Miscellaneous Musings, June 9, 2011

There was a good article in this week's The Weekly Standard (here) by David Gallertner on the view of the American Left towards America itself.  Here's a short excerpt:

The Obamacrats’ hatred is too well known to need cataloguing. We know that NPR’s top people see Tea Party supporters as “seriously racist, racist people.” We know the views of such old reliables as former DNC chairman Howard Dean (“I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for”) and Nina Totenberg of NPR (who once said that Jesse Helms “ought to be worried about what’s going on in the Good Lord’s mind, because if there is retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it”). We know former congressman Alan Grayson’s ideas about his Republican colleagues: “If you get sick in America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly.” We know the disgusting things that have been said about Sarah Palin going back to the first days of her vice presidential candidacy. Most important, we remember the indescribably low and dirty attacks made repeatedly on President Bush and Vice President Cheney.


(Not long ago a thoughtful Obama-crat was attacking Cheney, and I asked him whether Cheney and Obama weren’t, in personal terms, much alike. He thought it over and said yes; they were both highly intelligent, low-key, thoughtful, well-read, unemotional but strongly committed to their own worldviews. Then why did the left find Cheney personally so objectionable? And wasn’t it striking that the right never talks about Obama the way the left did about Cheney? To his credit, he had no answer.)

There's also an article on the self-indulgence of Government employees at the expense of the taxpayer.  Together, these articles make interesting, if not infuriating, reading, for sure!

Wacky Wednesday, Wednesday, June 8, 2011, Car 54, Where Are You?

It's Wednesday, we've made it half way through the week, it's time to kick back and enjoy a laugh from Car 54 Where are You!!

Miscellaneous Musings, Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Chesterton, in On Gargoyles,

That, I fancy, is the only true origin of Realism. Realism is simply Romanticism that has lost its reason. This is so not merely in the sense of insanity but of suicide. It has lost its reason; that is its reason for existing. The old Greeks summoned godlike things to worship their god. The medieval Christians summoned all things to worship theirs, dwarfs and pelicans, monkeys and madmen. The modern realists summon all these million creatures to worship their god; and then have no god for them to worship. Paganism was in art a pure beauty; that was the dawn. Christianity was a beauty created by controlling a million monsters of ugliness; and that in my belief was the zenith and the noon. Modern art and science practically mean having the million monsters and being unable to control them; and I will venture to call that the disruption and the decay.

It always amazes me to read Christian writers, in this case, Chesterton, who lived a hundred or more years ago and see how well they were able to diagnose the ills of modernism overtaking society.  They saw the problems arising yet seemed powerless to stop them.  As a result, we find ourselves living today in a world where the monsters have taken over, our fears, in truth, have become all controlling.  We seem no longer to have the courage, or virtue, to withstand the worst of our all too human tendencies.  To point this out is deemed intolerance.

 

I take comfort from the fact that our Lord warned us to expect this sort of thing.  It may be that where our ancestors in the faith failed to stem the tide of decay, we can still succeed.  I’ve thought for some time that what needs to be done is not some mass media campaign, not even a successful political campaign.  The real answer must lie in conversion, our own first, then our neighbor.  But it starts with ourselves, with prayer, faith and then a living out the rest of the virtues, hope, charity, prudence, justice, temperance, and most of all fortitude.  The best we can do is, I think, is try to be live and exemplify the Christian life; we won’t be perfect, but we can give it our best shot. 

Early Church Fathers, Sunday, June 5, 2011, Ignatius of Antioch

Image via Wikipedia"Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. . . . They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes."

(Letter to the Smyrnaeans 6:2-7:1 [A.D. 110]).

Founders Friday, Friday, June 3, 2011 John Hancock

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"In circumstances dark as these, it becomes us, as Men and Christians, to reflect that, whilst every prudent Measure should be taken to ward off the impending Judgements....All confidence must be withheld from the Means we use; and reposed only on that GOD who rules in the Armies of Heaven, and without whose Blessing the best human Counsels are but Foolishness--and all created Power Vanity;


"It is the Happiness of his Church that, when the Powers of Earth and Hell combine against it...that the Throne of Grace is of the easiest access--and its Appeal thither is graciously invited by the Father of Mercies, who has assured it, that when his Children ask Bread he will not give them a Stone....


"RESOLVED, That it be, and hereby is recommended to the good People of this Colony of all Denominations, that THURSDAY the Eleventh Day of May next be set apart as a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer...to confess the sins...to implore the Forgiveness of all our Transgression...and a blessing on the Husbandry, Manufactures, and other lawful Employments of this People; and especially that the union of the American Colonies in Defense of their Rights (for hitherto we desire to thank Almighty GOD) may be preserved and confirmed....And that AMERICA may soon behold a gracious Interposition of Heaven."

John Hancock

-= April 15, 1775 =-

Miscellaneous Musings, Thursday, June 2, 2011, Pope Leo XIII

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Pope Leo XIII is often credited as being the father of the so-called “social justice” movement within the Church as a result of his encyclical, Rerum Novarum (New Things). I sometimes wonder if anyone making such a claim has ever actually read the encyclical? Below is one brief quotation, see what you think?

But in the present letter, the responsibility of the apostolic office urges Us to treat the question of set purpose and in detail, in order that no misapprehension may exist as to the principles which truth and justice dictate for its settlement. The discussion is not easy, nor is it void of danger. It is no easy matter to define the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor. And the danger lies in this, that crafty agitators are intent on making use of these differences of opinion to pervert men’s judgments and to stir up the people to revolt.

I think Holy Father Leo was being unusually prescient when he wrote this; there seems to be an over-abundance of crafty agitators running around today.

Wacky Wednesday, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton

It's Wednesday, we've made it half way through the week, it's time to kick back and enjoy a laugh from the Honeymooners.