Fallacies Galore

by Thomas A. Droleskey

United States Senator John Sidney McCain III, R-Arizona, was more spirited in his third and final debate with United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama, D-Illinois, catching his young opponent off-guard on several occasions, including in this exchange about the over-reliance of the United States of America on imported crude oil:

MCCAIN: Well, you know, I admire so much Senator Obama's eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words. He said, we will look at offshore drilling. Did you get that? Look at. We can offshore drill now. We've got to do it now. We will reduce the cost of a barrel of oil because we show the world that we have a supply of our own. It's doable. The technology is there and we have to drill now. (Transcript of Obama-McCain Debate, Hofstra University, October 15, 2008. All citations from this transcript in this article come from the same source.)

 

Yes, Senator McCain is entirely correct. It is important to pay attention to words. Senator Obama's words are full of unspecific generalities and outright distortions of fact, combined on many occasions with enough ambiguity as to give an undiscerning voter who is leaning one way on a particular issue cause to believe that he, Obama, sides with him. This is certainly what Obama was attempting to do by saying that "we" could look at offshore drilling to make the United States of America more independent of foreign crude oil producers and exporters.

Unfortunately for Senator McCain, however, words do indeed matter, including his when answering moderator Bob Schieffer's about judicial appointments and Roe v. Wade:

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let's stop there and go to another question. And this one goes to Senator McCain. Senator McCain, you believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Senator Obama, you believe it shouldn't.

Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue? Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I've been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That's not appropriate to do.

SCHIEFFER: But you don't want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

MCCAIN: I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I'm a federalist. And I believe strongly that we should have nominees to the United States Supreme Court based on their qualifications rather than any litmus test. Now, let me say that there was a time a few years ago when the United States Senate was about to blow up. Republicans wanted to have just a majority vote to confirm a judge and the Democrats were blocking in an unprecedented fashion.

We got together seven Republicans, seven Democrats. You were offered a chance to join. You chose not to because you were afraid of the appointment of, quote, "conservative judges."

I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we're talking about.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn't meet his ideological standards. That's not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that's what I will do.

I will find the best people in the world -- in the United States of America who have a history of strict adherence to the Constitution. And not legislating from the bench.

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone -- even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

 

Let's cut through the fallacies one by one, starting with fallacy number one: The Litmus Test.

 

MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I've been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That's not appropriate to do.

 

No litmus test? This is not so. John Sidney McCain III would never appoint a blatant racist or a person reputed to be, whether falsely or not, an anti-Semite to any position in government, including to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.  Such a person wouldn't get a litmus test. He would be deemed unacceptable solely on the basis of hearsay. Not necessarily so with an out-and-out pro-abort.

Although McCain stated that one who supported the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Roe v. Wade, January 22, 1973, would not have the qualifications to be nominated by him for a seat on the High Court, he reiterated that he had no litmus test. In other words, support for the slicing and dicing of innocent human beings in their mothers' wombs does not necessarily disqualify one from holding a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Indeed, McCain wanted to select his pro-abortion pal, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, a Catholic, or another pro-abortion pal, United States Senator Joseph Lieberman, I-Connecticut, who is Jewish, before turning to Alaska Governor Sarah Heath Palin. (See Bob Dole, part trois.) Those who support abortion are not disqualified from service in government as far as John Sidney McCain III is concerned.

Fallacy Number Two: Abortion is a "federalist" issue:

SCHIEFFER: But you don't want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

MCCAIN: I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I'm a federalist.

 

No, Senator McCain, decisions concerning the inviolability of innocent human life at any stage from the moment of fertilization through all subsequent stages until natural death do not belong to "the states." No human institution of civil governance has any authority from God to enact positive legislation or to render judicial decisions contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. This means, Senator McCain, that the Fifth Commandment is non-negotiable. Human institutions of civil governance may determine the penalties to be imposed upon those adjudged guilty after due process of law of violating the Fifth Commandment's absolute prohibition against any and all attacks on innocent human life. Such institutions of civil governance do not have any authority to permit the taking of such life. This is not a matter of states' rights, Senator McCain. This is a matter of God's immutable and eternal Law from which no human being may legitimately dissent at any time for any reason.

Senator McCain did not even directly answer the question as to whether Roe v. Wade should be overturned, saying only that it was a "bad decision, rushing quickly thereafter to say that "a lot of decisions were bad." His desire, however, to throw the issue of baby-killing back to the state legislatures where it began in the 1960s is at odds with the Republican Party's 2008 platform that was adopted during the convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, that nominated him for President of the United States of America:

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. Republican Party Platform, 2008. See: Political Party Platforms, clicking for the years listed above. One can then do a search for the abortion planks.)

