Archbishop Sheen's "Declaration of Dependence"

I’m reading Archbishop Sheen’s 1941 book “Declaration of Dependence” and it’s so good. He was a prophet! 

I’m only part of the way through but can see why it’s just gotten re-released. It really speaks to our time and the disillusionment so many Christians feel about our government. 

Some excerpts:

"Political irrationality is used as a contrivance for power. There was once a time when a man blushed at being caught in a contradiction, but the insane or irrational never do. The Communists who berated the Nazis embraced the Nazis without a blush.” 

That goes along with the “death of shame” that I’ve noticed in politics since Bill Clinton.   

Sheen also predicted the crazed unpredictability of modernity (and although he didn’t predict the insanity of  being able to “identify” as a different sex it certainly fits here): 

"Because the spirit of the world is irrational, modern international politics is to a great extent unpredictable. If ideas are only instruments for power, it follows that treaties will be repudiated when they no longer serve power. We can never, for that reason, predict what certain nations will do tomorrow, because they are governed not by reason, which is predictable, but by unrestrained power, which is unpredictable.”

He mentions how WW2 is a smashing our illusions, of how “even Americans had the false optimism" during the last war, WW1, which they thought was the ‘war to end all wars. 

Mom will like this because the Church and Archbishop Sheen are both pessimists about history! He writes on the eve of Pearl Harbor: 

"In a word, everything human, everything historical, has collapsed. Self-destruction stalks the earth...Now that we are disillusioned, where are we going to look for hope? The modern man despairs because his utopian progress has failed. Not so with the Church! Her insight is far more realistic. Never expecting man to be a god, the Church does not feel that all is lost because he turns out to be just a disillusioned man. The perfections for which man is made are free gifts of God to be received through repentance and faith and forgiveness. Man’s despair today is only his proud and impenitent pretension to be independent of God and His love. In this sense, the war is a revelation. It has brought man back to earth, to his misery, to his need of God.”

"The Church is not optimistic about history; it has always seen that the final product of history will be anti-Christ, the concentration of diabolical evil in human souls. And the only way out of that horror will be, not a new social order, but the Second Coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead. Every year in the Gospel of the Mass the Church reminds her children that there will be no perfect state in the world, for while good men sow wheat, evil men sow cockle; and both will be permitted to grow together until the harvest.” 

Jan 6 SWAG

Pitched a new Babylon Bee headline:  “FBI Online Gift Shop Now Offering Jan 6 Themed SWAG Including 'This Insurrection Sponsored By The FBI' T-Shirt". 

The best (only?) revenge of the powerless is mockery, in the great Irish tradition under centuries of British rule. 

I recall back in the '90s how Islamic terrorism seemed like just something you had to put up with, sort of a cost of living in a fallen world. Then 9/11 happened and it felt different, a change of perspective given the enormousness of that atrocity. 

Similarly, with the FBI, it seemed like you had to put up with the excesses with J. Edgar Hoover and later Ruby Ridge and Waco. Just a cost of doing business. But the 9/11 event for them was the attempt to take Trump out via the Russian hoax followed by the Jan. 6th Fed production number (with the Whitman prequel). 

They obviously need to be disbanded since they are more a force for evil than good at this point. But unlike bin Laden, the FBI has powerful friends in Congress and media.  I think all or most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis but Saudi Arabia was not punished for 9/11 due to having patronage in D.C., so we took it out on Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly, the FBI has great patronage in D.C. so it looks like the plan is to take it out on Trump and the Jan 6 trespassers.

In Praise of Rosaries, Scapulars and Indulgences

It occurred to me how consoling and healing it was reading “The Secret of the Rosary” back in grade school. The post-Vatican II response to the promises around the Rosary, as well as around the wearing of the scapular, were intended to discourage us and for us to see it as bordering on superstition. I was influenced in that direction certainly. Even the gospel’s miracle stories were de-emphasized, such as the Feeding of the Five Thousand reduced to a sermon on sharing. 


But the promises of the Rosary and scapular and indulgences seem a necessary antidote to the Pelagianism of our age. Nothing quite expresses the power of grace and God’s love like pondering the promises of those devotions and by implication the feebleness of man’s works compared to God’s. Instead, we tend to think man’s works and thoughts are determinative and prayer an add-on like the A-1 sauce on a steak. The pragmatism of our age whispers that only the material matters.  Or, if religiously bent, that only one's actions matter.  But the devotions mentioned above give unexpected power to the weak and confer benefits non-material. 

