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I look at my fellow Southerners in South Carolina with a feeling of exacerbation. Newt Gingrich, a pseudo-conservative, a “big government conservative,” a supporter, along with the late Jack Kemp, of affirmative action, a warmonger, and a supporter of torture as U.S. policy, won the Republican primary. He seems to desire conflict with Iran every much as Mr. Santorum. While I appreciate his conciliatory tone tonight, he resembles George W. Bush too much on both foreign and domestic policy. Ron Paul, who has the only sensible policy on foreign policy, received only 13% of the vote–thank goodness for the 13% who see beyond the lust for war and an ignorant Premillenial theology that has led to an unbalanced support of Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mr. Paul has opposed the arrogant Wilsonian triumphalism that Mr.Gingrich supports.How does Mr. Gingrich expect to balance the budget while expanding defense spending and pushing toward military conflict with Iran?
Mr. Gingrich said some good things in his acceptance speech about the Tenth Amendment–but this does not seem consistent with his policies earlier in his career. I have other questions: Does Mr. Gingrich support the free trade policy that has effectively destroyed American manufacturing? Does he really mean to appoint only strict constructionists to federal courts who will neither support the radical secularist agenda nor expand the power of the federal government over matters that should be reserved to the states? Is he willing to reconsider his position on torture? If American is as “exceptional” as he claims, surely he could support America being on the moral high ground by never participating in nor officially supporting waterboarding and other forms of torture? I doubt it,and unless I see evidence of a change of Mr. Gingrich’s positions on foreign policy and on torture, and if Mr. Gingrich wins the Republican nomination, I and other antiwar Republicans may have no moral option other than to vote for either the Libertarian or the Constitution Party candidate. The only votes that are wasted are those that violate one’s conscience. If Mr. Obama wins re-election as a result, so be it.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 08:27:08
I’ve given you a Like although our positions are far apart.
You have summoned evil spirits from the vasty deep, sir, by way of conservative discourse. Newt Gingrich is a Catholic who ostentatiously came to Catholicism as a sort of “return” as did, with much more dignity and meaning so very long ago, Cardinal Newman.
I fear that we do this in many cases as ersatz for love. It’s like Pablo Picasso painting pretty pictures in the 1920s because it was easier than being a Cubist in 1916, or Serge Prokofiev writing tonal music because it was harder to write like Berg. We have to face where we are, and I think Ron Paul’s nostrums are an evil social experiment, isomorphic to Communism.
Newt is trying to say what he thinks you want to hear. You need to say at this point, get the behind me Satan, and recognize one thing, that GK Chesterton knew. Catholicism is easier to reconcile with socialism. Reconciling it with libertarian anarchy-capitalism is the camel and the eye of the needle.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 14:29:59
My own position is closer to Pat Buchanan’s since I oppose free trade and am in favor of some government regulation of business, certainly at the level of laws to help avoid Enron situations and the recent financial crisis. But I hate both parties’ support of warmongering, and whatever faults he may have, Ron Paul is the only candidate who is not a warmonger.
My understanding of Mr. Chesterton is that he disagreed with both capitalism and socialism and sought a middle way between the two. I tend to agree with the Southern Agrarian’s critique of both capitalism and socialism, but am not sure their positive suggestions could be practically implemented in this society. They wanted agriculture to drive the economy rather than “industrialism.” But agriculture today is dominated by corporate farms rather than family farms, unfortunately. Actually I don’t mind in theory the idea of redistribution as long as resources such as land are distributed to families as private property.
Socialism tends to degenerate into the haves and have nots just as much as capitalism. No economic system will work without deep flaws in a fallen world. With so many Americans giving up any sense of virtue (most of my students have no problem with cheating if they can get away with it), whether you have capitalism, socialism, communism, redistributionism, agrarianism, won’t matter if most people lack virtue.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 15:02:37
True. And tragically, virtue will only return, along with great evil, when society collapses.
I now understand that you only partly like Ron Paul, and for a good reason: his plan to stop international adventures.
Our problem, whether as Catholics or in my case a person who considers himself “culturally” one, is that we live in a society in which capitalism has become an ideology. By my own theory of tolerance we must tolerate this.
The question remains…whether Federal intervention under Obama is evil. I do not think it is. Obama inherited a national security state which would overthrow him (as Nixon was overthrown) if he tried to implement a defense cutback. And his domestic policies are needed. Most of them benefit the least well off.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 14:22:38
Sir, the free market as an ideology is not consistent with Catholicism. Have you ever wondered why tobacco products are still sold?
