A Plague on Both Their Houses - Virgil Goode for President

"Conservative pragmatism" has brought us to a conclusion that will probably shock our readers -- it would be better for Barack Hussein Obama to be reelected and face what is expected to be an enlarged conservative opposition in Congress, than for Congressional conservatives to become the pawns in the consolidation of socialist politics and the "leftist deconstruction of America’s moral identity."  Better that our representatives should be a minority fiercely defying what is wrong, than its docile facilitators "carrying water" for another liberal Republican administration.

We were heartened when Governor Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate.  He is the antithesis of Romney -- bright, conservative, principled, a leader who stands resolute for core convictions.  We look forward to the day when he might be a presidential candidate in his own right.  In the meantime, he is being used in a decades-long process that Ambassador Alan Keyes has eloquently described below.  

Conservatives in America do not have to settle, again and again, for the lesser of two evils.  Like the millions gathered in 1979 to greet Pope John Paul II in Warsaw's Victory Square, let us realize that there are more of us than there are of them.  An overwhelming majority of Republican primary voters voted for candidates other than Governor Romney.  And yet, once again, we are saddled with a nominee who does not represent the conservative beliefs of most Republican voters and whose ever-changing views and record in government are profoundly repugnant to Christians.  

It is a dark hour in America's history and we need a leader who has character and core beliefs, not a chameleon who has been on every side of every major issue.

We believe to our very core that Obama is an illegitimate President and a communist intent on destroying America;  but if we are to have any hope of restoring the patrimony handed down by our founding fathers, it is time to radically change course, reject a slower route to the same destination, and refuse what has again been offered by the Republican establishment.  It is America's acquiescence with evil - choosing over and over again the lesser of two evils -- that has brought us to bankruptcy, moral degradation and near collapse.  Stand tall, in solidarity with one another, and in the spirit of America's founders, reject the false pragmatism.  The lesser of two evils is still evil. 

With faith in Divine Providence, we join Alan Keyes in standing for what is good and true.  We don't expect our candidate to win, but as Saint Augustine wrote, "right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it."  For the sake of our conscience, we declare our independence from a pernicious, demoralizing and corrupting system. We will proudly vote for the Constitution Party candidate, Virgil Goode.

Is Romney to lead conservatives to self-extinction?

By Alan Keyes

“I know that Romney’s bad.  But first we get Obama out.  Then we’ll hold Romney’s feet to the fire.”  That’s one of the most common things I hear from self-blinkered GOP partisans hacking for the artificially engineered Romney nomination.  They angrily pretend that rank and file conservatives have no choice but to obey the “eyes wide shut” command emanating from the GOP’s elitist faction Party bosses.

There’s a suspiciously peremptory tone to their pretense these days.  As an old Star Trek fan I hear the chilly, disembodied voice of the Borg collective.  “You will be given no other choice.  We will add your no longer electorally distinctive ballot to our total. Resistance is futile.” Truth to tell, however, if you are authentically conservative, supporting Romney is also futile; futile and self-destructive.

A leftist pretender like Romney wins office by successfully gulling a conservative constituency that would otherwise oppose the things he really means to achieve.  He uses their support to build up the lie that he’s one of them.  Once in office he works with the leftists (in his own party and the opposition) to come up with predominantly leftist plans and proposals that implement his true goals.  The false perception that he’s “conservative” allows his supporters in the “conservative” party to hold any critics in its ranks in check .  “We have to trust him,” they say.  “We have to give him the benefit of the doubt,” they plead. “He’ll implement this with respect for our views,” they promise. And on and on.

Thanks to this strategy for governing, the duped conservatives can’t hold his feet to the fire because he has no need to bed down in their camp once elected.  He can set to work building a coalition that combines the left-wing tail of his own party with the left-wing body of the opposing party so as to pave the way to re-election, with or without the conservative dupes who obligingly handed him the opportunity to make them obsolete.

