"Santayana's Dictum" Dept.
(A Synopsis of Our Overall Prescience Viz. the 2006 Elections and A Bit of Analysis As Well)

[Prefatory Note: Your host apologizes for the delay in posting this thread -it was ready to go back on November 22, 2006 but there were too many glitches in the text formatting to be posted at that time and not enough time to fix them. Anyway, the text here is the same as before with only the most minor of adjustments (including the addition of a footnote among them). -ISM]

As it has been customary for the present writer to write an analysis of sorts after each election cycle{1}, it seems appropriate to do so after the recent election; ergo, the post you have before you.

Now readers of this weblog are aware that your humble servant has reiterated numerous times certain principles to account for in making prognoses on future events. We intend with this email to outline some areas where we were remarkable prescient before getting to one area where we must eat some crow. But without further ado, let us get to it.

To start with, there is the historical trackrecord of elections. Often did the present writer speak of these matters in private conversations and sometimes even in public media formats. In perusing the archives, the following bits were found which will be revisited in sequential order so that readers can denote the consistency of my approach to these matters for reasons which will soon be evident:

For those who know their history, political savvy is going to be needed in much greater supply than normal in the next year and a half. I will outline in this post reasons for that seemingly bold assertion.

To start with, I have noted before that a year is an eternity in politics.[...] For that reason alone, what seems like a certain thing now may not be that way a year from now. (Let alone a year and a half from now.) But that does not mean that there are not certain lessons that history can teach us of general tendencies which can give us probabilities of what is more likely than not to happen. And it is utilizing the latter that I intend to do in the rest of this post in discussing the 2006 elections.

By all historical indicators of norms, the 2006 elections should favour the Democrats because historically the party which holds the White House loses ground in the midterm elections of a two-term president as a rule. And while many might scoff at the idea of the current crop of Democrats achieving that kind of feat, it frankly does not matter as a rule how potent or impotent they are politically. And as a brief outline from recent history should help clarify this a bit, that is what we will do at this time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 21, 2005)]

The above text was the first public utterance we made on the principle of midterms in the second term of a presidency. Readers can review the entire thread to see the historical outline sketched which showed itself to apply again in this election year. The subject was revisited in the months prior to the election both in chat format as well as on this weblog. Here are the salient threads that can be recalled offhand -the first is a chat with Kevin Tierney which is reproduced in substantial integrity{2} at this time:

Kevin: the Machiavellian in me wants the dems to win the house so something like this can be put out and I'm at work, so I can't view it :)

me: well, if nothing else Conyers keeps me from having any of my blog postings be considered the "world's longest blog post" ;-)

Kevin: some of the charges there, let the dems go forward with that. It would give new definition to the concept of "hari-kari"

me: I predict Conyers and company may well use that report as their manifesto of sorts for this November and yes, it would turn off most people enough to marginalize the dems to make their takeover of the House go from possible/probable to snowballs-chance-in-hell ish

Kevin: their chances have declined incredibly from the beginning of the year when everyone was taking it as granted the dems were taking over both houses

me: agreed but I still think they are to be favoured

Kevin: I don't think either side is favored now it's 50-50 the dems have a chance in the senate, not the house I think

me: my reason is the "midterm of a two term president election cycle" pattern historically but the Senate will hold either way methinks the question mark is the House and that is key cause even if they take over and try impeachment schtick the Senate holding guarantees that there will be no removal of Bush prior to January 20, 2009

me: admittedly my Machiavellian side would get joy in seeing such hearings take place...cause it would make the Dems in 2008 less likely to win the presidency because we would see all the rabidness in full media view rather than somewhat sequestered as it is now and most people would be turned off by it to no small degree

Kevin: the only problem is astute democrat congressmen are few and far between

me: in short, we are in agreement here

Kevin: even Hillary Clinton is not that smart. One thing is for sure, she does not have her husband's charisma or the ability to bullshit

me: Lieberman is being challenged by the rabid moronic leftist fringe sorts in his re-election I hope Joe kicks the fringe candidate's keister soundly. I like him and wish there were more Dems like him [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa August 7, 2006)]

As readers can see, our hope for Leiberman panned. Readers can say that our comments on Conyers and the strategery we noted not being used means that we missed a prediction but at best it is a half-prediction and the germ of the point remains intact.{3} The present writer also made another reference to the historical pattern in the above thread. And from another chat file with Kevin, we noted these points including some predictions which remain to be fulfilled{4}:

me: well, that is what closed door sessions are for and a complicit media remember only with the 1994 congress did a lot of this stuff get televised prior to that, it was not on TV for viewing on CSpan or whatever and if the Dems win, they will probably make some excuse that the subjects to be treated on are "too delicate a matter to be publicly broadcast" or some other bullshit of that sort

me: if I sound downright nasty in my portrayal, it is because of experience in seeing them when they have a majority and how haughty they act. The Republicans act stupid a lot but the Democratic ancients are downright evil at times...not to mention vindictive...think of the way high school bullies and the "popular class" sorts acted for a good picture of the mentality

Kevin: their flanks have collapsed now, so my worries are less

me: my worries are less too...but a wounded animal is a fiercer fighter and there is enough anger out there at Bush

Kevin: the republicans don't have to win in November they just have to not lose

me: if they can convince enough fools to make the 2006 election a referendum on Bush, it may well work this time...things have changed since 2004...Bush has shown weakness in spots which is from our POV appalling...from their view, it is exploitable if they know what they are doing

Kevin: they won't be able to focus their message though since they call for a referendum on bush, but then state we achieve that by withdrawing from Iraq which nobody outside of the angry left blogosphere actually believes

me: put it this way...if I was the strategist for the Dems in 2006, I guarantee they would win the House cause I know where to hit Bush for maximum effect

someone on their side has to know too...the Q is if they will be listened to

which odds are is no

Kevin: let the dems charge the line, all anyone has to do is just hold the spears forward. Sure one horse breaks through, but they don't take the ground :)

me: lol nice analogy

me: I hope it is apropo...history is not on our side here though midterms of a two term president are rarely not a disaster for the incumbent party particularly if one party holds both houses and the presidency

Kevin: I do not believe history is a God who is infallible and to be worshipped. :) the tides of history are always shifting.

me: even the Republicans after the absolute ass kicking they got in 1932 and a further setback in 1934 and a 1936 electoral absolutely cleaned House literally in 1938 (about 75 House seats and 14 Senate seats were gained that year)

history is not to be worshipped nor is it infallible, but as Newman said it has lessons that we ignore to our own detriment...or as Santayana said "ignore history and you are doomed to repeat it" [Excerpt from a Chat With Kevin Tierney (circa September 6, 2006)]

Again, readers can notice your host's appeal to history on this matter as something to be taken seriously. However, the present writer would be dishonest if he did not admit that the tea leaves were reading differently to him in September as noted in the following blog posting of miscellaneous tidbits:

Some have opined that there will be a tidalwave of anti-Republican sentiment this November aimed as some kind of "referendum" on President Bush. Others have claimed the converse: that the Republicans will consolidate and maybe expand their holdings as the Democrats come apart at the seams. I have noted in the past on various occasions that a year is an eternity in politics. Keeping that factor in mind, it suffices to note that even two months is a long time -maybe an ice age or whatever. My gut intuition on these matters at the moment is the following:

---The Republicans will not lose the Senate. Period. They are vulnerable in the House this is true both by virtue of current circumstances as well as the traditional pattern of parties out of power gaining in the mid term elections of a two term presidency. But the Senate will hold -only 33 are up for re-election and the Democrats would have to hold serve on all their guys and pick up about ten seats or so in the Senate just to tie. (Remember, Cheney is the tiebreaker.) But ultimately I see the Republicans at the moment losing some seats in the House but holding serve. They may lose some in the Senate too but whatever happens, they will retain the Senate no matter what. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 14, 2006)]

While making note of the historical pattern and also that two months is a long time in politics; nonetheless, your host writing on the fly should have double checked the Senate numbers before posting some of what is in the above thread. For some reason, we were thinking it was ten to tie instead of six which may not sound like much of a difference but it is for reasons now to be explained in brief.