**

 Justice Clarence Thomas in new book "Created Equal":

“I went off to school and I took all sorts of philosophy and took history, took theology. You read, you thought about things. Later in life, I was thinking back on my life, and I thought after all of that, the person who had the greatest influence and probably the most accurate was Sister Mary Dolorosa in the second grade in 1955 as we were beginning the Baltimore Catechism. She would say, “Why did God create us?” And the answer was pretty uniform—a whole group of second graders answered in unison: “God created us to know, love, and serve him in this life and be happy with him in the next.” So that’s pretty simple. After all the existentialism, having studied metaphysics, nihilists, you’ve been through all these, and you come back to Sister Mary Dolorosa and the second grade in September 1955. It seemed to me in a lot of ways that life was a circle that you started in one place, went away, and came back.”

Conservatism: A Rediscovery

Reading the book “Conservatism: A Rediscovery” and it’s pretty enlightening. Edmund Burke is not the gradualist he gets the reputation for.  Hazony makes the case that it's not the documents or government structure that allows us to thrive, it’s the culture and the people. I think there's a temptation to want to believe there's a "system" (especially for this computer programmer) when, of course, humans are complex, irreducible, and dependent on God. 

We found out, the hard way, in 2004 that democracy and the rule of law were not easily transplantable in the infertile cultural soil of Iraq. But what we learned of late is that democracy and the rule of law is also not salvageable in the infertile soil of modern America. It all makes sense now, what’s happening, when you see it with the eyes that our Constitution is only as good as the people who enforce it (or don’t enforce it). The edifice or false idol is the Constitution; what made us great is a nationalism (common language, law, religion) and the Bible. The sacred founding documents were a kind of “fiat currency”, i.e. only as good as the faith the people had in them and that faith was ultimately dependent on faith in the culture and traditions and religion of Anglo-Americanism. 

**

Delivered a shot at company leadership yesterday. Human Resources put out a non-sequitur email saying they are evaluating potential changes to our benefits in response to the recent Dobbs Supreme Court decision. I responded to the HR person and cc’d the CEO saying that I hope we provide additional benefits to those choosing to keep their unborn child rather than encourage or facilitate the opposite. No response obviously. 

It’s kind of a crazy world when a decision to turn the abortion decision back to the states where it belonged is greeted with hysteria. But our CEO understands his audience - he’s always been interested in millennial generation and he’s big on insights about them - and one of the insights is the famous “snowflake” metaphor in which they are fragile flowers easily upset by political events like Trump winning the presidency or now Dobbs. So he has to massage them with either actual benefit changes or instilling this temporarily hope for them that the company will “push back against that evil Supreme Court”. 

Trump Associate John Eastman's Phone Seizure

Heard podcast with a documentary director (Michael Pack) in which he talks about the effectiveness of lies:  “What happens is that if you’re not thinking about it you just absorb the narrative. If you don’t have a counter-narrative to set against it, you can’t just disbelieve everything you’re told, some of it just comes in.“ 

So the January 6th committee may well be successful towards it's goal, that of narrative-setting.  To the extent it goes unchallenged by enough outlets, it trickles down eventually. You can't disbelieve everything. 

I’m trying to square Trump’s supposed involvement with how Kash Patel testified under oath that Trump asked for 20,000 troops if need be a couple days before the 6th. Did Trump suddenly become thirsty for violence on the 6th while he wasn’t on the 4th? 

Patel testified that the president, on his own, told Patel and Gen'l Milley: “if you guys need 20,000 National Guard in the coming days you have my authorization”.  

We know if Milley had said anything to the committee contradicting Patel’s statement there's a 100% certainty it would’ve been leaked. 

**

Trump associate & constitutional lawyer John Eastman had his iPhone seized and was only shown the warrant after it was seized.  (The 4th and 5th amendments apparently now regarded as optional.)

Additionally, the FBI held the phone up to Eastman's face so that they could access the phone. Civil libertarian Kurt Opshal tweeted: "The Eastman phone seizure warrant illustrates how a password can provide more legal protection than fingerprint or facial unlock."

Hell hath no fury like a Deep State scorned.  Smart phones are pretty dangerous instruments these days. I recall what a lawyer said on "60 Minutes" years ago, how lawyers have the real power in this country and they can single out winners and losers at will. But then so do corporations.  

