The Feds Want to Censor the Internet

The list below is taken from a website called TheoriesofConspiracy.com about SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill going through Congress that would put America behind its own Chinese firewall.

While the bill is being sponsored by a particularly odious Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, it has the enthuasiastic backing of liberal Democrats who love the idea of the government taking control of the Internet at last — including many from California who have been paid off by the entertainment conglomerates pushing for this bill.

Among the Democrats trying to ram SOPA and its companion bill in the Senate,the PROTECT IP Act down the throat of the American public are  Howard Berman (D-CA), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA).

The most troubling aspect of the legislation, revealed in a live video posted on YouTube.com, is the wholesale technical ignorance of the hack politicians presuming to reinvent the Internet.  In the hearing on SOPA, the politicians revealed themselves to have a computer knowledge of three-year-olds — yet they don’t hesitate to pass legislation that would shut down entire sections of the Internet without due process.  AMong the proposed laws most odious features:

Website Blocking

With this bill, government can order Internet service providers to block websites for infringing links posted by any users. Websites like Reddit, Tumblr, and even Youtube, are fair targets to be shutdown.

Risk of Jail for Ordinary Users

It becomes a felony with a potential 5 year sentence to stream a copyrighted work that would cost more than $2,500 to license, even if you are a totally noncommercial user, e.g. singing a pop song on Facebook.

Chaos for the Internet

Thousands of sites that are legal under the DMCA would face new legal threats. People trying to keep the internet more secure wouldn’t be able to rely on the integrity of the DNS system.

How to Fight Back

If this law passes, you’ll wake up to find sites you love blocked by the US government.

Tell your parasite in Congress to vote “no” on SOPA — or start looking for a new job.

Contact your congressman and senator and tell them you are against the bill — either by calling their office, writing a letter, or sending a prepared message though americancensorship.org.

It is also useful to know who the enemy is. The following major companies support SOPA. You can write or call the companies to let them know you are boycotting their services and products unless they end their support for the dangerous bill.

Companies Supporting SOPA:

