GOODBYE TO THE THIRTY FOOT TRAILER
(Ewan MacColl)
The old ways are changing you cannot deny
The day of the traveler's over
There's nowhere to gang and there's nowhere to bide
So farewell to the life of the rover
Goodbye to the tent and the old caravan
Tae the tinker, the rover, the traveling man
And goodbye tae the thirty foot trailer
Farewell tae the cant and the traveling tongue
Farewell tae the Romany talking
The buying, the selling, the old fortune telling
The knock on the door and the hawking
You got to move fast to keep up with the times
For these days a man cannot dander
There's a bylaw to say you maun be on your way
And another to say ye can't wander
Farewell to the blossom and besoms of broom
Farewell tae the creels and the baskets
The folk of today would far rather pay
For a thing that is made oot o plastic
The old ways are passing and soon will be gone
And progress is aye a big factor
Its sent to afflict us and when they evict us
They tow us away wi a tractor
Farewell tae the pony, the cob, and the mare
The reins and the harness are idle
You don't need a strap when you're breaking up scrap
So farewell tae the bit and the bridle
Farewell tae the fields where we've sweated and toiled
At pulling and hauling and lifting
They'll soon have machines and the traveling queens
And their menfolk had better be shifting
September 12, 2008
Irish Song Friday
Drama, He Wrote
"Delusions of grandeur keep me going" once wrote William H. Luse (don't know his middle initial but it sounded more impressive to add one; we'll edit this later with the correct one should he willingly divulge it).
Same with me, hence this title. We ape our betters and Fr. Neuhaus recently said he liked the title "American Babylon" so much he decided to write a book around it. He was only half-jesting. And I liked this title so much that I'm going to try to write a post around it.
Specifically, I mean to write about the recent drama of my visit to the doctor concerning a minor medical condition. See, I've never been quite willing to give up writing about the mundane. I've never quite accepted that to be authorially successful you have to either have been born in an interesting place or travelled there, or, alternatively, have Shakespearian gifts. (Proust and St. Thérèse of Lisieux had at least one thing in common besides being French. They didn't need to travel or do great deeds in order to excel.)
But I've never quite accepted the awful truth that I don't live in an interesting place nor do I travel to exotic locales nor am I a brilliantly gifted writer. I even take shameful solace that better writers than me - like Tom o' Disputations - aren't published either. (Though Tom was in an anthology a few years back.) There's faux solace in not being the biggest underachiever.
Many are fearful of trying to spin poetry from the banal. They shrink from the challenge. But bloggers (amen brother!) can go where pros like Paul Theroux loath to go. No, Theroux didn't come to the plate with the donut on the bat in the form of his "boring" hometown of Medford, MA:
But that only steels my resolve because a blogger has to write like a horse has to pee, or something like that, and the drama this week was a rare visit to my doctor (doctress?) concerning the sudden appearance of a few suspicious moles. Because, you know, the price of sun worship is eternal vigilance. And to my surprise Frau Doctor said that they should be removed and so I came back four days later to have it done.
She was charmingly shy in fumblingly asking me to take off my shirt. (Now there's a sentence I usually don't have cause to write.) I save her further embarrassment by offering to remove it. She goes to great pains (a proactive pun) to explain that this will be painful, as she'll be numbing the areas via a needle-injection. It was not nearly as painful as advertised and I began to wonder if men have a lower threshold for pain than women and whether her expectations were unduly low. I'm certainly all for lowering expectations of pain since that means likely more pain reliever. My theory, apparently not shared by the medical community, is that it's better to error on the side of too much pain reliever than too little.
The numbing worked, and soon there were deep gouges in my skin each perhaps a hundredth of a millimeter in depth. She deftly sewed the canyons of skin back together, requiring multiple stitches (where multiple is defined as two).
Post-op, I was tired but appreciative of living in a town with such solicitous doctors and staff. Real drama, I realized, would be a high cost to pay for art.
"Delusions of grandeur keep me going" once wrote William H. Luse (don't know his middle initial but it sounded more impressive to add one; we'll edit this later with the correct one should he willingly divulge it).
Same with me, hence this title. We ape our betters and Fr. Neuhaus recently said he liked the title "American Babylon" so much he decided to write a book around it. He was only half-jesting. And I liked this title so much that I'm going to try to write a post around it.
Specifically, I mean to write about the recent drama of my visit to the doctor concerning a minor medical condition. See, I've never been quite willing to give up writing about the mundane. I've never quite accepted that to be authorially successful you have to either have been born in an interesting place or travelled there, or, alternatively, have Shakespearian gifts. (Proust and St. Thérèse of Lisieux had at least one thing in common besides being French. They didn't need to travel or do great deeds in order to excel.)
But I've never quite accepted the awful truth that I don't live in an interesting place nor do I travel to exotic locales nor am I a brilliantly gifted writer. I even take shameful solace that better writers than me - like Tom o' Disputations - aren't published either. (Though Tom was in an anthology a few years back.) There's faux solace in not being the biggest underachiever.
Many are fearful of trying to spin poetry from the banal. They shrink from the challenge. But bloggers (amen brother!) can go where pros like Paul Theroux loath to go. No, Theroux didn't come to the plate with the donut on the bat in the form of his "boring" hometown of Medford, MA:
Medford itself, a colonial-era city just outside of Boston, wasn't worth returning to on paper or in person. Theroux's literary heroes were Graham Greene, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad — writers who traveled and were inspired by travel.Of course Columbus makes Medford look like Rome.
But that only steels my resolve because a blogger has to write like a horse has to pee, or something like that, and the drama this week was a rare visit to my doctor (doctress?) concerning the sudden appearance of a few suspicious moles. Because, you know, the price of sun worship is eternal vigilance. And to my surprise Frau Doctor said that they should be removed and so I came back four days later to have it done.
She was charmingly shy in fumblingly asking me to take off my shirt. (Now there's a sentence I usually don't have cause to write.) I save her further embarrassment by offering to remove it. She goes to great pains (a proactive pun) to explain that this will be painful, as she'll be numbing the areas via a needle-injection. It was not nearly as painful as advertised and I began to wonder if men have a lower threshold for pain than women and whether her expectations were unduly low. I'm certainly all for lowering expectations of pain since that means likely more pain reliever. My theory, apparently not shared by the medical community, is that it's better to error on the side of too much pain reliever than too little.
The numbing worked, and soon there were deep gouges in my skin each perhaps a hundredth of a millimeter in depth. She deftly sewed the canyons of skin back together, requiring multiple stitches (where multiple is defined as two).
Post-op, I was tired but appreciative of living in a town with such solicitous doctors and staff. Real drama, I realized, would be a high cost to pay for art.
Conscious of the Conscience
Reading Tom's post, I suddenly realized that I can't begrudge my neighbor's vote if they are sincerely following their conscience. In St. Paul's day, some people refused meat sacrificed to idols even though he (Paul) had declared there to be no sin in it. And yet it was a sin to them, if they'd eaten that meat. So whether to vote for or against a given candidate, I need to realize that the voter is doing what they have to, conscientiously speaking. Too often I tend to think of voting as sort of like the graph below instead of recognizing that the value of a vote for "my" candidate is nothing compared to the conscience of the one casting it:
(Click to enlarge)
And of course this ignores the fact that voting itself is highly unscientific, fraught with guesses and hunches and compromises.
Reading Tom's post, I suddenly realized that I can't begrudge my neighbor's vote if they are sincerely following their conscience. In St. Paul's day, some people refused meat sacrificed to idols even though he (Paul) had declared there to be no sin in it. And yet it was a sin to them, if they'd eaten that meat. So whether to vote for or against a given candidate, I need to realize that the voter is doing what they have to, conscientiously speaking. Too often I tend to think of voting as sort of like the graph below instead of recognizing that the value of a vote for "my" candidate is nothing compared to the conscience of the one casting it:
(Click to enlarge)
And of course this ignores the fact that voting itself is highly unscientific, fraught with guesses and hunches and compromises.
Fun with Headlines
Jonah Goldberg has a few here; I played here. Sure it's barrel-fishing, but...there may come a day when media bias isn't so obvious kids.
(I thought the Bush doctrine was that Bush would hold countries harboring terrorists just as responsible for venal acts as the terrorists themselves so I'm giving SP the benefit of the doubt on that one.)
Jonah Goldberg has a few here; I played here. Sure it's barrel-fishing, but...there may come a day when media bias isn't so obvious kids.
(I thought the Bush doctrine was that Bush would hold countries harboring terrorists just as responsible for venal acts as the terrorists themselves so I'm giving SP the benefit of the doubt on that one.)
Andrew Klavan on Peter Robinson's Show
Interesting to hear novelist Andrew Klavan speak about his conversion from atheism, as well as his response to Christopher Hitchen's charge that forgiveness in the sense of the transfer of ones' sins to a scapegoat is unpalatable:
Interesting to hear novelist Andrew Klavan speak about his conversion from atheism, as well as his response to Christopher Hitchen's charge that forgiveness in the sense of the transfer of ones' sins to a scapegoat is unpalatable:
"I think [Hitchens] is starting from the wrong place. He's thinking of evil deeds for which we can be forgiven. But I think if you read Genesis carefully you'll see there's a sense of shame inherent in being a human being. And that is part of what the '60s were about, we were no longer going to feel guilt, we're just going to be free and love freely and of course that doesn't work. And why doesn't it work? Because inherent in the knowledge of good and evil, inherent in consciousness and self-consciousness, is a wierd sense of shame that we are 'meat puppets', that we are these objects being moved about by nature. It's not necessarily our evil deeds that we are asking to be forgiven for, it's our humanity."Klavan also speaks about how the only truly honest atheist was Marquis de Sade, and that is when he learned where atheism leads. Which reminded me of something I read by Camille Paglia recently, who is one of the few honest feminists concerning the nature of abortion.
September 11, 2008
It's Relative
Regarding this, of the three network anchors I thought Charlie Gibson was the fairest, although that's sort of like saying Moe is the smartest Stooge.
Regarding this, of the three network anchors I thought Charlie Gibson was the fairest, although that's sort of like saying Moe is the smartest Stooge.
Ha!
Given the ephemeral nature of Obama's lipstick folderol, I'll share this high-larious tidbit from Bob now instead of saving it for Spanning:
Given the ephemeral nature of Obama's lipstick folderol, I'll share this high-larious tidbit from Bob now instead of saving it for Spanning:
What he should have said:"You can put arugula on hotel food, but it's still hotel food."
"You can wrap a terrorist in a cap and gown and call him a professor of English, but he'll still blow stuff up."
September 10, 2008
Gleanings from Readings
"As she hugs him, she leans away from him so as to insert some chaste space between them. As the nuns used to say before school dances, 'Leave room for the Holy Ghost.'" - Christopher Buckley on the Palin-McCain hugs
"...a specimen of one of those minitaturized breeds that are programmed to tremble helplessly." - from O'Neill's "Netherland"
"Usually the poets were talking about money while the stockbrokers talked about art." - from Hamill's "My Manhattan"
"As she hugs him, she leans away from him so as to insert some chaste space between them. As the nuns used to say before school dances, 'Leave room for the Holy Ghost.'" - Christopher Buckley on the Palin-McCain hugs
"...a specimen of one of those minitaturized breeds that are programmed to tremble helplessly." - from O'Neill's "Netherland"
"Usually the poets were talking about money while the stockbrokers talked about art." - from Hamill's "My Manhattan"
Help for Haiti
Amy Welborn posts about how bad it is there after the hurricane. Perhaps those who have been there, even if it was in the cocooned safety of a Royal Caribbean cruise, might help out here.
UPDATE: Food for the Poor has a hurricane blog.
Amy Welborn posts about how bad it is there after the hurricane. Perhaps those who have been there, even if it was in the cocooned safety of a Royal Caribbean cruise, might help out here.
UPDATE: Food for the Poor has a hurricane blog.
No Free Market in Oil
I forget, sometimes, that there is collusion in the oil industry.
Not secretly between Exxon and Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell but publicly and proudly, via the transparently named: "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries", although even better would be CPEC - "Cartel of Petroleum Exporting Countries".
So my prediction of $100 a barrel was beginning to look good but now it's a pipe dream. As my brother-in-law says: "Any release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would net a nearly equal drop in OPEC production ... They intend to keep oil in the $125/barrel neighborhood."
While on the subject of economics, came across a quote in Reid Buckley's book that reminds me of Darwin Catholic's philosophy regarding capitalism: "The problem with socalism is socialism. The problem with captialism is capitalists."
I forget, sometimes, that there is collusion in the oil industry.
Not secretly between Exxon and Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell but publicly and proudly, via the transparently named: "Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries", although even better would be CPEC - "Cartel of Petroleum Exporting Countries".
So my prediction of $100 a barrel was beginning to look good but now it's a pipe dream. As my brother-in-law says: "Any release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would net a nearly equal drop in OPEC production ... They intend to keep oil in the $125/barrel neighborhood."
While on the subject of economics, came across a quote in Reid Buckley's book that reminds me of Darwin Catholic's philosophy regarding capitalism: "The problem with socalism is socialism. The problem with captialism is capitalists."
We're All Hypocrites Now?
The fascinating thing about this election is that it's been a constant stretch/test of one's partisanship. In this respect maybe it's a good thing since we've all been exposed to some extent, so maybe we can all start over (and get along, say like Rodney King).
Before Palin, the Democratic primaries held the drama. We saw the titanic struggle between a woman and an African-American striving for the same position in the quota, er, Democrat party. Affirmative Action was supposed to be about robbing the rich (the white man) and giving to the poor (the minority) but now, in this primary, it all went horribly astray. There was a cannibalization. And then we learned that even Democrat primary voters could be prejudiced! Who knew?
This was also the election when most of the media lost all pretence of objectivity. "What did we ever see in that old McCain guy," they must've said. We found out that smooth talk beats straight talk among the straight talking crowd.
But then Sarah Palin came ridin' into town and nothing was ever the same. With a name reminiscent of The Hallmark Channel's "Sarah: Plain and Tall", it was love at first sight, in more ways than one, for this Sarah wasn't plain and Republicans swooned in a way they didn't over, say, poor Sam Brownback. It was, perhaps, vaguely similar to the swooning over Barack in the other party, albeit with 99% less Messiah-talk by volume.
I'm the last one to be able to judge how hypocritical Repubs have been since I'm partisan too, but the Palin nomination was certainly an exercise for us. I do like domestic policy experience. If you think you know a lot about foreign policy, you'll be tempted to exercise it. And even though the Dems are taking a bigger risk with Obama than Republicans with Palin, they are the Crazy PartyTM. They are officially the ones who want social experimentation and social engineering and even wars, having entered us in every 20th century one with the exception of the Gulf-Iraq War.
And it's true conservatives were none too found of Britney Spears' sister for having a child as a teenager outside of wedlock while with the Palin kid, well, we think of it merely as bolstering the family's pro-life bona fides. I was somewhat blindsided by the Spears comparison since I was critical of that one while less so of this one. It's hard to be consistent. I do think the Palin family is far more grounded than the Spears family, and thus more able to properly raise and take care of the child. The Palins seem far more mentally healthy anyway and less druggy, but that is a 50,000 foot view, having not known either family whatsoever.
But the most astonishing whopper of all-time in this election full of whoppers is the fig leaf of feminism worn by liberal feminist leaders. It was already a whopper of a lie since it left out the millions of baby girl unborn chldren. We knew it wasn't pro-woman, it was pro- "some" woman. And of course we knew it wasn't even too concerned about behavior towards certain adult women, since Bill Clinton was embraced despite constant accusations of sexual harrassment. But now how that group has narrowed! It turns out it is for women who look and think and act...exactly like them.
This was shown in spades as the feminists descended upon one of their own. At one time, simply working outside the home was good enough to be included in their in-group. But Palin shows you have to work outside the home and not have a five children. It's all been exposed that it was never about women, it was about the ability to abort. If, as Mark Shea says, abortion is the sacrament of the Democratic party, then the feminists are the high priests. Sarah Palin is therefore seen in their eyes as the anti-Pope.
The fascinating thing about this election is that it's been a constant stretch/test of one's partisanship. In this respect maybe it's a good thing since we've all been exposed to some extent, so maybe we can all start over (and get along, say like Rodney King).
Before Palin, the Democratic primaries held the drama. We saw the titanic struggle between a woman and an African-American striving for the same position in the quota, er, Democrat party. Affirmative Action was supposed to be about robbing the rich (the white man) and giving to the poor (the minority) but now, in this primary, it all went horribly astray. There was a cannibalization. And then we learned that even Democrat primary voters could be prejudiced! Who knew?
This was also the election when most of the media lost all pretence of objectivity. "What did we ever see in that old McCain guy," they must've said. We found out that smooth talk beats straight talk among the straight talking crowd.
But then Sarah Palin came ridin' into town and nothing was ever the same. With a name reminiscent of The Hallmark Channel's "Sarah: Plain and Tall", it was love at first sight, in more ways than one, for this Sarah wasn't plain and Republicans swooned in a way they didn't over, say, poor Sam Brownback. It was, perhaps, vaguely similar to the swooning over Barack in the other party, albeit with 99% less Messiah-talk by volume.
I'm the last one to be able to judge how hypocritical Repubs have been since I'm partisan too, but the Palin nomination was certainly an exercise for us. I do like domestic policy experience. If you think you know a lot about foreign policy, you'll be tempted to exercise it. And even though the Dems are taking a bigger risk with Obama than Republicans with Palin, they are the Crazy PartyTM. They are officially the ones who want social experimentation and social engineering and even wars, having entered us in every 20th century one with the exception of the Gulf-Iraq War. 
And it's true conservatives were none too found of Britney Spears' sister for having a child as a teenager outside of wedlock while with the Palin kid, well, we think of it merely as bolstering the family's pro-life bona fides. I was somewhat blindsided by the Spears comparison since I was critical of that one while less so of this one. It's hard to be consistent. I do think the Palin family is far more grounded than the Spears family, and thus more able to properly raise and take care of the child. The Palins seem far more mentally healthy anyway and less druggy, but that is a 50,000 foot view, having not known either family whatsoever. But the most astonishing whopper of all-time in this election full of whoppers is the fig leaf of feminism worn by liberal feminist leaders. It was already a whopper of a lie since it left out the millions of baby girl unborn chldren. We knew it wasn't pro-woman, it was pro- "some" woman. And of course we knew it wasn't even too concerned about behavior towards certain adult women, since Bill Clinton was embraced despite constant accusations of sexual harrassment. But now how that group has narrowed! It turns out it is for women who look and think and act...exactly like them.
This was shown in spades as the feminists descended upon one of their own. At one time, simply working outside the home was good enough to be included in their in-group. But Palin shows you have to work outside the home and not have a five children. It's all been exposed that it was never about women, it was about the ability to abort. If, as Mark Shea says, abortion is the sacrament of the Democratic party, then the feminists are the high priests. Sarah Palin is therefore seen in their eyes as the anti-Pope.
September 09, 2008
That's What I Meant
R. R. Reno of "First Things" said this, which is far more eloquent and persuasive than the way I put it, concerning how politics isn't all that disturbing. (He compares it to box scores.) Where it all gets interesting and meaningful are the first principles, which is what politicians mostly don't touch, like our view of human nature, God, life etc... Politics during this silly season is pretty much like All My Children, a guilty pleasure in the same way you want to see "who's zooming who" on that soap:
R. R. Reno of "First Things" said this, which is far more eloquent and persuasive than the way I put it, concerning how politics isn't all that disturbing. (He compares it to box scores.) Where it all gets interesting and meaningful are the first principles, which is what politicians mostly don't touch, like our view of human nature, God, life etc... Politics during this silly season is pretty much like All My Children, a guilty pleasure in the same way you want to see "who's zooming who" on that soap:
Party politics and campaign punditry make for boredom in the same way that a heavy diet of the Racing Form or baseball box scores will make any person’s life seem dull and narrow. But there is more. Politics are also epiphenomenal. Winning elections is all about gaining control of the levers of state power. In a healthy political culture, candidates and their supporters want power in order to implement policies that have some sensible connection to ideals or principles or collective sensibilities.The whole article is well worth reading.
...In the end, our dreams and fears emerge out of debates about our common culture, debates about first things. These debates, as Lytton Strachey and Russell Kirk (two men with very different political outlooks) recognized, are much more interesting and more important than politics.
Comments Found on the Catlick Blogosphere Concerning McCain/Palin (Via Here)
OK, so he's wrong about some things, including embryonic stem-cell research. So what? I've never encountered a politician who's right about everything; I've never even encountered a pope who's right about everything. But I would vote for McCain over Obama even if Obama were pro-life, which he manifestly is not. - blogger at Sacramentum Vitae
______
I agree with the comment that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are perfect. As a black Catholic who does not believe in abortion, I would like to be able to vote for McCain, but there is no way I can. Racism is a sin, period. And as far as I am concerned, McCain's waffling on the Confederate flag during the 2000 campaign speaks about his indifference to African Americans and willingness to lie. - Commenter Jessica on Sacramentum Vitae
______
Already I can anticipate comments/e-mails "Quasi pro-life? come on! She had a baby with downs-syndrome!" Yes, but she is a protestant who supports contraception, the ultimate enslavement of women. The protestant bit is incidental, I don't care about that per se, but it tends to be the case that most protestants do not see the link between abortion and contraception. This is a huge problem for me, because just as truly as pornography creates the throw-away woman, so does contraception create the throw-away baby, because both make the human dignity of the other irrelevant, and therefore something to be discarded at the earliest convenience. - Athanasius Contra Mundum
______
John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. It really has made me hope that he will be the next President. I am full of hope for the future of a country that has a woman like Sarah Palin involved in politics. - home-schooling mother from South Australia ("Aussiecoffeeshop" blog)
______
I'm not registered to vote (...I live in DC), do not plan to vote, and have no idea what I would do if I did plan to vote. I am not planning to try to get you guys to vote for somebody, largely because of the colossal naivete I displayed the last time I tried that. But I'm still interested in figuring out what Sarah Palin's deal is, because I do hope that both parties can be reshaped so that neither of them is based on support for radical evil. - Eve Tushnet
______
To my mind, the most pressing issue facing America today is the holocaust of abortion. Nearly 50 million innocent dead in the U.S., and their blood cries out to the Lord for satisfaction. Nearly two million more are killed every year. On the strength of John McCain's long (though imperfect) record of opposition to abortion on demand, his zero rating from NARAL, and most especially his selection of a reliable pro-lifer as his running mate (as I repeatedly demanded on this blog that he do as a pre-requisite of my support) I have concluded that I can believe Senator McCain's repeated promise to be a pro-life president. - blogger at Thoughts of a Regular Guy
______
Proportionality only comes into play when one is deciding between two options both of which fall short of being a true moral good. This fits voting to a T, which is why many people accurately describe their experience of voting as choosing the lesser of two evils. In many important ways, though not all, this is exactly what we do, which is why prudence is so necessary. Therefore, we can see that there are times when choosing the lesser of two evils is the best we can do, thus we choose either means or even ends that in an ideal situation we would not choose. It is morally licit to do this when voting. I urge everyone to read Faithful Citizenship, it addresses this quite well. It's like that one psychological test, which I had to take, along with several others, before being admitted as a deacon candidate, that gives you two bad choices, say, between clubbing a baby seal or smacking your mom and you have to pick one with no caveats and no skipping....I think to say or suggest McCain and Obama are similar in their views regarding abortion, or their views have some moral equivalence, is a mistaken analysis. I cannot in good conscience cast a vote for any candidate who advocates abortion. This is true at any level of government. If no candidate on the ballot is prolife, then I don't vote, but work hard between elections to affect prolife attitudes and policies in the community and with those elected to serve in government. - Deacon Scott Dodge
OK, so he's wrong about some things, including embryonic stem-cell research. So what? I've never encountered a politician who's right about everything; I've never even encountered a pope who's right about everything. But I would vote for McCain over Obama even if Obama were pro-life, which he manifestly is not. - blogger at Sacramentum Vitae
I agree with the comment that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain are perfect. As a black Catholic who does not believe in abortion, I would like to be able to vote for McCain, but there is no way I can. Racism is a sin, period. And as far as I am concerned, McCain's waffling on the Confederate flag during the 2000 campaign speaks about his indifference to African Americans and willingness to lie. - Commenter Jessica on Sacramentum Vitae
Already I can anticipate comments/e-mails "Quasi pro-life? come on! She had a baby with downs-syndrome!" Yes, but she is a protestant who supports contraception, the ultimate enslavement of women. The protestant bit is incidental, I don't care about that per se, but it tends to be the case that most protestants do not see the link between abortion and contraception. This is a huge problem for me, because just as truly as pornography creates the throw-away woman, so does contraception create the throw-away baby, because both make the human dignity of the other irrelevant, and therefore something to be discarded at the earliest convenience. - Athanasius Contra Mundum
John McCain has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. It really has made me hope that he will be the next President. I am full of hope for the future of a country that has a woman like Sarah Palin involved in politics. - home-schooling mother from South Australia ("Aussiecoffeeshop" blog)
I'm not registered to vote (...I live in DC), do not plan to vote, and have no idea what I would do if I did plan to vote. I am not planning to try to get you guys to vote for somebody, largely because of the colossal naivete I displayed the last time I tried that. But I'm still interested in figuring out what Sarah Palin's deal is, because I do hope that both parties can be reshaped so that neither of them is based on support for radical evil. - Eve Tushnet
To my mind, the most pressing issue facing America today is the holocaust of abortion. Nearly 50 million innocent dead in the U.S., and their blood cries out to the Lord for satisfaction. Nearly two million more are killed every year. On the strength of John McCain's long (though imperfect) record of opposition to abortion on demand, his zero rating from NARAL, and most especially his selection of a reliable pro-lifer as his running mate (as I repeatedly demanded on this blog that he do as a pre-requisite of my support) I have concluded that I can believe Senator McCain's repeated promise to be a pro-life president. - blogger at Thoughts of a Regular Guy
Proportionality only comes into play when one is deciding between two options both of which fall short of being a true moral good. This fits voting to a T, which is why many people accurately describe their experience of voting as choosing the lesser of two evils. In many important ways, though not all, this is exactly what we do, which is why prudence is so necessary. Therefore, we can see that there are times when choosing the lesser of two evils is the best we can do, thus we choose either means or even ends that in an ideal situation we would not choose. It is morally licit to do this when voting. I urge everyone to read Faithful Citizenship, it addresses this quite well. It's like that one psychological test, which I had to take, along with several others, before being admitted as a deacon candidate, that gives you two bad choices, say, between clubbing a baby seal or smacking your mom and you have to pick one with no caveats and no skipping....I think to say or suggest McCain and Obama are similar in their views regarding abortion, or their views have some moral equivalence, is a mistaken analysis. I cannot in good conscience cast a vote for any candidate who advocates abortion. This is true at any level of government. If no candidate on the ballot is prolife, then I don't vote, but work hard between elections to affect prolife attitudes and policies in the community and with those elected to serve in government. - Deacon Scott Dodge
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