First of all, I would like to send out some mad props to First Things, probably the my favorite magazine at the moment. You can read all of their stuff online for free a month after the issue has come out, or you can pay $15 for a student yearlong subscription.
Anyway, this article on Bush’s tacit and timid pro-life work is a must read.
Many are still left with the misperception that the Pope condemned the war in Iraq. I hope this post from the Corner’s Peter Robinson will help you all.
THE PONTIFF AND THE EUROBABBLERS [Peter Robinson]
Impossible though it may be to quote a papal condemnation of the war
in Iraq, lots of emails quoted statements against the war by Vatican
officials other than the Pontiff, notably by Cardinal Soldano, the
secretary of state, Cardinal Martino, the Vatican’s permanent observer
at the United Nations, and the former nuncio to the United States,
Cardinal Laghi. “What does it matter,” one correspondent asked, “that
the Pope himself didn’t condemn the war if his agents did?”It matters a lot.
No one in the Church has any standing or authority that even
approaches that of the Pope, as Soldano, Martino, and Laghi themselves
understand. Read their anti-war statements carefully and you’ll find
them making it clear that they’re speaking for themselves or for “the
Vatican,” by which they mean the secretariat of state—that is, the
Vatican diplomatic corps—but never directly on behalf of John Paul II.When Church officials speak as diplomats, moreover, the faithful owe
them no more allegiance than they would to any other diplomats. In
perfectly good conscience, in other words, a Catholic may conclude
just what I have concluded, namely that Soldano, Martino, and Laghi
have spent the last couple of years talking nonsense, all three
suggesting that a war can prove just only if condoned by the United
Nations, without, however, helping the faithful to grasp, a) how the
question of justice is affected by having an action ratified by a
body, two-thirds of whose membership is made up of dictators,
oligarchs, and nickel-and-dime tyrants, or, b) why the same Vatican
diplomats opposed the first Gulf War, even though that action was
indeed condoned by the United Nations.With a clear conscience and in perfect justice, it is possible to say
of Soldano, Martino, and Laghi what would be quite wrong to say of the
Pope: That they deserve no more respect or consideration than
Dominique de Villepain or any other practitioner of mere Eurobabble.
As this new Washington Times article points out, the DLC which has suffered a long series of setbacks lately has sent a salvo across the bow of the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
“To win back the White House in 2008, our party must change. We must be willing to discard political strategies that may make us feel good but that keep falling short. We must finally reject the false choice between exciting our base and expanding our appeal, because unless we both motivate and persuade, we’ll lose every time,” said DLC founder Al From and President Bruce Reed in a new manifesto for their party.
The crazies aren’t going to like the “Republican-lite” language used by the DLC. But the DLC has said they are willing to fight a massive political civil war to “scrub the anti-war contigents out of the platform.” The thing I think the DLC has missed is that the anti-war kool-aid has been drunk by so many Democratic activists that if they do what they want to do it will result in a likely schism of the party. Its the mirror image of those who want to remove the pro-life plank from the GOP. They may suceed, but if they do it will tear the party assunder.
It has to be a sad day for America when one of our major political parties is so off in la-la land that they openly wish for the failure of our policies and well are insane.