So-Cons for Rudy?
Dave Price
Even as a Rudy backer, news this good is hard to believe:
Rudy Giuliani, whose positions on abortion and homosexuality mark him as the most socially liberal Republican presidential candidate in more than a generation, is so far winning the contest for the support of social conservatives, according to a new analysis of recent polls.I'm the farthest thing from a social conservative myself, but it's interesting that the group everybody predicted would go against Rudy is lining up about the same as the rest of the GOP primary crowd.
...
Giuliani is winning 30 percent of the social conservative bloc, compared to 22 percent for McCain. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney captured just 8 percent — a figure that puts Romney in fourth place, behind former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is currently not a declared candidate.
Are you kidding? The primaries show up every night in most major newscasts and every day in most major newpapers.
I would offer that the reason behind this support is that those folks understand what the Presidency is all about: leadership.
It galls me to hear presidential candidates talking about all the prigrams they are going to get enacted if elected. Well, it's the Legislature that, well, legislates, not the President. He's the CEO. He proposes the budget and they decided whether to apporve of it and pay for it.
Giuliani has demonstrable leadership skills. He's also shown that he isn't swayed by polls on his basic belief. Refreshingly, he's willing to stand up and say "This is who I am" and let folks decide whether or not to support him.
Now, He's not very handsome. Sometimes he stumbles a bit with words. He's been divorced. He's had some bad things happen. That's OK. He's not trying to spin anything, not reaching for poll numbers, not trying to be someone or something he is not, and I, for one, enjoy that candor.
Will I vote for him? I dunno. Romney and McCain are right off my ticket. I'd like to see Fred enter the race, and he'd (at present) be my primary choice. However, if he doesn't run, it's probably Rudy or sitting out the vote.
I live in Maine. I have two RINO Senators, Snowe and Collins. After this last go round, and especially after the Alien Amnesty bill, they will not get a vote from me.
What I would like to see, and I'm very serious about this, is a "none of the above" choice on the ballot.
Respects,
As a social conservative I know there's going to be at least one person not voting for Rudy.
This might well be the year I vote third party.
would you say that says something about Rudy or about the convictions or priorities of social conservatives?
*Tilting at windmills for 11 years (since I cast my last vote for Bill Clinton)
Priorities and pragmatism. Besides Rudy's electability, the War on Terror(or as Giuliani more accurately terms it, "the terrorists' war on us") trumps everything else.
The Twin Towers cast a long shadow.
(Full disclosure: I just mailed in my new registration form which states "unaffiliated" (was Republican))
I don't want to lose any national elections to Democrats over social issues. Rudi likely will use good italian-american common sense about gun rights (at least those of us who don't live in Manhattan), women's right to choose in abortion issues, centrist US Supreme Court nominees, and defending the USA against terrorism or outright foreign invasion such as we are now enduring with no end in sight from the present sad-ass national leadership.
Will some hardcorps rightists sit it out rather than vote for Rudi? Maybe so. But these are the same kind of jerks who will let Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama become president rather than support a centrist Republican. If worse comes to worse, maybe this will be a good way to shake these people loose from the Republican Party.
But most voting Americans are centrists. That means staying away equally from the socialist-leaning left and christian sharia that imagines it has inherited the right wing our party.
The truth is, Giuliani is the only Republican who most republican activists think is capable of taking away centrist voters from the Democrats, and capturing otherwise blue states in 2008.
I'm one of these people, at least on the local level, and that's the way I see it, too.
As for the Bush bunch, we hardly pay any of them any regard anymore. Especially now that he's come out with his usual mouthful of mush in support of an amnesty for millions of illegal aliens who have surreptitiously crossed the US borders.
Most of us with strong feelings on this topic don't give a damn how long they've been here. We don't give a damn about the problems of employers who think they need cheap sweat labor. We want them tagged and expelled.
Anything about any of this that some of you don't understand?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I'm sick of Bush, but I'm probably voting GOP in 08', because I think the Dems have been wildly irresponsible.
The one Dem I did like and would considering supporting, Bill Richardson, got hammered on Meet the Press this weekend. He had jello spine, when discussing Iraq and what to do about it.
HBarnes
So, you, just like every other Democrat, vote for the party rather than the candidate? What makes you any better than them?
I vote for who is most qualified. If that means voting third party so be it.
You're obviously just looking to maintain course 4 years at a time. I'm looking in the long term and that means both parties need to get cleaned up.
Maybe if you were more concerned about the long term you wouldn't be so concerned about a Democrat in the White House in the short term.
And without "these people," as you call them whoever they are, the Republican party would cease to exist. But, I guess you're looking for a new Republican party altogether. Most Republicans I know want another Reagan in office. That you seemingly think Rudi is a better fit for the party than anyone else in the past 55 years I daresay you're choosing the husk over the heart.
