, with nothing but good intentions, without agendas or malice, who want to do the right thing; they are "dear innocents", too. I mean no excoriation of their character and dignity. Laura Ingraham is only beginning to become the Saint God is slowly, but persistently calling this valiant lady to be. However her career, she will land upright because she has a head on her shoulders and both feet squarely planted on the ground and a heart filled with love for God and her neighbor as herself for love of Him. Lady Laura is deeply loved by me and countless others. So she's not perfect yet, neither am I. I know she is trying, profoundly and humbly. I pray for her and everyone else at the FOX Sewer and Power Company Unlimited. And for those Catholics who are being lured into the spirit of the world's lair. FOX has a Novus Ordo priest as an "analyst" for bait. Another similar priest was heard extolling the greatness of the material heretic, Karl Rahner during Pope Benedict's visit. Good going, FOX! And to think we have a priest "shortage"!
How many other Miss Lauras are out there who inadvertently help this poison proliferate in an effort to make a living and to make a difference? This is our situation and it is not helpful to try to find excuses or rationalize it away, to pretend so as to remain "optimistic". If this is one of the definitions of Americanism, I plead not guilty, thanks be to God! The morbidly obscene [not the morbidly obese as the media tells us is our real problem] now dominates, driving everything in public and social life. There is almost no place left to run to now, except home, our Catholic communities or outposts---oases in the vast desert where traditional Catholics can mingle and exchange ideas and support one another in the Faith. We are neither safe nor secure, besieged by those we used to count as our own.
Those who are consumed with lust, the voracious appetite for notoriety, and other assorted hungers are tearing us apart, by sheer force of numbers and with no compunction about law-breaking and injustice. One form of injustice renders us ripe for another we did not bargain for. I am not saying that the border bashers, the invaders, are vindicated---one evil cannot confer legitimacy on another evil---only that we are weak because we have chosen death over life. Once you begin to lie to cover a monster-sized crime, you have to lie about lying and then lying becomes a way of life. Soon the truth can't set you free because man has freed himself from wanting to see. Why? Because he wills himself to be blind because he is actually disgusted with himself as he really looks like, he cannot afford to see, if he is to persist in folly. Those who are still able to, are penalized in little, annoying ways so as to accuse them of being overly sensitive or unreasonable to object to the unfairness or double standard. It is sometimes called "the treatment". You know, the phrase, "There you go making judgments again, who gave you the right to decide what is right and wrong." Now the normal, sane, calm, reasoned response to this invective is to answer, "the same Person Who gave me the ability to perceive that you have arrogated the right to decide what is right and wrong for yourself, and in fact, have just judged me wrong. You can't have it both ways." One replies thusly not out of personal pride, which would be sinful, but because one is arguing for truth itself, not one's opinions. In other words, being honest about other lesser matters seems "goody-two shoes" and soon the whole structure of the natural law begins to crumble. The only shameful thing left is shame itself, another self-contradictory "principle". We trade insight for rationalization and the demonizing of those who still see clearly, who have not lost the use of [un] common sense and reason.
The Roman empire toppled, in a few short hundreds of years. History says that there is a strong likelihood America will fall of its own prideful largesse, love of ease and luxury, laziness and wanton abandonment of tradition, its great dead weight. We want lots of goods, but we do not want to pay our neighbor on the next street who has the skill to make them, what he is worth. Of course we do not want him to do likewise to us. We want to keep our own standard of living and yet do everything possible to make sure our cousin in the next state cannot. Better to let slaves and those viewed as peons make them for a government that has its own megalomaniac designs. We have become a service economy, without real "real estate". Well most of those slaves and poorly paid peons are not buying your services either. Their bosses are, only until they have their own service companies, too. The merger of communism with raw capitalism is worse than the two opposed to each other, for its complexity camouflages the line of responsibility and our ability to meet the challenges. The superstructure of the global economy is a multi-layered labyrinth, with each effect causing another that is not planned, a precarious balancing act. It is nothing less than diabolical. A madman's ponzi scheme. Even now the Red Chinese are permitting the growth of a selective middle class which will demand higher incomes and expansion and the cheap goods will become more expensive. What a Faustian bargain! We won't even have a service economy, but a slave state. The artificial pie starts shrinking for everyone except the top honchos. The game of trading chairs can't go on indefinitely. Self-love has its own law of diminishing returns because we are someone's neighbor down the street, also, and what goes around comes around as the saying goes. Oh for the Catholic guilds [not the labors unions as we have today] of the middle ages! Not perfect, but heaven on earth to compare. We are helping the Red Chinese to keep communism, instead of forcing them to change; they can promote atheistic communism [persecuting religion, for instance] and still reap the profits of capitalism. They are defeating us at our game, without firing a shot for now. The price to pay for "free" trade is exorbitant beyond the telling. The Red Chinese must be laughing all the way to the bank, literally. They are blind, too, in a different way. If the devil can't pull you his way, he just pulls you your way. It's the same damnation in the end. He's laughing too, at man's stupidity when he thinks he only needs God on Sunday for an hour.