It’s because of a logical-legal problem. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution has always been interpreted as guaranteeing private property and right to trade, and this is a good thing.
But the problem is that banning any legal product becomes very difficult, since the lawyers for the vendors of the product can always argue that private property and trade are being unconstitutionally interfered with.
The result? Legal products, such as cigarettes, stay legal. It took the Eighteenth Amendment to ban alcohol: the states and their counties had, prior to 1918, the right under the Tenth to do so, but not the Federal Government. An Act of Congress would have been found unconstitutional, but an Amendment once passed cannot, by definition, be unconstitutional. It can only be changed by another Amendment, here the 21st Amendment.
Now, the market (say to illegal drugs or abortifacients) is not as easily expanded. That’s because there’s no Ninth Amendment right to do things such as witchcraft or abortions not thought right in colonial times.
The result? The system can’t prevent evil.
Ideology trumps. Catholicism is permitted in China but cannot influence policy when it contradicts Leninism. Whereas Rawls tried to narrate liberalism as a sub-ideology that would be influenced collectively by the conflicting but reconciled views of decent people who hold a variety of world-views.
Ideology, whether Ron Paul’s anarcho-capitalism or Lenin, steps over the dying baby because it must. We need an “open” and liberal system which is soft around the edges and flexible, limited in a minimal way by the Constitution.
The meaning of minimal government is not a government we can drown in the bathtub, that stands idly by when people die as in Katrina. It’s one that responds in a nuanced way to the different views of decent people. For example, millions of decent people do NOT regard abortion as murder. The orthodox Catholic, who does, needs to reflect that Christ never said a thing about this issue and that they might have a point. In a multi confessional society he exercises the virtue of humility.
In the early Sixties, even the younger nuns admitted that there had to be a difference between the Protestant mom down the street who had an abortion in Sweden in preference to giving birth to an eyeless monster courtesy of Thalidomide, and a racist who killed black kids. Blessed was it in that dawn to be alive.
But once you rigidify all you get are daemons like Gingrich who are saying what their speechwriters think you want to hear. He’s a man incapable of love. And that was job one if I recall my Bible.
Nowhere in the Sermon on the Mount does it say either that we must not regulate the economy….or interfere in all cases with what we think is a moral wrong about to be done by a stranger, unless that wrong is to us or our family. But it does say that the Samaritan, the stranger, is better than the pious Pharisee because he helps another person.
Of course…I realize that the Catholic regards the fetus as a person from the moment of conception. But I do not and neither do millions of others. A baby can remember a fetus cannot. The point of having a soul is found for me not in Catholic dogma but in Peter Singer.
Sorry for unloading these thoughts on you, Professor. Feel free to delete. I don’t think my Dad was as much of a pain in the ass.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 15:08:47
Just saw this on my Facebook:
http://floridaindependent.com/65318/newt-gingrich-rick-santorum-catholics-to-stop-perpetuating-ugly-racial-stereotypes
Catholic laypeople are calling on Republican candidates to stop racial stereotyping.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 18:43:12
All the candidates for the presidency,excepting Paul, belong to a certain class of instinctive-intellectual types. By this I mean that their behavior is motivated usually by a mixture of emotion and thought with only rarely any benefit from the higher aspect of their beings. This indicates that they almost always act from egoism.
To me it seems clear that Ron Paul is motivated by a desire to help others as much as he can.
According to his brother Dr. Paul read books on economics while waiting for babies–and there were over 4,000 of those. So it would be unwise for anyone not very well educated in economics to critique what he has in mind. However, I personally have enough faith in the man to consider that he will act wisely in that area should he become president. I have absolutely no faith in the other candidates when it comes to money. My sense is that Paul’s economics is very sophisticated and would require a good deal of study from most of us to fully grasp.
Two of the candidates are Catholic. Unfortunately the Catholic Church has a very old habit of supporting dictatorial regimes. And it is an authoritarian structure. Whether being a Catholic really means much to Gingrich I do not know.
Romney causes me to think of obese or very fat people. His one quarter or more billion dollars is not a recommendation. And there is something in his manner which communicates that he regards himself as a member of a very special class of people. The super rich. A member of the one percent of the one percent. I am afraid their wealth has gone to their heads and caused them to swell.
And then there is the man without a past, the current President. Having spent quite some time researching the requirement, “natural born citizen”, it seems clear that this means born in the USA to citizen parents. I am sure more law professors know this than are willing to say so in public. [ While I don't think it will ever come out, there is a good chance that Mitt's father was not a citizen as George was born in Mexico to parents who may have lost their citizenship by expatriating.]
