by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The wearying monotony produced by naturalism does not seem to bother a lot of well-meaning Catholics, many of whom continue to run after this or that secular "savior," suspending their sensus Catholicus in order to do the bidding of men and women who are shaped by the anti-Incarnational errors of Modernity and thus support various evils under cover of law. The very same people who refuse to consider themselves bound by the immutable, infallible Social Teaching of the Catholic Church yoke themselves over and over again to naturalists, some of whom have interesting thoughts now and again on certain selected issues, to be sure, but who do not understand that every level of government in a nation (local, state, nation) has an obligation to adhere to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law (those laws revealed definitively by God Himself and taught authoritatively and infallibly only by His Catholic Church) and the Natural Law (those moral laws that inhere in the nature of things and are knowable by reason, the explication and interpretation of which have also been given by God exclusively to the Catholic Church).
Enter Frederick Dalton Thompson, stage naturalist "right," shall we say?
Former Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee) has the support of many in the "establishment" pro-life movement, which includes a lot of people whose support of the slicing and dicing of innocent preborn babies in their mothers' wombs in certain circumstances makes them simply less pro-abortion than those who support baby-killing in all instances without restrictions. No one who supports a single, solitary exception to the absolute inviolability of innocent preborn life is "pro-life." Such a person is, as noted herein, simply less pro-abortion that those in public life who are pro-aborts. It does a fundamental disservice to the cause of truth and logic to let anyone call himself pro-life who supports a single abortion under cover of law. There are no exceptions to the Fifth Commandment's prohibition against the direct, intentional killing of an innocent human life as the first object of a moral act. Fred Thompson, ladies and gentlemen, is not "pro-life" despite his using that label to describe himself.
Do not be deceived by "voting records" or "scorecards," many of which are crafted by organizations that depend heavily upon Republican-based political action committees for their funding. These records or scorecards are most selective in nature, frequently omitting votes on issues such as funding for Title X domestic "family planning programs," which includes abortifacient contraceptives pills and devices. The National Not-So-Right-to-Life Committee, which supports baby-killing in instances where it is alleged that a mother's life is endangered and which takes no stand on contraception whatsoever, does not "score" votes to fund international and domestic "family planning" programs as part of their phony "pro-life" scorecards. Former Senator Thompson has indeed voted to fund such programs, as he admitted in a questionnaire he filled out in 1996 for an organization called Tennesseeans for Choice:
Thompson: “The Supreme Court has attempted to delineate the constitutionally appropriate roles for individual and governmental decision-making on the issue of abortion. Beyond that, I believe that the federal government should not interfere with individual convictions and actions in this area. I would make an exception to this general rule of governmental non-interference in a very limited number of cases where government has a compelling interest in promoting the public welfare. For instance, I believe that states should be allowed to impose various restrictions (i.e. parental notification, 24-hour waiting periods, etc.) if they so choose.”
In the questionnaire, Thompson also answers “no” when asked if he favors criminalizing abortion.
Furthermore, Thompson expressed support for public funding to pay for abortions of indigent families in circumstances where a pregnancy was due to rape or incest, and when a woman’s or girl’s life is threatened by her pregnancy.
When asked what services or programs he supports in order to minimize unplanned pregnancies, Thompson noted that he “voted to provide funding for Title X family planning programs.”
No one who votes to fund "family planning" programs is pro-life. No one who supports contraceptive pills or devices is pro-life. No one who endorses pro-aborts in his own political party is pro-life. Doesn't truth matter to anyone out there?
Sure, Fred Thompson has said that he believes that the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v. Wade was bad law and bad science. However, harkening back to the two different versions of the "Hatch Amendment" that were introduced, respectively, in 1981 and 1983 by Senator Orrin Hatch (Republican-Utah), Thompson believes that it is up to state legislatures to determine to permit or to restrict or prohibit baby-killing under cover of law, invoking the demigod of "federalism" to justify his position. Fair is fair here, folks. I've pointed out that Representative Ron Paul, M.D. (Republican-Texas), is wrong to take this position. So is Fred Thompson.
No institution of civil governance has any authority to pass legislation contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. No institution of civil governance has any authority to permit the killing of innocent human beings under cover of law. While such institutions of civil governance are free to determine what kind of penalties will be imposed upon those who kill innocent human beings, taking into account the nature of the crime and the circumstances under which it was committed, such institutions of civil governance cannot permit the killing of innocent human life. Indeed, they have a positive obligation to prohibit such killing. The recourse to "federalism" here is simply wrong. While the power of all levels of government should be as limited as possible, relying upon the family (which has been rendered asunder by contraception and the subsequent rise in marital infidelity and promiscuity) to address the needs of its members, a Catholic nation would be organized on the basis of a concordat with the Church wherein it would be recognized by the civil state that no unit of government can contravene the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural law, recognizing as well that the Catholic Church has the right, exercised as an absolute last resort following the discharge of her Indirect Power of teaching and preaching and exhortation, to interpose herself with the civil authorities when the good of souls demands her maternal intervention and magisterial correction.
The "federalist" approach to abortion also ignores the factual history of how abortion-on-demand came to be considered, albeit unjustly and falsely, the "law" of the land in Roe v. Wade. Many of the states prior to Roe v. Wade permitted baby-killing in some circumstances. Many have "trigger" laws that will permit babies to be killed if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The march in the direction of decriminalized baby-killing in the United States of America began at the state level as baby-killing activists started intensive publicity campaigns to complain about how it was "unfair" to all women to make abortion available only to some women in some circumstances.
The "federalist" approach to abortion is thus a gigantic cop-out to avoid making the daily slaughter of the preborn the first and foremost issue to be discussed in a country where domestic pets have more "rights" under the civil law than little babies whose immortal souls have been made in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity. It boggles the mind that Catholics worship at the false altar of "federalism" without once admitting that no form of national government organization (federal, confederal, unitary, each of which is a legitimate form under which Holy Mother Church could prosper if recognized as the true Church as is her absolute right) must organize itself around the Deposit of Faith that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has entrusted exclusively to the Catholic Church.
