Thursday, August 11, 2016

Silencing the Lawyers

Earlier this year came the story about the Wyoming municipal judge who may lose her position based on an interview she gave to a newspaper saying she would not perform gay marriages.
 
Well, yesterday the ABA laid the framework yesterday for silencing and lawyers who object to same sex marriage...
 
It is professional misconduct for a lawyer to:
(g) engage in conduct that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know is harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status in conduct related to the practice of law...
 
[3] ...Such discrimination includes harmful verbal or physical conduct that manifests bias or prejudice towards others. Harassment includes ... derogatory or demeaning verbal or physical conduct... The substantive law of antidiscrimination and anti-harassment statutes and case law may guide application of paragraph (g).
 
Under current antidiscrimination and anti-harassment case law, florists, bakers and photographers are forced to serve gay weddings because to do otherwise would be harmful and demeaning to the protected class; school boards are penalized if they don't adequately accommodate students on the basis of gender identity who are otherwise harmed, degraded or demeaned.
 
Procedurally, these at model rules which need to be adopted by each individual state bar association... But they are usually adopted verbatim. I wonder which state will refuse to incorporate the sexual orientation/gender identity language. ND's as good a bet as any red state, but I cannot see my peers refusing to enshrine this in our own rules.
 
I wonder how this plays out when a religious institution comes to a lawyer seeking advice on how to protect themselves when firing or not hiring a gay employee, or refusing to rent out the church hall for a wedding or reception. Given case law and the march of SOGI antidiscrimination statutes across the country, its hard to envision a lawyer not knowing it would, in fact, be SOGI discrimination to deny the service and that such a denial would result in "harm" to the "victims..." But did the ABA really just ban the entire ADF and Beckett Fund staff from practicing law?

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Catholic Case for Donald Trump? A response.

A Friend Sent me this article and asked my thoughts on it:
http://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/2646-catholics-4-trump-the-catholic-case-for-donald-trump

I guess I'll start with this statement:


"I am under no illusion that Donald Trump is a saint or that he is a deeply religious man. However, we are not living in the age of Catholic confessional states, and there is no St. Louis to vote for. We are instead living in a secular republic with non-believers, hedonists, lukewarm and liberal Christians, and a smattering of conservative Catholics. Donald Trump is a salesman, a businessman, and a competitor... to get results in business you have to deal in reality or you go bankrupt. I believe this key fact is a huge one for Catholics. The very philosophical foundation of our Faith  is recognizing that there is an objective reality and conforming our thought to be in accord with it... Although Trump does not have a 100% Catholic platform, and would never be elected in our society if he did, the one thing he has is common sense. He does what works to get tangible results. With a man who operates based on reality, on what works, on the practical, one can have a conversation."


First off, no one asks us to vote for a Pope or canonization on November 8. This is a complete red herring - we're voting for a President. The statement presupposes that Catholics believe they can only vote for saints running on 100% Catholic platforms. Find me the Catholic Social Doctrine references on property tax reform or sales tax increases for public projects; what does the Church have to say on Grey Wolf hunting in the Upper Midwest; on the definition of "Waters of the United States?" The depth and beauty of our faith is that we can apply it to a platform, we do not use it as a platform - there are many things the Church doesn't speak on and doesn't need to.
Why isn't the author under any illusion that Trump is a saint?  Because such a thought is laughable! Trump's been inconsistent on abortion and Planned Parenthood at best; he has no qualms about transgenderism; he hand-picked a gay Silicon Valley exec to deliver the prime time message before his own RNC speech that attacked the "fake culture wars" in America; the guy is a serial adulterer; he's made millions off enticing other people to gamble in his establishments; he appears to be a compulsive liar.

The author seems to acknowledge in the passing references to sainthood and piety that Trump is morally repugnant to many, but that's ok because he gets results?  We've been down this road before. In 2004 and 2008 well-meaning faithful Catholics (including many I knew) twisted themselves into pretzels distancing themselves from the morally repugnant aspects of Kerry and Obama while wielding snippets of Catholic teaching to justify voting for them. They looked crazy to me, but now I see many Republicans doing the same thing over Trump... 

The author tells us that Clinton will pick 3-4 Supreme Court Justices, will "cement Roe v. Wade into the Constitution" and will silence religious speech.

