2005
OPD 940
Once OPD
Always OPD
Always OPD
2005 OPD 940 |
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Once OPD Always OPD |
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[Three Cheers For The Rich]
When I was a child a wealthy family near us obtained the neighbor-hood's first television set. The neighborhood children who were fortunate enough to be friends of the scion of that household dutifully lined up outside the blessed home, each on an assigned day, and were allowed in to watch the marvelous device. There we were, too young to formulate a coherent socialist political philosophy but each of us psychologically socialist to our envious little cores. But it was only a year or so until the prices of television sets became so cheap we could all afford them and we had to find something else to be envious about. Now envy is at the heart of the socialist redistributionist egalitarianism that motivates the left. And of all the deadly sins envy is surely the worst for it is the only one primarily dedicated to harming another. At the intellectual center, if we dare call it that, of the socialist belief that we should share equally in the economic "pie" is Proudhon's (the nineteenth century French anarchist) bon mot that "property is theft". That is, everything one owns is inequitably taken from another who has an equal "right" to it. This, of course, assumes that we are sharing an economic "pie" that is fixed in size and it is only good fortune that grants one person a larger slice than another. It would be hard to find a proposition more at odds with reality and so demonstrably false, but this idea motivates the left in all its permutations and socialist catastrophes are the inevitable results. In fact, wealth disparity is at the heart of economic and technological progress and attempts to eliminate it are inherently reactionary. Why this is so becomes readily apparent in an age of rapid technological innovation. The promise of wealth attainment motivates entrepreneurial risk takers and a stream of innovations is the result. These innovations increase the economic "pie" for everyone, rich and poor alike, and raise everyone's standard of living. So, the poor in a free society with wealth disparity usually live better than the elites in a socialist society without economic freedom. In addition, a pool of wealthy consumers creates a market for new products so that "bugs" can be ironed out and production techniques improved. Once a market is created, costs decrease and prices drop, and the population as a whole shares in the bounty. So it was with automobiles, television sets, computers, cellular phones, and who knows what else in the future. Soviet Communist propaganda during the Cold War would recount statistics about the size of the American welfare class and how many Americans were mired in poverty. They would show propaganda films describing the circumstances of the poverty stricken American underclass. But these portrayals of the American poor had to be stopped because they turned out to be counterproductive. The Russian populace was not impressed with the poverty statistics of the United States but with the television sets, the air conditioners, the automobiles, and the size of the living spaces of the so called "poor". They envied the capitalist"poor"! The possibility of attaining wealth provides an incentive that also serves to increase the work ethic for society in general. The janitor's child can dream of attaining wealth (and often will) and be incentivized to attain the education and put in the extra work to make it possible. Where left wing economic egalitarianism through its communist, socialist, or welfare state manifestations kills the desire and ability to attain wealth (through welfare payments, progressive taxation, and regulation), it also kills the dream and saps the will to succeed. The left in striving to eliminate disparities of wealth and end relative economic poverty creates instead a culture of true poverty and hopelessness which is the essence of slavery. Economic and social mobility require the ability to attain wealth and achieve beyond the status of one's parents. The socialist heavily regulated and highly taxed states of Europe are also nations without social mobility and still rigid class structures. So, wealth achieved without force or fraud in a system of non-preferential law helps us all, both those who achieve it and those who do not. Three cheers for the rich! Passed on from Dr. Roland Butnick, by David Mc Arthur, OFD Ret Everything coming out of one's mouth isn't speech designed to be protected. A number of years ago in what was to become a famous case (Kunz) a man took to standing at a busy intersection in New York City and hurled epithets at passing pedestrians. He would scream slurs at Catholics and Jews as they hurried to the nearby subway station. As this naturally tended to meet with rather serious disapproval, the police thought they would put a stop to the tirades before significant violence occurred. But when the case found its way to the Supreme Court the Court held that this constituted prior restraint of free speech