1-800 Contacts, Inc.
1-800-PetMeds
2b1 Inc
3M Company
ABRO Industries, Inc.
Acushnet Company
adidas America
Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed)
Allen Russell Photography
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers
Alliance of Visual Artists (AVA)
Altria Client Services
American Apparel and Footwear Association
American Association of Independent Music (A2IM)
American Board of Internal Medicine
American Federation of Musicians
American Gramaphone LLC
American Made Alliance
American Mental Health Counselors Association
American Photographic Artists
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
American Society of Media Photographers
American Society of Picture Professionals
American Watch Association
Anatoly Pronin Photography
Andrea Rugg Photography
Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative (ACAPI)
Applied DNA Sciences
Art Holeman Photography
Association of American Publishers (AAP)
Association of Equipment Manufacturers
Association of Independent Music Publishers (AIMP)
Association of Test Publishers
AstraZeneca plc
Australian Medical Council
Autodesk, Inc.
Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association
Baker & Taylor Ent.
Bay State Psychological Associates
Beachbody, LLC
Beam Global Spirits & Wine
Blue Sky Studios, Inc.
Bose Corporation
Braasch Biotech LLC
Brian Stevenson Photography
Brigid Collins Family Support Center
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI)
Burberry
C. F. Martin & Co., Inc.
Callaway Golf Company
Cascade Designs Incorporated
Caterpillar Inc.
Caveon, LLC
CBS Corporation
Cengage Learning
Center for Credentialing & Education
Center Stage Photography
CFA Institute
Chanel USA
Christopher Semmes Photography
Church Music Publishers Association
CMH Images
Coach
Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP)
Columbia Sportswear Company
Comcast Corporation
Commercial Photo Design
Commercial Photographers International
Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System
Consumer Healthcare Products Association
Copyright Alliance
Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)
Coty Inc.
Council of Fashion Designers of America
Country Music Association
CropLife America
Cross-Entertainment LLC
CSA Group
CVS Caremark
D’Addario & Company, Inc.
Dan Sherwood Photography
Danita Delimont Stock Photography
Dayco Products, LLC
Deluxe Entertainment Services Group
Dennyfoto
Derek DiLuzio Photography
DeVaul Photography
Direct Selling Association (DSA)
Directional Insight
Distefano Enterprises Inc.
Doriguzzi Photographic Artistry
Dolby Laboratories, Inc.
Dolce & Gabbana USA, INC.
Dollar General Corporation
Don Grall Photography
Dunford Architectural Photography
Eagle Rock Entertainment
Ed McDonald Photography
Educational & Industrial Testing Service
Electronic Arts, Inc.
Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA)
Eli Lilly and Company
Englebert Photography
Entertainment Software Association (ESA)
ERAI, Inc.
Eric Meola Studio Inc
Evidence Photographers International Council
Ex Officio
Exxel Outdoors
FAME Publishing Co., LLC.
FAME Recording Studios
Far Bank Enterprises
Fashion Business Incorporated
Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy
Fender Musical Instrument Company
Footwear Distributors & Retailers of America (FDRA)
Ford Motor Company
Fortune Brands, Inc.
Fred J. Lord Photography
GAR Associates
Gelderland Productions, L.L.C.
Gemvision Corporation
Gibson Guitar Corp.
GlaxoSmithKline
Gospel Music Association
Governors America Corp.
Graduate Management Admission Council
Graphic Artists Guild
Greeting Card Association (GCA)
Greg Nikas Photography
Guru Denim
H.S. Marketing & Design, Inc.
Harley-Davidson Motor Company
HarperCollins Publishers
Harry Fox Agency
Hastings Entertainment, Inc.
ICM Distributing Company, Inc.
IDS Publishing
IEC Electronics corp.
Images Plus
Imaging Supplies Coalition (ISC)
Independent Distributors of Electronics Association (IDEA)
INgrooves
Innate-gear
International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC)
International Trademark Association (INTA)
IPC-Association Connecting Electronics Industries
Ira Montgomery Photography
J.S. Grove Photography
James Drug Inc.
Jaynes Gallery
JCPage Photography
Jean Poland Photography
Jeff Stevensen Photography
John Fulton Photography
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Johnson & Johnson
Juicy Couture, Inc
Julien McRoberts Photography
K&R Photographics
kate spade
Kekepana International Services
Kenneth Garrett, photographer for National Geographic
Killing Jar Productions LLC
Lacoste USA
Leatherman Tool Group, Inc.
Lexmark International, Inc.
Light Perspectives
Linda Olsen Photography
Little Dog Records
Liz Claiborne, Inc
L’Oréal USA
Lucky Brand Jeans
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Macmillan
Major League Baseball
Marcia Andberg Associates LLC
Mark Niederman Photography
Marmot
Marona Photography
McLain Photography Inc
Merck & Co., Inc.
Messy Face Designs, Inc.
Michael Stern Photography
MicroRam Electronics, Inc.
Minter Works of Art
Mira Images
Monster Cable Products, Inc.
Moose’s Photos
Morningstar Films LLC
Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA)
MotionMasters
Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association
MPA – The Association of Magazine Media
Mr. Theodor Feibel (sole proprietor)
Music Managers Forum-U.S.
Nashville Songwriters Association International
Natalie Neckyfarow Actor/Dancer/Singer
National Association of Broadcasters
National Association of Manufacturers
National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM)
National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO)
National Basketball Association (NBA)
National Board for Certified Counselors
National Board for Certified Counselors Foundation
National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA)
National Football League (NFL)
National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA)
National Retail Federation (NRF)
NBCUniversal
Nervous Tattoo Inc., dba Ed Hardy
New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc.
New Era Cap Co Inc
New Levels Ent. Co. LLC
News Corporation
Next Decade Entertainment, Inc.
NHL Enterprises, L.P.
Nicholas Petrucci, Artist, LLC
Nike, Inc.
Nintendo of America Inc.
Nissle Fine Art Photography
North Dakota Pharmacists Association
North Dakota Pharmacy Service Corporation
Oakley, Inc.
One Voice Recordings
OpSec Security, Inc.
Outdoor Industry Association
Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI)
Outdoor Research, Inc
Pacific Component Xchange, Inc.
Party Killer Films LLC
Pearson Clinical Assessment
Peavey Electronics Corporation
Perry Ellis International
Personal Care Products Council
Peter C. Brandt, Architectural and Fine Art Photography
Peter Hawkins Photography, Inc.
Petzl America
Pfizer Inc.
PGA of America
Philip Morris International
Photojournalist Dave Bartruff
Picture Archive Council of America (PACA)
Pigfactory Music
PING
PNW Images
Premier League
Production Music Association (PMA)
Professional Photographers of America
Quality Float Works, Inc.
Raging Waters Music
Ralph Lauren Corporation
Ramsay Corporation
Rebel Photo
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
Red4 Music/Doogs Rock Inc
Red Wing Shoe Company
Reebok International Ltd.
Reed Elsevier Inc.
Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA)
Revlon
Richard Flutie Photography
Rite Aid
Robin Davis Photography, Inc.
Rodger Scott Craig, a member of Liverpool Express, The Merseybeats, Fortune, Harlan
Cage, 101 South, and Mtunz Media
Roger Smith Photography Services
Rolex Watch USA Inc.
Romance Writers of America (RWA)
Rosetta Stone Inc.
Saddle Creek
Sage Studios LLC
Sam D’Amico Photography
Schneider Electric
Sean McGinty Photography
Secret Sea Visions (Photography)
SESAC, Inc.
SG Industries, Inc.
Shure Incorporated
SIGMA Assessment Systems
Six Degrees Records
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
SMC Entertainment
SMT Corp.
SoBe Entertainment
Society of Sport & Event Photographers
Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA)
Sony Electronics Inc.
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Soul Appeal Records and Music
SoundExchange
Southern Gothic LLC
Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA)
SPI (The Plastics Industry Trade Association)
Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association
Sports Rights Owners Coalition
Spring Fever Productions LLC
Spyder Active Sports, Inc
Stenbakken Photography
Stephen Dantzig Photography
Stock Artist Alliance
Stuart Weitzman Holdings, LLC
Student Photographic Society
Studio 404
SunRise Solar Inc.
Taylor Glenn Photographs
Taylor Made Golf Company, Inc.
Tednologies, Inc.
The Cambridge Don
The Collegiate Licensing Company/IMG College
The Donath Group, Inc.
The Dow Chemical Company
The Estee Lauder Companies
The McGraw-Hill Companies
The Music People! Inc.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
The Recording Academy (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences)
The Timberland Company
The Walt Disney Company
Tiffany & Co.
Time Warner Inc.
Tony Bullard Photography
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc.
TRA Global
Tricoast Worldwide
Trio Productions, Inc. / Songscape Music,
Twist & Shout, Inc.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Ultimate Fighting Championship
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
Universal Music Group
Uniweld Products Inc.
VF Corporation
Viacom
Vibram USA, Inc
Virtual Chip Exchange USA, Inc.
Voltage Pictures, LLC
W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery Co.
Walcott Studio, LLC
Wal-Mart
Warner Music Group
Wendy Kaveney Photography
Western Psychological Services
Westmorland Images, LLC
Wild & Associates, Inc.
Wild Eye Photos LLC
William Sutton Photography
Willis Music
WindLegends Ink LLC
Winestem Company
Winslow Research Institute
Wolfe Video
Wolverine World Wide, Inc.
Woolrich, Inc.
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
Xerox Corporation
Zippo Manufacturing Company
Zumba Fitness, LLC

Fred Reed on Chickenhawks…

One of my favorite expat columnists, Fred Reed who lives down Mexico way, spent some time as a military affairs reporter and police reporter. Unlike many anti-war conservatives and liberals, therefore, Fred has a healthy respect for the military — at least, as much respect as someone who has actually spent a lot of time with soldiers can have. In other words, he’s a realist. His problem with the Republican chickenhawks like Newt Gingrich is that their ignorance and arrogance can get a lot of good people (mostly teenagers) killed. Here’s what he says we need to ask all the candidates urging quick military action against Iran…

To begin, I will ask the following questions of the candidates, and for that matter of Mr. Obama, and of the Secretary of Defense, a generic bureaucrat.

Can you explain: Convergence zones, base bleed, Kursk, range-gate pull-off, artillery at Dien Bien Phu, IR cross-over, Tet and queen sacrifice, Brahmos 2, CIWIS, supercruise, side-lobe penetration, seven-eighty-twice gear, super-cavitating torpedoes, phased arrays, pulse Doppler, the width of Hormuz versus the range of Iranian cruise missiles, DU, discarding sabot, frequency agility, Chobham armor, and pseudo-random PRF?