"Religious Speech"

Moving backwards, the religious speech claim is interesting because of its ambiguity in the use of "religious speech" - I would have used the term "religious freedom" which encompasses much more than speech, such as practice of religion as well. Hillary is no friend to what she calls the "freedom to worship," which is also more limiting than religious freedom. Hillary would limit such a freedom to worship to only the four walls of your worship space. As we're seeing across the country, church-affiliated daycares, gyms, schools and restrooms are being used as "public accommodations" in order to bludgeon Churches into submission to the progressive LGBTQ+? agenda; where public accommodations aren't working, the activists are using employment discrimination claims to force compliance. This will get worse under Hillary, no doubt. But what has Trump said about it? Nothing. Trump doesn't promise to change anything about this. This is the single most important moral issue facing our country- and Trump is silent while Pence's track record shows he caved on religious liberty in Indiana. Hillary may be driving the Religious Suppression Express but Trump and Pence haven't shown any desire to stop or slow it. In fact, Trump has openly considered closing houses of worship that he disagrees with (something that is happening in France under emergency rule) - the precedent set if he were to follow thru with "closing hateful mosques" is every bit as dangerous as the soft (but very real) persecution Obama and Clinton are pushing - it will be Muslims under Trump but, when Clinton or the Next One take the reins in 2020 or 2024, who decides who's "preaching hate" and who gets shut down?

Roe v. Wade/Abortion

On cementing Roe v Wade into the constitution, I'm assuming we're talking about abortion not the case or legal framework of Roe, after all Roe legalized abortion nationwide, and Republican Supreme Court appointees Harry Blackmun, Warren Burger, Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor already cemented Roe and its progeny into the Constitution with their opinions. We know HRC is pro-abortion and now she's pushing for using federal funds for abortion. But what about Trump? He was pro-choice a decade ago and now he's pro-life because he met a kid who's doctors advised his parents to abort due to disabilities, but that kid is now a total superstar...sorry for not buying that.

On the abortion front, I consistently hear that Trump has surrounded himself with "good advisors" but look at this campaign and you'll see Trump routinely acts without consulting his advisors:
  • his wife plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech; 
  • he favored arresting women who get abortions for a few hours before changing his mind;
  • he went off the rails attacking the judge in a case he's party to;
  • he had a beauty of a speech written for him at the RNC two weeks ago, then he actually delivered it and couldn't stick to script;
  • just last week he encouraged Russia to hack Clinton's SOS emails and release them to the public like the DNC emails;
  • currently he's in a public pissing match with the family of a soldier who sacrificed his life for our country and was shamelessly (and brilliantly) used by the Clinton campaign to attack him - Trump took the bait and cannot let go.
No doubt he has good advisors telling him not to do these things- yet he does them regardless of the good advice. Why do we think this would change all of a sudden on 1/20/17? All the best advisors in the world won't do him a lick of good if he doesn't act on their advice. The ugly truth of it is that we have no idea how Trump will act on the issue of abortion. Abortion is a moral issue, but Trump has no history of pro-life action, he has been inconsistent on his position on abortion during the campaign and has only empty promises and good advisors to offer us for the future. We know that Hillary is opening wide the doors of the abortion mills across the country, but we have no idea what Trump will do; he certainly is not a sure-thing to lead pro-life (or pro-choice for that matter) policy, at best he'll be a reactionary safety-valve, preventing things from getting too bad... at best

