Why Am I Not a Republican? I Like My Toes

Traditional GOP Footwear

The goof from Missouri who seemed to have a clear path to the United States Senate and replace Claire McCaskill, a bused-over Obama mouthpiece, is a Republican. All the guy needed to do for the next two months and change was make the rounds of the Show-Me State Knights of Columbus, Odd Fellows, and League of Women Voter library soirees and gobble rubber chicken.  Instead, Rep.  Todd Akin decided to dip his foot in his tonsils on TV with a guy named Jaco. Jaco? That did not signal DISTRESS, Congressman? Jaco?  The last guy I recall with the handle of Jaco wore a glove on one mitt, played with a monkey and drank boxed wine with little kids.

Instead, Todd Akin blew off his own toes.

I have been a Democrat all of my life.  The Democrats have purged the Party of people like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Scoop Jackson, Harry Truman, Old Man Daley, Mike Sheahan, Frank Annunzio and Marty Russo for the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jan Schakowsky, Barney Frank, Anthony Weiner and the goof who thinks Guam will tip over.

I have been a Catholic all my life and managed to survive Clown Masses, Liturgical Dance, Help for Hamas, Liberation Jesus and Homosexual predators and the Purple Mafia Bishops who doled out the  get out of jail free cards.  Today, the American Catholic Church is coming back and Catholics are coming home thanks to doctrinal-authentic bishops like Cardinal George, Cardinal Dolan and priests like Father Bob Barron.

I hope the same for the Democratic Party - a return to authentic values and 1st Principles.  There is some hope.  My Congressman Dan Lipinski (D.3rd) defends real labor over the leftist public service PACS like SEIU and the life of the unborn child is his litmus test.

The GOP, while attractive in some respects,  stilll manages to front daffy old balls like Illinois Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka, the Minnesota Toe-Tapper of Airport Men's Rooms, and the Missouri Magpie -Todd Akin over genuine and talented people like Dan Proft. These are the "tassled loafer" crowd of GOP deep-thinkers who enable the likes of Pat Quinn.   When School Choice was possible to pass in the Illinois Legislature it was the suburban DuPage, McHenry and Lake County Republicans who sold out.

The GOP vets goofs in the same manner as the Democrats, with one huge difference - the media will not provide cover for Republicans.

Voila!

When TV reporter Charles Jaco asked Akin whether abortion should be illegal if it is the result of rape, the Republican Party Missouri Senate candidate gave this inglorious answer: "From what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something: You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist and not attacking the child."

Republicans are much more prone to let off a volley down-range!  By golly!  Down-range to the GOP often means -The Toes Goes!

Illinois GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bill Brady was an adept at shooting off his own piggies.  He allowed WLS drive-time wits Roe & Roeper to corner him on his tax returns.  Brady allowed Personal PAC of Illinois Planned Parenthood to manage the message that Brady Wars on Women without a chirp.  Pat Quinn is the governor who takes orders from Illinois Personal PAC's Boss Terry Cosgrove.

Nope, I'll remain a right of center Democrat.  I like my toes.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/08/21/todd_akin_when_dumb_talk_is_inevitable_115164.html

Paradise Lost, My Ass!

“Thus it shall befall Him, who to worth in women over-trusting, Lets her will rule: restraint she will not brook; And left to herself, if evil thence ensue She first his weak indulgence will accuse.” 

Not this Cat, G!

http://www.neatorama.com/

Tales of The South Side: Garage Band Aid - My 1960's Tour Bus was CTA

I was taller in real life . . . or, so I am told.

Smilin' Jack Merrins was two years ahead of me, at St. Augustine Minor Seminary* in Holland, Michigan where I spent the first three years of high school.  Like four of my classmates from Little Flower Grammar School Class of 1966, ( JC, SB, PO'C, & PM,), PFH thought of becoming an Augustinian Brother.  We were recruited by the late Father Dudley Day O.S.A.

I improved my smoking habits, participated in athletics with gusto, completely avoided any familiarity with chemistry, physics. math and the lesser sciences and learned Latin, Spanish, Literature, History, Government,  as well as more chords on the guitar and how to sing into a microphone. We had a band. In fact, we had many bands.  We had many bands in order to use up the few minutes of the day where mortal sin might become an issue.  We were by circumstance and indoctrination celibate.

Smilin' Jack Merrin was from St. Louis, Mo, where he fronted a band call Le Clades Blades - an eight piece rhythm and blues rock band of guitar, bass, Farfesa organ, drum kit and brass & reed. Smilin Jack vocalized.

