NO NEED TO TALK WHEN MSM WILL DO IT FOR
YOU
Re: Peter Hannaford’s
When Silence was Golden for Obama:
Silence in Obama’s case is indeed golden! After dithering and
watching his numbers show renewed signs of declining, Obama
finally allowed the right thing to happen. However, the media
will undoubtedly rise to the opportunity occasioned by this good
thing and present it as an argument for more socialism. After
all, Obama has now “proved” himself and so we can now go full
steam to the socialist utopia, right? Of course we
can!
— Douglas Skinner
Alexandria, Virginia
Obama’s silence about pirates holding the captain was not a
strategy in my view. Obama actually had no remedy to offer. His
silence was due to his fear of failure. He didn’t want to be the
new Jimmy Carter.
When we analyze what was done we learn that the “pirates” were
teenage and that no one had yet been killed in any attack,
however the media have become silent: no profiles, no second
guessing, no real inquiry. Obama owns the Media.
— George Hall
Marietta, Georgia
CARD CHECK
Re: Matthew Vadum’s Thoughtcrime
Redux:
It could have been worse than what this memo states. Homeland
Security could have been unionized.
— Mike Geer
Irvine, California
AND PUT A STRAIN ON LIPTON
Re: Peter Ferrara’s
The Tea Party Revolution:
It would be great if the TEA party became a viable political
party with the Founding Documents (Declaration, Constitution,
Bill) as the basis of their party by laws.
The new party would draw from both Dumbocrats and Redumblicans
and would recreate the Founders’ Vision.
— Eddie
AN INQUISITION
Re: Lisa Fabrizio’s
A Blessing for Catholics:
I need not belabor here, as I have done in these pages
previously, that the American Catholic Church’s hierarchy bears
the weighty responsiblity for most of the self-generated problems
that have, within four decades, brought the U.S. Catholic Church
to a state where the number of its religious vocations has
plummeted, knowledge of what constitutes the dogma and teachings
of the Catholic Church is woefully inadequate among its
believers, as well as resulting in bankrupting several diocese
because of the actions of homosexual priests
(emphasis mine). Enter front stage the invitation by the head of
the “premiere” Catholic university to President Obama to give the
commencement address, as well as receive an honorary law degree.
Lisa Fabrizio’s explanation of these phenomena touches on the
multiple sources of the problems, but the real question that must
be raised is this: would the appalling situation regarding the
woefully inadequate state of most Catholics about church
doctrine, the numbers of (self-described) Catholics who share
Obama’s views on abortion and homosexual marriage have been any
different if Obama had not been invited? Would the solons in
charge of the formerly Catholic universities run by the Society
of Jesus — aka the Jesuits — changed a whit had no invitation
been afforded President Obama? In short, what Obama’s invitation
does is shine the spotlight on the real issue here: why is all of
this 0- from the decline of the Church’s standing, to the
invitation of the most pro-abortion president, by a priest, no
less, taking place? I suspect that Signorina Fabrizio really
knows the answer, for she gives it away in her opening remarks:
“Proceeding from, though not limited to, the willful
misinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council by some in the
clergy, thousands upon thousands left the Church; older members
who could not withstand the confusion, and the younger ones who
could not perceive an enduring faith amid the calamitous
changes.”
Unless or until the results of that disastrous Council known as
Vatican II are replaced with those enforced tenets and doctrines
that made the Catholic Church…the Catholic Church… Father
Jenkins and his colleagues will continue to insist that
inviting pro-abortion officials or advocates is a proper and
necessary function of his university, in the “Spirit of Vatican
II,” whatever that is. This, despite his own knowledge that, in
so doing, the invited guest’s beliefs radically contradict —
Speaker Pelosi to the contrary — every core belief about the
sanctity of life that the Catholic Church has held since nearly
its inception. To Rev. Jenkins and his like-minded “progressive”
colleagues, the Catholic Church began in 1965. To test that
theory, the following may interest you:
In the week leading up to Easter, I queried a number of Novus
Ordo (post 1965) Catholic parishioners if they or their church
would hold a service for Tenebrae. All of the responses were the
same: What’s that? But one weekly parishioner went a step
further: not only did he not know what a “Tenebrae service” was,
but he doubted that his local parish priest did either.
