“Strangers”

Strangers
July 29, 2015
Dr. Mark S. Latkovic

We are strangers in our own land

Aliens they do not understand

Hatred fanned

Conscience banned

It’s all been planned

No place left to take a stand

Dying by the enemy’s hand

Waves wash blood from sand

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“Miscellaneous Meanderings” (July 2015)

Miscellaneous Meanderings on the signs of the times
Dr. Mark S. Latkovic
July 1, 2015

{Some of these “Miscellaneous Meanderings” appeared on my Facebook status updates and on Twitter in June 2015, but appear here often in a slightly revised form}

~Add biotechnology to the list of things (contraception, gay marriage, etc.) that Catholics will be penalized and persecuted for in the future for not going along with.  Pressure will mount for them to accept artificial reproductive enhancement technologies – or else.  Or else, more than ever before, face the threat of being socially ostracized, fined, and even imprisoned.

~Our society is characterized by a forgetfulness and abandonment of truths that not so long ago were accepted and lived as, well, true (Thomas Sowell illustrates this well with respect to crime and policing, arguing that it’s often intentional: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060215.php3).

~The German bishops have flipped out (See, for only the latest, this article: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gay-unions-now-central-to-synod-agenda-after-irish-vote-cardinal-kasper).  These days, it seems, nothing good comes out of German Catholicism (especially Cardinal Kasper).  It’s a spent force.

~Gen. Stanley McChrystal has published a new book on leadership.  Reading this essay on it (see http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/30/stanley-mcchrystals-accidental-expose-about-the-military/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRogu6jMZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JSsZhI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D) reminds me how true it is that we often forget to our detriment certain principles, strategies, and ways of doing things with the passage of time.

~Controversy over the minimum wage continues despite its negative impact  (see http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/31/whos-hurt-most-by-los-angeles-15-minimum-wage/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRogu6jMZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JSsZhI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D).  It just goes to show that progressive dreams don’t die easily even in the face of empirical evidence.  But then, progressive liberals don’t do empirical evidence well – never have, never will.

~I’m sorry Caitlyn, but you’re still Bruce (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/introducing-caitlyn-jenner/ar-BBkuL9D?ocid=U305DHP).  Time was when persons who underwent sex change operations would change their names to either the male or female form of the name or something that sounded close to it (e.g., Richard became Rennie).  Now, even that’s no longer true as we run farther and farther away from the truth about God and man.

~I love how when you’re typing a comment on Facebook, certain friends come up in the comment box depending on what letter(s) on the keyboard you type.

~In coming to terms with the problem of evil (and God’s existence), it’s important to realize that both the believer and the atheist know that evil exists, but that they respond theoretically and practically to it in different ways, as philosopher Richard Purtill has observed (cf. Reason to Believe: Why Faith Makes Sense, Ignatius Press, 2009, p. 47).

~I think I’ll retire from teaching and then announce my run for President of the United States.  Why not? Everyone else is running, even though years ago only a handful of people ran for president.  But now it seems everybody does!

~After reading a column by Michelle Malkin on how the College Board has “sabotaged” American history (http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2015/06/03/the-college-boards-sabotage-of-american-history-n2007291/page/2), I was reminded of the “two truths theory” of childhood education: kids get one truth from their teachers and another from their parents.

~If you listen to ‪‎David Bowie’s early-to-mid-1970s stuff, it explains a lot about where we are as a culture-in-confusion over gender in the 21st century.  It’s evident that he anticipated in in so many ways, both in art and in life, the gender-bender culture that is our own.

~The relatively new term for illegal aliens – “undocumented” – tells you something because it tells you nothing.  When I a citizen go out without my wallet, even I’m undocumented.

~I once heard a comedian ask, “Who are these people in the expression ‘People say…’?”  But what I want to know is this: Was there a particular time when these “people” stopped with the folk wisdom sayings?

~Father Time kills off not only our lives, but many of our brightest ideas.

~The slipping of America’s morality is shown in a new poll (see http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/04/americas-morals-are-slipping-new-poll-finds/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguq7IZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JRMZgI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D).  We didn’t need a poll to tell us that, but we have one anyway just in case you had doubts.

~Seemingly overnight, we went from an obsession with trans fats to one with transgender.

~Just when you thought the homosexual orientation was a genetic “given,” as gay rights advocates have insisted for years, I read this: “In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, [David] Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was ‘the biggest mistake I ever made’ and ‘I was always a closet heterosexual.’  On other occasions, he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by [biographer David] Buckley, he said he had been driven more by ‘a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being.’” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bowie#Personal_life).  There’s further evidence of choice with respect to “being gay” in Jonathan V. Last, “You Will Be Assimilated: The same-sex marriage bait-and-switch,” Weekly Standard, June, 22, 2015, http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/you-will-be-assimilated_969581.html).

