What's Wrong With Designer Babies?

“What’s so bad about creating designer babies?” asks John Stossel:

“Jenna Bush Hager, who's the daughter of former President George W. Bush, recently said that "there should be things that we leave up to God."

"I'm not really sure I'm going to take her word for it," says Brennan. "If God appears before me and says 'don't do this,' I'll stop." 

But why would God say stop?

God would have at least three reasons to say “STOP!” and all three of those reasons revolve around the definition of the word “person.” Mr. Stossel, apparently doesn’t realize it, but by even asking the question, he has put himself in league both with the Progressive liberals who gave us the eugenics mindset and with Karl Marx, whose worldview led logically to Stalin’s socialism. These groups, and others like them, consider persons to be objects, things to be manipulated, and not subjects, persons to be honored.

John Stossel Isn’t The Only One Confused

Although its meaning serves as the foundation for Western law and culture, the Western definition of the word “person” is almost entirely lost. Today, instead of adhering to the ancient Western definition, we attempt to substitute various other worldviews. When we succeed, Western culture always loses.  For instance, most rabbis will assert the soul arrives at “first breath”, that is, at birth. This is the viewpoint we recently enshrined in US law via RvW. It is legal to abort up to the moment the child has “breath in its lungs.” When a fetal body is found in a toilet, the prosecution of the mother for murder relies solely on that test. US law aligns perfectly with Jewish faith.  Substituting Islamic views works no better: Muslims allow abortion, which is just an extreme form of genetic editing, almost universally before four months gestation, and any time the mother’s life is at risk. Hindus, who say every living thing possesses an individual, eternal soul, place the transmigration of the soul into a new body anywhere between conception and birth, depending on exactly which Vedic tradition is followed. Buddhists say there is no such thing as a human soul, but they still view abortion negatively; a Buddhist monk can be expelled from his monastery for assisting in abortion. For both Hindus and Buddhists, it creates very bad karma.

John Stossel is now trying his hand at the game by substituting scientism’s definitions. Some in Stossel’s school would argue “life” or “personhood” begins at “viability”, others, the first appearance of a complete central nervous system, or the first appearance of a heartbeat, or the implantation of the blastocyte in the uterine lining, or the moment of conception, which generally occurs after the egg has travelled about a third of the way down the Fallopian tubes. In each case, the biological event is emphasized as the test for “personhood.”  This emphasis on scientism, on physical tests, is precisely what Stossel endorses and Stalin desired.

The problem is simple: none of the worldviews above were involved in defining the original term. Instead, each necessarily distorts the word’s original meaning in order to shoehorn the term into their worldview. “Person” was defined in a formal, scientific way, nearly two millennia ago. But, the original, ancient definition is entirely incompatible with most modern agendas. Unfortunately, insofar as the word “person” is successfully redefined to fit one of the viewpoints above, Western civilization ceases to exist. By redefining the term, some other form of civilization will, for better or worse, have taken its place.

The Original Definition

The term originated in the formal science that forms the basis for Western civilization. A formal science is quite different than an experimental science. Unlike the latter, formal science does not require experiment. Formal sciences begin with basic propositions and extrapolate a logical framework from those basics. They don't use experiments. The best-known example of a formal science is mathematics.

In math, an axiom is a statement or property considered to be self-evidently true, but yet cannot be proven.  In 1911, the mathematicians Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead sought to prove that the axioms of math were never self-referential, never self-contradictory. The culmination of their work was the Principia Mathematica, hailed as a masterpiece. Kurt Gōdel, the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, created his “incompleteness” theorem, to counter-demonstrate that the Principia, indeed any logical system as complicated as arithmetic, cannot avoid being self-referential. Math is built upon concepts that simply must be accepted in order to build the logical framework:

"Therefore, it is in fact both true and unprovable. Our system of reasoning is incomplete, because some truths are unprovable."  

We know that the propositions of arithmetic are true. We don’t know how to, in fact, we cannot, prove they are true.

Here’s an unwelcome shock: like math, theology, specifically Christian theology, is also a formal science. Christian theology starts with basic propositions concerning the nature of persons. It then builds a logical framework upon those basic propositions using the tools described in Aristostle's "Logic." In fact, Kurt Gōdel used modal logic to demonstrate the validity of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God.

