Mark Shea on Ron Paul (and his critics)

So when I express some pleasure over, say, the way Ron Paul keeps humiliating the thugs, empty suits, and poseurs of the GOP, that's not to say that I "believe" in Ron Paul (who, as I've repeatedly said, strikes me as a bit kooky). It's that I think him a valuable counterweight to the far more pernicious and dangerous kookiness that has infected the GOP with Grand End to Evil Delusions, with huge and cynical schemes for Salvation Through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary arrogance, with a contempt for fiscal responsibility that would do LBJ proud, and with a repellent knack for wrapping all this in fur Kirche und Vaterland rhetoric that constantly makes the suggestion that critics of Bush not only hate America but are enemies of Christ *and* kumbaya idiots who need to read more Machiavelli. I think the stench from that insanity is what makes people appreciate Paul's basically modest approach to what governemnt is capable of. . . .

SOURCE: Catholic and Enjoying It December 22, 2007.

Mark Shea on Little Green Footballs

. . . Slowly, through a process of attrition, those guys have found their natural habitat at Little Green Footballs and other places that have nothing but contempt for any Catholic teaching that stand in the way of such secular messianic projects as Grand End to Evil Schemes for Changing the World and Salvation Through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary Projects. So the open contempt for Catholic moral teaching has faded in the comboxes somewhat. . . .

Source: Catholic and Enjoying It December 17, 2007.

Mark Shea on Torture Apologists for the Bush Administration

. . . people have been *taught* over the past few years to be "sincerely conflicted" by apologists for Strength Through War Crimes and shills for the Administration. I recognize that the vast majority of people are thinking about torture (when they happen to do so, which is seldom) in light of "24" and crap fed them by professional crapmeisters who scare people with endless (and completely unreal) ticking time bomb scenarios. My ire is not with the plumber or the soccer mom who has never given the matter much thought beyond, "Yikes! I'd do anything to save my family from the Bad Guys." My ire is with those in the media who have, with calculated malice aforethought (not to mention self-serving abuse of power), worked with might and main to excuse, abet, and aid the Bush Administration with a policy of war crimes that they *know* is torture, that they *know* is shady, and that they strive to cover up with redacted court opinions, lies, and euphemisms. And they have taught us to parrot them. . . .

Source: Catholic and Enjoying It December 12, 2007.

Mark Shea on Ron Paul, Republican Media Whores

"So, Congressman Paul ... you’re basically saying that we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda?" Fox host Chris Wallace asked.

"No! I'm saying we should take our marching orders from our constitution." Paul replied sharply.

That the agents and shills of the War Party and the End to Evil Crowd have to routinely stoop to this sort of filth in order to neutralize the growing threat of Ron Paul says far, far more about them than it does about him. The idea that a high regard for the Constitution is now routinely treated as crazy talk by the the Rubber Hose Right is a harbinger of the self-made doom they face in the 2008 elections. [...]

I differ from many Americans in not regarding the Constitution as holy writ. I think it is a work of staggering human genius which we disregard at our peril and particularly when the disregarding is being done by a fourth rate Chauncey Gardner with a mean streak like the current President. To sell our birthright for the mess of pottage the Administration has crammed down our throats for the past six years is spectacularly short-sighted. But I don't think the Constitution is inspired Scripture, so I'm not convinced that mere fidelity to the Constitution always guarantees Ron Paul won't be (as I think he sometimes is) a kook. But I do find myself thinking I much prefer this kook to the Best and Brightest whose schemes of Creative Destruction and Grand Strategies for the End to Evil have so royally screwed up America and the world in the past six years. And not the least of that damage is that a good man who reveres the Constitution has to sit there and take it while a Republican Media Whore says he is a traitor to his country for that reverence. Despicable!

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It September 7, 2007.

Mark Shea on Victor Davis Hanson

Part of the reason I am so suspicious of the Creative Destruction theorists, the Grand Political Strategists and the secular messianic End to Evil visionaries is that they write things like:

Israel lost some of its precious capital of deterrence in the last war, but ultimately the real loser was a bankrupt Iran who lost far more materially than did a far wealthier Israel.

Daniel Larison points out the little blind spot that comes of this tendency to analyze things in terms of "people as means to ends".

[T]he "real loser" of the war in Lebanon last year was, um, Lebanon, which had its infrastructure severely damaged, 1,000 of its people killed, hundreds of thousands made into refugees and its political life thrown into ever greater convulsions.

Oh. Yeah. Them. The Lebanese. But they don't figure into the Grand Strategy of the Great Thinkers. They're just people who happened to be in the way of the Big Picture.

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It July 3, 2007.

Mark Shea on Michael Ledeen

My point--Machiavelli's point, actually--is that real decisions in real life are almost never easy, and those called upon to make those tough decisions have to be willing to "enter into evil." Sometimes by doing that--as briefly as possible, he implores us--means doing things we know to be morally wrong.... [A]s every grownup thoughtful person knows, that it is also possible to do the morally right thing, and by so doing, we unleash great evil. Life is tough. And the abstract moralists are not a very good guide for leaders, at least not all the time. - Michael Ledeen

May God grant eternal rest to the 100 million victims of those who were not afraid to ignore the abstract moralists, be "grown up thoughtful persons", enter into evil and do things they knew to be morally wrong.

