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America's real party system-Part 1

[Every now and then something I read produces a critical reaction that impels me to focus on the background historical and other assumptions that I take for granted  in my thinking.  This article is the first in a series that developed as I took note of my reaction to a piece about the significance and possible future of the Tea Party movement.  Labor Day has traditionally marked the formal kick-off of the "campaign season" in American politics.  It seems an appropriate day to publishing a series that aims to help readers think through the political reality veiled by the appearance of the so-called two-party system. ] Not long ago I read an article signed J. R. Dunn that offered a plausible history of the relationship between conservatives and the GOP.  It portrays a party in which the “liberal” tail has usually been  wagging the  “conservative dog”, the exception being the era ...

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America's real party system- Part 3

If, during eras of elite ascendancy, the two most visible parties are tools of elite manipulation, then there is at all times a third party involved in all our political activities.  It is the populist party, normally divided against itself by successful elite manipulation.  In terms of its potential, it is always the majority party.  The notion that “third parties fail” is therefore less an observation of fact than a statement of elite intention. In the past, some pervasive material or moral passion occasionally roused this third party to unify under its own leadership .  In our current circumstances the unifying impulse comes in reaction against the elite itself.  There is a widespread sense that the nation suffers from a general failure of elite leadership (in particular, the failure of both elite manipulated parties),  a failure connected with the elite's cynical, purely self-aggrandizing ambition.  The Obama faction's open contempt for ...

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America's real party system-Part 2

In the years that followed the Lincoln era, the United States faced a new organizational imperative.  As in the post-Jackson era, it involved continental expansion.  But in addition to this there were  the material challenges of accommodating new technology’s rapid transformation of economic life, and the moral challenge of reconstituting the nation’s unity despite the persistent post-traumatic stresses still reverberating from the Civil War. These challenges allowed the elite to regain a leadership position, this time co-opting the populist moral passion of the Lincoln era with ideas of national destiny and administrative reform. The result was  an era of unprecedented elite ascendancy marked off by the two Roosevelts, the Republican, Teddy and the Democrat, FDR.  Their familiar nicknames represent the complete submergence of elite ascendancy in the streams of populist passion.  They signify the virtually complete success of the elite divisional strategy. The two Roosevelts aptly represent this success.  Their family relationship ...

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Is Lakin’s court-martial an American ‘Dreyfus affair’?

I doubt that most people would be shocked to learn that sometimes the influence of power can interfere with and even derail the course of justice in our legal system.  Behind the scenes, a phone call from a powerful politician, or a corporate mogul often affects the actions or judgments of people whose personal ambitions they are in a position to help or hinder.  Usually though, people giving heed to such considerations have enough sense to cloak what they do with words or actions that give their corruption at least the appearance of probity.  Maybe its the tribute that vice renders to virtue.  Maybe its nothing more than self-serving prudence (the mask of honesty that facilitates corruption.) However, when court officers conclude that such hypocrisy is no longer worth the effort, things are pretty far gone.  The video featured with this post  focuses on the recent decision by Col. Denise R. ...

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Planned Parenthood’s moral insanity

Daily Brief #13 The video featured on this page is a news report out of Texas about a pro-life billboard campaign just launched there by the Radiance Foundation and the Life Education Resource Network (L.E.A.R.N.).  It’s an effort to focus attention on the disproportionate number of nascent blacks being murdered in Texas under the rubric of abortion rights. What especially provoked my interest was criticism of the project from a Planned Parenthood spokeswoman quoted in the report.  “This is about trying to interfere with women making private personal decisions and unfortunately and really shockingly, this group has decided to use racism as a wedge issue,” Rochelle Tafolla said. “We think that  is just reprehensible…” So its reprehensible to focus an individual’s attention on the impact her individual action has on her community.  Could there be a more perfect illustration of Planned Parenthood’s moral insanity? In many U.S. communities today local laws encourage or even ...

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Was Jesus a leader?