Christian theology created the definition of the word “person.” The central mystery – a word we shall return to – the central mystery of Christian theology is the nature of the Trinity. In order to describe the Trinitarian reality, a Christian theologian, Tertullian, stole a Latin stage term, a word used for the mask an actor wore on stage: persona. He then completely redefined this term and used the word to describe the three “Persons” of the Trinity: God is one substance in three persons. The discussion that resulted from this simple statement would eventually result in the creation of both the Declaration of Independence and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Tertullian's Foundation

Tertullian distinguished “nature” from “person.”  “Nature” is the range of actions an entity can take. “Person” is the agent who does it. God’s substance is the Divine Nature. The Divine Nature consists of the Divine Intellect and the Divine Will. The Divine Intellect knows all there is to know, the Divine Will chooses the good. The Divine Persons are the Father, Son and Spirit. Each Divine Person entirely owns the one Divine Intellect and the One Divine Will.  The Divine Nature is not shared. Each Person within the Godhead completely possesses to Himself the single Divine Nature.

The mystery of the Trinity is not the existence of the Divine Nature nor the existence of the Three Persons. The mystery lies in how each Divine Person can completely possess the single Nature without sharing.  We know that it is true. We do not know how it is managed.
We have no experience with such a thing. My intellect and will is mine, I do not share either my intellect nor my will with you, nor do you share either of yours with me. Yet, with the three Divine Persons it is not so. Each Divine Persons completely possesses the one single Divine Nature. The Three Persons know with the same Intellect, the three Persons choose with the same Will. To speak metaphorically, the Three Persons are always of one mind, one heart. This must be true because there is only one God. We do not know exactly how this is accomplished within the Godhead. We do know the answer resides in the relationships between the Persons.

Relations Define Persons

The relationships are simple. The Father eternally begets the Son (active relationship), the Son is eternally begotten by the Father (passive relationship). The Father and Son (or the Father alone, if you are Eastern Orthodox) eternally breathe forth the Spirit (active relationship), the Spirit is eternally breathed forth (passive relationship).  If it were not for these four relationships, there would be no Persons. So, we know relationship defines the Divine Persons.  The Father pours everything He is into the Son, the Son, seeing what the Father does, pours everything He is into the Father. This mutual, total, self-gift is Himself the third Person of the Trinity, the Spirit. Total self-gift is Divine love. This is what we are meant to image.

The paragraph above took moments to write. It took six ecumenical councils, ending with Third Constantinople (680-681 AD) and nearly seven centuries of argument to hammer out the details. The simplest definition of “person” comes from Boethius: “an individual substance of a rational nature." In modern terms, we can say a person is “that which possesses an intellect and a will.”

Notice: a physical body is not necessary to personhood. God is pure spirit. God does not have a body. So, personhood is not defined by body or bodily functions. The Divine Nature consists only of intellect and will, nothing else. The relationships that define the Divine Persons center on intellect and will. “Intellect” means rational thought, “will” means rational choice. So, God is Pure Rationality. But God is not just Pure Rationality. We also know God is Love. The ancient personhood debate revealed that the only rational choice, in fact, the only rational relationship, the single rational relationship which very literally defines all persons, is love. Love is identical to pure rationality.

Jefferson’s Declaration 

This was rather a surprising result, but that single result created Western civilization, because it defined how human beings, human persons, are meant to interact with each other. God is three Persons. Man is made in the image and likness of God. To be fully persons, man must imitate God. This is how theology gets around the self-reference problem that plagued math.

While God loves all things into existence, humans are singled out. From the first moment of our existence, the Persons of God actively forms relationships with us, thereby making us persons. The Father actively begets the Son, the Son receives. The Father (and Son) actively breathe forth the Spirit, the Spirit receives. The Spirit actively pours Himself into us, we receive the Spirit. We in turn actively love God and each other, pouring ourselves out in service of each. Thus, we are images of God. We are persons because of our relationships with God (primarily) and with each other (secondarily). God’s relationship with each of us makes us persons. As images of God, our relationships with each other in a sense “confirm” our personhood.