In an elected body where only one third are elected in a given cycle, basically assuming an even split roughly between the parties (which is something that is not necessarily a given), we were seeing approximately a third of the senators up for election (ten) being needed to close the senate gap rather than roughly a fifth (six). If we had taken a few minutes to double check the numbers above, the above statement would never have made about the Dems "not winning the Senate period" but instead we would have recognized that it was much more probable than we were presuming.{5}

Basically not much changed between what was noted on September 14, 2006 and what was posted on the weekend leading up to the election. Or to quote a post of miscellaneous tidbits on some subjects:

---As I have told not a few friends and associates in recent weeks, watch for this election cycle's "October Surprise." Well, it took 30 days but on 10/30 we got it in John Kerry's recent public snafu. After this one, I cannot see how the Democrats can win either house of Congress because (i) seven days before an election is too quick to be able to spin this one away and (ii) this will anger Independents like your weblog host as well as Republicans who may have been a bit lax viz. the upcoming election. Anyway, that is what our gut intuition is on the election at the present time. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 1, 2006)]

For the record, it is obvious that our intuition in the above paragraph was wrong. However, while the present writer did note more than once his intuition about the Republicans holding, he also noted a concern that they would not get the message if they did. Or to quote a post from the day of the election when it was too early to tell where the winds were blowing:

It needs to be made clear that any support for the Republicans is done grudgingly and not because people think they are that good a party because they are not...

[W]e must avoid being one-issue focused here. Granted national security is a huge issue and definitely must be at or near the top of the list of anyone who actually is concerned with the survival of not only themselves but also civilization. But we cannot let these guys off the hook in the myriad of areas where they are screwing up. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not being approved of in this election as much as their opponents are being rejected. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa November 7, 2006)]

Obviously our concern there ended up being not founded as the Republicans were rebuked on election day. And the reasons why they were rebuked are ones which your host outlined in advance. In other words, while we outlined what the Dems would need to do to win and also noted the historical trackrecord, we obviously underestimated the Dems being smart enough to know what they needed to do to win and to actually do it. We said they would need to nationalize the election around Bush and they did that. We also said that they would need to shut their traps and not tell people what they really planned to do{6} and they actually did that also. Give them credit for actually learning from past mistakes if nothing else. The question is, will the idiotic Republicans realize why they lost in the election or not. Alas, we cannot say there is much optimism here at Rerum Novarum that they will -at least not in the short term. Maybe it will take handing over the gavels in the chambers on January 20, 2007 for them to realize what happened and start the process of pondering why what happened actually happened.

How does your host feel about the election results??? He noted on the day after the election, that he was not that disturbed by what happened in the election -which is a surprise cause the converse was actually presumed to be how he would take it. And as time goes on, we find that appraisal not changing in the slightest. What happened to the Republicans and why did they lose -history's pattern working against them notwithstanding??? Well, the present writer summarized it in an email just the other day and will quote from it{7} at this time:

[T]he Republicans...saw their congressional power obliterated overnight because they were not true to conservative principles first and foremost.[...] They were in other words hypocrites for preaching about caring for the Constitution while they spent like drunken sailors in the most foul and unconstitutional fashion ala the Democrats in the old days. They also gave every impression of trying to do just enough to placate the base and get re-elected. Frankly, I can respect the people for throwing the Republicans out because if they are going to govern like Democrats, why go with a pale impressionist of the real thing when you can have the real thing...[Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 14, 2006)]

There is also the fact that no conservatives lost their seats and if anything, conservatives were either re-elected amongst the Republicans or elected amongst the Democrats. The reason the Dems will have majorities in both houses is because of southern conservative Democrats being elected. This makes the majority the Democrats will have a very fragile one -particularly in the Senate- and if the more rabid Democrat sorts do not show that they can work and play well with others{8}, then they will fail to govern effectively and will be thrown out in 2008.

To wrap up this thread, while more could be noted than just what is in the above snippet and followup paragraph, that will nonetheless have to suffice for now -though your host will probably revisit this subject after the new congress convenes in January of 2007. In summary: conservatism did not lose in 2006 while party loyalty at all cost amongst the Republicans did. Thank God the present writer is an Independent voter of ten years standing is all he will say about that at the present time.

Notes:

{1} Here are the analyses blogged on the elections that have taken place since this weblog debuted:

A Rerum Novarum Post-Election Commentary, Development of Some Key November 2002 Post-Election Observations, Etc. (circa November 24, 2004)

Analysis of the Overall Election Trends (circa November 6, 2002)

{2} The only changes made were some spelling glitches, removing the time stamps to give the thread a better cohesion, and imbedding any url links from the chat log. All of these were done for easier reading of the material.

{3} For while the Democrat leadership did not act as we said they may well act, at the same time (i) if they had acted that way or essentially been honest with the electorate, they would have lost soundly and (ii) their silence in the final weeks from public interaction shows that they knew well that to speak their minds would have meant defeat.

{4} For the record, your host hopes to be disproven on the predictions of upcoming Democrat party media censorship of congressional proceedings.

{5} Gut intuitions do not constitute "predictions" properly-speaking but we note it here nonetheless in the interest of disclosure.

{6} We may post that email in its entirety and not revealing the identity of the person it was sent it to; however, because of the contents of said email and what it says about certain persons and institutions, we want to mull over that for a while longer before deciding one way or the other on what to do with it.

{7} Or in other words, be profoundly disingenuous to the voting public.

{8} Your host predicts that to some extent they will not be as rabid as they may want to for one reason: it would sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations in 2008. You gotta know that Bill Clinton will have a talk with the party leadership about that before they are sworn in on January 20, 2007 --if he has not done so already-- and tell this crowd to not impair Hillary's chances by acting out their extremist tendencies on several polarizing issues. (We may discuss some of them later including a couple predictions made in private on this crowd that may shock the readers of this humble weblog.)

On an Upcoming Weblog Update, Etc.

I am working bit by bit on a weblog update which will cover materials blogged since the last update (August 16, 2006). It will probably incorporate some old threads from the archives and also remand some other threads to the archivesbut the main focus will be on the stuff since the last update. As some threads will be removed from the side margin in this update, it seems appropriate to explain what my criteria is for such a selection -as I have been asked before why some threads are included and others are not.

Of course some threads are simply better than other ones subject-wise, argumentation-wise{1}, and the like. Other times, I look back and wish I had handled a subject better and decide for that reason to remand existing side margin threads or not include a particular thread in the update sequence. But this is not an exact science by any means.

Remanding threads to the archives does not necessarily mean that I disapprove of them. Sometimes it happens that certain threads are no longer as relevent to particular circumstances to remain in the side margin when there are space limits to consider and other threads of greater prevalance to take their place. Another way of saying it is this: nothing gets deleted here at Rerum Novarum but sometimes certain threads are not as relevant so they are removed from the side margin but are still accessible in the archives.{2}

Anyway, I should have the weblog updated by December 1st. That is the time frame I am shooting for time-willing.

Notes:

{1} Unfortunately, shorter threads are usually not my best though over time I have been improving in this area.

{2} Sometimes on those rare occasions where I actually change my mind on a person or issue, I will update the thread to note this if I remember the existence of said thread. (Not easy to do with so many blog entries.) The same is the case with threads directed at arguments made by individuals.

I should have the election synopsis thread done in about an hour. If that is achieved, then it will be the last thread posted until the weekend -I would have said last thread posted until Monday but I want to possibly remember an old friend before ceasing posting before that time. It depends on how much spacing I can get in essentially but if it is not possible than I will remember my old friend sometime next week.

"None Dare Call It A Zionist Conspiracy" Dept.
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)

With that title, we have a resumption of a thread started here and a followup note from someone accusing me of "zionist complicity: or whatever. I will let them explain it in their own words so here goes...

Mr. McElhinney,

One could only wish that you were as concerned about the heinous Zionist influence in the Catholic apologetics community and Church in general as you are about the spelling of your name! But I will at least give you credit for putting up my letter. I did not think you had the guts to do it. Maybe you are not completely brainwashed, a mind-numbed robot working for the Zionists in their filthy drive to rebuild the insane profanity known as the "Jewish Temple". We shall see.

But rest assured, Mr. McElhinney, I have the proof and you and everyone in the apologetics world is going to be rocked by the proof I will provide. It will be iron-clad and only those living in the Zionist fool's paradise will be able to ignore it. It will be completed soon and only then will the world see whether you are a buffoon and coward. Will you have the guts to print it, Mr. McElhinney? Will you have the fortitude to be Catholic?

These are the questions to be answered.

