Archive for dependent

Dumping the Social Issues

We hear it again. After a Republican loses the election, moderates (with every encouragement from the left-wing Old Establishment Media (OEM)–wonder whose side they’re on) tell us that the problem is the social issues.

Read More →

Obamacare, the Church, and the Stupak Amendment

15 February 2012

Copyright © 2012 by P. A. Ritzer

In light of the Obama Administration’s recent attack on the Church, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience, I think back to the unseemly process by which Obamacare passed the Congress and how the Stupak Amendment conciliated Church leadership. On Sunday, November 8, 2009, we received an “Urgent Action” insert in our church bulletin directing us to contact our representatives and let them know that we wanted them to support the Stupak Amendment to the Obamacare Bill, an amendment that would prohibit funds “authorized or appropriated by” Obamacare to be used for abortion except in cases of life of the mother, rape, and incest. Rarely have I felt such a rush of shock and righteous indignation in a church. I knew the Stupak Amendment for what it was, a ruse to give cover to so-called pro-life Democrats to secure the passage of Obamacare. Thus I was infuriated that some Church leaders were taking the bait and getting reeled in to set up the Church for the assault that President Obama, his administration, and the Democratic Party would naturally–given their commitment to big government and the culture of death–unleash upon her through the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Obamacare. (Of course, Bart Stupak, and his cohorts, eventually knuckled under to pressure and dropped support for his own amendment after being given the cover of a meaningless executive order from the President.) I immediately wrote the following to a Church leader. I have here omitted the leader’s name and responses and other identifying portions out of respect and have omitted greetings and closings and have otherwise lightly edited these communications.

Copyright © 2009 by P. A. Ritzer

With all due respect, I feel conscience bound to let you know how deeply upset I was by the “Urgent Action Parish Bulletin Insert” we received at Mass this morning. I will be blunt in unburdening my mind, heart, conscience: These Democratic bills cannot be fixed; they must be stopped! There is no fix for them.

The Democratic Party has proven over nearly thirty years that it is committed to the culture of death! They “Borked” judicial nominees who would have been strict constructionists unlikely to find a “right” to abortion in the Constitution, and placed on the Supreme Court and any federal court (and Obama is trying to create more federal courts to stack) judges whose one requirement was to be pro-abortion. They used taxpayer money to promote and coerce abortion and contraception around the world, imposing them, with the help of the United Nations, on the poorest of peoples, except when Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush could stop them by executive order, which they circumvented nonetheless. Most opposed an attempt by Republicans to ban partial-birth abortion, a ban which Bill Clinton vetoed. They promote the destruction of the Sacrament of Matrimony. And more and more, they support euthanasia and assisted suicide. And now comes Mr. Obama, whose tedious obfuscation cannot hide his radical commitment to abortion in the great tradition of such notable Democrats, and Catholics, as Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius–it is scandalous! Why on earth would we ever want to hand over more control of healthcare to government, when we see what these people will do with the power we have already handed over to them in contradiction of the distrust of government enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

On the other hand, the party that has had a pro-life platform for the last thirty years, the Republican Party, does offer real healthcare reform that would make it more affordable and available without handing over more control of it to government. We hear about Stupak: what about the party that has maintained a pro-life platform, at great cost to itself, for decades? Why aren’t we working with them to oppose this monstrosity. So what if the Democrats have the votes. We should oppose them regardless!

What more does the Democratic party need to do to prove to us all that it is the Party of Death? Why on earth would we as rational people think we can work with a party so radically committed to the exploitation of women and girls and the slaughter of unborn children, and, more and more, the destruction of the Sacrament of Matrimony, and euthanasia. Those of us who have never been Democrats do not understand this accommodation of the Party of Death. We find it hard to see the great virtue in the party that was pro-choice on slavery: the party of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow, and the internment of Japanese-Americans. We do not see the virtue in the party that launched the attacks on personal property and the reduction of free human beings to impoverished dependency called the New Deal and the Great Society. We see, instead, how such attacks and reductions could create a dependent class robbed of initiative and responsibility ever dependent on the Democratic Party which would thereafter depend on their votes. And now they want to take over healthcare–God forbid! Have we not seen enough in the bankrupt programs of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and all the problems they have wrought.