Thus, the Declaration of Independence, written by a Deist, echoes Christian Scripture. It proclaims “that all men are created equal” by God (Gal 3:28). Jefferson knew men’s bodies are not equal: some are weak, some strong, some capable, some less so. Jefferson certainly didn’t mean biological equality or even equality in opportunity. Equal opportunity is an empty catch-phrase if the resources to leverage that opportunity vary wildly, as biological capacity certainly does. Jefferson meant "equal in rights," but which rights?

The last book of Christian Scripture was written a scant century before the personhood debates began. The recognition of which books had Divine origins occurred just as those debates reached their heights. Christian Scripture was defined simultaneously with "personhood." The New Testament insists all persons have equal right to hope for salvation (Gal 3:28).

Jefferson was a Deist, but he was also a deeply serious student of the New Testament – in fact, he created his own expurgated version. He simply repeated Scripture. Since God has dignity and God has rights, we who are made in His image, have dignity, we have rights. Since the Persons of the Trinity are co-equal in all things (except relationship), every human is co-equal in this dignity and these rights. His Declaration of Independence recognizes the Divine origin of the equal rights of persons. Not equal capacities, not equal opportunities, not equal biologies, but equal rights to “the pursuit of Happiness,” which, even for a Trinitarian-denying Deist, meant happiiness not just in this life, but primarily happiness in heaven.

In the Declaration’s phrasing, Jefferson echoed the idea that each “person” is made in the image and likeness of God. Jefferson despised Trinitarian theology, but because the Christian concept of "personhood" founded his entire worldview, he literally could not avoid grounding the Declaration in this very same Trinitarian theology, in the theology of personhood. Man images God via Divine grace, man bears likeness to God via the human soul, composed of the human intellect and human will. We are persons because God calls us to be in rational relationship with Himself, the Persons of the Trinity. Man’s likeness, his intellect and will, make him rational, makes personal relationship possible. Our rational capacity not only makes us persons, it allows us to name ourselves homo sapiens, man of wisdom. It gives us dignity, it gives us rights. Though he was not a Trinitarian, given what Jefferson wanted to say, he had nowhere else to go.

The Lessons of Personhood

We can take several lessons here. First, only Christianity has ever had this extensive debate. No other worldview requires a definition of personhood, so no other system ever clarified what personhood is. The center of Christian theology revolves around personhood because the centerpiece of Christian theology is contemplation and union with the Persons of the Trinity.  Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, Taoism, name whatever “-ism” you wish, none of them have so strenuously struggled to precisely define personhood, as Christianity has. Most worldviews have not even recognized it as an essential issue.

Second, the heart of personhood is rational relationships. While Christians rightly discarded massive amounts of Greek and Latin writings that incorrectly described how the world worked, the one writing the West never lost was Aristotle’s Logic, His description of how to consider all matters rationally was a touchstone for all of Christian thought. The Christian emphasis on rational consideration reached one of its notable high points with Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. The Summa, Aquinas’ attempt to systematically present the basics tenets of Christianity, was enshrined along with the Scriptures on the altar at the Council of Trent. Unlike Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, the Summa avoided the self-reference problem by demonstrating everything ultimately derived from the Persons of God.

Third, personal relationships do not rely on biological function. The soul is the form of the body, the body is the tool of the soul. If one person has a faulty tool, a body incapable of communicating with other human persons as well as we might prefer, this in no way impairs that person’s relationship with God. That individual’s rights are still equal to the rights held by any other person, for the rights do not flow from government, but from God, from His relationship with each human person. God is completely self-sufficient. He doesn’t need us. The rationale for each personal relationship is not utility, but love.

How It Fell Apart

We smile when Tony Stark says to his daughter "I love you tons" and the little one replies, "I love you 3000!" We know instinctively that there is something childishly erroneous about the exchange, which is what makes it adorable.

The two, both adult and child, are mixing experimental science with formal science. The formal science of theology describes relationships via quality ("I love you..."). Experimental science describes relationships via numbers ("tons," "3000!").  When doing experimental science, when describing objects, numbers decide. When doing formal science, describing rational qualities of the soul, love decides.

The two sciences do not overlap. Experimental science has no way to quantitatively measure qualities of the soul, i.e., qualities of the person, like love, honor, sin, vice, virtue. Similarly, theological sciences, which are created to describe the quality of relationships between persons, has no place for quantitative measure. "3000" and "tons"  are not measures theology can use. 