~If Donald Trump can call the brilliant Charles Krauthammer a “dummy” and “overrated clown” on Twitter (see http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/244123-trump-hits-back-at-dummy-fox-news-pundit), then he can call anyone a dummy who disagrees with his run for president.

~Those two escaped killers in New York may have used a “ruse” to escape – “decoys made from sweatshirts to make it look like they were asleep in their beds, deceiving corrections officers who check on them every two hours” (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/with-power-tools-and-a-ruse-2-killers-escape-new-york-prison/ar-BBkN2vR?ocid=U305DHP) – but it’s one that only your parents or Barney Fife are supposed to fall for – not guards in a maximum security prison.  Of course, now we know they had inside help.  Thank God they were caught: one shot dead, the other shot and wounded.

~Although several states did not have data available, it appears that the abortion rate has fallen 12% since 2010 (see http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/08/since-2010-abortion-rate-has-dropped-12/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRogua3MZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4JRcBlI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D).  Good news, but will it continue?

~Just as we find teleology in health, we find examples of it in social affairs.  For example, we know that smoking is bad for health, even though not everyone will get lung cancer from it.  Still, we tell people, in no uncertain terms, not to smoke.  So too in society, we know that out-of-wedlock births are bad for family well-being, even though not all will suffer dire consequences from it.  Just as we discourage smoking absolutely, so too we should discourage people from having sex outside of marriage absolutely.

~If rape is only a crime about men exercising power over women and not sex, as the radical feminists maintain, why don’t we see (excluding prison rape) more males being raped by males?  Could it be that male-female rape is often about both control and sexual pleasure?

~The Supreme Court held in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992) – famous for its “Mystery Passage” – that women had come to depend on access to abortion for 19 years since Roe vs. Wade had been decided.  As the Plurality (which included Justice Kennedy) wrote in section 5 of its opinion, “An entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe’s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions; no erosion of principle going to liberty or personal autonomy has left Roe’s central holding a doctrinal remnant.”  Well, haven’t Americans come to reply on the conjugal definition of marriage for millennia?  And now 5 unelected judges (Kennedy strikes again!) have decided the definition of marriage will be radically revised to include same-sex couples (see more below).  We know the “revising” won’t stop there.  Nor will the persecution of Christians who don’t genuflect before the New Order’s “Altar to Sexual Freedom.”

~President Obama has said that a bill to ban late-term abortions “disregards women’s health and rights, the role doctors play in their patients’ health care decisions, and the Constitution.” (see http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/11/lindsay-graham-introduces-senate-plan-to-ban-late-term-abortions/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoguaTLZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4ITMFkI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D).  It’s funny how he’s not concerned with the female unborn child’s “health and rights”; that Obamacare doesn’t respect the doctor-patient relationship; and that his many other actions, e.g., on health care and immigration, don’t respect the Constitution.  Has he ever actually read the Constitution?

~Christianity preaches the transfiguration.  Modern culture preaches transgenderism.

~I really wish we’d stop using the word “fetishizing.”  It’s right up there with “fondle” in the expanding list of words I hate and refuse to use.

~“When [Richard Matt’s] cleaned up, he’s very handsome and, in all frankness, very well-endowed.  He gets girlfriends any place he goes,” a retired detective told the Daily Beast.  The escaped killer [since shot and killed by law enforcement] has also been described as highly intelligent (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/the-dangerously-charismatic-escapee-at-the-center-of-the-ny-manhunt/ar-BBl1AQK?ocid=U305DHP).  It seems that the only thing he’s not well-endowed with is moral virtue.

~Self’s “Could You Be Denied IVF?”(http://www.self.com/work/womens-issues/2015/05/could-you-be-denied-ivf/) focuses on how insurance companies and state legislatures are denying (=discriminating) IVF treatments to lesbians because of the so-called “husband clause.”  But it’s not wrong to discriminate against what’s immoral and unnatural.

~Boston College moral theologian James Keenan, S.J.’s “Life Lessons: How I teach ‘Humanae Vitae’” (http://americamagazine.org/issue/life-lessons), is, on the whole, a good exposition of Bl. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control and how he teaches it to undergraduates.  For 25 years, he says in this February 3, 2014 America Magazine article, he has “upheld” its teaching.  That is good to hear in this age of dissent, especially so with respect to Humanae vitae.  My main beef with it is his support for condom use in the case of discordant H.I.V.-positive married couples [For a much longer version, where I lay out my reasons why, see: http://www.truthandcharityforum.org/why-i-think-james-keenan-s-j-is-wrong-about-humanae-vitae-and-the-prophylactic-use-of-condoms/].