Henrik Hassen

In short, no proof yet from "Mr. Hassen" so we must wait a bit longer it seems. I wonder if Mr. Hassen realizes that the whole idea of "cliffhangers" be it in books, television shows, or whatever is an invention of the Zionists to distract people from reality and fixate their attention on unimportant minutiae while the cabal of semitic globalists move their agenda for world domination along outside of the public eye. Or perhaps he has not gotten that far along in the "conspiracy theorist manual"??? ;-) We shall see I suppose...

To be Continued...

Note of an Upcoming Weblog Posting:

As it sits at the present time, the previously mentioned election review and analysis is on pace to be published on November 22nd of this month. Whether that timeframe is achieved or not depends on finding the time to finish and format it but that is where we are at with it at the present time.

The Rerum Novarum Miscellaneous BLOG has been updated!!!

The new entry is a definition for the word "torture" since thus far no one I am aware of has shown an interest in doing that.

"None Dare Call It A Zionist Conspiracy" Dept.
(With no apologies to Gary Allen)

The emailers words will be in dark red font.

Mr. McIlhenny,

I am aware that you and others like you are either in a deep state of denial about the Jewish conspiracies that abound world-wide or you are yourselves directly cooperating in them.

Now, before you cut me off as a lunatic, I insist that you hear me out. I have proof that Jews are basically into EVERYTHING and that you and your friends are all pawns and dupes (at best). There are even some among you who are masquerading as gentiles, while I have come into the possession of irrefutable evidence that some are Jews. One of your colleagues even has ties to the Israeli Mossad.

I am dead serious, Mr. McIlhenny and I will be coming forth with the evidence shortly. I must insist that you publish it, unless your pro-Jew, pro-Zionist sycophancy will not allow it.

We will all see, Mr. McIlhenny and the world will know whether you tried to cover this up or not.

Sincerely,

Henrik Hassen

Why do people continue to think I am related to the Avery Island crowd of tabasco makers??? Look, it is not as if my name is absent this site or any other that I run so at the very least, my name should be spelled correctly. That minor issue aside, I am left wondering where people presume somehow that I am so "pro-Zionist" but I will get to that in a moment too.

My remarkable consistency over the years{1} includes a constant trackrecord of expecting at a minimum that those who either disagree with me or who kvetch about some issue over and over again that they (i) be reasonably civil and not not act like a pompous asshole, (ii) define their terms, (iii) make viable arguments, and (iv) document their sources. I have little patience with those who cannot meet this minimal threshold by my own admission.{2} But I am accustomed to being called a panopoly of names from "modernist" to "liberal" to "fascist" to "neo-con" to "Bush sycophant"{3} to "Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde", to "Satan's bedfellow", etc over the years. This is done (of course) by a consortium of carping cowards who demonstrate in their own words that they are intellectually dependent sorts who cannot meet the minimal requirements for a proper dialogue grounded in logic and reason as I noted above.

Now certainly, I have had no problems dispatching with such people's pitiful excuses for "arguments" with the only challenge being finding the time to do such things amidst my constantly-insufficient extra time for these matters. So in that respect, I see little different from this letter except the person involved actually claims they have "irrefutable proof" of their position. So for that reason (and despite no small degree of profound misgivings I have about what I am about to do), I will play along here and see what this Henrik Hassen fellow has to offer in the weeks ahead (if anything).

To be Continued...

Notes:

{1} Modesty aside for a moment.

{2} It reminds me of those who think I am some kiss up to the Bush Administration when I mention an area or three where I agree with them at least to a macro extent. For every agreement I can think of with the Bush Administration, there is a disagreement if not two and I have not been shy in pointing many of them out over the years here at Rerum Novarum. Of course to actually have the integrity to admit to this is something that the contingent of carping cowards and intellectually dependent sorts cannot do lest they admit that they are lying like a carpet about what they say about me. But that is neither here nor there.

{3} And (of course) those who make arguments will have what they offer scrutinized and those who provide documentation of positions they take can expect to have their sources fact-checked. If the work is shoddy, I will not mince words or irenic tonalities saying so -particularly if it is someone whom I know can probably do a better job.

On the Blues and Painting a Lyrical Picture of Reality:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

When listening to the blues Monday night on the car radio while enjoying a very fine Don Tomas Maduro, I decided on a whim to call a good friend of mine{1} whom I had not spoken to in a couple of months. As it was, he happened to be listening to the blues also at that exact same time. (What are the odds of that???) We discussed a number of subjects as we always do including on this occasion the subjects of honesty and integrity and how we both find these things in such short supply today by many persons whom would give the appearance of being pious or otherwise honourable. "Is it a coincidence" my friend asked "that the one sin that Jesus was most angry about was the sin of hypocrisy???" Frankly, I think not and after our conversation, I resumed listening to the blues CD I was listening to and a song came up which reminded me of what my friend and I were discussing. Here are the lyrics as composed by Don Nix and sung by Albert King circa 1970:

Ev'rybody wants to laugh
Ah, but nobody wants to cry
I say ev'rybody wants to laugh
But nobody wants to cry
Ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die

Ev'rybody wanna hear the truth
But yet, ev'rybody wants to tell a lie
I say ev'rybody wants to hear the truth
But still they all wanna tell a lie
Oh ev'rybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to die

Ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Without even askin' why
Oh, ev'rybody wanna know the reason
Oh, without even askin' why
You know ev'rybody wanna go to heaven
But nobody wants to die

What more really needs to be said{2} than that???

Notes:

{1} I refer here to my good friend Albert Cipriani -someone with whom I have a long history of passionate disagreements with but who never (despite those disagreements) has sought to go the route of showing disrespect for reason and logic. Nor was he at any time a public hypocrite. Insofar as sin makes everyone a hypocrite at least privately, I will not go there. However, there is the integrity required to admit to mistakes and do so to the extent they have been made -a point I have discussed more than once on this weblog over the years including here. Where it counts, Albert has always stood on principles and I have always appreciated that. Would that more friends (past and present) would have acted in like manner but I digress.

{2} Basically, that gets to the crux of it really: people want things they are not willing to do what is needed to get. They want to laugh but do not want to cry as if you can have one without the other. They want to hear the truth but they want to (and do) tell lies. And when it comes to things that happen, they want to know the reasons without asking why things happen as they do.

On Torture, the Limitations of Dignitatis Humanae, Logic, Etc.:
(A Response to Dr. Michael Liccione)

[Update: I added a footnote to the text below after receiving an email responding to this thread which clarified a point I made in the text by providing additional support. -ISM 11/15/06 12:30pm]

It should be noted in advance that I was unaware of the academic credentials that Dr. Michael Liccione possesses; ergo my more personal references to him in the previous off-the-cuff posting.{1} I will therefore refer to him in a formal fashion in this note as befits someone with his manifested educational background{2 } and because we are not well acquainted (yet). His words will be in dark green font and any citations from my previous posting made by him in his recent response will be in blue font.

Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum ('SM' for short), a Catholic apologist well-known in the blogosphere, has undertaken to rebut my treatment of the Church's development of doctrine on the question of punishing heretics.

I am a person who writes on a variety of subjects which are of interest to me at a given point in time who happens to be Catholic, not a Catholic apologist Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, I will presume in light of our general unfamiliarity with one another that this is not intended as a slight on your part. I make this clarification because I have no small degree of annoyance at the garbage that so often passes for "Catholic apologetics"{3} and as a result I do not want to be affiliated with them in the slightest -at least not directly.{4} But enough on that for now.

Be it noted that the point of my post was to argue that the Church's development of doctrine on this question does not constitute any negation of doctrine that had been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium. I'm sure SM agrees with that point, but he doesn't like what he takes to be my argument.

That can be noted but I disagree that there has actually been an authentic development of doctrine on this issue. That is where we part company Dr. Liccione. I explained this in the first of my public postings on torture and general norms and you may not have seen that thread. However, if you give it a review, you will understand with far greater accuracy what my actual position on these matters is.

Readers should also note that, on the nest of moral topics associated with that of the punishment of heretics, SM has disagreed with Mark Shea, who as far as I can tell agrees with me that the Church has come to recognize as intrisincally evil certain acts which many bishops and popes once thought fit punishment for heretics in a Catholic state.