Like many ancient philosophies, pagan Rome and Greece philosophies disliked experiment, preferring the life of the mind over that of the hands.  In both of their Divine pantheons, the god who worked with his hands, Vulcan/Hephaestus, was the only god who was ugly, physically deformed and constantly cuckolded, the only god ejected from heaven. The work of the hands was the work of slaves. This is why Judaism and its son, Christianity, were both considered the religion of slaves: the God of Genesis worked with His hands in the clay of the earth, as a slave would.

In addition, all pagan philosophies assigned personal agency to inanimate objects. Both their theology of nymphs, naiads, dryads and their philosophy, in which Aristotle argued that even inanimate objects have a kind of purpose and action, reinforced this view. For example, Aristotle asserted rocks fell because they "wanted" to be at the center of the universe (the earth). While Christianity slowly converted the pagans to a new worldview, many old misunderstandings, which were not obviously related to Christian theology, were slower to be abandoned. Experimental science was recognized as valid – both the Old and the New Testaments contain descriptions of experiments and emphasize the importance of the physical test – but, the formal sciences were held in highest regard. As a result, Greeks, Romans and early Christians all made a serious error: the formal sciences of theology and philosophy, not the experimental sciences, were used to define both the relationships between persons and the relationships between objects.

As Christian theology more deeply suffused every aspect of European thought, the problem created by this mis-match became more apparent. The problem was complex. Human persons are a unity of subject and object, soul and body. The seven Christian sacraments used to minister to man's body/soul unity are themselves a unity of divine grace and creation. Distinguishing object from subject, body from soul, without harming the correct understanding of either, was not an easy task.

Various attempts were made to solve the problem. Some, like Martin Luther, tried to resolve it by throwing away the Christian theology of sacrament, which could only be done by repudiating logic itself. Luther's cry "Reason is the whore of the devil!” resulted in the absurdity we call "blind faith." The "blind faith" movement was nonsensical, but it meant hard thinking was no longer necessary. This appealed to many unwilling to do the hard work of thinking clearly. A century later, Galileo demonstrated the formal science and language of math was superior to the formal science of theology in describing how objects interacted, but by then, it was too late to fix the error Luther had introduced. Within a century, England’s last Catholic king was overthrown (1688). From that point forward, the Protestant appeal to “blind faith” ruled the English colonies.

While England was never Lutheran, Protestant England adopted much of Luther’s worldview. Luther’s rejection of formal logic and insistence on an incorrect understanding of fallen human nature, led him to a false understanding of rationality, faith and personhood itself. Mathematical fields developed by Catholic scientists, like Pascal’s discovery of statistics and Galileo’s discovery of mechanics, focused attention on objects instead of persons. These trends seemed to tear theology in two. This, in turn, meant that by 1896, Andrew Dickson White could write his book, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, and have its wildly erroneous history accepted as Gospel truth, Today, America, still a Protestant culture to its core, considers logic and religious faith contradictory, simply because its entire experience with religious faith is the experience of Luther's Protestantism, a worldview that barely acknowledges the original Christian development of the “person.” This loss of memory was not always accidental.

Stalin Understood

Few people realize that Josef Stalin spent five years in study at the Spiritual Seminary in Tiflis, Georgia, wearing cassocks every day and living the life of a seminarian. He was also one of the seminary’s top students before he was expelled. Though an atheist when he ruled the Soviet Union, he had been trained in liturgical Christianity, Russian Orthodoxy. He knew the history of the word “person” intimately.  So, when the UN began formulating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he made a point of having Soviet diplomats object to the documents’ use of the word “person.” Since the word “person” was a religious term, such use, the Soviet atheists said, constituted the establishment of Christian faith as the overarching worldview of the UN. The Soviets insisted rights flowed from government to human beings. The word “person” implied rights derived from something other than government. American diplomats, being Protestant and relatively ignorant of Christian history, had no idea what the Soviets were talking about.

But Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain and René Cassin, two of the principals behind the Declaration, understood Stalin’s objection. This is part of the reason the Declaration starts not with a right, but with a definition:

Article 1 . All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 

As we can now see, the Declaration's definition is simply a paraphrase of the definition of the word “person” hammered out by the ecumenical councils a millennium before. It omits only Jefferson's observation that the Creator is the One Who endows human beings with freedom, equality, dignity, rights, reason and conscience. Since the UN document used. at the insistence of an Indian delegate, the phrase “human being” instead of the word “man” or “person”, and did not reference the Creator, the definition was generally accepted. The document passed. The Soviets abstained from the vote. The ancient Christian understanding of the word “person” is now enshrined not just in the Declaration of Independence, but also, via the UN, as a fundamental value of all nations. It has had a profound effect on the development of not just two millennia of Western European culture and law, but on all subsequent international law.

Returning to the Problem

So, when does the person begin existence? Experimental science, which deals only with the human body, cannot tell us. But the formal science of theology can. Follow the logic: sin is the absence of the grace necessary to be in full, rational relationship with God. Since persons alone are called into relationship with God, only persons can sin. Non-persons, such as chairs, dogs, or clumps of cells, are not persons and cannot sin. The Blessed Virgin Mary is a simple human person, a woman. She is also the Immaculate Conception. If  Mary is sinless from the moment of conception, she must be a person from the moment of conception. Since we are all, apart from sinlessness, no different from Mary, then we are all persons from the moment of conception. The left rejects this reasoning as empty religious posturing. The right refuses to supply this reasoning for fear of being accused of imposing theocracy. And so we stumble together, hand-in-hand, towards Stalin. Given what we are willing to say, we have nowhere else to go.

The moment of conception is not just a biological event, it is also, and primarily, a theological event. Experimental science can demonstrate the biology, but it can never demonstrate the theology. Insofar as we emphasize the biology, insofar as we attempt to define “person” as something man defines instead of something God establishes, we support Stalin’s objection.

When Stossel insists on "designer babies", he insists on a child made by committee, designed by teams, treated like an object. Each child will have not one, but a thousand fathers, not one, but a hundred thousand mothers. This is a "child" whose existence does not flow from the love between persons, but a "child", a person who has been redefined by government committee - and who really believes government will not get involved? -  to the nth degree.

Ovulation, ejaculation, uniting gametes in a lab dish, allowing a conceptus to reach a particular stage of development, whether in the womb or out, all of these biological stages are regulated by human persons. A government is just a group of human persons acting together.

So, if we accept the idea that personhood flows solely from a biology controlled by men, then we accept that personhood results solely from a group of human persons acting together. We will have judged Stalin right and Jefferson wrong: rights flow from government, from human persons, not from Divine Persons, not from God. The original definition of “person” will be changed, and we will no longer be ruled by either the Declaration of Independence, nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We will be ruled by capricious, ordinary men and women. Our rights will flow from their whims. Two millennia of constant usage will have gone by the wayside. The word “person” will have been successfully redefined. Western civilization will be at an end. 

Feminists Who Argue AGAINST Child Support

Emma Johnson, SingleMommy Blog:

Interesting aside: It is women are going to be the ones who end alimony. Often, the most vocal anti-alimony activists are women married to or in relationships with men who pay ungodly sums to exes: educated women who chose to be un- or underemployed, co-habiting (but not married to, because that would render alimony null) with educated men. The loudest alimony reformers, however, are successful women who are ordered to pay alimony and child support to men. Hell hath no fury like a woman paying alimony.

The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism:

I draw from this feminist literature as well, arguing that the child support system, as generally constructed, leads to the perpetuation of these traditional gender roles by forcing men to assume a status role of "father" as exclusive breadwinner. 

The Atlantic's biography of Karen Decrow, past president of NOW:

In a 1982 letter to the Times, she wrote that since men have no legal power to either veto or compel an abortion, it is only just that they shouldn’t have to pay for a woman’s unilateral decision to bring the pregnancy to term: “Or, put another way, autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice.”

Money.com's article on how bread-wining women drive alimony reform:

Now that women are paying alimony more often, they are getting involved in advocating for change.
“It’s unfair for men to pay it, and unfair for women to pay it. But women are much more outraged by it,” said Ken Neumann, a founder of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators.

If there is no child at conception, and if sex creates no responsibility towards future children, that is, if women create children, then men can never be responsible for the existence of children. Men cannot be compelled to pay child support.

Feminists agree with this reasoning.

