There And Back Again

I'm back.

I will try to explain my absence as well as I possibly can. It could possibly be chalked up to being busy, which I have been. Life, job, other extracurricular activities that required my attention. Or it could be attributed to being sick, which I most certainly was around Christmas. Or having a new baby in the house, or any other of a thousand reasons.

But none of them would be quite completely true. Because they aren't the real, deep, underlying reason. The real reason is pretty simple. I suppose you could call it literary despair. Let me explain.

2012 had been a pretty eventful year, packed from one end to the other with intellectual, emotional, political, and religious happenings of every size and shape, from the HHS mandate to the Supreme Court's decision to uphold Obamacare. It was a year of a certain kind of hope, that maybe finally, the long four-year drudgery of Obama's presidency was finally reaching its end. That maybe the country would turn a corner, make a real change, demand a good leader. I hoped and prayed along with everyone else who hoped and prayed the same thing. I begged that God's will be done with America (a double-edged sword of a prayer, I know.)

I wrote to convince, I wrote to persuade, to possibly add a modicum of sense that had not existed in the argument before. I wrote from my heart about things I thought people should hear. I linked to other people's writings that were more eloquent than my own.

And then I allowed myself, to some degree, to get plowed under. Obama got reelected, bad policy became firmly cemented in place, the attacks on my religion and my church increased. The heavy hand of a faraway tyrant became more ever-present: on this New Year when my taxes went up, for the past couple weeks with all this asinine "discussion" concerning guns and gun control, the constant din of divisive and dangerous rhetoric from both sides of a dysfunctional government.

I honestly despaired that my writing had any effect whatsoever on the discussion, any purpose other than to occupy my time. I am a person who likes to see the results, and I was not seeing them. So I stopped.

And I realize that stopping was an enormous mistake on my part. For all honest dialogue, all honestly considered and honestly spoken thought, is worth hearing. Maybe I get things wrong, or nobody listens, or my words drown in the sea of other voices saying sort of the same thing as me. But it shouldn't matter. Because, as my wife so eloquently posted on the wall over my computer, "I am a writer, I will write." God gave me the gift of putting words together in a way that makes some amount of sense. You will be the judge of how much sense I make, I am sure. But I will be damned if I don't use that gift anyways, for my own benefit if not for yours too.

So my New Year's resolution, if I have one at all (I honestly hate New Year's resolutions) is to keep pouring out some part of my soul onto this corner of cyberspace and not worry so much about the concrete results it may or may not have. Because, if I speak truth, and I hope that I do more often than not, then it benefits somebody out there.

So as I like to say, Be Aware. And God bless. I promise to stick around. Will you?

It's Over, But Not Really

In chapter eight of the first book of Samuel, the people of Israel cry out to the prophet Samuel to appoint them a king to rule over them, instead of the direct rule of God through His prophet. In an odd twist, God does not refuse the request of the Israelites; rather, He has Samuel appoint Saul as the first king of Israel. Within three generations the kingship of Israel degenerates into a crushing burden on the backs of the Jews, an oppressive regime of over-taxation, corruption, and debauchery unwilling to answer to God's call for change. God had given the people what they wanted: the glamour and pomp of a secular king, the rule of a human being, a "messiah" of sorts to wave his hand and right the wrongs of the people. It did not take long for the humanity of Israel's kings to show its ugly side. In the act of giving the people what they desired, God let them unwittingly enact His own vengeance on them..

This scenario seems all too familiar.

In 2008, America craved a change in its leadership, in its policies, and in its general direction. John McCain, stodgy and inarticulate, was seen as merely the continuation of eight long years of George Bush's perceived presidential ineptitude. America fell hard for Barack Obama, a dynamic and inspiring figure whose freshness and youthful attitude led to McCain's obliteration at the polls. Democratic rule dominated Washington and the Republican party was left for dead. Things would get done, greedy people would be punished, jobs would be created, the environment would be saved from human ravages. It was a new golden age.

Close to four years passed. Obama's administration bypassed, ignored, or downright contradicted established American law on numerous occasions. Guns went to Mexican drug lords on Obama's watch. Diplomats and SEALS died while Washington watched from afar. The economy continued to sputter and struggle. Money applied to green energy companies disappeared in multiple bankruptcies. A corrupt attorney general chose to prosecute peaceful groups opposed to his agenda, whilst leaving other known criminals to live free. The list goes on and on.

