FBI Presecutes Pro-Life Catholics

 Eric Sammons at Crisis Magazine reports that the FBI Is Sending A Message To Pro-Life Catholics.

The swatting and arrest of a pro-life activist on Friday sent shockwaves throughout the pro-life community…which is exactly what the FBI intended by their gestapo tactics.

When a swarm of fully-armed FBI agents attack the rural home of a father of seven who runs a Catholic anti-pornography ministry over a charge that was already dropped in the local courts, it’s not a mistake—it’s a message. You will be silent, you will comply—or you will be next.

...snip...

The real story here is the overheated response of the federal government. This arrest is another step on the path to full-scale persecution of Catholics and pro-lifers. History shows that the persecution of a class of people doesn’t appear in a vacuum; it usually takes decades or even longer of priming the society to look down on a group of people or way of life. And what has the past few decades in America been if not a growing delegitimization of Catholicism and its teachings?

We see it all around us. Big families are ridiculed, priests are mocked, and traditional sexuality is reviled. Anyone who dares to resist this trend is progressively ostracized from society and the culture at large. It begins at the level of the major media and Hollywood until it seeps into dinner conversations and neighborhood picnics. Eventually it gets to the point that a family man can be arrested and many will just say, “Well, he probably deserved it—after all, look at the way he lives.”

The forces of evil know how to take advantage of this attitudinal shift. They push a little at a time, progressively ramping up their attacks to see what is acceptable and what is not (yet) acceptable. An arrest like this, then, serves a dual purpose: first, it sends a message to the pro-life community, and second, it checks the pulse of the culture to gauge the reaction. If this arrest is allowed to stand, then expect more in the future.

"The forces of evil indeed."  Is it too much to say that Catholics are being attacked demonically? I won't name the demon because to do so gives it power.  We invite these demons into our lives when we allow abortions and do other things that displease God.  If you want to see what I am talking about, look up the Tucker Carlson interview with an exorcist.  Hair raising stuff, that.

The chaos around us is yet more evidence of demons let loose on the world. Many gentle readers will of course say that this is all hogwash. But if Christ himself cast out demons, and taught the Apostles to do so, then demons exist.

The Church has been through persecutions before. But in a country that ostensibly has religious freedom as one of its founding principles, it is disappointing. Still...

The increasing insanity of the Left has one positive element: it reveals to a growing number of “normal” people that a world ruled by the Left isn’t one they want to live in. And so we will likely see more and more victories by the Right, which is really just more victories for sanity.

If you are Catholic, pray a rosary for Mr. Houk, and also for his persecutors. If not, pray anyway.  He needs our prayers and so do we.

We must insist that the demons stay in Hell where they belong

Today at Townhall.com Star Parker has an article noting that Religious Freedon Means Nothing if Religion Means Nothing. It seems that an LGBTQ etc. etc. (yawn)club had sued Yeshiva University to be included as an official club, and the Supreme Court had backed the club.

Yeshiva University, the nation's only orthodox Jewish university, has been sued by Yeshiva University gay students for refusing to sanction an LGBTQ club. A New York State court ruled in favor of the students, and now Yeshiva University has been dealt another setback by the Supreme Court.

The Supremes, to whom Yeshiva University appealed, refused to block the state court decision requiring that the university allow the LGBTQ club to operate.

First, this shows that the Supreme Court, being composed of fallen human beings, doesn't always deliver the right decision. Obviously, Yeshiva University is a religious Jewish school.  Their first amendment rights would be violated by being forced to officially recognize an LGBT etc. etc. club.  And the club could operate in any case, as it apparently did.  

Second, it also says that no matter what, we must stand up for what we believe. I noted a few posts ago, that during the pope's trip to Malta to speak with the migrants, he covered up the Cross. He should never have done that. We should never do that.

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.

 And Yeshiva University should not, under any circumstances accede to this ruling of the Supreme Court. If the State of New York can thumb their noses at the Supreme Court's Bruen ruling, so can Yeshiva University.

But, more importantly, Yeshiva University must follow God's law when God's law and civil law disagree. God's law uneqivically says that homosexual behavior is anathema to God. More to the point, God says He created man male and female. The first command He gave man was to be fruitful and multiply. Homosexual behaviour can not produce children. Neither can any other of the LBGTQ etc. etc. (yawn) click produce children as long as they behave according to their perverted leanings. This is nothing but the demonic being allowed once again into our midst. We must insist that the demons stay in Hell where they belong.

Saving Unborn Lives

 Over at the Federalist Joshua McCaig has a piece entitled Biden Administration Silently Erases Unborn Child in Legal Argument Pushin Abortion On Religious Medical Workers. The issue is surrounding the Emergency Medial Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA)

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) has taken center stage in the Biden administration’s push to force health care providers to perform abortions. Faith-based organizations have been forced to take action to protect their sincerely held religious beliefs, including the belief that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, from being violated by requirements that health care providers perform abortions.