Here at St. Augustine's -Smilin Jack's ax was Sax and Vox.  I played guitar, Lurch Palauskas -the Lithuanian Lover -banged keyboard and Brian "Bing" Bell hit the skins and did back-up vocals.

We covered these hits -

1. "Mama Get Your Hammer (There's a Fly on Baby's Head)," by the Bobby Peterson Quintet.
2. "When There's Tears in the Eyes of a Potato," by the Hoosier Hot Shots.
3. "I Like Bananas Because They Have No Bones," by the Hoosier Hot Shots.
4. "She Was Bitten on the Udder by an Adder," by Homer & Jethro.
5. "A Bowl of Chop Suey and You-ey," by Sam Robbins & His Hotel McAlpin Orchestra.
6. "I've Got Tears in My Ears From Lying on My Back in Bed While I Cry Over You," by Homer & Jethro.
7. "How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life," by Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.

8. "I'd Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me (Than a Frontal Lobotomy)," by Randy Hanzlick, M.D. 

At no time did we violate ASCAP or BMI regulations

(Dr. Demento says Hanzlick is--or was, as of 1980--a real internist in Atlanta, who writes songs for a hobby). 

http://www.hollandsentinel.com/news/x132294923/St-Augustine-Seminary-graduates-bring-spirit-of-history-to-reunion

http://www.ascap.com/

*“I got a great education here,” said Edd Boyd of the class of 1963, one of the 60 alumni at the first overall reunion of the St. Augustine Seminary, a Catholic high school from 1949-1977 on what is now Shore Acres Park in Laketown Township. “I enjoyed the four years I spent here. It was rather idyllic.” . . . The property was originally the home of Dorr Felt, the inventor of the first adding machines. The Augustinians bought the property in 1949.
The order sold the property to the state in the late 1970s and the buildings were converted into a prison. Laketown Township bought the mansion and surrounding land in the 1990s and the prison was leveled. The mansion is being restored to the Felt-family era and the grounds around it are now a park with a disc golf course, trails and access to a beach on Lake Michigan.

100 Years of Chicago Catholic League and The Hound of Heaven

Yesterday, hundreds of people from around Chicago and as far away as Tennessee gathered at Holy Family Church on west Roosevelt Rd. to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Chicago Catholic League*.

The Chicago Catholic League is the oldest Catholic high school athletic association in America and the incubator of some of the best athletes in our country.  The Mass was con-Celebrated by priests who are school leaders ( St. Ignatius, Mt. Carmel, Gordon Tech, St. Rita, Loyola & etc.) and stepping in as chief-celebrant for Francis Cardinal George - Auxiliary Bishop Frank Kane.

Bishop Kane noted the unique history of the Catholic League and its roots in the 1896 Olympics founded on the ideals of a Dominican secondary school in Paris - Faster, Higher, Stronger. Earlier that afternoon, I thumbed through a rare volume of a poem by Francis Thompson (1859-1907).  The book had been part of Catholic and private school curriculum reading, before  biology-based Deweyism murdered the idea of education in America.


Through Bishop Kane's sermon, as is my rubbing necking wont, I swivel-necked  from both transcepts  with a stop at the apse and onto the vast nave making a sign of the cross with my noggin. To my left were the representative athletes who carried a banner from each school, at center was the altar and choir/orchestra on the right the Bishop and the concelebrant priests and deacons and in the thick nave Catholic League greats, parents, student athletes and my colleagues. Thompson's poem roared louder than the flights of F-18s from the Blue Angels entertaining Chicagoans on the lake front and looping lowly over Roosevelt Road and Holy Family Church.



The Hound of Heaven is 182 line fable as allegory - a hare (rabbit) flees its predator running faster, jumping higher and stronger as the poem develops.   The idea of the hare as quarry is common.  The idea of God as the Hound is unusual. The idea is that we ( me and you) run from God all of our lives and He -The Hound of Heaven pursues us to our last bolt-hole.

The language is wildly archaic ( e.g. Dravest: Thou dravest for You drove dead old white men and patriarchal hegemonists tend to do that) and obscure.   The sense is that we drive God from us and use all of our strength and skills and talents to do escape God.  God pursues us rabbits who dravest Him off - I know I run from God, given some elbow room, via health, security, comfort and self-satisfied ego.