So Ron Paul is a gift to the American people. An upright and very intelligent man, with a real past that can be known about, who wishes to help his country. The fact that Paul Craig Roberts thinks highly of Paul is another very strong recommendation. In the meantime the Gingrich win is good because it has temporarily knocked Romney aside; and we can hope that the two will wear each other out. So there is a slender chance that Paul might get the nomination. I hope so.
As regards “Spinoza”, foeteses, and Peter Singer: I don’t think memory is a good test of whether a soul is present; there are plenty of old people who have little or no memory. These strong prohibitions are usually necessary for human beings as once the line is crossed–say by allowing infants to be killed because defective, the line has a tendency to move into new territory. Old people who are not productive perhaps. Criminals. People with expensive health problems.
Finally, I am completely against the drug war. I would be also against making cigarettes illegal. Abortion is in a different category as some believe that this is not merely a woman doing something to herself. What I would strongly recommend is making abortion readily available during the first tri-semester. That way we don’t get late term abortions which I do think are in effect murder. This does not mean that I favor abortions. I don’t. They are extremely hard on the woman if nothing else. But this is a long and difficult subject.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 07:48:41
I a aware that George Romney was born in Mexico. However, the Constitution was ambiguous are as most laws, which seem so precise when drafted. We have judges and juries because no law is precise.
Now, the wording of the Constitution is this: “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.” (Art. II Sec 1).
The word “natural born” is ambiguous and case law has made it more precise. Basically: If you’re born in the USA to citizens, legal aliens illegal immigrants OR ABROAD to one or two citizens, you’re a citizen. Not too many conservatives are aware that if an illegal immigrant gives birth on USA soil to a child, the child is a citizen, and they’re not aware of this because much conservative propaganda is based on sexual fear, and this was only guaranteed by the Fourteenth amendment to which conservatives have a basic antipathy.
Which means that in the worst case George Romney was a citizen in two ways: because he was born in 1907 to persons considered citizens although Mitt’s grandparents were born in territories and not states: there is case law concerning this, and Mitt was born in Michigan which makes him a citizen by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.
However, much conservative discourse (especially that of Gingrich) rests on confusion that I’d call Satanic if I were a religious man, since it rests upon use of language attributed to Satanic people by writers including John Milton and CS Lewis. Satanic discourse need only raise doubt and needs not be true, and since many conservative Americans aren’t even aware that American citizens abroad sire citizens by way of case law, and that persons born to anyone in the USA are citizens by way of the Fourteenth Amendment, there will be massive confusion over this issue should Mitt get nominated.
Obama was born in Hawaii and presented the long form certification of his birth as of last May. Hawaii has been a state since 1960 so under the Fourteenth Amendment, our President is a citizen.
I believe Catholics, and people who regard themselves as I do as culturally catholic, should have nothing to do with conspiracy theory. This is because I learned from Viatorian priests (who followed Jesuit models) that as St Paul wrote, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”: whereas the conspiracy theorist, because he so willingly uses doubt of written records to falsify objections to his theory, lives in a world of doubt. The Counter-Reformation made peace with Galileo and with science and as a result there have been great Catholic scientists and historians who, while not always trusting the written record, know enough about primary and secondary sources to assemble a history.
Whereas in USA culture, the disappearance of the teaching of history has made our political culture fabular: one of horror stories in which newly infantilized Americans are terrorized by possibilities in a model of the way the fear of Hell was used by uneducated nuns in my Catholic primary years of the 1950s. I was reading a history of Britain in a North Carolina restaurant, the friendly and efficient waiter asked me what sort of book it was, and I realized with horror…he did not know that there are books of history that can be true or in error. He thought Norman Davies “The Isles” was a work of fantasy.
Gingrich preys upon such people. At least Romney keeps his mouth shut. But I will vote for Barack Obama, especially if he does more Al Green riffs.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 18:06:10
There is a lot to reply to in your comment. However, the expression “natural born citizen” is not ambiguous; we simply have lost track of the meaning. At the time it meant a person born according to natural law as a citizen, i.e. born in the land of two citizen parents–actually only the father counted in those days. Someone who knew Latin but little history would find all kinds of “ambiguities” in the writings of Cicero. [see http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/ WordPress blog of Leo Donofrio, Esq. for excellent treatment of the subject]
Conspiracies are a regular event in all societies. Theories are potential explanations. The Official Report on 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory. Unless you believe that governments always tell the truth it is wise to consider alternative explanations for events.