Supreme Court

Finally the Supreme Court. Donald has a list. This has been a deal-sealer for many and I don't blame them. But read the statement with that list. These are people that Trump would "consider" as "potential replacements for Justice Scalia;"  He plans "to use this list as a guide." Trump does not  necessarily plan to pick from that list;  if Trump was to pick someone out of left field, he's off the hook because he only plans to consider these people as potential replacements. Now he may very well pick from that list, and nothing says he won't, but he doesn't say he will pick from the list. (I've been saying for a while that Trump ought to pick a "shadow nominee" -to borrow from British politics- and actually name the person he'd nominate, instead of a list of "potential replacements," but then he'd be bound to sticking with that person and he can't change his mind). Note too, he really couches this in terms of replacing Scalia, though he does say at the end that "this list is a guide to nominate our next United States Supreme Court Justices" so he may go back to the list to replace Ginsberg or Breyer - but there's no guarantee that these people will be his appointees; or that they'd get confirmed. Further, 6 of these judges  on the list are from the Federal Courts of Appeals; the remaining 5 from State Supreme Courts. 7 of the 8 sitting SCOTUS justices came from the Courts of Appeals; as did Scalia. Who will Trump nominate to the Courts of Appeals? Maybe he could give us conservative rock stars as SCOTUS justices, but fill the "farm system" with liberal hacks and cronies. In general, the younger the attorney is that is filling these federal court seats, the more liberal they are. There aren't too many conservative lawyers in my generation, our law schools are percolating with liberal profs (even at UND), gay and abortion rights are taken for granted in law school - the courts won't solve the problem with liberal legal interpretation. The loss of the court for generations is occurring but it hasn't hit the Court yet; it will. The best Trump can do is kick the can down the road and he can't fix the underlying problem.in legal academia.

Further, I've been pondering the following question for a while now: "what are we saving the Supreme Court from or for?" Are we looking for the elusive Fifth Justice to overturn Roe? We've been looking for the Fifth Justice since 1987 when the Dems blocked Bork from being appointed and that's gotten us a whole host of moderate to liberal justices. Are we looking for a Fifth vote to overturn Obergefell? If so, are there any cases working their way thru the Circuits challenging Obergefell? I'm unaware of any. Even if Roe  or Obergefell are overturned, what next? Abortion and same-sex marriage will fall back to the states; there's no culture war victory: 36 states will still have gay marriage, 5 states will have no abortion... but the victory doesn't change culture, the battle for the hearts and minds of the culture will still go on. The Court is NOT the golden ticket to save the country. We're idolizing and romanticizing the role of the Court if we believe that.  If the purpose of saving SCOTUS is to protect the left flank from attacks on Citizens United (campaign contributions), Heller (gun rights), Clean Air Rule, Migratory Bird Rule, carbon emissions standards, voter id, etc - then those are all prudential matters and, though important, don't rise to a moral imperative to vote for Trump.

Finally, along those lines, discerning a person's fitness to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States is also a prudential issue not a moral one. The Court itself may weigh legal questions with moral implications, however the judging of the appropriateness of a certain person for a legal position - that's a question of prudence, in my opinion. Prospective judicial nominees cannot pledge to always take a certain side in certain legal cases, thus even sometimes your Conservative "home runs" like Souter, Kennedy and even Roberts turn out writing head-scratchers (like Souter's entire career, Kennedy on abortion and gay rights, Roberts on Obamacare). I've never hired or fired a person based on morals, it'd be bad business, but its also hard to know to person's heart and mind, so absent a clear record of decisions on "morality impacting decisions," I'd have to put the SCOTUS nominee process in the prudential category, not the moral category.


"With a man who operates based on reality, on what works, on the practical, one can have a conversation."


Honestly, I think this is what drives so many Catholics in politics to get behind Trump... the desire to "have a conversation." The idea that if you get around the table with the Don, he'll see how reasonable and truthful and practical our ideas are and he'll adopt them. All we need is a conversation and things will change for the better and Trump will lead us into a new golden age. Ask Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz how having "a conversation" went for them. Christie largely ignored Trump and bullied Rubio - and it arguably got him the next AG gig. Paul tried to discuss policy and got pushed to the edge of the stage because of it. Bush tried to have a big-boy discussion on economic matters was mocked and shouted down and made to look ridiculous. The only people who ever got anywhere against Trump were Rubio and Cruz and they did that by yelling louder and mocking Trump's body parts. That's no conversation. That's why I don't buy the "advisors" argument either. Seeking a conversation may open the door for certain people to prestigious jobs in DC, in hopes for more political and (top-down) cultural influence down the road, but gambling with The Donald to further one's own career and interests is a calculating move and a prudential matter, not question of morality.


"There is absolutely no moral justification for any Catholic to vote for Hillary Clinton or to assist Clinton in wining the presidency through not voting or voting for a non-viable third party candidate."