These, gentlemen, are the small talk of serious students of the military. Here I mean men like David Isby, author of such books as Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army for Jane’s, which you likely have never heard of, or William S. Lind, probably the best military mind (though, or because, not a soldier), that I have encountered. If you are unfamiliar with them, and with the things listed above, you are unfamiliar with the military. Yet you campaign for possession of the trigger.

Perhaps a little humility, perish the thought, and a little self-examination might be in order.

Peering into your own depths, you will probably find that the humility does not come easily. In my decades of covering the armed services, I noticed among men a belief in their innate jockstrap competency regarding wars. Men who would readily admit ignorance of petroleum geology, ophthalmology, or ancient Sumerian grammar nonetheless believe that they grasp matters military. Usually they do not. In particular, they have an utterly unexamined belief in America’s military invincibility.

You know the old expression that to a hammer all things look like a nail? Well, according to Reed, to a general all things are military threats. Unfortunately, they almost always overestimate the threats and underestimate their army’s own abilities. Saying that “the Pentagon hasn’t won a war since 1945,” unless you count Grenada, Reed adds that “career officers live in a mental world not well adapted to winning today’s wars.” They can win battles, for sure… just not the wars. The generals can bomb countries back to the stone age, as in Vietnam, but still be forced to withdraw their forces when the ugly realities of occupation become too burdensome… as in Iraq and soon in Afghanistan. Then the people they “defeated” rush back in and take over the country again, as they did in Vietnam and probably will do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a result, Reed concludes, presidents (and the public) should be skeptical of all generals, and certainly all chickenhawks, who are in a hurry to go to war. Unfortunately, presidents are more easily fooled than the general public — which explains how an unregenerate lefty like Obama could quickly be seduced by his generals and the CIA and come to embrace everything he opposed as a candidate — such as the waging of undeclared wars on his sole authority, the assassination of American citizens without trial, the widespread use of illegal electronic surveillance against American citizens, and the abrogation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by signing a law that allows the military to detain U.S. citizens without trial in secret prisons overseas without access to court review.

Once a candidate from the relative bushes gets elected, as may happen, he becomes a captive of Washington in about ten minutes. This too you should bear in mind. You will be briefed by the CIA, which will spin things so that you believe what it wants you to believe. The spooks will radiate lethal charm and speak with the assurance of a higher order of being. This will give you a sense of admission to a special tree house where everyone has a Captain Marvel secret decoder ring (two box tops and a dollar fifty). And, in Washington, you will have access to no other view. Gotcha.

You will be briefed by the Pentagon by generals with firm handshakes, steely gaze, obvious intelligence, and a convincing understanding of the world as consisting chiefly of threats. They are very good at this. You do not become a general without expertise with Power Point and the slick gab of a confidence man. Generals too are politicians. They will carry you along like a wood chip in a spring flood. And you will pay the price.

Fun stuff. You can read the rest of his column here…

How to Be Happy in Life

There are many different ways of life, of course, and each person has to choose the way that fits his or her personality and intuitions about what life is all about and how to be happy. There is the way of the adventurer. The way of the businessman. The way of the scholar or priest. There is the way of the artist or mystic. There is even Gurdjieff’s Way of the Sly Man, the secret mystic who lives like an ordinary business man. But because I studied Aristotle at a young age, I’ve always been persuaded that, when considering how to “structure” your life, you should consider how best to use whatever God-given talents you’ve been given. In his Nicomachian Ethics (1095a15–22), Aristotle said that happiness (eudaimonia) comes from the full exercise of your powers… from using your gifts… and I’ve always thought that is true. And that is why, for me personally, one of the dominant themes of my life has always been what I call balance – the attempt to arrange your life, in so far as its possible, so that you have some balance in life and are able to use as many abilities as possible. Perhaps this is actually the Way of the Dilettante but I prefer to think of it as the Way of the Renaissance. In other words, I wanted a life in which I could marry, raise a family, think, create, study, make money, travel, play sports, stay in shape, play music, read books, and, in general pursue my interests and passions. I tried to make choices, as life went on in its haphazard way, that created conditions in which this multi-faceted, balanced life would be possible.

For example, I knew early on that I wanted to be my own boss – both because I would probably make more money with my own businesses but also because it meant I would have more free time, the ability to travel, the ability to see my children growing up, and so on. As a result, I never really pursued any sort of corporate job or career. This has its disadvantages, of course. We’ve always had to pay for our own health insurance and medical costs, for example – and to this day marvel when friends complain about their $30 “co-pays” and rising insurance costs. We paid for each of our children’s deliveries, about $5,000 each, almost literally in cash. We’ve also had to create our own Defined Benefit Pension Plan with its myriad federal regulations, its mandatory reporting requirementss, its frequent demands for cash, and what I like to call the “adult supervision” of a professional pension fund administrator – a delightful woman, the “dragon lady,” who is an Orthodox Jew and who does her best to keep us out of trouble with the Feds.

But overall, being self-employed, in my opinion, gives you many more opportunities for the “full exercise of your powers” and be happy than working in a nine-to-five corporate job. I am revisiting all these issues afresh because, as I write these words, my eldest son is plotting his own career trajectory in the corporate world of high finance – and I marvel both at his ambitious determination and at the assumptions that underlying his plotting. It is so utterly alien to my own way of life – trying to fashion a career in a corporate setting – that I am only now appreciating the stubborn but quite deliberate choices that went into our way of life.

Another part of living a balanced life is making money – not a lot of money, perhaps, but enough to provide a safe and comfortable home, in a quiet and secure neighborhood, and so that you can afford such luxuries as sports teams, music and language lessons, health care, good schools and so on. If you want to marry and raise children – which, for most people, is the most realistic path to becoming a decent human being and whatever enlightenment is granted us on this earth — a minimum amount of money is a requirement. The practical upshot of this, for me, was that I didn’t want to choose businesses or jobs that would make me too poor. I’ve never really been all that materialistic (as anyone who sees the old truck I drive or my clothes would confirm) but I do like to travel, buy books, study Aikido and philosophy in my spare time, and provide educational opportunities for my children. This meant that my wife and I had to figure out how to make money – and thus becoming a starving artist wasn’t a choice I was prepared to make. I admire artists for their single-minded dedication to their art… and I actually would encourage anyone with serious talented to pursue art or music as a career choice… but you still have to earn a living, artist or no.