The Constitution is our protection against government. If we allow one thing here and one thing there to be re-interpreted by the government, before we know it we will have no rights. I am afraid that your Catholic background disposes you to trust authority when it is so often not worthy of that trust. A little skepticism is a very healthy thing.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 20:05:47
The problems with the “natural law” theory are legion.
If it’s applied to the Founding Fathers, they were not natural-born citizens. They were born as subjects of King George I, II, or perhaps of Queen Anne. In some cases, their parents were born abroad.
It fails to account for the fact that if a mother who is an American citizen gives birth abroad, and her husband is a citizen, the child is a citizen.
It fails to account for the fact that in practice, the “set” of “natural born citizens” is the “set” of all citizens that complements the set of citizens who acquired their citizenship through a naturalization process. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, all persons born in the USA (even the children of so-called “illegal” immigrants) are citizens. They are natural-born and all this means is that no legal process of “naturalization” (to make something natural that was not previously so) is needed to make these people citizens.
The broad language of the Fourteenth Amendment was needed to undo Dred Scott v Sanford which had questioned the citizenship of free citizens of color living in free states in that they were found not to enjoy those rights in their (slave) state of origin.
The “original intent” of the natural-born citizenship requirement was to ensure that ambitious foreigners would not seek office in the infant Republic. There is no indication whatsoever that the Founders felt that American citizenship was hereditary in a positive sense, or could be “attainted” or lost by George Romney’s sojourn in Mexico. This is indicated by the ban on titles of nobility and the less well known ban on “attaint of blood” in III/3.
Roman citizenship was no model for the Founders despite their classical learning: one effect of widespread ignorance of classical learning even among conservatives is the assumption that at 1700 years’ distance, the Founders thought the detailed institutions of Rome a model. They did know enough to know that Rome’s monarchy was a tyranny that ended in the rape of Lucrece at least in legend, its Republic ended in assassination and civil war, and that its Empire never solved the problem of Imperial succession. They proposed to learn from its errors.
Barack Obama was born in the USA to an American and a Kenyan citizen: under the Fourteenth Amendment he is a citizen because when Obama was born, Hawaii was a state…thereby avoiding the problem that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment meant “United States” in the old -fashioned plural sense (as in “the United States ARE x”) and may not have thought of our considerable territories.
Prior to May of 2011, Barack Obama had made available a short form certificate because under Hawaii’s laws, the long form is private to protect people. But in May he produced the long form: that’s all she wrote.
Barack Obama was not naturalized when an adult, therefore is a natural born citizen. Under our laws, there are only two types of citizens (and they are equal under our laws): natural born and naturalized.
Likewise Romney was born in Detroit in the state of Michigan, so he’s a natural born citizen and eligible for the Presidency.
There is no third type of citizen: there are only two. Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in Austria to Austrian citizens, knows he cannot be President until we amend the Constitution.
Now as to conspiracy theory.
Our government does many wrong things but the major wrongs do NOT include cover-ups. The facts that we overthrew democratically elected leaders in Guatamela and Iran in 1954, and in Chile in 1973, were known as they occurred.
The reason why many people BELIEVE there are conspiracies is because most Americans don’t bother to read quality newspapers and, lacking any academic preparation in American history, politics and government, cannot framework what they do know.
To the ignorant, knowledge is a conspiracy.
The fact is that the US government makes quite a lot of information available. But it’s kinda hard to read. So, people who wish to sound well-informed simply make up or believe conspiracy theories which can never be falsified, for documentary evidence to the contrary can always and at-will be rejected as a fabrication.
But conspiracy theorists are not only ignorant they are also cowards who are afraid of being wrong.
Ignorance is NOT “skepticism”.
it is natural for losers to think that the money system is a conspiracy against them. It gets them off the hook for their own failure to work and save, and their foolish investments.
It is natural for unfeeling men to call the assassination of JFK a conspiracy. This lets them evade the fact that capitalism had as early as 1963 created a class of drifters ready to kill that included Oswald, and three years later Richard Speck of Chicago who when turned down for a job on a lake freighter, killed eight student nurses.
It is natural to call 9-11 a conspiracy if you can’t face the fact that we used the Afghan people to defeat the Soviets and then tossed them aside which radicalized Osama bin Laden.
