Politics
From Under the Rubble…Words, Words, Words!
A few weeks ago, Pope Francis asked us to pray, fast, and give alms on Saturday, September 7, for peace in Syria. We did, and on Monday, September 9, Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in the New York Times somehow occasioned what Joe Sobran once referred to as “the qualm before the storm.” The Rubble couldn’t help…
From Under the Rubble…”No More Yaltas!”
On September 25, Secretary of State John Kerry signed the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty [ATT] at the UN headquarters in New York. As my longtime Senate staff colleague Mike Hammond explains, the treaty “was scheduled for approval in the U.N. last year, in July, but was suddenly pulled off the table because Barack Obama…
From Under the Rubble…”Incredibly Small”
During his speech to the nation regarding Syria on September 10, Obama spoke of “humanity” four times. Three of them reflected the sense of the term made famous by Turgot (+1781), the Enlightenment progressive for whom “the total mass of mankind (l’humanité) marches… slowly but steadily toward ever greater perfection.” In his prodigious studies of…
From Under the Rubble…Cal Thomas’s Learning Curve
The British parliament has defeated Prime Minister David Cameron’s motion to join Obama’s proposed attack on Syria. As of this writing, the U.S. Congress has not acted, but the prospect of another U.S. war in the Middle East has brought some old issues back to life. And some old players — the most interesting of…
From Under the Rubble…Here We Go Again
According to the New York Times, America’s Catholic bishops are counting on the persuasive power of the pulpit this month to push “comprehensive immigration reform” – also known as amnesty for illegal aliens. Unfortunately, we’ve already seen this movie, and it has an unhappy ending. Back in January 2010, our beloved shepherds launched a similar…
From Under the Rubble…Big Brother Makes It Personal
Four years ago, Obama’s Chicago crew borrowed a page from the Three-Card-Monte hustlers in Manhattan’s Central Park. With the nation distracted by the perils of Obamacare, Democrats quietly hijacked the student loan program from the private sector and handed it to the federal government. “We’ve eliminated the middleman,” they cawed, “and the savings will go…
From Under the Rubble…A Bang and a Whimper
Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg recently complained, “I am convinced that many so called Pro-Life groups are not really pro-life but merely anti-abortion.” Of course, this canard is common among the professional pro-abortion crowd, but it sounds strangely out of tune coming from a Bishop who, in the past, has been supportive of the pro-life…
From Under the Rubble…Who Killed the Mockingbird
There is a consistent theme that unites “progressive” advocates across a wide variety of the Left’s cultural causes. These hardened ideologues might make a perfunctory bow in the direction of “rights” and “diversity,” but they are united by a common purpose that seeks the ultimate destruction of the principles that form the fabric of the…
From Under the Rubble…Lapdogs of the Carnal Kennels
Lapdogs of the Carnal Kennels There abides a certain disequilibrium these days in the way that current events are translated by the media into the “news” stories of the day. Everyone knows it. But in an age where “What’s True For Me Might Not Be True For You,” it’s often met with an existential shrug….
The Myth of the Neutral State
If there is anything that distinguishes the contemporary world from past ages, it is our secularism, that is, our belief that society should exclude religion as much as possible from public life. We see this in our own country in the “separation of Church and State.” This used to mean that the government officially endorses…
