Conserving The Welfare State
by Thomas A. Droleskey
Watching "conservative" naturalists fight with their false opposites of the naturalist "left" over who is better able to "solve" the pressing financial problems facing the United States of America at this time is somewhat akin to watching "conservative" Catholics fight with "progressives" and/or "ultra-progressives" as to the meaning of the supposedly great governing principles of the "Second" Vatican Council and the decrees, statements, allocutions, dreams, prophesies and other random daily thoughts of the conciliar "pontiffs." Facts get distorted. Truth gets flushed down the Orwellian memory hole. A good "fight" is enjoyed by all. More tricks of the devil to distract us from recognizing the truth in the following quote from the late 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
Well, the same is true with American electoral politics. This is what I wrote over fifty-two months ago now when discussing the fisticuffs then taking place between United States Senator John Sidney McCain III (R-Arizona) and former Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Willard Mitt Romney duke it out for the Republican Party presidential nomination:
Arguing about whether United States Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) or former Commonwealth of Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is the more naturalistically "conservative" candidate is somewhat like arguing over whether like watching Raymond Arroyo of EWTN (Eternally Wishful Television Network) argue with Father Robert Fox over who is more devoted to Our Lady's Fatima Message, Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II or Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Absurdities are bound to result.
Thus it is that the ever hapless, mercurial, inarticulate thirty-third degree Mason named Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., has weighed in on the "conservative" credentials of his former colleague in the United States Senate, John McCain. The only reason that I am offering any commentary at all on this silly exercise is that Bob Dole, who was the leader of Republicans in the United States Senate for over eleven years, whose personal vanity (dyed hair at age eighty-four, a face-lift advertisements for a certain pharmaceutical product manufactured by the Pfizer company) is exceeded only by his absolute unwillingness to understand anything in light of First and Last Things.
As one who had to deal with the sorry record of then Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole when I was campaigning actively for the Republican presidential nomination candidacy of Patrick Joseph Buchanan in late-1995 and early-1996 (producing a pamphlet that was published by The Wanderer, "One Man's Assessment of the '96 Presidential Race" to accompany my talks), it gives me great pleasure to revisit the simple truth that the Lodge Brother Bob Dole is the last person in the world to be discussing who does or does not have a "consistent pro-life record," as Dole contended was in the case in a letter that he wrote recently to radio talk-show host and former prescription-pain-killer abuser Rush Limbaugh in order to defend the "conservative" credentials of Senator John McCain.
Mind you, I carry no brief for any of the naturalists running for the presidential nominations of the two major political parties in the United States of America, certainly least of all for the Mormon flip-flopper and opportunist named Mitt Romney. As I have noted in any number of commentaries on this site in the past few weeks alone, it is foolish to believe that a governmental system founded on false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational and semi-Pelagian principles is going to produce a means by which we can retard various evils at the ballot box. Perhaps one of the reasons that our website rankings are falling like a stone through water is because I refuse to concede anything to the nonexistent ability of naturalists to "restore America." So be it. I have every confidence that the analysis provided on this site will stand up in fifty years (as my analysis of past elections have stood the test of time).
Nevertheless, it is useful to point out that Bob Dole, who was considered by so many "mainstream" "conservatives" to have been the "electable" candidate back in 1996, something that was laughable on its face (I mean, the man lost a debate to then Senator Walter Mondale, D-Minnesota, when running as then President Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.'s, vice presidential running mate in 1976), is as wrong about John McCain being "pro-life" as he was wrong about so many other things throughout the course of his service in the United States House of Representatives (1961-1968) and in the United States Senate (1969-1996).
Bob Dole wrote to Rush Limbaugh to say that John McCain had a "consistent pro-life record." Says who? Says who? Bob Dole, who supports the slicing and dicing of preborn babies in their mothers' wombs in "hard-cases" and who voted to fund the chemical assassination of innocent babies by means of domestic and international "family planning" programs. Says Bob Dole? This is worse than laughable. Says Bob Dole?
No one who supports a single, solitary exception to the absolute inviolability of innocent human life is "pro-life" and must never be referred to as such. A person who supports "exceptions" to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that prohibit the killing of all innocent human beings, no matter the methods employed to kill them (be they chemical or surgical or some other means), is simply less pro-abortion than someone who is in favor of indiscriminate baby-killing. John McCain makes the same "exceptions" as Bob Dole. John McCain is not "pro-life" no matter what the bogus "scorecards" of Congressional votes are rigged to indicate. All you need to do about a candidate's alleged "pro-life" credentials is if they support a single exception to the inviolability of innocent human life and if they support contraception in any form.