The heart is leaving the party. You're welcome to whatever remains.
Go read some of Arnold's comments. You couldn't be more wrong about him. He doesn't give a damn about the party, just about his issues. If a pro-abortion Democrat came out against gun control and a pro-life Republican came out for it, you would see Arnold vote for that Democrat. Maybe even campaign for him.
You do realize that you've pretty much proven my point, don't you?
Look, I do this for a living. You don't have to believe me, and maybe I'll turn out to be wrong about how social conservatives ultimately warm up to Giuliani, but this thing has't even gotten started yet. Most of these campaigns do not even have full field staffs.
1) Choice in abortion issues, which is exactly what my wife and daughter want, is decided totally at the level of the United States Supreme Court. So I want nobody in the White House likely to yet another anti-abortion judge to sit on that court. Nor do I want the US Senate to be controlled by people of like mind who will consent to such an appointment.
Mostly this means I do not want any more Roman Catholics sitting on the US Supreme Court, who are in position to be threatened to be denied their sacrements or whatever by some bishop, arthbishop or cardinal of that church over their support for abortion rights. I've seen this happen more than once. Which is why any Catholic for whom I vote will be one who largely ignores the dogma of his or her own religion.
None of this matters at the state level, as long as we can maintain Roe v Wade as an absolute wall of separation of church and state on this issue.
2) On the issue of gun rights, all this is being played out now exclusively among the state governments, and no longer at the federal level.
Therefore, I want governors and members of their legislatures to be friendly toward citizen gun rights, regardless of their opionions about abortion and stem-cell research.
These folks at the state level can be Roman Catholics, or they can be Wiccans, for all I give a damn. Because none of that matters in relation to gun rights.
Now do you understand this a little better, Martin? I have been mostly faithful to Republican candidates and issues for a long time. But that has started to dwindle with these godly folks exercizing so much influence in that party. Things were not likely this in the days of Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon or even Reagan. But this Bush and his execrable father turned the world upside down on folks like me, and we're not happy about it.
The Giulianis and the Schwarzeneggers will reverse all that and put things right again.
And we will rebuild the Republican Party with a whole new cast of characters.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
What exactly does "IIRC" mean? I googled it up and got an answer as vague as my question. Call me cycnical if you want. But only winners of elections call the shots in this country. And then, only if they have the big money behind them as well as the votes. What I like to do is look at the world the way it actually is, and try not to get drowned swimming against that tide.
Everybody,
I live in Dane County, Wisconsin. Home of more or less leftist Madison, Wisconsin.
Around here, republican affiliations do not number very many less than democratic affailiations. But those who label themselves "Independents" outnumber both by 2-1, and those with no political affiliation whatsoever outnumber all the rest by vast pluralities.
The think is, all these middle-road voters control the politics around any metropolizing city.
What are the real issues around here? Nothing whatsoever to do with foreign policy, gun rights, abortions, stem cell research, etc.
First and foremost are land use issues. Which means comprehensive planning for the rural goverments. (In Wisconsin they are labelled "towns", which is the same as "townships" across the rest of the Middle West.) Land use issues of importance around here include whether to keep the open spaces or allow developers to fill them. Which pits big money developers against a lot of rural residents, including farmers who find themselves having a hard time buying lands on which to cultivate crops for promising markets such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Then there are issues of putting local tax dollars into commuter rail systems, as people watch the superhighways eat up more and more living space at the same time that people are looking forward to a future when a gallon of gasoline will cost them as much as they make in one hour working at a minimum wage job.
Next is the war of the NIMBYs against the American Transmission Company, which is the State of Wisconsin's agent for putting up more 345kw power lines. (One wonders why the county department of planning and development doesn't assign staffers to sit down with ATC and plan where the power transmission line corridors of 15 years from now will go, so as to lock people out from developing there.
Next is line is a series of arguments over funding of local school districts. Keep it all on the property tax rolls, or put some of the burden on state general funds raised by sales and income taxes? The problems they face is that with a statewide tax cap in place, school district income rises 2.8% annually, while school expenses rise 4.2% annually, according to the superintendant of the local Mount Horeb Area School District.
Then there's the question of tax supported public services (education, health, etc) for children of illegal immigrants. Everybody's a liberal about letting them cross the borders nightly, but nobody wants to pay for what happens locally when all these Mexicans settle in.