In the same way, anti-communism, American patriotism, is a hard, wearying, slogging, ever vigilant and self-sacrificing enterprise. Everyone remembers the demonization of Senator Joe McCarthy. Easy pickings because he had flaws the left could exploit to discredit him when the truth was obvious---kill the messenger. It is easier to be patriotic in a small, united culture, than in a vast diverse one. Diversity of creed is not a strength, no matter how many times the slogan is shoveled down our throats. The fact that diversity as strength has to be forced down our gullets by repeating the mantra like propaganda is evidence that it is a fraud. Diversity as we invite it today is a recipe for divided allegiances. You know, Afrocentrism, not Americancentrism, for instance. Dual citizenship another. It is also easier to have a successful democratic republic in a unified nation. There are fewer intractable citizens to educate and adequately inform, the cultivation of the norms of statesmanship is tranquil and invigorated through devotion, while the seat of government is not so far removed from the average person. Human nature at work, the better part. The tasks ahead of us are mammoth because of the unwieldy size of a bloated self-perpetuating bureaucracy that has almost unlimited power to control and harass us, dissipating the national will, strangled by spiraling taxes on that which have already been taxed only to be taxed once more. Some have even proposed taxing people by their weight. For now a curiosity, but given our preponderance for insanity, how long before ....?
Is there a worldwide calamity coming? I am not a prophet. The signs of the times point to one; yet, with all this dire trouble looming we cannot be sure that God will not be merciful. The end of the world will end by fire, the first "end of the world" or calamity or deluge, death by water. Before this there must needs be the Antichrist, a real person, who will set himself up in the temple as if Christ. We also know that Our Lady of Fatima has promised that the Pope will consecrate Russia, not the world, to her Immaculate Heart and that a period of peace will come, an indefinite period of time and that Russia will be converted and the world will know. This is anything but the situation there now. It would seem to me that this peace interval would be before Antichrist, who will reign for 3 and 1/2 years according to those who understand the allegorical nature of numbers in the Apocalypse. We have no actual doctrine on this as we are not supposed to know the time of the end exactly according to Christ. But however long he holds sway, Antichrist will be slain and the end will come. We also know that Mary is in the book of the Apocalypse, as she is referenced in Genesis---the beginning and the end along with her Son, Who is the Alpha and Omega. Our Lady of Akita tells of fire that will rain down upon the earth and consume everything in its path. I have no way to put these events into a time sequence and just how allegorical some of it is. As I indicated in the introduction our own death is the end of the world, and this is what we should prepare for unfailingly. Mary is the key as Mediatrix of All Graces; moreover Jesus Christ told Sister Lucia of Fatima that He willed the consecration and devotion to His Mother's Immaculate Heart along with devotion to His. I trust Jesus because He is God the Son. I trust Mary because she is God the Son's Mother. I have consecrated myself to both as I am sure you have also. This is all I need know here about "calamity". This all you need know also.
We live, however in a real country with a real society and we do have earthly duties as citizens all the while.
This brings us to the next question.
Should I give up on politics? Who do I vote for?
BACKGROUND: [Excerpted from other columns of mine, with no apologies.]
The political perplexities and the quagmire that is the current milieu is the result primarily of spiritual decay, and moral perversion of every kind. Politics are irrevocably and intrinsically about social arrangements; and social arrangements are about cultural matters; and cultural matters are about cult or religion. Where there is apostasy and atheism, and false religions rather than the true religion, they still function as if true religion since they become the dominant raison d'être or ideology. Human beings have no other way to go about human affairs simply because this is their nature as created by God. Denying that it is so does not make it not so, it just makes the one denying it wrong or delusional.
