Hinged and Unhinged

In a video produced by Word on Fire, actor Shia LaBeouf discusses main points of his recent conversion to Roman Catholicism with Bishop Robert Barron. I think it is very much worth watching and I have embedded it below.

I am happy Shia Labeouf found the Holy Church. I always liked his acting, and some of the crazy stuff he was involved in during his past life showed me that he was searching for something, not unlike the rest of us. Hopefully he will keep his newfound faith, but no matter what happens with Mr. LaBeouf in the future, this video has value. Because it shows someone in the midst of discovery, turning his life around and pursuing God with the sort of relentlessness which we are all suppose to aspire to.



Shortly after this video was released we got this gem from Cardinal Arthur Roche. Displaying all the normal reticence of churchmen to speak directly, we get this strange line of argumentation:

The head of the Vatican's liturgy office says he would welcome a conversation with Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf, who recently cited the traditional Latin Mass as motivation for his conversion to Catholicism.

"I'd like to know why he thinks that, what is his experience of the celebration of the Mass," said English Cardinal Arthur Roche. "That's what priests do; we try to talk to people."

"Reform of the liturgy was an enormous, long preparation prior to the council and the council is the highest legislation that exists in the church," he said. "Once that legislation comes into effect, it's a very serious matter."

"You disregard that and you're really putting yourself sideways towards the edges of the church," he added.

Roche warned against those reluctant to embrace the reforms of Vatican II, describing them as "not only dragging their feet but stubbornly opposing what the church has decreed."

"And that's a very serious matter," he continued. "In the end, people have to ask themselves, 'Am I really a Catholic or am I more of a Protestant?'"

Yes; every Catholic at the Latin Mass needs to ask themselves "Am I a Protestant?" You know, I used to say about the SSPX that they were more Protestant than they realized, but then Pope Francis slapped me down on that idea. "They are Catholic. They love the Church," he exclaimed in 2016. Well, then! I stand corrected.

But back to Cardinal Roche. When he states that Tradition lovers are putting themselves "sideways towards the edges of the church", it sounds like he is saying that we're out on the margins or peripheries, right? We most definitely have heard that kind of language before. I wish at least one of these Churchmen would work on a pastoral strategy of accompaniment for us weirdos who like tradition and Latin. Oh, wait... one of them did.

The title of Cardinal comes from the Latin word for "hinge" as most Catholics know, and a lot of what happens in Church government hinges on what they say and do. If Cardinal Roche really wants to talk to LaBeouf I'm sure it is merely a matter of contacting Bishop Barron and getting his contact info. Then he could provide LaBeouf with all the teaching and mystagogy he would like to. It seems to me like this calling out of a public person is merely being used to express a contrary opinion, and I really do not have a problem with simply doing that per se. It just seems like he could accomplish this discussion rather easily, and so stating publicly that he is trying to talk to someone means he is using this situation to push his own messaging.

Speaking of hinges, we got another article from NCR Online about Shia LaBeouf which is a little more unhinged a few days after the article about the Cardinal. The Shia LaBeouf conversion interview: A portrait of masculine aggression. Oh, man, do I love that headline. The author, Madison Chastain, is one of those Catholics who was sad about the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And she is not shy at all about expressing how she feels about Mr. LaBeouf:

LaBeouf also says, before his conversion, he did not initially feel compelled to have a relationship with Jesus because he only knew the "soft, fragile, all-loving, all-listening but no ferocity … meek" Jesus (Barron immediately offers the word "feminized"), and it was only when LaBeouf encountered what he considered to be "masculine" — "cape, dipped in blood, sword" — that Jesus felt "appealing."

We should be concerned about anyone who finds the Gospel most compelling in its violence or who is put off by the femininity of Jesus. If we are to understand Jesus as the savior of all, we must embrace his full divinity that has no gender, and we must confidently identify the goodness of both the masculine and feminine in the incarnation.

Throughout the interview, LaBeouf cites a number of tropes and returns to them often: cowboys, cavemen and gangsters. He repeatedly expresses gratitude for the men who accompanied him and "masculinized" his journey, "the hero's journey."

... At the time of his initial engagement with Catholicism, LaBeouf's mother wasn't speaking to him and his career was flatlining. LaBeouf shares about experiencing suicidal ideation and total lack of hope. Once he embraces the Gospel, he feels God calling him to let go of his egotistical striving for power. He finds the safety he was looking for in "non-transactional" relationships where he isn't expected to do anything besides contemplate how best to use his gifts for others. It is a beautiful narrative of acceptance.

And yet still, the concerns about the attractiveness of Catholic violence and secrecy cannot be downplayed, as they directly relate to LaBeouf's troubled past. LaBeouf minimally addresses the accusations made against him in the last few years, referring to them only as "the news." Barron never asks.

The money line: If we are to understand Jesus as the savior of all, we must embrace his full divinity that has no gender, and we must confidently identify the goodness of both the masculine and feminine in the incarnation. This is language which Miss Chastain probably heard from a liberal priest or theologian. Jesus is both God and Man; He is God throughout Eternity and he became a human male in space and time. He embodies masculine goodness and masculine gentleness and not aggression. And in Christianity, Divinity most definitely has a gender: masculine.