As noted in Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, Heard It All Before three days ago now, both Willard Mitt Ryan, who ran for the United States Senate in 1994 and for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002 as a "pro-choice" candidate, and Paul Davis Ryan support the direct, intentional slicing and dicing of innocent human beings in some circumstances. Romney supports "exceptions" to the immutably binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment in three so-called "hard cases." Ryan does so in one supposedly "hard case."
Well, all discussion of who is the most "pro-life" among the naturalists these days is, to borrow a phrase I have heard some younger people use in supermarkets, "so yesterday."
What's the discussion about now?
What else?
The money, specifically about which set of "naturalists," the false opposite of the "left" or that of the "right," can "save" Medicare.
Let me reprise, therefore, that quotation from Gilbert Keith Chesterton that is very descriptive of the farce that is battle between the "left" and the "right in any country, including right here in the United States of America:
"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
Social Security and Medicare are two of "progressive" or "liberal" or "leftist" programs that were founded on quite mistaken premises.
Permit me to elaborate on a point I have made before and alluded to three days ago now by way of explanation.
The unification of the Germanic states
into a single country as a result of Prussia’s victory in the
Franco-Prussian War in 1871 ushered in the triumph of social engineering in northern
Europe’s industrial and economic giant. Masterminded by Otto von
Bismarck, the “Iron Chancellor,” the social engineering that began
in Germany during the Kulturkampf sought to create a brave new world where
people would become more and more dependent upon the beneficence of the
state. Bismarck knew that one of the ways to solidify political power was to
create a sense of dependence on the part of the citizenry, who would become
convinced that it was impossible for them to live their lives without the
direction and largesse of government bureaucrats.
Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which
started off as a direct assault upon the Catholic Church (viewed by Bismarck as
an obstacle to the social and economic advancement of human society), occurred
at a time when two complementary schools of thought were coming to the fore:
Darwinian evolutionism and the historical-critical method of Scriptural
exegesis. The latter was designed by Protestant Scripture scholars in Germany
as a means of “demythologizing” Scripture, a goal that dovetailed
neatly with the agendas both of the Darwinians and of Hegelian philosophers
who were intent on creating the illusion of change in the very nature of God
Himself. The old way of religion had to yield to the new ways of progress and
social advancement. And that social advancement would entail, among other
things, the discarding of those who were economically unproductive and thus
relatively useless for the life of society.
Bismarck was not as aggressive as his
successors in Germany would be during the period of the Weimar Republic
(1919-1933). However, he laid the groundwork for the sterilization and
euthanasia policies that would be the hallmarks of both Weimar and the Third
Reich. One of Bismarck’s principal legacies was the establishment of the
modern welfare state, paving the way not only for the Weimar democrats and
Hitler but also for V.I. Lenin and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Social Security
was the crown jewel of Bismarck’s welfare state. For Bismarck desired
to create a world where grown children believed that they were relieved of the
natural-law responsibility to care for their elderly parents when they became
incapable of caring for themselves. He wanted to rally the elderly to his side by
making it appear as though he was their friend — and he wanted to do the
same with the young, convincing them that he had made it possible for them to
live a more comfortable life materially by relieving them of the
“burden” of providing for their parents (never mind the nasty little
fact that confiscatory taxes were used to pay for Social Security). Thus,
Bismarck sought to pit generations against each other in preparation for the
day when those who were retired could be deemed useless to society and thus
worthy of liquidation. Bismarck relied upon the German traits of obedience to
authority as the means by which he could convince the public that he, their
chancellor, knew best.
The issue of "social security" thus represents by itself a
case study in how the civil state can undermine the Fourth Commandment
as it creates a category of people, the elderly in this instance, who
come to view the government as its true source of sustenance.
The Catholic Church teaches us perennially
that we are supposed to work hard at something as long as we are
physically and/or mentally able to do so. Even people who choose to
retire from some kind of strenuous physical labor must continue to labor
hard for the salvation of their immortal souls--and for the souls of
their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The concept
of mandatory retirement age, 70, and then relying upon the civil state
for one's financial security was the brainchild of the aforementioned Bismarck, a Freemason, who created a gigantic income redistribution program in Germany to find social security there.
