American politics – Page 2

Crying Wolf at the SPLC

I categorically condemn the Alt-Right, white supremacy, racism, Nazism and all violent totalitarian political movements. But I am a bit confused. I thought I was supposed to be a member of the Alt-Right, or a racist, or a Nazi, since I voted for Donald Trump. I guess I am even supposed to be in sympathy with the Alt-Right marchers in Charlottesville.

Dealing With the “Hate” Label

People like me who have had the “hate” label pinned on them face a dilemma: we can defend ourselves and say, “I don’t hate anyone. I just don’t agree with you.” In my experience, this strategy goes nowhere. The more we attempt to defend ourselves, the more we appear, well, defensive. Hence, not believable.

Our other choice is to say, “The heck with it. I know I’m not a hater, bigot or racist. I officially no longer care what anyone thinks of me.” This second course has a certain nobility to it. But it presents dangers of its own. People can easily become jaded and cynical about the whole concept of “hate” and “bigotry.”

In the interests of full disclosure, I should reveal that this has been my preferred strategy. You see, the organization I lead, the Ruth Institute, is listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map.” I don’t know how one gets on the SPLC’s “Hate Map.” And I certainly do not know how one gets off it.

Is It “Anti-LGBT” to Say Children Need Their Own Parents?

I suppose I am an “anti-LGBT” hater, because I believe children need their own parents. So here is my question: If believing children need their own parents lands the Ruth Institute a spot on the “hate map,” what words adequately describe white supremacists or neo-Nazis?

I am clear on one point: Sexual revolutionaries gain a strategic advantage by labeling people like me. Guilt by association is irrational, but powerful. The fear of being labeled a racist provides a potent disincentive for people to voice the view that children need their own parents. Silencing people relieves the Identity Politicians and Sexual Revolutionaries from the effort of having to defend their ideas.

This is convenient for said Identity Politicians and Sexual Revolutionaries, because their ideas are indefensible. Children actually do need their own parents. Sexual orientation is not the equivalent of race. Two mothers do not equal two fathers do not equal a mother and a father, and certainly not one’s own mother and father.

One typical Revolutionary response at this point is, “Why are you singling out gay people? What about divorce?” Please be aware that the Ruth Institute spends a LOTof time talking about divorce and other forms of family breakdown. Don’t change the subject. Society’s injustice to children through divorce is proof-positive that depriving children of a parent through genderless marriage will also be unjust.

This “Hate” Labelling is a Dangerous Game

But what does any of this have to do with being a Nazi? Or a racist? Or advocating violence? Nothing.

and Same Sex Parenting. Kids need their own parents!

Our “opinion-makers” in the media, academia and assorted left-wing think tanks are playing a dangerous game. They have told us that the views of many ordinary decent Americans are the equivalent of racism. Some of those same ordinary decent Americans are fed up. They know they are not racists, haters or bigots. But we no longer have an adequate public vocabulary to describe actual haters, bigots and racists.

As I said, I categorically condemn the Alt-Right, white supremacy, racism, Nazism and all violent totalitarian political movements. You may search the Ruth Institute’s website all day long, and never find a racist word. Instead, what you will find are reasons and evidence to support sentiments that align with the vast majority of Americans, black and white, male and female. Children need their own parents. Men and women are different. Sex makes babies and therefore society has every right to expect people to control their sexual impulses.

The advocates of the Sexual Revolution cannot defend their ideas. That is why people with my views end up on their “Hate Map.”

On Wednesday, August 23, the Ruth Institute released a statement being included on SPLC’s “Hate Map.” You can read that statement here. The Ruth Institute has also created a special page called “Where’s the Hate?” which lists items that some have deemed “hateful.” They invite the public to review these items and determine for themselves who is actually “hateful.”

Originally published at The Stream, August 23, 2017.

Mooch

I do not have the bandwidth to have an opinion on everything that comes out of the Trump Administration. I will say this: in the unlikely event that Anthony Scaramucci were ever a Facebook friend of mine, his foul mouthed rant to the New Yorker reporter would have gotten him unfriended in a hurry. That type of language is a sign of either a) an underdeveloped vocabulary or b) an undisciplined mind and mouth. Don’t need a guy like that for a friend. Wonder if he will serve the President and our country well…

Dr J on “The Benedict Option”

I just finished reading the Benedict Option by Rod Dreher. I also recently read and reviewed Tony Esolen’s new book, Out of the Ashes, which is in my opinion, the better book of this genre. Dreher’s book has generated an enormous amount of attention. But if you only have time to read one book, read Esolen’s book.