Present this information to pro-aborts and watch their heads explode.

Should We Re-build Notre Dame?

Some say the money given to re-build Notre Dame is being wasted. It should be spent on the climate, or the poor.

God is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.
We help the poor the best by helping them understand God.
When we build beautiful things, we reflect God's beauty.

It was the poor we donated their treasure and their lives to building Notre Dame, because, poor as they were, they were richer than we are. They understood that they were giving their lives in dedication to reflecting the beauty of God, a gift they gave to the countless generations that followed them.

Sadly, we don't appreciate what the poor have given us, so we would prefer the gift of the poor not be re-built in their honor, in God's honor. We spit on the tuppence that is Notre Dame, the mite of beauty the widow has placed in history's coinbox for us. We instead say, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?”

I prefer to honor the poor who died to give us this gift.
I prefer to re-build.

Abortion and Immigrants

Does America have a moral obligation to open its borders and accept immigrants. Do the states have a moral obligation to support the immigrants, legal or illegal?

To answer, let's look at a similar situation. 

After WW II, Germany made amends to the world for the Holocaust in part by opening its borders to Jewish immigrants.

"For decades, Germany has tried to make amends for the murder of more than 6 million Jews by supporting survivors and descendants, at home and around the world, including an unusual program to offer citizenship to nearly any Jew from the former Soviet Union — which has built the Jewish community back to more than 100,000 people."

America has committed a Holocaust against itself, a genocide of much greater size and depravity than anything committed in 1940s Europe. If America hadn't been aborting it's children for the last 50 years, we wouldn't need the immigrants who are currently flooding in. As it is, we do need them, because our own children have been murdered, ground up in Insinkerators or thrown into biohazard bags and tossed into the mass graves we call garbage dumps.

America, you didn't want to pay to raise your own children, so now you are going to pay to help the immigrants who replace the innocents you murdered. Given that we have murdered far more people, we have at least as great a moral obligation to pay for our sins as Germany does.

Absolutely.
America has to make amends.
So, yes, we have to accept the immigrants.
And yes, we have to pay for them.

That's the pro-life position.

When People Say Trump or the Republicans Are "Prolife"

Quoting LiveAction.Org.  Notice how Trump is willing to veto an omnibus bill in order to keep Mexican Catholics out of the country, but never once mentions the murders of millions of children.

"Despite a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, and a Republican president in the White House, today, the omnibus spending bill, which continues to fully fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion corporation, was signed by President Trump after a threat earlier in the day that he might veto.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded.

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7:55 AM - Mar 23, 2018

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Despite promises from GOP leaders, including Trump, regarding their intentions to defund Planned Parenthood, this provision was not included in the bill in the face of a potential government shutdown.

The Daily Caller took the president to task over the continuation of half a billion dollars annually for the abortion giant:

The spending bill breaks Trump’s campaign promise to his voters, but it does fulfill a promise that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, made on the campaign trail in 2016. Clinton promised to continue funding Planned Parenthood if elected president, while Trump assured his voters that he would defund the abortion giant if he won.

The "Alt-Right" Are Actually Leftists

I could never figure out what this "Alt-Right" tag was supposed to mean, nor did I have the energy to investigate it and try to figure it out. Now it has been explained. "Alt-Right" means "these are damned socialists leftists that the leftists are afraid to own."

How do his views compare to those of other Alt-Right terrorists?

His views are in keeping with other white nationalist extremists who have resorted to violence. Jeremy Joseph Christian, an Alt-Right terrorist arrested for murdering two Muslims at a Portland train station in 2017, supported Bernie Sanders over the issue of tariffs and economic interventionism.

Norway mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik – whom Tarrant says he contacted and asked for a “blessing” before the Christchurch attack – wrote in his own 1,500-page manifesto that his economic views fell between socialism and social democracy. He favored the “development of alternative energy” to “save the environment” and argued it is “essential” that “national states have a controlling stake in” multinational corporations.

James Wenneker Von Brunn, who opened fire inside the Holocaust Museum in 2009, wrote in his book Kill the Best Gentiles that Christianity is a “hoax,” denounced “JEW CAPITALISTS,” and concluded that “WESTERN SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West.” (Capitalization in the original.)