Social Security, which was adopted by the government
of the United States of America in 1935 as one of the chief policies of
another Freemason, the aforementioned Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
violates the natural law principle of subsidiarity that is derived from
the Fourth Commandment. The ultimate "social security" program for the
elderly is to be found in a large family of grown children who share the
financial costs of caring for their elderly parents, and for whatever
other relatives who happen to be in need at any given time.
If, say, "Uncle Louie" is a little shiftless and
can't hold a job, it is the responsibility of his extended family to
care for him, not the civil state. Here is where the lie of Social
Security, born of a Freemason in Germany who waged war against the
Catholic Church by means of his Kulturkampf and instituted in this
country by a Freemason who was aided and abetted by sycophantic Catholic
bishops eager to silence Father Charles Coughlin's criticisms of
Roosevelt's policies as being violative of subsidiarity, meets the lie
of contraception and divorce.
Contraception produced smaller families in due time
after the post-World War II "baby boom," thus making it more difficult,
especially during an era of excessive confiscatory taxation, for
children who want to care for their elderly parents and other relatives
to do so. Contraception made it more possible for husbands and wives to
be unfaithful to each other, leading to divorce and the abandonment of
children to day-care and after-school programs in many instances.
Contraception, an expression of selfishness and narcissism and a
contempt for the law of God, helped to foster a spirit of materialism
and self-indulgence to the exclusion of providing for the needs of
others. Thus, selfish people who had become accustomed to sating their
every physical desire and material want came to believe that it was the
civil state's responsibility to provide for the needs of parents and
other relatives, not theirs.
The ready reliance upon contraception by so many married couples spread to the unmarried in the tidal wave of social revolution that was unleashed in the 1960s, aided and abetted as it was by "opening" of what most people in the world believed to be the Catholic Church "to the world" and the institutionalization of a ceaseless regime of novelty and change in matters of Faith, Morals and Worship that robbed many Catholics of their sensus fidei while robbing them ultimately of Sanctifying Grace as a result of sacramentally barren rites that are hideous in the sight of God. This is why so many Catholics welcomed the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the cases of Doe v. Bolton and Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, as a relative handful, including the late Miss Nellie Gray of the Lone Star State, sought actively to oppose surgical baby-killing on demand under cover of the civil law.
Contraception and abortion have both resulted in a decrease of birth rates, making it more difficult to fund entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare as there are fewer workers to provide the subsidies necessary to fund the entitlement payments made to retired or disabled Americans. This is a point that neither Willard Mitt Romney or Paul Davis Ryan are going to make.
No, Willard Mitt Romney believes that "contraception is working just fine" and Paul Davis Ryan, as earnest and as forceful a speaker as he is, will not speak about it even if he, who listens to "heavy metal" "music," ladies and gentlemen, has bothered to make the connection. That's not considered to be a "winning" issue with the voters in the "swing states," which is pretty much why President George Walker Bush refused even to telephone the late Miss Nellie Gray during the March for Life on January 22, 2001, two days after his first inauguration (see Get a Grip on Reality, published on the internet in 2001), although he did, at long last, address the organizers of the march, including Nellie Gray, and selected pro-life leaders in the White House on January 22, 2008, when he was prohibited from seeking another term in office.
Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Davis Ryan simply want to "conserve" the welfare state so as to make it more efficient in its delivery of entitlements even though the programs themselves violate the very Natural Law principle of subsidiarity that Ryan says he wants to uphold.
What was that Gilbert Keith Chesterton said about "progressives" and "conservatives" eighty-eight years ago now?
Similarly, there would be no need for Medicare in a world informed by the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ entrusted exclusively to His Catholic Church for Its eternal safekeeping and infallible explication as those who could not afford medical care on their own, whether because of age or condition, would have it provided for them in Catholic hospitals administered and staffed by Catholic doctors and Catholic religious sisters. As the religious sisters dwindled in numbers because of the conciliar revolution, you see, so have the number of Catholic hospitals, and the few that remain are notorious for violating the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law in many instances.
Willard Mitt Romney's own "big government" proclivities have been made manifest with his RomneyCare that served as the prototype for ObamaCare. Far from being "mister conservative," however, Paul Davis Ryan is just as committed to "compassionate conservatism" as was former President George Walker Bush:
Asked if the
choice of Paul Ryan would make any difference to conservatives,
constitutionalists, and tea party types as to whether it would help
them come around to get in the Romney camp, most who are familiar
with Ryan's record say "not a chance".
