R.A.G.E. Media

For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then
” ‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!” ‘ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
-Luke 23:29-31

I shudder to think what will now happen after 30 years of relative prosperity with the preaching that women are blessed not for having children, but careers - now that careers and wealth are being washed away.

I often wondered just what he meant by saying that the people will ask the hills to cover them and the mountains to fall on them - it is a reference to Hosea 10. Follow the links in the passage below to see how it relates to today.

1 Israel was a spreading vine;
he brought forth fruit for himself.
As his fruit increased,
he built more altars;
as his land prospered,
he adorned his sacred stones.

8 The high places of wickedness will be destroyed—
it is the sin of Israel.
Thorns and thistles will grow up
and cover their altars.
Then they will say to the mountains, “Cover us!”
and to the hills, “Fall on us!”

“…and you shall be like God…”
-Genesis 3:5

There was only one actor in that ancient drama [Eden] who seems to have had any real talent of salesmanship. He seems to have undertaken to deliver the goods with exactly the right preliminaries of promise and praise… He not only took up the slogan of Eat More Fruit, but he distinctly declared that any customer purchasing his particular brand of fruit would instantly become as gods. And as this is exactly what is promised to purchasers of every patent medicine, popular tonic, saline draught or medicinal wine at the present day, there can be no question that he was in advance of his age. It is extraordinary that humanity, which began with an apple and ended with the patent medicine, has not even yet become exactly like gods. It is still more extraordinary…that the record ends with some extraordinary remarks to the effect that one thus pursing the bright career of Salesmanship is condemned to crawl on his stomach and eat a great deal of dirt.

-G.K. Chesterton, in G.K.’s Weekly, March 23 1929

Might I humbly add, these same promises are made to women in regards to birth control, and the side effects on the packaging are even dire. Oddly enough, both theological and pharmaceutical language refers to the chance of death as “mortality.”

Original Painting: Cranach’s Eve

Religion, these days, has gotten quite a bad rap. Inquisition, conquistadors, terrorism - it is now taught that violence is the fault of God, or at least those who believe in God.

A product of such teaching, P.Z. Myers, a biology teacher at a Midwest university, has formed a cult following now infamous for their hatred for religion. And while I do not agree with him, I am grateful to P.Z. Myers for several things:

In desecrating Eucharistic Hosts and the Quar’an because he believes them worthless,
He has proven that ‘Holy Wars,’ defiling of sacred grounds and objects, and persecution of people based on one’s religion are not based on belief in God.

In fostering a vehement following who make violent threats against those he denounces,
He has proven that religious terrorism does not require belief in God.

In the repetitive babbling and regurgitating of the same insults, phrases, and words by his followers,
He has shown that no belief in God is necessary to form a cult.

By their sheltering of Myers, despite the above,
the University of Minnesota Morris has proven that even secular, state-funded, progressive schools can be theocracies in open support of terrorism.

In conclusion, I am grateful to P.Z. Myers for being just the sort of person that proves that it is not God, or belief in God, that makes men violent, contemptible, ignorant bigots, but religious fanaticism. For even his science-based, secular message is a body of beliefs shared by his followers - a religion in and of itself.

In other words, P.Z. Myers has exonerated God, and those who profess belief in him, of the very charges he makes against them.

Atheism is, I suppose, the supreme example of a simple faith. The man says there is no God; if he really says it in his heart, he is a certain sort of man so designated in Scripture. But, anyhow, when he has said it, he has said it; and there seems to be no more to be said. The conversation seems likely to languish.

The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement, by which the atheist lived, was an atmosphere of thrilled and shuddering theism, and not of atheism at all; it was an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there were not God, there would be no atheists.

-G.K. Chesterton, Where All Roads Lead

In that case, I am truly grateful for the example of P.Z. Myers.

May God bless him.

During one of my occasional whirls through webcomics of interest, I happened upon a quote on Penny Arcade that struck a chord with me.

In a guest commentary by Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings, creators of the Puzzle Pirates online game, stated:

We all know folks who collect music, movies or software, thrilled by all the notional value acquired, but rarely look at any of it. To me, it seems worthless. I assume that any bits are commonplace and easy to come by, and the value is in their use.