In fact, the idea that aggression need be masculine is faulty, and I would argue that this article is written with a great deal of feminist aggression, making needless assumptions about LaBeouf's guilt and insinuations that Bishop Barron is negligent for not probing into his Hollywood scandals.

Read the whole Chastain piece and tell me it is not a perfect occasion for playing Buzzword Bingo for members of the intersectional feel-feels contingent. We get to hear all the standard terms and phrases mentioned: Black Lives Matter, #Metoo, bigotry, sexism, racism, cultural appropriation, platform, Catholic violence, powerful men, etc.

Back to the Cardinal's concern about the Traditional Liturgy. I would advise him to read a really well-considered and well-written article by Rebecca Weiss called The Traditional Mass is not the problem with Traditionalist communities. I don't know if that would help, however. It might be that Mr. LaBeouf will never get any respect or trust from certain quarters. After all, he does mention that he is friends with Mel Gibson and that might explain all the reactions, both hinged and unhinged.

"All the contradictions are embarrassing" (Snowflakes)

What could possibly explain Alasdair MacIntyre's regret?

One of our faithful Anonymous commenters deserves recognition (although he/she obviously doesn't want any) for linking to an interview between a liberal protestant theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, and someone from Bruderhof a quasi-commune of sorts. My main interest is the exchange right at the beginning:

Peter Mommsen: You’ve written extensively about how the church should respond to the “end of Christendom” – the fact that we no longer live in a culture whose ground rules stem from Christianity. What about the “Benedict Option” proposed by the writer Rod Dreher? He argues that Christians should respond to secularization by following the example of the early monastics, withdrawing from a heathen civilization to build alternative communities where Christian virtues can be nourished and passed on. Is he right?

Standley Hauerwas: This Benedict Option idea comes from the last line of Alasdair MacIntyre’s book After Virtue, in which he observes that the barbarians have been ruling us for some time and that our future is “no doubt to have a Benedict, no doubt a very different Benedict.” Here’s the problem: Alasdair once told me that this is the line he most regrets ever having written! He wasn’t advocating some kind of withdrawal strategy – he was only pointing out that we can’t be compromised by the world in which we find ourselves. I don’t think your community, the Bruderhof, takes a withdrawal strategy, for instance.

I think it is appropriate to underscore MacIntyre's entire disapproval of the Benedict Option as well as his recognition for what it is, in the words of his theologian friend Stanley Hauerwas, "some kind of withdrawal strategy." Everybody using common English parlance recognizes two things: one, the intention of Alasdair MacIntyre's quip in After Virtue was not a fugit mundi and two, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option—if it is anything more than hashtag Christianity or fodder for a grad school mint julep fueled bull session—is most definitely a flight from the world, albeit with a few oddments crammed into one's pockets. Examples of the oddments would seem to include Diamond Dogs by David Bowie, Bitch by the Rolling Stones, a bottle of trendy French wine and a cell-phone photo of a one-legged stripper. Among other things.

Somewhere on the internets there is an article by a Benedict Option devotee wondering in print if MacIntyre was ever going to "break his silence" on the whole Benedict Option concept. I think the silence spoke loudly enough that, in the words of T. S. Eliot, it had the equivalence to a "That is not what I meant at all; that is not it, at all", and the development of the quasi-monastic lifestyle choice called the Benedict Option was based on a misperception of his original words. To put it mildly.

....What they set themselves to achieve instead—often not recognising fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct [one characterized by moral incoherence and unsettlable moral disputes in the modern world], we ought to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict. (Source.)

Each Christian man or woman of good will must ultimately judge whether this paragraph has anything to do with the upcoming book about craft beer, communes, trips to Italy, photos of restaurant tables and thick glasses lying on stacks of books, etc. Personally I think MacIntyre would join the chorus of other thinkers we've noted—Bruce Frohnen, Joseph Shaw, John Zmirak (several times actually), Brendan Eich, Austin Ruse, William Briggs and Father Richard Heilman—and shout in unison: "BATS AREN'T BUGS!"

Well, if he were a shouting type of guy. By the way, yYou can add my voice to the mix as well if you'd like. That's my original thought on why we don't need the Benedict Option, or already have it and just don't use it enough.

It is worthy to note that the Bruderhof community is exactly the kind of group that cracks me up as much as Rod Dreher's silliness does. At one and the same time, they publish left-wing condemnations of private property as evil in and of itself and boast of the prime real-estate they own on their web-site. It's a cushy life-style; it reminds me one of my favorite scenes ever.



"You don't care about money because you have it."

New York Times starts crying

Oh, the agony! Such a deep, deep sadness has come over Jay Sullivan and David Schanzer that they are compelled to write this article: CANCEL THE MIDTERMS. Here's the key paragraph, in my opinion:

The realities of the modern election cycle are that we spend almost two years selecting a president with a well-developed agenda, but then, less than two years after the inauguration, the midterm election cripples that same president’s ability to advance that agenda.

How absurd. Could it be that the crippling of the agenda is possibly the fault of selected president? If the star receiver is selected to catch the ball on the final play and he drops it, should we cancel the football game? I'm pretty sure there was no similar article written for the Times in 2006.

Republican wonks like to talk about political capital, but I think the concept of the Divine Right is operative among liberals and democrats. The way most of us see it is that Obama has burnt all his capital, squandered his good will and used most of his trump cards. If you are one of the leftists at the New York Times you shout "Not fair! He gets a do over!" If you're a conservative you simply say "Well, time to punt, big guy."