Here's why: An evaluation
of Ryan's record by the Republican Liberty Caucus in 2008 stated
actions that likely would not sit well with small government conservatives.
It stated "It appears that when Paul Ryan’s party is doing
the spending, raising debt limits, and acting unconstitutionally…
Ryan goes with the flow. Congressman Ryan’s actual record leaves
much to be desired. The issue Ryan is most known for is his interest
in cutting the deficit and balancing the budget. But why did the
Congressman vote to bail out the auto industry, to pass the Medicare package to the tune of $400 billion, and to nationalize education
via No Child Left Behind?"
Paul Ryan
on Bailouts and Government Stimuli
- Voted YES
on TARP (2008)
- Voted YES
on Economic Stimulus HR 5140 (2008)
- Voted YES
on $15B bailout for GM and Chrysler. (Dec 2008)
- Voted YES
on $192B additional anti-recession stimulus spending. (Jul 2009)
Paul Ryan
on Entitlement Programs
- Voted YES
on limited prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients.
(Nov 2003)
- Voted YES
on providing $70 million for Section 8 Housing vouchers. (Jun
2006)
- Voted YES
on extending unemployment benefits from 39 weeks to 59 weeks.
(Oct 2008)
- Voted YES
on Head Start Act (2007)
Paul Ryan
on Education
Rep. Ryan
went along with the Bush Administration in supporting more federal
involvement in education. This is contrary to the traditional Republican
position, which included support for abolition of the Department
of Education and decreasing federal involvement in education.
- Voted YES
on No Child Left Behind Act (2001)
Paul Ryan
on Civil Liberties
- Voted YES
on federalizing rules for driver licenses to hinder terrorists.
(Feb 2005)
- Voted YES
on making the PATRIOT Act permanent. (Dec 2005)
- Voted YES
on allowing electronic surveillance without a warrant. (Sep 2006)
Paul Ryan
on War and Intervention Abroad
- Voted YES
on authorizing military force in Iraq. (Oct 2002)
- Voted YES
on emergency $78B for war in Iraq & Afghanistan. (Apr 2003)
- Voted YES
on declaring Iraq part of War on Terror with no exit date. (Jun
2006)
- Voted NO
on redeploying US troops out of Iraq starting in 90 days. (May
2007)
Congressman
Ryan supports the United Nations, the World Trade Organization,
federal bailouts, increased federal involvement in education, unconstitutional
and undeclared wars, Medicare Part D (a multi-trillion dollar unfunded
liability), stimulus spending, and foreign aid.
According
to Michelle Malkin in 2009, “[Paul Ryan]"... "hyped
as a conservative rock-star" .... "gave one of the
most hysterical speeches in the rush to pass TARP last fall; voted
for the auto bailout; and voted with the Barney Frank-Nancy Pelosi
AIG bonus-bashing stampede." Milwaukee blogger Nick Schweitzer
wrote: ‘He ought to be apologizing for his previous votes,
not pretending he was being responsible the entire time, but I don’t
see one bit of regret for what he did previously. And I’ll
be damned if I’m going to let him get away with it’.”
In this attached
YouTube video of Congressman Ron Paul speaking to Neil Cavuto, Paul
stated he thought Paul Ryan's budget plan "doesn't cut anything
of substance". Paul is the only other candidate whose name
will appear on the ballot at the RNC Convention and who is seen
by many as a breath of fresh air for daring to tell the truth about
many issues. Cavuto admitted that Ryan's budget, compared to Paul's,
was "mild".
So when it
comes to Paul Ryan, I guess you could sum it up this way: "the
more things change, the more they stay the same". (Paul Ryan is No Ron Paul - Bedford, NH Patch.)
The author of the article quoted just above is a partisan of United States Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), whose libertarian views have been dissected a number of times on this site (see Ron Paul, Meet Saint Paul, God's Rights or States Rights?, The Mania Produced by False Premises, Showing Libertarianism's True Biases, Movements to a Dead End, Now and for All Eternity, Those Who Trust In Mere Mortals and just one more for the sake of brevity, It's Still a World of Sisyphuses). As I have noted on a number of occasions, Dr. Paul, who has prescribed the baby-killing potion known as the "birth control pill" to women in years as an gynecologist/obstetrician, is wrong on a number of key points. No one who believes, for example, that members of a legislative body at the state
level can decide for themselves whether to permit or restrict or
prohibit baby-killing under cover of the civil law according to the "will of the people" in a state is any kind of
champion of the Social Reign of Christ the King.
