It appears the author of a certain memo concerning Ave Maria's financial situation has been identified.

Alexander Cockburn:

The liberals are howling bout the unfairness of these attacks, led by Sarah Palin, revived by her “Death Panel” talk and equipped with a dexterous new speech writer who is even adding footnotes to her press releases.

But what is a conservative meant to think? Since the major preoccupation of liberals for 30 years has been the right to kill embryos, why should they not be suspect in their intentions toward those gasping in the thin air of senility? There is a strong eugenic thread to American progressivism, most horribly expressed in its very successful campaign across much of the twentieth century to sterilize “imbeciles.” Abortion is now widening in its function as a eugenic device. Women in their 40s take fertility drugs, then abort the inconvenient twins, triplets or quadruplets when they show up on the scan.

In 1972, a year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion on demand nationwide, virtually all children with trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, were born. Less than a decade later, with the widespread availability of pre-natal genetic testing, as many as 90 percent of women whose babies were pre-natally diagnosed with the genetic condition chose to abort the child.

One survey of 499 primary care physicians treating women carrying these babies, however, indicated that only 4 percent actively encourage women to bring Down syndrome babies to term. A story on the CNS News Service last year quoted Dr. Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life, reacted to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) pre-natal testing endorsement as another step toward eugenics.“The progress of eugenic abortion into the heart of our society is a classic example of “mission creep,’ ” Johnson said. “In the 1960s, we were told that legal abortion would be a rare tragic act in cases of exceptional hardship. In the ’70s abortion began to be both decried and accepted as birth control. In the ’80s respected geneticists pointed out that it was cheaper to hunt for and abort Down’s babies than to raise them. By the ’90s that observation had been widely put into action. Now we are refining and extending our eugenic vision, with new tests and abortion as our central tools.”

So if we have mission creep in the opening round, what’s to persuade people that there won’t be mission creep at the other and the kindly official discussing living wills won’t tiptoe out of the ward and tell the hospital that the old fellow he’s just conferred with is ripe to meet his maker. The author of the provision – now dropped – in the health bill before Congress – for “end of life” counseling was Democratic Rep Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Blumenauer has denounced the “death panel” description as a “terrible falsehood.” Maybe so. But Blumenauer is hot for “death with dignity”, as a speech he made in Congress in 2000 makes clear: “A major concern [in an attempted revision of the Balanced Budget Act]is a provision that would criminalize decisions doctors make on pain management for the most seriously ill and overturn Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. Oregonians have twice voted to support the assisted suicide law. H.R. 2614 not only is an attack on the Democratic process, but also threatens to pain management. There is evidence that doctors are increasingly hesitant to prescribe pain medications to terminally ill patients for fear of being accused of unlawfully assisting a suicide. The on-going attempts by Congress to criminalize the doctor-patient relationship are a threat to pain management in all fifty states.”

For forty years, every American president has deprecated the powers of government to improve the public weal. Why now should Americans believe that any government-backed “health reform” will do them any good, as opposed to assigning them the appropriate lifespan, relative to their income and contributions to the corporate bottom line, which is what the present system amounts to?

Check out Dr. Médaille's responses to Donald Goodman's post on Obamacare.

As far as influence at the federal level, there are things we can do which will be important. Breaking up the monopolies is a preparation for distributism. So would a plan to break up the banks, which is what should have been done. We don't even have to win the battles, we just have to bring the issues to the attention of the public. That is why conversations about the "death boards" are a waste of time, a diversion from real issues. People do understand the issues, when you bring them to their attention. In fact, they understand better than the economists, which, admittedly, isn't saying much.

Further, we can't be like the communists, who always sacrificed the present moment to the glorious future; any amount of suffering, any sort of gulag, was justified in the name to the coming golden age. The truth is, people still get cancer, have accidents, sick children, and all the other things to which the flesh is heir. They need something today, and we need to show that we are the people who care about such things.

If that means a govmint program or two in the meantime, I am not much bothered. The survival of the govmint won't depend much on another $500 billion or so, and if it helps a few people on its way down, well so much the better.

Systems don't give up easily, and there will be an effort to hold on to power, to restore what is now the ancien regime. And since the volunteer army is no longer representative of the Republic, there is the danger of a Praetorian Guard.

There is also a new oddity here. There are more natural "conservatives" on the left these days than on the right. Yes they are screwy on gender and marriage issues, but there is more localism and self-reliance in Mother Jones News than in almost any conservative journal. So we have an opportunity to work both sides of the aisle, which means being particularly non-ideological, which is why I want to avoid the wing-nuts.

What is the difference between a monopoly and a guild operating within a political community? The fact that the guild cannot determine prices and fees on its own, and that this is part of the function of the government?

Tomas Luis de Victoria - Ave Maria

Thomas Fleming, Just Say No–to Health Care

Te Deum

The Te Deum chanted by the schola of the FSSP on the occasion of Fr. Roberto Cano FSSP 1st Mass at St. Francis. Check out www.uvcarmel.org for more on the Traditional Latin Mass.

First Public Mass-Fr. John Blewett 1/14

Sandro Magister, August on Mount Tabor, for Saints and Sinners

On the pope's agenda for this summer, three realities leap to the foreground: the example of the Curé of Ars, the sacrament of confession, the feast of the Transfiguration. Here's how and why

Mark T. Mitchell has more on Phillip Blond: "Here is an interview from The Guardian. Blond has the ear of David Cameron, calls himself a Red Tory, and is launching a new think tank in the fall. Do his ideas translate to the US?"