...snip...

HHS then published a memorandum providing guidance on the obligations of health care professionals under EMTALA to patients who are pregnant, and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter to health care professionals stating that “if a physician believes that a pregnant patient presenting at an emergency department, including certain labor and delivery departments, is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by the EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide the treatment.” This guidance effectively requires any physician, regardless of personal beliefs and conscience considerations, to perform an intentional abortion.

...snip...

Contrary to HHS’s position, EMTALA was created to ensure that not only a pregnant woman’s health is protected in an emergency situation, but also the health of the unborn child. Enacted in 1986, EMTALA addressed “patient dumping,” a term to describe a situation where a patient who is uninsured or unable to pay is prematurely discharged or sent to another facility before being evaluated and stabilized. Pregnant women in labor were specifically contemplated in this law, as women without insurance who presented to a hospital in labor were being inappropriately denied care or transferred to another facility leading, in certain circumstances, to injury or death of the mother or unborn child. The purpose of EMTALA was to protect both the mother and the unborn child, and the unambiguous language of the statute requires health care professionals to take into consideration the life and health of the unborn child. EMTALA defines “emergency medical condition” as “a medical condition manifesting itself by acute symptoms of sufficient severity (including pain) such that the absence of immediate medical attention could reasonably be expected to result in — (i) placing the health of the individual (or, with respect to a pregnant woman, the health of the woman or her unborn child) in serious jeopardy … (B) with respect to a pregnant woman who is having contractions — (i) that there is inadequate time to effect a safe transfer to another hospital before delivery, or (ii) that transfer may pose a threat to the health or safety of the woman or the unborn child.”

I urge all gentle readers to read the entire article. What is happening to our country is an infinitely small version of what the real Hell would be like. Too many in our country have abandoned God, including our leaders, God in turn is abandoning us. We need to repent and return to placing God at the center of our lives.

We Should Be Grateful For Fossil Fuels. Instead, Some People Want To Destroy It All.

 I have two today from the American Thinker The first, I will let gentle readers read on their own, for it is, in essence prologue to the second. The first is by Alicia Colon entitled Are You Really That Smart If You Can't Recognize B.S.. Colon argues that facts are always in service to our interpretation of what we observe. But our highest act of reason is what is known as critical thinking. It is this critical thinking that our education system should aspire to, but has too often failed to deliver. She cites as one example the moronic theory climate cooling...er...warming...er...change.

The second article comes from Christopher Chantrill and is entitled Green Energy Transistion Hits the Wall. Chantrill in this article is necessarily vitriolic and sarcastic.

I wish it didn't have to be this way, but really, it's the only way to tell the climatatistas that their God is Dead. Facts and logic won't do it. Instead, the believers must experience decadence and nihilism and dead bodies floating down the Rhine and know, in their eternal recurrence, that their climate god isn't going to save them.

It's Not Funny, but the prospect of a cold winter without Russian gas in Europe seems to be the one thing that the Klausi babies and the Greta Thunbergs and the gubmint-funded scientists didn't think about in planning their glorious Great Leap Forward to the green energy transition.

Good point, young Mao, in the back row. If backyard steel plants were such a good idea, why don't we all cook up lithium batteries on the backyard barbie?

After all, it is not as if we have been told numerous times by those who should know that the climate has been changing since God created the Earth, and well before man first walked on the planet. To presume that man has anything to do with the current climate, or can do anything to change it is the height of hubris. It recalls the Tower of Babel. Chantrill, of course, takes his swipes at St. Greta of Thunberg and others, but then he gets down to business.

See, geniuses, there is this little concept called “time preference.” It says that humans discount possible events in the future. That's because it is more important to put gas in the car right now -- or plug your climate-friendly EV into the free recharging station at the supermarket -- than to worry about what gubmint- and billionaire-funded scientists say about the climate in 80 years. And it is really not a good idea to wreck the economy with green energy subsidies and pay-to-play research grants, just because you can.

And another thing, the gubmint scientists may be wrong. Ask Trofim Lysenko, Stalin's pet scientist, about that.

fearlessly predict that by the end of the 21st century the Big Thing will be the grandsons of Elon Musk fighting over their SpaceX inheritance to see who gets to make the next trillion by sending people to Mars on the Starship Premium Frequent Flyer Program.

People under thrity may not know who Lysenko was (or Stalin for that matter) but you should look him up. He was the one who attempted to conform science to Communist dogma. You may guess how that worked out, but at least Lysenko kept his head.

Chantrill concludes with this:

All the flap about green energy has helped me appreciate what an amazing boon to humanity gasoline is: with a hundred pounds of gas in the tank you can drive the kids all day across the fruited plain to grandma's house. But it takes 6,000 pounds of battery to get your EV halfway to grandma's: assuming that the charging stations have electricity, California.