The challenges ahead are so profoundly spiritual, they are in the strongest sense spiritual combat writ large, rather than political.
In her eminent work, THE STAR-SPANGLED HERESY: AMERICANISM, Catholic author and historian, Solange Hertz, writes:
"The Immaculate Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to ... Juan Diego in the Spanish west in 1531 and promised to destroy the cult of the serpent there, the ancient dragon had nowhere to go but east, where he found more hospitable quarters among usurpers and heretics. Settling incognito in spots like his famous Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, he was free to get on with his Revolution with the help of Ben Franklin ... He was incognito ... only to the ignorant ... he was quickly recognized by those in the know ... From the beginning this old serpent was rightly named Lucifer, the 'Light-Bearer,' for he is the source of the 'false light' which the Blessed Virgin told us at La Salette would soon 'illumine the world,' causing 'extraordinary wonders every place because the true faith will be extinguished.' ... The light the serpent offers can only be the light of his own tremendous natural knowledge, for he is forever cutoff from the supernatural ... Satanic natural knowledge is the primordial Gnosis the serpent offered Eve ... This makes Satan not only father of lies, but father of all so-called Illuminati or 'enlightened ones' peddling freedom and salvation through science rather the Redeemer ..."
Benjamin Franklin rejected the Fatherhood of our Infinite God and the worship due Him in favor of "the rights of man." In fact Franklin conjectured that there may be gods, not just a higher "SOMETHING". Franklin was a pure naturalist, dismissing the supernatural, the Resurrection of the body, etc. He no longer believed in miracles as such and declared that he could perform the same wonders as Jesus Christ! adding blasphemy to his list of achievements. To cite Hertz again:
"Catholics who mistake the United States for God's America may further fall more easily into the heresy formally defined by Pope Leo XIII as Americanism. Basically, it is naturalism in American dress, and it accommodates itself to all the ideals of the Enlightenment. French radicals of the last century expected it then to produce a major schism in the Church under the able leadership of Catholic bishops in the United States.
"Like Franklin, most of its Founding Fathers were not Christians. Although they often made references to the Deity, the God they invoked was their God, ... the God of nature in Christian dress. In fact the most influential among them were not so much deists as thoroughgoing pantheists, for, being avowed rationalists, they looked for divinity only in nature. ...
"Any citizen doubting that the Old Religion of the alchemists is the state religion of the U.S. need only make a pilgrimage to the nation's capital, beginning with the Prayer Room established ... by joint resolution of Congress in 1954. He will find there for his devotion a small central altar flanked by two seven-branch candelabra, above which rises a stained glass window showing George Washington kneeling. Below the Father of his country is the Great Seal of the United States. Above him is the truncated pyramid surmounted by the eyes of Horus, which constitutes the seal of Masonry and the Illuminati."
It is historical record that the architect of the White House, James Hobran, was the first Master of Federal No. 1, Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia. A few years later, when the construction of the House and Senate wings was commenced, another cornerstone contained a composition written by Daniel Webster, in which he wrote that "the cornerstone was laid by the President of the United States and the Grand Master of Masons."
Catholics took part in these ceremonies: the Archbishop of Baltimore's Masonic brother Daniel Carroll served as an official of the events and his cousin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, took part in the Masonic ceremony inaugurating the nation's first railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, July 4, 1828, "by turning over the first bit of earth with a silver spade."
"'The Masons, agnostics and atheists who are responsible for the rise of democracy must, of course, perpetuate the myth that monarchy means autocratism. Autocratism presupposes centralization of powers; the hierarchical structure of a Christian monarchy is just the opposite, each having certain powers according to his rank in the hierarchy, and each region, province, city, town and village enjoying a measure of genuine democracy----[the smaller the social unit, the greater that measure is]----as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas and, again, by Pius XII.
"The essence of politics is not votes, but the transmission of authority, which according to natural law can only proceed downward from God throughout society. So the Church always taught before the Second Vatican Council. Voting as practiced in modern times is the indispensable adjunct to the democratic heresy because it is the device whereby authority is allegedly transmitted upward from the people instead of downward from God.
