Immigration and Original Intent

I love it when "conservatives" argue for Original Intent (tm) on gun control, but then promote Progressive arguments on immigration because they don't know any ACTUAL American history.

The Founders revolted from England in part because the King refused to maintain open borders. Read the Declaration of Independence:

"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" 

The Founders (and present-day law) distinguished between immigration (entering the country) and naturalization (the ability to vote and hold office). Thus, the Constitution has VERY strict rules on naturalization, but none at all on immigration. In fact, there are NO federal laws restricting immigration until the 1875 Page Act, which embodied Darwinian eugenics to keep out the yellow Asian hordes. 

The only mention of immigration in the Constitution refers to the importation of slaves, the only mention of deportation (not immigration, btw - immigration is never mentioned) in federal law is the Alien and Sedition Acts.

In reaction to the A&S  laws, Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration) and James Madison (author of the Constitution) started the first federal nullification movement, wherein the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures passed resolutions declaring those specific federal laws invalid within their states. That is, Jefferson and Madison specifically and explicitly created those respective states as "sanctuary" states.

So, Trump's entire riff on this is actually a violation of the Founders' vision and constitutional law as embodied by the Founders for the first century of this country's history. The Page Act was passed in response to Darwin's work, and Trump has long been a proud eugenicist (as has virtually every President between Teddy Roosevelt and Trump, inclusive, with the sole exceptions of Reagan and GW Bush).

As the Cato Institute points out, the history is quite, QUITE clear.
You are backing a Progressive Darwinian eugenics argument.
Yours is the argument of a damned liberal, not an argument in line with the Founders' vision.

If you want to argue that times change, and the Constitution must change with it, that's Woodrow Wilson's argument. That's a Progressive argument.

Either you are for Original Intent (tm) or you aren't.
Choose.

How to Get Out of Being On A Jury

The elites like to control people, and the doctrine of jury nullification breaks their control, so they don't like it.

If you ever want to get out of jury duty, this is the easiest way to accomplish it. When the attorney asks, "Would X sway your ability to make a fair judgment in this case?", answer this way: 

"My opinion is my own. Gentlemen, once I am on a jury, my opinion IS the law. I stand in judgement not just of the defendant, but of the defendant's attorney, the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and even the very law itself. If I find anything in the conduct of the trial or the letter of the law that I do not like, that defendant will walk free, and - quite frankly - none of you have any recourse. I, and the eleven who stand with me on this jury, ARE the law. As a juror, I am the master of the law. You and the rest of the court are our servants, whose opinions about the law and the conduct of the trial we may choose to note, if we deem any of you worthy of our notice." 

You will be struck from the roster before you the last syllable finishes echoing from the courtroom walls. Every word of the paragraph above is true, you see, and they really don't want you to be saying that kind of stuff out loud.

Vegans and Socialism

Vegans and socialism go together like peanut butter and jelly, and have for at least a century:

"The truth is that, to many people calling themselves Socialists, revolution does not mean a movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms which 'we', the clever ones, are going to impose upon 'them', the Lower Orders. On the other hand, it would be a mistake to regard the book-trained Socialist as a bloodless creature entirely incapable of emotion. Though seldom giving much evidence of affection for the exploited, he is perfectly capable of displaying hatred—a sort of queer, theoretical, in vacuo hatred—against the exploiters....

And please notice that I am arguing for Socialism, not against it. But for the moment I am advocatus diaboli. I am making out a case for the sort of person who is in sympathy with the fundamental aims of Socialism, who has the brains to see that Socialism would 'work', but who in practice always takes to flight when Socialism is mentioned.

Question a person of this type, and you will often get the semi-frivolous answer: 'I don't object to Socialism, but I do object to Socialists.' Logically it is a poor argument, but it carries weight with many people. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents....

...In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "Nature Cure" quack, pacifist, and feminist in England....

...It would help enormously, for instance, if the smell of crankishness which still clings to the Socialist movement could be dispelled. If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaller, and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly! But that, I am afraid, is not going to happen." 

George Orwell, "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937)

Vaccines

I have no particular brief against vaccines. They work, they reduce and eliminate nasty diseases. They are an important tool in the medical arsenal. But, like any tool, vaccines have problems. They aren't completely safe. After all, if vaccines are completely safe, then:

1. Why does the federal government maintain a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program which pays out money to, presumably, non-existent victims? Certainly, fiscal conservatives should be trying to shutdown this federal boondoggle, right? So, why don't vaccine supporters rail against this database and these "victim"payouts as the boondoggles they are?
2. Why does federal law uniquely insulate vaccine manufacturers from all product-related lawsuits, and force taxpayers to provide manufacturers with both complete immunity and with federally-funded, comprehensive insurance against all damage claims?

