Everyone Loses When Our King Reigneth Not Over Men and Their Nations, part three

The debacle over the American Health Care Act (RyanCare) was completely predictable, which is why I republished Here To Stay late Saturday evening, March 25, 2017. This commentary is designed to summarize a few salient points while demonstrating yet again that everyone loses when Our King, Christ the King, reigneth not over men and their nations. There can never be any kind of amelioration of social problems, each of which is the result of Original and Actual Sin, by means that are merely natural. Anyone who thinks otherwise will continue to be deceived by the secular “saviors” of the false opposites of the naturalist “left” or “right.”

Catholicism is the only foundation of social order.

Period.

Unprepared to Govern

Neither the ever hapless, spineless Republican leaders of either house of the Congress of the United States of America nor President Donald John Trump were prepared to govern effectively even on the level of pure naturalism.

First, it must be remembered that Trump did not think that he was going to win the election last year. Let me refresh your memories on this score:

Donald Trump was just as surprised as the rest of the country.

The president elect said publicly on Tuesday that he expected to lose the election to Democrat Hillary Clinton, based on polls showing him behind in several critical states.

"I went to see my wife. I say, 'Baby, I tell you what. We're not going to win tonight,'" Trump said in West Allis, Wisconsin. "The polls are coming out — I always used to believe in those things. I don't believe them anymore."

Trump made the comments during a victory rally at the Wisconsin State Fair Exposition Center, where he appeared in public with House Speaker Paul Ryan for only the second time this year. Since Thanksgiving, Trump has visited several states that were key to his victory, calling it a "thank you tour" to his supporters. He abandoned much of his prepared remarks on Tuesday to recount his election-night tale.

He said that he had intentionally rented a smaller hotel ballroom, expecting to make a brief concession speech after losing to Clinton. Instead, the concession turned into a celebration, and Trump delivered a speech in which he was unusually gracious to his opponent and promised to unite a divided nation.

"I said if we're going to lose I don't want a big ballroom," he said. He said he figured he'd thank the guests and then "I'm out of there, right?"

But as the night progressed, TV stations kept announcing Trump had won another state.

"The map — bing bing bing, you know — that map was getting red as hell. That map was bleeding red," Trump said.

He still thought he might lose when reports initially indicated Texas, a state that even "lousy" Republican candidates win, he said, might be in play, and that Clinton might win the traditionally red state of Georgia, too.

He said he told his wife: "This is going to be a disaster.” (Honey, this is going to be a disaster".)

Trump had given no thought whatsoever to how he would staff his administration. Although it is true that many political positions (that is, positions that are within the discretion of a president to fill with his appointees, who then serve as his pleasure) in the Federal government of the United States of America are best left unfilled, it is nevertheless useful to know something about the complexities of the Federal bureaucracy that is, at least nominally, answerable to the incumbent president.

Trump’s ignorance of the details of the basic administrative structure of the Federal government stands in stark contrast to the preparation of Ronald Wilson Reagan’s campaign team, which began in January of 1979 to compile a thick dossier that contained the names of thousands of candidates for the approximately three to five thousand political positions that Reagan, if elected, would have to fill. As the saying goes, the Reagan team hit the ground running. This is not to assert that everything Reagan administration did was good. Of course not. It is only to state that the Reagan team was prepared. No matter the fact that Reagan himself did not like the details of governance, he did, however, know how the Federal government works, which is why he chose a team to coordinate staffing twenty months in advance of the election on Tuesday, November 4, 1980. (Please see Appendix A below for a reprise of information that I have provided in the past concerning the staffing of the Federal government. (The thoroughness of the Reagan effort was detailed by his director of the Office of Presidential Personnel at a Center for the Study of Presidency seminar on Friday evening, March 28, 1981, in Washington, District of Columbia, just three days before John Hinckley, Jr., shot and seriously wounded President Reagan. I was there with two of my students from Nassau Community College.) Nothing that is planned for the streamlining of the Federal bureaucracy by presidential counselor Jared Kushner, the Kabbalist who is married to Ivanka Trump, who is also ensconced in a White House office, excuses the president’s lack of readiness to govern and to recognize that Federal bureaucracies are behemoths staffed by career civil servants, many of whom serve their own self-interests and those of those individuals and groups who receive goodies from their agencies and departments. (See Jared Kushne to lead White House Office of American Innovation for a news story about the proposed streamlining that will be planned on business model that will be very difficult to make effective given what some have called the “iron triangle” relationship that exists among members of Congress, bureaucrats and interest groups whose members get the goodies.)