Thus leftist results, wearing a conservative gloss, move the government toward the greater consolidation of socialist politics.  In the process the term “conservative” gets progressively (pun intended) redefined to encompass more and more of the features of socialism.  What is more important, those who articulate and insist upon approaches that actually correspond to conservative principles and institutional goals (like respecting unalienable rights, preserving the natural family, encouraging morally responsible individual entrepreneurship  and competitive free enterprise) are put in the false position of being unrealistic “purists” and rigid opponents of “the possible.”

The GOP’s nomination of Mitt Romney actually marks the culmination of more than twenty years of this stupidly self-destructive brand of “conservative” pragmatism.  Whatever patter Romney uses to deceive, the actual results of his career stand well to the left of what Republicans claimed they adamantly opposed in Bill Clinton.  In terms of politics, Romney represents the successful “transvaluation of values” (as Nietzsche called it).  (That’s the political equivalent of a sex-change operation.)

The result is, and will be, to condemn real conservatives (those loyal to America’s founding principles and institutions, such as the US Constitution) to a Hobson’s choice-accept the new and ever leftward  redefinitions of conservatism, or else accept banishment to the outer limits of political irrelevance.  The first requires the sacrifice of conscience, common sense and intellectual integrity.  The second means life in a wilderness of lies, living on the remembrance of self-evident truth that is the “locusts and honey” of America’s true believers.

Faced with this choice, many GOP “conservatives” of my acquaintance have in one way or another jumped on the bandwagon of self-extinction.  Thank God, I am now no slave to their partisan machine.  I don’t feel their compulsion to suspend disbelief in order to pretend that a deed proven socialist and implementer of the leftist deconstruction of America’s moral identity can ever, in any sense, be “my candidate” for President.

No more do I feel any kind of racial compulsion to support a deeply rooted communist like Obama just because his skin is a lighter shade of brown.

I find that the inevitable wrestles of youth, and the ongoing tussles of adulthood, have confirmed the moral sense that flowed through the earliest roots of my moral identity.  That moral sense affirms that my goodwill is not bound to correspond to any material attribute or passion, but only to the insistent inclination that draws the mind and heart toward truth, the way a compass needle seeks the northern pole.

On both sides of the sham election currently being staged, truth is the uninvited guest. The racial partisans say I should not tell the truth about Obama’s allegiance to the cult of death: his advocacy of child murder; his suppression of the family’s call to procreation; his abandonment of God’s precious gift of freedom in order to enslave humankind to the outcomes of “history”, however inconsiderate, vile and inhumane.

The GOP partisans say that I should not tell the truth about Mitt Romney’s worship of ambition and financial gain, which led him, too, to sacrifice conscience and unalienable right in order to feed the depraved appetites of those he thought necessary to his advancement.  I should not tell the truth about his deed conflicted stands; his careless health care packages tainted with the blood of murdered innocence; his socialist “bipartisan” schemes tainted by the sacrifice of conscientious liberty.

But ringing true in my ears is the word that drowns out all they say.  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his own soul?” (Matthew 16:25) And before my eyes is the example of the one who said “For this was I born; and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth…” (John 18:37).  In my youth I was inspired by the painful history of my forbears to read and give much study to the effort to understand what it takes to found and safeguard human liberty.  And here, in what may be its gathering twilight, Christ’s word and his example epitomize the best fruit of that effort.

If tomorrow all the self-professed conservatives I have known and worked with in my life could break free from the mesmerizing light of false pragmatism and walk only by the light of that word and example, they would see their own strength.  Awakening from their redeemer bereft nightmare world of “lesser evils”, they would shun the tawdry compromise that now steals their strength away.   “But that would take a miracle,” you say.  So be it.

Papa Stronsay Monks Profess Vows

In September 2007, we posted a moving and wonderfully positive video about a new community of monks that had founded a monastery on the island of Papa Stronsay in the Orkneys.  The video was created by an agnostic who recognized in these good monks, known as the Transalpine Redemptorists, the power and dynamism of lived Truth.  Although thoroughly Catholic in their beliefs and sacramental life, they were at the time separated from union with the Vicar of Christ.  Thanks to extraordinary efforts by our holy Pope -- truly a Blessed Peacemaker and Holy Shepherd -- old divisions are being healed and our Lord's prayer that "all may be one" is being realized in countless, miraculous ways throughout the world.  

In 2009 the Transalpine Redemptorists of Papa Stronsay were reconciled with Rome, and on August 15, 2012 their community was canonically established in the Diocese of Aberdeen as the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer.  On August 22, 2012, the whole process of reconciliation was completed when the Papa Stronsay monks publicly professed their vows in the presence of the Right Reverend Dom Hugh Gilbert, O.S.B., Bishop of Aberdeen.

As in the days of Saint Columba and the monks of Iona, the British Isles are in need of holy monks dedicated to the Church and sharing the Good News of salvation.  In these good monks and others like them, the Lord of the harvest is renewing His Church and the world in wondrous and unexpected ways.  May the light of Truth, burning so brightly among the Orkneys, "renew the face of the earth" (Psalm 104:30).

The public profession of vows by the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer follows.  The sermon of his Lordship is at 32:15. The public profession of vows starts at 58:15

Deo Gratias!

The Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa

On today's wonderful Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa, I send my love and very best wishes to my Polish brothers and sisters who exemplify what it is to have "a Polish heart." Thank you for your friendship, powerful witness, and for your faithfulness.  May the Queen of Poland be your protection now and always.  Sto Lat!

Brittany Mruczek - Czarna Madonna

On this earth there is a place where every soul wants to return;

For there reigns the Queen of Poland, on her face two cuts are seen.

Sad but gentle as she gazes almost begging one and all

That they ask for Her protection with this call:

Madonna, oh Black Madonna how good to be your child

Oh, hide us dear Black Madonna in your heart so meek and mild.

A Grand Old Party in Panic

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Whittaker Chambers said that "the great failing of American conservatives is they do not retrieve their wounded."

 

He had it right, as Todd Akin can testify.

 

In an interview that aired last Sunday, Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, was asked whether he opposed abortions for women who had been raped. Akin's reply:

 

"From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. ... If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down ... .

 

"But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."

 

As no rape is "legitimate," this was a colossal gaffe.

 

Glenn Beck on the Churchill Bust

New Audio Surfaces of Obama Defending Infanticide in Illinois

 From LifeNews.com

That President Barack Obama was the only member of the Illinois legislature to not support a bill to provide medical care for newborns who survived failed late-term abortions is one of the key reasons pro-life voters will never support him.

Now, Weekly Standard reporter John McCormack has uncovered new audio of Obama, as a state legislator in Illinois in 2003, defending his position. Obama essentially argues that there is no need for the law because he trusts abortion practitioners to provide medical care for the baby they unsuccessfully tried to kill in an abortion.

The transcript of the video McCormack unearthed follows:

OBAMA: I just want to be clear because I think this was the source of the objections of the Medical Society. As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child – however way you want to describe it – is now outside the mother’s womb and the doctor continues to think that its nonviable but there’s, lets say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they’re not just out limp and dead, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. Is that correct?

OBAMA: Let me just go to the bill, very quickly. Essentially, I think, as — as this emerged during debate and during committee, the only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made an assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, lets say for the purposes of the mother’s health, is being — that — that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, or she made an error, and, in fact, that that physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical measures and practices that would be involved in saving that child. Now, if — if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects as well that doctors feel that they would be under that obligation, that they would already be making these determinations and that, essentially, adding a — an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion. Now, if that’s the case – and –and I know that some of us feel very strongly one way or another on that issue – that’s fine, but I think it’s important to understand that this issue ultimately is about abortion and not live births. Because if these children are being born alive, I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after. Thank you, Mr. President.”

Rick Warren Cancels Obama-Romney Civil Forum Due to Lack of Civility

 A Forum on Religious Freedom Will Be Held Instead

Pastor Rick Warren has canceled his highly anticipated "Saddleback Civil Forum" with presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, citing a lack of civil discourse between the two campaigns. Warren will hold a forum on religious liberty instead, which may bring attention to the Obama administration's birth control mandate less than two months before the presidential election.

Read the rest of this entry at The Christian Post >>