" 'It is also Church teaching,' writes Dupont, 'that authority, that is, God's authority, cannot rise from the people for the simple reason that God's authority is not vested in the people.' He notes further that this 'was confirmed by Leo XIII in Graves communi and again by St. Pius X in Notre Charge Apostolique. The common source is, of course, the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. We all know that this teaching is currently disregarded in the Conciliarist Church (which is the Church of Man and Democracy).' Because all authority flows downward from one source, which is God, the very order of reality binds authority indissolubly to monarchy. [Emphasis added.]
"Even in a democracy, to exercise authority at all, sooner or later some one person, or persons acting as one, must command the others. This poses a perpetual dilemma for democracy, whose apparent rule from below is never more than magical illusion. ... Democracy would have us believe that it has eliminated the monarch whereas in fact it has only displaced him. It should be obvious that monarchy has in no way been abolished by driving kings and emperors from their thrones. Anyone who says kings have been exterminated simply doesn't know what has been going on for the last 200 years. The truth is they have proliferated all over the earth ... Voting has become indispensable where every man is a king ...
"Because it is impossible to do away with monarchy without doing away with authority altogether, monarchy was perforce usurped by the people. The substitution was clearly seen at the time by Tories like the dour colonial who remarked regarding George III that he'd rather have one tyrant across the sea than thousands of them here at home. Where one man sat in majesty as personal embodiment of the nation, every person in the nation now squabbles for a seat. ...
"Our Lord told the politician Pilate, "Rex sum Ego, I am a king" (John 18:37). Or, as a more literal translation of the Vulgate would support, "I am King." Ultimately, to wish to rid oneself of monarchy is to wish to rid oneself of God, to usurp the monarchy of God. [Ibid.] If we read history correctly, this is precisely what modern democracy set itself to do." [UTOPIA, Solange Hertz, pp. 79-80.]
Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical on the Sillon Movement taught: "Those who preside over the government of public affairs may indeed, in certain cases, be chosen by the will and judgment of the multitude without repugnance or opposition to Catholic doctrine. But while this choice marks out the ruler, it does not confer upon him the authority to govern; it does not delegate the power, it designates the person who will be invested with it. Moreover, if the people retain the power, what becomes of authority? A shadow, a myth; there is no more law properly so-called, no more obedience." Certainly not by the the tenets of Freemasonry and its Declaration of Independence.
St. Pius continues: ... [With regard to democracy] Such error and danger are all the greater." He calls this democracy "one which goes to such lengths in its wickedness as to give sovereignty to the people, and which presses for the suppression of classes and for their leveling down." He names things as they truly are, writing that "liberty, equality and fraternity a theory opposed to Catholic truth, warping the essential and fundamental notions which regulate social relations in every human society ... By separating fraternity from Christian charity thus understood, democracy, far from being progress, means a disastrous set-back for civilization."
"No, civilization does not have to be invented, nor the New City built in the clouds. It has been already; it is here. It is Christian civilization, the Catholic City. The only problem is to keep setting it up and restoring it on its natural and divine foundations against the ever-recurring attacks of the unhealthy utopia of revolt and impiety. Let not the Priesthood be misled by the miracles of a false democracy into the maze of ideas; let them not borrow from the rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church the high-flown phrases full of promises which are as high-sounding as they are unrealizable!"
Pope Pius XI said the same in Divini Redemptoris: "It is utterly untrue and mere empty talk, to say that all citizens have equal rights!" What we know as modern democracy never entered the minds of men and the world by way of the Church, but by means of men who had apostatized from the true Faith.
The land of the Americas was first explored and settled by Catholics, before the Puritan-Freemason hegemony and the rewriting of history textbooks for school children. Its triumph was in the conversion of the Indian population, and especially in the conversion of the Aztecs through Our Lady of Guadalupe. The American nation began as the work of God, albeit using men tainted with Original Sin. The creation of the United States, the citadel or "new city" alluded to by Pius was the work of men, taking the place of God, not only tainted by Original Sin, but working covertly for their Father, Satan:
Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons: Washington was a thirty-two degree Mason and insisted that all of his senior officers practiced the Craft. When he was inaugurated he was reported to have worn his Masonic apron. For another picture with description you are referred to this Masonic web site.