 

Senator McCain is at odds with own party's platform, something that is not news but is nevertheless important to point out once again to all of those who want to believe in the political equivalent of the tooth fairy (i.e., that John Sidney McCain III wants to reverse Roe v. Wade and/or to support his party's platform.)

Fallacy Number Three: Elections Have Consequences:

McCain: I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we're talking about.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn't meet his ideological standards. That's not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that's what I will do.

 

McCain misspoke when he said that Barrack Hussein Obama voted against the nomination of Stephen G. Breyer to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Breyer, nominated by then President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton in 1994 to replace the author of Roe v. Wade, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun. Barack Hussein Obama was not in the United States Senate at that time. McCain meant to say that Obama voted on January 31, 2006, against the nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

John Sidney McCain III's contention that "elections have consequences" and that senators of the "out" party are more or less obligated to vote in favor of "qualified" judicial nominees of a president who belongs to the "in" party is fallacious. There is no such obligation whatsoever. How can McCain claim that he is "proudly pro-life" and that he wants to built a "culture of life" when he has voted to confirm known out-and-out pro-aborts to the Supreme Court of the United States of America?

Members of an opposition political party has the obligation to oppose policies and nominees they believe to be injurious to the common temporal good of their nation. They are under no obligation to aid and abet policies and nominees contrary to the common temporal good of their nation. And one of the sad ironies in all of this is that members of the Democrat Party demonstrate more integrity in their commitment to protecting the evils of the day by opposing those policies and nominees they believe pose a threat to such evils with great vigor and determination. Such cannot be said of their false opposites in the naturalist camp of the "right," the hapless Republicans, many of whom fold like a cheap camera at the slightest hint of bad press.

Oh, some will argue that McCain's vote in favor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer did not matter as they were going to be confirmed anyway in a United States Senate controlled by the Democrat Party. After all, why antagonize Jewish groups by voting against the first two Jewish nominees to the Court since Associate Justice Abe Fortas was forced off of the Supreme Court on May 14, 1969, as a result of a conflict-of-interest charges resulting from a retainer he had taken from crooked financier Louis Wolfson (and setting the stage for the United States Senate's rejection of two consecutive nominees sent to it by then President Richard Milhous Nixon, Clement Furman Haynsworth and  G. Harrold Carswell)?

Well, it is like this: each human being answers to God for his actions at the moment of his Particular Judgment. It is either a good or a bad thing to vote in favor of someone committed to the preservation of a nonexistent legal "right" to kill babies. One's duty is before God, not before one's fellow men. Only three Republicans (the late United States Senator Jesse Helms, North Carolina, and former Senators Don Nickles, Oklahoma, and Bob Smith, New Hampshire) voted against Ginsburg. Nine Republicans voted against Breyer. John Sidney McCain III took refuge in "elections have consequences," a fallacious canard that will come back to haunt him if Barack Hussein Obama does wind up defeating him in nineteen days.

Obviously, the lies that spewed forth from the mouth of Barack Hussein Obama on the issue of abortion during the debate last evening at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, are to be deplored even though they were to be expected. Obama is indeed a very calculated liar who plans to ratchet up the police state once he is elected. There can be no doubt about this. Obama's lies and misrepresentations of the positions he took against a "born alive" infants protection bill while a member of the Illinois State Senate show him once again to be a reprehensible supporter of baby-killing under cover of law. In addition to the five commentaries written during the week of the Democrat Party National Convention, Trapped by Apostasy and Desiring to Stay Ignorant have pointed out that Obama cannot say that he is a follower of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ while supporting Our Lord's mystical dismemberment in the persons of innocent preborn children in their mothers' wombs.

Obama's despicable lies and misrepresentations about abortion being a "difficult issue," a canard that has been used by Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and George Walker Bush and John Sidney McCain III and Sarah Heath Palin (WHAT'S SO DIFFICULT ABOUT KILLING A BABY?), however, do not indemnify John Sidney McCain's own misrepresentations as to what it means to be "pro-life." McCain corrected Obama at one point in the debate when rebutting an Obama campaign advertisement that claimed that he, McCain, did not support embryonic stem cell research:

MCCAIN: Every other ad -- ever other ad was an attack ad on my health care plan. And any objective observer has said it's not true. You're running ads right now that say that I oppose federal funding for stem cell research. I don't.

 

No one who has any degree of intellectual honesty can claim that someone who supports Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research is "pro-life." Do you want to stand logic and truth on its head? Then again, I guess it's easy to stand logic and truth on its head in the realm of the absolute and total farce that is our Judeo-Masonic electoral system when so many Catholics fail to accept the fact that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI himself stands logic and truth on its head by claiming that dogmatic truths contain "particulars" that can become obsolete over the course of time.

