Tag: Blithe Spirit

Being a pacifist about drugs

​Gummint wars on drugs as its duty to protect citizens from a social evil, George Mason University’s Don Boudreaux argues; but it has become "addicted to intruding in this and many other noxious ways into people’s lives to win this war.

But:

​Even if, contrary to fact, the government could succeed at ‘winning’ the ‘war on drugs’ – and even if you believe that government has a moral duty to protect people from themselves if doing so is worth the price by some reckoning – is the actual price paid today to fight this ‘war’ really sufficiently low to justify the alleged gains?​

​Think about it.

On anti-feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest and Doctor of the Church

​Once a saint with a feast day, now nothing but a stinking “memorial.” Thus have decreed the liturgical technicians, who wrap pliant bishops around their little fingers.

It’s a “pastoral” loss, because Aquinas was a real, graspable human being who was like us in every respect but oh so different. Vive la difference, my friends, the kind that gives samples of living life in the real. But not making the muster for lit-techs who have their PLANS, do they not​?

For getting things neat and orderly and making it pretty damn hard for the daily homilist who might just otherwise have a bit of advice or two, in Thomas’ case for scholars and students.

Homilist can talk about Thomas if he wishes, yes, but he’d have to decide to go against the grain in an age of relative indifference to saints. The techies have spoken, the matter est fini.

This publisher died for his faith

​Wow. Wanna good thought or two while mourning for the Charlie Hebdo victims? (R.I.P. them) It’s here in Dolores Madlener’s Church Clips column in the Catholic New World.​

​Cartoons and Catholicism —

  • Coming shortly after the Jan. 7 terrorist attack on an audacious publishing house in Paris was the feast day of Blessed William Carter. The two historical episodes have little in common. Yet there is some irony in the proximity of dates since William Carter was also a slain publisher. According to Franciscan Media’s “Saint of the Day,” online, this Catholic layman was born in London in 1548. William entered the printing business at a young age, serving for 10 years as an apprentice to well-known Catholic printers. After setting up his own business, William had to spend time in prison for “printing lewd [i.e.,
    Catholic] pamphlets” and for possessing Catholic books. Two years later he was again arrested for printing books that aimed to keep Catholics firm in their faith — an even bigger crime according to Elizabeth I. William was sent to prison for 18 months, suffering torture on the rack.Saint of the Day concludes: “He was eventually charged with printing and publishing ‘A Treatise of Schism,’ which allegedly incited violence by Catholics and which was said to have been written by a traitor and addressed to traitors. While William calmly placed his trust in God, the jury met for only 15 minutes before reaching a verdict of ‘guilty.’ William, who made his final confession to a priest who was being tried alongside him, was hanged, drawn and quartered the following day: Jan. 11, 1584.”

​A publisher martyr, he.​

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Reporter who wrote about being “harassed in Obama’s Washington” on the stand in re: AG nominee. Hmm.

​Among witnesses tomorrow before the judiciary committee about AG nominee Lynch:

Ms. Sharyl Attkisson
Investigative Journalist
Leesburg, Va.​

​She’s the no-nonsense reporter who quit CBS after her bosses spied on her after tough reporting on the Benghazi attacks, Fast and Furious and Obamacare.​

​Her book Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington is all about that.

I will be looking at the night’s news and on web for something about what she said and how she said it at the hearing.

Marquette and L’affaire McAdams

​Libs have been lying in wait for this outspoken professor, got him suspended.​

​Howard Kainz on the suspension of Marquette professor John McAdams, who dared to defend academic freedom on a Catholic campus.

<—– John McAdams

With the ongoing advocacy of gay marriage and mandatory attendance at “sensitivity” classes, pressures on faculty at universities to avoid doing or saying anything “politically incorrect” have significantly increased.

A recent example, which has entered into national headlines, arose when a graduate student in philosophy, Cheryl Abbate, teaching a course on ethics at Marquette University, was discussing John Rawls’ “Equal Liberty” principle, which affirms individual freedom unless the rights of others are impugned.​

​Read all about at The Catholic Thing.​

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The Obama administration wants to dramatically change how doctors are paid – The Washington Post

Take gummint money, get monitored. It’s a long arm that has no ending.

Rather than pay more money to Medicare doctors simply for every procedure they perform, the government will also evaluate whether patients are healthier, among other measures. The goal is for half of all Medicare payments to be handled this way by 2018.

Gummint gonna evaluate us. That’s nice.

Wages of socialism

You sigh, the song begins, you speak and I hear violins
It’s magic.
— Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne

Like the alleged living wage, which if mandated by government magically adds to prosperity, as we hear from our socialist friends and neighbors, who have unswerving belief in the power of government to save the world.

He can who thinks he can. The little engine that could. Socialists, democratic or the other kind — think Soviet, think National as in Germany in the ’30s and ’40s, think autocracies all over the world who run the banner of gummint uber alles.

These living-wage people need a new name. C’mon, reinvent yourselves. The red flag don’t fly hereabouts. We are too bourgeois, for all our flirting with pie in the sky before we die.

Such as Illinois Democrats spending, borrowing, spending some more, and look where we are now, will you? Heading up that old creek sans paddle in a cast-iron canoe. Not there quite yet. Give us time.

As for that mandated wage — telling employers what to pay employees, or else, or else what? After that, what? Tell them how to price their goods? Prix fixe for all!

That’s mandated wage all over, a fixed price. There’s a labor market, out of which can be priced hordes of people not worth the price. Wages are competitive or not, right? We can price ourselves or be priced out of that market.

Socialist policies do that. Want to know about democracy in the workplace, and anywhere else you look? It’s the will of the people. When they say free market, that’s what they have in mind: lots of people vote on what to pay for things and that vote prevails. It’s their money.

So when there’s something to sell, a man’s time for instance, democracy calls for open bidding, not a state directive. Free market, unhindered by government interference.

No price-fixing.