As Hertz writes:
"Such facts are symbols of deeper facts, showing the place and power of Masonry in the making of the nation. Along the Atlantic coast, among the Great Lakes, in the wilderness of the Middle West, in the far South and the far West, everywhere, in centers of population and in little Upper Rooms on the frontier, the Lodge stood alongside the Home, the School and the Church."
We are always told that Freemasonry is not a religion per se. Yet it meets all the requirements of an established religion. In the United States and France it even had its own trinity in its 3 virtues: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, and in the first, with its 3 main personages: Washington, Franklin and Jefferson. It is not accidental that Washington, "the Father of his country" took the place of God the Father, something that has been an insider's joke for generations; because he wrote the Masonic word and proclaimed it in his Gazette, Franklin is said to be the "Son" among the Sons of Liberty and the Spirit is that of Jefferson, the famed "Deist" with a profound hatred of Jesus Christ who insidiously provided the rationale for a subset of naturalism embedded within the ACLU, for the eclipse of true religion in his letter referring to the separation of Church and State, while all the while ostensibly championing the opposite. It is reported that Washington had a picture of the Madonna and that before he died he converted; I have not been able to verify it.
By 1933, Masonry was firmly rooted in the Americanist spirit that the spiritual descendant of Jefferson, President Roosevelt, was to have it placed openly on our dollar bill. And a scarce twenty years later it adorned the Capitol Chapel. [Hertz, p. 17]
The reader is referred to this web site for further reading on the matter, HERE.
In the first line of the preamble is set the Masonic ideal: "We, the people in order to form a more perfect union." ... Not only a union of states but a unity of the whole people is the basis upon which all American institutions are founded. "All Freemasons should know that the idea of union originated in Colonial Freemasonry, was developed and advocated by Freemasons, and was realized under their leadership." Freemasonry was held by all the principles, from George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry to Alexander Hamilton to be the only institution in colonial times in which the leaders of all the different colonies could meet upon common ground.
The Revolution was for the very purpose to form the union of the colonies ... the spirit of national unity in the thirteen original colonies lay deep in their common heritage ... The faith of nearly all was grounded in the English Bible [King James version]. But the Puritans of New England, with their Congregational form of church government, did not look favorably upon the Established Church of the other colonies, holding its clergymen with only a little less abhorrence than they held for the Papacy.
"In 1868 representatives of seventeen denominations formed, in Pittsburgh, the National Association of Christians Opposed to Secret Societies. Magazines such as The Christian Cynosure were started, and books were written to counter the activities of secret societies. In 1874 the National Christian Association was organized to coordinate Protestant opposition to secret societies.'
"That these secret influences survived and continued to make use of some elements of Masonry throughout the Nineteenth Century is apparent. How else can we explain the support given by certain elements to the revolutionary activities of European socialists, continental Masons, and adepts of various secret societies?" [Conspiracy Against God and Man, Fr. Clarence Kelly, pp. 57-58.]
Father Kelly further on engages the reader with an account of the intricate network of Masonic organizations and those inflamed with the same goals and spirit, in fact a vast array of diverse institutions. This dynamic, rather than dilute the potency of the Conspiracy of Secret Societies engaged in destroying the Kingdom of Christ, strengthens and emboldens it, providing a convenient cover from which to claim there is no conspiracy since they are large and diverse. Most Americans fall for the subterfuge and what seems like common sense, all the while unable to grasp the cleverness with which they have been deflected from safeguarding true justice and first and foremost, the cause of Christ the King.
Misapprehending that there is no Conspiracy, they feel secure, grow lax, lose their sense of vigilance and end by doing nothing when at last they perceive that something has gone terribly wrong; unable to admit they are partly to blame through human error and weakness, that is, through smaller sins, they tend toward rationalization, displacing their discomfort onto those who had always acted as sentinels for Christ, by calling them "extremists" in order to ostracize them in some way from their midst, committing graver sins to excuse the lesser. Human nature 101.