Goofus and Gallant: Statist vs. Laissez-faire

I love Jon Gabriel's stuff, and with his Goofus & Gallant update, he has scored again. Check them all out; this is my favorite:

Huh, huh--he said phallocracy.

My "Plan B"

Over at the Midwest Conservative Journal, Bill looks at the whole LGBTXYZ mess and admits he needs to buy a vowel, especially with regard to the construct of "transgender". I very much agree with his assessment that the "average person" needs to take stock and step up to fight the insanity. Excerpt:

We hear all the time that insufficient precautions are taken to prevent harassment against women, and it stands to reason that allowing someone with male sexual organs access to naked girls is tantamount to an invitation to sexual assault. But if denying that same individual free expression of their [1 of 56] sexuality, isn’t that discrimination – at least to the LGBTxyz movement?

If Nick and Justin, a “married” couple with a 15 year old daughter Stacy (by artificial insemination/surrogate mother) are faced with their daughter coming home in tears from school one day and telling them about how she was made to feel trashy by this big, hulking man getting naked in front of her in the locker room and then watching her every move – what do they say to her? Does she have no rights? And, if not, what would it take for her to “get” some rights?

This is all very complex. I’m not trying to brush it off, or dismiss it casually. But the explosion of references to “Transgender” has caught my attention, and I think it’s about time the “average person” took stock of what’s going on around them.

Yes, I quite agree that we must engage this "transgender" issue and do so seriously. Snide ridicule seems to be in order and has worked for some time, but I'm afraid it will no longer. The cultural left has built up enough critical mass using their brainwashed drones on this topic. Face it; if people are willing to let a person break your skull to support a politically correct view of gender, then we have left the path where a simple call to common sense will suffice to correct the disorder.

The goal of "getting some rights" for the real victims like Stacy in the illustration is the problem if you see rights as "positive", entitlements people should be given, as most people on the left do. The concept of rights as negative and protective in nature comports better with the old-fashioned, tried-and-true, "Male and female He created them" method of bathroom assignment. Under the entitlement model, everyone is entitled to pick the bathroom which most matches their boutique sexual orientation. Under the rights as protection/negative rights model, everyone has a right to privacy from the opposite sex when they enter the bathroom.

Of course I've already spoken my mind on what I believe should be the priority on identity in general—including bathrooms—and that is gender. All traditional Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims, I expect) see things this way as well. Orientation can either come first or second in the mind of the pro-LGBT crowd in the way of priority. So a homosexual who is transgendered sees himself as a woman and wants to use the ladies room, whereas a non-transgendered gay man wants to use the men's room. In order to respect their right, they must be allowed to use whichever bathroom they are comfortable with. It doesn't matter if the current occupants of the bathroom are comfortable. Man, that makes as much sense as the "traveling public" remarks on getting Ebola on the bus.

Twenty years ago, a previous co-worker of mine used to joke that men didn't speak to each other in the men's room due to what he called natural homophobia (he was a really funny, insightful guy for a liberal) but now that any sort of homophobia has become one of the only deadly sins a person can commit, it's possible that we'll all be expected to begin chatting about NFL scores or hairstyles as soon as we enter, mixing business with pleasure to show acceptance of all the "56 genders".

I admit I haven't visited that that "56 gender" link. Part of me keeps telling me that even going there is sort of like giving in on the argument. So I'm going to leave that for another time; right now I feel like going on the offensive with something I call my Plan B. The letter B stands for bisexual, and I think that the concept of bisexuals being among the other alternative lifestyles represented in LGBT is a key to showing open-minded people how the whole project is simply an attack on traditional values and traditional notions of rights rather than any type of civil-rights effort to stop bullying.

The method I have used in the past generally involves questions. For example: How do I know I'm not a bisexual? I'm attracted to women and I've only ever had sexual relationships with women, but is it possible that I just never met the right gay man? After all, they're only 1.6 percent of the population. How often do you have to fluctuate between relationships to be officially bisexual? Once a month for women bisexuals, once a week for men? Is Anne Heche, for example, bisexual? and does that explain why she only had one lesbian relationship (albeit a very public one with Ellen DeGeneres) and all the rest of her relationships have been with men? One of the reasons I bring up Heche, who I realize is a very troubled person who was possibly abused as a child, is because many members of the LGBT community were upset that she "went straight" and started dating a guy after breaking up with DeGeneres. Well, what if she didn't go straight—what if she went bi when she went bye-bye?

Bisexual is basically a non-orientation, and this fact can be expressed by asking all these questions along with the big one, "What constitutes being bisexual over and above changing your mind a lot?"

Here are some more: Would a long term, committed relationship for a bisexual require at least three people in a marriage? Would polygamy be required? Or should it be admitted that bisexuals don't really do long term, committed relationships as bisexuals? Is bisexual just a transitional phase that future committed gays go through? Why do some of them appear to end up straight? And how can you explain that orientation is innate if some people are born with a fluctuating orientation?