As I noted in
Feeding Caesar's Bloat a few weeks ago now, Catholics in public life are supposed to pursue the common good in light of man's Last End. When this truth is lost, as it has been in the nearly five hundred years since the debauched lecher named Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg, then men become captive to the blindness of their own pride, which prevents them from even providing for the simple public health and safety concerns of their fellow citizens. Sloth prevails in most instances, which is why highway bridges are not inspected regularly (or inspected cursorily) and why it is not even considered to be important to used the highway engineering technology (including sensors which could trigger lights on demand at times of low traffic volume) now available to synchronize traffic lights on surface roads so as to produce a smoother, more consistent flow of traffic. The ethos of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry results in the rise of career politicians, most of whom believe that we exist to enable them to pick our pockets so as to further their own careers, and of steady increase in the bloat of bureaucracy and the subsequent, inevitable increase of control over the daily lives of citizens and a decrease of the citizens' legitimate liberties.
Pope Pius XI noted in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922, that contemporary politics was all about the acquisition and retention of raw political power as ultimate, defining ends in and of themselves:
To these evils we must add the contests between political parties, many of which struggles do not originate in a real difference of opinion concerning the public good or in a laudable and disinterested search for what would best promote the common welfare, but in the desire for power and for the protection of some private interest which inevitably result in injury to the citizens as a whole. From this course there often arise robberies of what belongs rightly to the people, and even conspiracies against and attacks on the supreme authority of the state, as well as on its representatives. These political struggles also beget threats of popular action and, at times, eventuate in open rebellion and other disorders which are all the more deplorable and harmful since they come from a public to whom it has been given, in our modern democratic states, to participate in very large measure in public life and in the affairs of government. Now, these different forms of government are not of themselves contrary to the principles of the Catholic Faith, which can easily be reconciled with any reasonable and just system of government. Such governments, however, are the most exposed to the danger of being overthrown by one faction or another.
Pope Leo XIII explained the disastrous consequences of secularism/naturalism throughout his twenty-five year pontificate, doing so with great clarity and force in Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900:
From this it may clearly be seen what con sequences are to be expected from that false pride which, rejecting our Saviour's Kingship, places man at the summit of all things and declares that human nature must rule supreme. And yet, this supreme rule can neither be attained nor even defined. The rule of Jesus Christ derives its form and its power from Divine Love: a holy and orderly charity is both its foundation and its crown. Its necessary consequences are the strict fulfilment of duty, respect of mutual rights, the estimation of the things of heaven above those of earth, the preference of the love of God to all things. But this supremacy of man, which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores Him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor selfdevotion. Man may indeed be king, through Jesus Christ: but only on condition that he first of all obey God, and diligently seek his rule of life in God's law. By the law of Christ we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the Ancient Law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by His declaration, explanation and sanction; but also the rest of His doctrine and His own peculiar institutions. Of these the chief is His Church. Indeed whatsoever things Christ has instituted are most fully contained in His Church. Moreover, He willed to perpetuate the office assigned to Him by His Father by means of the ministry of the Church so gloriously founded by Himself. On the one hand He confided to her all the means of men's salvation, on the other He most solemnly commanded men to be subject to her and to obey her diligently, and to follow her even as Himself: "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me" (Luke x, 16). Wherefore the law of Christ must be sought in the Church. Christ is man's "Way"; the Church also is his "Way"-Christ of Himself and by His very nature, the Church by His commission and the communication of His power. Hence all who would find salvation apart from the Church, are led astray and strive in vain.
As with individuals, so with nations. These, too, must necessarily tend to ruin if they go astray from "The Way." The Son of God, the Creator and Redeemer of mankind, is King and Lord of the earth, and holds supreme dominion over men, both individually and collectively. "And He gave Him power, and glory, and a kingdom: and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve Him" (Daniel vii., 14). "I am appointed King by Him . . . I will give Thee the Gentiles for Thy inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Psalm ii., 6, 8). Therefore the law of Christ ought to prevail in human society and be the guide and teacher of public as well as of private life. Since this is so by divine decree, and no man may with impunity contravene it, it is an evil thing for the common weal wherever Christianity does not hold the place that belongs to it. When Jesus Christ is absent, human reason fails, being bereft of its chief protection and light, and the very end is lost sight of, for which, under God's providence, human society has been built up. This end is the obtaining by the members of society of natural good through the aid of civil unity, though always in harmony with the perfect and eternal good which is above nature. But when men's minds are clouded, both rulers and ruled go astray, for they have no safe line to follow nor end to aim at.. . .
God alone is Life. All other beings partake of life, but are not life. Christ, from all eternity and by His very nature, is "the Life," just as He is the Truth, because He is God of God. From Him, as from its most sacred source, all life pervades and ever will pervade creation. Whatever is, is by Him; whatever lives, lives by Him. For by the Word "all things were made; and without Him was made nothing that was made." This is true of the natural life; but, as We have sufficiently indicated above, we have a much higher and better life, won for us by Christ's mercy, that is to say, "the life of grace," whose happy consummation is "the life of glory," to which all our thoughts and actions ought to be directed. The whole object of Christian doctrine and morality is that "we being dead to sin, should live to justice" (I Peter ii., 24)-that is, to virtue and holiness. In this consists the moral life, with the certain hope of a happy eternity. This justice, in order to be advantageous to salvation, is nourished by Christian faith. "The just man liveth by faith" (Galatians iii., II). "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews xi., 6). Consequently Jesus Christ, the creator and preserver of faith, also preserves and nourishes our moral life. This He does chiefly by the ministry of His Church. To Her, in His wise and merciful counsel, He has entrusted certain agencies which engender the supernatural life, protect it, and revive it if it should fail. 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.
So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men's hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power which once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once remove all impediments and allow the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away; mutual rights will be respected. If Christ be listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realise that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established ( by the salutary fear of God as the Lawgiver. In the same way the precepts of the natural law, which dictates respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance there the order established by Divine Providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result. The common welfare, then, urgently demands a return to Him from whom we should never have gone astray; to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life,-and this on the part not only of individuals but of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to this His own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the Life which proceedeth from Him- legislation, political institutions, education, marriage and family life, capital and labour. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilisation which is so ardently desired depends greatly upon this, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity, as by the spiritual qualities of morality and virtue.