The conservative’s instinctive dislike of any social theory, in which he immediately claims that the theory is an attempt to excuse bad behavior, is replaced in the conspiracy-conservative by trumping theories which always win because they are unfalsifiable. Projecting an absolute trust in documents that favor the conspiracy-conservative, the cc is forever finding smoking guns while claiming that smoking guns that disprove were planted by the cops.
You can’t lose if you do this. But you can never win, either, and, worse, you make reason impossible.
Jan 23, 2012 @ 09:18:26
The idea that George Romney’s being born in Mexico, or any “attaint” on Mitt’s grandparents being born in Utah when it was a territory under suspicion because of Mormon polygamy, is atavistic and runs up against the fact that at the time of the drafting of the Constitution, most “natural” citizens’ parents or grandparents had been born in Great Britain. The theory that Mitt’s citizenship is “tainted” is profoundly un-American.
An obscure article of the Constitution (III-3) reads: “The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.”
What it means is that in America, we don’t hold a person’s ancestry against him. Richard Duke of York in the 15th century had a stronger claim to England’s crown than Henry VI since Richard was descended from an elder brother of Henry’s ancestor where both were sons of Edward III: but Richard was “attaint” because of the treason under Henry V of his father.
While few modern Americans know this, the Founders did and it offended their Enlightenment notions of personal accountability.
Modern anti-Romney Republicans, however, seek to attaint Romney based on his grandparents being Mormons in the Utah territory even though the Fourteenth amendment guarantees that Mitt Romney’s natural born.
This is so pernicious. It’s worse than the Obama-birther lie: it’s reminiscent of rumors about President Harding’s black ancestry in the 1920s.
It’s pernicious, indeed Satanic, because it puts the notion of membership in our community into play in such a way that anyone at any time can be excluded from being a “real” American.
American Catholics, whose ancestors fought in all our wars, need to fight this tooth and nail. As it is, many Fundamentalist Americans do not believe that Catholics are Christians…and they want a “Christian” America.
Otherwise we’re all Richard Duke of York whom good Henry made Duke of York, partly revoking the attaint in an attempt to prevent England’s Wars of the Roses, but who was followed by whispers that his “blood” was that of a traitor.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 21:34:24
I am enjoying the exchange of ideas here. John, I agree with you that memory is not a sufficient criterion for personal identity; as Joseph Butler noted long ago, memory presupposes identity rather than constituting it. On Mr. Paul, I agree that he is a decent person–will his system work in a culture that has bought into self-absorption.
I know, with due respect to those who disagree, including Spinoza (don’t worry about posting–I enjoy discussion of these issues at a higher level than is found in the media) that socialism does not practically work well as an economic system. It works best in a small, homogenous society such as Sweden, but in the United States, it would lead to debt that would make today’s debt look like chicken feed, and it also increases federal power to an untenable degree. Social programs cost money–and we cannot keep spending on them at today’s levels–even cutting defense to zero would not balance the budget. Have you considered that if China calls in our debt because we don’t control spending that more poor people will suffer in the long run?
Jan 23, 2012 @ 08:59:20
The debt to China is not caused in the main by our “out of control” government domestic spending, because our domestic spending is not out of control. The highest paid teachers in our public schools make only 50K per year by law no matter how good they are or how hard they work.
No, it’s our consumer spending which is out of control in part because we won’t pay taxes and want the money for spending now.
The major components of the debt to China are direct consumer spending on countless desires that have been multiplied since the end of WWII by capitalism and an indirect hit caused by our military spending. The consumer component is direct because China makes the crap we buy. The military component is indirect because its purchased primarily from US suppliers but it creates an enormous pressure on capitalist markets which is relieved by borrowing money from China.
Since 1980, middle-class Americans have wasted far more per capita on consumer goods than has been wasted on their behalf by Federal spending on health, education and welfare.
In 1980, hardly anyone owned a computer. Today, most families have one or more which are usually buzzing with viruses and run slowly because they are improperly maintained.
I was able in 1985 to buy what I wanted: a new car to get to work and the beach. All I wanted was manual transmission, no air conditioner and reliability. I was able to do so. Ten years later the same model came with air conditioning standard which wastes gasoline and pollutes the environment. I do hope the Fiesta is more environmentally safe than the Escort was then, but I wouldn’t know since I live in a civilized place, Hong Kong, where you don’t need a car because of the availability of pubic transit.
In 1980, you could go into Bailey’s Cowboy Clothes on Van Buren in Chicago and buy a pair of Levi’s for less than thirty dollars, and the old cowgirl selling the jeans would call you “slim”. Today there’s a dazzling array of overpriced and inferior jeans with fancy French names.