And yet, at the end of the day as we all know by now, Barack Obama was not only reelected as president, he was reelected with a rock-solid margin of victory. Mitt Romney did not just lose, Obama won. Big. Again.

I was listening to the radio Tuesday night after the election results came in, and there was all manner of finger-pointing. Some blamed Obama's ground game being more formidable than originally thought, others blamed a Republican candidate who was not as articulate expressing conservative ideals as a Ronald Reagan might have been. And then the funniest and saddest (in my opinion) excuse for the loss came from a Republican operative who blamed everything on Senator wannabes Mourdock and Akin's abortion remarks. The GOP leadership almost immediately began calling for a toned down approach to abortion and social issues in their campaigns, essentially blaming their electoral hemorrhaging on a "misguided" attempt to hold the high moral ground.

Essentially that view is correct. But in expressing that view Republicans have made a diagnosis of themselves that even they do not understand. What the Republican Party does not seem to realize is that this election had little to do with a political process failure, a procedural issue that can be re-calibrated in the next election. They are correct in thinking that the abortion remarks brought down both Mourdock's and Akins' campaigns, and maybe Romney's by extension, but their solution to the problem is their own indictment. Barack Obama won a second term because the people are more willing to put their faith in a man than in a God. Obama won because too many of the people who stand for the sacredness of life, marriage, and sacrifice (the proper building blocks of a society) were not only silent but in many cases complicit. The people of God could easily pass for people of the world, and they voted en masse in the guise of the latter.

Catholics hold the most blame in this regard. A long-standing bulwark against the slaughter of innocent people, the leadership of the Catholic Church has grown soft and complacent. There is a good case to be made that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was in large part responsible for the passage of Obamacare, in their starry-eyed frame of mind after hearing the words "universal healthcare." Catholic priests have failed to adequately express from the pulpit the evil of abortion and its corrupting influence on society's moral structure. The number of Catholics using birth control is statistically indistinguishable from secular society's numbers, despite the fact that chemical and mechanical birth control is expressly forbidden by the Church. Divorce rates are similar. The media and entertainment industries continue to barrel headlong towards a fully homosexually integrated culture, with nary a peep from the same Catholic Church. Far from being the light of the world, let alone the light to the United States, Catholics have devolved into a socially embarrassing version of fundamentalist Christian.

So yes, the Republicans did lose the election in part because of some of their members' remarks about abortion, but not because opposing abortion is a bad platform. Rather, it is because the morals of the American people have evaporated to such a degree that abortion is now a politically losing issue. And to stand for something like the ending of abortion is a career-ending move, so Republicans naturally gravitate towards the mushy lukewarm middle. It is so much easier to compromise one's moral position than to possess a spine and lose.

Democrats in many ways now hold a distinct political advantage. Their party platform is now unambiguous in its support of absolute evils (abortion and the glorification of homosexuality) and people I think gravitate towards absolutes. Especially when those absolutes are as pleasure-seeking and selfish as those the Democrats espouse, and especially in the absence of a strong witness to the truth. Obama's ground game was not merely a GOTV (get out the vote) effort, it was a systematic attempt to create both material and moral dependency on his administration. If you don't believe me, take a look at the following video. This woman is bought and paid for.



The truth is that Obama is an elected official. We the people put him there, maybe not by directly voting for him but quite possibly by not evangelizing the person standing next to us in the grocery checkout line. Obama's corrupt views and morally oppressive policies are a reflection of our lives as citizens. Before we complain that he stands for a tyrannical top-down approach towards the citizens he is meant to govern, we need look no farther than ourselves for the blessing he got to proceed.

So I urge all those people who still refuse to participate in the group-think of secularism to consider two things: number one, realize that we do not have a political problem on our hands, so much as we have a serious moral and social corruption problem; and two, live your life according to the actual dictates of your faith in a visible manner. Especially after this election is no time to hide what we believe, but to make absolutely sure that the truth is on display for the next four years in a way that it hasn't been in this country for many years.

It is time to pick a side. Not a party, not a candidate, but a clearly delineated moral side based on absolute truths. Proclaiming the truth will not necessarily win elections in the short run, but it may win hearts. A democracy (or representative republic) is only as good as the people that constitute it, and when the people are corrupt their leaders will necessarily follow. However, the opposite is also true. When enough people come to realize the true scope and evil of abortion, they will demand its censure by law while simultaneously eliminating the demand for it. When enough people come to grips with the fact that homosexuality erodes the core of a healthy and growing society, then the "gay marriage" argument will cease to hold any political water. And so on...