While the Democrat's current health reform plans may not be a good solution, still this post by Mr. Giraldi reminds us that the current system does not seem to be without its problems. Donald Goodman offers a distributist perspective on the Democrats' proposals. "Rex" posts this comment in response to Russell Arben Fox over at FPR:

Russell, in order for your question to be answerable you must make a distinction between health care and medical care. In all the debate about medical insurance, the sloppy interchange of these terms has clouded the debate to the point that it has become a tragic parody.

(I am going to borrow heavily from the Ivan Illich bucket here, but his discussion is most relevant, and like all of Illich’s essays you have read the definitions first.) Medical care is a part of health care, and medical insurance is only a part of medical care.

In my opinion, health care must be local. Local to the point of an individual, or even perhaps to level of an individual’s thoughts. Health care in its most basic form is taking care of your health: Getting enough sleep. Eating right. Getting enough exercise. Brushing your teeth. Etc. On the family level it is: Teaching you kids how to take care of themselves. Telling you wife that her pie Kung Fu is better than her sister’s, but I am really full. And of course giving and receiving hugs are important. On the community level health care is about having safe places to recreate, walkable communities, access to clean water, pure air, and healthy food. These circles continue to expand to the regional, national and global scale. For good or bad, the arrow of causality is (mostly) pointed from the individual out to the larger segments of society. Having a global authority telling people to brush their teeth is insanity embodied.

Medical care is different. Telling someone that should have brushed their teeth when have a broken arm is nonsense. Having trained doctors and nurses and adequate facilities is a necessity. However, it cannot replace health care at the its most basic and most inclusive form. Telling a 350 pounder that can cure her diabetes with a syringe is equally nonsensical. The causality arrow is much more balanced here.

Medical insurance is a subset of medical care. Medical insurance can never supplant either medical care nor health care. You can insure against medical costs, but you can never insure health. Perhaps our failure is semantic. We want to “ensure” our health, but all we talk about is “insuring” our medicine.

Paul Craig Roberts, Concocting the Appearance of Recovery

The internet connection has been restored -- the problem was the wiring outside, at the phone box. Next time, I'll pay for the AT&T technician in the first place, unless I have a friend who really knows how to do this stuff...

Edit. Maybe I spoke too soon...

FPR has an excerpt from Paul Gottfried’s Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.

Lydia McGrew, More from Esolen on boys

Things Fall Apart: Complexity, Supply Chains, Infrastructure & Collapse
Dr. David Korowicz, The Oil Drum

Why Corporations, Emerging Powers and Petro-States Are Snapping Up Huge Chunks of Farmland in the Developing World
Scott Thrill, alternet
(via EB)

Creating a Resilient, Natural 'World of Ends' Economy
Dave Pollard, blog
If we want to engender a new economy, bottom-up, we have to start by discovering the work we're meant to do, because we're only going to persevere effectively if the role we're playing lies at the intersection of what we're good at, what we love doing, and what's needed in the world that we care about.

Winslow T. Wheeler, How Congress Pays For Its Pork

Mike Whitney, There is No Recession
It's a Planned Demolition

John Médaille, Who Owns Our Jobs?

He reviews the book Jobs of Our Own.

Sarge and his older brother watched The Hurt Locker last night, and they hated the movie for its lack of realism and accuracy. For example: (1) the widespread use of ACUs during the movie (which takes place in 2004), when they were not introduced until several years later. (2) The fight between James and Sanborn. In real life an E-5 would not hit an E-7, without consequences (court-martial). (3) The sniper duel involving two members of the EOD team. (4) The CAG sequence when James goes off on his own. (5) The team doing a sweep of a building by themselves. (And presumably when they go beyond the perimeter of a secured site where a tanker exploded, in order to look for the culprits) (6) Some of the equipment was not authentic -- especially the switch for the radio used by team members.

Sarge questioned the identity of the Brits going after the wanted Iraqis. He thought they were mercenaries.

The movie may satisfy civilians, but not professional soldiers... even though it wasn't produced by a major studio, it's still "Hollywood" and good for only the "sheep" of our society.

Interview with Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal - Beyond the Multiplex
ROTTEN TOMATOES: Inside The Hurt Locker with Writer Mark Boal
"The Hurt Locker" New York Screening And Q&A With Mark Boal
Interview: The Hurt Locker's Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow

Dr. Fleming praises Barney Miller: "Barney Miller was by far the best cop show on TV, the best written and the most true to life." When I was young I didn't really understand the humor so I never really watched it.




Something more serious: Orestes I.

Still without internet access at "home." Will it be taken care of on Wednesday?

Peter Hitchens, Police are now the useless uniformed wing of New Labour

Nathan Origer, Localism and Economic Liberalism: A prolix pontification and an open forum

This morning I was thinking that I should have pursued a theology degree. (Where, though? Not CUA or Notre Dame, probably. DSPT? The Dominican House of Studies? Ave Maria?)

Why did I pick philosophy? Because I was, and still am, a scholastic who believes that one should have an adequate education in philosophy before proceeding to speculative theology. (Of course, philosophy is not enough--one should be familiar with Sacred Scripture and with the Church Fathers. But what American university gives a sufficient introduction to the Church Fathers?) And for me, the best guides in philosophy are Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.

But if the graduate education I received was very inadequate for training someone to become an Aristotelian-Thomist, then wouldn't the time have been better spent on a theology degree? At least it would be easier getting a job teaching at a Catholic high school or being a lay minister of some sort.