Now, although James’ commentary was peppered with the usual vulgarities and he was talking about DRM and copy protection in gaming, he did hit on something that has been constantly on my mind. What good is all our stuff if we don’t actually use it? Having 500 DVDs when you only watch the same 40 makes the other 460 worthless to you. It’s like having hundreds of great works of art, and keeping them in storage. What good is it if you, or someone else, can’t enjoy it?

Wealth isn’t all about hoarding money. It’s about hanging on to material goods that you have no use for, or get no value for, save for the fact that you possess it. It clutters your life, your home, your mind. And ultimately, it’s just more to lose.

James’ comment just goes to show that we can find wisdom in the most unlikely of places.

There is an alarming number of Catholic and pro-life leaders and influencers who are propagating a dangerous, even evil idea. This idea is that in 2008, we do not have a suitable candidate for truly pro-life voters to choose in November.

Not voting, or voting write-in candidates, is the popular suggestion.

When I was in attendance at the Men and Abortion conference in Chicago a few weeks ago, Jason Jones addressed the audience, and said “When you live in a constitutional democracy, your civic duty becomes your religious duty. We are the sovereigns.” In other words, these influential pro-life and Catholic individuals are asking us to abdicate the throne.

First, though, it should be pointed out that the most convincing argument against voting for John McCain was his acceptance of Embryonic Stem Cell Research. That has now been answered by his announcement that he will maintain the policy of George W. Bush and the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin, who is more courageously pro-life than I would have ever hoped to see in this election on a major ticket. Third, by the very fact these two preceding events have taken place, it confirms that John McCain is a candidate in which pro-life dialog can take place and have an effect. Therefore, this argument that he is not ‘pro-life’ enough seems to no longer hold water.

But even if these events had not taken place, if we were faced with the two parties putting forth such terrible options - would it be justified to cast a vote for a third-party candidate, especially one who has not gotten on the ballot in all 50 states?

The cause for abortion is one of the ultimate issues of good versus evil in our time. For many of us, it may be the greatest of our lives. Therefore it is our duty to take part in the battle.

Those who would have you believe there is no choice but a third-party candidate have cited that one cannot take part in evil. That is true. But we live in a time so compromised our choices have been severely limited. The blood of two generations is literally running in our sewers. The tyranny of the two party system has given us no perfect solution. However, there is a great difference between those candidates put forth by the parties.

The faults of John McCain have been mentioned, and of course one can add concern over his party’s integral part in the war in the middle east. But on the other hand… in Barak Hussein Obama… we have perhaps the personification of a candidate on the anti-Catholic, pro-abortion platform.

Obama not only supports abortion, but he has not opposed the rights of a child who survives an abortion - Obama supports a mother’s right to even kill her already-born children. As a Democrat, it is practically assured that he will revoke the Mexico City Policy, which will allow our tax dollars to fund abortions in foreign countries. There is indeed a great many more lives that will be lost if Obama is elected than if McCain is elected. Of course, if you have even read this article to this point, we are probably in agreement that under no circumstances do we want Obama to be elected.

If we cannot choose either candidate because we should not participate in evil, then we have no choice? That is what a fool will tell you. If you do nothing, or you piddle your precious vote away on a third-party candidate who has no chance, than you may very well commit a graver sin of omission, if your action or inaction brings about the greatest evil. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Let’s say that someone tells you they are about to kill one man, or three. It is your choice. But if you do not choose, they will kill the three, You have in fact three choices. If you refuse to choose, the third option, you would be responsible for the death of two more people than if you had chosen the lesser evil.

The third parties might still seem to be an option. However, never in our history has a candidate from a third party won, and for good reason. Jerry Freisa explains:

On four occasions in US history, the candidate with the most popular votes did not win the presidency. This is a feature of a republican form of government, a government that is intended to “check” popular participation and “leveling” or democratic impulses. The mechanism by which this is done is the Electoral College. The Electoral College also insures that the number of parties seriously competing for the presidency will always be and only be two.

Each State’s allotment of electors is equal to the number of House members to which it is entitled plus two Senators (with the District of Columbia getting three). But here is the key element for our purposes: in order to win the presidency, a candidate must win a majority of electors.

By requiring that a candidate win a majority, the Electoral College guarantees that third parties must do one of three things. Let’s assume a third party arises and is incredibly strong (the Perot candidacy that for a time was pushing 20 percent nationally), but has no realistic chance of wining a majority of electors straight out. Its first choice is to press forward, win a significant percentage of electors and deny either of the two major parties a majority victory. In this case, the election would be decided by the House of Representatives, already dominated by the major parties. Option 1: third party looses everything.