Fallacies Number Four and Five : Changing the Culture and Proudly Pro-Life

McCain: Let me talk to you about an important aspect of this issue. We have to change the culture of America. Those of us who are proudly pro-life understand that.

 

How are you going to "change the culture," Senator McCain, when you vote to confirm pro-aborts to the Supreme Court of the United States of America and when you support pro-aborts in your own political party for election to public office and for appointment to your own putative administration?

How can you be "proudly pro-life," Senator McCain, when you support the absurd contention that the civil law may permit the slicing and dicing of innocent human beings in certain "hard" cases? You are not "pro-life," Senator McCain. You are simply less pro-abortion than Senator Obama.

Words have meaning. One cannot say he is "proudly pro-life" while supporting a single, solitary abortion, whether chemical or surgical, under cover of the civil law. Period. End of argument about the "dumbing down" of what it means to be "pro-life."

Fallacy Number Six: Abortion "Extremism:"

McCain: Senator Obama, as a member of the Illinois State Senate, voted in the Judiciary Committee against a law that would provide immediate medical attention to a child born of a failed abortion. He voted against that.

And then, on the floor of the State Senate, as he did 130 times as a state senator, he voted present.

Then there was another bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the state of Illinois not that long ago, where he voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion, one of the late-term abortion, a really -- one of the bad procedures, a terrible. And then, on the floor of the Illinois State Senate, he voted present.

I don't know how you vote "present" on some of that. I don't know how you align yourself with the extreme aspect of the pro- abortion movement in America. And that's his record, and that's a matter of his record.

 

Hey, Senator McCain, here's news for you: every abortion kills a baby dead. Every method, whether chemical or surgical, is a "bad procedure." Suction abortion is a "bad procedure." Saline solution abortion is a "bad procedure." Dilation and evacuation is a "bad procedure." The hysterotomy is a "bad procedure." And, yes, intact dilation and extraction--partial-birth abortion, is also a "bad procedure." There is no "good procedure" by which to kill a baby inside of his mother's womb. There is absolutely no distinction in the eyes of God between the killing of a six week old baby in his mother's womb by means of a suction abortion (would you, Senator McCain, liked to be suctioned alive by a vacuum machine twenty-nine times more powerful than the home vacuum cleaner?) and the killing of a baby by means of partial-birth abortion. Each method of killing an innocent human baby is heinous. Every abortion is the same heinous crime morally in the eyes of God no matter the method used to kill the baby or the age at which the baby is killed.

Each and every abortion is a radical and extreme rejection of God's absolute and unwavering Sovereignty over the inviolability of all innocent human life.

No wonder the pro-aborts have been so successful in our culture of naturalistic lies. Their logical consistency in their support of one of the four crimes that cry out to Heaven for vengeance stands in sharp contrast to the fallacies and internal contradictions of so many in public life who call themselves "pro-life."

Fallacy Number Seven: The Feelings and Views of Mainstream America:

McCain: And he'll say it has something to do with Roe v. Wade, about the Illinois State Senate. It was clear-cut votes that Senator Obama voted, I think, in direct contradiction to the feelings and views of mainstream America.

 

Excuse me, Senator McCain? Feelings? Views of mainstream America? Feelings Views of mainstream America? Feelings? Views of mainstream America? Surely, sir, you jest. Feelings? Views of mainstream America?

Opposition to the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human being in his mother's womb is not a matter of "feelings," Senator McCain. Opposition to the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human being in his mother's womb is not a matter of the "views of mainstream America," Senator McCain. Opposition to the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human being in his mother's womb is matter of fidelity to the Fifth Commandment--"Thou Shalt Not Kill--as it has been entrusted by God Himself to the infallible teaching authority of the Church that He Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and from which no human being on the face of this earth may dissent legitimately at any time in any place for any reason. Public opinion has nothing to do with the immorality of taking an innocent human life. Nothing. God is a majority of One, Senator McCain. And he speaks solely through the Catholic Church.

It is like this, Senator McCain:

The more closely the temporal power of a nation aligns itself with the spiritual, and the more it fosters and promotes the latter, by so much the more it contributes to the conservation of the commonwealth. For it is the aim of the ecclesiastical authority by the use of spiritual means, to form good Christians in accordance with its own particular end and object; and in doing this it helps at the same time to form good citizens, and prepares them to meet their obligations as members of a civil society. This follows of necessity because in the City of God, the Holy Roman Catholic Church, a good citizen and an upright man are absolutely one and the same thing. How grave therefore is the error of those who separate things so closely united, and who think that they can produce good citizens by ways and methods other than those which make for the formation of good Christians. For, let human prudence say what it likes and reason as it pleases, it is impossible to produce true temporal peace and tranquillity by things repugnant or opposed to the peace and happiness of eternity.  (Silvio Cardinal Antoniano, quoted by Pope Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri, December 29, 1931.)