Because of abundant fossil fuels, we no longer are dependent of human muscle power, which has woeful limits, nor on horse power, which also has woeful limits. This has enabled us to build, to travel, clean our homes and cook our food and live longer, healthier lives. We should be grateful and respectful. Instead, certain people want to destroy it all. Why?

Depopulation?

Marian Tupy has an article at Townhall.com asking Does The World Face an Underpopulation Problem? Tupy argues that contrary to what is deemed "common sense", the world, and human flourishing, has grown as the population has grown. But common sense in this instance is wrong because neo-maltusians look at resources as being used up. But all the resources that have ever been here are still here. What happens is that as population growns, we get more and more creative in how to use these resources more amd more efficiently.

Tupy notes that the price of strategic resources continue to go down in terms of the number of hours someone needs to work to purchase these materials.

The problem with real prices is that they ignore changes in incomes. Typically, though not always, individual incomes increase faster than inflation. That’s because people tend to grow more productive over their lifetimes and across time. Contrast the productivity of workers equipped with shovels and those driving giant excavators. While real prices are measured in dollars and cents, time prices are measured in hours and minutes. To calculate a time price, all you need to do is to divide the nominal price of a good or service by the nominal hourly income. That tells you how long you must work to afford something.

Consider U.S. manufacturing workers. Between 1900 and 2018, the time prices of pork, rice, cocoa, wheat, corn, coffee, lamb and beef fell by 98.4%, 97.6%, 97.1%, 96.7%, 96.1%, 93.8%, 78.6% and 75.5% respectively. That means that the same length of time that bought 1 pound of each commodity, now buys 62.6, 41.1, 34.8, 30.5, 25.6, 16.2, 4.7 and 4 pounds. While people cannot eat rubber, aluminum, potash or cotton, the prices of these commodities are valuable inputs in the production processes that impact the prices of goods and services, and hence the overall standard of living. Their time prices fell by 99.4%, 98.9%, 98.2% and 95.8% respectively. All the while, the population of the United States rose from 23 million to 328 million.

What happened to global time prices of resources? They fell by 84 percent between 1960 and 2018. The personal resource abundance of the average inhabitant of the globe rose from 1 to 6.27 or 527 percent. Put differently, for the same time of work that he or she could buy one item in the basket of resources we looked at, he or she can now get more than six. Over that 58-year period, the world’s population increased from 3 billion to 7.6 billion.

When looked at in those terms, it is pretty clear that far from being over populated, more people have brought greater human flourishing. The malthusians have always been wrong. The neo-malthusians are just as wrong. The China one child policy has been wrong. I suspect that as the world's population decreases, the cost of everything will rise because there are fewer people to spread the cost over.

Dobbs was worth it

Yesterday, David Harsanyi had an article at Townhall.com entitled Absolutely, Dobbs Was Worth It. Now, Harsanyi cites reasons of constitutionality and the political prospects of Republicans in the upcoming midterms as reasons for believing that the Dobbs decision was needed. I can not argue with Harsanyi on any of the points he made. Indeed I am glad he made them. For too long we have wandered away from our constitutional roots by following stare decisis. So one bad decision yields another worse decision based on the bad decision. Then the next, based on the worse decision becomes still more worse than the last. What the Supreme Court has done is gone back to and ruled on the Constitution itself, to find that there is nothing in the Constitution guaranteeing a "right" to kill your unborn children. So they have turned it back to the states to decide, each state for itself. It's about time. Why does everything have to be decided nationally for all? But of course you know the answer. It concentrates power in the hands of Washington elites.

What concerns me more, however, is the sheer immorality. Now, one can feel sorry for women who have to carry an unwanted child to term, and believe me I do. And men do not get off easy here, for there has only been one immaculate conception in the history of mankind. But the baby is the only innocent party here. Each person, mother and father, made a choice. The moral thing to do is bring the child to term and either raise it yourself, or put it up for adoption. Many families are looking for children to adopt, and frankly the government often makes adoption more difficult. But there is doing the right thing, and doing the convenient thing.

Whatever way you look at it though, Dobbs was worth it.

Ohio Advances the Second Amendment

At Townhall.com today, Sarah Arnold tells us that Ohio Teachers Are Now Allowed To Have Guns In Their Classrooms

As many Democrat states call to get rid of guns, Republicans are fighting to keep the Second Amendment alive and protected.

This week a new law went into effect in Ohio allowing teachers, principals and school staff to carry firearms while in the classroom.

House bill 99 will require only 24 hours of training, down from the previous 700 hours, followed by 8 annual hours of re-qualification training. School staff will also be required to undergo yearly criminal background checks.

Another win for the Second Amendment.