I am not clear on whether the Benedict Option is:

a quietistic retreat from politics, or
a strategic retreat to live to fight another day, or
a joyful embrace of the full Christian life because it is the life most worth living, no matter what may be going on in the World.

I’m not sure whether Dreher himself is clear. Option #3 was certainly the motivation of the original St. Benedict, and his many sons and daughters down to this day. And, Tony Esolen is definitely an option #3 guy.

What makes The Benedict Option worth reading:

Its argument is explicitly Christian. No more making arguments that are accessible only to “public reasons.”
Dreher argues that Christianity is good, and deserves to survive. In fact, the World needs for faithful Christians to keep the Christian message alive, because the World is not doing well without it.
Dreher has many practical suggestions for maintaining and building a Christian identity, in the face of an increasingly hostile World.

Having said all that, I do have a couple of problems with this book, and with Dreher’s writing in general.

First, he sometimes acts as if he is the only guy who has ever thought of these things. This is an annoyance, but not a super-serious problem. He says: “One reason the contemporary church is in so much trouble is that religious conservatives of the last generation mistakenly believed they could focus on politics and the culture would take care of itself.” (pg 81) Who ever thought that?

West Coast Walk for Life or One Walk LA 2016 (That looks like a red Stanford jacket in the foreground. I happen to know there are active Students for Life groups at both Berkeley and Stanford!)

Further on, he makes this remarkable claim (without a footnote, mind you): “Fundamental abortion rights remain solidly in place, and Gallup numbers from the Roe v Wade era until today have not meaningfully changed.” (pg 82).

That’s odd. The millenial generation opposes abortion and favors its restriction more than older generations, even if Millenials do not self-identify as “pro-life.” The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute breathlessly reports that states have enacted over 1,000 abortion restrictions in the past 5 years. This doesn’t sound like complete political failure to me. Nor does it sound like a complete failure of cultural engagement. On the contrary, it sounds like successful involvement in both arenas.

“Fundamental abortion rights remain solidly in place” because the Supreme Court has repeatedly circled the wagons around said “rights.”

I know very well the frustration of having Courts overturn social conservative measures that were duly enacted by voters. I was a spokeswoman for Proposition 8. I lived through that whole drama, of winning the election (quite decisively, thank you very much) and then watching courts overturn it on one flimsy pretext after another.

I sympathize with Dreher’s frustration. But enacting measures and then having the courts repeatedly overturn them is not an argument against politics per se. Nor is it an argument that we have done politics badly.

It may mean we need a new strategy. But I do think we owe it to the people who have knocked themselves out in the public square to acknowledge their efforts. We should not dismiss them so casually as Dreher appears to do in the passage I quoted and in other places.

The evacuation at Dunkirk, June 1940. The Allies came back 4 years later on D-Day to defeat the Nazis.

This brings me to my biggest complaint about The Benedict Option. He keeps saying: “We lost.” This bugs me. A lot. For several reasons.

It is one thing to say that a particular political effort failed. It is another to say “we lost,” as if there is no longer anything left to do but hunker down and accept permanent dhimmitude.
It is one thing to say that our strategies are not working, and that we need to try something else. I get that. In fact, I have myself advocated strategic retreat for the purpose of regrouping. But that is not the same thing as saying, “we lost,” as if the battle is over.
Finally,and most importantly, the cause of Truth is never decisively lost. It cannot be. We have a responsibility to continue to speak the Truth, love the Truth and live the Truth, no matter what the outcome may be. I would call this the Solzhenitsyn Option, or the Václav Havel Option.

We Christians cannot continue doing our ordinary occupations in our accustomed manner. What will come after the Modern World shakes itself apart? And what will Christians contribute? Dreher has done a great service in inducing so many people to be part of this all-important discussion.

“The Upper Class is Communist”

“By any Marxian pattern of how classes behave, the upper class should be for you and the lower classes should be against you. But it is the upper class that is most violent against you. How do you explain that?”

Henry Luce, the founding publisher of Time magazine, asked this question of Whittaker Chambers at a private dinner. This was during the period when Chambers was testifying that Alger Hiss was part of an extensive network of Soviet spies inside the US government in the 1940’s. “All the best people,” inside and outside of the government, supported Alger Hiss. Meanwhile, Whittaker Chambers received cards and letters of support from ordinary people of modest means from across the country.

