Thursday 18 June 2015

Climate Change, Unchanging Teaching

Sticking it to the pickiest of all Cafeteria Catholics, the right-wing American and wannabe American ones, is always great fun, and it is always necessary.

Popes have been doing it, at least implicitly, for as long as the terms have been at all meaningful. But this time, the targets have paid attention. One might call that a climate change.

As ever, bioethical matters and sexual matters, matters of social justice (a term of Papal origin, like the Living Wage) and matters of peace, are presented as an indivisible whole. Such is catholicity.

Of course, it has not taken long for the Malthusians to emerge.

But consumption is at its highest where birthrates are at their lowest. As is bound to be the case, when you think about it. A culture of self-indulgence.

Likewise, it is anything but counterintuitive that there is the most abortion where there is the most contraception.

But the anti-natal answer to every question is always, “There are too many proles and darkies, and we should be allowed to have completely consequence-free sex with every woman on earth.”

Ever faithful to Marie Stopes, author of extravagant, versified love letters to Hitler. Marie Stopes, who disowned her own son because he married a woman who wore glasses.

Marie Stopes, who campaigned for the compulsory sterilisation of “the C3 population”, of “half-castes” and of “revolutionaries”, among numerous others.

Marie Stopes, who opened dozens of clinics in working-class areas to reduce the number of “undesirables” by persuasion if force were politically impossible.

Yet those clinics now retain the right to “counsel” women considering the abortions that they have a gigantic financial and an immeasurable ideological interest in ensuring go ahead.

They still carry the name of Marie Stopes. Our televisions now carry their adverts. Our 50p stamps have recently carried her image. And we all carry the shame.

As they do across the Atlantic, where tax dollars fund the heirs of Margaret Sanger, whose stated primary objective was always to prevent black babies from being born, the objective still pursued above all others by her successors, so that “Planned Parenthood” would more accurately be called “Planned Genocide”.

The womb, the streets and the battlefield are the locations of the triple genocide to which the American black male, in particular, is now subject.

The Unholy Trinity is completed by Helen Brook, who in February 1980 wrote in The Times that, “From birth till death it is now the privilege of the parental State to take major decisions – objective, unemotional, the State weighs up what is best for the child.” 

In 1995, this deranged creature was given the CBE. The Conservative Party was not at that time in coalition with the Liberal Democrats or anyone else.

Femaleness has been classified as in itself a medicable condition by means of the contraceptive pill, which is simply not a medicine at all.

It is, in point of fact, a poison, designed precisely to stop healthy body parts from performing their natural functions, and accordingly attended by all manner of horrific side effects, for no reason except to make women permanently available for the sexual gratification of men, and despite the unrivalled effectiveness of Natural Family Planning if it is taught and practised properly, a practice only possible by a faithful married couple.

The Pill, in turn, has wrought havoc by filling our water supply with synthetic oestrogens. If that is not both a social justice and an environmental concern, then I cannot imagine what could be, or what it is instead.

Following logically, maleness itself has also been so classified, leading to the heavy medication of boys purely for being boys, by means of Ritalin and other powerful “treatments” for largely or entirely invented conditions.

The impact of antidepressants on the rise of violent mental illness, especially among young men and teenage boys, also calls for the most unflinching examination.

As, while, we are about it, does the impact of cannabis on the rise of schizophrenia, and by extension also on lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, brain tumours, serial miscarriage, low birth weight, male and female infertility, impotence, and a huge number of other conditions.

We need an approach to climate change which protects and extends secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encourages economic development around the world, which upholds the right of the working classes and of non-white people to have children, which holds down and as far as practicable reduces the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refuses to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

Climate change is supposed to be anthropogenic. The human race makes the weather. The burning of carbon is the foundation of the working class, the foundation of the Left, the foundation of human progress (problematic though that term is), the foundation of civilisation.

We need a celebration of the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.

The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? We all know the answer to that. Rather, people produce wealth, material and otherwise. People are wealth, material and otherwise.

The Holy Father has said nothing that does not confirm and reiterate both these principles and the urgency of their practical application.

19 comments:

  1. Excuse me? The Pope has just embarrassed himself beyond words (and Iwish it were not so) by embracing the Left-wing cult of Man Made Climate Change, which is like a modern version of the cult of the Moonies.