Now “they” want you to read books on a backlit screen downloaded from the Internet when to buy the book, you need a credit card with all sorts of hidden gotchas and fees. But no study has been made of the long term effect on eyesight of reading text on a backlit screen as opposed to reflective paper, and it is well known that the muscles of the eye, when not used (when the older person simply pays more attention to the text as opposed to simply increasing the font size), will atrophy. Gone is the healthy exercise of browsing second-hand bookshops.
In the Fifties, I could drive out with Grandfather only thirty miles to buy fresh fruit on a farm. Today, apart from farmer’s markets in upper middle class communities, the fresh and safer produce is “organic” and commands a premium.
THIS is where the money went and where it goes. Basically, middle class people don’t see the merit in taking care of other people’s children. They’d rather go on a cruise, not knowing that cruise companies have skimped on safety training and expect waiters to pilot lifeboats … and hire cowards as captains as seen in the Costa Concordia disaster.
THIS is why we can’t simply raise taxes. People who pay their taxes are either Germans or fools in the social mind. But my Dad, while German in ancestry, was no fool. When I cleaned out his house I found neat copies of every tax return he filed since getting out of the Army in 1948.
As his highly competent executor, my brother got him several refunds because in cases of doubt Dad would err on the Government’s side. Yet since 1980 there’s been an industry which tells people that paying taxes is optional. Thank God for Hong Kong’s system…it’s a flat tax, but we all pay at the same rate, and the obscene fact, that Mitt Romney pays 15% but the working family, 35%, doesn’t exist here.
As to the meme that “Swedes can have socialism and we can’t because we’re diverse”: go to Stockholm. You will see people of all races. And Brazil features Hispanic, Portuguese, Italian, indigenous cultures yet under socialist policies, it has just surpassed Britain in GDP and may become the strongest economy in the hemisphere.
Jan 22, 2012 @ 21:48:35
Jan 23, 2012 @ 21:31:17
Spinoza: the 14th Amendment does not address “natural born citizen” issues. The Founders and other citizens were given separate treatment in the Constitution. I am not sure why this bothers you so much. Also I think we need to be very careful when dealing with the concept of evil. I am not sure why demanding a special requirement for presidency has anything to do with Satan.
Personally I think the quantity of good in a society is fairly steady. Some things get better; some get worse. Materially life was better after WWII for some years–but some areas like alcoholism were not treated properly. Nor was mental illness. And black certainly had it worse . . . But that is just a theory of mine.
I agree with Gratiaetnatura that a small country can have socialism whereas in one as large as the USA it would not work. Ample supply of good jobs and then a far better safety net for a smaller number of people would be ideal. Most people like the idea of earning their own living. But for a widow with three growing children what this country offers is insufficient. And in any case the idea that money equals happiness is not only misleading but very harmful to many who do not have the intellect or education to figure things out for themselves.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 09:19:21
The Fourteenth Amendment was the first to define Citizen: if you don’t know what a Citizen is you do not know what a “natural born Citizen” is in logic. Therefore you may not dismiss it.
The Founders did not receive special treatment. George Washington and John Adams were natural born citizens under the law since they were born in colonies that became the USA, whereas one of the objections to Alexander Hamilton as President was that he’d been born in the British West Indies.
As to Satan. I believe our concept of Satan is a reification or metaphor for our own capability for evil, and that as a metaphor it is far more important than any theological delusion, used as a tool of control by truly Satanic persons (psychotics) to check and control the egoism, renarrated as Satanic, of people who must serve them.
Augustine was far too intelligent in Civitas Deo to claim that Rome and Hippo had become overrun with demons. Instead, he carefully analyzed classical culture to show that polytheism had become license at the bottom of society, and illegitimate tyranny at the top.
It is in fact a delusion of a reaction to economic modernization to believe in Thrones and Powers, literal demons and exorcism, and while vestigial Catholicism includes exorcism, its mainstream theology preaches, as Paul has said, that evil is nothingness and not somethingness.
But it’s the politicians and politicized churchmen who need Satan and Hell to terrorize the rest of us…for example in Ron Paul’s oh so genteel demonization of welfare recipients. Or the idea that Mormons are wicked or stateless, for that matter.
