Media Dishonesty Means Breaking Windows — Some are wishing the Republicans had a candidate who was well-mannered, nice and with a great hair cut.
Like Mitt Romney.
Then we would not have these allegations of kissing and dirty words.
And we wouldn’t. We’d have other things.
And the nice guy with the great haircut would be nice about it and he would lose.
Where were you people four years ago?
As long as the media is completely in the tank for corruption, and it is, no longer can someone who counts on impartial judging from the Fourth Estate expect to win.
The time for politely knocking on doors is tragically past. The era of breaking windows has begun.
It is sad but that’s why Donald Trump is the man of the hour.
By the way, the establishment media doesn’t need to tell the truth to smear someone. It appears the women making claims against Donald Trump have serious credibility issues.
Jessica Leeds, for instance, says The Donald lifted the arm rest on his seat on the first class section of a Braniff Airlines 707 and groped while flying from Dallas to New York in 1979.
It turns out that first class seats did not have arm rests and that Braniff did not fly a 707 from Dallas to New York.
He’s a gentleman.
And the first-person account by Natasha Stoynoff in People magazine has serious holes especially with regard to her claimed friendship with Melanie Trump. Mrs. Trump says they were never friends or friendly and that she would never have recognized the woman. Her lawyers have demanded People make a retraction or she will sue.
Meanwhile, women who knew Trump during those years are coming forth unprompted and calling him a great guy and a gentlemen.
When you read of those symposiums featuring dignified academics dealing with weighty matters just remember that symposium in ancient Greece meant drinking party.
Archbishop Chaput Wikileaks Reaction — This article by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput appeared in the Oct. 13 edition of First Things. It should be noted that the Archbishop is not wildly enthusiastic about Donald Trump. It sounds, though, that the Wikileaks revelation about Hillary Clinton’s views on Catholics might have just pushed him into hitting the button for him. We certainly hope so.
Imagine if it was Donald Trump and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley facing each other in the General Election. Would The Donald have a chance? We don’t think so.
But that is why we have come to respect Trump. If someone like Haley was the Democrat nominee, and someone named Bush had not been ordained to be the Republican nominee, we don’t think he would have run.
We have come to conclude that Trump is not running for his ego or because he likes power, but because he is a patriot.
Hopefully, others start seeing this too.
By Charles Chaput
A religious bigot
Back in 2008, in the weeks leading up to the Obama-McCain presidential election, two young men visited me in Denver. They were from Catholics United, a group describing itself as committed to social justice issues. They voiced great concern at the manipulative skill of Catholic agents for the Republican Party. And they hoped my brother bishops and I would resist identifying the Church with single-issue and partisan (read: abortion) politics.
It was an interesting experience. Both men were obvious flacks for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party—creatures of a political machine, not men of the Church; less concerned with Catholic teaching than with its influence. And presumably (for them) bishops were dumb enough to be used as tools, or at least prevented from helping the other side. Yet these two young men not only equaled but surpassed their Republican cousins in the talents of servile partisan hustling. Thanks to their work, and activists like them, American Catholics helped to elect an administration that has been the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers, institutions, concerns and liberty in generations.
I never saw either young man again. The cultural damage done by the current White House has—apparently—made courting America’s bishops unnecessary.
But bad can always get worse. I’m thinking, of course, of the contemptuously anti-Catholic emails exchanged among members of the Clinton Democratic presidential campaign team and released this week by WikiLeaks. A sample: Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, emailed John Podesta, now the head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to ask about whether “the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage” could be the tinder for a revolution. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship,” Newman writes.
Of course, Newman added, “this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests who count on it for their maintenance.” Still, he wondered, how would one “plant the seeds of a revolution”? John Podesta replied that “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this . . . likewise Catholics United” (emphasis added).
Another Clinton-related email, from John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, mocks Catholics in the so-called conservative movement, especially converts: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” In a follow-up, he adds “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what . . . they’re talking about.”
On the evening these WikiLeaks emails were released, I received the following angry email myself, this one from a nationally respected (non-Catholic) attorney experienced in Church-state affairs:
I was deeply offended by the [Clinton team] emails, which are some of the worst bigotry by a political machine I have seen. [A] Church has an absolute right to protect itself when under attack as a faith and Church by civil political forces. That certainly applies here . . .
Over the last eight years there has been strong evidence that the current administration, with which these people share values, has been very hostile to religious organizations. Now there is clear proof that this approach is deliberate and will accelerate if these actors have any continuing, let alone louder, say in government.
These bigots are actively strategizing how to shape Catholicism not to be Catholic or consistent with Jesus’s teachings, but to be the “religion” they want. They are, at the very core, trying to turn religion to their secular view of right and wrong consistent with their politics. This is fundamentally why the Founders left England and demanded that government not have any voice in religion. Look where we are now. We have political actors trying to orchestrate a coup to destroy Catholic values, and they even analogize their takeover to a coup in the Middle East, which amplifies their bigotry and hatred of the Church. I had hoped I would never see this day—a day like so many dark days in Eastern Europe that led to the death of my [Protestant minister] great grandfather at the hands of communists who also hated and wanted to destroy religion.
Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails. All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful.
In the meantime, a friend describes the choice facing voters in November this way: a vulgar, boorish lout and disrespecter of women, with a serious impulse control problem; or a scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.
In a nation where “choice” is now the unofficial state religion, the menu for dinner is remarkably small.
On Oct. 14, 1644, Pennsylvania’s founder William Penn was born in London, England. Penn had a rebellious streak and was a man who was ahead of his time. Ivan Martin’s introduction to Penn’s book No Cross, No Crown provides a brief account of his life. By limiting himself to the highlights, Martin manages to condense Penn’s life to a mere seventeen pages.
Despite being born into an aristocratic family, Penn was kicked out of Oxford at the age of 17. At the age of 24, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Penn was imprisoned for his writings, which attacked the doctrines of the Church of England. The Bishop of London ordered Penn’s indefinite imprisonment until he recanted his previous statements in writing. Instead, he used the supply of paper and ink to write No Cross, No Crown. Penn spent eight months in the Tower before he was released; without recanting. Essentially, Penn spent eight months in an unheated cell in solitary confinement for his religious beliefs. One of his more famous quotes neatly encapsulates his personal philosophy, “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”
Penn’s numerous encounters with the courts and persecution by English authorities inspired many of the innovations he included in Pennsylvania’s first Constitution. Penn used the Constitution to limit the power of government, a novel idea at the time. He was the progenitor for many of the liberties enumerated in the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights including a free press, trial by jury, religious tolerance, and the amendment process itself. Penn also insisted on low taxes. His focus on freedom and free enterprise led to an explosion of growth for Penn’s Woods.
William Penn’s guiding principles and dedication to his “Holy Experiment” paid dividends for Pennsylvania’s earliest settlers and American’s today.
