A Modest Proposal

Ross Douthat has “A Modest Proposal” that entails giving wealthier people more money will never float with the egalitarians. Rather, they've already voiced their preferences for Jonathan Swift’s version in the form of funding Planned Parenthood with federal, state and insurance dollars to kill the extra children that they find inconvenient.

Why I'm Not a Leftist (one reason among so many)

Things Leftists think are bad: “To find the Tea Party throughline in this election cycle, you have to look past the ballot counts and toward the policies – the radicalism of which the GOP establishment refuses to recognize, much less censure: voter ID, ratcheted down abortion access, bigotry masquerading as "religious freedom", concealed carry.”

Progress? From what? To where?

""The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. " GK Chesterton From the Illustrated London NewsApril 19, 1924

Will the bishops follow Pope Francis in New Orleans?

Thomas Reese  |

Fr. Reece sees the Church in the world through an unfortunately bifurcated lens. In charity, I will say that his concern for the poor and for Progressive causes has blinded him to the real meaning of “the consistent ethic of life.” That blindness leads him to say things like this: “The last thing troubled families need is bishops quoting papal encyclicals to them.” I could say that he appears to believe that troubled families need access to abortion, birth control and divorce more than they need the pastoral teaching of the Magisterium to show them what is truly true and beautiful and good. Perhaps he would have the bishops do away with Jesus’teaching as well that “what God has joined let no man put asunder.”etc. Frankly, there are trillions of tax dollars and billions of corporate and private charitable dollars going to help the poor. Somehow, they are not having the desired effect. Perhaps Fr. Reese should spend some time thinking about why the Progressive program to help the poor has failed so miserably. At the same time, there are precious few who are willing to defend the Truth in regards to the Family and sexual ethics. Does the proud Father consider that the bishops’ voices appear louder on those subjects because there are so few other voices? Fr. Reese’ is missing from the pro-family chorus. And I have the sorry sense that he wished the bishops would be silent too – or worse, join the amen chorus of Progressives who cheer the re-definition of marriage, the dissolution of the family, the misdirection of an individual’s sexual powers, the intentional sterility of the womb and the death (when “compassion” demands) of the unborn.

Of course, this story only presents one side of the argument; because that is the side NCR supports. But it leaves to be assumed that NCR prefers that the pope redefine truth and reality and will be disappointed if the Vicar of Christ uses the data to infuse the New Evangelization in order to teach the Church what is true and beautiful and good about human sexuality, marriage, children and the family.

Dave Brat, Watergate Conspirator? Politico would like you to think so

This partisan piece in Politico is unsurprising. Sometimes for what it says, sometimes for what it doesn't say. It doesn't say anything about Democrats possibly taking the House. Politico presumes Republicans will retain the majority there. A really cute line attempts to subliminally link Brat with Watergate,

“It’s perhaps no accident that Cantor was defeated by an insurgent named Brat, an upstart conservative Roman Catholic who received a master’s degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, the alma mater of Watergate conspirator Jeb Stuart Magruder. Brat’s platform: Washington is awash in corrupting cash, and it’s time for a change.”

1. Let’s make fun of his name, mature.
2. “insurgent,” “Brat,” “upstart,” “conservative Roman Catholic,” “Watergate conspirator.” Loaded language much?
3. “conservative Roman Catholic” Didn’t that sort of anti-Catholic bias die with JFK? No, only if you are an ‘enlightened Catholic’ like Mario Cuomo, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, etc. But a ‘conservative Roman Catholic’ can only mean that Brat hates women and is in favor of pedophile priests, right?
4. And since Brat attended the same college as Jeb Stuart Magruder (wait, don’t they only use all 3 names for serial killers? Unless I missed the subliminal between Brat and the Civil War general – of course! Brat also wants to sent African Americans back to the plantation!), of Watergate fame, Brat is also as tricky as one of Nixon’s henchman.
5. It mentions Dave Brat, the man who soundly defeated Eric Cantor only once. It gives his last name once. Seems to me that the first person to defeat the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives  in a primary since the Nineteenth Century deserves to at least have his name mentioned in a Politico hit piece.

It should be noted that Politico is one of the few places where readers might possibly know who Magruder and Stuart were or what Watergate was about. I’d wager that the majority of people who vote for Brat’s opponent in November will not know at least 2 out of 3 of those facts.