Pazdziernik II

President Bill Clinton

[P]resident Clinton got re-elected even though nobody mistook him for George Washington. It helped that he had a Republican Congress that reformed welfare and held down spending. It also helped that Mr. Clinton seemed a likable lug. He has a way of winking at you without winking.

By contrast, Mr. Obama comes off as a condescending, left-wing college professor with false jocularity. His signature, upbeat sentence enders tell the listener that the case is closed: Argue with me only if you want a bad grade.

Read more: KNIGHT: Buying Obama's whoppers - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/12/buying-obamas-whoppers/#ixzz29HGptxXG 
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Incapable of Moral Outrage

Catholic World Report's Matthew Cullinan Hoffman article Lady Gaga Gets the Indonesian Boot (June 1, 2012) provides and excellent analysis of the Lady Gaga controversy in Asia.

Lady Gaga should hardly be surprised at the reaction of Asian Christians and Muslims to her on-stage antics, which she has repeatedly acknowledged are calculated to generate controversy, and which serve her economic interests as a publicity-seeking entertainer. Americans, however, have apparently become so jaded and desensitized to the routine obscenity of such “pop artists” that we can no longer comprehend the reaction of ordinary people in countries that are still imbued with the values of religious piety, a sense of the sacred, and a visceral desire to protect their children from unhealthy influences.

Generations of American parents have blithely surrendered their children to the tender mercies of industries that openly profit by corrupting their morals, selling them a hedonistic and degraded understanding of human sexuality at the most vulnerable moment in their psychosexual development. Our cultural “race to the bottom” is justified by a libertarian ideology that deifies individual freedom at the expense of public morals, a concept that has almost disappeared from American jurisprudence. The resulting ethos is reflected in almost every manifestation of mass media, from movies and television to music, video games, and the Internet. Americans have been breathing this poisoned atmosphere for so long that they have become almost incapable of moral outrage, and are unable to interpret such indignation when it manifests itself abroad.

The true issue raised by the Gaga affair in Southeast Asia is not one of religious extremism or the sanctity of freedom of speech, themes often used by Americans to explain away the recalcitrance of foreigners in the face of our cultural exports. It is, rather, our own moral and spiritual decline, which has created a gulf between ourselves and peoples who continue to maintain the values we have abandoned, values that are essential to the health of any society.

The first step toward a solution is to recognize the problem. Mr. Hoffman succeeds here.

How-to Get a Job...

BloombergBusinessweek's second annual How-to issue (April 22,2012) featured an interesting one: How-to Get a Job... Here's what I found of interest ...

 

At Dyson

"When we interview, we are looking for the sort of people who ask questions, who make outrageous suggestions, and people who might even interrupt you if you say something as they get excited about how to add to that idea. Once they get here, we’ll encourage them to make silly, wrong, or improbable suggestions. Sometimes I’ll ask someone, “Did you take things apart as a child?” I’m much less interested in whatever they took apart than if they tried to put it back together again. If you can’t put it back together, that doesn’t really matter. What is important is what you learned."

At Bridgewater

"Unlike a lot of firms, we look at what someone is like rather than what they did before. We are first interested in people’s values, second interested in their abilities, and least interested in their precise skills. We want independent thinkers who are willing to put aside their egos to find out what is true. "

At Palantir

"We tend to think it’s better to have an A-triple-plus in one area, which presupposes an F in other areas. So maybe we end up with someone who solves problems very creatively but can’t interact with people. We look for people within uneven IQs, then we build a role around their strengths. I like to meet candidates with no data about them: no résumé, no preliminary discussions or job description, just the candidate and me in a room. I ask a fairly random question, one that is orthogonal to anything they would be doing at Palantir. I then watch how they disaggregate the question, if they appreciate how many different ways there are to see the same thing. I like to keep interviews short, about 10 minutes. Otherwise, people move into their learned responses and you don’t get a sense of who they really are."

 

We Will Survive

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh (b. 1965) "defended Gambian laws banning homosexual behavior in comments to the country’s National Assembly last Friday" (April 27, 2012):

“If you want us to be ungodly for you to give us aid, take your aid away, we will survive,” said Jammeh,...

“We will rather eat grass than accept this ungodly evil attitude that is anti-God, anti-human and anti-creation.”

Acceptance of homosexual acts would compromise the nation’s dignity and “insult God,” he said. The country is predominately Muslim, but is also home to many Christians. He noted that Gambia had lost many of its traditional practices to the influence of western culture, but said that this was an issue where the country would stand firm.