Truth is, I don't think there's a moral justification for voting for Trump either. Prudential justification - sure. The author of the article says Catholics have a "moral right to vote" for Trump. Agreed, and they may be justified in doing so - I agree with Trump on trade, he's actually close to forcing us to have a real conversation on immigration, he seems to understand that Islamic jihadism is a real threat... I'd be willing to say there's no moral argument for voting for Clinton. However to condemn Catholics for voting third party as immoral? That's deplorable.


What is a vote? Is a vote simply a utilitarian instrument which is only good and valid if your candidate wins? Or is it an  instrument of political expression? If its utilitarian and only "counts" if you're voting for a "viable" candidate, then every vote for a losing candidate (up and down the ticket) is worthless and you will always be choosing between lesser or two evils. If its an instrument to express your political opinion, then you will see yourself free to actually express your opinion regardless of whether its a right, wrong, winning or losing opinion. Telling people they're morally responsible for electing the most pro-abortion, anti-religious freedom and anti-family candidate in US history simply because they voted against her and Trump does nothing to foster the common good, nothing to help us find common ground and shuts down political conversation in our country and our Church. You might was well call third-party voters "bigots," "haters," "racists" and "fascists."

 My vote for a third party candidate this fall is not going to be a vote to assist Clinton in winning the presidency (in fact, I think Trump will win the election). Remember we're not a majoritarian democracy, but a republican democracy. One need not win 50.1 percent of the vote, but must win 270 electors in the electoral college.  I have no illusions about where my three electoral votes are going - if I was in Ohio or Virginia or Pennsylvania or Florida, I'd probably be leaning Trump for prudential reasons -  here in solid Red ND, I know Trump already has this thing locked down, so instead of voting for the lesser of two evils, (and thereby choosing an evil) I may exercise a prudential vote to help ensure ballot access for the Libertarians in the next round of elections in 2018 (the Libertarian party needs to get 5% of the vote for pres or gov in order to be on ballot in the next elections); I may make a morals-based vote for the Constitution Party but they still don't have ballot access in ND; or I may write-in someone totally different. I have no idea yet.

Perhaps I have rationalized my immoral electoral behavior and I'm just as damned as Clinton voters may be. But I'm willing to make the argument that a third party vote is at least as prudential as a vote for a deeply flawed Trump and better than a vote for Clinton. It may seem irrational to pro-Trump Catholics but I certainly have the "moral right" to cast that vote.

And finally, this: "to get results in business you have to deal in reality or you go bankrupt-" keep in mind the fact that a handful of Trump businesses have, in fact, gone bankrupt in the past...




 
 
 
 
 

Friday, May 13, 2016

Trump and Third Parties, Politics and Culture

I won't vote for Donald Trump in November.  I certainly will not vote for Trump out of fear of Hillary Clinton. I don't think people who will are immoral, but I cannot do so in good conscience and therefore will not vote for him. I will vote third party. 

I'd like to explain why I'm at peace with my decision to vote third party, because I've been told a third-party vote is a vote for Clinton, and I strongly disagree.

The first reason why I will vote third party for President is because of Trump’s flaws.

I'm not going to list all of Trump's flaws - I'm assuming most serious Catholic voters know them and in all likelihood share my concerns. He was pro-choice before lately becoming pro-life; he’s considering shutting down mosques that "preach hate;" he wants to ban all members of an entire religion from entering our country; he constantly changes position on policy issues...assuming he's taken a position. His personal life raises issues from his extramarital trysts and multiple marriages; there's the shady business deals; he has no problem with biological men using women's bathrooms; he’s made millions off gambling; he seems to have no problem lying about or denying things he's previously said; the fact that he feels he’s a man who doesn’t need forgiveness because he’s already a good person. Just like Clinton’s flaws, Trump’s flaws are grave enough to make me concerned about what kind of president he would be. Concerned enough that I will not vote for Donald Trump.

The second reason I will vote third party for President is because I don’t want to waste my vote.

You may laugh, but a quick civics refresher: The next president of the United States of America does NOT need to win the majority of votes in the country to become president. They only need to win the majority of the 538 electors in the electoral college; one elector for each member of Congress. That means that the winning candidate for president needs to win 270 electoral votes.

The minimum number of electors a state can have is three - remember the Constitution guarantees every state at least one representative in the House, apportioned on population, and two Senators. California is the largest state with 55 electors, Texas has 38 and Florida and New York have 29 apiece.