None of these good things will exist, however, if the truth is not shouted from every rooftop regardless of who we think is listening. I think we failed this time around. Let's not fail again.



Photo by Roxanne Jo Mitchell, via Wikipedia.

History in the Making (Kinda...)

I love listening to the BBC, not least among the reasons being that the United States is not always at the top of their important news list. Lo and behold! There is actually other stuff going on out there. Who'd a thunk?

To expand that thought, though, I appreciate British journalism in all of its forms because it gives a refreshingly different take on notable happenings. And among their most intriguing and humorous insights is into their friends "across the pond," the Americans.

Here is a piece by a UK Telegraph blogger named Tim Stanley that had me chuckling. It is a humorous critique of the American media's obsession with making Obama into the most historic, heroic president in history. Quite worth the read.

Obama is "Sort of God," and Biden is His Prophet

Photo by David Shwen

Vice President Joe Biden has become a rather useful barometer for determining the political air pressure inside the Obama administration. When the pressure is up, something awkward is bound to emerge from the man's mouth and make headlines.

Beginning with a humorous incident  in January where the VP "prophesied" (by gaffe of course) the outcome of the Giant's game against the 49ers, Biden may rapidly be shaping up to be the administration's very own highly unwelcome prophet. (After all, prophets are said to be most unwelcome in their home towns.)

We could start with how Biden views his own accomplishments and position: in other words, as a joke. In Biden's own words: "I never had an interest in being a mayor ‘cause that’s a real job. You have to produce. That’s why I was able to be a senator for 36 years." Purportedly spoken in an attempt at humor, but it is revealing. The man does not know when to bite his tongue. So it became a source of major apparent embarassment in the past week and a half when Biden came out in full-throated support of gay marriage and forced Obama to say something on the issue definitively.

Did Obama evolve? I think possibly, but not the way he would claim. With the full-fledged push for gay rights by the Obama administration, including the mandate that Eric Holder disregard the Defense of Marriage Act (a federal law that Holder is bound constitutionally to uphold), it would seem unlikely that anything happened other than that Biden revealed Obama's hand before the president was ready. The evolution was complete a good while before Biden opened his mouth on the issue.

Every god needs his prophet, and Biden appears up for the task. In March, Biden claimed that the current GOP candidate pool could not beat Obama, but then proceeded to detail the factors that could very well sink Obama's chances in November. Then on "Meet the Press," Biden proceeded to call Mitt Romney 'President Romney' by accident. What is the VP trying to tell us here?

It may be that none of these gaffes come to fruition in the real world, but if they did Joe Biden could always come back to say "I told you so." For once I agree with radio host Rush Limbaugh, who said at this point it almost sounds like Biden is desperate to keep from being replaced as VP on the Democratic ticket. I would strongly urge Obama, the president who has been declared "sort of God," to keep his prophet around for another four years. Even if the gush of prophecy gaffes does not pan out, it will definitely be an amusing ride.

An Ode (of sorts) to History

Harlem Race Riot
- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

I have the privilege of being able to teach a 20th century history class on my spare days, an experience which has invariably taught me more about the 20th century than it has my students. I have heard that a person will always learn more about his subject matter by teaching it than he will ever learn by being taught about it.

During my last class we were learning about the 1960's and early 70's, and inevitably the issue of racial struggles came up in discussion. The race riots and discrimination of the 60's in America are not subjects to be taken lightly in any conversation about the 20th century. However, one of my students raised her hand and made a point which not only took me off guard, but resonated as true the more we discussed it.

To paraphrase, this particular 16-17-ish student made the point that her particular generation (from her own experiential point of vew as a teenager) is relatively immune to the racial issues of the 1960's. Not only has she never had a problem with mingling with black people, but none of her friends have either. There is no discrimination in the circles she moves in and never has been. Whatever racial discomfort there has been in her experience has come from her elders.

It was a powerful point that I had never considered from that particular angle. And I realized that the same is true with my peers as well (I am only about ten years my students' senior.) We simply don't really care about racial issues the way our parents and grandparents did. This may not be the experience of my generaation as a whole, but it is of all the people my own age that I have encountered. I am constantly witnessing seamless integration of blacks and whites where I live, kids hanging out, going to high school and college together. Color just doesn't seem so important to us.