We teach and encourage our young to run swift, vault high and increase in strength.  Ironically, those virtues seem to help us rabbits scurry from God.  We do not want to be Pharisees - religious show-offs; therefore we make light of the faith and pretend to skulk in the shadows like the Publican.

The poem ends with God ( The Hound of Heaven) nailing the rabbit ( us) and proclaiming-"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me."
This morning I will collect my Canaryville Rabbit-Lions from 43rd Street and bring them to Leo High School, one of the old Chicago Catholic League schools.

I not only dravest God's love, but the bus five days a week.

Once I post this,  I'll drave.


http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30730/30730-h/30730-h.htm

http://www.chicagocatholicleague.com/Documents/NavLink/CCL_SCHOOL_FIGHT_SONGS_uid1202011909531.pdf













*

It all began on October 3, 1912 when representatives of eight parochial schools met in Chicago’s Great Northern Hotel (demolished in 1992) to found the Catholic League. Those charter members were Loyola academy, St. Cyril (Mt Carmel), DePaul Academy, St. Philip, St. Ignatius, De La Salle, Cathedral and St. Stanislaus. In that very first year of its existence the League sponsored only basketball and indoor baseball. Football competition was to follow in the 1913-14 school year, track in 1916-17 swimming, golf, and tennis in 1923-24, cross country in 1946-47, wrestling in 1964-65, water polo in 1965-66, soccer in 1967 and volleyball in 1993. Baseball was dropped after the 1930 season but was reinstated in the 1957-58 season.

For the first 71 years of its existence, the Chicago Catholic League operated independently of the Illinois high school association (IHSA). The League’s renown, especially in football and basketball, was recognized nationwide. But, during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, as the need developed for a wider base of competition especially in such sports as swimming, track, wrestling, golf, tennis and baseball, the principals of the League’s schools began to consider the possibility of joining the IHSA. After much discussion, many arguments over pros and cons, and several meetings with the IHSA staff, the Catholic League’s Principals voted 11-1 in favor of joining the State Association. Thought the momentous vote was taken on January 30, 1973, the actual entrance into the IHSA did not take place until June 10, 1974. The reason for the 18 month wait was to give the League a full year of athletic competition during which it could make the transition to those rules and practices of the IHSA which differed from those current at the time in the Catholic League. Though there was a multitude of objections from many in the Catholic League to the decision to join IHSA, the benefits that have accrued to the Catholic League schools and students since 1974 have far outweighed the original objections

Chicago Catholic League 100th Anniversary Mass

LEO's Jay Standing -“My junior year we made the playoffs and I think we lost to Mendel. My senior year we tied Rita and we played Gordon Tech at Soldier Field Stadium. At halftime, I was sprawled out, I was so tired and the manager came out and said: ‘There are some Notre Dame people here and if you play well, you can get a scholarship.’ I told him just to get away. We beat Gordon Tech and then we played Loyola the following week but we lost to them.It was the worst game that everybody had. Loyola beat us up and down. They won fair and square. I played running back but I also played flanker. We had a quarterback that could throw the ball a mile but I could never got off the line. I was a big part of the offense. I could catch the ball and run like the wind, and it was so easy for me. Loyola would double team me, and I could never get the ball. Loyola ended up being in the Prep Bowl.”

Thats's Catholic League!

For one hundred years, The Catholic League of Chicago has provided young men and women an opportunity to excel in athletics.

Today, at Holy Family Church on Chicago's near west side, a Mass will be celebrated by Francis Cardinal George in commemoration of this century of Faith, Fellowship and Family.

CHICAGO CATHOLIC LEAGUE - 100TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION 

The Chicago Catholic League and its member schools cordially invite you to the one hundredth anniversary celebration on Sunday, August 19, 2012.   Mass will be celebrated at 3:00 PM in Holy Family Church - 1080 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago, Illinois.  A reception will follow at 4:30 PM at St. Ignatius College Prep - 1076 W. Roosevelt Road, Chicago, Illinois.

http://www.leohsalumniassoc.com/alumni%20stories/standring/standring.html

Francis Cardinal George - One of Us! We are all Supplicant Lions!

Catholics are supplicants.  From the time we first learn to chatter, we are taught to ask for help, intercession, aid and comfort; we beseech.  We supplicate - ask humbly, earnestly and with faith.  Our prayers are chock-filled with verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns rooted in the Latin past participle -supplicatus/supplicare.