Daily Brief #12 “Asked who would be considered conservative Christian leaders today- with Graham in his 90s and the recent death of Jerry Falwell – Land said that “leaders are leaders because people follow them.”  So says Richard Land. Every year as we approach the commemoration of Christ’s passion, crucifixion and resurrection the people Jesus has saved recall his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And the most part of the multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut branches from the trees, and spread them in the way.  And the multitudes that went before him, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.” Judging by the multitudes that followed him, and the words of Richard Land, in this grand triumphal entry, Jesus was a leader. But after he drove the money lenders from the Temple, confounded the ...

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A Meditation on Glenn Beck’s Divine Mission

[I have been in prayerful thought about the events taking place this weekend under Glenn Beck’s auspices.  He portrays them as the beginning of a Great Revival of faith in America.  People I know and think well of are involved.  Yet I find I cannot ignore the check in my spirit that prevents me from accepting that the events or their sponsor are what he professes them to be.  This posting is an effort to lay out the elements that contribute to my misgivings, insofar as they are susceptible to articulation.  Herein I attempt to share a train of thought and the destination toward which  it points.   Is it the right one? With God’s help, time may tell.] Glenn Beck: “I mean, the one part of culture that I am doing a lot of is faith.  But general faith.  We have got to get back to our churches, our synagogues, our mosques, ...

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Forgive Us Our Trespasses

May 5, 2009 · 51 comments

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series The Notre Dame Scandal

[FYI: This past weekend Fox news reported the arrest of Randall Terry as he protested against Notre Dame's invitation and honorary degree for Barack Obama. (See Notre Dame: Promoting the Glamour of Evil, and An Open Letter to Father Jenkins.) According to the report "Terry was taken to the St. Joseph County Jail on criminal trespass charges." He has since been released after posting a bond. In light of this occurrence, I feel bound in conscience to make the following statement, commitment and call to all who labor in defense of the God given and unalienable right to life.]

With the arrest of pro-life servant Randall Terry, Father Jenkins and the University administration at Notre Dame take their adulation of evil to a new level of spiritual atrocity.

In a little less than two weeks they will welcome to the university campus a man who represents the most abominable and extreme commitment ever known in US politics to destroying the God given right to life of innocent human offspring. With their actions and the “honor” they confer upon Obama, they will actively promote the lie that it is possible to dishonor God blatantly and unashamedly, yet be somehow “honorable” in the eyes of those who profess faith in Jesus Christ.

Christ said

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: 36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. 37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:31-40)

These words must ring in the ears of faithful Christians as they consider the grim reality of abortion. Every time abortionists rip a child limb from limb within the womb; every time they crush an infant’s fragile head; every time they have scorched the life from its body with a death dealing chemical solution; every time they scrape its nascent cells of life from the walls of a womb- Jesus is savagely beaten again; his skull pressed down with thorns; his limbs pulled recklessly in their sockets; his hands and feet pierced through with nails; his breaths infused with fiery pain; his life finally extinguished; every time.

And every time there stands vociferous in the taunting crowd, the ambitious man of blood, Barack Obama. He is crying aloud, “Let Him be crucified.” He is justifying the torture, forcing bystanders to aid in the atrocity, assuring that the nails are paid for and the henchmen of evil well fed and rewarded for their role in the daily crucifixion. Even the garments of the innocent children (their little organs or their stem cells), like the vesture of Christ, he prepares for division among those who perpetrate the slaughter.

All his life Randall Terry, seeing this passion play of evil repeated over and over again in our day, has born witness bravely and shamelessly against it. On the day of crucifixion, Christ endures the punishment reserved for infamous rebels and criminals. Fearing that they too would be treated as criminals, Peter and most of the other disciples run and hide. So too do many of us today. Though we profess to believe that abortion breaks God’s fundamental law, we will not stand boldly with Jesus as he endures humiliating injustice. We fear for ourselves and shrink from association with the bloody and terrible images of torture and death. But through the years Randall Terry, and those who share his lion’s heart for justice, have stood with the Mother of our Lord at the foot of the Cross. They have been sprinkled with the blood and water that gushed from his wounded side. They have received from the pierced and bleeding hand of the Lord the Blessed Gift by which he made his Mother Our Lady (Notre Dame), the mother of all the faithful ones who endure with Him to the end, receiving His crown of pain, which is also the crown of life.

