This is why many will continue to pretend they do good even if the entire world would condemn their acts or what they advocate (which is unlikely, for the world likes what is worldly). This is also why Christian humility is so liberating. To be able to look at one’s own sins and recognize we need the grace of Christ, and know we can obtain it through the sacraments, is the thing that really sets us free.

But, honestly, even making jokes about torturing POW’s and engaging in wars in unholy defiance of laws both Constitutional and natural and international appalls me. The Republicans had the chance to return this nation to a constitutional basis, a society of laws rather than fiat, and they did not.

The Republican party started as an Abolitionist party, and favored the North in the Civil War, and the Democrats supported slavery. Since abolishing slavery was a change to a settled institution, this would technically be both “liberal” and “un-conservative.” During Jim Crow, the Republicans supported and passed Civil Rights legislation, with some Democrats crossing the aisle to help, and the Communists, using Political Correctness (the theory that says all non-Commie institutions should and must be criticized, even if the basis of criticism shifts) supported youth movements, riots, and madness on the same side as their enemies, the Republicans. After the success of the Civil Rights movement, the Democrats rewrote history, the Republicans did nothing to stop them, and so the Democrat-controlled South and its segregation laws was re-cast as an albatross to hang around the neck of the Republicans.

Conservatives these days is used as a word to meant those who wish to arrest and reverse the concerted attack on those traditional institutions of marriage and private property which neither political party seems much interested in preserving. However, since the Dems are openly in war against Conservatism, and the Republicans pay lip service to Conservatism, like Charlie Brown letting Lucy hold the football for him to kick, we always vote Republican, and always end up supine, dazed, looking at the empty sky and wondering what went wrong.

I like your suggestion about amending the Constitution to reflect how, de facto, war is declared by the President and Congress has then to agree to fund and authorize it. It reminds me of what seems to be the British practice, the Crown (acting on the advice of the PM), declares war and Parliament then approves and funds it.

Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks

One heresy and abomination after another has risen up against the Church century after century, and never the same one twice. Each new opponent to the Church always looks like it shall be the final, and strongest, and last. Somehow, it never is. Yet the Church has not moved nor changed. Yet somehow we always prevail in the end. Why do you suppose that is?

I will answer the question, even thought you cannot understand it, because the darkness cannot comprehend the light. God is for us. What does it matter who is against us? We are only weak in worldly eyes. Soviet Russia took on the Pope, and scoffed because we have prayer, but no tank divisions. When the riots came, the tanks did not roll over the rioters. Whose hand stopped them? Where is Soviet Russia now? It is the same place the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Albigensians, and the Arians have gone.

Traditionally, we believe the state must defer to the Church. A king gets his authority from God and cannot exceed that authority or abuse it.

The argument that accepting tax dollars to do charitable work makes you the butt-monkey of Caesar is hardly a libertarian argument. We are not talking about a case where the state is claiming it will cut funding if the funds are not being used as promised. We are talking about a case where a fiat is being impose on all business and institutions whether the particular party ever took money from the state or not.

Like the argument about disobedient Pharisees in the Church, all your arguments are “dirty hands” arguments: you keep saying the Church has done some unrelated bad thing that compromised her integrity, therefore she can be raped. The argument is not logical. A jaywalker still has the right to free speech, and so does a murderer, up until the moment he is hanged.

Do you think inalienable rights can be forfeited by the fiat of an unelected bureaucrat? If so, the rights are not inalienable, are they?

Are you actually a libertarian? You don’t talk like one. You talk exactly like a PC Lefty seeking the unearned moral high ground, reveling in the strength of an unrestricted state.