I'm telling you, the B doesn't really belong in LGBT. It can be used as a sort of symbolic Trojan Horse to expose the sheer chaos inherent in the LGBT agenda and argue for a return to traditional sexual roles and morals. The conundrum for the pro-LGBT folks is that to take it out at this point would be non-inclusive, and they wouldn't want to exclude anybody, would they? Well, other than straight people, I mean.

All of these questions—which I think are great "gotchas" since people don't reason things through very well when their gonads are doing the thinking—ignore a pretty big indoor elephant: what can bisexual possibly mean if there are 56 sexes? Doesn't the concept of a non-orientation orientation, open the doors pretty wide for the need for more letters? Maybe they should look into the Zhonghua Zihai.

I'm sure someone on the traditional side of things has brought this whole thing up before, and I know it is discussed as a problem in gay and lesbian circles due to a recent anecdote I heard. And not being someone who wants to immerse myself in gay press and literature, I have no idea if they have standard responses to my "Plan B" (other than to call be a horrible bigot), only that their responses will not answer my questions satisfactorily. Here's the recent anecdote; my friend's cousin told him that the lesbian community she was part of had arguments about whether bisexuals should be part of the community. She was on the side of being less inclusive because, "well, they really aren't gay", she told him. Ironically, my friend related, she is now in a relationship with a man, and pretty much left the whole LGBT thing behind. So she is now straight. Or maybe bi? Jury's out....

Dennis Prager: "There is great benefit to the liberal sinner in being a liberal."

I commend Dennis Prager for being able to write an article like this. No Weiner jokes, just straight-ahead wisdom and truth about the widespread evidence that liberalism enables bad behavior. (Of course I appreciate Weiner jokes as much as the next conservative male....) Excerpt:

Consider the example of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He had been expelled from college for paying someone to take his exams. His role in the death of a woman with whom he spent an evening would have sent almost anyone without his family name to prison -- or would have at least resulted in prosecution for negligent homicide. And he spent decades using so many women in so public a way that stories about his sex life were routinely told in Washington. Read the 9,000-word 1990 article in GQ by Michael Kelly, who a few years later became the editor of the New Republic.

When this unimpressive man started espousing liberal positions, speaking passionately about the downtrodden in society, it recalled the unimpressive students who marched on behalf of civil rights, peace and love.

It is quite likely that Ted Kennedy came to believe in the positions that he took. But I also suspect that he found espousing those positions invaluable to his self-image and to his public image: "Look at what a moral man I am after all." And liberal positions were all that mattered to the left and to the liberal media that largely ignored such lecherous behavior as the "waitress sandwich" he made in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with another prominent liberal, former Senator Chris Dodd.

Eternal Vigilance

After reading this horrible, but unfortunately accurate, description of one of the books on the required summer reading list for Saint Ignatius High School, I sent the following email to both the President (Father William Murphy) and the Principal (Daniel Bradesca). The private Catholic grade school which my children attend currently has a 100% acceptance rate for its Eighth Grade boys who apply to Ignatius.

Dear Father Murphy,

I have always considered that St. Ignatius High School would be a great place to send some or all of my sons – I have six of them – assuming any or all could get accepted there. That was before I read this article in Catholic World Report, which literally sent chills up my spine. I question the judgment of a Catholic educator who would assign a book like this over the summer, a time during which a young person may not have a chance to discuss the moral implications of the many problematic passages with a responsible adult.

I also question the choice of the book altogether, seeing that there are many books to choose from which do not contain such infantile blasphemy, praise for the act of self-abuse and tolerance for the deviancy of homosexuality. This assignment of Alexie’s book is an example of why many people whom I know and trust conclude that certain faculty members at St. Ignatius are actually intentionally leading young people toward a modernistic view of religion and morality.

I realize that many of the classics contain adultery, fornication, prostitution, sacrilege, murder, bad language, prejudice, etc. – I’m neither a prude nor a naïf. Most of these same books show the consequences of such sins. When you read critically the quote page for Alexie’s book, you realize that this man has a relativist and cavalier attitude toward morality which epitomizes the hellish maxim, “If it feels good, do it.” I realize that the book won an award, but that is meaningless to anyone who believes in the possibility of gaining the world and losing one’s soul.

Please consider dropping this book from your list and replacing it with something more worthy for a young Christian man to read. Also please consider having someone trustworthy verify the choices made by the person or committee which assigns books like The Privileges and The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The Pope—who is also a Jesuit—recently attacked a tendency he said was rampant in our world which he called “adolescent progressivism”. These books seem to be illustrative of this tendency and assigning them to high-school kids over the summer can certainly endanger their souls. And those assigning them should not be teaching in a Catholic school.

I remember talking to a respected Catholic theologian who said to me "There is only one institution which is guaranteed by Christ to stand, and that's the Papacy—and it will barely stand." Then he quoted Luke 22:32, "... when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers." Saint Ignatius High School is an institution which appears to have a lot of good things going for it, but it needs to be pruned to be healthy. If you check out the English faculty page, you can pick out the professor who teaches the obligatory "multicultural" course. My sources say that he is one of the culprits behind material like The Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie being assigned at St. Ignatius.

I advise anyone with concern for St. Ignatius to write an email to the President and the Principal of the school. See, I'm making it easy for you by linking their emails. And, of course, pray that the malevolent forces would be pruned out of our institutions. To protect what is good, beautiful and true in the world requires eternal vigilance.