    It is the excuse for carbon taxes, incessant state regulation (even of what lightbulbs we use, and how our rubbish must be put in the bin) and the burning of large amounts of crops as "green" ethanol at a time when people are starving.

    The Republicans went into the 2012 election on a platform of abolishing Planned Parenthood funding in 2012-but sadly Obama won.

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    1. Of course climate change is man-made. It is supposed to be. By grace, including the very grace of creation, God's image and likeness participates in His Work.

      We don't talk about the Republican Party. It's kinder that way. And if you believe that it would really have done that, or that doing so would in itself have made any difference, then you are even worse than its array of comedy Presidential candidates.

      Donald Trump is the only serious one, because he is the only one who is in on the joke. In their own minds, the rest of them truly believe that they ought to be the President of the United States, and that anyone else agrees with them about that.

      It's not hilarious. It's beyond hilarious.

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  2. Every one of the Republican Presidential candidates you refer to are declared opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage.

    Every declared or likely Democratic candidate is a supporter of both.

    Case closed.

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    1. And that is why none of them will be the nominee. Like last time.

      The RNC allows them their fun during the long nomination process. But it will never allow such views in a Presidential nominee. There will be someone lined up. There always is.

      Neither abortion nor SSM is anything to do with the President, as such, and on all matters that are, every Republican candidate is either a joke or beyond a joke.

      Hillary Clinton is awful as well. But other Dems are not. Whereas all of the Republicans are. Just ask the paleocons. Just read The American Conservative or their tweets.

      They are laughing themselves silly, and they have pretty much endorsed Jim Webb against their own party's entire field.

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  3. The Democrats are solely a party for ethnic minorities and abortion enthusiasts now (as David Goodhart pointed out, the GOP now commands up to 90 per cent of white votes in the deep south, and 2 out of 3 even in the mid-Atlantic states and the majority of married people, while the majority of married people have always voted for it).

    Pat Buchanan says, such is the demographic change in America, the Democrats no longer need to try and appeal to any other constituency.

    America is going down the pan with them.

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    1. That'll be Pat Buchanan, whose contempt for the 2016 Republican non-field is magnificent.

      There are billions of people opposed to abortion and SSM. Most of them would do far more about it than any of the Republican candidates for 2016.

      But very few of them, even where eligible, are qualified to be President of the United States. None of those candidates is among the exceptions.

      My ties to the American paleocons and to Blue Labour are rather closer than yours, dear boy.

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    2. He is a funny little boy, isn't he? You're a stalwart of Blue Labour conferences whose last book was commended by Glasman and Milbank. You've written for TAC. But he's the one who knows all about Goodhart (I've never seen him without you in the room) and all about Buchanan.

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  4. Yes, one of them will be. And the one last time was a declared opponent of both. And vowed to scrap Planned Parenthood funding. As was George Bush, who did scrap it.

    Come back when you've done some reading.

    Every Democratic candidate at this election and the last one, is a declared supporter of abortion.That's what they stand for. Have you ever even seen a Democratic Convention?

    Every Democratic candidate is a declared supporter of same sex marriage at this one too.

    Support for the full NARAL/NOW agenda-more than anything else-is what the Democrats stand for.

    You can't be in the running for the Democrats without such a view.

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    1. And the one last time was a declared opponent of both.

      No, he wasn't. He was against SSM, but so was Obama in those days. Expect next year's GOP nominee to want it left to be left to the states.

      Romney was not remotely against abortion, even continuing to derive an income from its performance at public expense in the state where he legalised such funding.

      You can't be in the running for the Republicans without being pro-abortion, not against SSM next year, and all for it from 2020 onwards.

      You can go through the childish, if very expensive, pretence of a run. But you will never be the nominee. The people who run the party would never, ever, ever permit that.

      Their views on these matters being those of most white Americans, including most married white Americans. There is probably more opposition to SSM among blacks.

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    2. Spot on, Mr. L., spot on.

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  5. The best thing I have read on this, anywhere.

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  6. Spot on Mr L?

    Mr Lindsay, let's clear this up. Romney stood on a pro life platform. He pledged to abolish Planned Parenthood funding.