Actually, that is not primarily what my disagreement with Mark Shea is Dr. Liccione. I disagree with the entire pattern of disgraceful antics Mark has involved himself in pertaining to the subject of torture in general for several reasons I have not viewed as appropriate to note publicly prior to this time. If he had conducted himself as gracefully as Dr. Scott Carson has or even as you have, things would be different. But that has not been the case at all and Mark has displayed some of the same noxious traits that are common to many who call themselves "Catholic apologists" and that is hardly the worst of it by any stretch of the tape.{5}

I make my rebuttal of McElhinney herein.

Ok.

As usually happens when debating this issue, many others get conflated with it.

Agreed.

One is whether any sort of act that can reasonably be classifed as torture is intrinsically evil as opposed to being merely evil in most circumstances. Since the term 'torture' does not have a definition that's both consensual and decisive for the purpose, the question cannot be answered to everybody's satisfaction.

I agree and that is why I have noted the necessity of those who bandy about this term to define how they are applying it. I reviewed your site a bit before writing this response and it seems you have taught logic in academia. For that reason (and kudos to you for doing that btw) you should be among the first to agree with me that this whole issue being discussed in the absence of definitions is a problem. Furthermore, people like Mark Shea have been completely disingenuous in refusing to define their terms from the get-go.

It does not matter if you agree with me or not on the crux of this issue per se Dr. Liccione though I have explained my position more than adequately enough and been careful to explain how I apply the terms I use and the approach I have taken on this matter. I would though expect us to agree that discussions where terms are not explained as to how they are to be understood go nowhere and the deliberate refusal to explain terms is disingenuous and to be discouraged to no small degree. Far from merely refusing to define his terms, Mark has actually ridiculed those who have made this request publicly as if they are somehow asking for something indecent. While on the one hand, he has pointed to the definitions of others he has not bothered to explain how he understands this term. This is easy to demonstrate{6} and frankly is not even debatable.

But McElhinney isn't even totally forthcoming about his own, tentative answer; by his own account (see below), it seems he wishes to avoid giving scandal. That's a red flag in itself. Perhaps the brouhaha at Shea's blog has made him unwilling to be totally frank.

I have no problem at all with being frank, indeed I am usually criticized for refusing to play "see no evil, hear no evil" when it comes to the crap paraded about by catholic pundits, agenda provocateurs and apologists. The problem is opening up a plethora of subjects I do not want to talk about at this time.

At any rate, if I went on as SM does, I wouldn't be totally frank either.

We shall see...

Candor would not be politic even in ecclesiastical terms.

Other forms of misunderstaning appear in SM's critique of me, so let's get to it.

He claims that Dignitatis Humanae "does not contradict the injunctions of Lateran IV viz. persecuting heretics however it may appear," and cites his reply to Brian Tierney for his argument on that point. Having examined that reply, as well as SM's reply to Scott Carson, I find the nub of the issue in the interpretation of this passage from DH §2:

This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others within due limits.

The question, specifically, is what the phrase "within due limits" modifies. I've always taken it to be modifying the immediately preceding phrase "in association with others...."

This interpretation appears problematical for reasons of the syntax of the paragraph. First of all, one wants to avoid being too repetitive with words beyond what is necessary. The essential statement is as follows:

--The Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom and to be immune from coercion on the part of any individual, social group, or human power insofar as that they will not be forced to act in a manner contrary to their own beliefs within due limits.

To boil down the entire declaration to a single sentence, that would be it. Obviously, a single sentence is not enough to understand the teaching adequately because many of the words in that statement are not explained as to what is meant by them. But for the sake of this posting, it will have to do except that there are four factors which qualify the preciseness of this requirement. Dr. Liccione is only focusing on one of them rather than all four for whatever reason.

I would assert that it is far more probable to look at it as a modifying factor of everything subsequent to the declaration itself about immunity from coercion rather than just a modifying factor "in association with others" as Dr. Liccione has asserted. Instead, it would seem to denote four specific areas which one is not forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs and those areas are (i) whether privately (ii) [whether] publicly (iii) whether alone or (iv) [whether] in association with others The clarifying within due limits applies to all four of these areas. The due limits are spelled out later in the declaration when defining the meaning of the concept of "public order" in conjunction with the traditional criteria of "the common good." To go over all of this with the detail it deserves would detract from my intentions here so that is all I will say on it at the present time except to direct readers back to my original detailed exposition on torture and general norms circa early October of 2006.

Such due limits might mean, for example, the forbidding of certain cult practices, especially those involving minors, or open attacks on public morality, such as what one sees at "gay-pride" parades.

I concur with this assessment.

(Of course even the latter wouldn't comport with the First Amendment as currently understood in American jurisprudence, but that is secondary; the focus here is meaning of the teaching of the Church.)

To go over the problems with activist judges is beyond the scope of this post; however, it can be more than adequately defended a hypothesis that the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to allow for the defense of societal order. But that is a subject for another time perhaps.

I limit the scope of 'within due limits' as I do because, if one takes it to be modifying the whole previous part of the sentence, then it can be so interpreted that the alleged "right to religious freedom" would be no different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics.

People can place a lot of interpretations on a text absent context Dr. Liccione. I do not see how one can get around applying to the whole previous part of the sentence without their position being one of arrested development both logically as well as syntaxually.{7} You assert that you think this can be interpreted as any different in principle from a right extended only to Catholics but that would be to pay no heed whatsoever to the declaration's own explanation of what "due limits" is. If the latter is taken into account, it is evident that the right to civil religious liberty is not one extended only to Catholics. I have discussed this before and do not want to revisit it again at this time except in a footnote{8} perhaps.

That indeed is pretty much how it was understood in the Middle Ages.

This is true.

Some trads would have no problem with that, to be sure;

Which is unfortunate but again, true.

but if that's how DH is to be construed, it's not easy to explain how its teaching constitutes a substantive development of doctrine as distinct from a mere rhetorical game. It's more natural, as well as more common, to explain the passage in question as forbidding some forms of coercion not only practiced but mandated in the medieval Church.

I am not necessarily in disagreement with you on this in principle Dr. Liccione, only in how you appear to go about explaining it. Your approach seems to dismiss a lot of history wholesale in order to get to your position whereas my approach does nothing of the sort.

Now I claimed that the older teaching rejected by DH can be conveniently formulated thus:

(HP) Heretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good.

Yes you did.

SM criticizes that formulation as follows:

The problem with the way the statement is phrased is that it involves a normative or subjective element into the equation. It involves a value judgment in other words as to what should or should not be done. The only concern we need in the current context is not whether someone should be punished with torture or death under certain circumstances but only if they could. The latter is a non-normative or objective question in the sense that we are only interested in what can be done in these situations.

I'm afraid that illustrates the sort of confusion generated by assuming too sharp a distinction between value and fact. In the objective, factual, sense, of course heretics can be punished in any manner lying within the genius of the torturers.

That was not the point I was making Dr. Liccione. If torture in all formulations is ipso facto "intrinsically evil" than it cannot be used in any form period. My point in making the distinction is in asking if torture in some form or another --and again the lack of defining this term by those who kvetch on this matter publicly is no small annoyance-- is permissible.

But the question is not whether they can be so punished, but whether there are circumstances under which they should be. That's the question to which HP, or a proposition relevantly similar to it, is an answer. The phrasing of HP reminds us that making moral judgments typically involves the exercise of prudence and that this case is no exception.

I agree with your analysis in the paragraph above.

One might snippily dismiss the judgments HP calls for as "subjective," but that hardly makes them irrelevant. In general, the relevant question is how such judgments ought to be made; in the particular case, the question is what sort of punishment of heretics, if any, is necessary to serve the common good. One doesn't make that question go away by dismissing in advance any answer as 'subjective'.

I would suggest you familiarize yourself with what I wrote on these matters before presuming that I have snippily dismiss[ed] anything.

I had written:

Between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, most popes and prelates believed HP. Even St. Thomas Aquinas believed it. But the Church's development of doctrine has it that the torture and execution of people for their religious beliefs is a violation of their consciences, which is intrinsically evil inasmuch as it violates one of the most basic of human rights.

