Facts Are Troublesome Things

by Thomas A. Droleskey

The late United States Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, R-Illinois, was the Minority Leader of the United States Senate from January 3, 1959, to the time of his death on September 7, 1959. An irascible man with a gravel voice who was nevertheless a fine naturalistic orator, Dirksen took to the podium of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 1952 and pointed his finger at New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, who was the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States of America in 1944 and 1948, and said, "You led us down the long road to defeat (long pause while he shook his finger)--twice!"

Dirksen was the Chairman of the Republican National Convention Platform Committee in 1968. He took to the podium in Miami Beach during the Republican National Convention and held up the massive document containing the pages of the platform, saying to the assembled delegates: "Here is your platform," thereupon throwing the huge book down to the convention floor from the podium. "All in favor, say 'Aye'!" And that was the end of the Republican platform for 1968.

Political party platforms are interesting naturalistic exercises in putting together a statement of positions on various issues of concern to the rank-and-file party members as well as to "independent" voters in some instances. They rarely serve as the foundation of public policy, as the late Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen demonstrated mockingly in 1968 when he threw the Republican Party Platform book onto the convention floor in Miami Beach, Florida. What matters are the positions taken by a party's presidential nominee, not the party's platform, most of which is designed to keep the "Indians on the reservation" when a particular nominee takes views that diverge from those expressed in the platform.

Some are contending that the fact that the Republican Party Platform of 2008 is completely pro-life shows that there is a substantial difference the two major political parties on the issue of child-killing under cover of law. This view is very mistaken, and it is one that would attempt to convince people that the no-exceptions abortion plank in this year's Republican Party Platform is something new. It is not.

Look for yourselves:

There can be no doubt that the question of abortion, despite the complex nature of its various issues, is ultimately concerned with equality of rights under the law. While we recognize differing views on this question among Americans in general—and in our own Party—we affirm our support of a constitutional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn children. We also support the Congressional efforts to restrict the use of taxpayers' dollars for abortion.

We protest the Supreme Court's intrusion into the family structure through its denial of the parent's obligation and right to guide their minor children. (Republican Party Platform 1980.)

The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose the use of public revenues for abortion and will eliminate funding for organizations which advocate or support abortion. We commend the efforts of those individuals and religious and private organizations that are providing positive alternatives to abortion by meeting the physical, emotional, and financial needs of pregnant women and offering adoption services where needed.

We applaud President Reagan's fine record of judicial appointments, and we reaffirm our support for the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. (Republican Party Platform, 1984.)

That the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose the use of public revenues for abortion and will eliminate funding for organizations which advocate or support abortion. We commend the efforts of those individuals and religious and private organizations that are providing positive alternatives to abortion by meeting the physical, emotional, and financial needs of pregnant women and offering adoption services where needed. (Republican Party Platform, 1988.)

We believe the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We therefore reaffirm our support for a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We commend those who provide alternatives to abortion by meeting the needs of mothers and offering adoption services. We reaffirm our support for appointment of judges  who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. (Republican Party Platform 1992.)

The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. (Republican Party Platform 1996.)

The Supreme Court's recent decision, prohibiting states from banning partial-birth abortions — a procedure denounced by a committee of the American Medical Association and rightly branded as four-fifths infanticide — shocks the conscience of the nation. As a country, we must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. (Republican Party Platform, 2000.)

As a country, we must keep our pledge to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence. That is why we say the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. Our purpose is to have legislative and judicial protection of that right against those who perform abortions. We oppose using public revenues for abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life. (Republican Party Platform, 2004.)

Faithful to the first guarantee of the Declaration of Independence, we assert the inherent dignity and sanctity of all human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children. We oppose using public revenues to promote or perform abortion and will not fund organizations which advocate it. We support the appointment of judges who respect traditional family values and the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life.

We have made progress. The Supreme Court has upheld prohibitions against the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortion. States are now permitted to extend health-care coverage to children before birth. And the Born Alive Infants Protection Act has become law; this law ensures that infants who are born alive during an abortion receive all treatment and care that is provided to all newborn infants and are not neglected and left to die. We must protect girls from exploitation and statutory rape through a parental notification requirement. We all have a moral obligation to assist, not to penalize, women struggling with the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy. At its core, abortion is a fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life. Women deserve better than abortion. Every effort should be made to work with women considering abortion to enable and empower them to choose life. We salute those who provide them alternatives, including pregnancy care centers, and we take pride in the tremendous increase in adoptions that has followed Republican legislative initiatives. (Republican Party Platform, 2008.) (See: Political Party Platforms, clicking for the years listed above. One can then do a search for the abortion planks.)