“We lost our traditional head scarf for a necktie, but we will not lose our humanity for the so-called human rights,” he said.

“We will respect human rights where a human being behaves like a human being.” He added: “Let me make it very clear that if you want me to offend God for you to give me aid, you are making a great mistake. You will not bribe me to do what is evil and ungodly.”

Source:

LifeSite—April 27, 2012

Sarah Palin Defends Rush Limbaugh

On Tuesday March 6, 2012, former Alaska Governor and Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin defended Rush Limbaugh:

“I think the definition of hypocrisy is for Rush Limbaugh to have been called out, forced to apologize and retract what it is that he said in exercising his First Amendment rights and never is that the same applied to the leftist radicals who say such horrible things about the handicapped, about women, about the defenseless,” Palin told CNN in an interview from Wasilla, Alaska.

Source: Politico

A certain charm and passion and magic

Aerosmith's Steven Tyler had very edifying comments this week in defending common decency on television and on "a certain charm and passion and magic" in not revealing everything. Read for yourself Steven Tyler to Supreme Court: Watch the language

"There's a certain charm and passion and magic in not showing full-frontal nudity" or using constant profanity, Tyler said, as the high court prepared to take up a First Amendment case on the regulation of the airwaves.

"It's really hot when you only show a little," he said.

Thanks Steven!

American Decentrialization

I just finished Senator Jim DeMint's (R-South Carolina) book The Great American Awakening: Two Years that Changes America, Washington, and Me (2011) on the rise of the Tea Party and principled conservatism in 2009. I highly recommend this well-written and short book.

In keeping with the "short" theme of Senator DeMint's Book I decided to limit my self to a single citation which, in my estimation sums up, the Tea Party and principled conservatism: decentralization.

Decentralization is not a new idea for American government; it is the idea. It's called federalism. In America's original design, individuals held most of the authority and responsibility in America. From the individual, authority moved to families, churches, and volunteer organizations. Local and state governments provided a framework of law and order, and the federal government was created by the states to provide for the national defense, ensure justice, and to facilitate interstate commerce. But very little of what federal government does today was ever intended to be functions of a centralized national government.

There are two good reasons why we must restructure the federal government and devolve many federal programs back to the states: (1) we can't afford them, and (2) it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that the federal government cannot manage programs effectively or cost-efficiently.

The question Americans should be asking is not what else the federal government should do to solve out problems, but what the federal government must let go of to save our nation.

Baseball Lingers

Thomas Boswell, columnist for the Washington Post sports section, hit it over the fence, so-to-speak today when describing, in part, how great the game of baseball is : With 2011 World Series and MLB playoffs, baseball hits it over the fence

In other sports, seasons simply end. Baseball lingers. In my office, I keep the scorebooks of my handful of favorite Octobers. Those scribbled personal accounts stay behind with us, letting you replay, relive and, deep into winter perhaps, have yet one more insight into what should have been done, but wasn’t. Other sports say they’ll have to look at the films before they will know what really happened, then they never tell you what they saw.

Baseball shows you everything the first time, in plain panoramic view, then lets you figure out what you saw, again and again, forever.

Image: 2011 Little League World Series, August 2011 FOX Sports

Excellent Spiritual Direction from Dr. Edward Peters

We can all get caught up in our own problems, problems of society and problems of our world — very real or very imagined. September 6th Fr. Frank Pavone of the Diocese of Amarillo , Texas was recalled by his bishop, Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his home diocese. Fr. Pavone had permission to engage in apostolate outside his diocese in the form of Priests for Life , a worthy pro-life organization based in Staten Island, New York.

Fr. Pavone was not to pleased about this based on reading his public comments. On September 16th Edward N. Peters, JD, JCD (civil and canon lawyer) responded to some of Fr. Frank Pavone's public comments with clarity and in a ways that we can all take to heart.

Pavone: Well, friends, here in Amarillo I am working hard at my computer on various pro-life projects as I await further instructions from the diocese. Nothing yet…

Peters: Nothing? What’s that mean? Does a young, healthy priest, in his home diocese, with full faculties for ordained ministry therein, really need to be told what to do with a large, unexpected block of time? If so, I have some suggestions.