That having been noted, however, Dr. Paul has taken a
very courageous set of positions in opposition to the neoconservative,
pro-Zionist, American "exceptionalist" foreign and military policy of
almost every major American politician, whether of the false opposite of
the naturalist "left" or the false opposite of the naturalist "right." Although his own hands have been dirtied by sponsoring "earmarks" for projects in his own Congressional district, he has been an outspoken opponent of the fiscally unsound policies of a thoroughly unconstitutional extra-governmental agency that controls the banking and monetary system in the United States of America, the Federal Reserve Board, and has, despite his "earmarks," voted against the funding of every program he believes that the Federal government of the United States of America has no constitutional authorization to create and maintain. He is, despite his flaws, deadly seriously about cutting the size, the scope and the power of the Federal government.
Willard Mitt Romney and Paul Davis Ryan are not, no matter their impassioned rhetoric of the moment that will last for the next eighty-three days. They desire to "conserve" the welfare state, claiming that they will do do in a more "responsible," "restrained," "fiscally prudent" manner that the utter demagogues named Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetero and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
Disagreeing with libertarianism as a matter of firm principle, I nevertheless find myself in complete agreement with Lew Rockwell's observation about the forthcoming election:
This year especially
there is no lesser of two evils. There is socialism or fascism.
The true American spirit should guide every voter to have no part
of either. (The
Only Choice on Election Day.)
My own views on this matter have been expressed a number of times (see Want to Reconsider the Lesser of Two Evils Business, Folks?, which provides important distinctions and qualifications that some who comment on the matter of voting fail to make), What you want to do is up to you. As I have noted, you can do whatever you want and believe whatever you want. Vote early and vote often if you want to do (it's the Chicago Way, after all). Doing so, however, will not change a thing about the chastisements facing the United States of America for its daily assault against the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, including, of course, the daily carnage of the preborn by means of chemical and surgical baby-killing that was opposed with such conviction by Nellie Gray in the pat nearly forty years.
"Conservatives" love to fight "progressives" and the latter love to fight the former while the evils advanced by the "progressives" keep being institutionalized and protected by the "conservatives." This is as true in the ecclesiastical realm in the counterfeit church of conciliarism as it is in the realm of the farce known as electoral politics.
Pope Leo XIII, writing in aforementioned Immortale Dei, explained that we had to reject the false doctrines of the day, which false doctrines have an even stronger hold on Catholics now than they did nearly one hundred twenty-seven years ago now. We must come to realize that each of the problems of Modernity is the result of the rejection of the Catholic Faith as the one and only foundation of personal and social order and that we have an obligation to be informed about this truth and to help others to accept it:
Doctrines [Modern doctrines on the separation of Church and State and civil liberty] such as these, which cannot be approved by human reason, and most seriously affect the whole civil order, Our predecessors the Roman Pontiffs (well aware of what their apostolic office required of them) have never allowed to pass uncondemned. Thus, Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter "Mirari Vos," dated August 15, 1832, inveighed with weighty words against the sophisms which even at his time were being publicly inculcated-namely, that no preference should be shown for any particular form of worship; that it is right for individuals to form their own personal judgments about religion; that each man's conscience is his sole and allsufficing guide; and that it is lawful for every man to publish his own views, whatever they may be, and even to conspire against the State. On the question of the separation of Church and State the same Pontiff writes as follows: "Nor can We hope for happier results either for religion or for the civil government from the wishes of those who desire that the Church be separated from the State, and the concord between the secular and ecclesiastical authority be dissolved. It is clear that these men, who yearn for a shameless liberty, live in dread of an agreement which has always been fraught with good, and advantageous alike to sacred and civil interests." To the like effect, also, as occasion presented itself, did Pius IX brand publicly many false opinions which were gaining ground, and afterwards ordered them to be condensed in summary form in order that in this sea of error Catholics might have a light which they might safely follow. (Pope Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, November 1, 1885.)
Let it not be said about us that we were ignorant about First and Last Things or that we enabled career politicians to conserve the welfare state, which is but the logical result of the false premises of the modern civil state.
Consecrated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, may it be said about us that we planted at least a few seeds in behalf of Christendom as we prayed as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permitted. May it be said of us that our prayers to the Mother of God, the Immaculate Queen of Heaven and of earth, helped others to define every moment of their lives according to the truths of the Catholic Faith, apart from which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.
A blessed Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to you all.
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
