by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Naturalists believe in naturalism. Most, although not all, naturalists believe that their own brand of naturalism is "salvific," that it possesses the means to establish, maintain material prosperity at home and serve as the means of securing peace among nations. Some naturalists, living in an insular world as they are surrounded sycophants and other "true believers," believe their own rhetoric to have been received from on high and that those who do not accept their own brilliance, perhaps even choosing to criticize them, must be faulted for failing to see the "self-evident truth" that is so evident to these egomaniacs when they look at themselves in the mirror and/or hear the siren sound of their own voices or contemplate their appealing visages by watching videos of their speeches and public appearances.
Some naturalists know that they are insincere and attempt to fake touches of sentimentality
The late Richard Milhous Nixon, who served a President of the United States of America from January 20, 1969, to August 9, 1974, knew that when he needed to give a good stage performance, which is what he did in his famous "Checkers" speech of September 23, 1952 (see "Checkers" Speech, Part 1, "Checkers" Speech, Part 2, and "Checkers" Speech, Part 3), a little pathos to appeal to the motions was always in order:
But Pat and I have the satisfaction that every dime that we have got is honestly ours.
I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in anything.
One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election.
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog, and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was?
It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers.
And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.
It isn't easy to come before a nation-wide audience and bare your life, as I have done. But I want to say some things before I conclude, that I think most of you will agree on. (The "Checkers" Speech.)
While the charges of having of the then United States Senator Richard Milhous Nixon's having a "slush fund" were indeed scurrilous and hypocritical as the Governor of Illinois at the time, Adlai Stevenson, who was the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States of America, had such a fund for his own office expenses, Nixon, who was, of course, retired General of the United States Army Dwight David Eisenhower's vice presidential running mate in 1952, did take money covertly, something that he later admitted to the man who served as his White House Chief of Staff following the forced resignation of Harry Robins "Bob" Haldeman in April 30, 1973, the late Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr.:
He [Alexander Haig] was brutally candid about his own run for office and his subsequent distaste for political life. “Not being a politician, I think I can say this: The life of a politician in America is sleaze,” he told the authors of “Nixon: An Oral History.”
“I didn’t realize it until I started to run for office,” he said. “But there is hardly a straight guy in the business. As Nixon always said to me — and he took great pride in it — ‘Al, I never took a dollar. I had somebody else do it.’ ” (Alexander M. Haig Jr. Dies at 85, p 3)
Richard Nixon knew how to emote and posture and preen, and he knew when he was doing so, something that he admitted very candidly when he asked speechwriter Ray Price if he, Price, liked how Nixon choked up a bit when he spoke the following words at the Republican National Convention on August 8, 1968:
But this is only part of what I see in America.
I see another child tonight.
He hears the train go by at night and he dreams of far away places where he'd like to go.
It seems like an impossible dream.
But he is helped on his journey through life.
A father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his sons could go to college.
A gentle, Quaker mother, with a passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but she understood why he had to go.
A great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way.
A courageous wife and loyal children stood by him in victory and also defeat.
And in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions worked for his success.
And tonight he stands before you -- nominated for President of the United States of America. (Richard Nixon's 1968 Acceptance Speech)
Nixon knew when he was telling the truth and when he was lying. According to the late H. R. Haldeman's memoirs, Nixon knew in April of 1973 that he would have to resign over his involvement in the misuse of the Central Intelligence Agency for purposes of domestic espionage and his involvement in the cover-up of the this abuse and that involving the the break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, District of Columbia, on Saturday, June 17, 1972. He knew that his presidency was on borrowed time, and he knew that the speeches that he gave in defense of himself were not true.
Former President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, a man who still lives in a world of egomaniacal delusion, had a few moments of lucidity when he knew that he was not telling the truth and when he was faking things for the cameras. This is what he did following the funeral of the late Ronald Brown, who the pro-abortion graduate of the Saint John's University School of Law who served as Clinton's Secretary of Commerce and was killed in a plane crash in Croatia on April 3, 1996 (see Crocodile Tears).