SM doesn't like that one bit. He replies:

Notice the bait and switch: Michael goes from "[h]eretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good" to claiming that they are not to be punished in that way whatsoever for their religious beliefs and what exercising those beliefs may or may not involve. This may appear to be not what I assert but consider for a moment the relevant factors involved in a nutshell:

---In a society where church and state are closely intertwined, heretics who were zealous in propagating errors which were seen rightfully so as undermining the common good of society were not tolerated. That does not apply in a society as we have seen construed in recent centuries but it also overlooks a key factor: the necessity of the common good factor. If the heretics so called are seeking militarily to infringe upon the rights of others and threatening their survival unless said persons or nations bow to coercion and accept the aggressor's religious beliefs, then such "persons and societies" (cf. DH §1) can under the rubric of self-defense of persons and society be tortured or executed within certain parameters.[...] It depends of course on how "torture" is defined.

Apparently, the subject of the question needs to be reiterated. The question is not about whether heretics seeking to use force on others should be physically resisted and punished. As far as I know, that is not in dispute.

Wanna bet??? Read what the apologists for Al Queda are saying publicly Dr. Liccione. What angers me so much on this subject is that they are doing just that under the cover of being "faithful Catholics" when indeed they are mouthpieces for sedition. If Dignitatis Humanae is considered in its logical import and in the light of tradition, it is not possible to accuse the Church of undermining the common good of society or just public order. But by the interpretation of people such as Mark Shea, that is not the case.

The question is whether heretics should be punished just for publicly propounding heresy, not just for actions which would count as crimes even if heresy were not at issue. I clarify the question in that way because that's precisely what's at issue in the DH passage quoted above. And I've already indicated what the natural interpretation of DH's statement would be, when taken as an answer to the question properly understood.

We are not addressing the same thing then Dr. Liccione.

Thus, I had claimed that, given the teaching of DH, "...it is never necessary to serve the common good by doing such an evil that good may come," where by 'such an evil' I meant torturing and/or execting heretics for publicly propagating heresy. What seems to have set off SM is that I was not crystal clear about the distinction between imposing heresy and merely propagating it.

No, that is not what angers me Dr. Liccione. I made the mistake of drawing you into the orbit of Mark Shea and Professor Kevin Miller and what are obvious flaws in their understanding of general norms of theological interpretation. That is not to say that your approach is free from potential problems of course but to get a better gauge of that would require a closer examination of your position than I have taken.

Thus SM replies:

Again, torture is not necessarily an intrinsic evil any more than the death penalty is. That does not mean that both torture and the death penalty are unable to be conducted in ways which are inhumane and objectively evil of course. But it does mean that not all means of coersing others or of executing them are intrinsically evil. The Pandora's Box that such a notion opens up is far wider than I originally asserted and I am frankly not sure I want to delve into it in the public medium at this time lest it scandalize some of my readers of a religious nature and start more fires than I care to deal with (metaphorically speaking).

Oy vay: doesn't want to light fires he can't put out!

Frankly Dr. Liccione, it is not that I cannot put them out, only that I do not think the time required to do so would be time well spent. Should I have the time to deal with them later on (and feel the inclination to), then it may be different.

OK, but SM doesn't have to do that in order to address my point, which he fails to do. I did not claim that "all means of coercing others or executing them" are "intrinsically evil."

Then we are not in disagreement it seems.

If SM wishes to define 'torture' simply as 'means of coercing', that is his affair; but he's going to be talking to himself, since nobody condemns all means of coercing others as intrinsically evil.

Apparently you have not been watching some of those who have made the "torture is intrinsically evil" argument very carefully Dr. Liccione because in the absence of those persons explaining what they mean by the word "torture", they by logical extension are saying just that. How else do you explain that they whine and kvetch about every kind of attempted coercion on the part of the US Government in trying to get information from Al Queda operatives as "torture" either explicitly or by logical inference in other things that they have said??? And then when this is pointed out to them, they lack the basic integrity to admit to what they are doing!!! Nonetheless, it is far more evident in what you wrote in your rebuttal that you have not done this and I apologize for presuming in my off-the-cuff email response to what you wrote{9} that you had.

What DH condemns, and I condemn, is forcing others to act against their conscience; yet in certain instances centuries ago, the Church enjoined the civil arm to do just that. Whether the means of doing so should be classified as 'torture' according to somebody-or-other's definition of torture is sometimes an interesting question; but I take it we all recognize the rack and the stake as forms of torture that were used to do to heretics just the sort of thing that DH implies may not be done.

I agree with this Dr. Liccione.

I also claimed that DH does not negate any teaching infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium—a claim with which SM would surely agree. His objection is to how I reach that conclusion, not to the conclusion itself.

Yes and also because I saw in what you were writing an excuse to condone an undermining of national security. But that was because I was so livid over this whole subject that I presumed that you were on the side of those persons due to similarities in position at some points. However, similarly of position does not necessarily mean identical positions as I have often said; fidelity to principles requires me to acknowledge when I fall short of them as I did in this case.

Now I had said:

But since HP itself is a material conditional, the falsity of its antecedent makes it trivially true

and

So even if HP does meet the criteria for having been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium, it is trivially true.

That gets SM rather hot under the collar:

The crux of the issue is being avoided with the above statement so I will highlight it in bold font: Defending persons and society from the menace of heretics out to either undermine the common good of society or who seek to coerce people under threat of physical mutilation or death to violate their consciences and accept alien systems of thought is not "trivially true" no matter how you stretch the tape!!!

SM seems to think I consider this topic unimportant. Quite the contrary, of course, else I wouldn't have written more than one lengthy post about it.

We are obviously not too familiar with one another's work on some of these subjects Dr. Liccione.

It is evident that SM has completely misunderstood my use of the logician's term of art 'trivially true.' In logic, statements of the form 'P if Q' or 'If Q then P' are called "material conditionals." The truth-conditions on statements of that form are such that if the 'if-clause'—i.e., the antecedent—is false, then the whole statement is true regardless of whether the 'then-clause', the consequent, is true or false. That's why material conditionals whose antecedents are false are only "trivially" true. They are "if-then" statements but the condition, the state of affairs described by the 'if-clause', doesn't obtain; so it doesn't matter whether the consequent is true or not; the whole statement is true, but only "trivially" so in virtue of the antecedent's falsity.

As I noted above, I was seeing red when I wrote my original response for reasons which I hopefully have noted adequately above. As for the argument you make above about logic, you appear to be saying that the statement "P if Q" as the proposition depends on the truth of falsity of Q. For that reason, the falsity of Q would mean the falsity of P and therefore if Q as a variable changes, than its relation to P changes also. Am I understanding you correctly on this???{10}

From the standpoint of development of doctrine, then, it doesn't matter that HP is true; it's only trivially true. The doctrine developed in DH only goes to show what makes its antecedent false. And what makes it false is that, be they called "torture" or something else, attempts to force people to violate their consciences are intrinsically evil.

Unless (as I noted above) what is involved is a violation of the common good of society. This was the rationale used in the Middle Ages. What differs in the modern context is that ascertaining what is and is not "the common good" is a normative issue fundamentally. For that reason, logically an objective criteria is needed to help interpret "the common good" in a non-normative framework. DH does this by defining a new term for the Catholic lexicon "public order." To ascertain that something most not undermine "the common good" and recognize that how the latter is objectively verified is to consider how it relates to the "public order" of society. The latter provides an objective verifier to an equation that previously only had a subjective element to it. I have explained this before on numerous occasions{11} and presume that you are getting at essentially what I noted above.

SM complains about anti-Catholic apologists not wanting to do the work necessary to understand in context the magisterial statements they criticize.

Correct.

He would do well to try to understand his Catholic opponents better than his Protestant opponents understand Catholicism.

This is a sword that cuts both ways Dr. Liccione. Nonetheless, for my part in the misunderstanding, I apologize to you.

Notes:

{1} A similar thing happened in an earlier response to Dr. Scott Carson. As for this post, it is a revised version of an email I sent to someone who brought Dr. Liccoine's thread to my attention.

{2} [A] valid PhD does not grant them immunity from making crappy arguments. For that reason, focus on their arguments not their presumed "credentials" or lack thereof.

The truth is, one can be logical without being learned. My father did not have a high school diploma, could not read well due to poor vision, etc., but he hardly was incapable of making logical arguments. The two do not have an intrinsic connection insofar as they must be present at the same time. Obviously knowledge can assist someone in making an argument but the tools for making a proper argument are not (and never have been) a special preserve of the educated.