Senator McCain is so clueless about simple logic that he does not understand that his most valid point that the likes of Senator Obama want to use a "health of the mother" exception to mean almost anything clouds the simple truth that each of the three "exceptions" to the inviolability of innocent human life that he, John Sidney McCain III, supports also provides baby-killers with loopholes that can mean pretty much whatever they want it to mean. After all, do we really, really think that those who kill innocent human babies for a living are going to be scrupulously honest about whether a particular "exception" exists?

Why should John Sidney McCain III know any of this? He was raised an Episcopalian and is now a Baptist. He mouths slogans that have been used with impunity for decades now by the National Not-So-Right to Life Committee, which supports the direct, intentional taking of innocent life in the womb of a mother whose life is said to be "endangered" by a pregnancy and which takes no stand against the direct attack on the Sovereignty of God over the fecundity and sanctity of marriage represented by contraception. And no conciliar "bishop" is going to disabuse him of these slogans. Indeed, most conciliar "bishops" would consider John Sidney McCain III's responses on the issue of abortion in the debate last evening to be commendable!

Although it should not be necessary to point out that a criticism of John Sidney McCain III is not in anyway a minimization of the evils supported by Barack Hussein Obama, the illogic and emotionalism and sentimentality of the moment makes it important to stress the fact that a criticism of the supposedly "lesser evil" is not an endorsement of the "greater evil."

To wit, those of us who criticized the Communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979 were not endorsing the repressive, corrupt regime of Anastasio Somoza. The administration of then President James Earl Carter, Jr., ever eager to support Communist "liberation" movements and other "popular" revolutions (then United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, called Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini a "saint" following the abdication of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi in early-1979), sided with the Sandinistas, helping to bring the Fidel Castro-backed murderers into power by its tacit support behind the scenes (Carter actually wept when Sandinista dictator, now the elected President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, lost to Violeta Chamorro in free elections in February of 1990). No, to oppose the Sandinistas was not to endorse Somoza. And to point out John Sidney McCain III's continuation of the same empty rhetoric of Robert Joseph Dole, Jr., and George Walker Bush is illogical and self-contradictory is not to endorse Barack Hussein Obama.

To point all of this out is, however, to note once again that a nation founded on the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles that flowed forth from the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry must degenerate into a massive mush of illogic and contradiction and sentimentality in its national discourse and public policy. Catholicism is the one and only antidote to this mush. There is no naturalistic means to oppose the evils wrought by naturalism. Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order.

Yes, I well know that few readers will accept this observations. If John McCain winds up losing the election in nineteen days to Barack Hussein Obama, it will be because naturalists of the "leftist" bent are more convincing in their absolute support for statism than naturalists of the "rightist" bent whose "limited" support for statism is a concession to the inevitability of the growth of the power of the civil state that is accepted as part of the "feelings" and the "views of mainstream America." Why settle for a "limited" statist when you can have a fully committed one? And those in the libertarian camp of naturalism who oppose this civil state's unjust usurpation and exercise of power are themselves incapable of retarding it as they do not understand or accept the monster civil state is the direct and inevitable result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King wrought by the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry.

I, for one, am simply going to make more and more reparations for my many sins, which are so responsible for the state of the Church and that of the world, praying as many Rosaries each day as my state-in-life permits. Each of us can do our part to advance the Social Reign of Christ the King by offering up our daily prayers and penances and sacrifices and humiliations to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, making sure to pray for the conversion of our public officials even as we absent ourselves from lending any degree of credibility to an electoral system that is one gigantic farce from beginning to end.

The Catholic Church has survived the onslaughts of the Roman emperors and various barbarian and pagan potentates. She has survived the Protestant Revolution. She has survived the social revolutions of Modernity with which the counterfeit church of conciliarism has made its "official reconciliation." She has survived the convulsions caused by various heresies. She will survive a Barack Obama Hussein administration if that should be the result of the elections nineteen days from now. She will survive a John Sidney McCain III administration if that should be the result nineteen days from now. And she will survive the counterfeit church of conciliarism that has done so much to exacerbate the problems of Modernity by refusing to champion the rights of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Be at peace. Our Lady has us in the folds of her mantle and in the very crossing of her arms. Be at peace. Her Immaculate Heart will be triumph in the end.

Be at peace in Jesus through Mary.

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of the Rosary, 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.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Hedwig of Silesia and Aunt of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?