I wish I could say the same of my parents' and grandparents' generations. I was fortunate to have loving and racially colorblind parents who taught me that what people say and do matters infinitely more than what they look like, but the same cannot be said of the generation from which they came. The baby boomers have much to answer for in this respect, as do their elders who were responsible for racial segregation in the South and general discrimination against blacks nationwide. But the real sin of that generation is not so much that they discriminated and shunned in the past. No, their real sin is that they desperately attempt to foist this stupidity on every fuure generation they can get their hands on.

Think about it for a second. What is the average age of those news anchors who irresponsibly take hold of any story with a possible racial angle and run with it? I cannot be absolutely sure, but my best guess is mid-to-late forties. The average age of those political and social commentators who are stuck on the idea of perpetual racial conflict is no different, maybe even higher, as is that of racially-driven politicians. Barack Obama, who will turn 51 years old this year, is just as much to blame, especially when his own Department of Justice refuses to prosecute blacks who attack whites as vigorously as whites who attack blacks. As much as I dislike talk show host Neal Boortz, his description of Rev. Jesse Jackson as a "race pimp" perfectly sums up my point here. These commentators, politicians, and anchors all have one thing in common: a racial agenda that became old fashioned years ago but that they cannot seem to let die.

Perhaps the passage of time is a mercy here. It may sound harsh to phrase it this way, but it is true nonetheless: racism will only die when its perpetrators and hangers-on pass away. It does a tremendous disservice to the youth of America when one or another class or race is constantly portrayed by the 'older and wiser' as the victim group. People with a victim complex make poor citizens and even poorer human beings, and the ones responsible for perpetrating this idea must carry a good portion of the blame.

So, the next time you hear someone proclaim that we live in a 'post-racial' society as evidenced by the election of our first black president, it would be good to remind them that the same Obama who was elected because of unity of race should stop trying to divide them again. It would be well for all of Obama's generation to remember that as well, but for the moment it would seem that old dogs cannot be taught new tricks.

Channeling Kennedy

I never thought I would actually hear Peggy Noonan praise John F. Kennedy, but she has an intriguing insight into his presidential approach, in contrast to President Obama's approach of divisive verbal bludgeoning.

Aluminum Foil Hats Off Now!

There is a wonderful book written by the great G. K. Chesterton, called The Ball and the Cross, which I read for the first time at college and couldn't put down until I was finished. It is the story of a hard-core atheist who is completely convinced of the truth of his atheism, and has a shop set up with inflammatory anti-Catholic posters in the windows in order to attract somebody of a religious persuasion to debate. The world passes him by for a good portion of his life, being too self-involved in its own ennui to give a care, until one day a Catholic man sees the shop and in a fit of righteous rage smashes the window, challenging the atheist to a duel in defense of the honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The atheist is so happy to finally meet someone who will take him up on his challenge that he drops everything and the two try to find a nice quiet spot to duel with swords.

Only they never actually do much fighting at all, because they are constantly being interrupted by busybodies and the authorities. But the various people they encounter only fuel their passion to cross verbal and literal swords in a spiritual duel.

If you think I relate this story in order to defend or tear down one side or the other, then you would be mistaken, this time anyways. I do in fact believe one of these men's positions to be true and disbelieve the other, but at the moment that is unimportant. The point is that each man believed in his own position so thoroughly that they were willing to do what was necessary to defend it and propagate it, and that is what got them both in trouble with the rest of the world. They unfolded their philosophies to the bitter end and only one position withstood the test of truth. I will not tell you which, you have to read the book and find out for yourself.

Let us all take off our political, ideological, social, and religious aluminum foil hats for the moment and set them aside. The world has need of opinions and positions and views well enough, but it needs something else first, something that has been most desperately lacking in the modern world. Brutal, unforgiving honesty.

The Catholics of the United States received a shock of brutal, unforgiving honesty just a couple of months ago, when the Department of Health and Human Services declared that religious institutions were required to purchase services that they were morally opposed to. It was a backhanded slap in the face for anyone in this country who gives a damn about conscientious objection. But it was straightforward and out in the open, not underhanded and guarded. The president and his HHS secretary threw down the proverbial gauntlet and demanded that the Catholic Church comply. I can only imagine that this demand arises purely from the president's own ideology concerning what rights he thinks women have and how they are allowed to exercise said rights.