We all are free (though less and less so under Democratic governance, especially if Obama gets his way about ending charitable deductions) to give to the charities of our choice. The churches, other private institutions, and localities, in the spirit of the doctrine of subsidiarity, used to provide medical and other services with the freedom to do so according to their moral codes. But the more we support the big-government Party of Death, and its programs, the less freedom we have to support the charities of our choice according to our values, and we give up that freedom to a party that embraces and promotes the culture of death, which is absolutely consistent with its big-government tradition.

Years ago, I met the priest who was the godfather of Avery Dulles when he entered the Church. He gave me an article he had written about his own conversion to Catholicism. In it he recounted how he would visit different churches in Germany during the Third Reich. As I remember it, he said that the Anglican churches did not say much so as not to rock the boat. The Lutheran churches spoke out about their right to religious freedom. But the Catholic churches preached that Hitler, Himmler, Goering, and Goebbels were wrong because Jesus Christ was right.

Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and Reid are wrong because Jesus Christ is right. We must oppose them because we must embrace Him.

The following is my response to the recipient’s response.

I remain blunt, as anything less seems to me a waste of time. I do not understand how the bills [Obamacare] can be fixed by amendments when the ideology behind the giant power grab, which is the basis for Democratic healthcare reform, is the same that has promoted, guaranteed, and funded the most aggressive and far-reaching attack on the culture of life in this country.

Yes, I am partisan. I make no apology for it. (Nevertheless, where the Republican party is wrong, I will oppose it.) One party, the Republican, is flawed, as are all human institutions; the other, the Democratic, has long been committed to evil, to the culture of death. I believe that the Democratic Party’s ongoing drive to expand government and control more and more aspects of our lives are part and parcel of their evil commitment to every aspect of the culture of death. Are there some Democratic leaders who are pro-life? Well sure, but less and less so when their party requires a vote. I make no judgment on their souls (I pray for them daily) but do judge their party, its actions, and the real consequences, intended and otherwise, of their actions. I would be irresponsible and a bad citizen to do less.

Today we Americans will countenance the cutting and tearing apart of another 4000-some children in the sanctity of their mothers’ wombs, and we will leave their mothers and fathers with the baggage. And the great Democratic Party will have had as much, if not more, to do with making sure this takes place than any other institution in the country. And we are still talking about it! The Republican Party has taken the principled stand on slavery, human rights, and abortion when it was difficult to do so. In each case, it was opposed by the Democratic party. When the Democratic Party believes that a pro-life position will get it power, it will convert. Until then, it must be defeated.

As for what the Republicans have and have not done. They did pass some healthcare reforms, like health savings accounts. Should they have done more, like tort reform and enabling competition between insurance companies across state lines, probably. (But among their priorities were two wars, and the Democrats–not to mention the press–were opposing every healthcare reform they attempted.) But many of us believe that the current “crisis” in healthcare has been manufactured by the Democratic Party to set up this enormous power grab, and that much, if not most, of the problems in healthcare have been created by other government meddling in the form of the likes of Medicare and Medicaid. As I was growing up, my family was anything but wealthy, but my mother was able to give birth to seven children in the hospital, and my parents were able to pay the bill. This was pretty much the norm among the families I grew up around in Wisconsin. Today, after forty years of government healthcare solutions like Medicaid and Medicare, a family could go bankrupt doing the same.

The following is my response to the recipient’s response.

I fear the blindness of partisanship that has a majority of Catholics helping to put the Party of Death in power.

I wrote the above over two years ago anticipating the recent attacks on the Church, and worse to come, if we did not stop this anti-Constitutional takeover of healthcare by Obama and the Democrats. We have got to deal with reality here. This is tyranny as only the Democratic Party can serve it up. And the Democratic Party is the Party of Death. This is not about well-groomed, well-dressed, well-fed, fat-cat Democratic politicians throwing around the antiseptic word “abortion.” This is about the truth of what that word represents: a horrific reality of human savagery and carnage; of exploitation of girls and women, mothers; of emasculation of boys and men, fathers. The Democrats have tried too long to keep this issue at bay by playing it as if it ought not be on the table, just as they did with slavery in the founding years of the Democratic Party with the Richmond-Albany axis. Just keep it off the table and let it fester and let people suffer and pretend there is nothing worth considering about it. They managed to some extent to do it with slavery until the Republican Party rose up in reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and defeated slavery and fought for full recognition of the rights of African Americans–the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and the Civil Rights Acts, etc.–despite the Democratic tyranny of the Ku Klux Klan, and lynchings, and Black Codes, and Jim Crow, etc. The unborn and their mothers and fathers need the Republican Party to be their champion as it was for slaves and freedmen. And we all need the Republican Party to reverse this anti-Constitutional, dictatorial power grab by President Obama and the Democrats. And we need to regain a love for life and freedom that welcomes the baby and stands up against government oppression.  

