"WE'RE LIBERALS AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP"

Probably the most annoying trait of liberals is their belief that “they know better”, that is, you may want something, but they know what you should really have. This was never more apparent then when President Clinton told a crowd that he was against tax cuts because,

"We could give it all back to you and hope you spend it right"

This condescension flows right through from taxes to property rights. They are forever passing laws telling us what we can do with our property (usually what we can’t do) and throwing us into jail if we don’t follow the rules. After all, it’s probably for our own good anyways.

Well, I think we have a new low. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed THE ENTIRE STATE of Vermont as an endangered site and the New York Times is all on board. What freak of nature, what terror weapon is it that threatens Vermont?

Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart would like to build seven stores in the state and bring low prices to everyone, but this ruins the idyllic view the liberals have of Vermont. Liberals want to go to Vermont once a year and see what it was like before cheap prices and good selections. They want to wander in the local stores offering little and old fashion high prices. Of course, Wal-Mart is the whipping boy of choice this year, so there indignation is doubly hot.

The Times denies all this. They say,

“Nobody really wants to deny Vermonters everything that Wal-Mart offers, like $10 jeans or the latest labor-saving gizmo, as seen on TV.“

Not that that’s condescending, or anything. We also get stuff like this,

“In pursuit of cheaper stuff, Vermonters need to be especially careful not to overload their winding roads and covered bridges, not to ruin their green, rolling landscapes and not to empty out their small, historic downtowns. More than a quarter of the state's income now comes from tourism, and nobody's going to mail home a postcard of a Wal-Mart.”

Translation, don’t screw up my vacation, you hicks!

We also get the tired old argument about local businesses,

“When big stores move in, small businesses often go belly up in the nearest towns.”

And why is it these stores go out of business? Is it because the customers have left for better prices and selection? Again, we might not make the “right” decision, so we shouldn’t have to deal with “choices”?

As a former Vermonter, I find this editorial to be disgusting. Please, let the Vermonters make their own decisions, just once?

"WHAT? WAR IS HELL?"

Just last week, the people over at National Review Online were bantering about whether George Orwell said,

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

It’s still up for debate if he said it or not, but the general consensus was that even if he didn’t, it’s still true. CS Lewis was quoted as saying,

“It is a brutal truth about the world that the whole everlasting business of keeping the human race protected and clothed and fed could not go on for twenty-four hours without the vast legion of hard-bitten, technically efficient, not-over-sympathetic men, and without the harsh processes of discipline by which this legion is made.”

Again, completely true and relevant to today’s column by Bob Herbert in the New York Times. In it, he tells the story of Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a member of the Florida National Guard who is refusing to return to Iraq now that his furlough is up. Herbert doesn’t really care about Mejia, he’s using the story to tell how what terrible things we are doing in Iraq.

“He led an infantry squad and saw plenty of action. But the more he thought about the war — including the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, the mistreatment of prisoners (which he personally witnessed), the killing of children, the cruel deaths of American G.I.'s (some of whom are the targets of bounty hunters in search of a reported $2,000 per head), the ineptitude of inexperienced, glory-hunting military officers who at times are needlessly putting U.S. troops in even greater danger, and the growing rage among coalition troops against all Iraqis (known derisively as "hajis," the way the Vietnamese were known as "gooks")…”

“He spoke about a friend of his, a sniper, who he said had shot a child about 10 years old who was carrying an automatic weapon. "He realized it was a kid," said Sergeant Mejia. "The kid tried to get up. He shot him again."

The child died.”

All terrible things, but that’s what war is – terrible. Herbert seems to feel that war should really clean and maybe no killing, like a game of Risk or chess. Does he have no comprehension that war is very messy, that it is a nightmare and that people get killed? Herbert either is a fifty-nine year old ignoramus (a very real possibility) or a liar, who feigns shock, shock! that people get killed in war. I tend to believe the latter because of the wording of the column, (“slaughter of Iraqi civilians”, “glory-hunting officers”, etc), all showing an anti-liberation bias, oh, so common in the liberal press today.

"WE'LL TEACH THE CHURCH HOW TO BE CATHOLIC!"

In a move that is sure inflame honest Catholics, the House Democrats circulated an absolutely outrageous letter and got 48 of their fellow Democrats to sign it. It was then sent to Cardinal McCarrick of Washington. Because the Dims haven’t released the letter to the general public, just some fellow liberals in the press, I can only comment on what I have seen in the press. That being said, look what is being quoted:

“The letter questioned how the bishops could limit the denial of Communion to abortion, noting that Pope John Paul II and many U.S. bishops have condemned the death penalty and the war in Iraq. "All of us firmly believe that we can be good Congresspersons and Catholics and we respectfully submit that, while sometimes difficult, each of us has the responsibility and the right to balance public morality with private morality without pressure from certain bishops," the letter said.”