and was forbidden by the First Amendment. The problem was that what was being engaged in wasn't speech at all. The speech protected by the Constitution involves the communication of ideas, words intended to convey meaning and express thoughts. Our street corner screamer was not engaged in speech. In the days before the death of common sense at the Supreme Court words such as he used were known as "fighting words", language designed to incite not communicate. Language such as this is akin to spitting in the faces of passersby not speaking to them. Supreme Court Justice Jackson in a dissent in 1949 said "This Court [the Supreme Court] has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil liberty means the removal of all restraints ... and that all ... attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with practical wisdom, it will convert the ... Bill of Rights into a suicide pact. "But it only gets worse. The Court has held that not only "fighting words" are protected but all kinds of symbolic speech (i.e., acts that aren't in any sense speech) used in lieu of "fighting words" are similarly protected. So,the Court has protected the burning of the American flag in spite of its inherent nature as incitement. And currently in Northern California a home-owner claims First Amendment protection as he hangs the effigy of an American soldier outside his home to the outrage of his neighbors. None of this involves speech, symbolic or not, for what is intended is not communication but incitement of anger. If one wants to attack the United States or its government or the war in Iraq , one is free and constitutionally protected in renting a hall, using a soapbox in the park, or writing letters to the editors or one's government representatives making one's opinions known. One is not free to spit in anyone's face or desecrate the symbols that some hold sacred. The Courts have become so unhinged that they have forbidden prohibitions of nude dancing as violative of the First Amendment. Not being a prude, nude dancing may be perfectly permissible but it is not a right protected by the First Amendment, though here the word for what is intended is not incitement but arousal. The one thing it is not designed to do is communicate ideas. Amazingly enough, the only speech, real or symbolic, that the Supreme Court feels escapes First Amendment protection is the very political speech (communications of ideas by candidates for public office) that that Amendment was most designed to protect. The Supreme Court so held in upholding limitations on political speech contained in the recently enacted Campaign Finance Law as it found that limiting financial influence in political campaigns outweighed the absolute guarantees of the First Amendment. It never ceases to amaze how those seeking to be offended so easily find things to be offended about. Now one usually associates this with the politically correct left, easily offended by slights and injuries, more imagined than real, to some victim class they have created or ideology they venerate; but the furor created by right wingers over the Academy Award winning motion picture "Million Dollar Baby" shows folly knows no ideological boundaries. Now those who have not yet seen the movie and intend to do so might want to avoid reading the rest of this article. "Million Dollar Baby" is the story of a young woman, self described as "trailer trash", who seeks to achieve success in the world of women's boxing and talks an aging and world weary boxing trainer into helping her do so. After achieving a significant degree of success, she suffers a catastrophic injury rendering her a quadriplegic. Unable to cope with her new and irreversible condition, she seeks the help of her trainer in ending her life and, reluctantly, he ultimately agrees and assists her in dying. Social conservatives such as the movie critic Michael Medved (usually quite sensible) leaped to attack the film as a propaganda piece endorsing euthanasia. They found an issue they could sink their teeth into and they wouldn't let go. But this movie isn't about euthanasia anymore than "Gone With the Wind" was about agricultural practices in the antebellum South or " Casablanca " was about running cafes in North Africa . The movie combines the formulaic sports story (as in "Rocky") of an underdog achieving success against all odds through determination and hard work with a story of two products of dysfunctional family arrangements able to get a second chance to achieve a loving father-daughter relationship. The euthanasia issue occupies a small portion of the film and to see it as its principal thrust is to miss the forest for the trees. But since socially conservative critics have made this an issue, let us proceed to tackle it in the context of the situation presented in this movie. And let us deal with it by gradually approaching the issue of euthanasia. Is taking one's own life always an immoral and cowardly act? A mother's giving her life for her child is universally acclaimed as an act of selfless love. A soldier's throwing himself on a hand grenade to save his comrades is the stuff for which Medals are awarded. We praise instead of chastise the secret agent who when captured by the enemy swallows a poison pill rather than risk betraying his comrades or his mission. And he who smuggles the poison pill to him is likewise considered a hero not a villain. So, if suicide and assisting suicide is not universally to be condemned, when is it to be reviled and when not? Apparently the distinction that is commonly made is that suicide (and assisting suicide) is permissible when done in the interests of others but not when done in the perceived interests of the person committing suicide. Is this a rational moral distinction? Now suicide for insubstantial reasons (depression or breaking up with a boyfriend) is surely to be discouraged, but let us examine the facts as presented in this movie. A previously physically active and uneducated young woman incurs a major spinal cord injury to her neck rendering her a quadriplegic (unable to move either her arms or her legs) and there is no hope for recovery. In addition, the writers have her suffering gangrene of her leg necessitating amputation and creating a dismal picture of future bodily disintegration. (Yes I know this might indicate poor nursing care in real life, but let's take the story as written.) She is completely lucid and alert. After her "father figure" refuses to assist her in suicide, she pathetically uses one of the few muscles she still controls and tries to bleed to death by biting off her tongue. And the trainer relents and painlessly causes her death. References to survivors under similarly dire circumstances (Christopher Reeves or Stephen Hawkings) are irrelevant. The courage and mental prowess of some is to be admired but surely we cannot demand it of everyone. Given the circumstances as presented in this movie is the desire for death irrational? People who make euthanasia a calling like the itinerant peddler of death Kevorkian are to be despised and legal systems that facilitate it as in The Netherlands are to be feared. But individuals caught up in nightmarish situations surely deserve sympathy rather than condemnation for their desire to escape. Is the act of the "father figure" in this movie an act of love or malevolence? For those who believe that such acts are forbidden by their religion and, therefore, never permissible, the imposition of such beliefs on others trapped in situations which are intolerable for them is not so much an act of morality as one of cruel arrogance. Passed on by Dave Mc Arthur from Dr. Roland Butnick , MD In the novel "War and Peace" Tolstoy repeatedly presents his thesis that history is the product of economic, political, cultural, and social forces minimally influenced by the outstanding historical figures of the day. This may well be true in the long run, but we live our lives in the short run where outstanding men, both good and evil, mold the times. In the nineteenth century Nietzsche announced the "death of god", by which he meant traditional morality, and he predicted the twentieth century to come would, therefore, be the bloody result. But even hecould not have predicted the extent of the carnage, far beyond anythingseen before, nor the inhumane manner of the slaughter. This was in largepart the product of the truly evil twentieth century figures: Lenin, Stalin,Hitler, and Mao, and their many minor satanic acolytes.But at opportune times in history, great figures for good have also arisen. In 1776, in a world consisting only of hereditary despotisms, two figures arose to light the candle of hope in a universe of darkness. Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence set the table for political liberty with his declaration that individual rights were God given and man was not the tool of the state; Adam Smith in his "Wealth of Nations" presented his exposition on economic liberty, without which political liberty is impossible. Almost exactly two hundred years later when mankind was threatened by a suffocating totalitarian ideology seemingly poised on the edge of victory, two new giants arose to stem the evil tide. Things looked bleak for Western Civilization in the l970's. The United States had ignominiously deserted its ally in Viet Nam and the appeasers at home were shrinking its Armed Forces and its Intelligence Services. The Soviet Empire was extending its tentacles in Southeast Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and the Caribbean . And an inept American President pleaded for lessened expectations as he tried to reach a pathetic detente with the Soviets. Into this dismal setting arrived two historical giants, dissimilar in back- ground but identical in courage and belief in the worth of the individual man. Both were optimistic and had faith in a better future. Both survived being wounded in assassination attempts. One shook the political, economic, and military underpinnings of the Soviet Empire, the other the moral and spiritual, and the entire malign edifice collapsed. Ronald Reagan became President of the United States in l981. He rebuilt the American military, actively intervened to prevent Soviet expansion and roll back their most recent