    That investment group confirmed that he left long before 1999 when they invested in an abortion disposal firm. It was a lie.

    Come back when you've done any reading.

    Everyone in the running for the Republican nomination is pro life and anti SSM-Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, the lot. Everyone in the race for the Dems takes the usual Democratic line on both.

    That's how it will always break down in America.

    The star of Obama's campaign was a woman who felt that her Catholic University should provide her Pills.

    Do you really ever seen the party of Kathleen Sibelius and Nancy Pelosi?

    Obama legislated in favour of after-birth abortion (yes you read that right) before becoming President.

    You do give the impression of someone who has never been to America or so much as seen a party Convention over there.

    Or indeed seen the voter demographics of either party.

    The Democrats will always stand for NARAL/NOW. That's their only constituency. And the only one they need.

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    1. None of those people will be the nominee. It is, so to speak, inconceivable. Romney simply was not pro-life, and you are only making a fool of yourself by suggesting that he was.

      The abortion law changed not one jot under the Bushes, Reagan had actually legalised it in California (and sent no fewer than three abortion supporters to the Supreme Court while he was President), Ford was pro-abortion and had Nelson Rockefeller as his Vice President, and Nixon's Executive Order relating to overseas military bases was the first ever legalisation of abortion at federal expense.

      Dole's record spoke for itself. So did McCain's. So did Romney's. And so will that of next year's Republican nominee, as yet unknown, at least to those of us outside the relevant closed circle.

      "He is! He is! He is!", people like you will screech. But he won't be. No one who was will be allowed to be. No change there.

      I never said that the Democrats were a pro-life party. But nor are the Republicans. Not in the least.

      If abortion were your litmus test, then you would just abstain from American Presidential Elections. All of them. On SSM, you could have voted either way in any past Presidential Election, but you will never be able to vote in a future one. Ever.

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  7. Romney stood on a pro life platform. He pledged to abolish federal funding of abortion (ie Planned Parenthood).

    You're making a fool of yourself by repeating a lie his own investment group has rebutted that he ever funded an abortion company. He'd left by then.

    George Bush did abolish federal funding of abortion at home and abroad.

    Every Republican candidate opposes SSM.

    By not even mentioning the Democrats-and particularly Obama's-disgusting record on abortion (he actually supports killing survivors of abortion after birth) you come across as a complete delusional.

    For heavens sakes, the star of their last Convention was a suspiciously "mature" undergraduate who felt Catholic Universities should pay for the Pill.

    Then again, to Pat Buchanan's disgust, even Jesuit-run Notre Dame University gave Kathleen Sibelllius a platform.

    Those Jesuits "pro life" credentials are as suspect as yours.

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    1. I doubt that you are a Catholic, but if you are, then enjoy schism. You are practically there, anyway.

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  8. People pay too much attention to the presidential races when analyzing American party positions.

    Things are murkier at the local level, where much of the real action takes place. For example, in the Chicago area, support for abortion and SSM depends not so much on party but on other factors like economic status, religion, and race. A pro-life Democratic candidate in a black, Hispanic, or working-class white area is not a rarity at all. On the other side of the coin, pro-choice Republicans are very common in the wealthier suburbs.

    The Republicans and the Democrats are both "big tent" parties with many supporters falling on both sides of social/cultural issues. The reason that social conservatives often lose is because both parties are controlled by elites who usually tend to be socially liberal or do not care one way or the other.

    Opponents of abortion and SSM would have a better chance of seeing victories in their favor if American elections weren't so totally dominated by Big Money.

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    1. Thank you, John. Good to see you back.

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    2. Reagan repented of the Californian law, having been advised at the time that it would only apply in a tiny number of special cases.

      He went on to vigorously advocate the abolition of abortion as President, but could not find a majority for such action, to his great regret.

      The Gipper chose life, which is why he fought the inherently Godless forces of Socialism and Communism to the death.



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    3. Who on earth told you that? Reagan sent no fewer than three supporters of abortion to the Supreme Court, and he pursued détente with the Soviet Union until it happened to collapse anyway, exactly as and when it always would have done.

      Oh, and he was pretty much an atheist, or at any rate a kind of agnostic, who almost never even put himself through the show of going to church. Neither party would nominate him today.

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