Indeed, Pope Saint Pius X, who condemned the separation of Church and State that is at the root of the problems of Modernity and the social teaching heresies of Modernism in the counterfeit church of conciliarism, explained in Pascendi Dominci Gregis, September 8, 1907, that it is indeed the goal of Modernism to produce a world where people think and act naturalistically, having divorced the civil state from the true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope:
In the civil order the public conscience has introduced popular government. Now there is in man only one conscience, just as there is only one life. It is for the ecclesiastical authority, therefore, to adopt a democratic form, unless it wishes to provoke and foment an intestine conflict in the consciences of mankind. The penalty of refusal is disaster. For it is madness to think that the sentiment of liberty, as it now obtains, can recede. Were it forcibly pent up and held in bonds, the more terrible would be its outburst, sweeping away at once both Church and religion. Such is the situation in the minds of the Modernists, and their one great anxiety is, in consequence, to find a way of conciliation between the authority of the Church and the liberty of the believers.
But it is not only within her own household that the Church must come to terms. Besides her relations with those within, she has others with those who are outside. The Church does not occupy the world all by herself; there are other societies in the world., with which she must necessarily have dealings and contact. The rights and duties of the Church towards civil societies must, therefore, be determined, and determined, of course, by her own nature, that, to wit, which the Modernists have already described to us. The rules to be applied in this matter are clearly those which have been laid down for science and faith, though in the latter case the question turned upon the object, while in the present case we have one of ends. In the same way, then, as faith and science are alien to each other by reason of the diversity of their objects, Church and State are strangers by reason of the diversity of their ends, that of the Church being spiritual while that of the State is temporal. Formerly it was possible to subordinate the temporal to the spiritual and to speak of some questions as mixed, conceding to the Church the position of queen and mistress in all such, because the Church was then regarded as having been instituted immediately by God as the author of the supernatural order. But this doctrine is today repudiated alike by philosophers and historians. The state must, therefore, be separated from the Church, and the Catholic from the citizen. Every Catholic, from the fact that he is also a citizen, has the right and the duty to work for the common good in the way he thinks best, without troubling himself about the authority of the Church, without paying any heed to its wishes, its counsels, its orders -- nay, even in spite of its rebukes. For the Church to trace out and prescribe for the citizen any line of action, on any pretext whatsoever, is to be guilty of an abuse of authority, against which one is bound to protest with all one's might. Venerable Brethren, the principles from which these doctrines spring have been solemnly condemned by Our predecessor, Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fide
How sad it is that so many Catholics have permitted themselves as citizens to be separated from the Faith in order to serve as dreamy cheerleaders for naturalists who have not got a single clue as to why human problems exist (Original Sin and Actual Sin) and how they are to be ameliorated (the daily cooperation of individual souls with the Sanctifying Graces won for them by the shedding of every single drop of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to whose Immaculate Heart has been entrusted the cause of world peace). Catholics serve as dreamy cheerleaders for naturalists of the so-called "left" and the so-called "right," both of which are but artificial "divisions" designed to confuse the masses as political power continues to be consolidated in the hands of the enemies of the Divine Redeemer.
Although Fred Thompson is probably acting in good conscience, the naturalism of his life allies him with the fiercest naturalist enemies of Our Lord and His Holy Church in two of the organizations to which he belongs, the Trilateral Commission and the Council of Foreign Relations. Just take a list at the members of the Trilateral Commission to find a veritable who's who in the world of pro-abortion and population "control," including former National Security Adviser Henry Alfred Kissinger, Jr.:
The three current chairmen are:
Some others who are or have been members:
George H.W. Bush: Former President of the U.S.
Jimmy Carter: Former President of the U.S.
Bill Clinton: Former President of the U.S.
Walter Mondale, former vice-president of the U.S. (under Carter)[6]
Dick Cheney: Current vice-president of the U.S.
Robert Taft Jr., US Senator
Fred Thompson, Former US Senator
Ted Sorensen, special adviser to President Kennedy[7]
Lloyd Bentsen, former Senator and Secretary of the Treasury under Clinton[8]
Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State (under Clinton) and deputy Secretary of State (under Carter)[9]
Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense under Reagan[10]
John Glenn, former astronaut, senator and presidential candidate[11]
Donna Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services under Clinton[12]
Robert Rubin, Treasury Secretary under Clinton[13]
Bruce Babbitt, Interior Secretary under Clinton[14]
Henry Cisneros, HUD Secretary under Clinton[15]
Hank Greenberg: Former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the world's largest insurance and financial services corporation.
Lee Raymond: Former CEO and Chairman, ExxonMobil, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute, director of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., director and member of the Executive Committee and Policy Committee of the American Petroleum Institute.
David Rockefeller: Founder of the Commission; Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank board from 1969 to 1981; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1970 to 1985, now honorary Chairman; a life member of the Bilderberg Group.
Henry Kissinger: U.S. diplomat, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations; former Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of JP Morgan Chase.
Zbigniew Brzezinski: U.S. National Security Advisor to U.S. President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Paul Volcker: Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1987, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Group of Thirty.
Paul Wolfowitz: Former President of the World Bank, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and a prominent member of the neo-conservatives in Washington.
Gerald M. Levin: Former CEO of Time Warner, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Robert Zoellick: Nominated President of the World Bank, Former Deputy Secretary of State, former U.S. Trade Representative.
Frank Carlucci: President of Carlyle Group, U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989.
William Cohen: Republican Congressman and Senator, U.S. secretary of Defense under President Clinton.
Mary Robinson: President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997 as a candidate for the Labour Party; United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002.
Sergei Karaganov: Presidential Advisor to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin; member of the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 to 2005.
Jim Balsillie: Chairman and Co-CEO of Research In Motion.
Georges Berthoin: International Chairman of the European Movement from 1978–1981.
Ritt Bjerregaard: Danish Social Democrat MP, member of various cabinets; European Commissioner for Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection in the Santer Commission from 1995 to 1999.
John H. Bryan: former CEO of Sara Lee bakeries, affiliated with the World Economic Forum and a director on the Boards of Sara Lee, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, British Petroleum and Bank One.
James E. Burke: CEO of Johnson & Johnson from 1976 to 1989.