When Americans renarrate their own history to downplay the role of slavery in the Civil War, they are engaged, I believe, in applied Satanism because the written record indicates that up through 1859, slavery obsessed both sides. Given what happened in Yugoslavia, in Catholic Croatia alone, the breakup of a Federal Republic or even its federal institutions such as a bank is a Satanic social experiment and I want no part of it.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 15:09:38
Mr. Lincoln himself said the war was about preserving the Union; he offered to make slavery permanent in twelve states if the South would return. The spread of slavery to the territories was one of many issues, including the steep tariff that hurt Southern agriculture and helped New England manufacturing (and speaking of a slave-like system, you know the poor working conditions at the time). Slavery is wrong because it violates human dignity–it is wrong, period, regarding of utilitarian reasoning. Not everyone who believes that the War between the States was for other reasons than just slavery are justifying that slavery.
As for Satan and demons, it is true that those beliefs are not in the Christian creeds; however, they are such an essential part of church tradition that I accept them as more than metaphors. The existence of such beings should never justify removing one’s personal responsibility for moral evil–even if temptation comes from “without” in the sense of beyond the natural order, a person has a moral duty to resist such temptation. In any case, if I believe in a personal God who created the universe, I have no a priori difficulty regarding the existence of other beings that transcend the known matter-energy universe.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 18:01:51
Article III, Section 4 of the Constitution states clearly that one must be a natural born citizen or citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution to be President. The latter was necessary for a person at the time to become a president as there would have been no natural born citizens of the right age. Clearly the Founders knew what they meant by citizen and also natural born citizen as both terms are used in the Constitution. One could become a Senator merely by being a citizen. The Founders were drawing on both English Common Law and the LAW OF NATIONS. I strongly urge you to do some research on the matter. In an earlier comment I mention a blog where very professional legal scholarship and research is published.
I am not sure that using the words Satan and Satanic benefit your expositions as they are sensational expressions. It also seems entirely possible that there are both benevolent beings of a higher nature as well as malignant ones. I also notice that you frequently refer to the Catholic Church but it is not clear why. Good luck.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 19:28:02
There is no article III, section 4 in the Constition: the relevant section is Article II section 1.
While it is correct that there was a grandfather clause that allowed “citizens of the United States at the time of the adoption of [this] Constitution”, “citizenship of the United States” has often been treated as honorary membership in a white man’s club as it was frequently in play.
The problem here is that nobody had any more than a common sense understanding of the alternative condition, “a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution”.
Precisely because women were not considered citizens (in not being allowed to vote), poor men were not considered citizens (in not being allowed to vote), freedmen were not considered citizens, and slaves not considered human beings in 1789, this put the concept of being a member of the Men’s Hut of full “citizenship” in play in political discourse, and resulted in frequent challenges to the citizenship and then the white male humanity of one’s opponent … among the most famous the challenges between Hamilton and Aaron Burr that resulted in Hamilton’s death.
Dialectically, almost as soon as the cat of human equality was let out of the bag, the wealthy and elite Founders were anxious to say “we’re just kidding”.
“We don’t mean poor men, women, saves, or Loyalists. You’re a citizen if you fought on Washington’s side, are male, and own property.”
This tendency re-emerges in the ugly and inapposite phrase “illegal immigrant”. It existed in the idea that Germans and Irish who were Catholic could never be “real Americans”.
Because Kennedy, an Irish Catholic, had the bad taste to get shot by a crazed loner who was a member of the Protestant white male club, and the bad taste to be a victim, and the bad taste to have a wife that didn’t have a face like a camel turd, we haven’t had a Catholic president since and we won’t unless we elect the psychotic Gingrich…who isn’t what I consider a cultural Catholic.
If Obama fails to get re-elected, which hopefully he will not, we’ll never again have an African American president because just as the media constantly uses Kennedy’s exciting but flawed character as a boogie-meme, as it were, it will use Obama’s failure as a boogie-meme. Mario Cuomo would have made a great President, he didn’t have a chance.
You see, for me, “Satanism” is that form of evil that corrupts language as it was for CS Lewis in his novel That Hideous Strength. It was a dangerous ambiguity in 1776 that “people” had both a full extension that included men, women and children, but was also as honorific as “man” (as in “real man” who’s learned to kill in the military) is today.
Because it was honorific, Frenchmen with a straight face could refer to white adult male Frenchmen as citoyen but could not consider black Haitiennes to be citizen resulting in the genocidal attempt to suppress Haiti’s slave rebellion.
Finally, because of the persistence of tribalism, American Catholics expect former Catholics to turn into Protestants like Sarah Palin but I happen to consider myself “culturally” Catholic which is why I agree with the blogger here on some issues.