Trump gave no thought about this in the slightest. He is not a man given to study, no less to consider that he does not know, if anything, about the Constitution of the United States of America or how the Federal government actually works. The first two months of his administration have proven how completely unprepared he was to govern, which involves more than sending out “tweets” and holding political-style rallies.

Second, also ill-prepared to govern as the party-in-power were the likes of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Paul Davis Ryan (R-Wisconsin), a conciliar Catholic who listens to “heavy metal,” something that has, no doubt, affected his rational thought processes (as has conciliarism, obviously), and his handpicked leadership team, including various committee chairmen, with whom he plotted behind closed doors—and without any input from other members of the House Republican Caucus—to craft a “health care” bill that was kept the basic structure of ObamaCare in place. So much for seven years of rhetoric about repealing ObamaCare, which I, for one, never took seriously. Not once. These careerists are predictable, and it just amazes me that so many people, including Catholics, fall for these empty promises time and time again.

The hapless, spineless creatures of tort lawyers and lobbyists for insurance companies had seven years to plan what would happen once the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was repealed. Seven years. Not once did any of these “conservative” statists ever state that there was no constitutional justification for Obama/Care.

Rather, the clowns in the Republican clown car have decided that, yes, indeed, Obama/Care is here to stay in some form or another, but their effort to convince members of the House Freedom Caucus that ObamaCare Lite was not still Obama/Care by another name, which it was, was entirely transparent.

Third, President Trump, who has no governing philosophy or ideology even on the level of pure naturalism and who is, of course, entirely bereft of any thought given to First and Last Things, wanted a “deal” for the sake of getting “something” passed by Congress so that he would be weakened politically. This is not what one might call a good way to govern.

Indeed, Steven Bannon, who is one of the president’s chief advisers, almost demanded that the members of the House Freedom Caucus vote for American Health Care Act, telling that they had no choice but to do so:

Everyone on Donald Trump’s team was called in to whip up the votes for the American Health Care Act, which was ultimately pulled from the floor. This includes Steve Bannon, who dealt with the members of the reluctant Freedom Caucus with all the finesse and tact you’d expect.

According to Axios, he walked into the room and said, “Guys, look. This is not a discussion. This is not a debate. You have no choice but to vote for this bill.”

This type of discussion opener went over as well as you might imagine. One unnamed member of the Freedom Caucus replied with a statement so amazing that I am genuinely shocked this much honesty and frankness still exists in the otherwise largely showy and fake Washington D.C. (Bannon Attempted to Bully the Freedom Caucus.)

This is no way to run a railroad, shall we say.

Fourth, it appears that the president, who was urged by Bannon to keep an “enemies list” of those who defied his ultimatum to pass the American Health Care or live with ObamaCare, is prepared to work with Democrats, including members of the Black Caucus, to get some of his own statist spending agenda passed through Congress. This is not what those who voted for him on Tuesday, November 8, 2017, desired. It should also be noted that many of those who voted for him did not expect him to send more American troops to shore up the corrupt Iraqi regime that has shrugged its collective shoulders as Chaldean Rite Catholic and Orthodox churches that date back to the Fourth and Fifth Centuries have been destroyed, forcing about seventy-five percent of Chaldean Rite Catholics into exile. The “global war on terror” continues, albeit under a different pretext. This is a farce, especially one when considers that  the indiscriminate bombing of Iraq and Syria by the United States is causing widespread panic as a record number of civilians are being killed. Gee, I thought Trump was opposed to the war mongering of the Bushes and Obama/Soetoro. (I am being facetious.)

The fact remains, though, that Trump, whose rule of life has always been an unconditional demand for loyalty, is more willing to work with Democrats than with members of the House Freedom Caucus (whose members, of course, do not believe that there can be a truly limited government only when the authority of Catholic Church is obeyed in all that pertains to the good of souls) who raised legitimate concerns about a bill that did nothing of what they had told their constituents that they were going to do (and about whose terms they were kept entirely in the dark).

Our loyalty must be to Christ the King and His true Church, not to the caesars of this passing world who believe that anyone who opposed their programs and policies in a principled manner are his “enemies” deserving of being “punished” for refusing to accept their supposed infallibility that no one has the right to question or disparage.

