American Notebook

The over-arching media presumption is we are nation of drunk college students, happy to see deviancy normalized. Who notices the weak minds of youngsters destroyed in the process, or, as in the latest teen-child thrill killing story (not a pleasant read, take our word for it), the other lives they in turn destroy? What forces in our culture have made killing other human beings a game? Why are there no gate keepers?

People are either formed or deformed by what they let into their heads. Unfortunately, for many in the media business “money-love” is the only guiding star of programming suitability. Hardly a reliable moral or aesthetic compass.

 Opt-In Far Better than Opt-Out To Limit Media Deviancy

A practical stop-gap suggestion: Why not require people to opt into all the deviancy out there, rather than forcing ordinary folks to find ways to circumvent this deluge with various cumbersome opt-out technologies? Opt-in rules work on the internet. Failure to observe them is the very definition of spam. Won’t they work for TV and other media?

The media manipulators of the American psyche know that they actually will work, and work so well they will cut into their programming profits. To rework an old phrase: Those who can, entertain, those who can’t, glorify the abnormal and the degrading. Sex, violence and deviancy are the true last refuge of media scoundrels. These are people ever ready to play on people’s weaknesses to make a buck.

 Violence and Anger Prime By-Products of Media Toxicity

And what is the toxic by-product of all this deviancy? Here is an extended quote for Cormac McCarthy’s novel, “No Country for Old Men” that might shed some light on the real world violence generated by all this media irresponsibility (“spellin” is as in the original):

 ”No Country for Old Men” on Young Children at Risk

“I sent one boy to the gas chamber in Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The paper said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He’d been datin this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely don’t. I thought I’d never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strapped him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really believe that he knew he was goin to be in hell in fifteen minutes. I believe that. And I’ve thought about that a lot. He was not hard to talk to. He called me Sheriff. But I didnt know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything? I thought about it a good deal. But it wasnt nothin compared to what was comin down the pike.

“They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. I dont know what them eyes was the windows to and I guess I’d as soon not know. But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that’s where this is goin. It is done and brought me to a place in my life I would not of thought I’d of come to. Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don’t want to confront him. I know he’s real. I’ve seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I won’t do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just being older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it’s even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die even to do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they’ll know it. They’ll see it in a heartbeat. I think is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won’t do that. I think now that maybe I never would.”

There was a time in Poland when people of faith were invisible. They just didn’t exist – at least not officially. Then the steel-worker town of Nova Huta, a planned city without a church, was built. And slowly, surely, the people of faith who didn’t exist, began to gather for Christmas Midnight Mass in a field where a church should have been. Well those non-existent people continued not to exist for a long, long time. And then one day, they suddenly mattered. This was after their bishop, who later became John Paul II, had lead them in prayer, year after year.

Those who spoke truth to power could not be dislodged, and in the end the church was built. And then, one day, after years of non-existence, seemingly overnight, the people mattered again and the entire structure of evil that had Poland in its grip collapsed, disappearing into the non-being from which it had come.

In the United States 300,000 non-existing people  gather each year in January to lobby Congress for life. To the media and the political masters of the status quo they do not exist. Yes, the culture of abortion rules safely and serenely, or so it seems. These hundreds of thousands of “non-existents” speaking truth to power seem a hopeless lot. They are as invisible as the unborn children they represent. In a land where media is everywhere, here it is not to be found. A blackout as thorough as any censorship prevails. Such is the dictatorship of relativism. But as we approach 40 years in the desert of desolation that is abortion, a point of no return is approaching.

The people who have been called to be faithful, not successful, may soon be successful as well. It is the abortion power in the media and government which is ultimately destined to disappear, as all structures of evil are destined to do. It will disappear as the evil it hides from view becomes manifest to more and more people. Has it taken too long? Yes. Will victory come in God’s time to those who are faithful. The answer is a resounding yes. We who do not yet exist will exist soon enough. And the children we represent will be spared. The voice of the “non-existents” will shake the very foundations of the culture of death, as long as we continue to be faithful.

People Are Changing Their Minds

Here is a small example of the change that is taking place, one person at a time. The truth spoken in charity is an irresistible force that cannot be ignored. For many the tension is too great between a culture that professes to care for all humanity while ignoring the unborn. A house divided cannot stand. As the word spreads from one person to the next the truth that is hiding in plain sight manifests itself.

With the birth of the 7 billionth baby on planet earth this November, the cry went out about so-called “out of control population growth rates.” Such is the charge made by an aging chorus of population fear-mongers, those wealthy cave dwellers of the upper East Side and Cambridge and their allies in that East River glass cigar box stuffed with fakes, phonies and frauds, the United Nations. Not only is their rant not true, it is the opposite of the truth.

Fertility Rates Matter

The people who know how to do the math and understand fertility cycles know that planet earth is headed for Niagara-like drops in population in the coming generations. China’s One-Child policy over the last 30 years has already depleted planet earth of a population the equivalent of the United States: Children murdered by a blood-thirsty Communist/Capitalist cabal Hell bent on destroying their own people. Such self-loathing is hard to fathom, but it is slowly dawning on younger leaders that India will surpass China as the world’s largest nation/ethnic group. India has also gone the wrong way on population “policy,” but China’s merciless brutality of forced abortion is unparallelled in the annals of history. At the same time, it is no wonder the geniuses in Peking/Beijing are equally Hell bent on destroying the minute Catholic Church in their country. Such hollow men have so little being, they know that even a breath from a few faithful, poor men and women who know how to pray might threaten to bring down their whole materialistic house of cards.

United Nations Population Study Fakes Numbers

The irony is the United Nations population gurus have just issued a report, using a phony factor of two children per family applied equally to every nation on earth, to continue their scare mongering about overpopulation. Skeptical observers, who know these numbers are so overstated as to be patently absurd, realize that if these U.N. bureaucrats entered the real numbers, it would become obvious that real long term population growth was impossible. No fear mongering, no job. Then they and their chauffeurs, entourages, and sycophants in the diplomatic corps would no longer be needed. Think of all the parties they would miss.

Steve Mosher Interview on 7 Billionth Baby

Check out this 7 minute interview with Steve Mosher, the man who was expelled from China, and scorned by academia, for exposing the one-child policy. He is also the man  who pointed out that the computer models used to implement this slaughter were funded in part by grants from Planned Parenthood’s international fund. Mosher gives a very level headed look at the future prospects and explains why the growth of ” human capital, ” which is the most important kind of capital, is at risk. Steve Mosher Interview on Current Population Trends.

Nice piece in the Washington Post about how the Obama administration is at war with Catholics. This, one supposes, is only news to those who sincerely believed that Obama had a shred of sincerity in his dealings with Catholics. (And nice job to the “Washington Compost” gremlins for putting an anti-Catholic cartoon on the webpage with the pro-Catholic opinion piece! ) Yes, the president/emperor doesn’t have any clothes and never did, but the fact that the beating Obama has been giving to the Catholic Church has even made news in the mainstream media is in itself news. Probably it has been noticed because it is proving to be one more nail in Obama’s political coffin. I guess the Democrats believe a little PR before election day will take care of that. Those Catholics are too dumb to remember you’ve been slapping them around for the previous three years, right?

Health Care as a Tool Against the Church

Bottom line is the ink wasn’t dry on so called health care reform than the word wizards were twisting it in all kinds of ways A) to destroy citizens private health care options B) to use it as a final solution for destroying those nasty Catholic health care institutions. It does this by denying Catholics the right to invoke the conscience clause in the legislation, which would exempt them from committing immoral acts. They are the only grass still growing between the cracks in the New World Order parking lot.  People like Kathleen Sebelius, and her confreres at the U.N., are working day and night to pave over the whole landscape with their sterile anti-life ideological blacktop. As the old Irish would put it, they want Catholics to take the soup, a reference to free soup with meat in it offered to starving Catholics on Fridays.

In this case, the government insists that no one may hold that life is sacred. Ideology is, after all, defined as knowing the “answer” without benefit of philosophical or practical reason being applied to the facts of the case. The role of the Government/Media spin machine is to recolor “facts” so they “conform” to the ideological answer they have already decided on. A great way to lose a horse race and a better way to lose a country.

Conscience is a great enemy to ideology, because it insists on deciding and making choices based on how a thing conforms to reality.

Supreme Court A Ray of Hope?

The good news is the Supreme Court will be hearing in-depth arguments on health care legislation. The bad news is the Supreme Court will be hearing in-depth arguments on health care legislation. Justice Elena Kagan, who has not recused herself, appears to have been an adviser on the very legislation she will be sitting in judgement upon. Once again, some of the Supremes will be playing at being legislators instead of justices interpreting the law. If she gave any input on this law to her old boss, President Obama, she should have the decency to step aside on this case right now.

It seems the verbal engineers didn’t wait for a court date to try and distort the pro-life issue of human personhood as it was placed on the ballot in Mississippi. Despite strong support from party leaders, Initiative 26 didn’t get the votes needed to pass. The old canards were trotted out to derail what is a perfectly rational argument, that a human person is a person from conception to natural death. As opposed to fish, who we all know become elephants at some point between conception and natural death. Well you see the point. But the work of abortion magicians is always to keep your eye on something other than their gruesome business while they do their slight of hand. The dopiest of these was the argument that the state would lose tax revenues, because unborn children would then have the right to be counted as dependents before they were born and that would cost revenue. Simon Legree, please hunt down those escaping tax slaves, better they should be dead and never pay taxes.

Voters Need Serious Education on Life Issues

The bottom line is pro-life arguments are terra incognito to most voters, so their resolve crumbles under the slightest challenge. This is a general problem in all modern soundbite driven politics. Politicians are marketed saying as little as possible about what their positions are, so their supporters can hardly get ginned up defending those positions. The other problem is human weakness. In principle people oppose abortion, but aren’t so confident they don’t want to leave it as an escape hatch in case they face a problem from contraceptive failure. This is the classic materialistic lukewarmness of the sunshine patriot. These folks want life defended without cost, and fundamentally see children as potential societal burdens, not overwhelming net assets.

They still fail to see that the current economic collapse is the fruit of these anti-natalist views.  No consumers, no economic growth – duh. Unless people become positively pro-child in this country, pro-life initiatives will trip over all kinds of irrelevant obstacles. There is clearly no genuine love of life driving many faux pro-life voters, and it shows.  And shame on those pastors who fell for all the pro-abortion folderol. These are clerical blind guides whom abortion forces and their marketing agencies in New York love to trot out at opportune times to mislead the people.

Most people have heard almost nothing of what seems like an amazing state constitutional referendum in Mississippi. If it passes, it will define as persons “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the equivalent thereof.” Presumably that includes all unborn children – even those monstrously cloned. Its passage seems likely, according to people who track these things. That it will end up in court, if it passes, is guaranteed. And then what?

Verbal Engineers Will Attack

Some attorney will begin by bringing in the verbal engineers and their wrecking ball. All attacks on life by lawyers representing social deconstructionists defy all that is common in common sense. Maybe we should just have these sophists cut to the chase and stipulate that no one is actually human – ever. After all, if life is not a right, if personhood doesn’t exist as a sacred human reality from conception, then actual biological existence is only randomly tolerated based on some bizarre genetic lottery and arcane grants of existence by the courts. This would make us mere biological renegades, lost, as Walker Percy would say, in the cosmos.

Lets hope the voters of Mississippi send this challenge off to the Federal government. It is a very well crafted law that directly defies the whole structure of abortion by judicial fiat. If it does nothing more than return the issue to the states, as was the case prior to 1973, it will have done something important.

By the time the second tower fell, and the planes had crashed in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, on Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of souls had fallen into eternity, a fate that suddenly or slowly, will face us all. Watching the memorial on TV, who could not be reminded of the personal nature of this ultimate experience. We live in the age of the personal, and personal responsibility for our lives is a great blessing, although as those who died on that day remind us, it can also be a great and awesome responsibility.

Whether their service to society was trying to rescue others, or fulfilling the responsibilities of their ordinary daily work, they had put themselves into the arena, with all the risks which making a gift of yourself to others involves. One of the more touching comments during the reading of names of the fallen was the mother who, speaking aloud to the deceased, said the family always teaches the children to hold the door for others just as you did on that day. How the ordinary virtues, repeatedly practiced, can lead to a true heroism worthy of Heaven!

Courtesy, chivalry, humility, compassion, mercy were among the great Christian contributions to Western Civilization, as it built on the fading barbarism of Rome. As we move further from the Christian roots of that civilization, it is easy to see the coarsening of society, as too many treat others as things, not individuals worthy of laying your life down for.

Perhaps those who meant to bring America to its knees on that day helped do exactly that, but not in the way they intended. Maybe we have learned, and each year re-learn from these memorials, the importance of retrieving the personal, and its authentic virtues, from a society that seems at times to treat us as interchangeable parts in a great mass, things to be used and discarded.

Most touching was the comment of a young man, not 10 years old, who was in his mother’s womb at the time of attack. He publicly thanked his dad for his generosity in wanting to have children, for wanting to have him! How great a hope are such children, and a reminder of how important our generous example is for building a civilization of life and love in the face of adversity.

The Missing Prayers at Ground Zero

As a footnote, the decision by organizers of the 10th anniversary event to not include a moment of prayer, and to exclude religious leaders, was a bizarre one. How many during those days and after said a short prayer before the famous cross at Ground Zero? And who can forget that a New York Fire Department chaplain was killed  ministering to others during the attack on the Trade Center? Yet, there are no atheists in the fox holes. Speaker after speaker referred to the enduring spiritual sense of these events during the reading of names, as did many official spokesmen. The natural law of life cries out against the seeming finality of the grave, demonstrating the innate sense of eternity planted in the human heart,  and the meaninglessness of the ideology of political correctness.

For those looking for an alternative to the missing element of prayer, we present the prayer prayed by Benedict XVI at Ground Zero several years ago (along with actual video of the visit and recitation of the prayer).

In addition to the official events, there were events commemorating the events in song and story, and many prayer services to mark the day, such as the memorial Mass held at St. Francis Xavier church in Manhattan.

9-11 Color Guard St. Francis Xavier Church, Manhattan

9-11 Memorial Mass St. Francis Xavier Church, Manhattan

9-11 "American Art Songs for Hope," September Concert Foundation, Manhattan

9-11 Memorial Flags Were Placed in Public Squares Throughout the Country, Such as These, in New Rochelle, NY

Former Congressman Christopher Shays, the last old guard House Rinos (Republican in name only) in New England to be tossed out on his ear, is now mounting a comeback. With typical Rino logic he wants to parlay being voted out as a House member, to being voted in as a Senator from Connecticut. A likeable man, he combines the mental and philosophical temperament that makes him something of a cross between Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Vice President Joe Biden, (on Biden’s good days). He was so determined to be “independent” that he became independent of his job. He advised the candidate who ran for his seat in the last election cycle to refuse to take a no-tax pledge. That esteemed candidate went down to defeat. Now Mr. Shays wants to return to Washington by following some of his own advise. We’d ignore this, except this is the state that threw out Sen. Lowell Weicker, only to return him as governor, where he paid back his old political constituency by implementing a state income tax. Can we expect more of the same in Connecticut?

An Alternative: Scott Frantz

There is an attractive alternative. State Sen. L. Scott Frantz of Fairfield County is an attractive leader, who has all the tools to make an excellent candidate. He is smart, successful and down to earth. People like him. His recent letter to constituents said, “I stand by the belief that state spending has gone well beyond taxpayer’s ability or willingness to pay for it, and that we can not tax our way out of recession.” And believe it or not, he is a New England Republican. Calvin Coolidge call your office, there is a growing cadre of pro-growth Republicans in New England. Frantz is not a candidate, but in the opinion of this page, he should be.