This is not the case with the currently reigning caesar, Barack Hussein Obama, who has told a reporter for The New York Times that he would change none of his policies, that it's the "communication" of them that has been a problem to him (see The Education of President Obama). Obama's arrogant sense of omniscience has proven to be be too much for some naturalists of the "left," including Michael Goodwin of the New York Post:
When word got out that President Obama told an interviewer he had learned from his mistakes, the grandees of the political class swarmed to the bait. Like primitive mystics "reading" the entrails of a sacrificial animal, they began dissecting his comments to divine whether the president is signaling a course change after the election.
Let me save you time and busted hopes. No, no, no -- he's not going to change. Why mess with perfection?
Obama thinks he did everything right and nothing wrong. And he remains stuck on blaming others, including voters, the media, Republicans, Washington, and impossible-to-please liberals.
In short, nearly halfway through his term, Obama still doesn't get it. He's clueless about his massive failures, which means, if he's given the chance, we can expect more of them.
The interview with The New York Times Magazine for today's issue is nonetheless enlightening. Most important, it shows that Obama's public display of confidence to the point of arrogance isn't an act. He really believes his own [propaganda, shall we say].
In his eyes, his only mistakes -- he calls them "tactical lessons" -- were limited to not paying enough attention to politics and "marketing and p.r. and public opinion."
One result is that he allowed himself to be pigeonholed as "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."
This is laughably preposterous for a president whose rank partisanship is already legendary and whose public eloquence is his trump card, one that has diminishing returns precisely because he overplays it.
As for tax-and-spend, his record is his record, and it is off-the-scale frightening.
Obama's self-flattery leads Times writer Peter Baker to wryly conclude, "The first refuge of any politician in trouble is that it's a communication problem, not a policy problem."
Shrinking violets don't make it to the Oval Office, of course, but Obama sees even his failures as evidence of his virtue. "We probably spent much more time trying to get the policy right than trying to get the politics right," he told Baker. "There is probably a perverse pride in my administration -- and I take responsibility for this; this was blowing from the top -- that we were going to do the right thing, even if short-term it was unpopular."
The danger to democracy inherent in that warped view is obvious. The more the public objects to his policies, the more convinced he is that he's right. All issues are reduced to propaganda struggles.
It's a Catch-22 for voters and a self-protection racket for him. He is constantly aware, as all presidents are, of what is said and written about him. But he is incredibly thin-skinned about criticism while immune to the substantive message. (Arrogant Obama thinks he did everything right.)
There are others in the naturalist "left" who have come to the same conclusion about the man in whom they put all of their naturalistic hopes in 2008. One of these is a writer named Mickey Kaus of Newsweek, who admits to being scared by the reigning caesar's belief in his own omnipotence as he blames voters for not realizing how wonderfully infallible he is:
But Obama's talk Saturday night wasn't as bad as his San Francisco lecture. It was worse, in this sense: It's one thing to say those poor people in Pennsylvania are hostile to gay rights, say, because all their "jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them"—and that they'll change when they get the jobs back. It's another thing to say those poor people will change when they get their jobs back when you've had two years to get them their jobs back and have conspicuously failed. At that point, blaming "false consciousness" becomes a semi-delusional way of dancing around your own inability to remove the root of that false consciousness. A little humility is in order. If true humility is unavailable, false humility will do.
Maybe Obama was cynically making a pitch to his immediate audience—a small crowd of Massachusetts donors who might be expected to respond to the idea that they were defending "facts" and "science" against confused know-nothings. But Obama should know, especially after the 2008 San Francisco incident, that a candidate can't keep his words confined to a fundraiser. And this apparently wasn't a closed-to-press event like the one in S.F. We didn't have to rely on a donor/blogger like Mayhill Fowler to spill the beans. Reporters reported on it. Obama couldn't have been trying to cynically play to the donors—he's not that naive! This must be what he really thinks.
Now I'm scared! What yesterday's comments suggest isn't just that Obama will get clobbered in the midterms. It suggests that after he gets clobbered he won't be able to adjust and turn the setback into a longterm victory the way Bill Clinton did. Clinton reacted to his 1994 midterm loss by acknowledging his opponents' strongest arguments and pursuing a balanced budget and welfare reform. Obama seems more inclined to just tough it out until the economy recovers and the scared, confused voters become unscared and see the light. Meanwhile, he'll spend his time in a protective cocoon.