Catherine Ann Bertini: Former United Nations Under Secretary General in Management, former Director of World Food Program.
Gerhard Casper: Constitutional scholar, faculty member and former President at Stanford University; successor trustee of Yale University and part of the Board of Trustees of the Central European University in Hungary.
Tim Collins: CEO of Ripplewood Holdings LLC investment company; also part of the Yale Divinity School and Yale School of Management board of advisors and U.S.-Japan non-profit organizations.
Bill Emmott: Former editor of The Economist magazine.
Dianne Feinstein: Democratic U.S. Senator, former mayor of San Francisco, member of the Council on Foreign Relations; ranking member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.
Martin Feldstein: Professor of economics at Harvard University; president and CEO of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984; former director of the Council on Foreign Relations; member of the Bilderberg Group and of the World Economic Forum.
Hugh Fletcher: Chancellor of Auckland University and CEO of Fletcher Challenge.
David Gergen: Political consultant and presidential advisor during the Republican administrations of Nixon, Ford and Reagan; also served as advisor to Bill Clinton.
Allan Gotlieb: Canadian ambassador to Washington from 1981 to 1989, chairman of the Canada Council from 1989 to 1994.
Bill Graham: former Canadian Minister of National Defence and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Paul Martin; since 2006, interim parliamentary leader of the Liberal Party.
Mugur Isarescu: Governor of the National Bank of Romania since 1990 and prime minister from December 1999 to November 2000; he worked for the Minister of Foreign Affairs then for the Romanian Embassy in the U.S. after the 1989 Romanian revolution.
Otto Graf Lambsdorff: Chairman of the German Free Democratic Party from 1993 to 1998; Economic Minister for West Germany from 1977 to 1984.
Liam Lawlor: Irish politician who resigned from the Fianna Fáil party; died in a car-crash in Moscow in 2005.
Pierre Lellouche: French MP of the conservative Union for a Popular Movement party led by Nicolas Sarkozy.
Jorge Braga de Macedo
Kiichi Miyazawa: Japanese Prime minister in 1991–1993; Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1976, Chief Cabinet Secretary from 1984 to 1986, Minister of Finance in 1987 and again from 1999 to 2002.
Akio Morita: Co-founder of Sony Corporation; vice-chairman of the Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) and member of the Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group.
Andrzej Olechowski: Polish director of Euronet, USA; on the supervisory boards of Citibank Handlowy and Europejski Fundusz Hipoteczny; president of the Central European Forum; deputy governor of the National Bank of Poland from 1989 to 1991; minister of Foreign Economic Relations from 1991 to 1992; minister of Finance in 1992 and of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 1995; economic advisor to president Lech Wałęsa from 1992 to 1993 and in 1995, etc.)
Lucas Papademos: European Central Bank Vice-president.
Gerard C. Smith: First U.S. Chairman of the Commission; chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of 1969.
Jessica Stern: Former NSC staff member, author, and lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
George Vasiliou: President of the Republic of Cyprus from 1988 to 1993, founder and leader of the Cypriot United Democrats party.
Francisco Pinto Balsemão
Maldonado Gonelha
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa: Leader of the Social Democratic Party (Portugal) from 1996 to 1999.
Miguel Sousa Soares: Management Consultant, EMPORDEF, MDN (Portugal) from 2005.
Isamu Yamashita
Lorenzo Zambrano: Mexican chairman and CEO of CEMEX since 1985, the third largest cement company of the world; member of the board of IBM and Citigroup.
Hedley Donovan, former editor-in-chief of Time magazine, founding member, and White House Advisor on Domestic and Foreign Policy under Carter (From Wikipedia)
The intersecting points between the Trilateral Commission and the Council of Foreign Relations in their mutual support for "globalization" (One World Governance by means of multinational coprorations, banks and supranational trade, monetary and "security" organizations created by treaties that sign away the legitimate sovereignty of independent nations) can be seen by reviewing a list of current and past members of the Council of Foreign Relations:
Some of the corporate members follow, most whom are Fortune 500.
ABC News
Alcoa
American Express
AIG
Bank of America
Bloomberg
Boeing
BP
Chevron
Citigroup
Coca Cola
De Beers
Deutsche Bank
ExxonMobil
FedEx
Ford Motor
General Electric
GlaxoSmithKline
Google
Goldman Sachs
Halliburton
Heinz
Hess
IBM
JP Morgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.
Lehman Brothers
Lockheed Martin
MasterCard
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
Motorola
Nasdaq
News Corp
Nike
Pepsi
Pfizer
Shell Oil
Sony Corporation of America
Tata Group
Time Warner
Total S.A.
Toyota Motor North America
UBS
United Technologies
United States Chamber of Commerce
U.S. Trust Corporation
Verizon
Visa [32]
Notable current Council members
Dick Cheney
Barack Obama
Hillary Clinton
Mitt Romney
Jonathan S. Bush
Fred Thompson
Condoleezza Rice
Paul Wolfowitz
Robert M. Gates
John D. Negroponte
Leslie Gelb
John McCain
Colin Powell
Alice Rivlin
Madeleine Albright
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Henry Kissinger
Alan Greenspan
Paul Volcker
Vernon Jordan
John C. Whitehead
George Soros
Brent Scowcroft
George Shultz
James Woolsey
Jimmy Carter
Warren Christopher
James D. Wolfensohn
Steven Weinberg
Edgar Bronfman
Barbara Walters
Lawrence Eagleburger
Thomas Friedman
Paul R. Krugman
Peggy Dulany
Keith A. Ridley, IV
David Rockefeller, Jr.
John D. Rockefeller, IV
Ethan Bronner
Warren Hoge
Steve Poizner
Bill Brock
Tom Brokaw
Bill Clinton
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr.