Alaska, the Dakotas, Delaware, DC, Montana, Vermont and Wyoming are the smallest memebers, each with three electors. In general the candidate who wins the most votes in that state wins all of the electoral votes in that state.

Thus for us in North Dakota, the candidate who wins the most votes in the state will take all three of our electors. When Mitt Romney won North Dakota in 2012 with 188,000 votes and 60% of the vote, his take-home were three electors.

Now part of the reason why I'm so willing to vote for a third party candidate is because I do live in deep-red North Dakota. I know with a gosh-darn (h/t Coen Brothers' Fargo) good amount of certainty that my electoral votes are going to Donald Trump. I'm being realistic here.

I've been cautioned that if enough Catholics across the country think like I do, then people like me could in fact sway the vote to Hillary Clinton. Again, I'm being realistic here. Even in little old North Dakota (47th of 50 states in population) such a sway would require me convincing tens of thousands of people (approximately 64,000 if 2012's numbers hold up) to vote like I plan to. That's not going to happen.
In early May, CatholicVote released the results of a poll it conducted of 18,000 respondents where it found that 40% of Catholics will hold their nose and vote for Trump and another 21% support Trump without reservation. That means at least 61 percent of (politically conservative) Catholics in CV’s poll will be voting for Trump this fall. That number is astounding to me, especially for a  group of people who have spent a good amount of time the last two decades chiding (politically liberal) Catholics who voted under the “seamless garment” theory where all political issues should be considered equally, with pro-life issues not being determinative. “It doesn’t matter where they stand on the economy and jobs and taxes for the working poor and the death penalty” we used to say, “there are certain non-negotiables.” Apparently not?

Anyway, the CV poll showed that only 6% of respondents would vote third party. I think part of it has to the psychology of voting and winning. Donald Trump gets this very well:  we want to pick winners; only losers vote for losers. Well, guilty as charged. I voted for McCain in 08, after being Mike Huckabee’s point person in the 08 caucuses; I was Rick Santorum’s precinct captain in my community in 2012. But how about you all who voted for Romney in 2012? Were those votes for losing candidates wasted? If so, then I guess we’re a bunch of losers. But hey, I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan and a guy who once won $1200 on a $6 bet on a horse race where the horse I picked to win had 28:1 odds of winning (I boxed the trifecta, btw); so maybe I just like the underdog.

But when it comes to elections, I’m tired of holding my nose and voting for the lesser of two evils. I think its wasting your vote to throw it away by voting for someone you find morally repugnant. If you take voting seriously and believe voting to carry moral weight, how can you give it away to someone you don’t trust?  If I can find a third-party candidate that I can vote for in clear conscience, then I will.

If tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of voters all of a sudden jumped ship to a third party, I think that would serve to wake up the major parties and candidates to the fact that people are not happy with them. In this day of advanced data gathering and tracking, the parties will notice a transition of thousands of voters to third parties - and that would be a good thing

But at the end of the day I cannot vote in good conscience for Donald Trump. And so , when my State's electoral votes are already going to a deeply flawed political candidate, to vote against my conscience and in favor of that candidate because I'm scared of another candidate, would be to throw away my vote. 

Or to rephrase that, I know Donald Trump will win North Dakota with or without my vote; so voting for him, against my conscience, is wasting my vote.

The final reason why I will vote third party for President is because I don’t think the next President will do anything to effect meaningful change for our society or our Church.

I've been urged to imagine an America under Hillary - imagine how bad it will be: Mandated sex ed from on high; taxpayer funding of abortion; gun confiscation; death panels. We need to win this election to keep the country from going to hell in a hand basket.
And all I say to that is, look around you right now. We have already lost the culture war.

The Wyoming Commission on Judicial Standards is trying
to remove a municipal judge from the bench for saying she wouldn't preside over gay marriage. No one even asked her to preside over a marriage, she simply responded to a hypothetical media question by saying "no, I can't. But others will."

The American Bar Association committee on model rules of professional conduct has a newly
proposed Professional Conduct Rule that holds that lawyers who “harass” a person based on sexual orientation or gender identity could be disciplined or suspended. Actions constituting “harassment”  include “verbal conduct manifesting bias or prejudice against someone.”