William J. Whalen, in his book, Christianity and American Freemasonry, gives us John Q. Adams' assessment:
"I am prepared to complete the demonstration before God and man, that the Masonic oath, obligations and penalties cannot possibly be reconciled to the laws of morality, of Christianity, or of the land." [p. 14]
Up to 1978, there were fourteen known U.S. Presidents who had been Master Masons: Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Polk, Buchanan, Johnson, Garfield, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Truman, and Ford. Truman, once the Grand Master of Masons of Missouri, was the last Master Mason elected to the presidency; Lyndon Johnson received the Entered Apprentice degree in 1937 but never went on to the third or Master Mason degree, and Ford, of course, was not actually elected. Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan reached the White House without Masonic membership. At least twenty U.S. senators belong to the lodge [as of 1987] among them Senators Robert Byrd, Robert Dole, John J. Glenn, Jesse Helms, Barry Goldwater, and Strom Thurmond. [Ibid.]
Skull and Bones, is one of the secret societies based at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. Our current President, George W. Bush was initiated into it during his matriculation there. It has connections to Freemasonry. You are referred HERE.
Skull and Bones is known by
many
names, including The Order of Death, The Order, Cooperation Star, The
Eulogian Club, and Lodge 322.
On an initiate's first day in
Bones
he is assigned a name, by which he will be known for the rest of his
life. Names that are regularly used are: Magog, which is assigned to
the initiate with the most experience with the opposite sex; Gog, which
is assigned to the least sexually experienced; Long Devil, for the
tallest; Boaz, for varsity American football captains; and Little Devil
for the shortest. Bonesmen have often assumed names of mythological and
legendary figures. George W. Bush's Skull and Bones name is thought to
be "Temporary". This is because he could not decide upon a name and was
therefore given the temporary name. He never took the time to change
it. His membership and the powerful connections it brings help us
understand his meteoric rise to the US Presidency, sweeping all the
polls while still a little known governor in Texas, save his being the
son of another President named Bush. It also explains his entrenched
position in favor of [Masonically maniacal] Mexico over the interests
of the vast majority of ordinary, law-abiding American citizens,
regardless of any poll. Bush is prepared to speak much, and do as
little as he must if pushed. He is beholden to a higher power, and I do
not refer to God Almighty. This higher power of global elitists, with
the spirit of naturalism and Freemasonry as its engine is called
various names but it serves as the Hidden Hand, once referred to by
Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister of England: "The world is
governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those
who are not behind the scenes." [As cited in Secret Societies and Subversive Movements,
Nesta Webster, p. 383.] Bonesmen are closely associated with the
Council of Foreign Relations [CFR] and other one-world organizations
who espouse a global ethic under international law, not the laws of
America that comport with justice and its common sense customs that not
even Masonry has yet to obliterate, until recently. Many, many of the
network and cable news anchors and or key reporters are members of the
CFR: when we hear the news through these people, we are hearing it
filtered through the CFR viewpoint; members of the fourth estate who
belong to the CFR are regulars on the Brit Hume evening news hour on
FOX, such as Charles Krauthammer for one. The owner of FOX news
Channel, Rupert Murdoch is of course a member. Former Congressman Newt
Gingrich, is a regular contributor on the O'Reilly Report. Marc
Ginsberg, a regular contributor on foreign policy for FOX News is
another. The CFR was founded in New York in 1919 to influence public
policy toward a new order of states that negates traditional
sovereignty, although its spokesmen deftly cover the truth with
sloganeering and other skillful use of language to say the opposite of
what one intends, a slow undermining of sovereignty until the public is
primed enough to accept the aims openly. Moreover, both Bush
Secretaries of State, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are members;
three Supreme Court justices: Ginsburg, Breyer and former justice
Sandra Day O'Connor; and Elaine Chao, present Secretary of Labor.
Interestingly, William F. Buckley and Linda Chavez, at one time
conservatives have both become liberals, with Chavez favoring illegal
aliens when once she did not. Buckley who is all over the lot as the
expression goes is anything but reliable. I simply could not
understand, but then I saw the membership list and it becomes clearer
now: CFR. And of course, Dick
Cheney, "the man behind the man".
Some of the current members of Congress who belong: Jane Harman, Charles Schumer, Joseph Lieberman, James Kolbe, Olympia Snowe, Bob Graham, Hamilton Lee, John McCain. There are a number of high-ranking military officers, some with advisory positions, a few of whom are FOX News contributors. There was a web site that listed them but it has closed.