Thanks, Acton, for making this clear.

Father Michael Rodriguez of El Paso

As of tonight, March 9, 2019, I have just been personally informed by the bishop of El Paso that Father Michael Rodriguez of El Paso diocese does not have faculties.

While any Mass he offers is valid, it is certainly not licit. 

His absolutions are likewise invalid.

Please act accordingly.

The Mystery of Abortion

Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.

We cannot uncritically ally ourselves with someone with whom we share the policy goal of ending abortion....While the church’s opposition to abortion has been steadfast, it has become a stand-alone issue for many and has become disconnected to other issues of human dignity....The association of our young people with racist acts and a politics of hate must also become unthinkable.

This is an excerpt from a pastoral letter written by the Rev. John Stowe, bishop of the Diocese of Lexington, concerning the kerfluffle at the recent March for Life.

Now, I don't entirely disagree with the good bishop's sentiments. Certainly, it is true that no good Catholic can support Trump's politics, Trump's wall, or Trump's insistence on characterizing immigrants as subhuman criminals. We can never forget that Donald Trump happily signed off on a bill, produced by a Republican House, a bill that gave one-half BILLION dollars to Planned Parenthood. We can never forget that Trump won his presidency, in part, by publicly attacking Pope Francis. What was Francis' sin in Donald's eyes? Well, Pope Francis had CORRECTLY pointed out that no Catholic can support the building of walls to keep out immigrants and refugees.

Just as the MSM used the Covington high school kids to trash the whole March for Life, so Trump used the Pope's preaching of the Gospel to successfully leverage America's anti-Catholic, anti-papal culture to his own electoral benefit. Outrage is all about the clicks, you see.

No, my concern in the bishop's letter is the bolded sentence. Bishop John Stowe is not remarkable in constantly being concerned about the Catholic laity's singular upset over abortion.

So here are a couple of rhetorical questions for America's bishops:

1. Why, bishops, might it be the case that, out of all the life issues, so many Catholics consider the abortion issue pre-eminent?
2. Why do Catholic laity place the issue of abortion higher than issues like racism, care for the poor, the immigrant, the elderly, the ill, etc?

Well, this small chart may (or may not) be instructive:

Sin	Canonical Penalty
Racism	None
Sexism	None
Neglect of immigrant	None
Neglect of poor	None
Neglect of refugee	None
Neglect of ill	None
Neglect of elderly	None
Rape	None
Murder	None
Abortion	Automatic excommunication

So, why do Catholics view abortion as a sin that is worse than pretty much any other sin? I'm sure I don't know. But maybe, if we study the documents of the Church, we can eventually figure that one out. 

Scott Hahn is Wrong on Laicized Priests.

Scott Hahn has now decided to become his own Magisterium, lecturing the Pope and the bishops on how priests accused of molestation should be treated. Surely, Scott knows best, right? He thinks all priests accused/convicted of molestation should be excommunicated, because simple laicization is too light a punishment, and therefore "an insult" to the laity.

Dr. Scott Hahn has spoken, the matter is closed, right?

Get a copy of canon law (here's the original,  here's a summary), and look up the offenses which automatically impose excommunication. It is essentially imposed only for offenses against, or denial of, the sacraments. Abortion and physical attack on the Pope are the only real exceptions to that rule of thumb. Rape is terrible, but it certainly doesn't qualify as an excommunicable offense according to the rules of canon law.

But Scott Hahn, the ex-Protestant minister who still doesn't quite get how Catholicism works, doesn't agree. He knows more than the Church, an amazing skill, really. Has anyone who agrees with Scott's stupidity ever MET a laicized priest and talked with them?

Get over your personal decision to excommunicate the laicized priest accused of molestation, and try talking to some of them sometime. These men typically have zero prospects in life. They have no useful skills, they have little or no experience in the workplace, as former priests, they have no resume they can list... what are you going to put down? That you were kicked out of the Catholic priesthood for suspicion of molesting children? Yeah, THAT will go over well in an interview.

These men end up doing manual labor or lucking into a job at Walmart as a greeter. Or, they just kind of wander around, hoping some former friends maintain enough of a friendship to let them sleep on a couch. Some will find temporary refuge amongst heretical or semi-heretical religious orders as spiritual advisors, but even there, they are lucky to get bed and board.