Liberals dislike of good news is telling

Bill Donohue shows how liberal Catholics dislike good news about their own church.

Peter Steinfels, who wrote the obituary on Father Andrew M. Greeley in today’s New York Times, notes that “there was resistance among liberal Catholics to his [Greeley’s] positive findings about Catholic schools.”

This is striking. Steinfels, himself a liberal, is writing about Greeley, another liberal (on most subjects), about the way liberal Catholics react to good news about Catholic schools. Which raises the question: Why do liberal Catholics treat good news about Catholic schools as bad news? Would they prefer they fail?

Steinfels went on to say that Greeley’s “research debunked the received view at the time that Catholics had low college attendance rates. He found instead that white Catholics earned bachelor’s degrees and pursued advanced degrees at higher rates than other whites, and he attributed their success to the quality of education in parochial schools, a controversial assertion in a time of public-school ascendancy.”

Conservative Catholics cheer such news. Apolitical Catholics cheer such news. So what’s wrong with liberal Catholics that they resist such news? Is their craven need for acceptance by secular elites so debased that it drives them to resist good news about Catholic education?

Of course many of them also dislike good news about the abuse scandal in the church. The proposition that there are a finite number of child abusers in the church or that the problem is at least under control disturbs them for some reason.

Bill Whittle on the Relative Wealth of the American Poor

...and resentment...



...and envy. Which is worse than greed, BTW.

I would leave

Everybody with sense is leaving New York. This article explains it. Favorite paragraph:

Then there's the cost of living in New York City. A 2009 report by the Center for an Urban Future found that "a New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston. In Manhattan, a $60,000 salary is equivalent to someone making $26,092 in Atlanta." Even Queens, the report found, is the fifth most expensive urban area in the country.

I remember a DBA from New York back about 10 years ago who wanted $250.00/hour. Real fat guy. Too bad for him the internet got fast. Someone in Mumbai probably has his job now. Or maybe even Houston or Atlanta.

Here's a good comment from an honest New Yorker.

I was born in Brooklyn more than 50 years ago, and have lived on Long Island nearly all my life. I LOVE New York and had really hoped so spend my whole life here, die here, and be buried in Brooklyn a short distance from my place of birth. But taxes have driven me out. I just returned this week from a trip to New Mexico looking for a place to live there. If the damn politicians do not lower taxes, the only people who will be remaining in New York are those that cannot afford to move elsewhere. It's the damn politicians fault for the sky-high taxes, and poor economy. God help New York because the damn politicians certainly won't.

It would have been nice if the Repub candidate for Governor up there hadn't been kind of a nut. Imagine what a Chris Christie could for the Empire State.

Ed Lazear's Excellent Piece on Jobs and Unemployment

Every paragraph in this article is great and I find myself mumbling "uh, yeah..." at the end of each. But I'll excerpt my two favorites.

One final fact is worth noting. Healthy labor markets are characterized not only by high levels of hiring, but also by high levels of separations. Although it is true that the importance of quits relative to layoffs rises during good times, even the number of layoffs was greater in the strong labor market of 2006-07 than it is now. No one would suggest that layoffs are good for workers, but what is good is a fluid labor market, where workers and firms constantly seek to produce better products and to find more efficient ways to produce them. High labor market churn is a characteristic of a strong economy. It generally means that workers are moving to better jobs in growing sectors that pay higher wages and away from declining sectors that pay lower wages.

Allowing maximum flexibility encourages fluidity and means that employers are willing to hire workers who lose their jobs elsewhere. Many European countries have restricted mobility by imposing severance pay penalties on employers that lay workers off. More than reducing layoffs, these rigidities make employers reluctant to hire because of the penalties that they will later incur if a layoff is necessary. Such restrictions are in large part responsible for the chronically high rates of unemployment that have been prevalent in many European countries.

The impact of the practice of making it difficult to lay people off on hiring cannot be understated. Businesses are already making a big commitment when they hire a person, and making it more difficult to let people go will raise the scrutiny given to applicants at the hiring end. Another instance of unintended consequences released by do-gooders and politicians who use attacks on business to score easy points with their base. And you're not going to solve the problem by scolding businesses for not hiring either.

Financing the Culture of Death

Anne Nicol Gaylor is an old lady who likes to buy abortion services for poor women. Is she a eugenicist who wants to "clean up the chaff of humanity"? Probably. Excerpt:

On Gaylor's 80th birthday she sponsored a fund-raising event to raise funds to kill more children in the womb. Those funds go mostly to poor women to assist them in taking the life of the children in their womb. There is no effort to offer counseling or any kind of abortion alternative. Erickson writes, "Gaylor used the occasion of her 80th birthday to hold a fund-raising party for the fund at the Madison home of Dr. Dennis Christensen, an abortion provider who has since retired. Gaylor sent invitations far afield, including one to a well-to-do woman in California she'd never met but who had donated to the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The woman sent her regrets and a $20,000 check."

She also helped start the Freedom from Religion Foundation; so there you go.

"This feels real good"

Emphasis mine. It's from a guy named Bob Kloos from Cleveland Heights mentioned in this article about a new micro-schismatic group in the Cleveland Diocese, and the line pretty much sums up the justification for defying an order from Bishop Lennon. Excerpt:

Defying the authority of their bishop, parishioners and their priest from the closed St. Peter Catholic Church in downtown Cleveland celebrated Mass Sunday in leased commercial space they transformed into a church independent of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese.