Again, the liberals feel there can be a public morality different and separate from private morality. Let me try this again and be very clear about it,

MORALS ARE MORALS, THERE AREN’T DIFFERENT GRADES OR VERSIONS. PUBLIC MORALITY IS THE SAME AS PRIVATE MORALITY. IT’S LIKE HAVING A PRIVATE SPLEEN AND A PUBLIC SPLEEN, OR PRIVATE SOUL AND PUBLIC SOUL, IT JUST CAN’T HAPPEN

Any questions?

And then this one,

“In their letter, the Democratic House members said they "firmly believe that it would be wrong for a bishop to deny the sacrament of Holy Communion to an individual on the basis of a voting record. We believe that such an action would be counter-productive and would bring great harm to the church." “

Oh, the Church should worry less about their teachings being right or wrong, they should worry about it being “counter-productive”. Typical liberal claptrap, holding their fingers up to the wind.

Finally, from the munchkin state of Rhode Island, we get this,

“Another antiabortion legislator, Rep. James R. Langevin (R.I.), said that "while I agree with [the bishops] on the pro-life issue, I don't agree with them on denying Communion to those who in good conscience have come to a different position. . . . These are complicated, emotional issues that each of us has wrestled with, and it's not helpful for the church to be punitive or to approach these issues in this heavy-handed way."

Yeah, don’t look at these things with a heavy-handed, Catechism-based, right and wrong, black and white way, we need to look at it in a way that doesn’t make me feel bad and gets me votes.

REAL MEN, PART II

I love it when real men act like men, like when Iclandic fishermen kill sharks with only knives and today is another one of those happy days.

Twenty British Soldiers were ambushed by 100 Iraqi terrorists yesterday and the situation looked beyond grim. Pinned down and surely short on ammo, what option did these Brits have but to surrender to avoid total annihilation? What option, you say?

How about a fixed bayonett charge and hand to hand fighting!!!

After the fight ended, thirty-five bad guys were dead, their bodies littering the street and only three minor wounds for the “fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders”

God bless them – God bless them all!!

PS. - Regarding the shark post from October, I have watched Queer Eye and I like it. Oh, well...

THIS REALLY BLEW UP IN THEIR FACES...

You’ve got to be careful in some professions in the Mid East and, surprisingly, thief is one of them. It seems two Palestinian thieves accosted a man in late April just outside an Israeli checkpoint looking for a quick buck or whatever they use for money over there. Unfortunately for the two, the person they were robbing was a Hamas suicide bomber. The bomber, in a fit of pique, detonated the bombs and, along with himself, killed both thieves.

To add insult to injury (or death), the two Palestinians are now considered “agents of Israel”:

“A Hamas official added that whatever their intention, the two should be considered agents of Israel.

"Anyone who tries to stop a fighter from doing his work is a collaborator," he said.”

The moral here is stay in school, kids – a life of crime does not pay. Oh, and you can't make this stuff up.

IF ONLY RUMMY WAS GAY...

Robert Scheer, over at the LA Times is making no sense again. Unable to comprehend the concept of Democracy and unwilling to state the truth, he praters on and we get stuff like this:

“What a wonderful image of democracy and tolerance the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has presented to the world by allowing same-sex marriages.”

How exactly is the writ of four judges “democracy”? If it were democracy, wouldn’t there be a few more votes? To liberals like Scheer, anything that advances their cause is “democracy”, anything that thwarts it is “special interests” or “ultra-right wing ideologues forcing their agenda on the people”, etc.

In the same editorial, Scheer manages to blame Donald Rumsfeld for the prison scandal. Scheer quotes from Seymour Hersh’s new book with supposed proof that Rummy planned the whole thing:

"Rumsfeld and [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen] Cambone … expanded the scope of [a top-secret intelligence-gathering program], bringing its unconventional methods to Abu Ghraib. The commandos were to operate in Iraq as they had in Afghanistan. The male prisoners could be treated roughly, and exposed to sexual humiliation," reports Hersh, relying on insider intelligence sources.”

Of course, Scheer leaves out key parts of Hersh’s book, such as the parts that say Rummy didn’t have anything to do with it. We have to go to Joel Mowbray for that bit of information:

“Buried 3,300 words inside a 4,500-word article is the following exoneration: "Rumsfeld may not be personally culpable." And farther down near the end was another: "The former intelligence official made it clear that he was not alleging that Rumsfeld or Gen. (Richard) Myers knew that atrocities were committed."

Ah, the liberal media. Will they ever change? I doubt it. I’m not even sure I want them to.