When young people call me up, as some do, and ask me if they should become writers, I always say the same thing: Absolutely! It’s the best way of life in the world! My only caveat is that, to be happy, most people will want to marry and have children, to exercise all of their powers – not just their artistic ones – and that you therefore have to balance your artistic pursuits with the need to make money and provide a comfortable home. You want to enjoy your body and stay in shape. Play tennis or softball. Go to yoga classes. This is self-evident to many people but not to all, especially not to all of my children. When you are young and idealistic, you want to give yourself over to a great artistic passion or project – to spend years working on plays that never get produced, or a great novel, or painting, or a rock band. In your early twenties, that’s what you should do – test out your abilities and explore different ways of making a living. But if you want to have a happy life, you need to know that you have to balance the desire for creative pursuits with the need to make a decent living – not to “sell out” but in order that you can “exercise your full powers,” so you’re able to become a full human being.

Again, I am only thinking about these issues because I have so many children. But I really do believe balance in life is essential, perhaps even a key to happiness – even if you decide that your talents lie in science, or engineering, or medicine. For example, my eldest daughter is thinking about becoming a doctor. My wife likes this idea because her sister is a doctor and she likes the economic security that being a doctor can provide to women, especially in an increasingly competitive global economy. I think that’s great, of course, and will do everything I can to help my daughter through medical school, if she decides to pursue that course. My only caution to her would be to strive for balance – to think about how to balance the demands of a medical career with the needs and expectations of family life, her musical talents, her passion for swimming and athletics. Medicine is a fairly demanding and monomaniacal profession… but I know it’s possible to build a balanced life as a doctor, as my younger brother and my sister-in-law have proven. But it takes effort and deliberate choices.

None of the Above

The word “politics” is derived from the word “poly,” meaning “many,”
and the word “ticks,” meaning “blood sucking parasites.”
– Larry Hardiman

The world needs a political and economic alternative.

The obsolete ideas and ideals of Big Government collectivism … and the equally bankrupt ideas and ideals of Big Business collectivism… have run their course.

Now all that is left, in most developed countries, is a political stalemate that is increasingly acrimonious, even dangerous.

The only sane alternative for fair-minded humanists everywhere is to abandon the siren song of politics altogether… to flee the plantation of government rules and regulations… and channel their energies into social and economic projects that lie outside the realm of politics.

What sorts of projects?

Anything that is based on voluntary cooperation, not force. Any individual initiative or social effort that invites participation, not demands it. That would include new businesses, voluntary organizations, neighborhood groups, food and medical co-ops, charities, churches and temples, social outreach enterprises.

For thousands of years, this was how people served the common good: voluntarily.

Someone saw a need that wasn’t being met, thought of a way that need could be met, and then either created a solution that could be sold, or, alternatively, persuaded neighbors and friends to join in a collective effort to provide a solution. Thus, Benjamin Franklin and the early American colonists created the first fire departments and libraries. Politics had nothing to do with it. Everything was done on a voluntary basis, by subscription.

It is increasingly obvious that politics is the domain of losers and leeches, parasites and gangsters; the place where talentless drones go to obtain jobs they could never get in the real world of business or art. It is the realm of ambulance-chasing lawyers and toadying bureaucrats, nepotism and connections, paybacks and bribes. In most developed countries today, politics is a method of career advancement for talentless hacks.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy,” said Ernest Benn.

H.L. Mencken agreed. “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Indeed. When you think about it, the kind of people who go into politics are, by definition, people who like telling other people what to do. They are at best professional busybodies; at worst, authoritarian thugs and gangsters.

In the past, politicians could at least be voted out of office; but in the past 50 years, the political class has discovered a way to protect itself: It has created a vast, self-perpetuating army of government workers who are 100% dependent upon the politicians for their jobs. In exchange for the government workers’ reliable votes every election, the politicians create make-work that come with bloated salaries and absurd pensions.

This vast army of government workers remains even when the politicians lose their jobs or a government changes. It is easy to fire an individual politician; it takes much longer, and is virtually impossible, to eliminate government bureaucracies.

Fortunately, there is a long and well-developed tradition in the Western world, at least, of ignoring politics and government altogether. It is a centuries-old movement of anti-politics – not anarchism exactly but more polite refusal to participate.

It is the Way of Just Saying No – no to politics, no to politicians, no to voting, no to force, no to imposing your policy prescriptions on other people. In the past, it was called “minding your own business” but today is often called “anarchism.”

Why Newt Gingrich is a False Messiah

Like most people who enjoy frank and intelligent conversation, I like Newt Gingrich. He is smart, knowledgeable, intelligent to a fault, every bit the history professor he once was. I first saw him, more than 18 years ago, at a gathering of conservative activists in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. He mesmerized the audience then just as he mesmerizes growing numbers of Republicans today.

Republicans are so grateful to have someone in their party who can string together more than two coherent sentences at a time — let alone someone who knows the specific details of policy and history — quite a few are falling all over themselves in support of Newt. But Newt is a false messiah. Like the greatest disaster to befall the Republican Party in a century, the faux cowboy George W. Bush, Newt is a “big government conservative.” He believes, like most of the Republican candidates with the exception of Ron Paul, in expanding government power, not limiting it. He wants to start new wars, not end the ones we’re already in.

Indeed, as the historian Thomas J. DiLorenzo has chronicled in painful detail, Newt’s proposed foreign policy is downright frightening — even granting that a lot of what he says is merely posturing for the Republican base.

According to Gingrich, the U.S. military should invade Lebanon with the purpose of “disarming Hezbollah.” This would effectively commence another war with Syria, says Gingrich, as it would be “the first direct defeat of Syria,” which supposedly pulls the strings of Hezbollah. It would also be an assault on Iran, says the former House speaker, and would therefore be an act of war against that country as well.

Next, full-scale warfare should be waged against North Korea, Iran and Syria with the objective of “replacing the repressive dictatorships” in those countries. All of this would somehow serve in “restoring American prestige in the region,” says Gingrich. Yes, murdering hundreds of thousands of Iranians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and destroying their cities and their infrastructure of civilization, which is what war does, would surely lead the people of those countries to think of Americans as “prestigious.”