Chris Heinz
John Kerry
Stan O'Neal
Henry Paulson
Charles Prince
Karenna Gore Schiff
Ron Silver
Jonathan Soros
Lesley Stahl
Adam Wolfensohn
Robert Zoellick
Charlie Rose
Angelina Jolie (UN Goodwill Ambassador)[33]
Mikhail Fridman (International Advisory Board member)
Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby (International Advisory Board member)
Notable historical members
Conrad Black (International Advisory Board member)
McGeorge Bundy
William Bundy
C. Douglas Dillon
Allen Dulles
John Foster Dulles
President Gerald Ford
Sergei Karaganov (International Advisory Board member)
George Kennan
Robert Lovett
John J. McCloy
Charles Peter McColough
Robert McNamara
Paul Nitze
Nelson Rockefeller
John D. Rockefeller 3rd
Felix Rohatyn
Eugene Rostow
Walt Rostow
Dean Rusk
Arthur Schlesinger
Strobe Talbott
Albert Wohlstetter
Roberta Wohlstetter
Paul Warburg
Caspar Weinberger
List of Chairmen
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-53
John J. McCloy 1953-70
David Rockefeller 1970-85
Peter G. Peterson 1985-2007
Carla A. Hills (co-chairman) 2007-
Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007- (From Wikipedia)
Still on that Fred Thompson band wagon? Don't be fooled by the folksy demeanor and the articulation. Fred Thompson plays with the "big boys" of international commerce and finance. He is in the State of Israel's hip pocket, supporting its policies of attacking Lebanon and the cruelties imposed on the Palestinians who were ousted by the Zionists in 1948 and have been subjected to inhumane treatment ever since. He is the biggest supporter of Israel in the current crop of Republican candidates for that party's 2008 presidential nomination:
FRED THOMPSON COMING TO ISRAEL
(Wednesday, June 06, 2007 by Staff Writer - Israel Today News)
“Fred Thompson, US presidential hopeful and former star of the hit television series “Law & Order,” is scheduled to make his first visit to Israel in the coming days.
Thompson, who is said to have a fair chance of winning the Republican presidential nomination, will meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and various other senior officials during his tour of Israel.
Of the dozen or so candidates contesting the nomination, Thompson is among the most supportive of Israel.
The former actor, who has also served as a US senator, bucked popular international sentiment by insisting in a hard-hitting editorial column that Israel has been almost too careful in its war on Palestinian terrorism.
“Israel is at war,” Thompson wrote for the conservative website Townhall.com. And the Jewish state has gone to “incredible lengths to stop the war against them without harming Palestinian non-combatants.”
Thompson is also on record as supporting an Israeli military strike against Iran should international diplomacy fail to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear arms.
More liberal political elements in Israel fear Thompson may be too far to the right, and therefore end up harming Israel. During his time as a senator, Thompson was one of the sponsors of the Jerusalem Embassy Act demanding that the US government move its embassy to the Israeli capital in defiance of Palestinian claims to the city.” Fred Thompson coming to Israel
The State of Israel is no friend of the United States of America. Indeed, two authors have assessed the control exercised by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee on American foreign policy in amazingly blunt terms, as a report in The New York Times published yesterday, September 6, 2007, reveals:
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” arrives carrying heavy baggage. John J. Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, set off a furor last year by arguing, in an article that appeared in The London Review of Books, that uncritical American support for Israel, shaped by powerful lobbying organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, does grave harm to both American and Israeli interests.
A bitter debate has raged ever since, with accusations of anti-Semitism leveled by, among others, Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, and Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the principal lobbying organizations taken to task by Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt.
“The Israel Lobby,” an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Slowly, deliberately and dispassionately Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt lay out the case for a ruthlessly realistic Middle East policy that would make Israel nothing more than one of many countries in the region. On those occasions when Israel’s interests coincide with America’s, it should count on American support, but otherwise not. What Americans fail to understand, the authors argue, is that most of the time the two countries’ interests are opposed.
The reason they do not realize this, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt insist, can be explained quite simply: The Israel lobby makes sure of it. Working closely with members of Congress, public-policy organizations and journals of opinion, energetic, well-financed groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, along with dozens of political-action committees, perpetuate the myth, as the authors see it, of Israel as an isolated, beleaguered state surrounded by enemies and in need of America’s unstinting financial and military support.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate before it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
There is nothing underhanded or devious about this, the authors say. Like the National Rifle Association or the AARP, the Israel lobby relies on the traditional political weapons available to any special-interest group in pressing its agenda. It just happens to be unusually skillful and effective.
“It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state,” they write.
The problem, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, is that Israel has become a strategic liability with the end of the cold war and a moral pariah in its dealings with the Palestinians and, most recently, the Lebanese. Uncritical American support for its closest Middle East ally has damaged American credibility in the Arab world, encouraged terrorism, stymied the search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and in every way made America’s international position weaker and more dangerous.
Coolly, not to say coldly, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt mount a prosecutorial brief against Israel’s foreign and domestic policies, and against the state of Israel itself. They describe a virtual rogue state, empowered by American wealth and might, that blocks peace at every turn, threatens its cowering neighbors with impunity, crushes the national aspirations of the Palestinians and, whenever the opportunity arises, bites the hand that feeds it.
Working tirelessly in the background is the Israel lobby, playing Iago to America’s Othello, leading president after president down ever more dangerous paths. Without intense pressure from the Israel lobby, the authors argue, America would not have undertaken the war in Iraq.
Most American readers will bristle at the authors’ characterization of Israel. This is to be expected, Mr. Mearsheimer and Mr. Walt argue, because of the completely false image of Israel and its history that has been manufactured by the Israel lobby. As a result, Americans completely misinterpret the Palestinian issue and fail to support a productive policy that would tilt away from Israel and toward the Palestinians. . . . .Two Scholars’ Argument Against Support for Israel
The State of Israel is not now and has never been an "ally" of the United States of America. Consider the case of the Israeli Air Force's bombing of the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 during the "Six Day War:"
NEW YORK – On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship 'USS Liberty' was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army.
'Liberty,' a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic 'ears' including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon.
'Liberty' had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over 'Liberty,' which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship's electronic antennas and dishes. The 'Liberty' was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.
At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning 'Liberty' with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the 'Liberty' midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.
Israeli gunboats circled the wounded 'Liberty,' firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House.
An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order. 'prepare to repel borders.' But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. 'Liberty' was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying.
The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since World War II.
Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a 'tragic error.' Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken 'Liberty' for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink 'Liberty.' So did three CIA reports; one asserted Israel's Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack.
