Polls vs Actions

Posted: March 4, 2011 by datechguy in catholic, culture, politics
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I’ve talked a bit about the difference between what a poll might say vs actual actions.

Early this morning insty linked to this post at hotair concerning polling on libertarian issues such as Gay Marriage.

Forgetting the splits lets see how this actually works in practice in a couple of blue states:

Getting a gay marriage bill through the Rhode Island House of Representatives with Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s support and a new openly gay House speaker was supposed to be a cakewalk. Instead, as The Boston Phoenix (an alternative paper) reports: “The end game is proving trickier than advocates had hoped. … They’ve been caught off guard by the prowess of the church, which has joined with the nation’s leading anti-gay marriage group to mount a surprisingly potent defense of the status quo.”

And in Maryland another deep blue state things are getting interesting too:

This week in Maryland, black Democrats from progressive districts are beginning to jump ship. First Melvin Stukes, a co-sponsor of a gay marriage bill in that state’s House of Delegates, unexpectedly announced he was switching sides.

A few days later, two black Democrats counted as “yes” votes suddenly went missing, refusing to show up for a committee vote, which had to be postponed.

Maryland is a deep blue state — core Democratic territory — but opposition to gay marriage is also surging

And the reason?

The reaction has been extraordinary! The black church in particular has risen to this occasion in an extraordinary way. Whose vision and whose values count to the Democratic leadership in the Maryland legislature, black pastors are asking? Well, maybe this week they will find out!

If the trends where with them the democrats would not have the trouble they are having. It’s precisely because they don’t have the numbers that it’s necessary to push without public support.

There is a distinction

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in abortion, catholic, opinion/news
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The Anchoress being a wholly more holy person than me talks about the death penalty and Kermet Gosnell and finds herself opposing it:

If you remain unaware of what investigators (who were actually looking for evidence related to drug trafficking) found when they entered Gosnell’s abattoir-for-humans, read the Grand Jury’s Report, if you can take it.

Nevertheless, I would defend this man’s right to live his life out in prison, rather than watch the state take his life. His life is not anyone else’s to take. For pro-lifers, this is a no-brainer.

And he may need many years and much time, in order to understand the enormity of what he has done, and allow his heart to be turned. He may need time for conversion and salvation.

I would have to disagree here, this is not a “no-brainer” for pro-life people.

Unlike the elderly who have committed no offense other than being old, the sick who have committed no offense other than being sick or the unborn who have committed no offense other than being conceived Kermet Gosnell has committed acts that under our laws can bring the death penalty.

She is absolutely right that his may need time for conversion, repentance and salvation and we are OBLIGATED as Christians to pray for this, but even if he is convicted, loses all appeals and the sentence carried out there will likely be many years of time to avail himself of the opportunity. As long as the process takes place before death it will be achieved, remember Timothy McVeigh a lapsed Catholic in fact received confession and absolution mere hours before his execution, saving his soul if not his life.

But there is a huge difference between protecting innocent life and life taken under due process in a free society. Even Ed is ambivalent.

I am totally indifferent in this matter. I have absolutely no problem with him (if convicted) being given life in jail and I also have no problem if he gets the death penalty. Neither Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI nor has any pope proclaimed ex cathedra the death penalty sinful or an intrinsic evil. Until and unless he does so then I submit that it is not a “no brainer” that we oppose the death penalty in this or any case and there is no obligation for us to think otherwise.

Matching Ad Challenge Soldier’s Angels: Update: $76 to go

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in Uncategorized
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“Cultural Imperalism” and Sati (Suttee)

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in culture, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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At Piece of work in progress Dan Collins talks about the “consequences of the Multicult”

The liberals who comprise the MSM majority have in essence adopted the stance that insistence on religious tolerance in Muslim majority nations is an undue imposition of Western standards of human rights on foreign states and cultures, which is an expression of lingering imperialism, and thus bad, while millions of Muslims and non-Muslims suffer under the yoke of Islamist fundamentalism in all of its forms. One of the most egregious examples is the media’s treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there are many more.

In consequence, the United States stands by as ethnic cleansing is accomplished versus Copts and other Christian minorities in Muslim majority nations.

Not two minutes ago on Morning Joe (I’m writing this at 8:37 a.m.) Mika mentioned the killing of two soldiers at the Frankfurt airport. They stressed “Germany” and the “last time there was a shooting in Germany” but they were unwilling to talk about what was brought up on MSNBC Europe’s own web page:

Family members in Kosovo described the suspect as a devout Muslim, who was born and raised in Germany and worked at the airport.

Nope, nothing to see here, not a thing going on. The Catholic minister in Pakistan murdered? No comment, nothing to see here. Copts killed in Egypt, none of our business.

Our unwillingness to defend our cultural values is dooming millions to oppression. Consider this story from history:

General Charles Napier held the offices of Governor of Bombay and Commander-in-Chief of India for the British Empire,was confronted with the tradition of Sati (or Suttee) where the new widow of a deceased man would be thrown alive on his funeral pyre. Napier forbade it, and when leaders of the community objected saying it was their custom. Napier with all the confidence of an 1850’s Brit with this classic answer (via Mark Steyn’s book America Alone)

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Sati or Suttee has been gone from India for 160 years. How many widows did not die in excruciating pain because of this example of “cultural imperialism”?

And what is the situation now? Now we’ve reached the point that the same British who stopped Suttee in India now have unofficial “gay free zones” in their capital imposed by unassimilated Muslims who are imposing their own “cultural imperialism” right back at em.

I think Steyn nailed it with this sentence:

Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own.

Until we look this straight in the eye we will be seeing more headlines like this:

German prosecutors said on Thursday that Islamic radicalism may have motivated a Kosovar to open fire on an American military bus at the Frankfurt airport, killing two United States airmen and wounding two others.

And it will be our own fault.

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