 

Leaving aside the second paragraph of the 2008 Republican Party platform's abortion plank that deals with the alleged accomplishments of the President George Walker Bush administration that I dissected in Absolute Insanity earlier today, one can see that the platform language from 1980 to 2008 has been relatively consistent. There has been no substantial change whatsoever. Anyone who asserts otherwise is attempting to parse words to fit a particular argument (special pleading) or is unfamiliar with the language of the earlier platforms

How did these almost identical platform planks influence the course of public policy?

Each Republican administration has pursued anti-life policies, including that of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, who signed into law legislation funding the chemical assassination of children by means of domestic and international "family planning" programs, and who in 1981 appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to succeed Associate Justice Potter Stewart on the Supreme Court of the United States of America despite fact that Conservative Caucus Foundation Chairman Howard Phillips and American Life League founder and President Judie Brown testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that O'Connor supported baby-killing under cover of law when she was the Majority Leader of the Arizona State Senate. 

Moreover, although President Reagan gave the issue of abortion rhetorical attention in his annual State of the Union addresses while embracing the flawed Hatch Amendment (which would have inserted language into the Constitution of the United States of America that state legislatures had the right to permit or restrict or abortion as they saw fit; no institution of civil governance has any right to permit the taking of innocent human life under cover of civil law), the issue was never paramount for him. A friend of mine from Saint John's University said in early-1982 when I complained that Reagan was squandering the opportunity provided him by what appeared to be a "pro-life" United States Senate, "Tom, they'll give him anything he wants if he gets the economy going again." And John "Cardinal" O'Connor noted to me in a private meeting in October of 1986 when I was running for lieutenant governor of New York, "We could have gotten somewhere if the President had moved on the abortion issue as strong as he has moved in support of the Contras in Nicaragua." (This is also the point of my piece from ten months ago now, Selective Use of Executive Power, which discusses how the George Walker Bush administration used executive power to assert nonexistent presidential prerogatives to prosecute the Global War Against Terror, which United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, R-Arizona, completely supports.)

President George Herbert Walker Bush, whose support for contraception when he was a member of the United States House of Representatives from the State of Texas from 1967 to 1971 earned him an unprintable nickname, remains to this very day a supporter of "exceptions" to the inviolability of innocent human life despite the language of the Republican Party Platform in 1988 and 1992. Although he appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court of the United States of America to replace Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall, his first appointee to the Court was David Souter, whose support for elective abortions when he served on the Board of Directors of a hospital in Concord, New Hampshire, that Howard Phillips documented in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1990:

In considering David Souter’s suitability to cast what, in many cases, will be the deciding opinion on the Supreme Court of the United States, it is necessary to go beyond Mr. Souter’s intellectual capacity and his stated opinions, and to assess his character and moral courage in their relationship to the responsibilities of a Supreme Court Justice.

DAVID SOUTER His pro-abortion record was there for those who wanted to know the truth. One moment of truth for Mr. Souter came in February, 1973 when, as a member of the board of trustees of Concord Hospital, he participated in a unanimous decision that abortions be performed at the hospital.

Advocacy of, or even acquiescence in, such a decision is morally distinguishable from the judicial conclusion, profoundly incorrect in my view, that women have a constitutional right to destroy their unborn children.

It is also distinguishable from and far more troubling than the political argument by politicians who maintain that they are “personally opposed” to abortion, even as they advocate its decriminalization.

It is one thing to intellectually rationalize the case for permitting legal abortions, while still opposing the exercise of such legal authority. It is quite another - something far more invidious, morally - to actually join in a real world decision to cause abortions to be performed, routinely, at a particular hospital.