conquests, extended missile strength in Europe in spite of overwhelming popular opposition, put tremendous economic pressure on the Soviets, accurately predicted their downfall, and called their evil empire the "Evil Empire". But Ronald Reagan's path was paved by Pope John Paul II who ascended to the Papacy in l978. Stalin had once mocked the power of the Papacy by asking how many battalions the Pope had. His successors came to know better. When they made the mistake of allowing the Pope to go to Poland , the land of his birth, in 1979, he lit a candle of hope and liberty that could not be snuffed out. The Soviet leader Brezhnev worried that "sooner or later ... it would suffocate us". A year later Solidarity arose in Poland as an anti-communist political movement supported economically by Reagan and spiritually by John Paul II and the end of international communism began. Unlike fascism or Nazism, communism makes a claim to having a moral basis (egalitarianism) which holds the loyalty of its adherents even absent military or political power. If that moral basis is challenged by pointing out its inherent antagonism to individual liberty, its rejection of the individual's relationship to God and his intrinsic worth independent of the State, then communism becomes just another form of totalitarian agression and ex-pansionism. That is why it was so important for Ronald Reagan to call the the USSR an "Evil Empire". And that is why John Paul II who so embodied and preached the idea of a transcendental moral truth beyond the exigencies of the day, the inalienable value and sanctity of each human life, sowed theseeds for the destruction of international communism. He prevailed; communism died. Whenever we are confronted by some action, good or bad, by an adherent of some belief system or religion, we must decide whether that action is the result of the individual's own nature or his belief system itself. In other words,was it the singer or the song. In 1945, a starving little girl newly released from a concentration camp sat alone in a corner of a railroad station in Poland , ignored by passersby who had become inured to tragedy. She waited for death. A young priest found her, brought her tea and food, carried her to a train in another village, covered her with his cloak, and tended to her as he brought her to the city of Cracow and a relief facility. The little girl, now grown, came to know that the priest's name was Karol Wojtyla, the future John Paul II. Regardless of what one thinks of the song- Catholicism, Christianity, religion itself-there is no denying the compassion and the capacity for self sacrifice of the singer. Within the historical scope we can envision, Tolstoy was wrong. Great men matter! The two giants that ended the "Evil Empire" are dead. To echo the words spoken after Lincoln 's death, now they belong to the ages. As future threats endanger mankind, we can only hope that their spiritual heirs will appear and, as John Paul II was fond of saying, we will no longer have to be afraid. [May 2, 2005 * * Religion of Peace?] The Religion of "Peace"? We are swimming in a sea of euphemisms as we deny the nature of the enemy. President Bush invites Moslem leaders (many of whom have ties to militant Islam and its use of terrorism) to the White House and talks of Islam as a religion of peace. Perhaps diplomatic and political niceties require him to speak in this manner and he really knows better. We can only hope so. Our media and entertainment industry, true to their destructive and anti-American core, are reluctant to portray Moslems in a negative light, as realism would require, and constantly warn against a non-existent anti-Moslem backlash. One of the rare programs to truthfully portray Moslems as the likely members of terrrorist cells in the United States was forced by external pressure to apologize. Kiefer Sutherland, star of the television series "24", recently issued a disclaimer which said in part that "while terrorism is one of the greatest challenges facing our nation ... it is important to recognize that the American Muslim community stands firmly besides their fellow Americans in denouncing all forms of terrorism". He didn't cite a source for this naive belief that is contrary to all outward signs. It is as yet unclear whether the enemy doing battle against Western civi-lization has the support of only a small fringe of the Islamic world, a large minority, or a majority. Celebrations following 9/11 throughout the Islamic world, including Arabs living in the United States , must give us pause. In any case, realism requires a critical examination of Islam itself and its place in the modern world. We must get an accurate picture of it rather than believe the lies we have been steadily fed. Unlike all other religions, Islam does not only provide an all encompassing code of personal conduct and behavior far exceeding that of any other religion in its rigorous strictures, but it also provides a political and social system. The Western idea of separation of Church and State is not only alien to mainstream Islam but is incompatible with it as the prophet Mohammed was both a religious and secular leader. The word "Islam" means submission and we are told ad nauseum by Moslem apologists that it means submission of the individual to God, but the actual history of Islam indicates that the more universally understood meaning is submission of all other religions to Islam. We are repeatedly told that the word "Jihad" means the war against personal sins, the conquest of self; but it really is universally understood, and always has been, as the war against all other religions. Moslems divide the world into dar al-Islam (the world of Islam ) and dar al- harb (the world of war) which must be conquered until the whole world bows to Allah and declares Mohammed his prophet. So today Moslems war (carry on Jihad) not only on Jews in Palestine , but on Hindus in Kashmir, Buddhists in Thailand , Christians in Indonesia and Nigeria , and animists in Sudan . The non-Islamic world is indeed the world of war and it is waged by Moslems on non-Moslems everywhere. We are told that Islam is a religion of tolerance and that it tolerated other religions during the Middle Ages when Christianity was quite intolerant. Regardless of whether this is actually true or not, Islam remains in the Middle Ages and its idea of tolerance is not one compatible with modernity. The Koran, Islam's holy book, commands in Sura 9:29 that non-Moslems "feel themselves subdued"; thus the dhimmitude , the subservient status that Sharia (Islamic law) imposes on non-Moslems living under a Sharia regime. This is the source for persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt and Christians in Nigeria living in Moslem regions. In Pakistan it is the source of anti-Christian legislation, in Iran it results in the systematic oppression of the Bahai community, in Sudan it results in the murder and enslavement of Christian and animist Black Africans, in Saudi Arabia in total apartheid for all non-Moslems, in Indonesia terrorism against Christians, and in Bangladesh the terrorizing of Christian and Hindu minorities. The wearing of signs of inferior status that the Nazis imposed on the Jews was borrowed from the symbols of identification on clothes that marked the inferior status of Jews and Christians under the dhimmi imposed by Islam. We in the West, caught up in our cult of tolerance and multi- culturism , are confronted by a religion which is intolerant to its core. We are inundated by a torrent of naive declarations that show a total misunderstanding of Islam and its unique nature, hostile to all the world's other religions and modernity itself. Its dhimmi mindset regards all outside of Islam as inherently corrupt and inferior, worthy of only conversion, enslavement, or extermination, but never respect. Can Islam change? Perhaps, but only if it is recognized as the atavistic force it is and expelled from the public arena as Ataturk did in Turkey . In Europe , in which many countries already have large unintegrated militant Moslem populations with much higher birthrates than the natives, it may already be too late to stop the Islamic onslaught. In addition, secular and anti-Christian Europe , tolerant of everything and standing for nothing, has no bastion of beliefs with which to confront Islam. The United States , with fewer Moslems within the population and having both a religious core and national self-confidence, is better able to deal with Islam internally while defeating the militants abroad. But first and foremost, we must recognize who the enemy is and not fear to call him out and confront him wherever he is found. [April 26, 2005 ** Judicial Tyranny] A number of recent cases decided by the United States Supreme Court have only served to call attention to a cascading stream of ever increasing usurpations of power by the Federal courts. Alexander Ham- ilton in writing in support of ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers wrote that "the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous... the weakest of the three departments of power". We now know how wrong he was. Looking at Article III of the Constitution, creating and describing the powers of the Federal judiciary, we are hard pressed to find from where they have derived the powers they have currently assumed. But the dangers were there almost from the beginning of our nation. Thomas Jefferson as President noted that "the opinion which gives the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere ... but for the Legislature and the Executive ... would make the Judiciary a despotic branch ... The Constitution ... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please... At the establishment of our Constitution, the judiciary... were supposed to be the most ... harmless members of the government. Experience ... showed ... they were to become the most dangerous." And it has only gotten worse. Federal judges have assumed executive functions (run school systems) and legislative functions (compelled the imposition of taxes). Richard Neely, once Chief Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court and a strong supporter of judicial activism, accurately described the mindset of the modern American judge in his book, appropriately titled "How Courts Govern America ". In it he notes that "The power of the federal courts to interpret the U.S. Constitution and through that vehicle effect dramatic social, economic, and political changes comes from the utter vagueness of certain broad clauses, primarily the Fifth Amendment, the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the commerce clause ... Obviously the power to give to vague clauses certain detailed meanings ...is the power to make supreme law- law which cannot be changed by the routine proceedings of the legislative process ... since there is hardly any question which cannot be framed in such a way as to assume "constitutional" dimensions, for all intents and purposes every conceivable question of public policy is up for review by the courts ... courts can at will substitute their judgment for that of all other agencies of government." Judge Neely wrote this book in support of rule by judges as he felt the normal course of republican democracy was just too messy and inefficient. And surely we cannot disagree that rule by the courts is likely to be more efficient, as despotic rule What is to be done? First, and most obviously, the appointment to the Federal bench of judges who are judicious and capable of exercising restraint rather than egotistical power, and able and willing to read the Constitution for the plain meaning of its text rather than engaging in poetic flights of fancy. Attempts to confirm just such appointments have been thwarted in the last few years by the threat of the extra-constitutional use of the filibuster in the Senate. No parliamentary body can ever be bound by the rules adopted by a previous parliamentary body. Filibuster rules are not mandated by the Constitution and are subject to change by the Senate by majority vote only, as are any other Senate rules. This has been called the "nuclear option" to frighten the timorous. It merely remains for the Republican leadership of the Senate to show some backbone, exercise the option, and stop concentrating on just getting along. The contrast between the way the Democrats in the Senate treated nominees of Republican Presidents (Bork and Thomas) and the way Republicans treated nominees of Democrat Presidents (Ginsberg and Breyer ) does not bode well. A junkyard dog like Pat Leahy will eat up a fastidious fop like Orrin Hatch every time. Second, Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution clearly gives Congress authority to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. There is no reason other than lack of backbone and fear that prevents Congress from limiting such jurisdiction in cases such as, for example, those arising from disputes based on "separation of church and state" or "the right to privacy", neither of which appears anywhere in the Constitution. And finally, there is the real "nuclear option". The Judiciary depends on other branches of the government, principally the Executive, to enforce its decisions. As President Andrew Jackson once implied, rather than enforce an absurd decision (such as providing constitutional protections for terrorists threatening our national survival), just ignore it. The usual objection to the last option is that it does away with the rule of law. But is the rule of law what we have now? No, it is the rule of men! It is not the rule of law when robed tyrants pluck newly created rights out of thin air to decide cases; it is not the rule of law when judicial decisions are based on the laws of other nations selected at random to coincide with the beliefs of the judges; it is not the rule of law when decisions are based on an unknowable international consensus; it is not the rule of law to base judicial decisions on data gathered by organizations of sociologists or psychologists subject to political correctness and internal biases; and it is not the rule of law when one Supreme Court justice changes his mind, reverses his previous opinion, and precipitously changes the criminal law as it is applied to three hundred million people. In legal fields such as contract law, property law, administrative law , etc., there are usually readily comprehensible rules that are to be applied to a disputed set of facts. But constitutional law has no easily discoverable rules and isn't really law at all. Constitutional law is a method of argumentation designed to impose one's opinions on others. If judges cannot exercise the utmost restraint in making decisions based on the Constitution, no other branch of government has any obligation to obey their dictates. Yes, we are currently subject to the rule of men, not law. And we are ruled not by a President elected by the population as a whole and limited in tenure; not by a Congress elected from and representing all sections of the nation and subject to periodic reelections; but instead we are ruled by five unelected sequestered aloof judges serving for life, in spite of senility or insanity, and virtually unremovable . If the rule of law is what this tiny coterie absorbs from the small academic and politically correct elite it caters to, heaven help us all! |