The move by the new Community of St. Peter puts members in danger of excommunication because they had been warned by Bishop Richard Lennon, who shuttered St. Peter's in April, not to hold worship services in places without his approval.

Still, about 350 people, joined by their spiritual leader, the Rev. Robert Marrone, gathered for their first Mass and communion in their new home ― a newly renovated, century-old building on Euclid Avenue and East 71st Street.

"This feels real good," said parishioner Bob Kloos of Cleveland Heights. "This is the handiwork of hundreds of people over many, many months."

Uh, huh. The article gets even goofier. These people are called traditional Catholics several times, which makes these two paragraphs fairly laughable:

At the opening hymn, the standing-room only crowd, joined by a choir and classical musicians, sang "Christ be our light. Shine in your church gathered today. . ."

Following the closing hymn, the crowd burst into an extended applause as the faithful hugged each other and cried tears of joy.

I must be losing my memory. In my many years attending a traditional Latin Mass I don't recall group hugs afterward nor ever once singing "Christ Be Our Light." The photo further down in the article of a smiling lady "pass[ing] out communion" was also a sight I missed in my old Trad circles.

Also, check out this related morsel from a sidebar about schismatic groups on the same page by the same author:

The irony is most who splinter off are actually more Catholic in their beliefs than main-stream Catholics.

Well, yeah, this is what I've had preached to me over and over again ever since running into my first schismatic acquaintance years ago. He also informed me that everything the Church has taught for the last 60 years is untrustworthy and the Pope is probably a phony. Plus I heard from another that the authority of the bishops doesn't exist and that all Novus Ordo Masses were invalid. And from a third I learned that anyone not folding their hands properly at Mass is going to hell. We used to call this "more Catholic than the Pope"; I'm guessing he qualifies as "mainstream".

Then we get some more "feelings" from Ms. Joseph of Shaker Heights:

"I feel wonderful at this moment," said parishioner Suzanne Joseph of Shaker Heights. "It's a little scary. We're kind of going into a new way of being within the Catholic church, but I'm very happy we're on this journey."

It's called a honeymoon, sweetie. Wait until the arguments begin about what to do next. Then everyone will really be feeling the love.

The St. Peter rebellion is unique because unlike in Boston, where five congregations, in defiance of the archdiocese, have been illegally occupying closed churches for up to five years, the Cleveland group has created its own worship space complete with a new altar, baptismal fount and sacred icons.

Like the coining of "St. Peter rebellion". Kind of Star Wars-y. Note the absence of the word "protest" in the article. Advice: call these people "protestants" at your own peril. My friend did this once; I don't think the guy ever talked to him again. It's funny―they don't know anything more about what Protestants believe than what the Catholic Church teaches about it's own authority. What they do know is that they are most definitely not Protestant―that is NOT cool, whatever it means.

The new space, unlike the classic cathedral structure of the closed St. Peter's, is a huge, brick-walled room painted white and lighted with rows of overhead spot lights and glass sky lights above exposed steel rafters.

It is very sad to note that the writer of this piece, Michael O'Malley, is the Plain Dealer religion writer. Seriously, does he know that the word "cathedral" does not designate a type of architecture? Must have gone to school with Nancy Pelosi.

I don't suppose there will be any weddings at the newly formed St. Peter More-Catholic-Than-You church. Brides favor that "classic cathedral" look over the "steel rafters".

If you read the rest of the article it gets more and more depressing. This thing has been done so many times before. Of course it's schismatic. Of course it will be short-lived. And, of course, it is an example of blatant ignorance and naivete on just about everyone's part except for the priest. Father Marrone likely knows better; hopefully he will repent of this action.

Update: What do you know? Huffington Post reports that Bob Kloos gave $325 to Barack Obama's Presidential campaign in 2008 and $765 to Dennis Kucinich's 2004 campaign. Thanks for the clarification, Arianna.

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Media Ratings in the Crapper

Pew Reports that Americans think the news media is a joke.

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows.

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last decade.

Similarly, only about a quarter (26%) now say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased. And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

I don't know why they don't boost their ratings with stuff like this:


Plenty of skin and great copy containing words like "prostitute", "pimp" and killer lines like "sex is like dancing". Plus it's a good in depth look into our current President's background. Then there are all the controversial angles, like black women promoting "white slavery". I think they call that reparations if I'm not wrong.

Hat tip Get Liberty.

Man from K Street Owns in Obamacare Discussion

I was reading an old post which I'd linked in a comment thread which noted the strange relationship over the years between Rod Dreher and Andrew Sullivan. The discussion thread was interesting, but the comment that popped out at me was from the mysterious Man from K Street. (You can read it here.) And I thought, by Jove! I'd nearly forgotten about him! And besides, I could have had a V-8!

Googling "man from k street" turned up a recent comment on a Dreher blog post which I found to be worth noting:

The Man From K Street
September 9, 2009 10:04 PM
I clapped when the president said that he would make it illegal for insurance companies to punish people with pre-existing conditions. Terrific!

So terrific it's already been illegal since, um, 1996.