Those abortions whose performance was authorized by David Souter were not mandated by law or court opinion. In fact, laws have remained to this day on the books in New Hampshire which provide criminal penalties for any “attempt to procure miscarriage” or “intent to destroy quick child.” Indeed, section 585:14 of the New Hampshire Criminal Code establishes the charge of second degree murder for the death of a pregnant woman in consequence of an attempted abortion. Nor were those abortions which Mr. Souter authorized performed merely to save the life of the mother, nor were they limited to cases of rape or incest.

If the unborn child is human, and if innocent human life is to be defended and safeguarded, why did Mr. Souter acquiesce in those abortions? Why did he not speak out against them? Why did he, through twelve years on the Concord Hospital board, in a position of responsibility, help cause those abortions to be performed, and invest his personal reputation in clearly implied approval of those abortions?

The overarching moral issue in the political life of the United States in the last third of the 20th Century is, in my opinion, the question of abortion. Is the unborn child a human person, entitled to the protections pledged to each of us by the Founders of our Nation?

The issue is much more than one of legal or judicial philosophy. There are men and women in the legal profession, in elected office, and on the bench who acknowledge abortion to be morally repugnant, but who assert that, in present circumstances, it cannot be constitutionally prohibited.

Whatever Mr. Souter’s legal and judicial philosophy may be - and, on the record, it seems to be one which rejects the higher law theories implicit in the Declaration of Independence - it is a chilling fact which the Senate must consider that Judge Souter has personally participated in decisions resulting in the performance of abortions, where such abortions were in no way mandated or required by law or court decision.

By his own account, Mr. Souter served as a member of the board of trustees for the Concord Hospital from 1971 until 1985. Following service as board secretary, he was president of the board from 1978 to 1984.

In 1973, shortly after the Supreme Court’s January 22 Roe v. Wade decision, the Concord Hospital trustees voted to initiate a policy of performing abortions at Concord Hospital.

Similarly, Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, which is associated with the Dartmouth Medical School, of which Judge Souter has been an overseer, has performed abortion up to the end of the second trimester.

During the period of Mr. Souter’s tenure as a decision-maker of these two institutions, many hundreds of abortions were performed under his authority, with no indication that he ever objected to or protested the performance of these abortions. Even though the Roe v. Wade decision did, in fact, authorize abortions through the ninth month of pregnancy, nothing in the Supreme Court’s decision required or obliged any hospital to conduct abortions, whether in the ninth month, the sixth month, or even in the first month of pregnancy.

If Judge Souter is confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, he will, in all likelihood, be given the opportunity to address not only the issue of Roe v. Wade, but broader issues involving the sanctity of innocent human life.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the 1986 Thornburgh case, “there is a fundamental and well-recognized difference between a fetus and a human being. Indeed, if there is not such a difference, the permissibility of terminating the life of a fetus could scarcely be left to the will of the State legislatures.”

Justice Stevens was wrong in a very deadly way. If an unborn child is not human, I would ask Justice Stevens, what is he, what is she? But as least Mr. Stevens was logical in defending his support for the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court said that, “If the personhood of the unborn child is established, the pro-abortion case collapses, for the fetus’s right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

As Notre Dame law professor Charles Rice has pointed out, “This is so, because the common law does not permit a person to kill an innocent non-aggressor, even to save his own life.”

Does David Souter believe that the unborn child - the fetus in the mother’s womb - is a human person, deserving of all the protections which are guaranteed to human beings after the moment of birth?

Seemingly, Mr. Souter’s answer is an unequivocal “no.” by agreeing that abortions be performed at institutions under his authority, Mr. Souter established clearly that he did not recognize the personhood of the unborn child. For surely, if he did acknowledge the unborn child to be a human person, Mr. Souter would not have agreed to authorize the extinguishment of so many precious lives at medical facilities for which he bore responsibility.

One must conclude that either Mr. Souter accepts the view that the life of the unborn child is of less value than the convenience and profit of those who collaborate in the killing of that child, or that, despite his recognition of the fact that each unborn child is human, a handiwork of God’s creation, he lacked the moral courage or discernment to help prevent the destruction of so many innocent human lives when he had the authority, indeed, the responsibility, to do so.

Either way, in such circumstances, unless there are mitigating factors or extenuating considerations which have not yet been brought to public attention, it is difficult to regard Mr. Souter as one suitable for participation in judicial decisions at the highest level of our Nation.