~Our movies are comic books and video games.  Our TV commercials are cartoons.  And our popular culture continues to be infantilized at breakneck speed.

~The controversy over “trans-racial” NAACP official Rachel Dolezal – the white woman playing at being African-American – has ended in her resignation (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/naacp-official-resigns-amid-race-controversy/ar-BBlaVht?ocid=U305DHP) and in her giving a slew of interviews.  I wonder, given how the transgendered have become another protected category, if we would have condemned this fraudulent “black” woman if she had also “transitioned” into a man.

~The mass killing of nine black persons at a historic black church (AME) in Charlestown, South Carolina has shown, if it needed showing, that we no longer have a common moral language to discuss events such as these – often called “tragedies, as if they happened by accident, like a brick falling off a building and crushing a pedestrian.  Commentators spoke of how the 21-year-old killer was psychotic, deranged, mentally ill, and so on.  But sometimes they spoke of him, even in the same breath, but less frequently, as evil (and a racist and a murderer).  If the former, then no or diminished moral responsibility; but if the latter, then morally responsible [That’s not to say we can’t have a bit of both].  On Fox’s Hannity, the psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow said he thought “most evil is [mental] illness.” (June 18, 2015).  If that’s true, there is no free choice; if no free choice, no moral responsibility.  So, which is it going to be?

~When I read a story about a possible human head transplant (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/surgeon-promising-first-human-head-transplant-makes-pitch-to-us-doctors/ar-BBl5gff?ocid=U305DHP), I had to ask: Where’s the journalist who wrote the famous 1983 New York Post “Headless Body In Topless Bar” headline when you need him?  Actually, he died last month at the age of 74 (see http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/man-wrote-headless-body-topless-bar-headline-dies-31648948).

~Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, was promulgated on June 18, 2015 (http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html), but a draft had been leaked a few days earlier (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/an-italian-draft-of-pope-francis-environmental-paper-leaks–setting-off-scurry-to-google-translate/2015/06/15/89af0012-1379-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html).  My biggest problem with the document isn’t its endorsement of climate change/global warming, but the negative stance it takes towards the free market, as Samuel Gregg observes (see http://spectator.org/articles/63160/laudato-si%E2%80%99-well-intentioned-economically-flawed).  To me, this is a real reversal of the long-developed warming to the free market that Pope St. John Paul II arrived at in his great 1991 encyclical, Centesimus annus (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html).

~Sometimes trying to discern God’s will can be a little bit like trying to figure out Michigan’s weather.

~Unlike cases where ovaries are transplanted from one woman to another, having one’s ovarian tissue removed and frozen, in order to undergo cancer treatment, and then have it transplanted back again(see http://abcnews.go.com/Health/woman-bears-child-ovarian-tissue-frozen-13/story?id=31665155), can be a morally good procedure.  Even very young girls, it seems, can have theirs removed and frozen so as to preserve their fertility for later use.  In other words, cancer need not destroy a female of any age’s power to give life.  This is truly a case of medical science being used for good.

~It’s unfortunate that many conservatives have accepted the need for contraception (e.g., see http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/419934/laudato-si-andrew-stuttaford).  But contraception doesn’t reduce the need for abortion, it increases it.  For it’s all about a “no” to life.

~A missed opportunity in Pope Francis’ Laudato Si: developing the argument for the chemical contraception–environmental destruction link.

~One reason why people like to view capitalism itself as a moral rather than a mere economic system is so they can criticize it without acknowledging the need for the development of moral virtue in the citizens who live in such a system.  If we say that capitalism is merely an instrument for creating wealth, then there’s no incentive to criticize it as immoral, as greedy (unlike, say, socialism).  But economic systems aren’t greedy, people are.

~Obama addressed the South Carolina church shootings and racism in a radio podcast interview (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/obama-in-first-presidential-podcast-us-not-cured-of-racism/ar-AAbVyT1?ocid=U305DHP; and http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/22/416476377/we-are-not-cured-obama-discusses-racism-in-america-with-marc-maron).  It was typical Obama: too much psychologizing (“the legacy of slavery…still part of our DNA that’s passed on.  We’re not cured of it [racism].”) and bragging (“I know what I’m doing and I’m fearless.”) and cool (use of the N-word) and self-reference (“…if I thought to myself that when I was in college – that I’d be in a garage a couple miles away from where I was living, doing an interview… As president – with a comedian.  I think that’s a pretty hard scenario to… imagine”).  In a word, it was too much Obama.