Gingrich’s enthusiasm for expanding America’s “war on terror” — and his utter indifference to civil liberties — reflects the fact that he is, at bottom, a career politician who believes government is the solution, not the problem. He doesn’t fear an expansion of the police state because Newt and his friends are the police state. He doesn’t feel the TSA is an out-of-control federal bureaucracy that needs to be scraped because, like most government parasites and former government parasites, he never encounters the TSA. He flies on private jets and doesn’t have endure strip searches by illiterate TSA goons.

Worst of all, Gingrich is the epitome of a career politician who cashes in after his “service” and makes literally millions off of the taxpayers. For more on that, check on Ron Paul’s new ad below…

I like Newt. I eagerly watch him on TV. But he should remain a TV pundit, not become president of the United States. His warmongering and lack of respect for constitutional restraint on government disqualify him utterly. The only candidate who will at least try to change the corrupt status quo in Washington is Ron Paul.

Carl Levin and John McCain Repeal the Fifth Amendment

A bipartisan coalition of increasingly rabid U.S. senators, led by Carl “Jabba the Hut” Levin (a Democrat) and John McCain (a Republican), have quietly laid the legal groundwork for martial law in the United States. That sounds alarmist but it may be quite literally true. Their amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) repeals the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (“no person [not citizen] shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”) and centuries of legal precedent regarding the doctrine of habeas corpus. At issue in the NDAA amendment is whether the U.S. military should have the power to arrest U.S. citizens, here on U.S. soil, and detain those citizens indefinitely in military prisons (here or overseas) without access to legal counsel or due process and without trial in civilian court.

Sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA, cooked up in secret by the corrupt lizard Levin and McCain and recently passed by the U.S. Senate after heated debate, say that the military can arrest and detain anybody “who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.”

Obviously anyone who is actively supporting terrorists or engaged in terrorism should be arrested. But what is troubling in this broad and undefined language (what constitutes “support” or what are “associated forces”?) is that the NDAA asserts that the U.S. military can do this, at their sole discretion and with zero oversight, and without supervision by a civilian court. This is de facto martial law and a de facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that forbids military personnel from enforcing the laws of the land on U.S. soil.

It’s true that the Fifth Amendment provides an exception to the general rule regarding due process: and that exception is precisely War or Public Danger. “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger… It was on this basis that Abraham Lincoln suspended habaes corpus during the Civil War (surely a case of war). But the dire need for such a sweeping suspension of U.S. Constitutional guarantees now, at this time, is far from evident. As much as the “hawks” in the government are continually trying to ratchet up fear of yet another impeding terrorist attack, the evidence that we are in a time of grave “public danger” has not been presented.

The only Republican in the Senate with the spine to stand up against this unprecedented attack on the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), son of U.S. presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul. Dianne Feinstein of California proposed an amendment that would have exempted U.S. citizens from the treatment described in Levin and McCain’s bill. “We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge, prosecution, and conviction,” Feinstein said during the debate, but a majority of her colleagues disagreed. Her amendment was rejected by a vote of 45-55, with quite a few Democrats joining the Republicans. The Senate did vote to accept another Feinstein amendment that purportedly “clarified” that the Levin-McCain Amendment, despite its brazen language, did not violate the rights of U.S. citizens:

“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

Nevertheless, this issue… like that of the CIA’s new enthusiasm for targeted assassination… is not going away. I am cheered to say that a coalition of sane constitutionalists, on both the political left and right, are rising up to oppose this power grab. While the ACLU and Glenn Greenwald have predictably opposed this legislation, many on the libertarian Right have as well — including The American Spectator and libertarian firebrand Judge Andrew Napolitano (see video below). “Some of you may be willing to accept this as a necessary evil…the overhead cost of a living in a country that’s increasingly less free than we’d like to admit,” noted Spectator blogger Reid Smith. “Some of you may be comfortable being told this makes you safer. I happen to prefer the modest benefits of due process and that old chestnut habeas corpus.” President Obama has threatened to veto the legislation, but, given his track record on civil liberties and his groveling desire to appear tough on terrorism before the 2012 election, no one is holding their breath.

New Mass Translations A Bit Awkward and Therefore Beneficial

The entire English-speaking Catholic world today began the painful process of adjusting to new translations of the Mass. And the verdict is in: Many people, particularly clergy and professional church folk, dislike them. Some dislike them intensely. The Jesuits have been carrying on their usual rear-guard assault for weeks now, in the pages of America. Commonweal naturally despises the new translations. Even The Tablet, the English Catholic journal that tends to be slightly more temperate in its expressions of dissent, has run article after article bemoaning the new translations.

The idea behind the new translations, of course, was to be a “reform of the reform,” to correct the overly-sloppy and needlessly dumbed-down translations that were rushed into print in the heady days of folk masses after Vatican II. Conservatives have long pointed out how the translations produced by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) seemed to have a deliberate theological agenda beyond merely smooth diction. It wasn’t merely a question of “dynamic equivalence” (looser) versus “formal equivalence” (more literal) translations but of actual distortion, the conservatives asserted.

Nevertheless, many people find the new, more literal translations from the Latin to be awkward in the extreme, wordy, laden with theological jargon (incarnate, consubstantial) that doesn’t exactly pour off your tongue smoothly. The priest at Mass today stumbled even more than the congregation did… although he carried on bravely, with good humor.

But in my own perverse way, I found I liked the new translations precisely because they are so awkward. Their very awkwardness are what I like about them. They force you to relearn the ancient prayers anew and to actually think about what they are saying. Some people are actually buying missals again. I am paying my young children one dollar for every recitation of the Credo in the new English translation, two dollars for every recitation in Latin (limit: one per day!). I also enjoyed the more theologically precise wording, although I would be the first to admit that the translations are not exactly The Book of Common Prayer, the widely heralded Anglican prayer book known for its timeless poetry.

One fact that is little known to most U.S. Catholics: The new translations actually bring American Catholics more in line with the rest of the English-speaking world which, for decades now, has been using more literal translations that are very close to these new ones. In fact, what is really going on is that the U.S. Church is playing catch up with the Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and other English-speaking places. We are also catching up with the Anglican world — much of which has been using liturgical texts that are much more formal, based as they are on the traditional Book of Common Prayer, than the groovy texts produced by ICEL in the 1960s.

Until today, here is a key passage of the ICEL translation of the Nicene Creed (1975):

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being
with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he was born of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

Now, here is the NEW, more literal translation put into place today:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.

Of course, the awkward parts are merely literal translations from the Latin:

Génitum, non factum, consubstantiálem Patri:
Per quem ómnia facta sunt.
Qui propter nos hómines et propter nostram salútem
Descéndit de cælis.
Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto
Ex María Vírgine, et homo factus est.

And this is very close to the older English translations used by British, Irish and Australian Catholics for decades. In the UK, at least, Catholics have prayed the Credo for decades with the somewhat difficult construction, “by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary…” Only in the U.S., I believe, have Catholics prayed “born” of the Virgin Mary. The U.S. office of ICEL and their episcopal oversees plainly thought, in the 1970s, that “incarnate” was just too big a word for bleary-eyed American Catholics to get out of their mouths on a Sunday morning and thus substituted the word “born” in its place.

Of course, we’ll get through all this just as we got through the much bigger transition from Latin to the vernacular. Nevertheless, I agree with conservatives who say that Sunday worship should not necessarily use the same casual vernacular of a cocktail party and that there is a place for a more formal, even more archaic syntax in public worship. Go to any Greek Orthodox Divine Liturgy… to say nothing of a Jewish synagogue… and you’ll encounter an infinitely more difficult linguistic situation than what Catholics are encountering in these new Mass translations.

Rob Bell Asks the Big Questions Ignored by Many Churches

What I love most about Rob Bell’s controversial book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne, 2011), is the way it has triggered a new debate about what is really at stake in Christianity.

The odd thing about Christianity, at least in the United States, is that tens, even hundreds of millions of its adherents can’t really articulate its core beliefs beyond the most superficial, kindergarten level.

That is not a snobbish slam on Americans but simply a fact of life.

Like most religions (with the possible exception of Buddhism), Christianity is not so much a philosophical system as it is a subliminal, pre-conscious worldview that is passed on from generation to generation through rituals, symbols, readings from canonical texts, stories, proverbs, finger painting and occasional catechetical classes. This cultural inheritance carries, of course, philosophical ideas and historical claims, but it is the rare adult Christian these days who has taken the time to examine systematically any of that inheritance.

It is the rare Christian indeed who gets a systematic presentation of the key ideas and philosophical presuppositions of his or her religion – perhaps in a parochial school religion class or in a Christian high school senior seminar.

Some Christian denominations do a better or worse job at this than others, but even those denominations that try to give a systematic overview of what Christianity is all about rarely rise above the most simplistic, elementary teaching. Most children today inherit so little of the “basics” of Christianity – the who, what, when and where – that few denominations or schools can spend much time on the “why.” When people are not all that clear precisely who the Apostle Paul was… or what the Exodus was all about… you don’t have much time to discuss what it means precisely to be “saved” or the Swiss theologian Karl Barth’s universalism.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had discussions with highly educated people – engineers, doctors, judges, movie directors – who will, when discussing ethics or religion, revert to what they learned from Sister Mary So-and-So in Eighth Grade or a class they took in Vacation Bible School.

It is a jarring shock to many naïve young people when they get to high school and college and start to actually think about the ideas and beliefs they inherited from their parents. The mere discovery that Christianity didn’t pop full-blown into the universe but evolved slowly over hundreds of years is unsettling to quite a few.

Some reject Christianity outright as soon as they make the startling discovery that the Gospels don’t agree on all the details of Jesus’s life… or that Genesis was written in a pre-scientific age and wasn’t supposed to be a treatise on astrophysics… or that the Gospel writers made use of Jewish scriptures in ways that, to modern sensibilities, seem a bit unusual.

So, that is why Rob Bell is such a bracing blast of cold air that should be welcomed by all.

His book, Love Wins, asks fundamental, Big Picture questions about what Christianity actually teaches. Even if you disagree with his answers – and judging from the firestorm in Protestant evangelical circles, many people do vociferously – you have to concede that his questions have rekindled thought. It is making thousands of adult Christians confront, often for the first time, what is really at stake in Christianity:

> How exactly did Jesus’s death save us from anything?

>> Is the point of Christianity that Jesus came to save us… from God? If so, if he saved us from God, then how is that good news? Doesn’t that make God a deity from which we should, well, hide?

Of course, Christians have been debating these issues for centuries… but these debates rarely filter down to the masses in the pews. Pastor Bell’s book, precisely through its deliberately provocative questions and chapter headings, is forcing the issue upon a reluctant (mostly Protestant) Christian community – although I would say that the debate has profound implications for Catholics and Anglicans as well and even for non-Christians.

That’s because what is at stake in the “Love Wins debate” is what kind of a world we live in, what kind of a God we worship (if we worship a God), what we can expect from life, what we are here to do, the kind of people we should aspire to become, and so on.

These are questions that transcend denominational and even religious boundaries.

One tip: Buy the audio recording of Love Wins in iTunes or on CDs. Pastor Bell reads his book himself, and he is a marvelous narrator. He doesn’t merely read the text but interjects little comments so you have the feeling of attending a kind of small group seminar with him as the facilitator. It’s a great book for commuters, one that I am mischievously giving to all my Calvinist friends and relatives. (Rob Bell is the bête noire to all the followers of hyper-Calvinist preacher and bestselling author John Piper.)

How I Saw the Loch Ness Monster

I never really expected to actually see the Loch Ness Monster. As a result, when I looked through the tour boat window out at the frigid waters of the loch and happened to spot “Nessie” cruising alongside with a little monster in tow, it was a startling moment.

What made it more amazing was that I was gazing at the time at the radar scanner that the boat has in its main cabin. As it moves up and down the loch, this boat, and the other boats as well, are constantly scanning every nook and cranny of this 23-mile-long inland lake in the Highlands of Scotland. Loch Ness is the second largest lake in Scotland (after Loch Lomand, where the popular BBC series, Monarch of the Glen, was filmed). But there she was, right before my eyes, right out the starboard window (see nearby photo).

I was in the UK on personal business and decided, after visiting St. Andrews and its famous golf course and university, to take a trip up north and see Nessie for myself. I’ve always been willing to believe in most legendary creatures now derided by science, including the yeti of the Himalayas, the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, fire-breathing dragons, at least some elves, trolls for sure (I’ve met some myself!), and giants. I haven’t made up my mind about vampires and werewolves, though, and am an unreconstructed skeptic when it comes to space aliens. But Nessie? A race of prehistoric plesiosaurs that somehow survived in the isolated lochs of northern Scotland and falsely believed, like the famous coelacanth, to be extinct? Sure, no problem!

The Loch Ness monster was first mentioned, as far as we can tell, in the 7th century. According to Adomnán, the ninth Abbot of the monastery of Iona, who wrote The Life of St. Columba, the great Celtic saint saw the monster himself around the year A.D. 565:

Also at another time, when the blessed man was for a lumber of days in the province of the Picts, he had to cross the river Nes [Ness]. When lie reached its bank, he saw a poor fellow being buried by other inhabitants; and the buriers said that, while swimming not long before, he had been seized and most savagely bitten by a water beast. Some men, going to his rescue in a wooden boat, though too late, had put out hooks and caught hold of his wretched corpse. When the blessed man heard this, he ordered notwithstanding that one of his companions should swim out and bring back to him, by sailing, a boat that stood on the opposite bank.

Hearing this order of the holy and memorable man, Lugne mocu obeyed without delay, and putting off his clothes, excepting his tunic, plunged into the water. But the monster, whose appetite had earlier been not so much sated as whetted for prey, lurked in the depth of the river. Feeling the water above disturbed by Lugne’s swimming, it suddenly swam up to the surface, and with gaping mouth and with great roaring rushed towards the man swimming in the middle of the stream. While all that were there, barbarians and even the brothers, were struck down with extreme terror, the blessed man, who was watching, raised his holy hand and drew the saving sign of the cross in the empty air; and then, invoking the name of God, he commanded the savage beast, and said: “You will go no further. Do not touch the man; turn back speedily”. Then, hearing this command of the saint, the beast, as if pulled back with ropes, fled terrified in swift retreat; although it had before approached so close to Lugne as he swam that there was no more than the length of one short pole between man and beast.Then seeing that the beast had withdrawn and that their fellow- soldier Lugne had returned to them unharmed and safe, in the boat, the brothers with great amazement glorified God in the blessed man. And also the pagan barbarians who were there at the time, impelled by the magnitude of this miracle that they themselves had seen, magnified the God of the Christians.”

Things were pretty quiet, though, for the next 1,400 years. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Nessie sightings really picked up… and led skeptics to charge that the whole thing was an elaborate publicity stunt for the money-grubbing Scots! In 1933, a man named George Spicer and his wife reported seeing a large creature crossing the road with a 25-foot-long body and a long, very narrow neck. Nessie gained a lot more publicity, though, when a famous photograph was taken of her the next year, in 1934, supposedly by a London gynecologist named Robert Wilson. That photo remains the iconic evidence for Nessie. Alas, it turns out the photo was almost certainly a fake. In 1993, Christian Spurling, stepson of a movie maker named Duke Wetherell and then age 90, confessed to two Loch Ness researchers that he had fashioned the “monster” in the photograph out of a toy submarine and plastic.

Yet sightings, photographs and films and videos have continued over the decades. What’s more, sonar scannings of the loch, far from disproving Nessie’s existence, have actually fueled the belief that she could be real. A series of acoustic scans in the late 1960s revealed tantalizing evidence that something was down there in the loch — something big and something fast! The Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Birmingham, England, set up an acoustic “net” in 1967-68 through which no creature could pass without detection. In August 1968, the sonar system detected multiple moving objects, 20 feet in length and moving at speeds of up to 10 knots, ascending and descending to the loch bottom. “The high rate of ascent and descent makes it seem very unlikely that they could be fish, and fishery biologists we have consulted cannot suggest what fish they might be,” the lead scientist concluded. The next year, 1969, another scientific group, this one from the New York Aquarium, also spotted a large creature (at least 20 feet long) with its sonar equipment. A small submarine in 1969, launched to film a movie and dragging a fake Nessie behind her, picked up a large moving object on sonor just 50 feet from the bottom. In the 1970s and then again in the 2000s, an MIT scientist named Robert Rines, using a variety of photographic and sonar equipment, collected evidence of what did indeed appear to be some kind of underwater dinosaur-like creature — including a famous underwater photograph. In 1972, Rines’s sonar equipment also detected an underwater object, 20 to 30 feet in length, moving about 35 feet off the bottom. By the 2000s, Rines concluded that the family of underwater Nessies did, in fact, exist up until the late 1990s, when global warming finally finished off the last of the species.

In 1987, Operation Deep Scan, one of the most ambitious searches to date, deployed 24 boats throughout the entire width of the loch… and detected “a large moving object near Urquhart Bay at a depth of 600 feet.” One of the scientists involved in Operation Deep Scan, concluded “There’s something here that we don’t understand, and there’s something here that’s larger than a fish, maybe some species that hasn’t been detected before. I don’t know.” Yet more searches conducted in 1993 and again in 2003 for TV documentaries failed to detect anything significant.

Skeptics say there never was a Nessie, that all the sonar detected was large pieces of debris moving through the water due to the unusual currents of the loch; believers say that there may well have been a Nessie, or a family of Nessies, until perhaps the late 1990s.

All was quiet until 2007. That’s when a man named Gordon Holmes took some home video of what he and other Nessie supporters believe was or at least could have been the monster (see video). You can see for yourself below.

For my part, I kept my eye on the sonar all during the cruise down Loch Ness (see photo above). The scanner reached all the way down to the bottom of the loch, 650 feet deep. You would think that, with these boats moving up and down the loch, day after day, week after week, they would be able to detect something. But alas, no, not until I took my photo of Nessie out the window.

Can a Faithful Catholic be a Democrat, Republican or Green?

What’s a peaceful, freedom-loving, family-oriented, hard-working Catholic guy to do with the current state of U.S. politics? For decades, now, it’s been obvious that even a moderately faithful Catholic cannot feel at home in any of the major, or even the minor, U.S. political parties. We are given the choice between an increasingly militaristic, even bellicose Republican Party that goes out of its way to sneer at civil liberties and enthusiastically endorses torture, illegal surveillance of ordinary citizens and the death penalty… and the morally tone-deaf party of slavery (both literally and figuratively), the Democrats, who have never seen an authoritarian Big Government program they didn’t like and whose only economic policy prescription is to “Tax the Rich” (the “rich” being defined as anyone who holds a job) and whose embrace of “abortion rights” is so extreme that it even includes outright infanticide.

Not a very appealing choice. The Party of Death versus, well, the Party of More Death.

The truth is, Catholics are odd ducks in American politics. The ones who actually go to church and believe the central tenets of their Faith (as opposed to the “I was raised” Catholic variety who skew polling data) are, by and large, fairly conservative on social issues (abortion, marriage and embryo research), moderate on economic issues and occasionally downright liberal on environmental, peace and justice issues. (Most church-going Catholics, for example, accept Pope John Paul II’s teaching that the death penalty is illegitimate in most modern societies.) Part of this odd political schizophrenia stems directly from Catholic social teaching as enunciated in papal encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum (1891), Quadragesimo Anno (1931), Mater et Magistra (1961), Populorum Progressio (1967) and Solicitudo Rei Socialis (1987) and Centesimus Annus (1991). As the popes have explained for the past 200 years, the dominant principles underlying Christian teaching on both social and economic issues are what’s called the Principle of Subsidiarity and the Principle of Solidarity.

The Principle of Subsidiarity means that, for both practical and philosophical reasons, matters ought to be handled by “the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority.” That means that Catholics believe in local, de-centralized, “small is better” forms of government. You don’t have the Federal government setting education policy, for example, when education is done on a local neighborhood level. In practical terms, the principle of subsidiarity favors regional solutions to problems over dictats from distant and unaccountable authority. On this score, Catholics would gravitate more towards a free market or Republican approach to economic matters. The Catholic political sensibility favors federalism, states’ rights, regionalism, non-empire building. Small is beautiful indeed.

But the principle of subsidiarity must also be balanced by the Principle of Solidarity or a commitment to the common good. As Pope John Paul II explained it in his encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis, “Solidarity… is a virtue directed par excellence to the common good, and is found in ‘a commitment to the good of one’s neighbor with the readiness, in the Gospel sense, to ‘ lose oneself’ for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to ‘serve him’ instead of oppressing him for one’s own advantage (Mt 10:40-42, 20-25;Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:25-27) ( Sollicitudo Rei Socialis ). Thus, while Catholics believe in the liberty-based ideals of a free market and de-centralized authority, these ideals are not absolute: They must be balanced with a “commitment to the good of one’s neighbor.” For that reason, most faithful Catholics do not object to, say, zoning regulations that prohibit strip clubs from opening near schools… or environmental protection laws that forbid dumping toxic waste directly in the ocean. The principle of solidarity is also why Catholics oppose abortion on principle: A woman’s freedom of choice ends precisely where another human life is involved.

For me personally, the only politician who comes close to living up to these ideals is the “unelectable” and “crazy” Dr. Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a libertarian on economic matters (more libertarian than Church teaching), opposed to the death penalty, opposed to America waging undeclared and unending wars overseas, opposed to the illegal and immoral use of torture, opposed to violations of civil liberties through the U.S. Patriot Act. Because he was a true physician and O.B. and delivered thousands of babies, Dr. Paul is also prolife, which, to me, shows a willingness to concede that his libertarian principles are not absolute. I thus voted for Dr. Paul in 2008 and will vote for him again in 2012. He is the only Republican candidate who even pretends to adhere to any fixed principles.

For a while, I was tempted by some of what the Green Parties say. I am, after all, prolife. I was raised in a vast forest. I’ve always liked the Greens and agree with a lot of the Global Greens Charter adopted in Canberra in 2001. The global Green Platform includes many very Catholic statements of principle in regards to nonviolence, social justice, participatory democracy, economic and ecological sustainability, de-centralized decision-making, human rights, and so on. Were it not for abortion, I would probably even sign up! The Greens oppose capital punishment and torture, as do I. They support regional farming and small business, as do I. Their champion for a long time was Ralph Nader, whom I have always liked even when I disagree with him on some economic questions and despite the fact that he is a lawyer.

Unfortunately, however, in the U.S. the Greens, like Amnesty International, have been taken over by extremist pro-abortion fanatics for whom the right to kill infants in the womb is “non-negotiable.” In Europe, most of the Green Parties insist that “questions implying life and death are sensitive ones indeed and let it be clear that the European Green Party has never advocated unrestricted abortion rights.” The European Greens, especially in Germany, have had painful experience with what happens when societies endorse medical killing…. and are thus much less enthusiastic when it comes to abortion and euthanasia than are liberals in the U.S. But for U.S. liberals, abortion trumps all else. How a party that claims to be “green” can celebrate the surgical dismemberment of an infant in the womb… or think that chemically poisoning such a child through saline solution or RU486 is somehow a “life-enhancing” act… is beyond me. Here is what the platform of the Green Party in the USA states on abortion:

Women’s right to control their bodies is non-negotiable. It is essential that the option of a safe, legal abortion remains available. The “morning-after” pill must be affordable and easily accessible without a prescription, together with a government-sponsored public relations campaign to educate women about this form of contraception. Clinics must be accessible & must offer advice on contraception; consultation about abortion and the performance of abortions. — Source: 2008 Green Party Platform from 2008 Chicago Convention Jul 13, 2008

Well, that crosses the Greens off of the list for Catholics, at least the Greens in the U.S.!

What about the Phillip Blond’s Red Tories? They are consciously drawing upon Distributist ideals. Distributism is the name given to the political aspirations of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP, in the early 20th century. Opposed to both Big Government liberals and Big Business conservatives, the Distributists favored small, locally owned farms and businesses and sought to put into practice the Corporal Works of Mercy. Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker movement were an example of early Distributist thought. Certainly, neo-Distributism has many attractions for Catholics… and much of what the Red Tories say appeal to us. Yet among their many attractions, numbers isn’t one of them – meaning, both Distributism and the Red Tories are more of a philosophical objection than a real-life movement.

If I was really pressed, however, I would have to say that the political movement that comes closest to authentic Catholic ideals and my own temperament would have to be The Idler movement founded by UK writer and general layabout Tom Hodgkinson. IN a very real way, Tom comes far closer to living out the ideals of Distributism, and thus of Catholic social teaching, than any of the more “serious” political parties we’ve been discussing. In a very real sense, The Idler movement is apolitical. Like G.K. Chesterton and the Distributists, Tom thinks that the most important things in life have nothing whatsoever to do with politics — things like raising children, dancing with your wife, river racing, drinking with friends — and that we should, by and large, ignore both politics and politicians. For example, Tom does not vote… and, the more I see of U.S. politics, the more I understand why he takes this stance. How can a person with principles stand with either the Party of Slavery (the Democrats) or with the Party of Torture (the Republicans)?

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