In contrast to American outrage over North Korea's assault on the intelligence ship 'Pueblo,' Iraq's mistaken missile strike on the USS 'Stark,' last fall's bombing of the USS 'Cole' in Aden, and the recent US-China air incident, the savaging of 'Liberty' was quickly hushed up by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel's explanation and let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million. There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack 'Liberty' were jailed for 18 years.
Surviving 'Liberty' crew members would not be silenced. They kept demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack to the media. Israel's government worked behind the scenes to thwart these efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse 'Liberty's' survivors of being 'anti-Semites' and 'Israel-haters.' Major TV networks cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the 'Liberty' by crewman James Ennes' was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him 'an Arab propagandist.'
The attack on 'Liberty' was fading into obscurity until last week, when intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was flying high overhead the 'Liberty,' electronically recorded the attack. The US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag.
Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most likely because 'Liberty's' intercepts flatly contradicted Israel's claim, made at the war's beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel, and that Israel's massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces.
Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan Heights. Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria, which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt. Bamford says Israel's offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when 'Liberty' appeared off Sinai, then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel's claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by 'Liberty.'
Most significant, 'Liberty's' intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan and Sinai.
Far more shocking was Washington's response. Writes Bamford: 'Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.' Why?
Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this 'third rail' issue.
Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his men's heroism – not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member's graves were inscribed, 'died in the Eastern Mediterranean..' as if they had be killed by disease, rather than hostile action.
A member of President Johnson's staff believed there was a more complex reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel, and a cover-up of the 'Liberty' attack, in exchange for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War.
Israel, which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford's revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Golan will be emboldened.
Much more important, the US government's long, disgraceful cover-up of the premeditated attack on 'Liberty' has now burst into the open and demands full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of 'Liberty's' dead and wounded seamen must finally be heard.
The USS Liberty: America's Most Shameful Secret
If you like the foreign policies of President George Walker Bush, my friends, you are going to love the foreign policies of a President Frederick Dalton Thompson, who says that he would have done in Iraq pretty much what George Bush has done. This is not surprising as the neoconservatives who planned the moral, economic, political and strategic nightmare that has been the unjust invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States of America meant to make the Middle East "safe" for "America's only friend," the anti-Catholic, anti-Arab, anti-truth State of Israel, which is perfectly capable of defending itself without a single drop of American blood being shed in its proxy wars, such as the one taking place currently in Iraq.
That the naturalist Fred Thompson is without much of a moral compass should be plain by his refusal to condemn outright the wanton devastation visited by the blood thirsty killers of the naturalist, Christophobic government of State of Israel last year in the bombing of civilian population centers in Lebanon. Thompson would continue the Bush's administration enabling of such mass killings, as Paul Craig Roberts noted last year:
There never was any doubt of the Bush regime's complicity in Israel's naked aggression against the Lebanese civilian population. Bush has protected Israel from world condemnation. Bush has blocked those who attempted to bring a stop to Israel's bombing of residential neighborhoods and civilian infrastructure, and now Bush rushes more bombs for Israel to drop on Lebanon.
On July 22, the New York Times revealed the full extent of the Bush regime's participation in the heinous war crimes being inflicted on the Lebanese people:
"The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign. … The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said."
Obviously, Bush and his government do not think Israel has yet murdered enough Lebanese. Bush denounces Syria and Iran for allegedly arming Hezbollah, while he rushes more deadly weapons to Israel.
The entire world is appalled at the Bush regime's support for Israel's policy of expanding its borders through naked aggression.
Every Arab and Muslim now knows that the U.S. is Israel's enabler. Arab hopes are dead that the U.S. will pressure Israel to behave more humanely toward people not armed with American fighter planes, tanks, and high explosives.
America's complicity in Israel's war crimes is more than America's UK lapdog can stand. According to the French news service, AFP, "The United States is starting to look isolated in its refusal to rein in Israel's attacks on Lebanon with key ally Britain criticizing the wholesale killing of Lebanese civilians and widespread destruction."
AFP reports that Britain's deputy foreign minister Kim Howells "questioned Israel's military tactics and slammed Israel's killing of 'so many children and so many people. If Israel is chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don't go for the entire Lebanese nation.'"
But is Israel after Hezbollah, or is Israel after the real estate that comprises southern Lebanon?
Right-wing Israelis say Israel needs southern Lebanon as a buffer against Hezbollah. If Israel were to succeed in driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, Israel would then want a buffer for southern Lebanon, where Israeli settlements would quickly spring up, and after that buffer, another, just as Israel has gobbled up Palestine.
The American people need to understand what everyone else in the world understands: The Bush regime is empowering the Israeli state to push out its borders by stealing land from other people.
This Israeli policy is the source of the Middle East conflict.
It is ignorant and immoral to blame the conflict on Hamas and Hezbollah. These organizations were created by Israeli aggression. Lacking American jet fighters, tanks, ordinance, and resupply, these organizations resort to terror, which is the only weapon that they have. Otherwise, the world would pay no attention as Arabs are ground under by Israeli expansion.
The fault is America's more than Israel's. The American government and the brainwashed American public are the source of the conflict. If America did not enable Israeli aggression, Israel would have to behave responsibly and endeavor to coexist with its neighbors.
Israel is an artificial state created in Arab lands by European colonial powers after World War II. Instead of working to win acceptance and overcoming Arab hostility to Europe shipping off "the Jewish problem" to the Middle East, Israel has antagonized its Middle East neighbors. Israel can play the bully-boy role because the U.S. acts as Israel's big brother. With its policy of fang and claw, Israel endangers its own right to exist.
Many distinguished Israelis came to this conclusion long before I did. I am only repeating what can be read in more eloquent writings of distinguished Israelis.
Israel's greatest friends are its own peace movement and those few in America who dare to criticize Israel's self-destructive policies. It is not anti-Semitic to hold Israel to the same standards as other civilized countries or to report facts instead of Israeli propaganda.
Israel's greatest enemies are the American neoconservatives, who hold the power in the Bush regime. What we are witnessing in the Middle East is the unfolding of the neocon plan to destroy all vestiges of Arab/Muslim independence and to remove all opposition to Israel's agenda. Can 5 million Israelis, even when backed by the United States, forever suppress hundreds of millions of humiliated Muslims stewing in their humiliation?