~The University of Hull psychologist, Giuliana Mazzoni, has written an article titled, “Artificial recreation of happy memories may become the next big weapon against depression” (see https://theconversation.com/artificial-recreation-of-happy-memories-may-become-the-next-big-weapon-against-depression-43423).  My first thought after reading this reminded me of the thought-experiment popularized by modern philosophers (although it goes back to ancient philosophy) from Robert Nozick to John Finnis known as the “experience machine” (see Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics, 1983, pp. 37-42, available at: https://books.google.com/books?id=D13PVzOiXgQC&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=john+finnis,+experience+machine&source=bl&ots=tdZcHMxJUe&sig=wcFEsJ87gFDRqFrHJR26fbT6pHg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pViIVZyhLY39yQSopqXYCg&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=john%20finnis%2C%20experience%20machine&f=false).  Among its lessons is the notion that living a fantasy life is not to be preferred to living in reality.  Being human means living in the real world, among real people, and acting to achieve real goods, with our real bodies.

~In a culture of secularism, it’s not good enough to be good, we have to be holy.

~You know someone’s views are messed up when even nonsense makes more sense.

~If Laudato Si is not about climate change or the free market or any number of practical policy things in the encyclical, as its defenders insist, then why are those things in there?

~To call oneself “apolitical” or “above politics – “above the fray” as it were – is to make a political statement.

~In King vs. Burwell, SCOTUS upheld the Obamacare subsidies to the states that had not set up health care exchanges (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what%e2%80%99s-next-for-obamacare/ar-AAc8wT0?ocid=U305DHP).  In doing so, the Chief Justice, John Roberts, did what he does best and what he did before with Obamacare: he rewrote the statute to save it (cf. Elizabeth Slattery, “Is Kennedy Still the Swing Vote on the Supreme Court?” http://dailysignal.com/2015/06/26/is-kennedy-still-the-swing-vote-on-the-supreme-court/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRogvq7AZKXonjHpfsX56uouW6%2B2lMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4IT8tnI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D and David Limbaugh, “Thumbs Down for Justice Roberts,” http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2015/06/30/thumbs-down-for-justice-roberts-n2018962/page/2 and Michael Barone, “Supreme Court Lets Obama Administration Say Words Don’t Mean What They Say,” http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2015/06/30/supreme-court-lets-obama-administration-say-words-dont-mean-what-they-say-n2018924/page/2).

~In regard to Chief Justice Roberts’ alleged concern for the reputation of the Court, I’d like to ask him: Why does it seem to run only one way?  That is, why is bowing to liberal outcomes the way to preserve the Court’s integrity, image, and the fiction that it’s above politics? (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chief-justice-john-roberts-charts-own-path-frustrating-right-again/ar-AAc8o9y?ocid=U305DHP).

~Just in time for your July 4^th celebrations, SCOTUS ruled, as noted, that gay marriage is a constitutional right in Obergefell vs. Hodges (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-rules-that-us-constitution-gives-gay-people-the-right-to-marry/ar-AAcaBM5?ocid=U305DHP).  Once again, a so-called “Catholic” justice, Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion.  After reading his opinion, I had to ask myself: You need a law degree to write this crap?

~I think the only time Obama finally admitted he was a “wretch,” was when singing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral for the slain South Carolina pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney (see http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/obama-charleston-eulogy-pastor/).

~I’m sure Justice Kennedy, who’s a fan of foreign law, has heard about this healthy 24-year-old granted the right-to-die in Belgium (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/healthy-24-year-old-granted-right-to-die-in-belgium/ar-AAckxLg?ocid=U305DHP) and will be eager to see how he can incorporate it into American jurisprudence given the right case.

~Actor George Takei of Star Trek fame “Blasts Donald Trump on Same-Sex Marriage,” screamed the headline. While right to say that Trump’s “3 wives isn’t traditional,” he was wrong to say “…our democracy is a dynamic democracy, and our constitution is a living document – it’s not carved in stone.”  He added that Trump’s idea of marriage goes against what it’s really about: two people loving and committing to each other (see http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/george-takei-blasts-donald-trump-on-same-sex-marriage-3-wives-isn%e2%80%99t-traditional/ar-AAclIM8?ocid=U305DHP).  If this is his idea of a living constitution, then I want a dead one, because the former can mean anything we want it to mean.  And no, marriage isn’t about “two people,” it’s about a man and a woman who have become – literally – “one-flesh.”

~After the Supremes gay marriage dictate, we will now have to ask those married and getting-married, as with a woman’s pregnancy, is it a boy or girl?

~This will be the first July 4^th celebration where I do not feel like celebrating because I feel like I’m in a country I no longer recognize.