Fifth, as has been noted so many hundreds of times on this site, the careerist Republicans never intend to do anything other than getting elected and maintaining themselves in office thereafter. Everything they do is calculated and driven by polls and focus groups, which means that they never want to take away “goodies” once they have been instituted no matter how hard and long they may rhetorically huff and puff about rescinding them.

Just as surgical baby-killing and, more recently, “gay marriage,” was left to the Supreme Court of the United States to decide, the Republican Congressional leadership hoped that the high court would solve the ObamaCare problem for them by declaring the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to be unconstitutional. Thanks to Chief Justice John Glover Roberts, however, the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare on two different occasions, something that was noted in Sunday’s reposting of Here To Stay.

A commentator by the name of Philip Klein summarized the matter well a few days ago in the Washington Examiner:

Here's the bottom line: Republicans didn't want to repeal Obamacare that badly. Obamacare was a useful tool for them. For years, they could use it to score short-term messaging victories. People are steamed about high premiums? We'll message on that today. People are angry about losing insurance coverage? We'll put out a devastating YouTube video about that. Seniors are angry about the Medicare cuts? Let's tweet about it. High deductibles are unpopular? We'll issue an email fact sheet. Or maybe a gif. At no point were they willing to do the hard work of hashing out their intraparty policy differences and developing a coherent health agenda or of challenging the central liberal case for universal coverage. Sure, if the U.S. Supreme Court did the job for them, they were okay with Obamacare going away. But when push came to shove, they weren't willing to put in the elbow grease. (GOP Cave on ObamaCare Repeal is the Biggest Broken Promise in Political History.)

Almost everyone, whether of the false opposites of the “left” or the “right,” accepted the false premise that health care is legitimate function of the Federal government of the United States of America.

As I noted in , “health care” in the Western world involves expediting the deaths of the chronically or terminally ill and those who are suffering from some kind of traumatic injury. The large corporations that run hospitals are joined at the hip in limiting the proper care of sick human beings rather than seeking to provide them the care that they need to recover if it is within the Providence of God for them get better. Gone are the scores of consecrated religious sisters and good Catholic physicians who sought to treat patients properly, yes, even providing services for free to the indigent.

The medical industry is run today on a utilitarian cost-benefit basis that minimizes the value of innocent human life by reducing it to terms of cost “effectiveness” as judged in light of a patient’s economic circumstances, age and life-expectancy. Resources are thus “conserved” for those deemed “worthy” of them. This premise was accepted by ObamaCare and by RyanCare.

This is why the work of Dr. Paul Byrne is so very important, and it is why those who want transparency in pricing and are in need of surgery should consider places such as Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which is run by two Catholic anesthesiologists, are springing up throughout the country.

Always Taking Refuge Behind The Black Robe of Supreme Court Justices

The naturalists of the false opposite of the “right” have long taken refuge behind the black robed justices of the Supreme Court of the United States of America as the chemical and surgical execution of innocent preborn babies became what is considered to be “settled law” over the decades, and they were not in the slightest discomfited by the decision of the high Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, which is not considered to be “settled law.”

The naturalists of the organized crime family of the naturalist “right” surrender on key points of the moral law time and time again, which predisposes them to surrender on matters of constitutional principle such as the simple fact that there is no role for the Federal government of the United States of America in either health care or education. No, what matters to the craven careerists of the “right” after seven years of empty rhetoric and meaningless “show” votes to repeal ObamaCare when they knew that Obama/Soetoro would veto such efforts is offending or disrupting the least number of people. As noted earlier, goodies once granted become nearly impossible to take away:

Patrick Joseph Buchan made much the same point in a recent column:

Another truth was reconfirmed Friday. Once an entitlement program has been created with millions of beneficiaries, it becomes almost impossible to repeal. As Ronald Reagan said, "A government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth." (RyanCare Rout: Winning by Losing.)

Remember these words of Gilbert Keith Chesterton:

"The whole world is dividing itself into progressives and conservatives. The job of the progressives is to go on making mistakes. The job of the conservatives is to prevent those mistakes from being corrected."Gilbert Keith Chesterton, April 19, 1924

The "Left" Is More Committed to Evil Than the "Right" Is Committed to Any Semblance of Good

It is indeed ironic that Democrats are more committed to the promotion of statism and its attendant evils than the hapless Republicans are to any principles other than the retention of power. They compromise readily. The likes of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro and his fellow leftists rarely compromise. Such steadfastness is not be found on the “right.”