"The CFR has cut a sordid path
through American history. But its dreadful record has not stopped it
from gaining unprecedented power and influence. Author/journalist
Richard Rovere [CFR] has aptly described the Council as "a sort of
Presidium for that part of the Establishment that guides our destiny as
a nation." It controls both major parties and has had a virtual
lock-hold on the executive branch of the federal government since World
War II." [New American,
03-12-2001.]
Please note that we must resist oversimplification. Not everyone joins an organization with precisely the same aims, level of knowledge and experience, and degree of attachment. However, it can generally be said no one joins one in which he finds no fellowship or commonality at all. Since Masonry is so repugnant to the soul in the state of grace, we can confidently surmise that Masonry and the step children it spawns draw unto themselves those who have an affiliation and sympathy with their aims and spirit, who tend to be wise in the ways of the world, rather than in the ways of Heaven, and if they are not totally given to the Prince of this world, risk becoming so.
The pretext for our Freemasons in search of an instigating event to further their cause of revolt against Christ was the Stamp Act which was passed, over the strong objections of American colonists, in order to help pay off the massive debt incurred by the British government during the French and Indian War. The act was important in that it united many of the colonies in their opposition to British rule and it sparked the creation of secret societies such as the Sons of Liberty. The August riot, which caused the destruction of property and direct threat to human life, contributed to the repeal of the Stamp Act. Langguth makes it clear that not all of the property destroyed was owned by the Crown and its representatives. He describes one family with innocent children who were almost burned to death. But even if the case had been otherwise, Catholic teaching does not permit of this type of action where human life is not directly under attack, and even then the perimeters are limited. The Sons of Liberty claimed as members many of the later leaders of the Revolution, including Paul Revere, John Adams, and Samuel Adams.
John Adams, one of the
participants,
reflected in his diary that such patriotic
events "tinge the Minds of the People, they impregnate them with
the sentiments of Liberty." That liberty is the "Liberty" of the French
Revolution that unleashed the Reign of Terror and the near destruction
of the Catholic Church in that country. Note he used the word, "tinge",
which bears a connotation that is less than noble.
This then is the spirit of
American
democracy that imbues all
our purest efforts on behalf of what we hope is the common good. At the
time of the American Revolution, the nation was tiny with immigrants of
various religions but of the same culture. Those religions became
subsumed into the ethos or the Masonic spirit. Likewise the
supposedly "Catholic vote". Our bishops will not lead for the Social
Reign of Christ the King, they are partisans of the left and the wishy
washy meaningless "moderate".
Still,
in the Revolutionary period and immediately after,
normalcy as we used to know it and still maintain in our families, was
the rule. As the US expanded and with it the notion of limited
government receded, public life became unwieldy. Now most of the Masons
were not personally corrupt in their public actions, whatever their
other flaws. Today corruption is a way of life with earmarks---pork for
specific districts is the bribe our rulers reward themselves with from
the public trough---bribery because they convince us that government is
the spoils of of participation in the American way of life. We refuse
to drive these scalawags from office. The arrangement is just too
cozy. The one star in the firmament over Sen. John McCain is that he
does not earmark----pad legislation to rob the treasury. But as you
read above his negatives are too many to ignore. As I update this
section John McCain is to speak to the implacable foe of
sovereignty, La Raza. He has promised gullible conservatives he will
secure the border, but openly courting one of the primary groups who
will not tolerate a closed border. I think he is a liar. Certainly
two-faced in his assurances.
"McCain headed up to Youngstown, Ohio, to tell the folks their jobs are never coming back and NAFTA was a sweet deal.
"But why, when America's mini-mills and steel mills are among the most efficient on earth ---in terms of man hours needed to produce a ton of steel---aren't those jobs coming back?
"Answer: It is due to the free-trade policies of Bush and McCain, which permit trade rivals to impose value-added taxes of 15 percent to 20 percent on steel imports from the United States while rebating those taxes on steel exports to the United States. We are getting it in the neck coming and going.
"An America First trade and tax policy could have U.S. steel mills rising again, while those in Japan, China, Russia and Brazil would be shutting down as uncompetitive in the U.S. market.