Julie and I were talking over the weekend about friends who are struggling to pay for health care between jobs, and how we'd be pleased to pay higher taxes if it would make it easier for families like them to sleep at night

You'll both be very, very pleased over the next decade or so then.

LOL

All I can say is that Rod really must suspend his critical faculties whenever Obama gets up and talks, which isn't a good thing to do since Obama has given around 300 speeches after about 230 days in office. In his big moment last week he was caught in several lies—not just the "illegals won't be covered" lie—and the polls show that the bump he got from the 47-minute speech is just that—a little bump which has flattened back down.

Note to Daily Kos Hobbyhorse Riders

Just for the record, I never accused anyone of being "unpatriotic for disagreeing with Bush". I'm not sure anyone I know did, to be honest. I know some people accused opponents of the Iraq war for being unpatriotic—I think Tom DeLay did, but he's gone now, or maybe they didn't notice. This could be placed under the general heading of not allowing politics to end at the water's edge, as was at once precedent. That is a little different than "disagreeing with the President" which seems to me to be a respectable American tradition regardless of one's political stripe. However this GWB squelching of dissent meme is a sacred mantra and a hallowed hobbyhorse on the left at this point, and I suppose I am guilty of religious discrimination for relegating it to fairy tale status.

But go on ahead and try to mock Kathleen's letter. Ridiculing parents' concern for their children should serve to further marginalize your radical views.

And thanks for reprinting the letter. I'll bet Kathleen is happy you reprinted it which is more than the moldy pigskin blogettes did.

Mike Rosen explains the "Kennedy Syndrome"

A great article about why the demise of the Kennedy family is such good news for America.

Jack and Bobby Kennedy were charismatic, larger-than-life political figures. Following their deaths, Ted, the last of the brothers, inherited the legacy. Following generations of Kennedys have been lesser figures. Several are lawyers. Some have dabbled in politics with modest results. Others entered the media, charitable foundations and the non-profit sector. There's hardly a secretary, insurance salesman, corporate executive, retailer, stock broker or soldier among them.

Ironically, this is the progeny of Joseph P. Kennedy, the family patriarch. The son of a humble Boston saloonkeeper, Joe was an ambitious, enterprising, hardnosed scrapper who married well and amassed a fortune in banking and shipbuilding, to say nothing of bootlegging during Prohibition. Unlike most of us who are forced to deal with mundane necessities like earning a living, inheritors of wealth (like the Kennedys) are relieved of that concern. Of course, they haven't taken a personal poverty oath but their gratification comes not from producing income and wealth themselves but from redistributing the fruits of other people's production. I call this the Kennedy Syndrome.

I'm no opponent of wealth. I've tried to accumulate some of my own from what's left after the tax collector's cut. Perhaps, as one who started without any, I have a greater appreciation for those who earn it than the Kennedys. And that's the fatal flaw of those afflicted with the Kennedy Syndrome. As compassionate do-gooders, they sympathize with the needy. That's commendable. But they have a blind spot in their inability to empathize with hard-working, industrious, risk- taking, entrepreneurial Americans who are the driving force behind our market economy and the creators of new wealth.

I remember hearing a talk once at a retreat that went something like this: "Some people like to sit on their back porch drinking a Martini and feeling bad for the poor, starving, godless natives in Africa, but their won't go over an talk to their next door neighbor because he has to wear a colostomy bag. This gives him an unpleasant smell, so it's much more pleasant to keep thinking about the natives in Africa, maybe even giving some money to charity to help them out." This is what comes to mind when I think of this Kennedy Syndrome, except that Ted Kennedy wanted to give someone else's money to the abstract poor. Rosen aptly quotes Mark Twain: "To be good is noble. To tell other people to do good is even nobler and much less trouble."

And I'm glad Rosen points out how self-indulgent the whole redistribution project is and how people like the Kennedys use it wrongly in an attempt to "redeem" themselves and their opulent playboy lifestyles. Maybe Teddy Kennedy wouldn't have felt the need to play Robin Hood in the Senate if he weren't so busy playing Don Juan in the nearby environs. I loved the conclusion, especially the WFB quote on idealism.

The appetite of do-gooders to dispense public largesse with the property of others is insatiable. But piling one social program on another runs up government spending to unsustainable levels. There are limits to the taxes you can impose on productive citizens. After you've soaked the rich, the middle class will necessarily get soaked as well. Government borrowing to finance budget deficits inescapably crowds out private sector investment, undermining the source of societal wealth. In the words of William F. Buckley, Jr., "Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive."

Father Sirico on the Parched Wilderness of Socialized Medicine

Great article by Father Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute on the attempt of the "religious left" to absolutize the health care debate into a battle of good versus evil. Here's his conclusion:

There is little or no recognition that other key institutions—the family, the Church, local civic associations—might also have a role to play in shaping reform. Certainly, no recognition for those civic and social groups that have a healthy distrust of an invasive state. Instead, we get the constant demand from the Religious Left that Washington must act. It is a sort of idolatry—the worship of Big Government as the solution to all of our problems.

There is a near total blindness to the fact that nationalized health systems in other countries are deeply troubled, even deadly. Horror stories about these systems are plentiful in the mainstream media. What about the common good? A 2002 report by the Adam Smith Institute noted the following about Britain’s state-run healthcare monopoly:

The NHS has a severe shortage of capacity, directly costing the lives of tens of thousands of patients a year. We have fewer doctors per head of population than any European country apart from Albania. We import nurses and doctors from the world's poorest countries, and export sick people to some of the richest. More than one million people—one in sixty of the population—are waiting for treatment.