If vaccines are completely safe, there would be no need for federal law preventing lawsuits, no need for immunity, no need for a database of "victims", no need for payouts. Instead, we have federal laws insulating vaccine manufacturers from having to pay damages, we have a federeal database of victims, and we have a history of payouts to victims listed in the federally managed database.

I can't think of another industry that has this sweet of a deal.
If vaccines are completely safe, why waste federal dollars like this?

Now, whether or not vaccines are dangerous, it is certainly the case that the diseases being vaccinated against are dangerous. For instance, it is perfectly true that measles, although not particularly deadly, can cause injury and death. It is also certainly true that vaccines have wiped out smallpox, are on the verge of wiping out polio, and have greatly ameliorated many childhood diseases like measles, diptheria, pertussis, etc. Many of the childhood diseases are QUITE deadly (e.g., diptheria), and their reduction via vaccine is a boon to mankind.

However, there are also certainly discordant notes. For instance, why are vaccines in the US federally mandated? Japan, for instance, has no mandatory vaccine policy at all. In Japan, failure to vaccinate results in the payment of a small fine, that's it, yet Japanese vaccine compliance is very high. Japan, for instance, has a 97% measles vaccination rate and measles is no longer endemic to Japan. Japan accomplished this without government mandates and without government-funded immunity for vaccine companies. But, the Japanese refusal to implement government mandates results in Westerners writing odd paragraphs like the following: 

"Although many health-related indicators, such as life expectancy and the infant mortality rate show that the health situation in Japan is among the best in the world, there is a large gap between Japan and other developed countries in the use of vaccines to prevent serious infections. For example, the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) was only recently approved in Japan (October 2009), more than 8 years after its approval in the UK. Many common vaccines, including those for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), the inactivated poliovirus vaccine, and combination vaccines, are not yet available in Japan....

[T]he epidemiology of meningococcal meningitis, ...has an incidence of around 1000 cases per year in England and Wales [4], but only around 10–20 cases per year in Japan [5]... Meningococcal vaccines are not available in Japan."

Why does the first sentence begin with "Although"? The entire science article begins with the assumption that Japanese vaccine policies are woefully backward and absurd, because Japan does not have any government mandates regarding vaccines. Yet, if government-mandated vaccines are crucial to stopping the spread of disease, the situation that same article so blithely described above should be literally impossible. Japan has no government mandates, so it should be suffering from an enormous caseload of measles. But it doesn't. Japan is measles-free. This is documented fact. So, why is the US government involved in protecting vaccine manufacturers when the Japanese have shown us that this is not necessary?

We can ask the same question in another way: exactly how dangerous are these diseases when compared to the vaccines we use to fight them? Well, let's take measles as an example. The United States has a population of 330,000,000. There have only been 1282 measles cases in 2019 (and this is a HIGH year). So, the chances of getting measles is currently about 1 in 260,000.

Currently, the chance of even catching measles is lower than the odds of being struck by lightning (1 in 180,746). Once you have contracted the disease, the risk of an adverse measles consequence, like pneumonia, is about 1 in 20. The worst adverse reaction is the least common: only 0.2% of the people who contract measles actually die from measles (and the risk of dying can be cut by 50% if vitamin A supplements are provided). So, which is more dangerous? The measles vaccine or the measles?

To find out, multiply the possibility of catching measles (1 in 260,000) with the possibility of serious adverse reaction (1 in 20) and you have roughly 1 in 5 million chance of suffering an adverse reaction from measles. Compare this to the CDC's estimate of the likelihood of an adverse reaction to the vaccine. According to the CDC, the chance of an adverse vaccine reaction is one in a million. So, here is the paradox: vaccines have worked so well for the general population that a statistician can reasonably argue s/he is five times safer to refuse to vaccinate and risk catching measles than s/he is to get the measles vaccine.

Are anti-vax fears that vaccines will harm or kill their children rational? In many cases, those fears are not rational: many anti-vaxxers fear vaccines on completely irrational, essentially superstitious, grounds. But not always.

We must admit that some of their fears are grounded in facts which the official narrative either seriously underplays or completely dismiss. The facts, indeed, the CDC's own website, demonstrate vaccines are not completely safe. The facts do not support the idea that government-mandated vaccines, and government-funded protection of vaccine companies, are warranted. US vaccine policy does raise valid questions: if vaccines are completely safe, why DO we have government mandates and government immunity for vaccine manufacturing companies? If the individual is duty-bound to bear possibly adverse consequences of the vaccine, from whence comes this duty? When does society have the right to compel an individual to risk personal harm in order to assure a common good?

The anti-vaxxers frequently offer irrational arguments, but the pro-vax arguments aren't fully rational either, at least not from a mathematical perspective. 

Both sides need to acknowledge that the other side has valid points. It is amazing how many people on both sides of the aisle are unwilling to acknowledge that the situation is not necessarily as clear-cut as either side paints it. 

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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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.