"But we no longer put America first.
"The U.S. government burns its incense at the altar of the Global Economy. The losers are those guys in Youngstown McCain was lecturing on the beauty of NAFTA. And the winners are the CEOs who pull down seven-, eight- and even nine-figure annual packages selling out their country for the corporation.
"Does McCain think $6 trillion in trade deficits since NAFTA, a dollar rotting away and 3.5 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush was all inevitable? Does he think we can do nothing to stop the deindustrialization of a country that used to produce 96 percent of all it consumed?
"Why should those guys in Youngstown vote for McCain?
"So the feds can teach them how to shovel snow?
"Even Hillary, whose husband did NAFTA with Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole's help, now gets it.
"Then McCain took a time out to denounce the North Carolina GOP for ads tying the Rev. Wright to Obama, and the pair to two Democratic congressional candidates. To their credit, the North Carolinians told McCain where to get off and are running the ads.
"What does a McCain victory mean for conservatives?
"Probably a veto on tax hikes and perhaps a fifth justice like Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito or John Roberts, to turn two pair into a full house. Fifty years after Warren, it could be game, set, match for the right.
"But McCain may also mean more Middle East wars, more bellicosity, more manufacturing jobs lost, malingering in the culture wars, and more illegal aliens and amnesty." [Column of July 29, 2008]
In short there is no one on the ballot to vote for in the positive sense. This leaves voting in the negative sense, to prevent what one perceives a greater threat to normalcy. Hillary or Barack are unfit for office for no other reason than they are committed to the cause of the left and have no coherent vision other than the "long march" of the left, primarily in their undaunted support for abortion. A ride with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Traditional Catholics are divided on what to do. Some insist to not vote for Ron Paul as a write-in, protest vote is tantamount to mortal sin; they are over zealous and their posture has no basis in Catholic teaching on civic duty. I take no position on Ron Paul, a libertarian, not a true conservative. I want to vote for a Catholic who not only is pro-life but has a grasp of the nature of the behemoth that is our entanglement with foreign powers and alien interests. Ron Paul does to some extent, but he has no use for the Catholic spirit in public affairs. He is not a Catholic.
Some Catholics are voting for John McCain because he has promised originalist judges and will not universalize health care, etc. You know, I know Catholics who voted for Reagan and the first Bush for the same reasons and we got Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter. And that was with a more benevolent Senate, less hostile to the natural law concept. Now there is no use for the primacy of the natural law over positive law. McCain can promise until the cows come home, the Senate Judiciary Committee is in no mood to allow the nominations, if there are any, to go to the floor for a vote. On the other hand, to sit out the election and not vote for him guarantees the very worst. If we trust in princes.
I cannot tell you what to do. Some Catholics aren't voting for President. I won't let my vote be wasted by being the usual patsy nor will I sit home in defeat. You will have to use own own judgment.
I want to vote for a practicing Catholic who has the experience and the will it takes to exercise the office, someone who realizes how high the stakes truly are and the forces arrayed against us and the enemy within. I will weigh the write-in options carefully over the next few months.
Ultimately, until we elect representatives enough in number who grasp that the key to effective pro-life legislation is to use the grants in the US Constitution that permit the limitation of the jurisdiction of the federal courts, is there any possibility for the sanctity of human life---to pass an unassailable Human Life Amendment, for instance.
"Oh, you will waste your vote."
To violate my conscience in order to be counted by those who think they count and you don't is to waste my vote.
If every Catholic and or other right-thinking normal American would vote their true conscience, not their civics class conscience, a write-in candidate could be elected. It doesn't happen because they join a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course a write-in can't win if you make sure he can't by joining those who don't care about you in the first place, just your faceless vote.
That would be wasting my vote!
God will not ask me if I was on the majority side, but who did I vote for and why. And the crowd, the bandwagon and the balloons? They won't be there when I am at the judgment seat. I can't control anyone else but myself. It is not my fault that principle is subservient to the pragmatic. Christ will judge me on what I knew and did, not what my neighbor did. The most virtuous civic act a citizen can perform for her country as a true patriot is obedience to a rightly formed conscience under the Social Kingship of Christ!
To quote Pat Buchanan:
Democracy
is not enough. If the
culture
dies, the country dies.