If, during his years of responsibility at Concord Hospital and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital, Mr. Souter believed each fetus to be a human person, and failed to act against the performance of abortion, he was morally delinquent.

If, on the other hand, he justified himself by denying the human qualities of the unborn child, then he placed himself in the ambit of those who have argued against the very philosophy which his sponsor, President George Bush, purported to embrace during his 1988 presidential campaign.

On the basis of the information now available, Mr. Souter, in my opinion, should not be confirmed.

 

Ah, yes, Republican Party plank on abortion certainly mattered to George Herbert Walker Bush when he nominated David Souter.

Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.? Bob Dole was a firm supporter of exceptions who tried to insert a "Declaration of Tolerance" on abortion in the 1996 Republican Party platform plank on abortion, something that I discussed recently in Bob Dole, part trois. The platform meant nothing to him.

We are now supposed to believe that John Sidney McCain III will take seriously the Republican Party platform plank of abortion because he refused to change it. To quote a favorite phrase of a Catholic commentator, this is "patently absurd."

This is what John Sidney McCain III told Glamour magazine to be published in October, a month before the general election on November 4, 2008, according to a recent report in The New York Times:

Mr. McCain has been trying to win over social conservatives wary of his candidacy, and the party is set to approve the platform Monday without the exceptions. On Friday, he named a vice-presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who opposes any exception for abortion and whose selection was hailed unequivocally by groups opposing abortion rights.

Mr. McCain argued strongly in 2000 for the platform to include the abortion exceptions. He affirmed that position as recently as May, in an
interview with Glamour magazine to appear in its October issue.

“My position has always been: exceptions of rape, incest and the life of the mother,” he said. Asked if he would encourage the party to include
them in the platform, he said, “Yes,” adding: “And by the way, I think that’s the view of most people, that rape, incest, the life of the mother are issues that have to be considered.”

But Mr. McCain in fact did little to push for the exceptions, and told Glamour on July 30 that he had “not gotten into the platform discussions.”

Connie Mackey, a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, said: “It is out of the platform. We were told early on that the platform is going to
be pro-life and that any differences the senator has with it are his own.” (G.O.P. Holds to Firm Stance on Abortion. The New York Times, August 31, 2008.)

 

John McCain is not going to make abortion any kind of cornerstone for his administration if he is elected. And while United States Senator Barack Obama, D-Illinois, will indeed do all manner of insidious things if he is elected, a "President" John McCain will do nothing to reverse the egregious things done by former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton from January 20, 1993, to January 20, 2001. The human pesticide, RU-486, will remain on the market. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Bill will remain the law of the land. And "President" McCain will do nothing to reverse the "pro-life" President George Walker Bush administration's decision to permit over-the-counter sales of the Plan B Emergency Abortifacient. "President McCain will appoint pro-aborts to a variety of Cabinet and sub-Cabinet positions, and he will appoint pro-aborts to serve as judges on United States District Courts and the twelve Circuit Courts of Appeals. The Supreme Court of the United States? "President" McCain will be faced with, thanks to the disaster that has been the presidency of George Walker Bush, a United States Senate with a solid majority of Democrats, who will not permit anyone approaching the likes of the positivists named John G. Roberts and Samuel Alito to be confirmed.

These are facts. Simple, undeniable facts. The differences between Barack Obama and John McCain, both of whom will kowtow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, before which Alaska Governor Sarah Palin paid her due obeisance and reaffirmed her lifelong support for the "democracy" of the Zionist state whose founding was opposed so adamantly by Pope Saint Pius X, are matters of degree, not kind. Both Obama and McCain are the products of the errors of Modernity and have their worldviews, such as they are, shaped thereby. Both Obama and McCain believe in the false, naturalistic, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles of Modernity. Both are part of the problem and can never, therefore, be considered as anything other than distractions to keep our wheels spinning while we lose sight of the larger battle that we face of opposing these errors of Modernity and the counterfeit church of conciliarism's "reconciliation" with those errors.