The second option, again assuming a strong third party, is to coalesce with one of the major parties in order to get something. Arguably the most powerful progressive political party was the People’s Party during the late 19th century. In 1896, they had anywhere from 25 to 45 percent strength in twenty-odd states. Clearly unable to win the presidency as a third party, they felt compelled to coalesce with the Democrats and saw their more radical labor and socialist elements purged in a losing effort. Well, there you are. Option 2 puts you back inside one of the major parties.

The third option arises when a third party is not that strong, say a Nadar candidacy of 2000. We know what happens there. A weak third party, by taking votes away from the party closest to it ideologically will, in effect, help elect the major party most unlike themselves. Option 3: help the other guys win.

The third option is perhaps the most likely for any “more pro-life than McCain” party, and in effect it hands Obama the presidency. In other words, if the sun rises on November 5, 2008 and Obama is elected, the blood will be on the hands not only of those who voted for him or did not vote, but for those who voted for someone other than McCain.

All three of these scenarios depict a strong third party, which is not a factor in the 2008 election. Even if they were, they would pretty much have to be polling more than at least one party to be a contender, and even then the odds are decidedly stacked against them. If you need a review of how the electoral college works, Wikipedia is actually decent for this.

The Catholic Voter’s Guide put out by Catholic Answers addresses this as well:

Where an ideal candidate, law, or prgram is not on the table, we are to choose the best option, the one that promotes the greatest good and entailes the least evil. Not voting may sometimes be the only moral course of action, but we must consider whether not voting actually promotes good and limits evil in a specific instance.

Is not voting, or voting for a third party candidate, who with less than 60 days to election day has not got a prayer, the best choice to limiting evil? No, for grave evil will befall us and our children if Obama is elected.

Disclaimer: I am an independent voter, with no particular affection for the Republican party. Like Sen. Clinton, whose support of Obama is more or less due to the fact that he is not McCain, my support for McCain is because he is not Obama, and the electoral college has left us with only 2 choices.

Also, I am free to specifically name candidates in posts such as these since R.A.G.E. Media is a Corporation and not a non-profit. We do not have the muzzle that non-profits are burdened with but at the same time we must “render unto Ceasar.” So if you would like us to keep saying what we must, please take a look at our products and consider purchasing an item or two.

Disturbing email I just received from a colleague:

It appears that Prolife pharmacist and PFLI spokesman Mike Koelzer has crossed paths with the very liberal
Associate Professor of Biology, P.Z. Myers. Apparently Mike’s big offense was to show (by offering to make a presentation at Myer’s place of worship) that he didn’t (according to Myers) “know me very well“.
For this grave insult of not recognizing the renown of Myers, small hordes of Myers’ Atheist Acolytes were sent to Mike’s pharmacy survey page to heap spam onto the website of his business. This caused Mike a bit of tedium, from a need to manage the spam, and caused me considerable amusement to hear of it.

Myers, a rather bellicose fellow, apparently in midlife crisis, is known more for obtaining a Blessed Eucharistic Host from a Catholic Church, and desecrating it, than he is for accomplishments in scientific research. A brief search for his work in Biology turned up……. well, ….. next to nothing. I understand that he has one or two peer reviewed journal articles, and a little collection of conference presentations to his name. If you search the net, you’ll find Associate Professor Myers now bending the ears of students at University of Minnesota, Morris Campus.

It appears that when this P.Z. Myers passes on to become fertilizer (as his own religion might suggest) he won’t be remembered for actual accomplishments, and may be recalled by a few for attempting to anger Catholics and other people with a vision of the Creator.

I do sincerely invite P.Z. Myers to get a life, to obtain access to the Creator through the illumination of the Catholic Religion, and perhaps accomplish some significant scientific research.

Science becomes a very useful tool, for the good of living creatures, when one stops abusing it as a religion.

Karen L. Brauer MS, RPh, President, Pharmacists for Life

Mike Koelzer is just down the road from me, and we had a chance to meet last month. He’s a wonderful guy who lives his Catholic faith.

In our defiance we haven’t bothered to get TV signal, and we are especially not going to pay for it.