Barack Hussein Obama and Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi were absolutely committed to their pro-abortion, statist agenda in getting ObamaCare passe seven years ago. They believed that they were correct. They did not want to listen to the voice of the "people" any more than their false opposites in the other organized crime family of naturalism, the Republican Party, wanta to listen to the voice of "people" except when it is convenient for them to do so. It is, however, interesting to note that the naturalists of the "left" are usually, although not always, more committed to defying what is considered to be the will of the "people" than are the Republicans, who are desperate, at least in most cases, to appeal to "the people" are election time even though they may not have any well-defined programs other than being the handy instruments by which the "people" may enable their careers while registering a protest vote against a particular president's policies. In both cases, however, no one among these naturalists is listening the voice of God as He has may It abundantly clearly through His Catholic Church.

If people are willing to scratch below the surface and avoid superficial conclusions about events in a world that has been thrown upside down by the mutually reinforcing errors of Modernity and Modernism, they would find that the naturalists of the "left" have taken true concepts and inverted them for their own nefarious purposes.

That is, most of the naturalists of the "left" believe that their ideology must be accepted without question. Those who serve as administrators of universities and colleges or as judges or as legislators or as elected executives or political appointees (such as the approximately 3700 people who serve in a president's Cabinet or in the White House) or career bureaucrats (civil servants) believe that in their policies dogmatically. Most of these naturalists believe that "the government" is true secular "church," outside of which no one is free to govern his own life. They believe that those who dissent from their political dogmas are, in essence, "heretics," if you will, who must be burned at the stake, figuratively speaking. Most of these people believe that the citizens are indeed the "mere creatures of the state" who must obey them, who have been given the necessity tools to order social and economic life to achieve what they consider to be "justice."

Although it is considered incendiary to call such people Marxists, this is indeed what they all. They admire the likes of the late Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz in Communist Cuba and the late Hugo Chavez's authoritarian regime in Venezuela. Some of them were open admirers of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the El Salvadoran rebels during the 1980s. (The Sandinistas are, of course, back in power in Nicaragua, having won at polls on November 5, 2006,what they lost there on February 25, 1990, after ten and one-half years of brutal, murderous Communist rule in this central American country. Ah, yes, the voice of the "people." President Daniel Ortega, who ordered the slaughter of the Mesquite Indians in Nicaragua and who repressed political opposition from 1979 to 2000, was congratulated on his victory by two of his strongest supporters, James Earl Carter, Jr., who wept openly at Ortega's loss to Violetta Chamorro in 1990, and one Fidel Castro.)  Our "leftists" believe in all of the shibboleths of egalitarianism, except, of course, that they believe themselves to be more "equal" than anyone else, and feminism and environmentalism and evolutionism and redistributionism. They believe that they have the right to dictate to the citizens how much of their money they can keep, what they can do with it, what they should eat, at what temperatures they may heat or cool their houses. Some would like to control how much gasoline that the "people" could purchase in a given year money to "save" the environment.

Such people are not prone to compromise. They believe in their false dogmas with religious fervor. Some of them truly hate anyone who dares to disagree with them, whether that disagreement stem from an objective presentation of facts on the merely natural level attesting to their lies and misrepresentations or from those who user deeper, supernatural arguments to demonstrate that they, the leftists, are enemies of Christ the King and thus of all legitimate social order. The naturalists of the false opposite of the "left" will cling tenaciously, yes, even to the point of their political deaths, to whatever policy gains they have achieved by their fraudulent assertions and/or the use of raw political power. This is why the “left” accomplishes things when they hold power while the “right” always winds up making its peace with those accomplishments, such as they are, of course.

No Solution in Naturalism of Any Kind

Although President Donald John Trump is “moving on” to deal with tax cuts that he, now finding himself in a weakened position politically, may never obtain as he counts on the impending implosion of ObamaCare to force Congress to revisit an issue that can be dealt with by a simple repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the truth of the matter is that nations whose laws permit that which is repugnant to the peace and happiness of eternity will never be free of social troubles and upheavals.