Moreover, it is my contention, which I am sure will be dismissed by some as "patently absurd," that the specter of a "pro-life" "feminist, who, contrary to the report in The New York Times, answered two years ago that she does indeed support the slicing and dicing of babies under cover of law in cases where it is alleged that a mother's life is endangered, and who has described herself as "pro-contraception," will do far more harm to our children than any legal measures that might be enacted during a "President" Barack Obama administration. We must look beyond the letter of our civil law to the false spirit that has given it its life and force, a false spirit that is already being fed by the hysteria of the moment  and that is convincing even some traditionally-minded Catholics into thinking that whatever harm might be caused by enabling the electoral career of a mother with young children is negligible in comparison to the harm caused by laws that might be enacted no matter who gets elected on November 4, 2008.

My contention is the opposite, and I believe that it is being validated by the hysteria of the moment. How many young, otherwise "traditional' Catholic girls might be inclined to scuttle any plans to choose the consecrated religious life in favor of following the footsteps of Sarah Heath Palin? How many young, otherwise "traditional" Catholic girls will consider it "necessary" for them to enter into public life even though they have young children at home? These are questions, as far as I am concerned, that are more critical to the integrity of the Faith and to the well-being of Catholic families than any piece of legislation, no matter how egregious, that might be passed during an administration of Barack Obama or an administration of John McCain.

To gain a bit of perspective on the hysteria of the moment as the current Democrat bogeyman is being presented as the "most pro-abortion" candidate in the history of the presidency, it is important to remember once again that some of the very first things that William Jefferson Blythe Clinton did as President of the United States of America on January 22, 1993, was to sign Executive Orders permitting the testing of RU-486, which Federal testing prompted, according to a report in The New York Times in the summer of 1995, some women to get pregnant deliberately in order to kill their babies with the French abortion pill, and permitting the Federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research, something that was supported at the time by Robert Joseph Dole, Jr.,  who would run against Clinton in 1996, and by one John Sidney McCain III. It was Clinton who signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Bill into law, and who authorized then Attorney General Janet "See No Chinagate Evil" Reno the use a special Federal Bureau of Investigation "task force" to intimidate a woman in Toledo, Ohio, in 1995 into never writing again to a baby-killing to whom she had written a letter stating that she, the letter-writer, was praying for her conversion. Oh, please, they don't come more pro-abortion--or more fascistically pro-abortion--than Bill Clinton.

Want more facts? Why not?

President Bill Clinton also lied repeatedly about the number of babies killed by means of partial-birth abortion, stating in 1995 when he vetoed, for the first time, the conditional, partial ban on this form of killing innocent babies that "only" around 1,500 babies a year were killed by this method. The Record of Hackensack, New Jersey, to its credit, reported at the time that an abortuary in northern New Jersey killed at least that number every year by means of the procedure known medically as "intact dilation and extraction."

Can we stipulate that Democrats support baby-killing without restrictions and then use all manner of lies to justify their position? And we can also stipulate that Democrats are attempting to rally their troops by making their own hysterical claims, that John Sidney McCain III is going to threaten to upset the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Roe v. Wade, which is why so many of them are upset with United States Senator Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, for "betraying" the cause of the Democrat Party to speak at the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that concludes this evening, Thursday, August 4, 2008?

This does not mean that the Republican Party, which is in the control of the neoconservatives who gave us the American invasion and occupation of Iran and who are just itching for a war with Iran, is the friend of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, or that John McCain, of all people, is our friend and has "learned his lessons" about "bucking" the political base. He will govern without his political base in mind just as much as George Walker Bush has done as the latter has advanced various anti-life positions, and he will be enabled by a new set of enablers to join those who constantly--and I mean constantly--served as apologists for Bush's betrayal of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. John McCain will be every bit as much as a statist as Bush if elected. If people do not see this clearly now, check back in 2012 or thereafter.

Each major organized crime family of the naturalism, both of which are here to stay until the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in the United States of America has a vested interest in asserting that its opponents' candidates are the "worst ever." So do the various advocacy groups that exist in a symbiotic relationship with these organized crime families. This is farce. It is farce from Hell, and it is a farce, as I will note later, that can go on quite well without my support, thank you so very much.

