Progressives are different from the rest of us. Here’s how . . .

Progressivism revised down:

Modern “progressives” are not, as some economic conservatives would say, socialists. In fact, today’s so-called progressives are not even particularly progressive, at least in the usual sense of seeking to redistribute wealth from rich to poor.

As Fred Siegel has noted, contemporary progressivism is an upper-middle-class movement that caters to the social libertarianism of coastal elites, while paying lip service to left-wing economic concerns.

Even when modern progressives do support economic development, they often do so in ways that stand traditional progressivism on its head—redistributing wealth upward to favored industries. [paragraphing
mine]

They do have their ways of doing things, do they not?

Oak Park’s thieves on bicycycles — nailed by OP cops

Oak Park Chronicles

Oak Park is handy to young thieves:

“Criminals can simply hop on a bicycle, cross the border to commit crimes and then flee back into a dense urban neighborhood,” said Police Chief Rick Tanksley. He described the situation as “among the disadvantages of sharing a border with [Chicago].” 

Wow. It’s a border. Used to be the city line. Border crossings are at the heart of this problem.

But cops are on the job. Crucial job it is.

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The black-robed regiment on call . . .

Clergy to the pulpit barricades!

AURORA IL – Sunday evening, the Illinois Family Institute hosted several hundred Illinoisans who gathered at Aurora Christian School to hear Pastor, Author, and Oklahoma State Representative Dan Fisher call for Illinois clergy to “wake up” and join a modern day Black Robed Regiment.

 

The Black Robed Regiment was the name the British placed on the American clergy during the Founding Era (a backhanded reference to the black robes they wore). The British blamed the Black Robed Regiment for American Independence, and American leaders agreed

” We’re all Catholics now,” the Episcopal priest said at a rally in the Federal center a few years back, referring to the impingements on religious liberty fostered by ObamaCare.

Trouble is, in N. Illinois the RC priests are mostly liberals politically, if not in every other way.

However, I heard an excellent sermon pre-election day 2012 at St. John Vianney, Northbrook, at the 10 a.m. Latin mass. Quite good indeed.

Who Is Morally Obliged to Pay to Level the Playing Field?

Asked to pony up to make things fair? Look out.

A sure sign that someone is making an argument for a policy that will unjustly pick the pockets of consumers in order to artificially and unjustly inflate the revenues of some producers is that person’s use of the term “level playing field.” This phrase is almost always a smiley-face mask for a plea for special privileges for certain producers. (I say “almost always,” although I honestly cannot recall a single instance of the phrase “level playing field” being used in any way other than the way I describe here. I could easily and truthfully drop the “almost.”)

My best example of that is, while quizzing possible school board candidates some years ago, hearing one man, a successful marketing entrepreneur with good instincts about how to deal with people, say uneven results ipso facto called for “leveling the playing field.” It had been leveled, but not enough, not until we got leveled or at least better results!

Pope Francis exposed . . .

. . . as a shrewd and focused opponent of a very bad curia:

The first non-European Pope was elected to do one thing: reform the Roman Curia, the pitifully disorganised, corrupt and lazy central machinery of the church. He is determined to pull it off — but he’s 77 and has part of a lung missing. When he looks at his watch during long Masses in St Peter’s, it’s not just because elaborate services bore him. He knows he may not have much time. ‘Two or three years and then off to the house of the Father,’ he said this week. Was he serious? You can never tell.

That’s from an all-out detailed, informative, original rundown on Pope Francis by the prolific Damian Thompson in the (UK) Spectator, where he is associate editor.

Some especially good stuff:

Jorge Bergoglio has little in common with Joseph Ratzinger apart from an intense, orthodox Catholic faith and a love of classical music. Like many Jesuits, Francis isn’t interested in liturgy. This is actually good news for traditionalists, because it means he won’t clamp down on the Latin Mass (with one baffling exception: the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a new order whose use of the Old Missal has been brutally restricted). [Italics added]

And:

The Pope has declared a spiritual culture war on the bureaucrats who forced the resignation of his predecessor, the most intellectually gifted pontiff for 200 years. Cardinal Ratzinger was once known as ‘the Rottweiler’. How ludicrous that nickname seems in the light of his eight years as Pope, during which he allowed curial officials — including his incompetent secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone — to plunge the church deeper into financial and sexual scandal while they fought their own factional battles. Benedict was too old and too kind to knock heads together.

And more more more where that’s from . . .