They have no prospects, no support, no future.

Laicization is an absolute destruction of everything they ever thought they would have. It's not unlike being released from prison after a murder sentence... Yeah, you're "free", for all the good it will do you.

Don't underestimate how harsh the current sentence is.
It is DEFINITELY punishment.

Do they deserve it?
SURE, if they committed the crime.

But, just as the secular judgment systems sometimes convict the innocent, so do the Catholic canon law courts. Innocent men are sometimes laicized. And the problem is, as lay people, we have no idea which ones might be actually innocent of all charges, but still punished with laicization and a completely destroyed life.

Scott Hahn is an ex-Protestant minister who essentially excommunicated himself from his old Protestant community. He thinks of laicization in terms of what HE has experienced. He leveraged his excommunication into literally a multi-million dollar empire, monetizing his own life experience in much the same lucrative way that Zuckerberg monetizes everyone else's life experiences. He has now decided to imitate Facebook and monetize the publicly destroyed lives of these priests, pursue the "culture of outrage" to make a few bucks off of that.

Hahn apparently thinks his personally satisfying and financially rewarding excommunication experience translates to that of laicized priests, that it gives him the right to make money off of their sins and their punishment. It doesn't. He thinks he has the right to lecture the Pope, the bishops, the Church itself, on what is or is not appropriate punishment for priests. He doesn't.

Pretending that he has such rights, and inflicting his pretensions on the rest of us ... THAT insults the laity.

Why FUS Theology is Problematic

There was a recent kerfluffle about an English teacher at FUS assigning a risque book to a group of graduate students. Some people took offense because the book was apparently blasphemous.

In reference to that problem, I have no brief. If adult, well-catechized Catholics can't handle blasphemy, they should probably go live in a cave, far from the madding crowd, and spend their snowflake time in prayer, that God may strengthen them. They certainly aren't cut out for the apostolic work of evangelization.

No, my issue with FUS is rather more substantial.
It simply doesn't teach the whole Faith.

A strong charge requires strong evidence.
This is my personal experience.

During the course of my MA in theology there, I was taught that the missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify. For two solid years, that was what I heard.

When I graduated and got job with a parish working under a wonderfully orthodox assistant priest, he pointed out that I had been mis-taught. The three-fold mission of the Church is

1. to teach, 
2. to GOVERN and 
3. to sanctify. 

He was right, of course.

So, why was the third mission never taught, never even breathed to me, during my entire time at FUS?  This puzzled me.

After this revelation, I made a point to question other theology grads, both FUS students and non-FUS students, on precisely this point, just to see if this was, perhaps, something I had missed. To a person, every FUS-taught person answered the question EXACTLY the same way that every non-FUS grad answered: the TWO missions of the Church were to teach and to sanctify.

In every case, when I pointed out the third mission, the FUS students were struck suddenly dumb, staring at the third phrase "as a cow stares at a new gate", while one Notre Dame student reacted very badly to the third phrase, going so far as to scratch it out and say, "I don't like that one."

So, again, how is it that the graduate theology program at FUS consistently omitted the third mission? I don't know. All I know is, it did. Consistently. And this omission includes teachers like Scott Hahn and Barbara Ann Morgan. All of them failed to explicitly teach the third mission. For two solid years. To everyone.

Second story.  I had a similar experience in regards to the teaching on the sacraments. When taking the undergraduate Sacraments course, the sum total of the instruction on the sacrament of marriage from the priest who taught it was "you'll learn about that in marriage prep."

That was it. Now, as it happens, I did marriage prep at FUS. I can't call it a waste of time, because almost no time was spent doing any marriage prep. The entire experience consisted of one, diocesan required pre-Cana weekend which was ... underwhelming... in its theology.

In my personal experience, FUS isn't passing on the whole Faith. Omitting one of the three missions of the Church is an incredibly basic mistake, not unlike omitting one of the sacraments. It is absurd. FUS theology instruction may be better than most schools (I have no basis for comparison, so I can't say), but in my experience, it is substandard by any objective measure.

I have NEVER recommended FUS as a place to learn theology.

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.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/316894/

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?

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.""

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. 

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 coöperate. 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 . . . 

Stephen Vincent Benet

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.