Mark Shea on Neoconservatism

That secular messianic impulse is why I keep banging on about the sinister rhetoric of Creative Destruction that is animating the latest Big Thinkers in their Wilsonian/Machiavellian attempts to create heaven on earth (in this case, via democratic capitalism). Ideologies that attempt a short cut around human nature via violence (whether jihadi or Creative Destroyer) are menaces. The common rhetoric these ideologies share with the Commies is, as the Marxist loves to say, no accident. There are few things more dangerous than a couple of Christian virtues cut off from the Tradition and used as the basis of a militant movement unashamed to use violence in pursuit of the Millennium.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It June 12, 2007.

Mark Shea on Michael Ledeen, Neoconservatism

Iraqi Church enjoys the fruits of the doctrine of Creative Destruction. But hey! As the Great Theologian says, "the level of casualties (in Iraq) is secondary." It's not like salvation comes through the Church or something. Get real! Salvation comes through Leviathan by any means necessary.

Source: Catholic & Enjoying It June 11, 2007.

Mark Shea on Impeachment

. . . I think that's just about it for me. If Corsi's assessment is accurate, then I say, Impeach George Bush. Yes, I'm aware Lincoln did something similar. I'm uninterested in excuses. The United States is not embroiled in a civil war. This is a power grab more despicable than Roosevelt's scheme to pack the Supreme Court. And undertaken by a man who has shown himself to be shockingly incompetent in dealing with the issue that he himself has decided his presidency must stand or fall upon: American security and the war in Iraq. Giving this man (much less all his successors in perpetuity) the power to make themselves dictator solely on their own discretion is insane. Fire the guy. Consign this disastrous novelty to the flames of political perdition.

The biggest mistake I ever made in my civic life was voting (twice, alas!) for George W. Bush.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It May 23, 2007.

Mark Shea on Republican Torture Enthusiasts

Our Vice President prefers not to call it "waterboarding". Too Khmer Rougish. He likes to call it "dunking". A little friendly horseplay that calls to mind the watersports of our teen years.

A few determined Torture Apologists will say, "Who you gonna believe? Me or your own two eyes!" Some of those with FoxNews implants will nod when the Torture Apologists flash the Queen of Diamonds and tell them that this is just "enhanced interrogation techniques", "so-called torture". Worse still, with the exception of McCain and Ron Paul, every single candidate in the Republican Augean stable enthusiastically endorse what you are watching (assuming you have the stomach to watch it) and even worse stuff besides. Indeed, not a few of the Torture Enthusiasts are saying that the gravest question facing the Republican Party is whether to allow a beast like Ron Paul to continue to sully the reputation of the GOP by appearing on stage with the upstanding men who want to make America a stronger, more efficient Torture State.

And all this has become a legitimate legal cheerfully endorsed (though euphemistically elided) fact of American life because of George W. Bush.

SOURCE: Catholic and Enjoying It May 22, 2007.

Mark Shea on Ron Paul

Libertarians always tend to be a bit kooky. But his kookiness is far less of a problem to me then the Enforcers of Newthink in the End to Evil Crowd who would ban his voice in the public arena because it shows up the Salvation Through Leviathan By Any Means Necessary guys as the brutal incompetents they are.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It - May 17, 2007

* * *

I will have to keep my eye on Ron Paul. I'm somewhat suspicious of the Libertarian thing, but if he opposes abortion as well as what the Newspeakers of the Rubber Hose Right and the FOXNews Ministry of Newthink technicians call "enhanced interrogation techniques", I may have finally found my doomed quixotic candidate to support.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It - May 16, 2007.

Mark Shea on Norman Podhoretz

Another Cubicle Dweller Has More Plans for More Andy Baceviches

When it comes to Grand End to Evil Planners, no sacrifice of other people's children is too much.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It May 15, 2007.

Mark Shea on Christian Persecution in Pakistan

Religion of Peace Adherents Feel the Longing for Freedom Beating in Their Breast Just as Bush's Second Inaugural Says It Does

Clearly, this is a culture ripe for the imposition of democratic capitalism at the barrel of a gun. What could it possibly hurt if we, say, march into a country and destroy the few protections that exist for the only institution in history that has ever actually given birth to stable democracies? Surely, the Christian community is not as important to the long-term healing and redemption of a people in darkness as "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" is. Six of one, half dozen of another! Indeed, as some of my readers have said, if the Chaldean Catholic community in Iraq *really* loved their country they'd be glad to undergo martyrdom at the hands of Muslim lunatics our Grand End to Evil Experiment there has unleashed.

Can't argue with logic like that.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It May 14, 2007.

Mark Shea on General Petraeus

Bravo, General Petraeus!

Clearly, he hates America and has nowhere near the grasp of Real War that the Laptop Bombardiers of the Rubber Hose Right have. Still, I'm glad he's calling the shots and not them. It would be especially nice if his Commander-in-Chief would listen to him.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It May 11, 2007.