So I get my news from other sources - still faster than my parent’s generation got it. For instance, this commentary from the Political Housewyf is just a few hours old:

Governor Palin made a comment in her interview with Sean Hannity (aired last night on Fox, more tonight) that too many companies are addicted to “opium, O-P-M, Other People’s Money.”

Aren’t we all? Isn’t that how we got here?

We have political campaigns spending money hand over fist (although Sen. Obama’s campaign is burning it twice as fast) to get elected. Could we do it cheaper? *shrug* Doesn’t matter, right? It’s OPM.

We have allowed our continued dependence on foreign oil to funnel our money into the hands of people who hate us. We’ve pointed fingers and said, “Those people over there should pay to develop alternative energy sources, not me.” It’s so easy to try to spend OPM.

We have bailed out people and companies who were party to mortgages that never should have been made. Partly, we had to bail them out because the federal government pushed for more mortgages to be available to people who can’t normally get them. Guess what? If you are poor, don’t have much of a downpayment, and/or don’t have proof of regular employment, then, heck no, the bank doesn’t want to lend you money, because they’re pretty sure they won’t get it back. And, too often, they didn’t get it back, and now we’re all paying for it. Our taxdollars just became OPM for AIG, Freddie, and Fannie.

We borrow to buy bigger cars, fancier houses, dinner, clothes, and everything else. It’s just plastic, right? It isn’t real money, right? And we have racked up an average consumer debt of about $8,500 per person on credit cards. Our economy is resting on all of us consumers spending OPM. Yeah, the “fundamentals of our economy” (as in a great workforce, American ingenuity, and all that) may be strong, but our spending habits stink, and it’s way past time we realized that.

Ha! And they say homeschool parents aren’t qualified to teach their own kids.

Anyway, we are floating on sea of debt that starting to come apart at the edges - not only on the corporate level but as we are all well aware at the private citizen level. And as citizens default, companies default… and either the government will bail us all out and collapse or the value of “money” in our society will become meaningless or both.

The sooner we realize and exercise personal responsibility, the greater a chance we have of withstanding the coming fallout.

This has been said for years, it may start to be taken more seriously.

An interesting sidebar - my brother in did a study of this while he was in junior high school in the 90’s at the International Science and Engineering Fair. The judges scoffed at him, and he lost to a girl who studied the statistical variance in the colors of M&Ms in each package.

You can buy the video here:

Political Satirist Stephen Colbert has caught my attention more and more. My brother introduced me to the show, and I’ve been catching clips and episodes from time to time on ColbertNation.com and Hulu.com.

Yes, he’s funny and over-the-top, but I’ve noticed more and more Catholic bloggers linking to his clips. Many times, it seems, he is expressing on a secular cable network (Comedy Central, for crying out loud - home to some of the worst trash on television) matters of faith and morals that get everyone laughing. Is this part of the new evangelization? Is it intentional, or just for the laughs?

Either way, it takes gall in this day in age to say that you like Pope Benedict XVI “better as JP2’s Rottweiler,” condemn ecumencalism as a watering down of one’s own faith, and recite the Nicene Creed on the air of the same nationwide network that airs South Park.

Or even more, to tell the Anglican Church to their face (in front of millions of people) that a return to unity with Rome is in order, and that however they want to spin it, their Church was founded by a promiscuous king who didn’t like the Church reinforcing the 10 commandments.

Sure, he likes to make pope jokes - but even then you can recognize his understanding of Church teachings:

He can also ask intelligent questions when he has clergy on the show:

When Rev. Hagee criticizes the Catholic Church, he calls in William Donohue of the Catholic League to pinch-hit in expressing outrage:

On the negative side, I did read on CatholicColbert.com that Colbert is pro-contraception - meaning there is some more dialog that needs to be had with him still.

A bit of background on Colbert - he was the youngest (that explains a lot) of 11 children in a Catholic family. At age 11, he lost his father and 2 of his brothers in a plane crash, which devastated his faith. In time, he came back to the Church and is now a practicing Catholic and Sunday School teacher. You can read more on his life in this article from Parade Magazine and this extra information from the interview.

Special thanks to CatholicColbert.com for providing a lot of links to these videos and info - and since that site is down, thanks to Google Cache for letting me still get to the content.

Thanks to Kathy at FiveFeetofFury for pointing it out.