This is a recipe for perpetual conflict and the eventual destruction of Israel.
Neocons believe that deception of the American public is a legitimate way for them to achieve their plan. Bush's so-called "war on terror" is the cloak for neocon deception.
Bush's war is not on terror. Bush's war is on Muslim states not ruled by American puppets.
US Complicit in Destruction of Lebanon - by Paul Craig Roberts
You'll get more and more of this with Fred Thompson--or Rudolph Giuliani or John McCain or Mitt Romney or Sam Brownback or Mike Huckabee or Duncan Hunter or Tom Tancredo, each of which is a shill for the State of Israel. Yes, only Dr. Ron Paul opposes the madness in the Middle East, doing so while he is oblivious to the fact that his belief that individual state governments can "permit" baby-killing if it reflects the "views" of its citizens (and his own support, both personal and professional, of certain types of contraceptives) makes this country all the more vulnerable to extinction from within as well as to attacks from without. And for those still not disabused of the Ron Paul bandwagon, the sober reality is that he, who could do much good if he converted to the true Faith and became a champion of the rights of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by His Catholic Church, is polling at around three percent in the national polls, which really don't lie about the relative strength of candidates:
Without Gingrich (recalculated, based on second choice of Gingrich voters): |
|
|
|
|
|
. |
|
|
|
8/21-22/07 |
7/17-18/07 |
6/26-27/07 |
6/5-6/07 |
5/15-16/07 |
|
|
% |
% |
% |
% |
% |
|
Rudy Giuliani |
30 |
27 |
31 |
24 |
25 |
|
Fred Thompson |
15 |
17 |
18 |
14 |
9 |
|
Mitt Romney |
12 |
10 |
8 |
12 |
10 |
|
John McCain |
7 |
17 |
18 |
15 |
18 |
|
Mike Huckabee |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
1 |
|
Ron Paul |
3 |
2 |
- |
2 |
1 |
|
Sam Brownback |
1 |
1 |
1 |
- |
2 |
|
Tom Tancredo |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Chuck Hagel |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
- |
|
Duncan Hunter |
- |
- |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
Other (vol.) |
2 |
2 |
1 |
- |
2 |
|
Unsure |
24 |
20 |
12 |
21 |
26 |
|
Wouldn't vote (vol.) |
3 |
2 |
3 |
3 |
2 |
|
Tommy Thompson |
n/a |
1 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
|
Jim Gilmore |
n/a |
n/a |
- |
1 |
1 |
|
|
|
|
|
. |
Republican nomination 8/31
Political systems founded in naturalism are bound to collapse sooner or later over the course of time. They produce short-sighted men who do not understand the problems of the world and/or who believe in false ideas (liberalism, conservatism, constitutionalism, libertarianism, socialism, communism, capitalism, utilitarianism, relativism, positivism, materialism, feminism, environmentalism, statism--and a whole host of other secular " 'isms"). Political discourse thus centers around symptoms of problems rather than their root causes. No one has the ability or the courage to state that each human being and each nation must be converted to the true Faith, fulfilling the irrevocable mission that Our Lord gave to the Eleven before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Ascension Thursday:
And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing them they adored: but some doubted. 18 And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Matthew 28: 16-20.)
Perhaps someone will tell former Senator Fred Thompson (as well as the other candidates vying for the presidential nominations of both major political parties) that the truths of the God-Man Himself, Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, bind all men at all times in all places until the end of time. The following passage from Pope Saint Pius X's Vehementer Nos, February 11, 1906, should be the keynote of their individual lives as well as the cornerstone of their political platforms:
That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State. Our illustrious predecessor, Leo XIII, especially, has frequently and magnificently expounded Catholic teaching on the relations which should subsist between the two societies. "Between them," he says, "there must necessarily be a suitable union, which may not improperly be compared with that existing between body and soul.-"Quaedam intercedat necesse est ordinata colligatio (inter illas) quae quidem conjunctioni non immerito comparatur, per quam anima et corpus in homine copulantur." He proceeds: "Human societies cannot, without becoming criminal, act as if God did not exist or refuse to concern themselves with religion, as though it were something foreign to them, or of no purpose to them.... As for the Church, which has God Himself for its author, to exclude her from the active life of the nation, from the laws, the education of the young, the family, is to commit a great and pernicious error. -- "Civitates non possunt, citra scellus, gerere se tamquam si Deus omnino non esset, aut curam religionis velut alienam nihilque profuturam abjicere.... Ecclesiam vero, quam Deus ipse constituit, ab actione vitae excludere, a legibus, ab institutione adolescentium, a societate domestica, magnus et perniciousus est error."
Once again, as will be pointed out in tomorrow's commentary on the centenary of Pascendi Dominci Gregis, the fault rests not only with the naturalists of our naturalist political order. It rests with the conciliarists of the counterfeit church of conciliarism who have made their "reconciliations" with the principles of 1789. There can be no such "reconciliation," as Pope Leo XIII made clear in
Custodi Di Quella Fede:
Everyone should avoid familiarity or friendship with anyone suspected of belonging to masonry or to affiliated groups. Know them by their fruits and avoid them. Every familiarity should be avoided, not only with those impious libertines who openly promote the character of the sect, but also with those who hide under the mask of universal tolerance, respect for all religions, and the craving to reconcile the maxims of the Gospel with those of the revolution. These men seek to reconcile Christ and Belial, the Church of God and the state without God
Today is First Friday in the month of September, giving us an opportunity to spend time with Our Beloved to console His Most Sacred Heart for our own many sins and offenses against Him, providing us as well a chance to offer up our prayers and sacrifices and our mortifications and humiliations to that same Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, both of Which beat as one and suffered as one during the events of our Redemption. We pledge ourselves today and each day to be enslaved to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, honoring the images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Immaculate Heart of Mary in our homes (or motor homes!) that have been enthroned to them!