Big business and the Republicans have turned against traditional morality in Indiana, Georgia, and in every Target store you go into.

The
Department of Education may be pulling Title IX funds from North Carolina and any other state that doesn't conform to their norms regarding transgendered students. Mississippi may be next. The Department of Justice is suing North Carolina under the Civil Rights Act because it's illegal discrimination to force men to only use men's bathrooms; and Mississippi faces a Federal suit for its own “bathroom” law.

Texas and Oregon public schools are implementing transgender friendly guidelines so as to not lose title IX funding. St Paul, MN, Public Schools are hedging their bets too.

UPDATE 5/13: The Obama administration just announced this morning that every school district in the nation must “ensure that all students, including transgender students, can attend school in an environment free from discrimination based on sex” or risk running afoul of Title IX.

Second Update 5/16:  I didn't see this on Friday afternoon, but the administration also decided to impose its transgender ideology on the American health system

The transgender rights movement we're seeing right now has nothing to do with where people will take a pee, or even about power and discrimination. These issues are about the very nature of humankind - about what it means to be a person. These are cultural problems, not political. We are witnessing a societal collapse.

The presidential election every four years cannot be that upon which we hang the hopes for the salvation of the nation or a restored anthropology of the human person. I remember as a kid being crushed when Clinton beat Bush in 1992 and Dole in ‘96; conversely I was elated and sure that the best days of the country were ahead of us when Bush was awarded the presidency in 2000 and beat Kerry in ‘04. After being downbeat and depressed after Obama won in ‘08, I had come to realize by 2012 that the outcomes of presidential elections are the end result of the work of the culture in between elections - not the starting point for sea change.

Thus I don't think that Trump winning the presidency means anything more for the future of our nation than Clinton – either way, we’re going to get the President we deserve and the underlying cultural problems will still persist. Four years with Chris Christie as Attorney General may slow the DOJ's march toward "the right side of history"; a lifetime of Ted Cruz on SCOTUS may counteract a lifetime of Sonya Sotomayor. Yet law schools are employing professors who think that conservatives in the profession (especially those who believe in “religious liberty”) ought to be marginalized, silenced and purged. The next Attorney General's staff will consist of attorneys formed by this thinking even if he isn't; SCOTUS clerks will be coming from this background, even if the judges aren't - and those clerkships are tickets to the bench in the future. Similarly the schools educating our future teachers are becoming increasingly hostile to traditional norms, which leave local schools susceptible to outside agendas

To those of you concerned about these things, do you really think Trump, or his judges or any politician, will stop this? Trump won't stop this. In fact, Trump hasn't said a word about these issues. For being so anti-PC, he sure hasn't stuck his neck out on these issues. Even if Trump wins in November, there will be another election in four years and another, four years after that.

I don't say that to say, "don't vote."  Politics do matter and it does matter to be involved. But its much more important at a local level now.

What will our Superintendent of Public Instruction do when the Federal government threatens to pull Title IX funding from our schools if the state doesn't submit transgender guidelines to the Dept of Ed for their approval?

What will our local schools do when the first transgender volleyball player wants to dress in the girls locker room? What if that student comes to play a game against St. Mary's in Bismarck or plays for another private school? Who supports biological truth when it comes to the bathroom? How about the locker room?

What will our next governor do when the federal government says the mere absence of a state SOGI/Employment Nondiscrimination statute, such as the one attempted in ND’s last session, puts our federal highway, law enforcement, military, and flood protection funding at risk?

 Who will support local schools, churches, and businesses when the Feds come down on them for "discrimination" or "harassment." Who will stand against government-coerced behavior or association when comes to sexual identity or orientation?

These are important questions that need to be asked of our candidates. These will impact us. If you don't believe it, did you ever think Wyoming would be looking to remove a municipal judge for a comment made to a reporter? That the Fort Worth school district would be mandating that transgendered student guidelines be implemented? Oregon and St. Paul – ok, they're "progressive" locales already. But Cheyenne and Fort Worth?

I said above that "we have already lost the culture war" but I don't say this to be fatalistic. I say it to be realistic and to get us thinking about "what next?" Winning the next election is not going to be how we move forward. How does the Church build a culture behind enemy lines? The Polish Church produced one of the greatest saints of the 20th Century and tore open a breach that led to the collapse of one of the most diabolical regimes in human history - and did so while under occupation. There's a lesson to be learned there.