Indeed, the moment it is conceded (even tacitly) that one has to be learned to be logical is the moment that academic elitists can impose an intellectual tyranny onto the rest of humanity. The truth is, intellectuals are often quite stupid and can make stupid arguments. Likewise, recognized "experts" in a particular area of study also can make poor arguments or misjudge matters. This is why what must be assessed is the validity (or lack thereof) of a theory or thesis they seek to advance, not the status of the person involved. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa February 11, 2006)]

The above text is referenced to remind readers of an important principle not often recognized, not as any kind of commentary on Dr. Liccione's writings.

{3} I find the lack of charity and tact on the part of many who call themselves "apologists" to be disgraceful. However, that is not all as there is also (i) the tendency towards manufacturing conflict that those of that mentality so often display, (ii) their narrowminded dogmatism of their own opinions as somehow of requiring assent, (iii) the general shoddiness of their arguments on a whole panopoly of issues. I have have become convinced over time that the latter is due to the incapability of many of them to exercise the faculties of reason and logic and (in several cases) a kind of intellectual dependence.

There is also the issue of how disgracefully the Catholic apologetics establishment has refused to take seriously the problems that exist in this area and prefer to play "see no evil, hear no evil, smell no evil" and that as much as anything is why I want no affiliation whatsoever with them. (If said establishment powers show a reasonable degree of concern at cleaning up the Augean stables of Catholic apologetics, I will reconsider my position on apologetics methodology in general but not until then.)

{4} Before this comes across as sounding contradictory, I should note that just because I do not want to be confused as a Catholic apologist does not mean that there are not others who have an interest both in that affiliation and in cultivating their capabilities in this area. For that reason -and because I tire of those who only criticize and do not offer functional solutions to problems- I do have an interest in (and to a certain extent am involved in) fostering the development of people who want to do apologetics and how to do it properly.

{5} One of the reasons my tonality in the response to your stuff was less than amicable is that I sense there are certain aspects of this that you are not paying sufficient attention to Dr. Liccione. I have written on the subject of the fundamental rights of man often at this weblog --most recently touched on a bit in this post series-- and one of those fundamental rights is the right to life. Under the heading of the right to life is the right to survival and I see the shameful antics of Mark Shea as contributing to the aid and comfort of those in the war on terror who want to see us converted or killed. I see your arguments as doing the same in the absence of defining one's terms and if there is one thing I will not do it is stand by quietly and let any apologist, philosopher, politician, or pope endanger my right and the right of my loved ones to personal security and survival. Period.

{6} A reader responded to the original posting with this observation which clarifies the point I made a bit:

Mark has refused to define the term "torture" himself; however, in fairness he did refer to three definitions a number of times: the dictionary, "Check the regulations for treatment of prisoners that have been used by the military and police for the past 50 years," and the Interrogator's Golden Rule ("If you'd call it "torture" if it were done to you or a friend, then it's torture"). Each are laughable in their fuzziness. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa November 15, 2006)]

In other words, he is playing a disingenuous semantics game here and refusing to undertake the bare minimum requirements of an authentic dialogue on these issues.

{7} I think I just invented a word there ;-)

{8} A Few Notes On Dignitatis Humanae (circa July 18, 2003)

Some More Notes on Dignitatis Humanae (circa December 16, 2004)

Particularly applicable to this discussion is what is noted in the posting from 2004.

{9} The post material was a slightly expanded version of an email circulated to an inquirer.

{10} I believe I am familiar with the argument you make -having used variations of it myself over the years- but not as much with the technical terms to explain it.

{11} See footnote eight.

It seems appropriate to find a bit of humour in this election season so here is a bit from one of my alltime favourite shows The Black Adder from the show's third season:

Black Adder: Dish and Dishonesty Part I

Those who are fans of House will recognize the actor who plays the Prince of Wales in the above episode.

I am compiling some stuff for an election analysis which will be posted later this week. It will vindicate a bunch of things I said all along and also admit to one point where I will have to eat some crow...gotta make sure I have a full salt shaker handy for that one. But briefly, this result does not anger or depress me in the slightest. As for why that is, there are a few reasons and I will explain them in the upcoming election analysis thread when it is posted.

Points to Ponder:
(On Fatigue)

Fatigue is an efficacious obstruction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity focuses us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. There may be layer and layer of this experience...[a] third and fourth wind may supervene. [William James]

As your host has already voted, it seems appropriate to note that the media attempts to portray this as a "blue wave"{1} may be premature. These threads from card carrying liberal Democrats are worth considering before you go vote:

Thank God I Voted First (Michael Kinsley)

A small taste to whet the appetite:

Older readers may recognise this formula. It's Vietnamisation - the Nixon-Kissinger plan for extracting us from a mistake.


The Only Issue This Election Day (Orson Scott Card)

Again, a small sampling:

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

Again, if you are thinking about giving the Democrats a shot at congressional power, kindly consider the above threads before you do it.

Note:

{1} How on earth the socialist so-called "progressivists" got their opponents tagged with the colour red rather than themselves is something I would be interested in finding out about.

On the Election and the Attitudes of Self-Identified Conservatives:
(From the Mailbag)

This is an email response to the link posted to this thread. My interlocuter's words will be in shale font.

Frankly, I would like to know what conservatives should expect. I seriously believe that one of the problems social conservatives face is that they've become too much like social liberals: They expect politics and government to become the first option and last resort for political change.

That sounds contradictory. Are you saying that the conservatives are approaching this from contrary premises??? That is certainly an interesting hypothesis and one I cannot say in my experience is argumentationally problematical.{1}

Of course, political activism is important but it's not the be-all and end-all of social activism.

Political vigilance is important of that there is no doubt. Perhaps part of the reason for the political activism approach being predominent by certain sorts often labeled "neo-conservatives"{2} is because some of them changed their geopolitical weltanschauung but did not alter their foundational presuppositions in the process. It is akin to how many former fundamentalists who become atheists act the same way as fundamentalists in how they approach scholarship, textual interpretation, and the like.{3}

Cal Thomas made some very salient points about religious conservatives' activism several years ago, saying not to expect too much from the political system and to avoid being conformed to its image. Well, I guess Thomas isn't as popular as James Dobson is in such circles.

Perhaps so but at the same time, there is always a temptation to political apathy. I will take someone who is active even if for the wrong causes than one who is politically apathetic any day of the week and twice on Sunday. The reason for this lies in the laws of motion and the greater ease of reversing an object in motion than to start a motionless object moving. Or as this writer has noted previously:

I remind you of the theories of motion as discovered by Sir Isaac Newton. If an object in motion will remain in motion, then attempts to stop that object will not succeed without a greater or equal force being involved. In light of the manner whereby intensity and duration are inversely proportioned, an intense reaction cannot sustain itself for very long in opposing an object in motion...

What must be attempted is to reverse the direction of the moving object but the approach taken has to be one focused on success over the long term. For that reason, the intensity behind such an approach has to be by logical necessity of lessor import if there is to be a conceivable reversal of trends that will be more than illusory. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa August 11, 2004)]

This is why your host does not go all out with intense political focus all the time: it is physiologically not possible to operate at high intensity for duration; ergo the best way to approach geopolitical stuff is with short bursts of intensity in brief periods with a degree of infrequency. Other than that, focusing elsewhere or addressing these issues with greater frequency but much less duration is the approach to be taken. Notice I am not saying do nothing, only that it is imperative to avoid burnout physiologically to recognize that intensity and duration are two sides of the same coin and cannot be realized at one and the same time.{4}

I'm quite disturbed by the caterwalling about the Republican Party from various people (including and especially Rod Dreher, a man whom I respect enormously for his courage in covering the clerical sex-abuse crisis). It is as if people are imitating the propaganda disseminated by the media and their acting-like-a-decapitated-chicken act.

Well, we do not have very good options right now. It needs to be made clear that any support for the Republicans is done grudgingly and not because people think they are that good a party because they are not.

I don't suggest that the GOP is The Best Of All Possible Parties; no political party is, really. But I'm sick and tired of all these decapitated chickens acting without any foresight or long-range vision, especially concenring Iraq and Muslim terror.

I understand that but at the same time, we must avoid being one-issue focused here. Granted national security is a huge issue and definitely must be at or near the top of the list of anyone who actually is concerned with the survival of not only themselves but also civilization. But we cannot let these guys off the hook in the myriad of areas where they are screwing up. They need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not being approved of in this election as much as their opponents are being rejected.

Yes, Iraq is a mess.

Well, Iraq is actually going better historically than most wars have in our country's history. There is always this kind of cleanup after wars and unfortunately, most people are unaware of history and do not know this.

Yes, the Bush Administration had a chance for greater success than it has achieved.

True.

Yes, the president has not communicated the long-range goals effectively

Without question.

(I never thought I'd live to see the day that "freedom" and "liberty" would become mindless cliches).

Well, "civil rights" and "choice" are mindless cliches to many people. That is what happens when words are not explained as to what the user of the word means by it. Or to note for the umpteenth time a most relevant quote from the late original thinker Mike Mentzer: definitions are the tools of thought.

Nevertheless, the situation is still in quite a bit of flux -- especially considering that the increased violence is, I believe, intended to make Americans soil their underwear, politically speaking. And nobody takes that latter possibility into account?

Well, some of us do. Certainly, in the MSM such are the exception rather than the rule.

Furthermore, nobody cares (let alone understands) that the whole purpose for encouraging democracy in Iraq is to prevent the formation of an authoritarian regime that could serve as a terrorist base, much like Afghanistan did?

Well, that is one reason certainly and not an unimportant one.

I have never been as ashamed of the media and of the pseudo-intellectual "chattering class" as I am now. The blood of future innocent victims of terror will be on these bastards' hands.

True.

Sorry for the rant.

No problem.

Notes:

{1} Though obviously as one who values the law of non-contradiction, I find it problematical from that standpoint.

{2} I use this term merely as an expedient marker and quite reluctantly for it remains undefined and I have sought over the years --particularly in the last year and most recently HERE-- to try to get those agenda provocateurs who regularly utter the word to be intellectually honest. Or as I have written elsewhere on this blog in the past:

There are...certain individuals who similarly have a kind of fetish with the term "neo con" and like to use the expression (usually in a derogatory fashion) in application to a lot of different people. This attitude is of course similar to a kind of cultic deadagenting whereby the cult member seeks a pre-emptory assassination attempt of the character of a critic rather than having the common decency to consider the criticisms made on their merits or lack thereof...

The aforementioned unsavoury sorts (to put it nicely) have ignored such simple requests for accountability and have continued to prattle on about these so-called "neo cons" including labelling certain parties as such when they have not bothered to explain what their criteria is for doing this. [Excerpts from Rerum Novarum (circa December 4, 2005)]

The bottom line is this: these sorts can either define the term or (to paraphrase Chris Farley's famous "motivational speaker" Mat Foley) "shut their yappers."

{3} The same is the way of converts to outlooks different from previous ones: the dogmas if you will change but quite often the manner in which they approach issues does not. (And this can cause no small amount of problems later on but I digress.)

{4} This happens to work against the Democrats in elections as a rule. (And the more they ratchet up the punditry and shriek like the moonbats they often are, the worse it generally is for them as they fail to recognize the inverse relationship noted above between intensity and duration.)

Miscellaneous Threads Worth Noting:

Had some of these around for a while and some others are of more recent vintage. Nonetheless, to touch on them briefly...

Poll: U.S. support for UN drops 13% in two years

Hopefully that poll is off at least by the usual margin of error to the conservative side (if not more)...

Verdict due in Saddam trial over executions

Riddle me this: would we be any closer to a trial verdict for Hussein if we had placed trust in the UN???

Republican Surge in the Senate???

As readers of this weblog know, your host is not surprised by this in the slightest.

Iraq on the verge of nukes in 2002???

Nice find by Beth at VRWC. And while it certainly provides support to the hypothesis that military intervention in Iraq was necessary around the time it was unertaken (if not overdue), it seems appropriate in light of the recent findings to enunciate something I have said many times before.

When it comes to the mountains of information on the Iraq ware subject, I am left wondering how many people are left spinning their heads and frantically having to revise (to at least a small degree) their positions on every piece of transient information they receive. By stark contrast, your normally-very-humble servant nearly four years ago{1} took a position which was solid and to this day unassailed on exercising the military option in Iraq.

If this new news is true, it enhances our previous position. If not, then it is no different than the whole WMD situation: my position as set forth nearly four years ago remains intact stable and valid every bit as much now as it did then. That my friends is the value of reason and logic and taking positions on solid data and core principles rather than speculative data which not infrequently evaporates like the morning dew on a sunny day.

U.N. 'peacekeepers' rape women, children

Yes it is an older link but it helps to review some of the reasons why people such as your host has a viceral disregard (to put it nicely) for the United Nations. The MSM has not wanted to talk about this stuff when it is the UN but boy, any chance to slap around Catholic priests for sexual misconduct is fair game. But then again, the religious body of many in the MSM is the UN so that explains it in a nutshell.

So remember folks, a good acid test for voting if you have any doubts is to consider the candidates who are most supportive of the United Nations and vote against them. But enough on that for now.

Note:

{1} While the decision on Afghanistan was a slam dunk, coming to the conclusion that military intervention in Iraq was necessary took some time as it was not as clear-cut as the intervention in Afghanistan was. (And your host was not about to take a stand on anything but solid principles and facts rather than the transient speculations of most people.)

"Excerpts From Classic Literature" Dept.
(Also filed under "A Trip Down Memory Lane" Dept.)

I have discussed before a teacher from my youth whose value to me was recognized mostly in hindsight. I invite readers to peruse that thread for a good background before reading what this post contains.

"As the Years Go Passing By" Dept. (circa September 22, 2002)

Indeed, the material in this post was actually referred to in the former posting{1} and it was a surprise to receive from my sister a clip from Youtube of someone doing a reading of the poem below because it brought back memories of my teacher David Mangels reading it to the class in his animated way. I can envision the pauses, the phrasing of the read, and even his occasional shouts of emphasis in certain spots which really made the work come alive -not only for me but for anyone I know who had Mangels for a teacher.{2} But without further ado, here is the written text of the poem which I classify as "classic literature" by virtue of its genre and content{3} nothing else...

Cremation of Sam McGee

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.


Notes:

{1} To this day my sister and I can rattle off whole stanzas of "the Battle of East and West", "the Cremation of Sam McGee", and other such classics. (And several short form movies like "An Occurrance at Owl Creek Bridge" which looking back was very deep subject matter - especially for grade school kids.) I think this is the reason why in large part Mr. Mangels was among the few teachers that stick out in our minds was that he would teach in ways unlike how other teachers usually did. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 22, 2002)]

{2} Including not only my sister but my good friend Tim Tull who had Mr. Mangels as a teacher the same year I did.

{3} And because I am admittedly on this subject somewhat biased :)

Texas Fred recently sent one of his senators (John Cornyn) a call to stand up for genuine conservative principles. Readers can review it and the concurring comments of many others (including those of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum) HERE.

Holy Souls Masses Registration:

This years scroll of the dearly departed -individuals of note and also family groupings by last name:

Richard Dunn McElhinney f
James Dunn McElhinney u
Teresa Mildred McElhinney gm
Paul Dowd McElhinney gf
McElhinney fam
Dunn fam
Flynn fam
McCann fam
Mark Usher sgf
Virginia Usher sgm
Usher sfam
Brooks fam
Hellstrom sfam
Leta M. Allen sa

David Kanski u
Mary H. Kanski gm
Harry Kanski gf
Harold Kanski u
Kanski fam
Haluk fam
Hruby fam
Duma fam
Rogowski fam
Denny fam
Omafrey fam
Ripplinger fam
Spence fam
Mel Clark sgf
Jane Clark sgm
Clark fam

James Jenner OP p
Joseph Fulton OP p
Blessed Sacrament Parish/Dom. Priory
St. Pius X Parish
Corpus Christi Parish

Jeff Cox cl
Rasmussen ext-fam
Tull ext-fam
Anselmo ext-fam
St. Blogs ext-fam
Mike Mentzer t
Mentzer tfam
Cipriani ffam
O'Grady ffam
Bannon ffam
Ziadeh ffam
Stein ffam
Smith ffam
Tierney ffam
Mockeridge ffam
Blosser ffam
Chris DiSomma f
Roy Sabin acq
Anne Sabin acq
Tim's friend (cannot recall his name at the present but God knows)

While I am sure more will come to mind than just those later on, they are what will be noted at this time. The link to the Purgatory Project can be found HERE and I encourage my readers to check it out and register the names of family and friends.{1}

Eternal rest grant unto their souls O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithfully departed through the mercy of God rest in peace. Amen

The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: But, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found [me]. The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord on that day (2 Tim i,18).