Pope Leo XIII explained the logical consequences that must occur when the laws permit the license of opinion to spread every error imaginable:

So, too, the liberty of thinking, and of publishing, whatsoever each one likes, without any hindrance, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. But the character of goodness and truth cannot be changed at option. These remain ever one and the same, and are no less unchangeable than nature itself. If the mind assents to false opinions, and the will chooses and follows after what is wrong, neither can attain its native fullness, but both must fall from their native dignity into an abyss of corruption. Whatever, therefore, is opposed to virtue and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eye of man, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only passport to heaven, whither all are bound, and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds astray from truth and souls away from the practice of virtue. To exclude the Church, founded by God Himself, from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth, from domestic society is a grave and fatal error. A State from which religion is banished can never be well regulated; and already perhaps more than is desirable is known of the nature and tendency of the so-called civil philosophy of life and morals. The Church of Christ is the true and sole teacher of virtue and guardian of morals. She it is who preserves in their purity the principles from which duties flow, and, by setting forth most urgent reasons for virtuous life, bids us not only to turn away from wicked deeds, but even to curb all movements of the mind that are opposed to reason, even though they be not carried out in action. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)

It is a grave and fatal error to exclude Holy Mother Church from the business of life, from the making of laws, from the education of youth and from influencing the whole direction of domestic society. The Western world is on a death march from which, humanly speaking, there is no retreat. This is all a preparation for the coming of Antichrist to take control of a world that has been torn apart by the proliferation of sin and error by those who believe that men can make their lives better without Christ the King and His true Church.

Consider these words of Pope Pius XI in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers. Many are intent on exploiting their neighbors solely for the purpose of enjoying more fully and on a larger scale the goods of this world. But they err grievously who have turned to the acquisition of material and temporal possessions and are forgetful of eternal and spiritual things, to the possession of which Jesus, Our Redeemer, by means of the Church, His living interpreter, calls mankind.

22. It is in the very nature of material objects that an inordinate desire for them becomes the root of every evil, of every discord, and in particular, of a lowering of the moral sense. On the one hand, things which are naturally base and vile can never give rise to noble aspirations in the human heart which was created by and for God alone and is restless until it finds repose in Him. On the other hand, material goods (and in this they differ greatly from those of the spirit which the more of them we possess the more remain to be acquired) the more they are divided among men the less each one has and, by consequence, what one man has another cannot possibly possess unless it be forcibly taken away from the first. Such being the case, worldly possessions can never satisfy all in equal manner nor give rise to a spirit of universal contentment, but must become perforce a source of division among men and of vexation of spirit, as even the Wise Man Solomon experienced: "Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes i, 2, 14)

23. The same effects which result from these evils among individuals may likewise be expected among nations. "From whence are wars and contentions among you?" asks the Apostle St. James. "Are they not hence from your concupiscences, which war in your members?" (James iv, 1, 2)

24. The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

25. These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

26. Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

27. There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

28. These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruinIt was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

That last paragraph, number twenty-eight, says  it all. The gist of the two hundred thirty-seven articles linked at the top of this article can be summarized in the following words written by Pope Pius XI nearly eighty-eight years ago:

They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

As we know, Modernity itself is the problem. The world in which we live, born of the Protestant Revolution and the subsequent triumph of naturalism in all of its Judeo-Masonic guises, is collapsing  because of its refusal to acknowledge the Word Who was made Flesh in His Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immacualte Womb by the power of God the Holy Ghost and to submit in all that pertains to the good of souls to His true Church. It is really very simple to understand. Everyone loses when Christ the King reigneth not over men and their nations.

We must be champions of Christ the King and Our Lady, she who is our Immaculate Queen, champions of the Catholic Church in this time of apostasy and betrayal, champions of the truth that Catholicism is the and only foundation of personal and social order. Those who disagree do so at the peril to the nation they say they love but for which they have a false sense of nationalistic pride that impedes her conversion to the true Faith, which is what Our Lord Himself mandates for each nation on the face of this earth.

We must not be distracted by the side shows of naturalism or conciliarism. We must serve as champions of Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, especially by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, refusing to march along in the parade of the ignorant midget naturalists.

Remember, this is a time of profound chastisement.

As should be abundantly clear by now, the false opposites of the naturalist “right” are not going to restore even a rudimentary adherence to the rule of law under the terms of the Constitution of the United States of America, no less to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. And the putative “pope” in the Casa Santa Marta actually celebrates the rot of popular culture as he promotes a “theology of encounter” with his fellow minions of the devil, each of whom is beng used for  preparing the way for Antichrist and his final battle with Our King, Christ the King. 

We do not, however, despair.

We are Catholics.