So as you can see, there are a lot of local issues in a county such as ours that have nothing whatsoever to do with the Bush vs Pelosi big picture.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And in keeping with that goal, there's nothing I'd like better than to capture a bunch of independent or non-affiliated voters from the Democrats. The hardcorps leftists around here is "Progressive Dane", and they are beginning to fight with some of the Democratic Party officeholders over being too lukewarm in defense of their principals. But getting such people to vote for Republicans would be almost harder than inducing some of the local Jews to take part in an RC mass or a prayer session at the local sun'a mosque.
Remember, politics is the art of getting this or that guy or gal elected. Everything follows from that.
Call that cynicism if you want. But I treat it as plain old reality.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Yes, I support abortion rights. My wife and daughter, along with some historical examples of note, have convinced me that's the sound choice.
Yes, I support citizen gun rights. I think that in the absence of a police state, it's the only way to protect your life, the lives of your loved ones, your property, and maybe even your neighbors, when push comes to shove.
Yes, I support comprehensive planning, at least in urbanizing areas such as where I live, because I see this as a mechanism for protecting my own property rights. Nothing goes away quicker than open spaces when the big developers start moving earth. But our tax assessor hits us up every year partially based on those open spaces in our "viewshed", so I want to get value for my money.
Yes, I support a carefully-funded public school system because the alternative, separate systems of private and church-operated schools, will lead to further cultural divides in this already-fractured society.
Yes, I want a well-armed and carefully defended USA, because without that, all the gun collections of all the NRA members if this country would be insufficient to defend this country against either slow or rapid destruction.
Yes, I want a totally controlled border. Having been duly born here, of a father born in Davenport, Iowa and a mother born in Barrow-in-Furness, UK, I don't want anybody in this country who wasn't either born here or came into this country legally, with an immigration stamp issued by a consulate of the United States of America. That's exactly how my mother came here from Britain. That's exactly how my wife Stefi came here from Croatia.
Yes, I want a society with political equality for everybody, but matched with an economic system based on merit and a meritocracy. Which means economic inequality, because that in itself is the godfather of almost all progress in human civilization.
And yes, I make no distinction whatsoever in regard to race, but every possible distinction in regard to culture.
Well, that's enough for now. You've all been reading my stuff for many years, and you can more or less predict what I have to say about anything.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Well, they've been saying that since 2006.
People who vote in primaries are the people who are already paying attention.
I wish that were true, but it's not. Even they aren't really paying attention. And, indeed, campaigns are not really spending tons of time and money lobbying voters directly anyway, as they will begin to in a few months (basically after Labor Day). Right now it's all about courting the media and raising money and basically just playing nice while introducing yourself to the public. But none of the hardcore issues have come out yet. Campaigns are long and unpredictable: you never know what the major issues that define each candidate will be, but one thing we can be sure of is that the story has yet to be written.
When you start getting paid mailers every other day from McCain telling you that Guiliani paid for abortions, or Guiliani telling you that McCain is mentally unstable, and people knocking on your door or calling you to find out where you stand, then we can talk.
Sure they are. I vaguely recall polls saying upwards of 70% reported they were paying some or a lot of attention to the 2008 elections.
When you start getting paid mailers every other day from McCain telling you that Guiliani paid for abortions, or Guiliani telling you that McCain is mentally unstable, and people knocking on your door or calling you to find out where you stand, then we can talk
I've been getting that stuff for months already.
Frankly, the more that the uber-religious coversatives have vapors regarding Rudy, the more inclined I am to vote for him. He has constantly displayed leadership when in elected office, and has done more to disturb ultra-leftists than all the other presidential wanna-bes combined.
(2) Here's my neighbors's thinking as a social moderate: (to paraphrase a college professor): "Hmmmmm. In that case I'll vote for Hillary! Because then the same horrible social things will happen, but the Democrats will get the blame! Bwahahahah ..."
He kinda has an interesting point. If you think that Guiliani and Hillary will behave basically the same way, and that way will involve blame, then shouldn't you logically vote for the one that you want to get blamed more?
(3) When I asked everyone else (friends, family, neighbors) they pointed out slowly, like I was crazy, some variation of "THIS is May, and you want to think about politics!?!" These are definitely people that are going to vote, even in the primaries. So, yeah, I'm thinking that here in the Midwest, its too soon to tell.
IIRC means: if I recall correctly, not that that merits any particularly importance.
First Martin comes to your defense in a quite intelligent way, and you berate him, and then you foolishly equate the pro-life wing of the Republican Party with the Roman Catholic Church.
You may claim yourself to be a rationalist and an atheist, but it's very clear that you've absorbed a deep loathing of Catholics that comes straight from the very Bible-thumpers you so enjoy antagonizing.
The majority of Roman Catholics in this country still vote Democratic, Arnold, just as they always have. Catholics are a distinct minority in the Republican Party, and those who are there often feel the loathing and contempt and aggressive ignorance that you glow toward them. Most Jews feel that same animosity, if to a lesser level, since anti-Catholicism is much stronger in the party.