Note:

{1} One should not presume that my recommendation of the above site constitutes a blanket approval of all or even many of the other threads they have posted there. Nonetheless, they do have a good thread on explaining purgatory written by Jimmy Akin which can be read HERE and which I do highly recommend.

Miscellaneous Musings:

---As I have told not a few friends and associates in recent weeks, watch for this election cycle's "October Surprise." Well, it took 30 days but on 10/30 we got it in John Kerry's recent public snafu. After this one, I cannot see how the Democrats can win either house of Congress because (i) seven days before an election is too quick to be able to spin this one away and (ii) this will anger Independents like your weblog host as well as Republicans who may have been a bit lax viz. the upcoming election. Anyway, that is what our gut intuition is on the election at the present time.

---Back when gasoline was around $3.15 a gallon, your host told not a few people that it would not surprise him if gasoline was around $2.25 by election day. Well, at the moment, gasoline is $2.34 a gallon with about six days to go until the election. We will consider a $2.30 gas price on election day to be another fulfilled prediction on our part lest anyone wonder ;-)

---We are of the opinion that by the end of 2007, gasoline may well be around $2.00 a gallon again{1} for reasons that will be discussed another time (if readers are interested).

Note:

{1} As a nationwide average. (Some areas such as Washington state have higher than the average price so this prediction is a more generalized one and not necessarily applicable to all markets.)

More on Torture and the Problems With Trying To Discount the Historical Record Explicitly or Otherwise:

Upon a reader bringing up the subject of slavery as it pertained to something I wrote in a recent thread response to Scott Carson viz. my previous three part posting thread on torture and general norms of interpretation, I sent a couple of older blog threads on that subject from 2003.{1} I forgot that in one of those threads I dealt with the licity of judicial torture albeit not in much detail. Upon receiving them, I was sent a return email with this question and link:

Have you been following Michael Liccione's exchanges w. an Anglican on the same subject?

Why her condemning torture doesn't discredit the Catholic Church Oct. 15, 2006

Admittedly I had not seen this thread but upon receiving it, I gave it a thorough review. To say that Michael Liccione's arguments do not convince me would be a mild thing to say so I will leave it at that. It seems evident to me that he has misunderstandings about the import of Dignitatis Humanae (DH) too well. As I noted in one of my responses to Brian Tierney's statements{2}, DH does not contradict the injunctions of Lateran IV viz. persecuting heretics however it may appear. Here are the other problems with this outlook in a nutshell (his words in darkgreen font).

The relevant statement taught is more like this: "Heretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good."

The problem with the way the statement is phrased is that it involves a normative or subjective element into the equation. It involves a value judgment in other words as to what should or should not be done. The only concern we need in the current context is not whether someone should be punished with torture or death under certain circumstances but only if they could. The latter is a non-normative or objective question in the sense that we are only interested in what can be done in these situations.{2}

Call that statement 'HP' for short.

Ok.

Between the fourth and eighteenth centuries, most popes and prelates believed HP. Even St. Thomas Aquinas believed it. But the Church's development of doctrine has it that the torture and execution of people for their religious beliefs is a violation of their consciences, which is intrinsically evil inasmuch as it violates one of the most basic of human rights. Whatever the ostensible benefits,

Notice the bait and switch: Michael goes from [h]eretics should be punished with torture and/or death if their being so punished is necessary for the common good to claiming that they are not to be punished in that way whatsoever for their religious beliefs and what exercising those beliefs may or may not involve. This may appear to be not what I assert but consider for a moment the relevant factors involved in a nutshell:

---In a society where church and state are closely intertwined, heretics who were zealous in propagating errors which were seen rightfully so as undermining the common good of society were not tolerated. That does not apply in a society as we have seen construed in recent centuries but it also overlooks a key factor: the necessity of the common good factor. If the heretics so called are seeking militarily to infringe upon the rights of others and threatening their survival unless said persons or nations bow to coercion and accept the aggressor's religious beliefs, then such "persons and societies" (cf. DH §1) can under the rubric of self-defense of persons and society be tortured or executed within certain parameters.{3} It depends of course on how "torture" is defined.

Therefore, it is never necessary to serve the common good by doing such an evil that good may come.

Again, torture is not necessarily an intrinsic evil any more than the death penalty is. That does not mean that both torture and the death penalty are unable to be conducted in ways which are inhumane and objectively evil of course. But it does mean that not all means of coercing others or of executing them are intrinsically evil. The Pandora's Box that such a notion opens up is far wider than I originally asserted and I am frankly not sure I want to delve into it in the public medium at this time lest it scandalize some of my readers of a religious nature and start more fires than I care to deal with (metaphorically speaking).

That is what the Western-European wars of religion and the rise of popular government taught the Church even though should it have been obvious much earlier than that. Therefore, the antecedent of HP is always false, and churchmen of the past were wrong to believe it.

Now Michael begs the question by presuming that the use of torture or the death penalty is across the board intrinsically evil. Besides the boatload of problems this creates which I decided to not touch on above, this also constitutes the very sort of evolution that does not conserve and refine past realizations but instead is a wholesale overturning and reversal. In other words, whether Michael realizes it or not{4}, it makes a mockery of the notion of development properly understood.

This is the sort of problem that arises when terms are thrown around without first being explained as to their meaning. Hence, the reasons I have said from day one (and will continue to say it) these terms require definitions. There is another factor that needs to be considered here and it is this: there cannot be a definition or declaration which is binding and requiring of assent as per the requirements of Lumen Gentium §25{5} without the terms involved being defined as to what they mean at the very least. It is no different than if I said one must always schwitzburger every morning and do not bother telling someone what the latter word means.{6} In the absence of terms being defined, people can put on them whatever meaning they want and that means the expression is worthless since formal contradiction cannot be avoided.

But since HP itself is a material conditional, the falsity of its antecedent makes it trivially true.

The crux of the issue is being avoided with the above statement so I will highlight it in bold font:

Defending persons and society from the menace of heretics out to either undermine the common good of society or who seek to coerce people under threat of physical mutilation or death to violate their consciences and accept alien systems of thought is not "trivially true" no matter how you stretch the tape!!!

Every word I noted in the above statement is important so if anyone tries to apply it to what the US Government is seeking with detainees at Gitmo or wherever, it will only prove to me that they are demagogues and are not to be taken seriously.{7}

So even if HP does meet the criteria for having been infallibly taught by the ordinary magisterium, it is trivially true.

See my previous comments. Hopefully it is clearer to some who think this is an easily dismissible subject why it is anything but. This further points out why the term needs to have a definition. I have just about used up my last good nerve on those who prattle on about this word without explaining what they mean by it. But enough on that for now.

Notes:

{1} Refuting Progressivist Errors on Galileo, Usury, EENS, and Slavery--Parts I and II (circa April 21, 2003)

Responding to Some Declarations of Brian Tierney--Parts I-III (circa December 30-31, 2003)

{2} The purpose of this posting is not to say what should or should be done in these cases: such a normative assessment by its nature can vary from person to person and therefore is not helpful when dealing with absolute moral principles of a prohibitive nature.

{3} Part of the reason I wrote on the matter of religious liberty in my original thread postings on torture and general norms is because I anticipated this route being taken by some who take the general position that Michael Liccione takes. With reference to what Vatican II does teach on religious liberty, I refer back to something I blogged when interacting with some dogmatic declarations of Brian Tierney in late 2003:

[T]here are safeguards in DH which do not allow for coercion of non-Catholics unless they are being menaces to society in accordance with objective criteria. So far from contradicting Lateran IV, Vatican II also allows for the state to suppress those who undermine a society. [Excerpt from an Email Correspondence (circa February 3, 2003) and quoted in a Rerum Novarum posting (circa December 31, 2003)]

The bottom line is, our right to survival trumps any presumed "right" these kinds of people have to not be tortured or killed. Period.

{4} I trust he does not and is only trying to deal with these complex issues according to the light of his conscience viz. how he understands the principles involved.

{5} [R]eligious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking. [Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium §25 (circa November 21, 1964)]

{6} To my knowledge, I made the word up on the spot lest anyone wonder.

{7} To put it tersely.