We trust in the motherly care of Our Lady, Who promised us in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal, that her Fatima Message will triumph in the end, which is why we must truly persevere in our prayers for the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter so that he can fulfill Our Lady's own request, made to Sister Lucia dos Santos in 1925, for the collegial consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart.

Oh, is there someone out there who does not believe that we are suffering from the errors of Russia in this time of apostasy and betrayal, this time when the Throne of Saint Peter is in chains?

We just need to keep close to her, especially through her Most Holy Rosary as the consecrated slaves of her Divine Son through her own Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, as we seek to make reparation for our sins and those of the whole world.

Viva Cristo Rey!

Viva La Virgen de Guadalupe!

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us

 

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Appendix

On the Complexity of Sub-Cabinet Political Appointees

In 1937 the Brownlow Committee famously declared: “the President needs help.”

Although FDR’s Committee was referring to the need for White House staff, the President now has plenty of help throughout the executive branch. Since Roosevelt’s Presidency, the Executive Office of the President has gained about 2,000 people, and the number of political appointees has increased to more than 7,000. Setting aside White House staffers and about 3,000 part time Presidential appointments, each new President fills about 3,000 positions with his or her partisans.

To lead departments and agencies, contemporary Presidents make appointments to about 800 full time PAS positions, which require Senate confirmation (not including US attorneys, US marshals, or ambassadors, which are also PAS). In addition, each new administration can appoint partisans amounting to 10% of the Senior Executive Service (about 800 of 8,000). And about 1,400 political “Schedule C” appointees at lower levels are spread throughout the whole executive branch. These approximately 3000 political appointees have policy making or policy related duties for helping Presidents direct executive branch policies. (These numbers are approximate; for details, see Bradley Patterson, To Serve the President .)

The purposes of Presidential appointments in the executive branch are laudable. Presidents are democratically elected and expected to carry out their campaign promises by directing the executive branch. Thus leadership by presidential appointees in executive positions is necessary and legitimate. Presidential appointees assure responsiveness to Presidential policy priorities throughout the executive branch. In addition to democratic legitimacy, political appointees bring new energy and new ideas to the government from the private sector, universities, and state and local governments.

But there is also a downside to the system of political appointments: the recruitment task is daunting, the pace of appointments is glacially slow, layers of political appointees dilute presidential leadership, and careers of career executives are prematurely shut off.

The pressures on a newly elected President to make political appointments are significant. According to President Taft, “every time I make an appointment I create nine enemies and one ingrate.” Thousands of campaign workers want to follow the new president to Washington to work in government jobs. Members of Congress urge the president to appoint their favorite staffer or constituent to executive branch positions. Even friends and families of the president are special pleaders. President Carter complained in his memoir: “I would be inundated with recommendations from every conceivable source . . . even family and friends, would all rush forward with proposals and fight to the last minute for their candidates.” (Keeping Faith, p. 61) The thirst for government jobs results in a flood of applications; in 2008 and 2009, more than 300,000 applications flooded into the Obama personnel operation, most of them on line. Many job seekers were unqualified, but it takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff.

As a result of the increasing number of appointees and delays in the Senate, the pace of appointments has consistently slowed over the past half century.Whereas it took John Kennedy an average of 2.4 months to bring his appointee on board, it took George W. Bush an average of 8.7 months. No recent President has made more than 25 PAS executive appointments before the first of April. In his first 100 days in office President Obama had filled only 17% of his top PAS positions. After their first years in office, President Reagan had appointed 86% of the top appointees, but President Obama only 64%.

The volume of Presidential appointees, combined with the vacancies resulting from delays in appointments, lead to problems of Presidential control and management of the government. The average time in office of political appointees is 2.5 years, with 25% staying fewer than 18 months. Vacancies in the top level PAS positions create vacuums in leadership that cannot be easily filled by unappointed career executives, who rightly do not presume to undertake new policy directions or represent a new administration. Vacancies created by rapid turnover result in loss of momentum and the need to bring new appointees up to speed against steep learning curves. Increasing numbers of layers between the President and the operating levels of agencies dilute Presidential direction.

Perhaps more importantly, the large numbers of positions that are filled with political appointees result in lower levels of competence in the leadership of executive branch agencies. Finding competent appointees at the top levels of government is not difficult because of the prestige of the appointments. But several levels down the executive schedule, finding people in comparable levels of management and convincing them to leave their positions to move to Washington is more difficult. (Presidential Appointments and Managing the Executive.)