What more can be said? We do not advance the cause of the Social Reign of Christ the King by enabling the career of a mother who should be at home with her children, no less a woman who is associated with Calvinist "restorationists" or "dominionists" who want to "restore" (formally, that is) Calvinist precepts as the foundation of civil order, the subject of an upcoming article. What do we teach our children when we say that we can be "pro-life" while encouraging a mother with small children to choose electively to engage in a career in electoral politics? How do we tell them that they should not follow Sarah Palin's example? Where is the line to be drawn? Why Sarah Palin and not them? This, as noted just above, will, in my view, do far, far more harm than any piece of legislation enacted during an Obama administration, legislation that will be, at least in some instances, passed with the support of at least some "moderate" Republicans in the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives.

Readers are free to consider these arguments and to accept or reject them as they want. The 2008 Republican Party's platform plank on abortion is not any "achievement" whatsoever, containing language that is almost identical to that contained in the seven preceding party platforms. Whether one chooses to vote for John McCain so as to prevent Barack Obama's election is a matter of prudential judgment in the practical order of things, although I will repeat once again what I wrote in 2000 and what was contained in "Absolute Insanity" earlier today, that voters in those states that are clearly in the Obama or McCain camps are not "helping" to elect Barack Obama if they stay at home and pray Rosaries or choose to vote for a third party candidate.

The late William C. Koneazny, the founder of the old "Catholic Rendezvous" get-togethers in the Berkshire Mountains, said in 1986 at a summer rendezvous in Sheffield, Massachusetts, that "Politics is a sideshow." It is. The devil wins no matter which particular candidate wins in any given election year. The devil wins if the man trained by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, Barack Hussein Obama, is elected, and the devil wins if John McCain is elected. The power and the size of the civil state will continue to grow. Foreign policy will be made by a set of "internationalist" naturalists in an Obama administration and by neoconservative naturalists in a McCain administration. "Bipartisanship" with be the buzzword in either administration, which is somewhat akin to the Gambino and the Genovese families calling for "bipartisanship" in their organized crime activities.

As noted before, this is all a farce, and this farce can go on without my enabling it. Indeed, it has been doing so very well for the 220 years since the first presidential election in 1788, and nothing I write on this site (which is viewed, recent reports indicate, by about 500 people a day) is going to change the course of this farce as each election year plays out with its own hysteria. I was told by many people in 2000 that "things" would be different in the year 2000 than they had been in the past if George Walker Bush got elected. The facts have shown my analysis, which, of course, is not received from the hand of God, was correct then. I believe that it remains correct today in our current situation, and you can check back in four to eight years, perhaps after I am dead and buried, to see for yourselves.

What can change this farce is, of course, the Rosaries of reparation we pray each day for our own sins and those of the whole world. We must be perfectly at peace in this time of social chaos and ecclesiastical apostasy as the false premises of Modernity and Modernism's "reconciliation" with those false premises demonstrate the inherent degeneracy of their founding principles with each passing year. Our efforts to make reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary will succeed where any political program based in naturalism must degenerate into a public life stained with crime, as Pope Leo XIII noted in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900

This generative and conservative power of the virtues that make for salvation is therefore lost, whenever morality is dissociated from divine faith. A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

 

A system based in the falsehoods must degenerate, and anyone who contends that some "good" naturalist will retard the process of degeneration is deceiving himself.

Pope Saint Pius X put it bluntly in Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1832:

 

. . . . For there is no true civilization without a moral civilization, and no true moral civilization without the true religion: it is a proven truth, a historical fact. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)

 

Let us reform our own souls by means of offering acts of reparation to Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states-in-life permit, and then let us be content to let the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, effect as a miraculous conversion in the Americas in our own day as occurred as a result of her apparition on Tepeyac Hill outside of Mexico City to the Venerable Juan Diego in 1531.

 

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us!

 

Saint Joseph, Patron of Departing Souls, 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.

See also: A Litany of Saints

The Novena to Maria Bambina

(begins August 30, 2008, and runs through September 7, 2008)

Mari Bambina--Infant Queen of the universe, intercede for all of us who have recourse to thee!  Do not forget us, thy faithful but lowly subjects who await thy response to our constant prayers !  We long to kneel before thy crib and watch thee sleep, dear little Queen! Choose to look upon us with thy loving childlike gaze and through that gaze send graces to us so that we may rejoice with thee and praise that beautiful day that God chose from all of eternity to begin the Redemption through thy most glorious Immaculate Conception!  Amen.