**

Fwiw, this quote seems reasonably true enough of our own leaders with respect to the border problems and their attitude towards blue collar Trump voters: 

"All empires fail because of arrogance, ignorance, and because they treat the very people who made their empire with utter disdain.” 

Let's Play...What's on a Bishop's Shelves?

Is it nosy to examine a bishop’s bookshelves when he’s videotaping from, presumably, his office? 

I did take a gander at our new bishop's YouTube message and here’s some of what’s on the shelves (besides a Bible): 

“Left to tell” by Immaculée Ilibagiza

“Catholic Mission and Culture in Colleges and Universities: Defining Documents: 1965-2014”

Historical fiction novels of Ellis Peters involving suspense in Middle Ages

A book by or about Pope Benedict XVI

“Stewards of the Mysteries of God Immaculate Conception Seminary, 1860-2010”

“In God We Trust: Morally Responsible Investing”

**

Whilst I'm here and as we wind down the best month of the year (Sacred Heart month), a good message from Amy Welborn:

“In a time and culture in which hardly any of us understand what love actually is, in which we seem to be surrounded by dehumanizing hate and horrifying violence as well as public discourse characterized by contempt and judgment, a daily prayer (you can find some here) focused simply on love might just have surprising power.

‘O Heart of love, I put all my trust in Thee; for I fear all things from my own weakness, but I hope for all things from Thy goodness.’

In a time and culture in which human beings hear, from the moment that they can understand words, that they will be valued for their abilities, their achievements and their appearance, to hear the Good News that no, this is not so, that a Heart pours out love for us just because we *are* – can mean the difference between life and death.”

Sweet June Weather

As a connoisseur of fine weather I've of late been savoring. And remiss in appreciating. 

Last week there was the sweet savor of breeze overlooking a shining sea beneath our seven foot tall open-air tent. Listened to Gordon Lighrfoot’s, “If You Could Read My Mind”.  An hour before and an hour after 12pm is my favorite time of day for watching the shellacked waves, shiny as if varnished. The green and yellow croquet balls rolling in the middle distance from gamers. A firm sand floor, neatly swept by the wind. The “stable-unstable” tent, poles dancing to the wind’s whims but never collapsing. The ever-approaching sea, with tide as hourglass. 

And no less, back in Ohio. Pure June weather undistilled and unadulterated.  The rich, alluvial soil against the healthy garden plants, now over a foot tall and well on their way to tomato glory, well over transplant shock. 

Breeze and sun, instant welcoming warmth from morning till long into the evening. The candle is lit at both ends, from 6am to 9pm.  Laying in the sun and half-dozing, with half-ish memories of long ago bubbling up courtesy of reading some T.S. Eliot poetry...

For most of us, there is only the unattended 

Moment, the moment in and out of time, 

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, 

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning 

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply 

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 

While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses...

**

Took the dogs to new joint, a local park, thinking we could walk those idyllic and elegiac old grass trails since it was 15 degrees cooler than the last couple of days . But too hot for Max or so he told me by putting on his brakes and laying in mid-path. He’s always aware of the direction of the car and after about ten minutes was only satisfied if we were going towards the car rather than further away.  Our other hound was obsessed with the rabbits and groundhogs that lived in the two to three foot high bramble beside the trail. 

**

The sun burns memories on my skin

Revealed when the sun seals again

Embossed tales of pre-adolescent summers

Laying on towels at the municipal pool

Effecting the asperges of chlorine. 

Yoram Hazony on Conservatism & Mattias Desmet on Totalitarianism

I’ve been learning more about political theory (my own education being underserved). Yoram Hazony’s history of conservatism is pretty rich and I’m struck by some of the synchronicity between that and the James Kunstler podcast (who interviewed Mattias Desmet). 

Hazony makes the point that the discovery of the proper laws in Anglo-American history was somewhat irrational in that it leaned to some extent on the empirical history of laws for good or bad but also on the humbleness of admitting our limits, not changing laws radically even if we don’t necessarily know the rational basis for them. 

This was polar opposite of John Locke, who figured that it was all a rational exercise involving objectivity that is available to all rational men. A universal view of rights that transcended nation and peoples instead of laws that needed to be customized to a given population.  One gets the sense that Locke assumes men are machines, interchangeable widgets. 

Desmet, from the podcast, is the author of “The Psychology of Totalitarianism” and has this to say: 

Western societies usually live in a very mechanized environment which leads them to be more vulnerable to “mechanistic thinking” - a view of men in the world that believes that the entire universe is a kind of machine, a material machine, a set of molecules and atoms that all interact with each other according to the laws of mechanics and in which we believe this entire machine can be perfectly understood in a rational way.  

That view became more prominent and this style of thinking makes people stop “resonating” with the world around them. Until I was 25 years old I really believed that all the nature and facts around me behaved in a strictly logical and rational way. I couldn’t imagine that facts could be irrational. Once I dived deep into the mathematical backgrounds of systems theory I suddenly was capable of seeing that nature and the things around me are just not rational. That’s paradoxical! Systems theory showed in a strictly rational way that all complex dynamical systems and most phenomena in nature behave strictly irrational, an irrational number in mathematics. From then on I understood most of reality we can only understand by emphatically resonating with it.... Max Planck, the famous physicist said, “When it comes to atoms, language can only be used as poetry.” 

Reminds me of Walker Percy’s assertion that understanding humans as machines is a core problem of our time. 

Desmet goes on to shed light on how "science" is now a joke (hint: majoritarian religions don't fare well):  

"Every virtue that gets institutionalized in the end lapses into its opposite I think. Universities should produce truth but in the end produce appearances and lies. The police department should protect us and yet become a danger in itself. Hospitals should help us stay healthy but in the end they make us sick. The church should represent model virtue but in the end it becomes the center of perversion, if we don’t watch out. Every virtue that gets institutionalized has a tendency - not always - to lapse into its opposite. 

"I think that is what happened to Western science. Science started as a discourse of a minority through which a minority went against dogmas and prejudices that existed in society and at that moment science was represented as an openness of mind and it was very fruitful. The early scientists had the courage not to know for a moment and they received new knowledge. 

"As a result of all the wonderful achievements of science, science became the dominant discourse in Western society. And then something strange happened - every discourse that changes from a discourse of a minority into the dominant discourse loses its qualities of truth-speech. That’s so strange!   I think I understand why now: if a discourse becomes a dominant discourse, if a majority of people believes in a certain set of ideas, this set of ideas just becomes the privileged instrument to manipulate society. And that’s what happened with science, that’s how it became perverted.  In 2005 we had the replication crisis which showed that up to 85% of all academic publications are radically wrong - full of mistakes, sloppy views and methods and the result of fraud. Up to 85% the conclusions of medical studies cannot be reproduced. That is huge! 

**

"In my understanding, the root cause of our anxiety [in society] is situated at the level of our obsession with the rational and logical understanding itself. If you think logically, you really connect one logical idea to another and build a closed wall of logical argumentations around you and without knowing it you isolate yourself from the world. I became aware that rational understanding can never bring you in touch with the essence of life and nature around you." 

Panic on the Establishment Express

MAGA is in the driver’s seat of the '24 nomination and Rich Lowry and Peggy Noonan know it. They foresee the fracturing of a potential ’24 field and how Trump could win it. Thus they have dueling editorials out making the argument for someone other than Trump. 

Noonan went for the jugular: Trump's completely apathetic response to the plight of the 1/6rs.  For all Trump’s famed erraticisms, he is pretty predictable when it comes to putting himself first. With Trump you’re buying balls, not compassion. 

Her take is let’s elect competence, not balls. The question I would ask Noonan: “GWB had a ‘dream team’ cabinet in terms of competence. How did that work? Decades of wars, weaponization of airlines via TSA/no fly lists, and surveillance of American citizens?” 

I’ll take Trump’s incompetence for $100 Alex. 

Lowry went for the hoary ol’ tried and true: “but...but...but the Democrats will hammer us for 1/6!....why would Republicans want to risk it or even deal with the complication?”

Answer: Because MAGA couldn't care less about party labels. Electability only matters when the parties are different, and only Trump and DeSantis are different.  Nothing quite says “uniparty” like shipping off $40b to Ukraine for a proxy war with Russia.  Or ignoring the incarceration of folks involved in misdemeanor activities on 1/6. 

Lowry also missed the memo that the days of GOP voters huddled in a defensive crouch trembling at how the Dems/media will frame them are long gone. It's especially annoying to be held at gunpoint by an event (1/6) sponsored by our own FBI. Electability is overrated if the choices are two wings of same party. 

In Praise of QAnon

Sometimes the paranoids are right and sometimes they're wrong but necessary! Listened to a bit of interview with Lee Harris, author of a number of books on American history, by Lee Smith.  Excerpt: 

Harris:  “...My book addressed the question was why some societies value liberty and are notable for their history of freedom.  In pursuing that theme I researched the English Civil War, the Peasants Revolt of 1381, etc....What I began noticing is that the citizens for liberty were often not exactly law-abiding citizens. They were often violently rebellious, often times paranoid. They sometimes had paranoid fantasies about the threats upon them.  In the American Revolution, the opening of the Declaration of Independence is well-known but few people get to the passages in which George III is referred to as a ‘tyrant trying to enslave Americans’. Which is pretty extreme. It occurred to me that maybe the price of having a free society is having a bunch of people who are ornery, who are unwilling to take authority, unwilling to abide by the words of their betters, perhaps this is a necessary agreement in free societies -- as opposed to people who believe you write this document the Constitution and append a Bill of Rights and then everything takes care of itself.  I’ve come to the conclusion this was false. But Stalin wrote a fine constitution with much more rights given than we have.

I differ emphatically from the school of Straussians who put a lot of importance on documents, to sacred political documents. And I tend to find the bedrock of freedom is the interior, gut feelings of ordinary people.” 

Freedom as Teleos Kills Freedom

It’s been surprising to find out after all these years that what made America special during its first 150 years was not freedom or democracy or capitalism or the Constitution but virtue and godliness.  The orientation from 1750-1950 was towards the goal of God with virtue as the path.  Education for a trade or profession took a back seat in favor of making good Christians and citizens, not good earners. 

Englishman G.K. Chesterton said America was a “nation with the soul of a church”. Schooling was heavy with Scripture, Greek and Roman classics that had a morality angle, and prayer and chapel.  It influenced what men and women wore and what they could do or buy on Sundays. It gave discernment that lying under oath had eternal repercussions. It radically asserted that our rights come not from the state but from God.  Even our money reminded us that “in God (not money) we trust”. I’m amazed to see in my own lifetime how throughly discredited the post-1960s vision of American freedom and liberalism has become.  

In a way, just as Jesus had to die on the cross to show us the truth about ourselves, our libertarian society had to show itself corrupt to reveal the truth about political systems. 

An emphasis on freedom ironically undermines freedom. We can see prioritizing freedom over virtue has literally made our democracy no longer a democracy - the government bends not to the people's voice but to the press, the D.C. swamp, and the election riggers. 

We also had a good test case in trade with China. The conventional wisdom said that would make them like us, the implication being that China would be too interested in money to make war (notwithstanding the irony that we are more warlike than any country these days in terms of military spending and number of wars, i.e. NATO expansion, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc....)

Similarly, the freedom that had been mistakenly guarded as our national treasure has become profane and used in the service of calling cross-dressing men “women” and referring to same sex coupling as “marriage”. 

In Yoram Hazony’s recent book on the history of conservatism he writes: 

An important principle of Anglo-American conservative thought is this: When faced with the disastrous consequences of a particular course of action, we must retrace our steps and restore, as much as possible, the conditions that existed prior to setting out on this course. This is what happened in 1660, when Matthew Hale proposed the restoration of the English monarchy. It is what happened in 1787, when George Washington proposed the restoration of the forms of the traditional English constitution in America. It is what happened in 1863, when Abraham Lincoln proposed that the evil of slavery, that unspeakable digression from the course of English constitutional history, would be abolished. America and Britain have arrived at another such juncture, and they will have to retrace their steps and return to their historic path. If such a repentance, and such a return to the right path, has taken place time and again in history, why should it not be attempted again? There is nothing to be lost in making the attempt—and everything to be gained by it.

We are neither happier than previous generations nor are we closer to Heaven. That sounds like a lose-lose proposition. But how fortunate for us to find (or re-find) this wisdom and knowledge in our time! How cool is it that we've been given the gift of sight before (hopefully) it's not too late? 

The 17th century philosopher Gottfried Leibniz said that the complementary nature of evil and goodness allows us to better appreciate God and why he lets evil exist.  He adds that God allows evil so that we will become better by fighting it.  This is along the lines of how some say that God allows evil because it creates the special conditions in which virtue can flourish. A recent piece by a man had his legs shattered in an accident said it, “taught me the value of fragility of the human body and has given me a newfound respect toward the physically handicapped.” 

Similarly, the evil of our political elites gives us a new regard for God's astonishing contrast. We suddenly feel sympathy for the imprisoned, especially the 1/6r's in D.C. jails. We feel the same for Americans suffering under the beneficiary of a stolen election, and for our countrymen whose jobs have been outsourced to China over the past few decades towards the goal of "free" trade. 

"This is RICO Stuff": On the Election-Stealing NGOs

Interesting Eric Metaxas interview with Catherine Engelbrecht of “True the Vote” on naming the NGOs involved in election theft. She says: 

“We don’t want to get ahead of the investigations...Governments can sweep in a way that has the benefit of timing. We want to take down the whole house of cards and to do that requires a lot of strategy. This is a syndicate that is nationwide and even international. These organizations are a web across our country that have, in part, an aspect of them that requires an element of election control. They’re all part of a piece. This is RICO stuff. This is huge. The movie was enormously helpful in opening people’s eyes but I assure you this is the tip of the iceberg.” 

My Unrequited Bromance with Bishop Flores & Regulatory Capture Comes to Journalism

I’ve long had a (one-sided) bromance with Bishop Daniel Flores of Texas. He’s the intellectual heavyweight among the American bishops and I always feel a bit wistful that his politics are mostly left-wing. He seems too intellectually honest for that and feel it's sort of an opportunity lost. Of course his mission of saving souls is infinitely more important than his politics. 

I more or less uncharitably/lazily attributed his pro-immigration stance to his Mexican heritage but of late he added his voice on gun control in the Pillar. 

I think the nub of the issue is where the bishop says, “there is a legitimate right of the state to exercise a vigilant and reasonable stewardship and control over the access to weapons or things which could potentially cause great damage to the good of the whole.” 

What if the state is (or becomes in the future) the threat to the good of the whole? What if the exercise of second amendment rights is not about the idolatry of individualism but taken in the context of militias mentioned in the Constitution? Violent defense against government state tyranny is either legitimate or not in the Catholic view — if it is not he should say so plainly. Ambiguity doesn’t work in this case because you can’t have it both ways.

The general snark, of course, is you can't defeat the mighty U.S. government with your little toy guns, even AK-47s. 

True, you're not going to "defeat" the state any more than Jews armed in the 1930s Germany would've been able to "defeat" the Germans. But would it have been better had they not been disarmed? No one thinks there will be tyranny in their own state (see Germany in 1930s). It's always considered a conspiracy because people don't read history, let alone that it might become applicable to the present.

I think maybe the subtext is the Catholic debate on guns is between folks who think we have solved the problem of Catholicism and the state and those who know better.  Catholicism has always wanted to see the unity of the Body of Christ lived out on the ground…i.e no nation states, hence the appeal of the Roman empire and later the Holy Roman one. The universal nature of Catholicism innately pictures a kingdom of Catholics irrespective of nationality, hence the reason the bishops across the world are so supportive of the EU & UN. ..and why Bishop Flores is on team State? 

Origen said that the kingdom of Heaven should be mirrored on earth as well as possible. Catholics didn't even evangelize outside the Roman empire in the early centuries, equating Christendom with an earthly empire in which Christianity can be lived out more seamlessly, while the Arians evangelized "beyond the pale" to Germanic tribes and thus therein lies much of their success. Bottom line: nobody knows the proper relationship between Catholicism and state and to talk about gun control is to indirectly talk about the right to defend against the state, and that is to talk about Catholicism and state, which seems a dead end.  

Bishop Flores also thinks the fact many are so against even discussing gun control is that guns are considered “sacral”. 

But I think the shutting down by the right-wing of any discussion of gun control is because that path of that discussion is unfruitful. It’s unfruitful because for Catholics gun ownership is tied to that thorny problem of Catholicism and the state, unsolved now for 2000 years. 

In other words, gun control has nothing to do with hunting animals and neither does the Second Amendment. 

**

The recent tragedy in Texas gives another reason to support the banning of banning guns. Apparently there was a long gap of time before the police finally shot the guy in Texas. So outsourcing our self-defense to the police seems a tad foolish. 

From American Spectator: 

“When the cops cannot control the criminals, then the idea of allowing the cop’s employer to control your access to firearms strikes as insane. The same people urging everyone to lay down their weapons just two years ago urged everyone to defund the police.”

I wonder how much the root issue is Thomas Sowell's "conflict of visions", whether we believe society will always get better with additional education and wealth, or whether human nature is unchanging and every society and government will eventually fall/become corrupt.

If every government will eventually become tyrannical then it’s not great to disarm citizenry in the long run. If we're all heading towards Utopia then definitely a stop along that route is disarming everyone. 

**

Our killer problem now is that journalism became credentialed with college degree and elite money. 

The great journalists of the 1940s had no formal training and came from working class backgrounds.

I honestly think Trump wouldn't have won '16 if journalism represented non-elites as they had in the past because Trump's pet issues would not have been able to rise to the level they did with a healthy press corps.

Trump gave voice to the voiceless and the reason the Deplorables were voiceless is because journalism lost its way, lost its ability to speak truth to power.  They got captured by the elite. Regulatory capture, ha.  It's hard to see how politicians would’ve had free rein on trade and immigration the last two decades if working class journalists held them to account. 

Editorial from American Spectator

Yep, from the publisher of American Spectator: 

After the 2020 vote manipulating debacle, when people pressed me about whether I thought the election was stolen, my response was, "I don't know and that bothers me." 

I don't like not knowing if I can trust America's government simply because the voting system is so open to manipulation and theft. That's a problem.

Both establishment Republicans and Democrats and the media that supports them, demanded people say, "Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States and won the election (while he was in his basement) with 82 million votes." It wasn't enough to say it. You had better be damned enthusiastic about it, too.

This strange obsession with what the "losers" believe is a mind infection and an important one. The mind infection is not on the part of voters. The mind infection is on the part of those who are so insecure about the election outcome that everyone else must, like a robot, conform to their worldview and state it publicly like some loyalty oath. 

It has real world consequences. January 6 protestors, ushered into the Capitol, touching nothing, are being harangued into confessing to thought crimes and disavowing previous views in order to get lighter sentences. It's evil.

Worse, it's likely that the protesters are right. The election, if not stolen, was surely distorted with voting irregularities. Why should a J6 protestor have to confess to something that may not be true? Why confess anything? 

Years ago, when talking to a friend, I said, "Find a Democrat, find voter fraud." It's an axiom that is as immutable as gravity.

Democrats do not have the courage of their convictions because their convictions are nuts and few people agree with them.

How do they get elected? Well, they lie about what they believe. They lie about what their opponents believe. And, most of all, they commit voter fraud just to cover their bases. 

Why, for example, was Hillary so convinced that she'd win and didn't work hard? She knew there'd be fraud. She just didn't think she'd have to overcome so many votes.

Why, on election night, when Trump was easily ahead, did Biden say and this is a paraphrase, By the end of the night we'll have this? Because he knew he would -- one way or another. 

Some states are shoring up their voting systems. Pennsylvania is not one of them. For the ones who have, it's not enough. There are vast paid operations to vote harvest. Criminals get more creative. The GOP, once again, will be caught flat-footed – if they're not actively involved with the scam.

There are some crazy outcomes in Georgia. How did thousands of first time voters come out and then vote for the....incumbents? That's weird. Usually, a change election bring in new blood not keep old blood.

Some are saying that Democrats voted in the GOP primary. Maybe. Then why was voting depressed on the Dem side? 

I personally hate open primaries. They should be abolished. But even that doesn't fully explain what happened in Georgia. 

All this to say expect shenanigans. Expect illegal votes. Expect Republicans to act doe-eyed and helpless. Expect Democrats to lie to your face. Expect the media to demand that you ignore evidence. 

Answering Jonah Goldberg

Kind of amusing Jonah Goldberg G-file on Friday in which his makes the argument that Trump's character is poor and that he's distressed that neither political side ever admits they are wrong.  

Trump is of poor character, just as every president since Reagan or Papa Bush. Some just hide it better. If character is destiny then no wonder the country is where it is (and not the work of one orange man! To paraphrase Willa Cather, that soup is the work of a thousand years). 

And of course neither side admits being wrong. Did Sherman admit some piddling thing to a southern belle on his March to the sea? Did Jeff Davis apologize for passing gas in a letter to Lincoln?

Goldberg should read the great Norman Podhoretz who recognizes the season accurately: a cold civil war.

There will be no reckoning or accountability for Trump until there is also for FBI (see Whitmer case and 1/6). No Epps, no peace.