— Vincent Chiarello
Reston, Virginia
REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING
Re: Frank Schell’s
Let’s Not Forget the Accountants:
Perhaps, as (if I understood him correctly) the Wall
Street Journal’s Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. wrote, we ought to
deregulate the accounting industry and do away with the FASB
altogether.
If that were done the market would price a company’s stock
commensurate with the reputation of it’s accounting firm.
Accounting firms would then develop reputations in the same
manner that law firms currently do.
Mr. Jenkins made that point in the wake of the collapse of one or
the other of the Enron or WorldCom house of cards. His point was
that accounting standards do not provide protection against fraud
or other monkey business. If, on the other hand, accounting
firms’ source of revenue was dependent upon the reputation of
their companies, various auditors’ seals of approval would mean
something and the market would price the company’s stock
accordingly.
— Richmond Trotter
IN A MOMENT’S TIME
Re: Reid Collins’s Columbine
Plus:
Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the
point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of
Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If
it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence,
they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students,
teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools.
Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the
safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to
reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers
and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate
efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing
school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health
community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the
key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves
teachers, administrators, parents and students in the
identification and communication process. Recently, colleges,
universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral
Intervention Teams with representatives from all these
constituencies. Higher Education has changed their
safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems,
yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams.
K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put
in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are
reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they
are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat
and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot,
which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus
preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors.
Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us
feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to
identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and
the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in
Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling”
and identifying and measuring emerging
aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for
identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at
school or — once a student has been identified — for assessing
the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based
targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry
should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications
to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing
for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally
neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, go
here.
— John D. Byrnes
President, Center for Aggression Management
HIJACKED ARGUMENT
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s Three
Presidents and a Hijacking at Sea:
There is a slight ideological bias to the article and even more
in some of the letters. Remember the problems with the
Iran-Contra affair, which also involved hostages, though they
weren’t pirates in the seafaring sense? Also, Carter’s policy of
denying any concessions to the Iranian hotheads who took over the
US embassy ultimately worked, though it took longer than most
Americans had patience. Also, Reagan didn’t win the Cold War
alone. Every president going back to Truman supported the policy
of containment and kept a variety of pressures on the Soviet
Bloc.
— David C. Nice
GETTIN’ TO CHURCH
Re: Mark Tooley’s
The Last Methodist President:
Mark, thank you for this great article on President Bush. As a
lifelong Methodist from a long line of Methodists (ancestors were
organizing Methodist congregations as they came West in Ohio in
the early 1800’s and in Kansas in the 1850’s), I am embarrassed
and saddened that there was not a UMC in the DC area where
President and Mrs. Bush felt welcome. I hope they were sent a
copy of your article.
— Glenda Gay
Denver, Colorado
CONFLATED ARGUMENTS
Re: Geoffrey Norman’s letter (under “Newsflash: Politicians
Dissemble”) in Reader Mail’s
Might As Well Have Said It:
I did not say Mr. Norman was a “neo-isolationist.” I said
Churchill’s alleged remark that America should have stayed out of
World War I was “a favorite of neo-isolationists over the years.”
The point is not America’s entry into World War I, on which
reasonable people can disagree. The point is: get your quotes
right!
A frustration for students of Churchill is the plethora of
quotations ascribed to him which he never said, some of which he
specifically denied — like this one. Well, Mr. Norman
prevaricates, if he didn’t say it “he might as well have.”
There’s no way to answer such obfuscation. If someone wants to
believe the founder of the National Enquirer, despite
profuse evidence to the contrary, there’s nothing I can do to
help.
— Richard M. Langworth, CBE
http://richardlangworth.com
Editor, The Churchill Centre