A few weeks ago a right-wing reporter told me that worried Dem congresspersons who met with Obama left their meetings more worried than when they went in. I discounted the gossip, but now it's begining to ring true. We thought he was a great salesman. He turned out to be a lousy salesman. We thought he was a great politician. Instead he makes elementary mistakes and doesn't learn from them. He didn't know "shovel-ready" from a hole in the ground, and then somehow thinks admitting this ignorance without apology will add to his appeal. (Uh, Oh. Obama Clings Again.)
Another naturalist, a fairly objective political analyst by the name of Jay Cost, has come to the same conclusions, meaning that the ruling caesar is seen by at least some in the chattering class as having as little clothing as he has any sense of true self-reflection or humility:
1. Obama’s Dime Store Sociology. This recent story from Politico caught my attention.
President Barack Obama said Americans' "fear and frustration" is to blame for an intense midterm election cycle that threatens to derail the Democratic agenda.
"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared,” Obama said Saturday evening in remarks at a small Democratic fundraiser Saturday evening. “And the country's scared.”
Not the first time we’ve heard comments like this. Remember these comments about the Israeli people?
During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that "some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion."
And who could forget this shot at the bitter clingers of small town Pennsylvania?
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
This kind of dime store sociological explanation is pretty common for the president, despite the fact that it landed him in hot water back in the spring of 2008. These comments have three traits in common.
(a) He doesn’t really know what he’s talking about. Obama might seem like a sociological expert, but he really just plays one on television. For instance, explaining the cultural conservatism of small town Pennsylvania as an artifact of economic decline sounds extremely ill-informed to anybody with at least passing familiarity of the subject.
(b) Hardships generate a false consciousness that always seems to manifest itself as irrational opposition to...Obama. As far as Obama is concerned, the fact that the country is disappointed with his performance is not a sign that he hasn’t done what he promised, but that the country is not thinking clearly.
(c) He turns fellow citizens into sociological subjects. It is one thing for a professor doing a study to treat other human beings as subjects; it’s another for the president of the United States to do it. There is a condescending, anti-republican quality to these statements. Rather than take opposition at face value – President Obama locates the hidden causes behind it, causes that his fellow citizens do not even understand themselves.
This is a terribly bad habit of President Obama's. It comes across as arrogant and condescending, and it doesn’t do a thing to help persuade people. (Obama's Dime Store Sociology.)
Obama has become rather transparent to at least some in the chattering class. He really does see himself as a secular savior despite all of his protestations to the contrary. As far as he is concerned, you see, the "people" are crying out for "Barabbas" by rejecting his political party's candidates in the elections that will be hold on Tuesday, November 2, 2010, the Commemoration of All Souls, thus making him "suffer" for "his people" as a result. This man is sick. Twisted. Demented.
Even some on the naturalistic "right," including some who have a bit of amnesia over who got us involved in the deathtrap for foreign invaders that has long been Afghanistan was started on October 7, 2001, by one President George Walker Bush, understand that the reigning caesar, Barack Hussein Obama, has developed military policy in Afghanistan on the basis of the exigencies of domestic electoral politics (see Obama's War). That Obama is unwilling to deal with the facts on Afghanistan as our military service personnel die for no good reason and as his predecessor's "success" in Iraq proves almost every day to have been delusional propaganda (see Sunnis in Iraq Allied With U.S. Rejoin Rebels and Iraq PM in Tehran on Key Political Visit; so much for those who have contended that the American invasion of Iraq was a means to subdue Mohammedanism as it is believing Mohammedans who have been persecuting and killing Catholics in Iraq as they, the Mohammedans, have taken hold of the reins of power there) is just as telling about his rigidity as his failure to understand that large numbers of the American public are rejecting both him and his statist policies.
Then again, it was the rigidity of George Walker Bush that made possible the election of Barack Hussein Obama. There is only one thing that comes from trusting in naturalists to "solve" problems and/or to retard various evils: naturalism, which winds up making our problems worse and worse over time. A nation that kills over four thousand children a day (in addition to funding and promoting other grievous sins under cover of the civil law and throughout what passes for popular culture) will never know a period of stable material prosperity or true social order, no less be free of threats from terrorists and outright invasions from countries such as, oh, let's pick a random example, Red China or Russia, which is helping Hugo Chavez of Venezuela build a nuclear reactor for "peaceful" purposes. Can anyone say "conversion of Russia"?
Alas, the very, very few remaining readers of this site know that this is what is bound to happen when people fail to realize that we have been made to know, to love and to serve God as He has revealed Himself to us through His Catholic Church and that all of the problems of the world are caused by Original Sin and own Actual Sins. There can be no genuine justice or social order within a nation or peace among nations as long as men continue to live in a state of perpetual warfare against the Most Blessed Trinity by means of their persistence in states of unrepentant Moral Sins. There is no secular, interdenominational, nondenominational, naturalistic, ideological, philosophical, constitutional, legal, electoral, financial or other programmatic means to ameliorate a single, solitary problem facing the country and the world today. Men must reform their lives. They must make reparation for their sins. They must attempt to cooperate with the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flows into their hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces.
It is enough for us to turn to our true popes, who remind us that we must be about the business of planting the seeds for what seems human impossible to most people today: the Social Reign of Christ the King.
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. (Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede, December 8, 1892.)
This, nevertheless, is what they want to do with human society; they dream of changing its natural and traditional foundations; they dream of a Future City built on different principles, and they dare to proclaim these more fruitful and more beneficial than the principles upon which the present Christian City rests.
No, Venerable Brethren, We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker - the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization, it is the Catholic City. It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants. omnia instaurare in Christo. (Pope Saint Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, August 15, 1910.)
No, the confessionally Catholic State is not a guarantor that leaders or citizens will be virtuous, just as being in a state of Sanctifying Grace is not a guarantor that one will see the world clearly through the eyes of the true Faith and act accordingly in all situations.
Nevertheless, just as being in a state of Sanctifying Grace is the necessary precondition for using our intellects and wills properly, so is it the case that the confessionally Catholic State is the necessary precondition for orienting the entirety of national life in light of our First Cause and Last End.
Pope Leo XIII explained this in A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902:
Just as Christianity cannot penetrate into the soul without making it better, so it cannot enter into public life without establishing order. With the idea of a God Who governs all, Who is infinitely Wise, Good, and Just, the idea of duty seizes upon the consciences of men. It assuages sorrow, it calms hatred, it engenders heroes. If it has transformed pagan society--and that transformation was a veritable resurrection--for barbarism disappeared in proportion as Christianity extended its sway, so, after the terrible shocks which unbelief has given to the world in our days, it will be able to put that world again on the true road, and bring back to order the States and peoples of modern times. But the return of Christianity will not be efficacious and complete if it does not restore the world to a sincere love of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. In the Catholic Church Christianity is Incarnate. It identifies Itself with that perfect, spiritual, and, in its own order, sovereign society, which is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ and which has for Its visible head the Roman Pontiff, successor of the Prince of the Apostles. It is the continuation of the mission of the Savior, the daughter and the heiress of His Redemption. It has preached the Gospel, and has defended it at the price of Its blood, and strong in the Divine assistance and of that immortality which has been promised it, It makes no terms with error but remains faithful to the commands which it has received, to carry the doctrine of Jesus Christ to the uttermost limits of the world and to the end of time, and to protect it in its inviolable integrity. Legitimate dispenser of the teachings of the Gospel it does not reveal itself only as the consoler and Redeemer of souls, but It is still more the internal source of justice and charity, and the propagator as well as the guardian of true liberty, and of that equality which alone is possible here below. In applying the doctrine of its Divine Founder, It maintains a wise equilibrium and marks the true limits between the rights and privileges of society. The equality which it proclaims does not destroy the distinction between the different social classes. It keeps them intact, as nature itself demands, in order to oppose the anarchy of reason emancipated from Faith, and abandoned to its own devices. The liberty which it gives in no wise conflicts with the rights of truth, because those rights are superior to the demands of liberty. Not does it infringe upon the rights of justice, because those rights are superior to the claims of mere numbers or power. Nor does it assail the rights of God because they are superior to the rights of humanity. (Pope Leo XIII, A Review of His Pontificate, March 19, 1902.)