The situation is Satanic because as seen in late Roman literary examples such as Apuleus, the elite has over learned ironic rules for the use of their language and it becomes impossible to speak of justice and fairness. Satanism is an attack on language.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 20:42:50
Spinoza: “The Current INS Officially Recognizes A Delineation Between Natural-Born and Native-Born.” http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/
It is best for legal scholars to present this material to you.
Personally I am very careful not to consider the age I am living in as particularly superior to any other age. That women did not have the vote in the 18th and 19th century had a certain logic. I think when you talk about common sense definition that you are not yourself sufficiently well educated regarding that era. It was not uncommon for men at that time to know both Latin and Greek. But do not take my word for it. First do some reading on the subject.
I am still not sure what the constant reference to evil and Satan adds to the discussion. I am fully aware that bad things occur and that some person’s lack in the moral area.
Maybe we could for the time being confine ourselves simply to determining if the expression “natural born citizen” had a very specific meaning at the time or not.
Please keep this in mind. The Constitutional Convention was attended by almost 60 well educated men. Ambiguities and confusions in the proposed document were addressed and corrected. Remember these men wanted this Constitution ratified and that meant a great many persons reading it with great care. I seriously doubt that there is a single word, phrase or sentence in the whole document that was not scrutinized by hundreds of men who had the equivalent of a college education. The fact that natural born citizen applies only to President and Vice President would have certainly caught their attention. Were this expression ambiguous at the time it would have been elaborated. How many expressions do we use that in two hundred years will be obscure?
I am looking forward to at least one comment where you do not use the words evil or Satan or Satanic or the like.
Jan 25, 2012 @ 22:23:25
Spinoza: Here the whole citizenship story is laid out in an elegant fashion by Leo Donofrio,Esq.
http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/georgia-brief-merged-final-redacted.pdf
If you read with care the 52 pages I think you find everything you could possibly want. Let me know how it goes. Leo is a very fine and diligent legal scholar and a Christian as well!
Jan 25, 2012 @ 23:44:40
No, I have no time to read Internet content since I’m too busy reading real books by genuine scholars who’d be ashamed to call themselves Esquire. Internet content cites in circles and stays within ideological kraals for this reason. It uses a lot of pointless pseudo-scholarship not to establish a community truth but rather, in a Satanic fashion, to instill individual and isolating doubt.
There are exceptions including the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, my blog, and this blog.
I am NOT your student and your citation of a nonexistent section of the Constitution makes me unwilling to be one. Furthermore, I do not trust scholars who in public identify themselves as Christian. This is not the practice amongst reputable scholars: I do not know whether Gordon Wood, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky or John Nash are observant Christians or Jews.
In the folk mind, with its anxiety to jump to conclusions and to assume that the scientific method or critical thinking on the one hand, and the religious or mystical world view on the other, are logically exclusive, it is assumed without evidence that a tenured faculty member at a first class university is not observant unless he comes out of the closet as such.
But the possibility is that the faculty member regards his church attendance or religious belief a private matter.
This self-identification as observant Christian or Jew is a secular phenomenon which has manufactured a hegemonic Israel and a Catholic Church which in the USA rather resembles just another Protestant sect.
George Romney’s religious affiliation was a private matter. Now that it’s a public matter that Mitt’s a Mormon, we’re headed in the direction of a Satanic establishment of religion in which Christian belief will be like clicking “Accept” on a software license. Many American Christians cannot name the Gospels and if a copy of a Mozart mass is jumbled on download to the iPod, many American Catholics would not be able to put it in the right order, since it’s in Latin and Greek.
The Christianity of these people is to me Visigothic.
Jan 26, 2012 @ 03:05:08
The reason that I referred you to a legal scholar is that I can not remember every article and section in the Constitution and do not always have the time to check. I think you can allow me a simple mistake. To assume that something on the Net is inferior to a book is hardly wisdom. Most scholars have blogs or publish articles and essays on the Net. It is just a fact you will have to get used to. And as for books there are plenty that are not worth reading.
I see nothing wrong with letting people know if you have a religious affiliation. It seems you have done that. And the author of this blog has also. You seem to have a number of peculiar beliefs. Statements like “The Christianity of these people is to me Visigothic.” are to me at least nonsensical. And I see you can not write a comment without a mention of Satan. I assume He is very important to you. In any case I will not respond to your comments anymore as they seem to annoy you without furthering any communication of value. Best of luck.
Laurie Roth vies for Constitution Party nomination for president « CITIZEN.BLOGGER.1984+ GUNNY.G BLOG.EMAIL
Apr 20, 2012 @ 16:08:47