I've said it twice, and now thrice, "'we've lost the culture war" but there is one glaring battle in the culture war where I'm wrong in that statement. After years and years of waging losing battles in the courts and legislatures, the pro-life movement is now winning and having so much winning, it’s become yyyuge! (I couldn't resist.)

Those pro-life victories take place in hearts and minds. They're winning in places like the pregnancy resource clinics, in maternity homes across the country where women in crisis can go and have a safe place to live while pregnant and raising young children, as well as at post-abortion retreats where women are learning how to grieve for their aborted babies and forgive themselves and others for their abortions. They're winning in towns like College Station, Texas where a Planned Parenthood director felt the only place she could turn to were the protestors who peacefully and quietly prayed outside her clinic every day and then welcomed her with open arms the day she resigned from her job.

After more prayer, more pregnancy resource centers and more maternity homes opening, we're seeing a historic decline in the number of abortions, and abortion clinics, and abortion clinic employees. But none of this has happened because of legislation or litigation – rather of lack of demand, lack of desire and changes of heart. Yes, legislators across the nation have advanced abortion regulations. But more so than abortion regulation, we need to work for the day where - God willing - we won't need to overturn Roe v Wade because no one will even want to have an abortion. That’s a culture of life!

But it took decades of pro-lifers being on the losing side of Roe, the losing side of Casey, the losing side of the Clinton years, Planned Parenthood campaigns and celebrity abortion advocates before the tide changed. Today 58% of Americans think abortion should be illegal in most cases. The legislation we're seeing across the nation didn't change the tide, the change in culture preceded the change in law.  

Voting for Trump, Clinton or a third-party this fall won't do anything to change the culture in America. Changing the culture is up to you and me and our fellow men and women of goodwill. And changing the culture, re-evangelizing the culture, needs to be the focus of our efforts, not just winning the next election. We need to build our local parish communities; we need to focus on forming intentional communities of prayer, charity, education and recreation; our children need to see their parents engaged in and living out the faith, otherwise its just "something we do." If we build the Church, we will bless the community, the state or the nation (h/t Al Kresta).

Look around at the cultural confusion surrounding us and the ever-strengthening arm of the state.  We need to find, build and maintain community if for no other reason than that we be there to support our pastors, our schools, our leaders against the strong arm should it come down upon them.  As the prophet Zechariah foretold in the Song of the Sword, "[I] strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones" (Zec 13:7). We can’t let that be us.

I'm thinking of communities in the vein of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option. The Benedict Option takes it name from Alastair MacIntyre's After Virtue where MacIntyre maintains that a pivotal point in the history of Western Civilization occurred when men and women quit focusing on shoring up the Roman empire and quit believing that civilization was dependent upon the survival of the empire. Instead, they focused on forming communities bent on preserving civility and morality from the dark ages to come.  As John Senior pointed out in the Restoration of Christian Culture, among these men and women was a man named Benedict, who founded a community of men at Nursia. He focused on keeping the faith alive and his community grew into many monasteries over the centuries. In turn, communities grew around the monasteries. Ultimately, one of those communities produced Thomas Aquinas. MacIntyre, Senior and Dreher would say the important thing is not focusing on the here-and-now (i.e. November's election so we can focus on making America great again over the next four years) but rather focusing on the long-term: how do I pass on my faith to my children? How does my church maintain its community for the next generation? What (or Who) will the identity of my Church be for the next generation?

I'm not going to throw away my vote this November by voting for someone who's making hollow promises and is simply the lesser of two evils. Its more important to focus on the long-term building of culture within our own community and, for me, that means voting for leaders that I don’t think will harm those efforts.

I'd like to finish with two quotes from scripture. First Psalm 146 – it is only ten verses long, but offers a lot to meditate on in this election season. I draw your attention to verse three:  "put no trust in princes."  For far too long in my own life, I had put too much trust in the power of politics, and so was incredibly disappointed when things didn’t shake out the way I had hoped or the way the politician had promised.  If only, I’d say, we had one more Justice on the Court; one more vote in the Senate; if that particular law could pass; if that person could be president… That president, or senator or judge  is “powerless to save…breathing his last, [he] returns to earth.” (Ps 146: 3-4)  For those of you willing to hold your nose and vote for Trump, believing that he will stall or stem the cultural slide in our nation – don’t trust that he will do it and don’t feel that he is your only choice.