Faith communities should recognize the Religious Left’s “40 Days” campaign for what it is: a politically driven “community organizing” effort that aims to expand a bloated state and make Americans evermore dependent on politicians and bureaucrats, not doctors, for healthcare. As people of faith, we need to speak up against this dishonest affair. After all, it’s our “prophetic” duty.

Of course he brings up a lot of questions we all have, primary among them this one: "Why must it be the federal government that takes care of everything?"

Close Enough for Horseshoes, Grenades and the New York Times

It's so hard for me to read news about Dan Rather because, to put it bluntly, the guy is a schmuck and an unrepentant liar, and he's rarely called on it by his colleagues. He recently called for the big ol' friendly Federal Government to bail out the journalism industrial complex–which of course means the liberal media establishment–because no one reads their crap anymore. The jury is still out on why he is making these noises; is he jockeying for a Media Czar position, or does he just want to make sure CBS is solvent enough to dole out a settlement in his brand new $70,000,000.00 lawsuit against his former employer?

Unclear. But the memory of Rather's demise perfectly segues into the recent flap about Allesandra Stanley's pathetic mistake-laden tribute to Walter Cronkite. James Rainey attempts to probe the causes of this failure, while still remaining respectful of the Times. It's sort of a high-wire act, IMO, but yields some humor, if no particularly new insights about how hesitant news companies are to correct on-going problems.

The Cronkite appraisal felt like "a disaster, the equivalent of a car crash," as one editor put it, because of the prominence of the subject and because the newspaper had plenty of time to prepare for the ailing newsman's death.

Yet in her piece, Stanley, who previously worked as a foreign correspondent and covered the White House, misstated the dates of the first moon landing and the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She had Cronkite covering D-day from the beaches of Normandy, instead of high overhead in a B-17.

Calame's successor and the paper's current public editor, Clark Hoyt, attributed the mistake-filled Cronkite appraisal to "a television critic with a history of errors [who] wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant [but] were not."

He suggested that tougher scrutiny by editors and better communication could have prevented the errors. No doubt.

Ya think?

Calame wrote in 2005 about what he said was a cut-and-dried inaccuracy, in which Stanley accused Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera of grandstanding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The TV critic wrote that Rivera "nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way," so he could help an older woman into a wheelchair. But Calame reviewed the video and saw no nudging.

Rather than agree to a correction, however, Times Editor Bill Keller defended Stanley for "writing as a critic, with the license that title brings." In other words, Rivera was showboating, so he had nudged his way into the story figuratively, if not literally.

Ah. Got it. This is the same "license" that allowed Dan Rather to use forged documents to support a charge that George Bush missed a required physical exam while in the National Guard. Rather never claimed that Bush literally missed the exam.

Would anyone at the Times suggest aloud that she is jealous of Geraldo Rivera whose name is much more of a household word across the country? I'm sure they wouldn't dare if the following is true:

Both of the Times' former public editors -- Daniel Okrent and Calame -- told me their critiques produced sharp rebukes from Stanley.

Okrent -- who once criticized the critic for tone, not accuracy -- remembers her as "extremely defensive and hostile," while Calame said she attacked him as a nitpicker.

A guess one man's tone is another's... nit.

"Stars or purported stars are obliged to get their facts right," the Times editor said. "Editors are obliged to edit everyone without fear or favor. Period."

Since it's not so clear that lesson has become ingrained deeply enough with everyone in the organization, it makes sense that the paper keeps an independent public editor on the payroll.

You see, this is all lip-service. Rainey is defending the Times for publishing corrections at the same time that he is scolding them for letting them happen. The fact is that people like Alessandra Stanley know that they have "star capital" and they live off the interest. Why should she accept any criticism? For a star journalist, making eight errors in print doesn't merit immediate punishment like throwing one interception might for a star quarterback. The errors are reported a day later in another print edition, yesterday's news. She doesn't have the experience of the locker room after a loss.

Craig Silverman–who outlines Stanley's history of mistakes in his article on this topic–suggests that Stanley be enrolled in a "a training program that helps her stop making simple factual errors at such an alarming rate." I'm sure she'd be thrilled about that. If she does take the first step and admit she has a problem, maybe she'll be spared the fate of Rather, whose forged document story was not the first time he bent the truth way past "truthiness".

Ultimately the reason that people like Alessandra Stanley, Dan Rather, Keith Olbermann, Rod Dreher and many journalists like them can be so ambivalent to stubborn facts is that that they are afflicted by superiority complexes common to anyone in the species which has been called "Wordsmith Intellectuals". I've commented before on this group drawing from an essay which states that "They [wordsmith intellectuals] shape our ideas and images of society; they state the policy alternatives bureaucracies consider. From treatises to slogans, they give us the sentences to express ourselves." This makes the stars among them rather more influential than quarterbacks and their mistakes more tragic than fumbles and interceptions. I suppose to a lesser degree, I am in this class with my influential (cough) blog. That's why I called upon my readers from the very outset to please correct me when I'm wrong.