We must defend the rights of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen, doing so with true Charity for our all people, a Charity that wills their good, the ultimate expression of which is the salvation of their immortal souls as members of the Catholic Church. To this end, therefore, may we be ever faithful to the Nine First Fridays and the Five First Saturdays, ever prompt in praying our daily Rosaries, ever mindful of the need to distribute Green Scapulars and blessed Miraculous Medals to those God's Holy Providence sees fit to place in our paths. We are not called to be naturalists doing the bidding of other naturalists. We are called to be Catholics who are ever willing and ready to fulfill this exhortation of Pope Leo XIII, contained in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:
But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.'' To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world." Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.
The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. So soon as Catholic truth is apprehended by a simple and unprejudiced soul, reason yields assent.
Omnia instaurare in Christo.
Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us!
Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our deaths. Amen.
All to you, Blessed Mother. All to your Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. Jesus, Mary
Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Pope Saint Pius X, pray for us.
Saint Giles, pray for us.
Saint Lawrence Justinian, pray for us.
Saint Hadrian, pray for us.
Saint Stephen of Hungary, pray for us.
Saint Rose of Lima, pray for us.
Saint Joseph Calasanctius, pray for us.
Pope Saint Zephyrinus, pray for us.
Saint Louis IX, King of France, pray for us.
Saint Jane Frances de Chantal, pray for us.
Saint Bartholomew, pray for us.
Saint Philip Benizi, pray for us.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, pray for us.
Saint John Eudes, pray for us.
Saint Hyacinth, pray for us, pray for us.
Saint Agapitus, pray for us.
Saint Helena, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saint Clare of Assisi, pray for us.
Saint Athanasius, pray for us.
Saint Irenaeus, pray for us.
Saints Monica, pray for us.
Saint Jude, pray for us.
Saint John the Beloved, pray for us.
Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.
Saint John Bosco, pray for us.
Saint Dominic Savio, pray for us.
Saint Scholastica, pray for us.
Saint Benedict, pray for us.
Saint Joan of Arc, pray for us.
Saint Antony of the Desert, pray for us.
Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.
Saint Bonaventure, pray for us.
Saint Augustine, pray for us.
Saint Francis Xavier, pray for us.
Saint Peter Damian, pray for us.
Saint Turibius, pray for us.
Saint Francis Solano, pray for us.
Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, pray for us.
Saint Lucy, pray for us.
Saint Monica, pray for us.
Saint Agatha, pray for us.
Saint Anthony of Padua, pray for us.
Saint Basil the Great, pray for us.
Saint Philomena, pray for us.
Saint Cecilia, pray for us.
Saint John Mary Vianney, pray for us.
Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
Saint Athanasius, pray for us.
Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, pray for us.
Saint Isaac Jogues, pray for us.
Saint Rene Goupil, pray for us.
Saint John Lalonde, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel Lalemont, pray for us.
Saint Noel Chabanel, pray for us.
Saint Charles Garnier, pray for us.
Saint Anthony Daniel, pray for us.
Saint John DeBrebeuf, pray for us.
Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, pray for us.
Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.
Saint Lucy, pray for us.
Saint Dominic, pray for us.
Saint Hyacinth, pray for us.
Saint Basil, pray for us.
Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.
Saint Sebastian, pray for us.
Saint Tarcisius, pray for us.
Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.
Saint Gerard Majella, pray for us.
Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.
Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.
Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.
Saint Genevieve, pray for us.
Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.
Pope Saint Pius V, pray for us.
Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us.
Saint Louis de Montfort, pray for us.
Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.
Venerable Pauline Jaricot, pray for us.
Father Miguel Augustin Pro, pray for us.
Francisco Marto, pray for us.
Jacinta Marto, pray for us.
Juan Diego, pray for us.
Father Maximilian Kolbe,M.I., pray for us.
The Longer Version of the Saint Michael the Archangel Prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, 1888
O glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Prince of the heavenly host, be our defense in the terrible warfare which we carry on against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, spirits of evil. Come to the aid of man, whom God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of the devil. Fight this day the battle of our Lord, together with the holy angels, as already thou hast fought the leader of the proud angels, Lucifer, and his apostate host, who were powerless to resist thee, nor was there place for them any longer in heaven. That cruel, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil or Satan who seduces the whole world, was cast into the abyss with his angels. Behold this primeval enemy and slayer of men has taken courage. Transformed into an angel of light, he wanders about with all the multitude of wicked spirits, invading the earth in order to blot out the Name of God and of His Christ, to seize upon, slay, and cast into eternal perdition, souls destined for the crown of eternal glory. That wicked dragon pours out. as a most impure flood, the venom of his malice on men of depraved mind and corrupt heart, the spirit of lying, of impiety, of blasphemy, and the pestilent breath of impurity, and of every vice and iniquity. These most crafty enemies have filled and inebriated with gall and bitterness the Church, the spouse of the Immaculate Lamb, and have laid impious hands on Her most sacred possessions. In the Holy Place itself, where has been set up the See of the most holy Peter and the Chair of Truth for the light of the world, they have raised the throne of their abominable impiety with the iniquitous design that when the Pastor has been struck the sheep may be scattered. Arise then, O invincible Prince, bring help against the attacks of the lost spirits to the people of God, and give them the victory. They venerate thee as their protector and patron; in thee holy Church glories as her defense against the malicious powers of hell; to thee has God entrusted the souls of men to be established in heavenly beatitude. Oh, pray to the God of peace that He may put Satan under our feet, so far conquered that he may no longer be able to hold men in captivity and harm the Church. Offer our prayers in the sight of the Most High, so that they may quickly conciliate the mercies of the Lord; and beating down the dragon, the ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, do thou again make him captive in the abyss, that he may no longer seduce the nations. Amen.
Verse: Behold the Cross of the Lord; be scattered ye hostile powers.
Response: The Lion of the Tribe of Juda has conquered the root of David.
Verse: Let Thy mercies be upon us, O Lord.
Response: As we have hoped in Thee.
Verse: O Lord hear my prayer.
Response: And let my cry come unto Thee.
Verse: Let us pray. O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we call upon Thy holy Name, and as suppliants, we implore Thy clemency, that by the intercession of Mary, ever Virgin, immaculate and our Mother, and of the glorious Archangel Saint Michael, Thou wouldst deign to help us against Satan and all other unclean spirits, who wander about the world for the injury of the human race and the ruin of our souls.
Response: Amen.