Besides engaging in the “period of prayer and reflection” to which you were directed, how about offering to cover some masses for your over-stretched diocesan brothers who are saying two, three (and, shhh!, sometimes four) masses a day for the local faithful? Or how about slipping, a la John Paul II, into a parish confessional for a few extra hours each day to tend whatever souls God might send you? If the liturgical or sacramental work of a secular priest is not your forte, maybe you could visit your elderly and infirm brothers, or fill relief boxes at a community shelter and share some moments with people in need. Would the daily grind of tending souls ransomed by Christ, but at such grave risk in this world, be such a poor use of your time?

...

Pavone: [It’s distressing to have to endure] disruption to a mission which is at the core of my life.

Peters: Stop. Something is seriously askew here. Nothing, not even the most visible (and arguably the most effective) pro-life work in the world, is at the “core” of any priest’s life; nothing is there, besides the High Priest Jesus Christ. That is no pious platitude. For any priest, religious or diocesan, to assert before the world that anything is at the core of his life besides the Son of God is very disturbing.

...

Pavove: Tears, sleepless nights, anger, righteous indignation – this and more come to me each day because something is happening to the youngest members of the human family.

Peters: Forgive my impatience, Father, but I don’t see anything in this litany of woes that can’t be claimed by virtually every conscientious Christian parent trying to raise children in this wicked age. And nothing in this list has not been endured by every normal adult who, in his or her own way, is trying to make the world a better place, often in the face of appalling injustices (one of which, to be sure, is abortion, and most of which aren’t) but with much less freedom and far fewer resources than you have been blessed with. The vast majority of such folks, however, don’t go around blogging about it. They just quietly do the best they can with what they have.

Dr. Peter's response to is worthy of study and, in my estimation, should be taken to heart by all. We all need good and prudent direction so we can be enabled to give good and prudent direction to others. The full text can be found on Dr. Peter's blog In The Light of The Law

Six Points, obviously contested, that are also obvious

George Weigel in The Pilot of the Archdiocese of Boston, reposted remarks that Pope Benedict XVI made "to Croatia's religious, political, business and cultural leaders in Zagreb's National Theater" in Zagreb, Croatia, in early June 2011.

The propositions of Pope Benedict are certainly obvious to me and many others I know. However, they are good to review and keep in mind as points that many, many contemporaries do not share for what ever reason — perhaps because they have never adequately reflected upon them?

1. Religious conviction is not something outside society; it is part of society's inner core: "Religion is not a separate area marked off from society...[but] a natural element within society, constantly recalling the vertical dimension: attentive listening to God as the condition for seeking the common good, for seeking justice and reconciliation in the truth."

2. The human element in religion is imperfect and flawed; there is no shame in admitting this, for reason can help refine religious passion: "Religions need always to be purified according to their true essence in order to correspond to their true mission."

3. Ancient religions should welcome the political achievements of modernity while calling modernity to open its windows and doors to a world of transcendent truth and love: "...the great achievements of the modern age -- the recognition and guarantee of freedom of conscience, of human rights, of the freedom of science and hence of a free society--should be confirmed and developed while keeping reason and freedom open to their transcendent foundation, so as to ensure that these achievements are not undone...The quality of social and civil life and the quality of democracy depend in large measure on this critical point--conscience, on the way it is understood and the way it is informed."

4. "Conscience" is not a matter of determining what I want to do and then doing it; "conscience" is my search for truths that can be known to be true and then binding myself to those truths, which stand in judgment on me and on society: "If, in keeping with the prevailing modern idea, conscience is reduced to the subjective field to which religion and morality have been banished, then the crisis of the West has no remedy and Europe is destined to collapse upon itself. If, on the other hand, conscience is rediscovered as the place in which to listen to truth and good, the place of responsibility before God and before fellow human beings -- in other words, the bulwark against all forms of tyranny -- then there is hope for the future."

5. Europe detached from its Christian roots will wither and die, for, in the name of a dessicated secularism, it will have cut itself off from one of the sources of its cultural vitality: "I am grateful to [those who remind us] of the Christian roots of many of the cultural and academic institutions of this country, as indeed all over the European continent. We need to be reminded of these origins, not least for the sake of historical truth, and it is important that we understand these roots properly, so that they can feed the present day, too."

6. The Church does not seek a direct role in politics; the Church forms the people who can shape the culture that makes democratic self-governance work: "It is by forming consciences that the Church makes her most specific and valuable contribution to society. It is a contribution that begins in the family and is strongly reinforced in the parish, where...[we] learn to deepen [our] knowledge of the sacred Scriptures, the 'great codex' of European culture..."