And finally remember that Christ built his Church upon the rock “and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.”  (Matt 16:18). We know the gates of Hell shall not prevail. But that promise was made to the Church – not to the United States of America. I said earlier that I think we are witnessing the collapse of civilization; you may disagree. But I urge you look around you – at home in the States, in Europe – something is happening; something is changing.

Cling fast to the Church – ever ancient, ever new. Focus on not just preserving, but defending, her for the future; focus on passing her treasures to your children.  Trump or Clinton will come and go, but the Body of Christ remains. Why won’t I vote for Trump (or Clinton) this fall? Because I don’t think he will do anything or offer any means to help build up the Body, in fact I view him as a threat to the Body. As a voting, conservative, Catholic, building, maintaining, defending and growing the Church should be more than our priority – it’s our responsibility and we shouldn’t trust or hope that a candidate who’s merely the lesser of two evils will help us do it.



Friday, January 24, 2014

Luttrell on Kresta

On my way home from work yesterday I was able to listen to the last 15 minutes of Kresta in the Afternoon on Catholic Radio.

Al was interviewing Marcus Luttrell on Operation Red Wing. I thought it was a great interview, especially since I haven't read the books yet. If you have 20 minutes to hear Luttrell's story, how the movie deviated from reality and how he copes with being the lone survivor, I'd highly recommend taking a listen.


The interview begins around 39:00, but you need to "fast forward" in segments (unless you want to listen to a report on media coverage of the march for life and commentary on Justin Beiber's self-destruction).

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Catholic Education and the Common Core, Part 1

After attending a PTO meeting at our parish school last month where the adoption and implementation of the Common Core was discussed, I left with way more concerns than I arrived with.

The presenters showed a video (www.commoncoreworks.org) to explain "why" they're adopting the Common Core. They need uniform measuring sticks so that everyone can succeed in preparing for college or the work force, according to the video. So I asked if there was an issue in the past with subpar performance? No, I was assured, out students always out perform their public school peers when they get to middle or high school.

I also asked, what makes the parish school different than the public school if you're going to adopt the same standards? "Character development. We can tell the students, 'no, that's wrong.' They can't do that in the public school."

Administrators talked about how they are already meeting and surpassing the Common Core standards at the school, yet teachers talked about being intimidated by the standards and having to re-teach subjects and helping students through these "very hard" assignments.  There was no "dumbing-down" of what had been taught in the past, that's for sure...

Repeatedly we were told students need to taught the skills necessary to prepare them to succeed in life. Sometimes "success" was replaced with "go to college or get a good job." A repeated example used was that of the ability to count to 100...so that students could learn to manage money and balance a budget. But even that can be done in a Catholic way, we were informed - by using the animals that Noah led on to the Ark to count to 100. "They can't do that in the public school."

One parent raised the issue of a letter written by Professor Gerard Bradley at Notre Dame's School of Law and signed by over 100 Catholic professors and sent to each bishop in the Country, asking them to reconsider adoption of the Common Core in their diocesan schools. Neither the teachers nor the administrators had read it, but the teacher giving the presentation had a response to it, nonetheless.

I wasn't given an opportunity to follow up my questions or questions from other concerned parents, though I raised my hand to ask others. Eye contact was made by the speaker who then would continue talking in circles. I was being bullied by a 7 grade social studies teacher; she had the floor and wasn't going to relinquish it. Other parents raised questions and objections and were treated the same way - give a manilla answer and then talk in circles until we could move on to something else that she could talk about - like how the Common Core had been in use for over 5 years in another state where she used to teach; how Common Core is necessary so that students transferring in and out of school know what to expect and teachers know where those students should be on the "stairway" of learning - she used to have 60 students a year transfer in or out; counting to 100, managing a budget, higher standards so more students can succeed...repeat. The bully pulpit was being used to talk us into resignation.

I decided my questions were maybe too broad to ask in this format - what is the purpose of a Catholic Education? How does the Common Core further that?

So, for your consideration, I decided to write to following letter to the school principal and parish priest: