The AntiSophist: politics

Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts

4/27/2009

President Obama Infanticide/Eugenics/Euthanasia Tracker

January 22, 2009: Affirmed his dedication to "reproductive freedom" in a speech commemorating the anniversary of the Roe ~Vs~ Wade decision.
January 23, 2009: Nullified the Mexico City Policy, freeing up federal tax dollars for worldwide organizations that provide abortion services in order to promote "family planning".
February 27, 2009: President Obama announces that the health care workers "Conscience Clause" put in place in the previous administration would be reviewed and probably changed because it could impinge on a womans right to receive medical care (have her baby killed).
Marcy 9, 2009: rescinds ban on embryonic stem cell research
March 18, 2009: Though the economy is in turmoil, Obama sends $50,000,000 to the United Nations Population Fund. An organization that violates human rights through supporting coerced and forced sterilizations and abortions in China.
Appointments reflect a contempt for protecting innocent lives, e.g.
· Rahm Emmanual: Chief of Staff (100% pro-abortion record as a congressman)
· Melody Barnes : Domestic Policy Adviser (former board member of Planned Parenthood Action Fund)
· Ellen Moran: Communications Director (former executive director of pro-abortion PAC Emily’s List)
· Hillary Clinton: Secretary of State (long record of extreme pro-abortion activity as First Lady, NY Senator)
· Kathleen Sebelius: Health & Human Services Secretary (extreme pro-abortion record [but still a “good Catholic”])
· More to come…
FOCA Obama: on July 17, 2007, Obama said, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do." FOCA Bill about to be reintroduced in both houses at Obama's urging (early 2009).

9/13/2008

Sarah Palin Sex Scandal

I have been very pleased so far with Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign strategy of promoting her positive traits. I believe that the left has played their role exactly as expected. They couldn't have been more predictable in their vitriol if they had actually been following a written script. It's almost as if the same Republican strategist has provided both camps with their talking points.

The liberal feminist's are showing that "Envy Green" and "Leftist Lavendar" are their true colors and not "Parity Pink". You see; NOW, the League of Women Voters, etc... don't exist to promote the cause of women being treated with equality in society. They exist to secure power for the political left by delivering the votes of a particular demographic group. They are completely intollerant of social viewpoints that don't conform to their leftist social agenda. They owe their allegiance to the leftist political philosophy more than they do to women.

They see the emergance of Sarah Palin as a scandal to their cause. "How is it that Governor Palin can be successful and not goose step with the liberal femenists?" they wonder. They actually can't comprehend and won't tolerate a woman holding a social philosophy that includes a pro-life agenda. It goes against what they've been brainwashed with for decades, that the pro-life agenda is born of men trying to control women and limit their choices.

So... they attack Governor Palin and the Republicans for using her gender exploitatively. How ironic to be accused by liberals of exploiting a particular demographic group through political pandering and candidate selection. I believe that this is part of what Pope Benedict XVI was referring to when he preached against the "Dictatorship of Relativism".

Here is a list of Sarah Palin's scandalous positions:
1. She is pro-life (and she's a women...? she must be brainwashed or dumb)
2. She Believes in traditional marriage.
3. She isn't a member of the "Lavendar Mafia".

Here is what NOW president Kim Gandy said of Governor Palin;

“She may be an intelligent, motivated, highly successful professional woman,” NOW President Kim Gandy said, “but she’s the wrong woman. She’s a bad woman. She’s not even half the woman Joe Biden is.”
Gandy cited Biden’s support for pay equity, his authorship of landmark domestic violence legislation, and his “lovely tribute to his mother” in his own acceptance speech as stark contrasts to Palin, who, according to Gandy, “foolishly believes in carrying all pregnancies to term” and “has consistently put herself and her career ahead of the fight for women’s rights.”
“It would be best for everyone if Sarah Palin would just stay home and raise her kids,” Gandy said. ”When you have one child with Down syndrome and another with an unwanted pregnancy who won’t even consider the ease and convenience of abortion, you need to be a better mother, not Vice President.”

So... the Sarah Palin sex scandal is this. Sarah Palin doesn't think like the liberals have been telling people of her sex to. How dare she think for herself and be successful without worshipping at their altar!

8/29/2008

Christian Voter part 3: Embryonic Stem Cell Research

7/23/2008

Christian Voter part 2: Abortion

I now come to the seven issues to which there is only 1 legitimate position for a Christian voter. To take the opposite position (through activism, or by placing your vote), would be indicative of a corrupted conscience or a disingenuous spirit of compromising moral truth for the spirit of the age.

Issue #1 Abortion:

What: Abortion - The intentional termination of a pregnancy by direct mechanical means or medicinal means.

Other names: Choice, reproductive choice, womens sexual health, reduction (when there is a pregnancy with multiple babies), emergency contraception, infanticide.

What the Catholic Church officially teaches regarding Abortion:
2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae," "by the very commission of the offense," and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:
"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."
"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights."

I used here the official teaching of the Catholic Church as defined in the official Catechism. The teaching contained there however is not such that Christians from other ecclesial communities would encounter doctrinal difficulty in embracing it. No Christian can in good conscience support legalized abortion or candidates who; facilitate, embrace, champion, safeguard, or enable legalized abortion.

Politicians who declare that, "I oppose abortion, personally, I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception. But I can't take my religious belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on... [someone] who doesn't share it. We have separation of church and state in the United States of America." are dishonest with themselves and with everyone.

How about if you are an athiest or agnostic politician who opposes abortion?
How about if you are a Muslim politician but your stance against abortion is strictly scientific?
Why isn't a person allowed to use metaphysical philosophy to inform their consience?

Politicians who make statements about "not forcing their religious views..." aren't being truthful. What they really care about is keeping in the good graces of their party and keeping the money rolling in from their special interest groups.

7/18/2008

Immigration President Bush and the Economy

I think I figured it out. Since President Bush and Congress can't seem to figure out a comprehensive immigration policy they did the next best thing.

They mismanaged the economy such that nobody will want to immigrate.

7/12/2008

Obamabortion

Found this interesting political caricature of the American Secular Messiah Obama "ASMO"

It got me wondering how many people actually know what his voting record or interest group rating is on abortion as opposed to his "campaign speak".

10/23/2007

Boxer Blames Bush For Fire Damage

Barbara Boxer, (yes it was difficult just to type her name) blamed President Bush, (watch the John Gibson video here) for the widespread fire damage because there would be twice as many guard troops and equipment to fight the fires if all those guard troops weren't deployed fighting that damn war in Iraq (that she voted FOR!!!).

What a load of crap. I looked into the facts, here they are;

California has somewhere between 21,000 and 25,000 National Guard members.

Currently about 3,000-4,500 of those troops are "deployed".

That's mostly from one unit, the 1st Brigade of the 40th ID.

around 85% of the California guard troops aren't deployed. A logical assumption would be that around 85% of their equipment isn't deployed either, (though you don't use army tanks and howitzers to fight fires).

Barbara Boxer is an ingnoramus attempting to make political hay from a tragic diasaster. What a Neo-Scalawag.

5/03/2007

It's O'Bama!!

I knew there was something I liked about this guy! This is about the only thing however.

Pyro

5/01/2007

"It Didn't Happen Here"

This would be a good read. It talks about why Socialism never got the strong base here in the United States that it has in European Democracies. Of particular interest to me was the influence of both Catholic social doctrine, Protestant cultural tendencies, and the influence of Organized Labor.

(Excerpt from the Hoover Institution www.hoover.org)

Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks.It Didn’t Happen Here: Why SocialismFailed in the United States.W. W. Norton & Company. 379 pages. $26.95

Socialism is fading throughout the Western world. In Germany, after two decades of immobility by the centrist Christian Democrats, taxes have now been reduced substantially by a Social Democratic government. In Australia and New Zealand, where conservative governments long pursued interventionist policies and left economies wracked by inflation, labor parties now apply neoliberal market principles. According to Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, the greatest ideological distance has been traveled by the Labour Party in Britain, whose leader, Prime Minister Tony Blair, stated in an interview that his administration would "leave British law the most restrictive on trade unionism in the Western world."