Chambers reports that a “witty European whom I shall call Smetena” replied to Luce’s question:

“You don’t understand the class structure of American society or you would not ask such a question. In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are communists.” *

Today, we could modify this statement slightly and say: “The poor are Democrats. The working class are Republicans. The Elites are advocates of Moral Relativism. ” Or “The Elites are advocates of Multi-culturalism.” Or “The Elites are advocates of “the Sexual Revolution.”

What do all these ideologies have in common? They are all totalitarian ideologies.

Communism is a fantasy ideology that says that we can have prosperity and justice without private property and with government control of the entire economy. It cannot be done. But “All the Best People” were absolutely convinced that attempting it was a moral duty. The attempt to do the impossible empowered the State to an unimaginable degree.

Billionaire investor George Soros: financier of Totalitarian Fantasy Ideologies around the world.

Moral Relativism is a fantasy ideology that makes the truth-claim that there is no such thing as truth: there is only “truth” which is socially constructed. This belief system leads directly to the Law of the Strongest, since it short-circuits any appeal to truth, reason or evidence. This allows the People in Power to label anyone they dislike, or anyone who hinders their agenda du jour as bigots.

Multi-culturalism is a subset of Moral Relativism. It is a fantasy ideology that claims to be unable to detect any differences among cultures. Ditto for empowering those who already have power.

The Sexual Revolution is a fantasy ideology that says that a good and decent society should separate sex from babies and both from marriage and that all differences between men and women are socially constructed. Ditto that this ideology is impossible to implement. But, this belief system leads to the destruction of the most basic human bonds. This destruction allows Elites to move into the legitimate sphere of the family, take it over and refashion it at will.

The motto of the Davos power elites of the world.

In short, Elites like these ideologies because they empower those who already have power: economic, political or cultural power. By contrast, the institutions of self-government allow people with minimal power to nonetheless rule their own lives. This is why the Elites prefer court rulings to elections, mass society to localized society, mass media to personal participation and a highly regulated global economy to small scale enterpreneurs.

*(Quotation from Witness by Whittaker Chambers, pp. 539-540.)

Why I’m not worried about Gorsuch.

I know some of my friends are concerned about Gorsuch describing Obergefell as “absolutely settled law.” I would be more worried except for one thing. As far as I know, no one has a credible case for overturning Obergefell.

The conservative Christian legal community does not have a litigation strategy for overturning Obergefell, to the best of my knowledge. True, I don’t know everyone in that community. But I know quite a few folks. I do not know anyone who is even working on finding the plaintiffs and constructing the arguments for such a case. We cannot blame Trump for that.

And no, religious liberty cases do not cut the mustard. We need arguments that defend marriage, on its own terms. Marriage is good for society. Marriage provides justice and equality for children. Removing the gender requirement from marriage undermines its ability to provide justice and equality for children.

So, it is cheap for people to say anything they want, one way or the other. True, I would have liked it better if Gorsuch had said, “If a case challenging Obergefell were to come before me (wink,wink, knowing this is exceedingly unlikely) I would give it all due consideration and would tend toward overturning it.” But calling it “settled law” when there is “absolutely” no credible case on the horizon, does not disturb me all that much. His opinion on prospective pro-life cases is more significant b/c there may actually be some credible cases in the foreseeable future.

Would all these kids be marching in the snow for separation of powers and federalism? I doubt it.

Speaking of the pro-life movement, consider this. What would public opinion around the life issues be today, if the pro-life movement had confined itself to religious liberty and separation of powers and federalism?

“Roe v Wade interferes with the rights of Catholic doctors to practice medicine as they see fit.”
“Roe v Wade is judicial overreach.”
“Roe v Wade interferes with the states’ rights to set their own policies.”

All true statements, to be sure. But all utterly irrelevant to shifting public opinion in a pro-life direction. The pro-life movement gave a full-throated defense of the humanity of the child in the womb, the value of pre-natal life, the harms of abortion to women, and how abortion does not solve the problems it claims to solve. These are much more human, much more compelling points, with vivid imagery that stirs the heart. The other arguments are bloodless and sterile by comparison.

We need a pro-marriage movement that stops talking about religious liberty and starts talking about marriage. And I’m afraid I know why so few people are willing to talk about the rights of children to their parents. Once we say that, the next question will naturally be: “what about divorce? More children lose their parents to divorce than will ever lose them to gay parenting. Are you going to outlaw divorce?”