In a weird way it is a breath of fresh air. Now the spiritual fistfight can occur out in the open for everyone to see. Finally our ennui has been broken by a good old fashioned brawl. In the same spirit as the president, the Catholic Church and many other religious leaders have accepted the challenge with fighting words. Chesterton's passionate Catholic man in the book is against everything the atheist believes, and yet still calls the atheist a real man for being willing to do battle over those beliefs. We should respect our enemy in the same way.

In a similar way, a reputable medical journal has just published a piece putting forward a justification for the killing of children outside the womb, as opposed to simply in the womb like with an abortion. They use the rationale that we kill a child inside the womb, so what makes being outside the womb any more special? All one needs is a weak economic or psychological reason and voila! killing may commence. I actually applaud this piece of journalism, not for the good or evil of its content, but that the people who want to justify killing children have finally taken the intellectually honest step of justifying the killing of children at any stage, not just in the womb. If life has no sacred quality to it, who gives a damn where the killing happens, to whom it happens, and for what reason. Now these same people just need to go the next logical step and justify removing murder from the books as a crime, since every murder has an understandable reason and the life being taken is not sacred. Right? That would be the endgame of their line of thinking.

Can I be any more clear? If you are going to be one thing or the other, believe one thing or the other, then go the whole way with it and don't hold anything back. Don't be a half-hearted murder justifier, proclaim it from the rooftops! What's stopping you? If you are going to defend life at all stages, then make sure everyone knows it, whether you be labeled saint or lunatic. If you believe the rights of conscience should be trampled willy-nilly, then be as willy-nilly as you possibly can. If you believe in justice and the punishing of real evil, then pursue it with all your might. Whether your position unravels in the end is dependent on how much of the truth it contains, but intellectual brawling tends to squeeze out the truth.

If you are going to pick a position, then make it count and make it real. The president has done it, in many ways even as a hindrance to his reelection campaign, but he has done it. We may despise him or love him for it, but at least he is finally being honest about his disregard and there is no mistaking it. He is merely playing out his philosophy to its bitterly logical end. We should deign to answer that sort of honesty with our own.

Nobody should be afraid to do battle for what they believe. The catch is that we must know where that belief will take us and go the distance to make sure we follow through. Every argument has an end, let's be gutsy enough to battle to that point. We will all be better off if we do.

(I am saving my comments against the infanticide justification for a later date. It is a morally abhorrent case that needs answering; I simply wished to use it as an example of following one's own argument to its logical conclusion.)

The Politics of Non-Accountability

An interesting take on the issue of torture from Andrew Cohen in this article here from The Atlantic. His immediate jump to blaming Obama for the problem may be a stretch and a half, but the rest of the argument makes a whole lot of sense. The main issue anyways is accountability, of which there is way too little of these days in the likes of Washington D.C.

Sometimes It Just Happens

The title pretty much says it all. My favorite is Bill Clinton alternating between falling asleep and nodding intelligently. The guy who put this together really should tack Rick Perry's "oops" moment on the end. Enjoy!

War and (No) Peace

Protest against Qaddafi -Photo by William Murphy
License Info here.

On October 20th 2011, the hunt for one of the world's more brutal and stubborn dictators came to an abrupt end when U.S. and French airpower stopped Moammar Qaddafi's convoy, allowing Libyan rebels to capture and kill their former ruler. Qaddafi was brutally beaten and manhandled, and finally shot numerous times before he died, defiant to the end. On the same day, President Barack Obama delivered a speech to the American people, beginning by extolling the new opportunity in Libya for free and democratic self-determination and ending by invoking the memory of Americans lost to the Qaddafi regime and the hope of a bright future for the Libyan nation.

I can't help feeling oddly left out by all sides. I consider myself obliged to ask what should be the glaringly obvious question: why were we ever involved in the Libyan civil war in the first place?

We have been currently fighting in Iraq for eight years now. The war in Afghanistan is two years older than that. We have spent billions of dollars on both wars in fighting, training, equipping, and rebuilding. Our losses total over four thousand, and that's not counting the physical and mental damage of the wounded. As if that wasn't enough, as a nation we are deeply in debt to just about everyone with no end to the printing of money in sight. We have no money to spend on extra things. Our political and social problems at home also remain unresolved, with youth taking to the streets in cities across the nation, a divided congress that has not passed a real budget in a frighteningly long time, and a jobs crisis that simply refuses to disappear.