While the death knell sounds for socialist theories, it may be timely to consider again the old question of why the United States never experienced a socialist movement with the strength and durability of those in Europe or the revolutionary force of those elsewhere in the world. Lipset and Marks revisit this topic in their fine new book, It Didn’t Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States.

At first, socialists turned a hopeful eye to American shores. After all, by the late nineteenth century the United States had the most advanced capitalist economy in the world. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and other socialist thinkers believed that a mature capitalist society would produce contradictions that would compel workers into a socialist mass movement. As we know, it soon became apparent that capitalism was not headed into collapse. The increasing mechanization of industry did not deprive businessmen of the surplus value "expropriated" from their laborers; rather, it created enormous windfalls, and at the same time made goods available to a broader proportion of the population than ever before.

Still, the American working class was not without grievances. As Lipset and Marks tell it, the Socialist Party of America did find limited popular support in the first decades after its founding in 1901. But the party achieved its very circumscribed success by maintaining its distance from European socialism and, instead, by laying claim to distinctively American values.

Much credit for the early success of the Socialist Party is due to its smart and charismatic leader, Eugene Victor Debs of Indiana, who first gained prominence organizing railway workers. In the 1912 presidential election, with Debs as their candidate, the Socialists received almost a million votes. They also did well in 1920, while Debs was in an Atlanta federal prison, serving time on a sedition conviction for speaking against the 1918 war bond drive. Popular outcry eventually led Republican Warren Harding to release Debs from prison. Throughout his career, Debs portrayed himself as a victim of government repression and capitalized on the American tradition of sympathy for free speech and hostility to the state.

Few socialists found their way into Congress, the most notable of these being Victor Berger, elected many times from Milwaukee, and Meyer London from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Numerous cities, however, elected socialist mayors. Mayors Daniel Hoan in Milwaukee and Jasper McLevy in Bridgeport, Conn., were both longstanding Socialist Party members. The populations that repeatedly elected these men were not a stereotypical propertyless proletariat. The workers in these cities were homeowners and civic participants — members of unions and fraternal and life insurance societies.

In another contrast to European-style socialism, low taxes were a major plank in successful Socialist Party platforms. In Milwaukee, according to Lipset and Marks "[p]roperty taxes under successive socialist mayors from 1910 to 1940 were actually lower than in the period before and after their administrations." Socialist-led municipalities placed a strong emphasis on fiscal restraint and efficiency and on eliminating corruption. They often had the full support of the business community in addition to homeowning workers. Victor Berger, the leading socialist in Milwaukee, emphasized the consonance of socialist ideas with those of the American Founders, declaring in 1905: "Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Give every citizen a good rifle and fifty cartridges and you have the best guarantee for the liberty of the people.’ Thomas Jefferson held the same views exactly."

Lipset and marks provide an important analysis of the early American union movement, one which goes far in explaining the failure of European socialism to win adherents in the United States. In a section entitled "American Antistatism and Labor," the authors argue that the American labor movement long opposed programs that would have extended the role of the government. The reasoning behind this attitude, expressed eloquently by labor leader Samuel Gompers, was that the state would be far less likely to protect the American worker than to serve the interests of his corporate masters. Gompers was a London-born cigar maker who emigrated to New York in 1863. He was president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) from 1886 until 1923 (except for 1895, after he was defeated by a Socialist Party candidate). Gompers advocated "the wage-earners doing for themselves what they can toward working out their own salvation," massing their own collective power against the power of the industrialists, without the intervention of the state. The authors note that "the AFL was opposed to state provision of old-age pensions, compulsory health insurance, minimum wage legislation, and unemployment compensation, and from 1914 on was against legislating minimum hours for men." Quoting historian David DeLeon, they argue that "‘Social democracy, communism, and other relatively authoritarian movements that rely upon coercive centers of state power’ have run against deep libertarian currents in American culture and as a result have never succeeded in developing deep roots."

The size and diversity of America’s immigrant population presented further obstacles, cultural and organizational, to the American socialist movement. Lipset and Marks report that by the mid-nineteenth century, only one-fifth of wage earners in the United States had native white parents, and almost three-fifths were of immigrant origin. The labor force in the United States soon became the most ethnically heterogeneous in the world, they state, and by 1930 "roughly one-third of the total population was of foreign stock." Seeking to explain "why the party failed to gain the allegiance of the poorest, most vulnerable sections of the population," Lipset and Marks point to the difficulties of uniting immigrants of different languages and cultures — populations which competed for jobs and whose ethnic animosities were often encouraged by employers and politicians. Studies have shown that immigrants were far more likely to look to their own people than to a political movement for help with their immediate needs and long-term security. Jewish and Catholic immigrants created flourishing voluntary and fraternal societies that provided social services and health, unemployment, and life insurance. Fraternal life insurance companies had 8.5 million members by 1910; more wage earners were members of fraternal societies than of labor unions. The proliferation of voluntary associations among Jewish, Italian, and Slavic immigrants in cities like Chicago and New York amazed reformers.

Moreover, the traditions immigrants brought from the old world were often hostile to socialist aims. Lipset and Marks point particularly to resistance to socialism among immigrants from Catholic countries. Political observers were already commenting on this phenomenon in the years before Word War I. Lipset and Marks cite British author G.D.H. Cole, who wrote, "the growing political strength of Catholicism was of great influence in keeping the Trade Unions aloof from any movement wearing a socialist label or ‘tainted’ with class war doctrine or materialist philosophy of action." Lipset and Marks argue that while Catholic leaders in the United States endorsed trade unionism, they repeatedly attacked socialism and pronounced the sanctity of private property. In doing so, they followed the lead of the Vatican, which condemned socialism in the papal encyclicals of 1891 and 1903. Archbishop Sebastian Messmer of Milwaukee did not transgress the bounds of his authority in declaring that "the private ownership of property is supported by the gospel apostolic teaching, and the rules of the Church, and is a divine ordination, not to be changed by the hand of man. . . . A man cannot be a Catholic and a Socialist."

As the proportion of Catholic workers grew, the American Catholic church also had direct influence over the political leanings of the labor movement. Church leaders urged the American Federation of Labor to adhere to Catholic social views and to eshew political remedies in favor of "pure and simple" trade unionism. They were persuasive. Lipset and Marks write that "Samuel Gompers, although a Jew, worked hard to convince Catholic church leaders that he was sympathetic to their outlook."

This analysis contrasts with the traditional linking of capitalism and bourgeois democracy with the Protestant faith, an association that arises from Max Weber’s original formulation in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Lipset and Marks argue the opposite: that there is a strong correlation between capitalism and Catholicism. They point out that "in Germany, socialism flourished primarily in the Protestant areas in the east, e.g., Prussia, while in western Germany, the Catholic Church, as in Latin Europe, repeatedly condemned atheistic materialistic socialism and weakened the appeal of the Social Democratic party." Recent studies have demonstrated that Catholic immigrants were longtime supporters of the liberal parties in England, Canada, and Australia, and the U. S. Democratic Party. As these parties strayed from principles of individual liberty, sound money, parental rights, and voluntarism, however, Catholics moved to the parties that newly espoused them, as the Republican party has done since the New Deal. Lipset and Marks do, however, lay at Protestantism’s feet another trait that repeatedly bedeviled the American Socialist Party — a tendency towards sectarianism, doctrinal wrangling, and schism.

Lipset and Marks thus demonstrate how homegrown traditions of mistrust of state power and respect for private property interacted with the attitudes of immigrant populations to deny European theorists’ dreams of a socialist America. They give credit to American affluence and social mobility. They lay out the reasons why the significant labor unrest of the years surrounding the turn of the century was not often expressed in political terms. And they point to structural features, foremost among them our two-party system, that made it difficult for the Socialist Party to gain a political foothold. It is by this close attention to historical circumstance, as well as a grasp of broad cultural features, that Lipset and Marks make an important contribution to a discussion that has been marred by overgeneralizations on one side of the political spectrum and bitterness and self-delusion on the other.

Pyro

The AntiSophist