Trust me, that was and still is the argument. I was in the 9th Circuit courtroom during the Prop 8 case, when Judge Stephen Reinhardt asked Prop 8 defense counsel Charles Cooper that question. The courtroom burst into laughter. They treated the rights of children as a joke. Cooper stood there silent.

I was practically jumping out of my seat. “Answer him! Answer him! Say ‘You are correct. We do want to reform divorce, because current divorce law is unjust.'”

Divorce ripples through the generations.

American society, including the conservative and pro-marriage movements, do not want to talk about divorce. Too many people have participated in divorce, and do not wish to stir up guilty consciences. Currently, most of those people are either against the concept of children having rights to their parents, or they are simply silent.

But I think this is also an opportunity. Many people have been unwilling participants in divorce: children, abandoned spouses, grandparents who lose touch with their grandchildren, and many others. Enlist all of those people. Now, you’re talking about a real movement.

If children do not have a right to their own parents, no one has a right to anything.

The Alinsky-ite Attack on Cardinal Burke

The Anti-Catholic Media have decided to go after Cardinal Burke, a wise and gentle man, greatly beloved by Catholics around the world. cardinal-burke The New York Times on February 7 and the Washington Post on February 9 published hit pieces on the Cardinal. Sandwiched in between was a Feb 8 Washington Post hit piece on Steve Bannon, that took an incidental swipe at Cardinal Burke.

I will not dissect these ghastly articles. Others have already done so. See Fr. Z. Carl Olson. Phil Lawler. Robert Moynihan. I will add two points.

Saul Alinsky in his (in)famous “Rules for Radicals,” (you know, the book dedicated to Lucifer. Go “look inside” at Amazon and you’ll see it.) gives rule # 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.” Evidently, Cardinal Burke is the current target.
Look at the comments to the Feb 9 WaPo hit piece. For the first 24 hours, the comments are all hostile to Cardinal Burke. After that, his supporters ride in to the rescue. Out of over 100 comments since Feb 10, I counted perhaps 5 that were hostile to him. (Fr Z’s readers, perhaps?)

My point is this: we need to go to these sites and stick up for Cardinal Burke. The attackers will not let up. Therefore, we must not let up either.

“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” And other naive questions about the “Women’s March”

women-protest-more-vaginas — Amateur Pix from the “Women’s March.” h/t Church Militant readers

One of my Facebook friends begins a post this way:

“Other than abortion, which would be contentious under any Republican president, which women’s rights are threatened by Trump?”

I was not surprised that the ensuing discussion produced more heat thanlight. For there is simply no way one can say, “other than abortion” in today’s political moment.

Abortion is the driving political reality of our time. It is the 21st century equivalent of slavery in the 19th century, the Holocaust in the early 20th century and the Gulag in the late 20th century. You either side with the weak against the strong, or with the strong against the weak. Those who pretend there is a middle ground are, quite simply, deceiving themselves.

“Other than abortion?” There is no “other than abortion.”

The women who march for abortion believe they are marching for their “rights.” If a child does not have a right to be born, no one has a right to anything. “But we need abortion in order to have access to jobs and equality and dignity.” The truth is that we can build a society that gives people jobs and equality and dignity without anyone ever killing an innocent person. It can be done. We could do it, if we had the will to do so.

As for abortion being a “women’s issue,” don’t make me laugh. How many predatory men are relieved that they can pressure their victims into having abortions so they can be excused from paying any consequences for their actions? Abortion clinics have a sordid record of not inquiring too closely into these kinds of situations. Crisis pregnancy counselors regularly hear these stories and try to help the women.

Does Planned Parenthood do as much? Just asking….

Mr. President, you shouldn’t have included the green card holders.

Mr. President. trump-thumbs-up

I voted for you. I like you. I support most of what you have done in your first days in office.

But you should not have included the green card holders in the immigration Executive Order. It looks too much like a broken promise. That’s not your style, sir. It is not America’s style. I urge you to reconsider.

Your friend, (really)

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

Mr. President, I like you, but no torture, please

Mr. President. trump-thumbs-up

I voted for you. I like you. I support most of what you have done in your first days in office. Thank you for supporting the rights of the unborn, the least and most vulnerable among us. The taking of innocent life must be off-limits. Whatever good people think they are accomplishing by abortion, they could accomplish some other way.

So please, Mr. President, no torture. You have surrounded yourself with good and capable people. I am confident that with their help, you can find other ways to accomplish the good you think you will accomplish with the use of torture.

Your friend, (really)

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse