Friday, December 28, 2018

Glenn Reynolds: Fetal Organ Farms

Glenn Reynolds, professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, frequent contributor to USA Today and Popular Mechanics, and popular blogger at Instapundit (Pajama Media), has just publicly admitted that he supports women acting as baby organ farms.

From his point of view, a woman can conceive, abort, then sell the baby's hair to stuff pillows, the baby's skin to make lampshades, the baby's fat to make soap and (since they lack gold teeth) the baby's organs to fill bank accounts. This policy got men tried and hung at Nuremburg. But it's now just another legitimate opinion at the University of Tennessee College of Law.


He has admitted to it in the comments to one of his posted articles.
Here's the screen snip of the relevant portions.



Were the Holy Family Refugees?


Comment: The Holy Family were NOT refugees! They went to Bethlehem to pay taxes!

Answer: Sure, the trip to Bethlehem was to pay taxes. But the trip to Egypt was as a refugee family fleeing a violent persecution that threatened to kill their son, as it had already killed all the male children under the age of 5.

The Holy Family were ABSOLUTELY refugees before the second chapter of Matthew's Gospel ended.

Comment: No, they were NOT refugees! They didn't cross a national border! It's like fleeing Illinois for Texas! That's not a refugee move!

Answer: While it is true the refugees remained in the Roman Empire, it is not at all like the move from Illinois to Texas. The Roman provinces held different legal statuses depending on their relationship with Rome. We aren't used to this kind of thought, but it was commonplace in the Roman Empire.

For instance, we have only two levels of citizenship: you are or you aren't. In the Roman Empire, it wasn't so simple. There were all kinds of different rights and degrees of citizenship, governing even whom you could marry. These rights and degrees of citizenship were often bound to specific geographic regions, so you had "citizen's right X" if you lived in one city or region, but you lost it if you moved to another (Ius migrationis).

Judea was a client state, with Herod as its Roman-chosen ruler. Rome's relationship to the Judean province was a client-state relationship, rather like the relationship between the US and Cuba after the Spanish-American war, when the US ambassador held more power in Cuba than the Cuban president did.

As the ruler of a client-state province, Herod had a relatively free hand to slaughter whom he liked. And he had already demonstrated a serious malevolent intent to slaughter the Holy Family's child. We know this because he had slaughtered every child that even looked like his target (note: I am publishing this on Childermas, the Feast of the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents).

Egypt, on the other hand, was considered the personal property of the Emperor. The Holy Family fled the Judean client state to enter the personal property of the Emperor, i.e., Egypt, where Augustus was considered pharaoh. By this flight, they were thus placing themselves under the personal protection of Augustus. That is, they were refugees in EVERY modern sense of the word.

Again, Egypt was the personal property of the pharaoh, i.e., the personal property of Emperor Augustus. Judea wasn't.

By moving from Judea to Egypt, they removed themselves from the authority of a man trying to kill their child and placed themselves under the personal protection of the Roman Emperor. That's a refugee move.

Conclusion: Yes, the Holy Family were refugees. And, yes, if Egypt were ruled by Trump, Mary and Joseph would likely be denied entry, perhaps they would even be sent back to suffer the execution of their child, God.

Why We Hate Illegals

For those who like to post news stories about the crimes of illegals.

It is fact that illegals commit fewer crimes, in every category, than US citizens do. So, for every "illegal commits dastardly crime!" story you post, anyone with sense can find a dozen similar crimes committed by American citizens. (Google "illegal immigrants crime" to verify)

If you consistently highlight stories about illegals who commit crimes,  you are cherry-picking anecdotal incidents in order to paint illegals as something the numbers tell us is simply not true. You're trying to show that illegal immigrants are a major cause of crime, when they aren't.

If I wanted to paint Catholics as career criminals, I could easily do the same thing using the same technique. In fact, the press currently does EXACTLY this kind of cherry-picking with priest sexual abuse cases: the MSM highlights priest cases and ignores or downplays sex crime committed by other faiths and sex crime committed by lay people (e.g., public school teachers, homosexuals, coaches, businessmen, etc.).

Even though statistics show that every other class of people you can think of actually commits MORE sex crime than Catholic priests do, we are being conditioned by the MSM to equate "sex crime" with "Catholic priest."

Is that fair?
Obviously not.

So, why do you do the same damned thing to illegals (many of whom are your Catholic brothers and sisters) that the MSM already does to Catholic priests? You're just stirring up hate against a class that has no way to protect itself against your false allegations.

The statistics are quite, quite clear: my children are safer being alone with a Catholic priest than they are being alone with a public school teacher, an evangelical preacher, a sports coach, a homosexual or the manager of a fast food restaurant.

You are safer being alone with illegal immigrants than you are being alone with one of your next-door neighbors.

If you want safety, deport all American citizens, bring in only illegal immigrants. Crime will drop like a rock.

According to legal experts, each American commits, on average, three felonies a day. If you REALLY wanted safety, you would be advocating for the deportation of all American citizens who commit crimes. I don't see you doing that.

You really DO NOT want safety.
What you want is the deportation of people who are not like you.

They are more law-abiding, they are Catholic, but they speak a different language and have different customs. THAT is the basis for your antipathy.

Is that fair?

Thursday, December 20, 2018

The Founding Fathers and Immigration

Immigration is crossing a country’s borders with the intent to remain in that country. Naturalization is the process by which immigrants become citizens and gain access to political institutions. A naturalized person becomes a citizen and has a right to
  • Hold office
  • Vote in elections
A person can immigrate to a country without ever becoming naturalized, i.e., a citizen. The Founding Fathers knew this simple truth. The Founders wanted open borders, and the evidence is in the founding documents of this nation.

Declaration of Independence: One of the reasons the colonials revolted against the King and the English government was precisely over the King's regulation of immigration:
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
We see three reasons for revolt listed in this paragraph: (1) restriction on naturalization, (2) restriction on immigration and (3) not enough open land. Reason number (2) is the kicker: the Founding Fathers revolted against the King in part because the King wouldn’t allow open borders.

The Constitution says nothing about allowing the federal government to restrict immigration. This is as close as you get.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 The Congress shall have Power… To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States…
The Constitution gives the federal government power to establish whatever naturalization laws it wants, but it says nothing about immigration law. 18th century Americans considered slaves and indentured servants to be “articles of commerce,” even though the indentured servants migration was voluntary. During the Founding era, the Foreign Commerce Clause was considered to give Congress power to regulate the international shipment of articles of commerce (including slaves and indentured servants), but not to forbid mere migration, as such.

Similarly, the interstate Commerce Clause was not understood to give Congress the power to forbid the migration of Americans from one state to another. The Constitution literally uses the same phrase to cover both, giving Congress the power to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States.” At the time of the founding, the individual states were supposed to have power to regulate themselves that was almost the equal of individual foreign nations. States were very much like "little nations."
Article I, Section 9: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The word "migration" is mentioned in Section 9, but it isn't what you think. Again, the Founders explain. As John Jay – the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and coauthor of the Federalist Papers – pointed out in an 1819 letter discussing the Clause:
“It will, I presume, be admitted that slaves were the persons intended. The word slaves was avoided, probably on account of the existing toleration of slavery and of its discordance with the principles of the Revolution, and from a consciousness of its being repugnant to the following positions in the Declaration of Independence, viz.: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”
James Madison, author of the Constitution, said the phrasing of the clause was due to “scruples against admitting the term ‘slaves’ into the Instrument.” In Federalist 42, Madison decried
“[a]ttempts [that] have been made to pervert this clause into an objection against the Constitution, by representing it…as calculated to prevent voluntary and beneficial emigrations from Europe to America.”
Congress could and did outlaw the importation of slaves by 1808, and did enforce that ban on the importation of these “goods”. Thus, it was physically possible to place a ban on immigration, if that were within Congressional authority. However, for the first century of the country’s existence, Congress passed absolutely no law restricting immigration.
Amendment 10: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Because of the 10th Amendment, any power not listed in the Constitution does not belong to the federal government. The power to restrict immigration is not listed in the Constitution. Therefore, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to restrict immigration.

Some say the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 restricted immigration, since it gave the federal government the power to deport foreigners and added restrictions to the naturalization of immigrants.  Also, it allowed fines and imprisonment against those who "write, print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government.

Now, under the terms of this law over twenty Republican newspaper editors were arrested, some were imprisoned.  No one was deported. All but the Alien Enemies Act was repealed within four years.  The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is still in force in modified form and authorizes the President to detain, relocate, or deport enemy aliens in time of war.

The problem, of course, is that none of those acts ever actually put any restriction on immigration. They allowed for deportation, but said not a word about immigration. Worse, both Thomas Jefferson (the vice-president at the time) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) publicly condemned the Acts as "unconstitutional."
James Madison argued that the Alien Friends Act (which gave the president the power to deport aliens that he “shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States,” as well as any suspected of “treasonable or secret machinations against the government.”)[1] “exercises a power no where delegated to the federal government.”[2] Thomas Jefferson adopted much the same position in his October 1798 draft of the Kentucky Resolution, which stated that “ALIEN-friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the state wherein they are; that no power over them has been delegated to the US. nor prohibited to the individual states distinct from their power over citizens.”
These men helped both Kentucky and Virginia pass resolutions which essentially nullified the federal laws. In summary, the Alien and Sedition Acts:
  • say nothing about immigration,
  • were never used to actually deport anyone,
  • expired at the end of two years,
  • caused two Founding Fathers to declare them unconstitutional,
  • caused two states to pass resolutions which nullified the Acts, making Kentucky and Virginia "sanctuary states" from unconstitutional federal law.
For the next sixty years, the Congress passed a few laws regulating how ships carrying immigrants had to be configured, but they passed no laws restricting immigration itself. In fact, quite the contrary. President Lincoln, in his Annual Message to Congress on December 8, 1863:
“I again submit to your consideration the expediency of establishing a system for the encouragement of immigration….”
A week after Lincoln’s message a bill to encourage and protect foreign immigrants was presented in the Senate and passed, establishing the Federal Bureau to Encourage Immigration. Lincoln’s Republican Party in its 1864 convention wrote into their platform a principle stating: “That foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources, and increase of nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”

So, if the Founders intended to establish an open borders country, what changed? The answer is simple: Darwin. In 1859, only a year before the Civil War, Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (published 24 November 1859). Twelve years later, at the same time a Republican Congress was passing the first Civil Rights legislation and giving citizenship rights to black Americans, Darwin published The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).

By 1883, Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, creates the term “eugenics”, which means “good genes”, and “dysgenic” or “bad genes.” Galton will go on to fund a Chair of Eugenics at University of London, 1904. America and England will become leaders in the implementation of eugenics throughout the world, teaching Europe, especially Germany, the glories of eugenic thinking. By the 1870s, educated Europeans and Americans spoke of the “German race” the “French race”, the “Italian race”, the “English race”. The American elite wanted a pure “American race”.

Riding the wave of scientific "eugenic" thought, America passed the 1875 Page Act, the first federal law restricting immigration. Like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, it and most subsequent federal immigration law was meant to prevent the diseased and the subhuman from entering the US. The first targets were the yellow Chinese, followed soon by most Asians and, then those of Mediterranean stock, whose skin was too dusky and whose religion was too Catholic to be trusted.

The educated elites were at war with the general culture. Most of America viewed itself as giving warm welcome to all immigrants. Thus, we see to this day, embossed on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, The New Colossus (1903):

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

But the elites would have none of it. They wanted a pure American race, unpolluted by the mongrel hordes of American citizens who welcomed those dirty, subhuman immigrants. Prior to 1906, an immigrant could be naturalized in any U.S. "court of record", but the federal government usurps that role by 1907. In that same year, Indiana passes the first law in the world empowering the government to involuntarily sterilize its own citizens. Cold Spring Harbor creates the first eugenics laboratory, and supplies advisors to Congress on what immigration laws should be passed to keep out the dysgenic riff-raff.

Money from the millionaire elite rolled in. Margaret Sanger, wife of one of those millionaires, began referring to blacks, Catholics and Jews as "human weeds" who needed to be contracepted and sterilized in order to maintain America's racial purity. Adolf Hitler studied America law and policy closely and liked what he saw. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf (1925), he explicitly praised American eugenics law, thereby demonstrating how deeply American elites had formed his own thinking.
"There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but [the US], in which an effort is made to consult reason at least partially. By refusing immigrants on principle to elements in poor health, by simply excluding certain races from naturalisation, it professes in slow beginnings a view that is peculiar to the People's State."
Thirty American states followed Indiana's example and began their own involuntary sterilization programs, targeting specific subpopulations: criminals, imbeciles, Mexicans, Indians. When these laws were challenged, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)  upheld the state laws: 
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. (Buck vs. Bell, 1927)
To this day, the SCOTUS ruling in Buck vs. Bell has never been overturned. Hitler will explicitly model his own laws and policies on America's example, using American lawyers and advisors to help him craft Nazi Germany's national policy.

In the years since Darwin captured the imagination of the elites, nearly every American president from Theodore Roosevelt to Donald Trump, and virtually all the moneyed interests who put those presidents in office, have championed the cause of eugenics. Thus, America no longer follows the Founding Fathers' vision of an open borders country. Instead, we implement the eugenics vision we taught the Nazis. Keep the dysgenic out! Make America Pure Again!


PS
As the Mises Institute points out, Constitutional scholars like Ilya Sommins and Judge Andrew Napolitano agree that the Constitution doesn't actually authorize the federal government to create immigration restrictions.
 ""[T]he Constitution itself — from which all federal powers derive — does not delegate to the federal government power over immigration, only over naturalization.""


Wednesday, December 19, 2018

The Fall of the Humanities

The self-destruction of the humanities on college campuses proves the study of the humanites was never actually a bulwark against despotism.
After all, the people who could lay a claim to being most steeped in the humanities were both:
(a) unable to teach and appoint their own worthy successors
(b) unable to keep themselves from falling into the abyss.
So, the very fact that the humanities have fallen so far provides a strong argument that study of the humanities never really brought the kind of abiding wisdom that such study claimed to provide.
That failure is worth contemplating. 

While the colleges were filled with Christians who supported the humanities, the disciplines served their purpose. When Christianity was stripped from higher education, the humanities failed.

Perhaps that is a coincidence, but I bet it ain't. 

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Nightmare Number 3

We had expected everything but revolt
And I kind of wonder myself when they started thinking--
But there’s no dice in that now.
I’ve heard fellow say
They must have planned it for years and maybe they did.
Looking back, you can find little incidents here and there,
Like the concrete-mixer in Jersey eating the wop
Or the roto press that printed 'Fiddle-dee-dee!'
In a three-color process all over Senator Sloop,
Just as he was making a speech. The thing about that
Was, how could it walk upstairs? But it was upstairs,
Clicking and mumbling in the Senate Chamber.
They had to knock out the wall to take it away
And the wrecking-crew said it grinned.
It was only the best
Machines, of course, the superhuman machines,
The ones we’d built to be better than flesh and bone,
But the cars were in it, of course . . .
and they hunted us
Like rabbits through the cramped streets on that Bloody Monday,
The Madison Avenue busses leading the charge.
The busses were pretty bad--but I’ll not forget
The smash of glass when the Duesenberg left the show-room
And pinned three brokers to the Racquet Club steps
Or the long howl of the horns when they saw men run,
When they saw them looking for holes in the solid ground . . .

I guess they were tired of being ridden in
And stopped and started by pygmies for silly ends,
Of wrapping cheap cigarettes and bad chocolate bars
Collecting nickels and waving platinum hair
And letting six million people live in a town.
I guess it was that, I guess they got tired of us
And the whole smell of human hands.
But it was a shock
To climb sixteen flights of stairs to Art Zuckow’s office
(Noboby took the elevators twice)
And find him strangled to death in a nest of telephones,
The octopus-tendrils waving over his head,
And a sort of quiet humming filling the air. . . .
Do they eat? . . . There was red . . . But I did not stop to look.
I don’t know yet how I got to the roof in time
And it’s lonely, here on the roof.
For a while, I thought
That window-cleaner would make it, and keep me company.
But they got him with his own hoist at the sixteenth floor
And dragged him in, with a squeal.
You see, they coƶperate. Well, we taught them that
And it’s fair enough, I suppose. You see, we built them.
We taught them to think for themselves.
It was bound to come. You can see it was bound to come.
And it won’t be so bad, in the country. I hate to think
Of the reapers, running wild in the Kansas fields,
And the transport planes like hawks on a chickenyard,
But the horses might help. We might make a deal with the horses.
At least, you’ve more chance, out there.
And they need us, too.
They’re bound to realize that when they once calm down.
They’ll need oil and spare parts and adjustments and tuning up.
Slaves? Well, in a way, you know, we were slaves before.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t.
(I wish I hadn’t looked into the beauty-parlor
And seen what was happening there.
But those are female machines and a bit high-strung.)
Oh, we’ll settle down. We’ll arrange it. We’ll compromise.
It won’t make sense to wipe out the whole human race.
Why, I bet if I went to my old Plymouth now
(Of course you’d have to do it the tactful way)
And said, 'Look here! Who got you the swell French horn?'
He wouldn’t turn me over to those police cars;
At least I don’t think he would.
Oh, it’s going to be jake.
There won’t be so much real difference--honest, there won’t--
And I’d go down in a minute and take my chance--
I’m a good American and I always liked them--
Except for one small detail that bothers me
And that’s the food proposition. Because, you see,
The concrete-mixer may have made a mistake,
And it looks like just high spirits.
But, if it’s got so they like the flavor . . . well . . . 

Sunday, December 02, 2018

A Word of Warning

Fr. RP: Let me say this, and please everyone pay attention to it for it is very real and a serious problem: Active sodomites in the clerical order often seek out a non sodomite orthodox priest for confession, with the sole intention of binding him to silence about them and their activities. They are not seeking to truly repent, they are effectively shutting him up permanently about their evil activities.

I have never seen this mentioned or reported anywhere, but it is very real. And it's one of the reasons why many 'good' priests and bishops are silent when it comes to specific clerics and their grievous sins. For they have been manipulated via the sacrament of penance to permanent silence on certain members of the clergy. And this is also how many of these deviants make it through seminary. My advice to all good priests is that if a cleric wants to come to confession to you and you have any doubts or suspicions about them that are serious, then you must refuse to hear their confession. Don't get manipulated by these vile men! If you don't know them then refer them to someone else! And I promise you, every priest who has been around for a couple of years or more, and is known to be solidly orthodox, knows by experience what I am saying is true.