Instead of cringing inwardly at Randall Terry’s bold willingness to be arrested for bearing witness to God’s truth, those who understand the gift of Christ’s words and example must be moved to imitate his boldness. Tragically, ironically, a supposedly Catholic university and its administration have stepped forward to be the Bull Connors of this era’s most clear and pressing battle for God given human rights. They have declared it an offense peacefully to demonstrate the evil of abortion. They have declared it an offense, prayerfully to bear witness to truth on a campus supposedly guided by and subordinate to that truth. Though it is an offense to them, it is a duty to Truth, and to Christ and to God. Wherever there are faithful hearts drawn to do this duty, they must feel now the vocation to join Randall Terry in defiance of this intimidation. I will join him. I ask others who all these years have prayed and labored for the unborn to join us. I know you are there. I have broken bread with you at dinners for crisis pregnancy centers and right to life groups. I have marched with you to proclaim the sanctity of innocent life, and decry the laws that sanction its destruction. I have been uplifted by your faith, your perseverance, your love of God and His son. The forces of evil mean to lay final claim to a place supposed to be within the precincts of our God and Lord. Come what may, we must come forth now to occupy and hold it against them.

I will go to South Bend. I will step foot on the Notre Dame campus to lift up the standard that protects the life of the innocent children of this and every generation. I will do it all day and every day until, if it be God’s will, shame and the love of Christ overcome the university administration’s vain craving for iniquitous “honor”. I will do it though it means I shall be housed every day in the prison house of lies and injustice that Obama, Jenkins and their minions now mean to construct for those who will never be still and silent in the face of their mockery of God and justice, their celebration of evil.

If this be trespass, then forgive us our trespasses and join us in trespassing until the South Bend jail is filled to overflowing with witnesses to truth; filled beyond capacity; filled until we break the most onerous shackles of all- the ones that bind the heart and mind to evil and our nation to the path of its moral and spiritual destruction.


Series Navigation«An Open Letter to Father JenkinsLet God Be The Judge»
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Related posts:

  1. The Notre Dame Scandal- A Brief Report
  2. Let God Be The Judge
  3. An Open Letter to Father Jenkins
  4. Notre Dame: Promoting the Glamour of Evil
  5. On the continuing scandal at Notre Dame

{ 51 comments… read them below or add one }

reallytrue May 19, 2009 at 6:05 am

Dr Keyes,

Right now, more than at any other time of my life, I can see clearly all the warnings of the Prophets of Olde: they told us of this time when
the Great Apostasy would come: Apostasy is the ‘falling away of one’s belief’, and we are seeing this apostasy in real-time as we witness
Notre Dame replacing Jesus Christ with the obama
messiah, and in other places when we see whole
congregations breaking off so as to be able to
sin without the uncomfortableness of the Doctrine
of God telling them they are wrong. Know this:
right after the great apostasy comes the first
appearance of the antichrist who will be disguised and pretending to be the true Christ.
This fake jesus, actually satan, will convince all to be accepting of practices that are against the very Doctrine of Gods Word, but most
people today aren’t even sure what is actually written and what is not. The stage is set, and
this flesh age is about to end. I wonder which side each person will be put? Sheep or goats?
God have mercy on us. It would serve those at Notre Dame well to open up Gods Word and begin to read it with understanding, because it will mean either life or dead for them; as it stands,
things are not looking well for many of them.
ANYTHING YOU PLACE BEFORE GOD IS AN IDOL; it seems we have a whole lot of idol worship going
on in this generation. fOLKS HAD BETTER GET THEIR HOUSES IN ORDER.

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