"YOU'VE GOT TO BREAK A FEW EGGS..."

Ok, let’s take a time out here. Let’s step back out of the minutia and see the big picture.

I, of course, speak of Iraq.

The prison abuse scandal has given the liberals just what they want concerning the war. It has given the Bush haters a stick to beat the President up with. Not that he committed these crimes, not that he condoned it, not that he had anything to do with it at all.

But it gives the liberals a reason to cry about being in Iraq. It gives them another reason besides the “no weapons-of-mass-destruction” to repeat over and over again, hoping to gain some traction somewhere.

But, I have a question for them. Is Iraq better off without the Saddam regime? Are human rights better now for the people in Iraq than they were before the war, including in the prisons? Will the future be better or worse for the average Iraqi? The answers to these questions is self-evident. Iraq is a better place now than it was before. The human rights situation is infinitely better then under Saddam, even in the prisons. On classic liberal grounds of helping the oppressed of the world, the war in Iraq can only be labeled a success.

But the liberals don’t care. It was never important to them if the Iraqi’s are better off, all they want is to bash Bush. So, if Bush is for the war, they’re against it.

So that’s why they love these pictures. So they can be against the war and more importantly, be against Bush. But, they don’t care about the prisoners. They don’t care if soldiers are now at greater risk because of a bunch of under trained guards. They only care about hating Bush.

No matter who gets hurt.

HOPELESS HARLEY

I’ve mentioned Harley Sorensen before here on the corner. His writing style is something I call “shotgun”. A shotgun writing style a scattered, point after point, often with no connections, litany of thoughts and ideas. And sure enough, old Harley has done it again.

The premise is George Bush and his posse are bad. But, as I said he never states that. Harley starts off his laundry list by surmising that politicians publicly “accept responsibility” and then go on with their lives, not really doing anything than just saying the words.

“Reno had learned from Reagan. Rumsfeld on Friday demonstrated he has learned from both. Publicly "taking responsibility" for misdeeds or errors has become an acceptable way to turn down the heat.”

This is actually a fair point and one he could have written a thoughtful piece on, but he doesn’t, he just veers off to another Bush attack.

But wait, don’t we have a candidate now that NEVER takes responsibility? He doesn’t fall down on the slopes, it was the secret service agent. He doesn’t actually say what he says on the campaign trail, it’s always those darned speechwriters. And didn’t he vote for the $87 billion before voting against it? What about that, Harley?

Keeping with the “Bush/Rumsfeld are responsible for everything bad” theme, we get:

“President George W. Bush, a one-time cheerleader at Yale, has been the primary cheerleader for abuse against our perceived enemies.

He has declared Iraq, Iran and North Korea as evil. In his opinion, Iraqis who continue to fight against the invaders of their country are "evil-doers." (Rumsfeld likes to call them "dead-enders.")”

Funny, Harley never addresses the idea that regimes that kill, rape and starve their own people might actually be evil.

“Given the national fear and anger, and the loathing of our enemies, all encouraged by the Bush administration, it is not in the least surprising that under trained service men and women abuse helpless prisoners.”

Ah, of course, it’s George Bush who made those guards abuse the prisoners. I should have known it. I bet Karl Rove is somehow involved, damn him!

Sorensen then regales us with his own time in the prisoner/guard relationship with stories from his time in the Army during the Korean war. He also brings up the famous Stanford experiment where students played out guard/prisoner relationships and things went very wrong, very fast. His point, what little there is, seems to be that when the military uses under trained people in prison situations, bad things can happen.

“What Zimbardo's work demonstrates is that anyone charged with taking care of prisoners must be well-trained for the job.”

That is, again, another fair point and worthy of consideration, but Harley sails on past it. I wonder if that’s because the blame (dare I say, responsibility?) of an under trained military might fall on the shoulders of Bill Clinton, who spent his entire presidency gutting the military? I haven’t seen this avenue explored, but it's one I've been thinking about.

Wrapping up the “Bush is evil” theme, we get this:

“What the exposure of our atrocities also teaches is that our leadership has gone against traditional American beliefs. One of our claims to respect has been our simple decency. George W. Bush's bellicose rhetoric, echoed by others in his administration, goes against our ideals.

Bush claims to be a disciple of the Christian Prince of Peace, and he commonly exhorts the God of Love, yet the rest of his rhetoric seems to belie those beliefs. Someone should point out to Bush the difference between a moral man and a moralistic one.

And Rumsfeld, who admits responsibility for war crimes, should accept that responsibility. He should return to civilian life. “

This bit is just full of little nuggets of stupidity. Firstly, the abuse is called “atrocities”, in an attempt to morally equate scaring people with feeding them, alive, to dogs and gassing villages. Harley, they are not equal. One is mean, the other is atrocious.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I think Harley then goes on to say Bush isn’t decent and mocks his faith. Liberals just can't stand the idea that someone might be religious. The moral/moralistic bit is just too ironic for words.

Anyway, Harley thinks everything bad is Bush’s fault, including the isolated acts of a bunch of guards, a significant number who seem to be women. Hmmm, what does that say? We'll get into that later. Of course, everything good done by the soldiers is probably just done in spite of Bush.

ANOTHER "WHY WE FIGHT" MOMENT

At a campaign stop in Lebanon, Ohio this week, the world was once again reminded why we fight the war on terror and why President Bush, with all his faults, is the man for the job.

Passing through the crowd, President Bush heard a voice say,

"This girl lost her mom in the World Trade Center on 9-11”

Good man, nay, great man that he his, President Bush turned back and asked the girl how she was doing and hugged her to his chest. If it wasn’t for the girls father who was lucky enough to snap one picture, the world would never have known how the most powerful man in the world took time to comfort a 15 year old girl.

And that’s what separates him from John Kerry.

If Kerry had even bothered to talk to the girl, he would have made sure press photographers got a shot of it and would have posted a bit on his website about he cares so much. John Kerry talks about how he cares, George Bush just cares.

BACKBONE

Little by little, The Catholic Bishops in the United States have started to get tough with the “Catholic” politicians that support abortion. Several Bishops have publically stated that John Kerry and his “Pro-Choice” ilk are unable to receive Communion in there Dioceses. Kerry has to go to some liberal Catholic church or even Protestant churches out of fear that he will be denied and the photo-op that would follow would define his campaign.

This past week, Bishop John D’Arcy of Indiana had a Catholic High School uninvite Indiana Governor Joe Kernan from the commencement because he’s a pro-choice Catholic. What a slap in the face!! I love it!! Bishop D’Arcy and the theology teachers at the school are absolutely right when they say:

“Kernan's appearance would directly contradict the moral truths they teach and expect students to embrace.”

Kernan, Kerry, Cuomo and all of the pro-choice Catholic politicians need to read Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation CHRISTIFIDELES LAICI to Catholic Lay people. In it he covers abortion more eloquently than most:

“Respecting the Inviolable Right to Life
38. In effect the acknowledgment of the personal dignity of every human being demands the respect, the defence and the promotion of the rights of the human person. It is a question of inherent, universal and inviolable rights. No one, no individual, no group, no authority, no State, can change-let alone eliminate-them because such rights find their source in God himself.

The inviolability of the person which is a reflection of the absolute inviolability of God, fínds its primary and fundamental expression in the inviolability of human life. Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

The Church has never yielded in the face of all the violations that the right to life of every human being has received, and continues to receive, both from individuals and from those in authority. The human being is entitled to such rights, in every phase of development, from conception until natural death; and in every condition, whether healthy or sick, whole or handicapped, rich or poor. The Second Vatican Council openly proclaimed: "All offences against life itself, such as every kind of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and willful suicide; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures; all offences against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where men are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons; all these and the like are certainly criminal: they poison human society; and they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator"(137).

If, indeed, everyone has the mission and responsibility of acknowledging the personal dignity of every human being and of defending the right to life, some lay faithful are given a particular title to this task: such as parents, teachers, healthworkers and the many who hold economic and political power.

The Church today lives a fundamental aspect of her mission in lovingly and generously accepting every human being, especially those who are weak and sick. This is made all the more necessary as a "culture of death" threatens to take control. In fact, "the Church family believes that human life, even if weak and suffering, is always a wonderful gift of God's goodness. Against the pessimism and selfishness which casts a shadow over the world, the Church stands for life: in each human life she sees the splendour of that 'Yes', that 'Amen', which is Christ himself (cf. 2 Cor 1:19; Rev 3:14). To the 'No' which assails and afflicts the world, she replies with this living 'Yes', this defending of the human person and the world from all who plot against life"(138). It is the responsibility of the lay faithful, who more directly through their vocation or their profession are involved in accepting life, to make the Church's "Yes" to human life concrete and efficacious."

Get that, Kerry? No matter how much “good” you do, how many of the rich you soak to give to the “disadvantaged”, without “defend[ing] with maximum determination” the right to life, it is all worthless. And, to emphasize your responsibilities, “some lay faithful are given a particular title to this task: such as parents, teachers, healthworkers and the many who hold economic and political power.”

To put it simply, YOU CANNOT BE CATHOLIC AND SUPPORT ABORTION!!!!!! That includes supporting those in power who do support abortion. To vote for these people is to deny your faith.