Solved: High College Costs and Illegal Immigration (Part Two)

Copyright © 2011 by P. A. Ritzer

15 November 2011

Instead of the government-student-loan approach to college financing, I propose the Knute Rockne approach, dramatized in the 1940 film Knute Rockne: All American, in which, fittingly, Ronald Reagan became the Gipper.

Rockne wanted to study at the University of Notre Dame. So, in order to do so, he worked four years at the Chicago Post Office and saved his money. And he continued working. Besides climbing up from a scrub to captain of the football team, he graduated magna cum laude and was offered a job at Notre Dame as a graduate assistant in chemistry. He accepted, as long as he could also help coach the football team. From 1918, when he took over as head coach, he compiled a record of 105 wins, 12 losses, 5 ties, 6 national championships, an .881 winning percentage, highest ever in college or professional football, before he died in an airplane crash at the age of 43. He once said: “The best thing I ever learned in life was that things have to be worked for” (www.knuterockne.com).

On the other hand, today we hear of “jobs Americans won’t do.” What! Jobs Americans won’t do! Since when? Since they could rack up tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars in government-backed or -provided student loans while immersed in youthful ignorance that does not appreciate the trap it sets until they are caught in it, or liberal arrogance that does not care who picks up the tab for their indulgence. And since, in 2009, President Obama and the Democrats engineered a federal take-over of the student-loan business, the president now claims the right to slash the amounts students will have to pay back to the taxpayers. Here’s one more tool liberals can use to turn Americans into effete, dependent, disgruntled, thoughtless voting machines ever ready to pull the lever for the liberals who will do their best to keep them that way.

I think of some of the jobs I had from the age of ten or so that helped pay my way through college and keep the student-loan monster from growing out of control: pulling weeds, delivering papers and collecting payment, mowing lawns, sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms, installing drain tile, flipping burgers, painting, hanging sheetrock, laying concrete block, striking joints between bricks, and just plain hauling by hand: brick, mortar, block, sheetrock, shingles, plywood, beds, windows, you name it. And most of my friends and family worked similar kinds of jobs.

And from that background I look with disgust upon the display of covetous malcontents–the Occupy Here, There, and Everywhere set–squatting on Wall Street and other public and private properties across the nation. And here is where the sluggish old gray matter churns up a solution. I will run the risk of assuming that these Occupy folks are Americans. And I can think of nothing that would better cure their ills than work.

Sooooo–I know you’re way ahead of me here–take away the student loans, (and dismantle other liberal devices, like the minimum wage, designed to protect a self-serving elite and limit the number of people who can find work) and suddenly we would have a vast number of people who would have an incentive to do the jobs Americans hitherto would not do! Think of the advantages. Instead of the spoiled Occupiers content to wallow in the filth and stench of their own sloth and discontent, we could have industrious citizens energized to wash off the dirt and smell earned from a day of honest hard work. Most would strive for something better and leave the entry-level work for the young workers who would follow in their footsteps. And their hard work at entry-level jobs would give more of a value to the reasonably priced education no longer artificially inflated by government student loans.

And having worked for their money, these young people would likely take a more mature and responsible approach to how much they would be willing to spend on their education and what they would expect to receive for their expenditures. Consequently, they would in all likelihood be less willing to spend what they had earned on much of the nonsense now taught at institutions of higher learning, and for that matter, would be more likely to identify the nonsense for what it is. This would help bring down college costs even more. And with a mature, responsible student population better able to identify and less likely to abide nonsense, liberalism and its attendant political correctness would naturally waste and slink away, and institutions of higher learning could once again freely and honestly search for and explore knowledge and truth as in days gone by.

But what if some natural genius of humble means cannot earn enough to attend Ivy League U? Well, he could apply his genius to studies at Local U and perhaps help raise the standing of that institution–rather than sacrifice himself to the liberal god of the status quo–and leave Local U a better place for those who would follow in his path.

Where does illegal immigration fit in? Bear with me.

(to be continued in Part Three)