Mark Shea on Jonah Goldberg

According to Jonah, if you buy sprouts the local organic co-op, you've already used up your 15 minutes.

I've always identified fascism with, oh, you know, smashing free speech and trying to centralize everything in a big centralized political economy. I thought a more noticable feature of fascism was, say, Grand Military Adventures promising an End to Evil and the inauguration of a Golden Age of earthly happiness. I've even tended to identify it with urging us all to hand Caesar the power to torture people and the employment of Orwellian euphemisms and groupthink pressure tactics such as "You aren't one of us if you oppose waterboarding and other forms of torture" to punish dissenters. Indeed, I was quite sure, till I heard Jonah explain it all for me, that apologists for Salvation Through Leviathan by Any Means Necessary bore a much greater resemblance to fascists than advocates of "Small is Beautiful" thinking. I never realized that the real menace to our liberty was a taste for tofu. I'm sure glad that Jonah has broken with that silly old narrative of saying "Anything I happen to dislike is fascist."

You learn something every day from NRO's Mandarins of True Conservatism[TM].

SOURCE: Catholic and Enjoying It January 17, 2008

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 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

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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 Hope and Despair

As the media begins to dally with apocalyptic despair, it becomes more urgent than ever to point out that despair (like the presumption that is its twin) is the enemy of hope. Secular presumption consists of the project of turning heaven into earth. It matters little who is making the promise. Whether it's the Lefty who is promising eternal health and youth via embryonic stem cell research or the Creative Destructionist Righty who promises an End to Evil and the triumph of the New American Century via murder of wounded combatants and torture, both are basically making secular messianic promises: heaven on earth and ultimate happiness achievable here, if only you will fudge some of that pesky crap about doing evil that good may come. We get drunk (for a time) on the hope that this time it will work.

The problem is that drunkeness leads to hangovers. So when the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agly because God is not mocked, the one who dreamt of heaven on earth yesterday can fall into despair and the false certitude of hell on earth today. This is why the prophets so often seem to be out of step with the times.

SOURCE Catholic & Enjoying It August 17, 2006.

Mark on Grand End to Evil Projects

I come from a military family. That's why I fret about Grand "End to Evil" Projects. It's generally guys like my Dad and brothers who have to pay the bills for that in blood. That's why I like to be reeeeally reeeeally sure we know what we are doing when we embark on such projects.

SOURCE: Catholic & Enjoying It January 30, 2004.