What, was your mom tortured by nuns or something?
The truth of the matter is that the pro-lifers you hate so much in your Republican Party are mostly Evangelical, Protestant, Bible-thumping Christians who, by and large, are almost as contemptuous toward Roman Catholics as you are.
And here I was tempted to defend your politics by explaining that you are a man into his '70s, and remember the party of Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater, all pre-Reagan and before the coming of the Evangelical Christians who came to control the party in the 1980s. But instead you're busy bringing up your animosity toward Rome, even though Catholics are a very small minority in your party and have virtually no influence as a church.
Meanwhile you ignore the elephant (pun intended) in the room: the massive influence of the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed and their ilk, who are infinitely more influential upon your party than Benedict in Rome is.
But you just go on and keep pissing in the face of your Catholic friends. It will profit you richly I assure you.
What is it about Catholics that pisses you off so much that you hate them more than pro-lifers like Jerry Falwell? Is it the funny hats?
IIRC, is If I Recall Corectly.
I still pay a lot of attention to you and know we are exactly the same about our borders. Memorial Day I had dinner with my son and his friend. They are both Ice (immigration and customs enforcement.) We talked in depth about their jobs. Bush has let them down terribly and the ICE (Princess), she got that name because she was a political appointy. She is just under Michael Chertoff of Homeland Security. Chertoff needs to go and so does the ICE Princess. The lady is 37 years old and has absolutely no experience in law enforcement. Due to the leadership, agents morale is pretty low along with our Border Patrol. The political games are serious and as a country we will see things we hoped would not happen.
It is sad for me to read Debbie Schussel's blog (my son recommended the site) to read the comments of agents that have been in immigration for twenty and thirty years. The laws we currently have are not being enforced and therfore illegal aliens committing crimes are back in the streets within days. This is due to immigration lawyers and the ACLU. Agents never sign their names on the write up sheets due to this otherwise the illegals could come back and get the agents. There is so much more to say on this but it really just gets me terribly upset.
I do want the closed borders due to the terrorists that have come through McAllen, Texas. How do we know this? The clothing many times has patches on them and the agents down there have arrested quite a few. Therfore, the only safe thing to do is to build that fence, hire more agents, both Border Patrol and ICE and of course the drones and better equipment. This would cost us money and Bush has said he would order the hiring of more agents and get the equipment but has yet to do it.
I also want to say that my son and his friend told me even though all this stuff was going on they feel they are blessed to have good jobs. They both get frustrated with the politics and has lapse they can be but they are proud to be defending America.
I'm not sure of Rudy. I need to hear more about his immigration stance. To my knowlege in reading blogs, he has not said enough to assure me he will control our borders. The only one that has really come out with some really good and safe measures for our country is, Tom Tancerdo. He of course is not among the leading Republicans. I will keep reading and listening to talk radio where the canidates come on for interviews. It is to early for me to make up my mind.
I voted for Bush and I am disappointed. Needless to say, my vote means a lot to me. I hope we get a man in that will protect this country. One last hing. Bush has offered ICE Agents six figures in income to go to Iraq and defend the borders. What is that saying?
I'm probably not saying it exactly right but many a good christian has been in the SCOTUS.
Around this state, at least, it seems that the Protestants are more likely to be the middle roaders on ideas such as abortion, stem cell research, birth control, and most other issues in which religion makes its presence felt.
Whereas the Catholics who hold elected office in either the state legislature or the US Congress are the ones who are sent threatening letters by their bishops.
Even catholic governors such as Wisconsin's Jim Doyle, who favors both abortion rights and unlimited stem cell research, are ostentatiously criticized in ways to suggest that they are traitors to their own church.
In fact, I don't know of any Protestant bishops who threaten legislatives of their religious persuasion either with keeping them out of church for Sunday prayers or any somesuch. I just never have accustomed myself to such churchly interference with governmental affairs.
And the truth is, any man or women who feels his or her self answerable to some foreign potentate -- religious or political -- rather than merely to the Constitution of the United States, is not someone I ever could agree to elect to public office. That's exactly the standard I would apply to any Protestant, Orthodox Christian, Jew, Moslem (Shi'a or Sun'a), Hindu, Buddhist, or follower of any other organized religious group.
I let this sort of stuff slide when it was the Reverend Jerry Falwell or Reverend Dobson doing the preaching. Bigots? The mold was broken after some of these guys were created. But no such person has the worldwide influence of the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In any case, these folks are all Americans, and they don't exercize their power and influence from a gilded palace in an ancient foreign city. In short, I never have felt threatened by them, because they never ever have held the power of the Catholic Church at its prime. And none of them ever shall.
I strongly and deeply hold to the total separation of religion and state. That goes equally for the jesus folks, the mary folks, the icon folks, the moses folks, the muhamad folks, the hussein folks, the gautama folks, joseph smith and nephi folks, the mary baker eddy folks, the l ron hubbard folks, and anybody I may have missed.
The problem with the Roman Catholic church, as I see it, is that traditionally it has been the nearest equivalent in the western world to the way the Kremlin tried to run the affairs of the human race from the Elbe river in the west to the Bering Straits in the far northeast, back in the days of Big Brother.
In short, I see it as a totalitarian empire. To be sure, these days, it's mostly a toothless and feeble gerontocracy. But the whole of that church has entirely too much power and influence over human affairs, and when anyone, anybody or any institution acquires what I think is unmerited and unelected power over so many people -- more than billion people, I would suppose, than I think the time has come to shorten that institution at the ankles or maybe even the knees.
The Comintern and then the Kremlin's empire both faded away, I often think it appropriate for western civilization if the Romintern and the Vatican's empire of the spirit at least shrank considerably.
I think that will happen, at least over time. The Latin Rite was the glue that held them together. In time, I think there will be separate national churches for the catholic world as their is for the orthodox christian world. Their ultimate loss of unity, which I look forward to, will rob them of some of their churchly power. And I think that will be good both for Roman Catholicism and for the future of the civilizations of the West.
Because no Vatican III will ever succeed in unscrambling this particular omelet. The Latin Rite is as dead as Babylon, and I'm glad of it.
Until then, the eye through which I view them and their works shall remain questioning and ever watchful.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I know many good members of the US Supreme Court have been Catholics. Along with Protestants, Jews, and maybe a ride-by-night unbeliever or two (at least back in the Age of Reason in which this great republic was founded).
But questions about abortion, the status of a fetus, the right to control birth, and all the rest, never much came to public attention back in those times.
I strongly support abortion rights. One day perhaps, I'll right an essay and publish it here, if Dean should bring himself to post it under my name, and you will know why I feel so strongly about it.
I thought that question was decided by Justice Harry Blackmun and a comfortable majority of the United States Supreme Court in 1973.
But now I see a lot of people chipping away at that right, and it's making me angry.
This is the same feeling that arouses me so strongly every time somebody questions my gun rights.
So my short, brief speech to the world might consist of just two statements"
"IF YOU DON'T LIKE ABORTIONS, DON'T HAVE ONE."
"IF YOU DON'T LIKE GUNS, DON'T OWN ONE."
Here's looking at you, kid.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Could you kindly comment:
Sorry it looks so much better repeated:
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
Bush ♥'s illegals.
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
So now Bush is talking about Darfur ?
And you're talking about Vatican III
Totalitarian empires.
The Kremlin, Comintern
The Supreme Pontiff
The problem with the Roman Catholic Church
West of the Bering Straits
And Protestants who are much more
Likely to be middle roaders on issues of
The Ten
commandmentssuggestions.So what do you have against ankle biters ?
You argue well. Some St Paddy's Day, I shall down a drink with you in mind, considering all the blogsite discourses we've had together over the years, in this great electronic Church of Esmay.
So as not to antagonize you on what should be a day of celebration and joy, I will refrain from wearing hunter's orange. (Like so many of the gunnies do when we want to remind the two houses of the Wisconsin legislature about how powerful the NRA is around America.)
-------
I don't much listen to Bush anymore. About the illegal aliens, Darfur, the Baghdad surge, or even the outlook for the baseball season.
About all the rest of this. I;m not just biting at anybody's ankles. I'm thinking far ahead of my own lifetime.
I've always viewed the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy as a totalitarian institution. The people who set it up, at the time of the Council of Nicea, intended it that way right from the start. Their successors ran it that way right until Martin Luther smacked them apart in the early 16th century. The people who founded this society, across the world, did so largely as a result of the Protestant Reformation. And I think we would have the freedom we enjoy in this society had that great Reformation not taken place.
But still today, because of its size, power and influence, the great Church of Rome is the only christian institution that I think of, at least occasionally, as a seriously organized threat to my american freedoms.
So if I perceive it that way -- and I do -- then why shouldn't I not cut to the chase and say so?
So yes, McK. I want them untimately busted up into a Church of Italy, a Church of Germany, a Church of Poland, a Church of France, a Church of Ireland. Maybe even a Church of Wisconsin.
And why would they not be good Christians even if their unity extended only as far as the border with the nearest secular jurisdiction?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I can see plainly that some of the protestant church organizations and a whole lot of big and little preachers are probably far more bigoted about secular America than are any of the princes of the Roman Catholic Church. I've taken the trouble to look up some of their malarkey. The only thing they have going for them, from my point of view, is that they lack any real extended power, so we can all afford to ignore whatever it is they are fulminating for or against on any given Sunday.
My main beef with Roman Catholicism is that their organizing is so big that it has become far too powerful to function well in a secular republic such as ours. Which gets me back to the totalitarianism that I talked about here earlier this week.
All power corrupts, and that works for bigtime churces as well as for madmen who sneak into or force their way into situations were they can only be removed by defeat in war or by successful insurrection.
Other than that, as an Apatheist, I have nothing in particular for or against the dogmas or teachings either of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, whatever and whichever.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Its quite nice to have some opinions, but sometimes they ought be supported with atomic facts.
The elder signores of the Curia have little temporal power. The Pope, however, can on the other hand occasionally have an extraordinary bully pulpit influence on world affairs without overtaking south-central Wisconsin. But at the same time, it is much more than difficult for him to run a bureaucracy that seeks to control one billion catholics much less sovereign countries. JP II choose, the pulpit.
And, so a new Pope John Paul II had a profound influence on General Jaruzelski, the main communist leader in the Poland of 1987:
"John Paul returned to Poland in 1987, celebrating an open-air mass at the Gdansk shipyard before an ecstatic crowd of 750,000. Reiterating that Polish workers had the right to self-government, the pope concluded: "There is no struggle more effective than Solidarity."
"At farewell ceremonies in Warsaw, Jaruzelski bitterly responded to the pontiff with open disrespect. "How often in recent days has [Poland] been the victim of outside manipulation so offensive to the common sense of our people?" he said."
And that was the end of General Jaruzelski as the regime began to crumble.
So, In 1989, who shows up in Rome but Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raissa. They are an interesting couple, atheist but not apatheist:
"As the revolution spread, Gorbachev refused to send in the Red Army to prop up the falling regimes, abandoning Moscow's satellites to their fate. In December of 1989, he visited the pope in Rome, and after a lengthy private conversation, the pontiff invited the premier's wife to join them. Gorbachev paid his host a high compliment:
"Raisa, I introduce you to His Holiness John Paul II, who is the highest moral authority on Earth, besides being a Slav like us."
So Gorby recognized that the Pope without any army and without any divisions can exert a moral authority that can actually move temporal events without controlling them.
With Ronald Reagan, these influences destroyed the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. That wasn't a bad thing and the Pope didn't take over anything.
"I didn't cause this to happen," John Paul was later to say. "The tree was already rotten. I just gave it a good shake."
So, Arnold, if an apatheist is a person that doesn't care, you sure seem to have a plethora of opinions indicating otherwise.
The question is, can you separate out the repetitive biased loop tape playing in your age challenged brain with the realities on the ground ?
I think the answer is: yes.
On the other hand, you don't seem to know that ankle biters are little, wee children.
They are the future.
Yes, McK. I can seaprate out repetitive biased loop tapes playing around in my age challenged brain.
And you got it wrong about us Apatheists. For many of us, it isn't that we don't care. Its just that all you heavy-duty theists got competing and mutually conflicting claims about who's the true god and who's the fake one. So many of us sit here like Joe Citizen on jury duty trying to figure out who's which one of these guys up there arguing is the judge, which one is the prosecutiving attorney, which one is the defending attorney, and which one is the guy who was indicted or is being sued.
I remember all about the Marked One, his beautiful and maybe saintly red-headed wife, and their meeting with the Pope. I almost found myself crying with that man when his wife -- the center focus of his life -- died. I also happen to life Slavs in general and I got a soft spot in my consciousness for Russians in particular. They had to pay some of the heaviest prices in all history just to keep their country together against the German invasions, the Bolsheviks, and all that followed.
Now about the wee ones. Stefi and I have raised four of our own. I hope more than you can imagine that we did our jobs well.
But just on the strength of that most fundamental of all human desires, doesn't mean that I can stretch my imagination or intellect to think that I will meet them all again some day, in a giant family reunion, in faraway heaven.
I wouldn't want to lie to you about any of this, McK. But above all, I wouldn't want to lie to myself.
Now about the abortion stuff. Maybe I told all this on Dean's World some time ago. Maybe I didn't.
I got firm fixed ideas on abortion rights back in about 1961, when a lady named Sherri Finkbein got pregnant with what would have been her fifth child. All this happened when she was working as a television show producer in Phoenix, Arizona.
Like many other women, she had been taking Thalidomide, which as I recall was being prescribed in those years to enable pregnant women to get a decent night's sleep.
Ms Finkbein went to ob-gyn specialist late in her term. He examined her, and when he learned about the Thalidomide, told her what had happened to many other women who had used that drug, and he advised her to abort the fetus.
No hospital in Phoenix, Arizona or just about anywhere else in the country would do that.
So she and her husband flew off to Europe (Sweden, I think it was), and had the abortion performed there.
The autopsy of the aborted fetus showed it would have resulted in a baby with one arm and no legs.
Ms Finkbein and her husband went back to Phoenix, where she made the mistake of telling the local newspapers what had happened to her and why she had the abortion.
Which was when the shit began hitting the fan for her, her husband, and their children. First, she lost her job on the local television station. On the grounds that they didn't want a child murderer producing a children's TV show for their broadcast station. Then her husband lost his job as a teacher in the local school district. Other peoples' children began hounding their kids in school. They had to pick up and move back East, starting a new life.
Right then and there, McK, started for me the political reaction that resulted, 12 years later, in Justice Harry Blackmun reading the majority opinion in Roe v Wade.
I think you're an ethical man, and that you see abortion as child murder. But I just cannot define it that way. And if you were to turn all the saints and angels loose on me, I simply could never turn my back on the Sherri Finkbeins of this world, fighting for the right not to have to give birth to an infant with one arm and no legs.
I figure you for a heavy-duty Catholic, McK. So let me tell you about one of the most catholic countries in Europe. I'm talking about Croatia, where my wife was born in Zagreb to a working-man father and a peasant girl mother.
When I child such as I have described above is born in some Croatian village, I'll tell you what typically happens. The midwife -- because in traditional villages around the east european slavic world, she's the one who takes the place of the well-trained and high-priced obstetricians in this society -- strangles such a newborn out of sight of the mother. Then she mournfully goes out into the other room and tells the villagers and family members that the unfortunate infant died in childbirth.
What about it, McK? Is that murder, or is it actually human kindness of the strongest order?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
You,however, would take it all a step further and allow any pregnant individual a right (?) to destroy another the individual human existence, that is temporary resident in her body.
My problem is, which one if any of my six brothers and three sisters did my parents have a right to kill in utero.
If that makes me a heavy-duty Catholic, I fail to see your point.
I have no problems with your religious beliefs, those of Dean Esmay, or anybody else. My problem with the Roman Catholic Church is political, not religious. In my judgement, your church is too big, too well organized, too powerful and too influential for me to regard it as anything other than the longest lasting totalitarian conspiracy in human history.
So I plainly look forward to seeing it busted up into a bunch of loosely affiliated national churches. Sort of like a roman catholic version of the Protestant Reformation, but some 500 years later.
And yes, I do in fact see this coming as the ultimate logical outcome of the Vatican II revolution that your church brought upon itself in a moment of weakness, when your church fathers threw away the Latin Rite. But that precisely was what held your churcly empire together for 2000 years. Now you never shall get it back together again. And that pleases me.
Why? Because I see the Roman International -- the Vatican establishment -- as a long-term threat to American liberty. Whereas I see the not-infrequently crazy ranters of the various protestant rightist groups mostly as annoying zealots but otherwise of little consequence.
Exactly the same as it was back in the days of the communist threat. A few nutcake Bolsheviks arguning among one another counted for nothing. But when they took over the state power of the great Russian Empire, and ran it from the Kremlin, they became truly dangerous.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Abortion, murder and human kindness are not political decisions, which seemingly is where you always seem to end your discussions.
You are one of a large, well-organized and insistent minority in this country who, because of teachings or dogma of your various religions, have taken the stance that abortion, which some women consider vital to their well-being, is murder.
Thereby, you have re-routed the question to the political arena. Which is where the anti-abortion movement tries to deny these women their rights when you feel you have the political muscle or connections to pull that off. And when you lack the backing of a majority, you fall back on attempting to change the national mindset by ceaseless propaganda.
Therefore, for those of us who operate from a different set of premises about life, you leave us no choice but to organize our own political power base as a defense mechanism.
There is no escaping from this issue, McK. Either for your minority or our majority. And I check the national polls on this issue continually. So I know that right now we beat you anywere from about 6-4 on up to 8-3.
I don't know if this majority will hold up indefinitely in the face of these ceaseless campaigns to reverse womens' rights in this country. But I think that if you win, your international church -- as the main instigator -- will seek to capitolize on your victory to terminate the wall of separation between church and state in this country. A wall that has enabled some 300 million Americans to grow into a complex and great culture where each person is free to live out his life answering to nobody but his conscience in regard to his or her religious creed, if any.
Which, if you stop to think about it just a little, will prove more harmful for your church than if you didn't have such a societal control mechanism.
Uncertain times are coming with what will be a chaotic aftermath of the peak worldwide production both of petroleum and natural gas. In such a setting, and the turmoil certain to ensue, the Catholic Church could have a major role to play in maintaining social order.
But not if all the moral authority of that church is to be squandered over this all but crazed fixation of the sexual relationships of men and women, and specifically, the seeming catholic need to control the reproductive processes and outcomes of women, and to treat homosexuals like lepers despite the obvious fact that so many of them have found a home in your church as priests.
And I would remind you, along with others, that none of you ever have enunciated a single argument about what all this fixation on sex and human reproduction has to do with the life, death and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
There are ontological truths which apparently do not seep into your gray matter enough for objective evaluation.
Genocide is an intrinsic moral evil of itself. And optional elected abortion of itself is not in any fashion an intrinsic or social moral good which requires legal and national representation and affirmation for the masses under conditions of convenience on demand.
Are we getting closer ?
Millions of law-abiding American women have abortions, for reasons appropriate to them, their physicians, and their families. I do not think many of them take such a step without serious consideration, including their own sense of morality.
For you to lightly dust all this off as an equivalent to genocide is itself a monstrous allegation on your part.
As for your first statement, there are no ontological truths. Ontology itself is merely a subset of philosophy and metaphysics. Therefore, "ontological conjecture" would be a more fitting descriptive term.
And about all this, because of the complexities of our national culture or cultures. Americans come from a wide variety of ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds, so that what you identify as "truth" is, to many others, just your particular opinion.
As for your remark about what "seeps into your grey matter", I think my grey matter probably is as well schooled as yours, and probably even better prepared than yours to welcome the seepage of ideas that conflict with my own. At least for purposes of finding out what other people think.
One never knows in advance what he or she might learn from listening carefully to opposing arguments. In fact, you should try that on occasion. Studying the arguments of others, where they may diametricallly oppose what you think is fixed truth, I am told, is excellent preparation for a career in the Society of Jesus.
Ask your own priest about this if you think it wrong to listen to such arguments as mine. Or if you are in fact a priest or some other level of leader in your church, ask the next person up the chain of your hierarchy. They cannot all be as close-minded as the impression I get from your statements.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
You are well aware that Roe v Wade is bad law that was decided by seven of nine members of SCOTUS.
No one else in USA have had a chance to vote on the matter. That isn't justice of the people, by the people and for the people. And you know that as well.
There may be a few ontological truths of which you are aren't aware.
Prior to judaism, the default religion of the day was human sacrifice exemplified by the aztecs that had as many as 50,000 human rituals per year.
Today, its called abortion on demand. Since Roe v Wade there have been 45 million abortions just in this country. That seems to be an awful lot of medical necessity one could erroneously presume.
And I didn't call abortion, genocide, but Jesse Jackson did in written letter to the President of USA. That was before he lost his way, morally speaking.
I don't give a tinker's damn how the Reverend Jesse Jackson labels anything whatsoever. I consider that man just a semi-racist con-man like Al Sharpton.
As you pointed out, the ancient Jews differed from most other prevailing religions in that they cut themselves loose totally from the practice of human sacrifice as part of any form of religious devotion.
But as a matter of fact, the ancient Jews practiced abortion and the religious Jews do the same today. But only if it concerns making a choice in regard to protecting the health or life of the mother as opposed to bringing a fetus to term.
I make no judgement whatsoever on abortion on demand as opposed to abortion because of medical need. I would always leave it up to the one person who has to give birth to that fetus, to decide where convenience ends and need begins.
As for Roe v Wade, a decision by the United States Supreme Court is good or bad in the eye of the beholder. But it remains the law of the land under it is changed by constitutionally sanctioned means. In any case, laws are interpreted all the time by courts, and this becomes part of the established legal precedent. You and those who think like you may never be able to arrange a membership level on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade.
And don't give me any crap about comparing Roe v Wade to the Dred Scott or Plessy v Ferguson decisions. Because legal decisions either to enslave or merely torment an entire race of people does not equate to the processes of birth control or pregnancy termination.
Most Americans do not consider abortion as murder. Nor do most Americans think that a fetus is entitled to any kind of legal protection until at least a third of the way through the pregnancy term. In fact, it was a common practice in the early American experience to stop a pregnancy by abortion at any time up to about the end of the third month.
And I have news for you. There aren't that many abortion clinics around anymore for your friends to picket and torment the women who went to such places. Mifepristone -- RU-486 and other safe pharmaceuticals will largely be taking the place of all that.
And that's precisely how all this will end up, with women all across the world determining when and if they shall bring fetuses to term, from within the privacy of their own bathrooms.
You will lose this struggle. So I advise you to find a different metaphysical hobbyhorse on which to ride.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
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Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.