While we must pray for those steeped in the errors of naturalism, including its Americanist species that played such a fundamental role in creating conciliarism's "healthy secularity" we attempt to make reparation for our own sins and those of the whole world by offering our prayers and sufferings and sacrifices to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying as many Rosaries each day as our states in life permit, we must not enable these figures of Antichrist in the world or in the counterfeit church of conciliarism (Ratzinger/Benedict is always talking about how the "values" of false religions can "contribute" to the "building" of the better world and to the cause of "world peace") in any way or pretend in any way that they are not absolutely identical in their apostate view of how to build the "better world" by means of a Judeo-Masonic spirit of practical religious indifferentism.
Pope Pius XI exhorted us in Quas Primas, December 11,1925, to be about the business of restoring the Social Reign of Christ the King:
If We ordain that the whole Catholic world shall revere Christ as King, We shall minister to the need of the present day, and at the same time provide an excellent remedy for the plague which now infects society. We refer to the plague of anti-clericalism, its errors and impious activities. This evil spirit, as you are well aware, Venerable Brethren, has not come into being in one day; it has long lurked beneath the surface. The empire of Christ over all nations was rejected. The right which the Church has from Christ himself, to teach mankind, to make laws, to govern peoples in all that pertains to their eternal salvation, that right was denied. Then gradually the religion of Christ came to be likened to false religions and to be placed ignominiously on the same level with them. It was then put under the power of the state and tolerated more or less at the whim of princes and rulers. Some men went even further, and wished to set up in the place of God's religion a natural religion consisting in some instinctive affection of the heart. There were even some nations who thought they could dispense with God, and that their religion should consist in impiety and the neglect of God. The rebellion of individuals and states against the authority of Christ has produced deplorable consequences. We lamented these in the Encyclical Ubi arcano; we lament them today: the seeds of discord sown far and wide; those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder so much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin. We firmly hope, however, that the feast of the Kingship of Christ, which in future will be yearly observed, may hasten the return of society to our loving Savior. It would be the duty of Catholics to do all they can to bring about this happy result. Many of these, however, have neither the station in society nor the authority which should belong to those who bear the torch of truth. This state of things may perhaps be attributed to a certain slowness and timidity in good people, who are reluctant to engage in conflict or oppose but a weak resistance; thus the enemies of the Church become bolder in their attacks. But if the faithful were generally to understand that it behooves them ever to fight courageously under the banner of Christ their King, then, fired with apostolic zeal, they would strive to win over to their Lord those hearts that are bitter and estranged from him, and would valiantly defend his rights.
Moreover, the annual and universal celebration of the feast of the Kingship of Christ will draw attention to the evils which anticlericalism has brought upon society in drawing men away from Christ, and will also do much to remedy them. While nations insult the beloved name of our Redeemer by suppressing all mention of it in their conferences and parliaments, we must all the more loudly proclaim his kingly dignity and power, all the more universally affirm his rights.
The way has been happily and providentially prepared for the celebration of this feast ever since the end of the last century. It is well known that this cult has been the subject of learned disquisitions in many books published in every part of the world, written in many different languages. The kingship and empire of Christ have been recognized in the pious custom, practiced by many families, of dedicating themselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; not only families have performed this act of dedication, but nations, too, and kingdoms. In fact, the whole of the human race was at the instance of Pope Leo XIII, in the Holy Year 1900, consecrated to the Divine Heart. It should be remarked also that much has been done for the recognition of Christ's authority over society by the frequent Eucharistic Congresses which are held in our age. These give an opportunity to the people of each diocese, district or nation, and to the whole world of coming together to venerate and adore Christ the King hidden under the Sacramental species. Thus by sermons preached at meetings and in churches, by public adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed and by solemn processions, men unite in paying homage to Christ, whom God has given them for their King. It is by a divine inspiration that the people of Christ bring forth Jesus from his silent hiding-place in the church, and carry him in triumph through the streets of the city, so that he whom men refused to receive when he came unto his own, may now receive in full his kingly rights.
We give unto the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary all of our efforts to plant a few seeds when all men everywhere will exclaim as the fruit of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary when the only peace plan that matters, Heaven's Peace Plan, Our Lady's Fatima Peace Plan, is fulfilled:
Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!
Isn't it time to pray a Rosary now?
Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.
Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us, especially on your feast day today!
Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.
Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.
Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.
Saint Luke, pray for us.
See also: A Litany of Saints
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