Catholics are required to go where help is most forthcoming, through intercessors.  We also pray in Adoration, Confession and Thanksgiving, but intercession and prayers of intercession are recognition of our helpnessess and subordination to others more capable giving aid -beyond our family, friends, co-workers and most certainly beyond Google, MSNBC,  our Advanced Degrees hanging on our walls and the guys at the local bar.

Catholicism runs counter to Thoreau, Emerson and Dewey.  Outcomes can not be determined by data. Nature can not be apprehended by legislation, policy, or desire for outcomes.

Catholics pray not to fix things, but to reconcile ourselves to God and Nature.  We fix things by paying for them whether they be hips, knees, gutters or unpaid parking tickets.  We can not lawyer up with God's Universe.  Catholics asks humbly and earnestly to keep faith. The absolute best prayer is the Memorare*

On the first day of classes at Leo High School, Thursday last, a giant child of a freshman and one of my morning transport lads, Daylon F. of Bronzeville was waiting for his schedule after being fitted for his uniform polo shirt.  Daylon is 6'3" in height and every bit of 300 lbs and change at 14 years old. Daylon got himself a XXXXX(5)L.

This Mannish Boy was staring at the wonderful life size crucifix with attached kneeler that dominates the wait area outside of my Development cubicle.  He asked me, " What's the INRI on the top of the cross mean?"

Daylon, like so many Leo Men, is non-Catholic.  More so , there are too many Catholic kids who do not learn that theological-historical tidbit in their eight years of Catholic grammar school anymore.

"INRI??? What's that?"

The Romans did not have the letter J and they used I instead.  Jesus was IESUS pronounced Yeah Sus, or something like that.

"What's INRI mean?"

That was the charge Jesus found guilty of violating by the Roman Court - Iēsus Nazarēnus, Rēx Iūdaeōrum Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.

" Damn, that's a crime ?"

A capital crime to the Romans - no king BUT Caesar and the Caesar at that time was Tiberius and he was real piece of work.

"Why a crime."

The Romans wanted nothing but attention to government -everyone and everywhere and the Romans did everything according to law. There is no wiggle room. It says, on that plate in no uncertain terms that Jesus of Nazareth, IS King of the Jews and only Caesar can make a King - like Herod and his old man.  This execution settled it.

" But it didn't."

No it certainly did not.  Jesus rose from the dead and over turned the court's ruling.

Daylon gets it.  He said Jesus "prayed to His Father and Father rose Him from the Dead."

No one does it alone, pal.

Daylon is at Leo because of Mike Holmes, Mark Lee,  Dan McGrath, Rich Furlong, Jim Furlong, Jim Arvetis, Andy McKenna, Frank Considine, John Gardner, Bill Koloseike, Bob Sheehy, Jackie Schaller, Bernie Pepping, Jim Corbett, and seven thousand other Leo Alumni who give money all year.  Even guys who might not have enough money to give volunteer, come to games and most of all pray for Daylon, whom they have yet to meet.  Daylon has Francis Cardinal George backing his play; Cardinal George is a Leo Alumnus.  He is one of us.

We take care of each other.  This summer, one of us, a classmate of Daylon was murdered -

Chicago police said Antonio Davis, 14, was shot and killed Friday night near 69th and Union around 8:40 p.m.A day later, a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed in the 6200-block of South Rhodes. Neighbors said there was a large party at the home where the boy was shot that spilled into the street.Also, a 14-year-old and 15-year-old are recovering from being shot while playing basketball near their home Saturday night. It happened around 8:43pm in the 2400-block of East 74th Street. The two victims were playing when a gunman approached on foot and opened fire, striking the two.Davis' family said he was an A and B student at Leo High School and had dreams of becoming a basketball player."I just know that he was walking to the store to get my niece's baby water and a car pulled up and jumped out at him and shot him" said Davis' aunt, Latrice Strong

Dan McGrath called the Leo community.  Leo paid for the gravesite and the repast held at the school.  Mr. Leak of the Funeral home handled the funeral, Dwayne Wade's mother preached the funeral - Dwayne Wade was coached and mentored by Leo Man Jack Fitzgerald. Antonio Davis attended one week of summer school - he was a Leo Man.  Cardinal George is a Leo Man, Daylon is a Leo Man and we are all supplicants.

Cardinal George has cancer. He is one of us.  We are all supplicants. There are seven thousand and change Leo Men saying the Memorare - a prayer of intercession and supplication,  Help and provide, Mary Mother of God, one of our own - old school and new school versions.

MEMORARE, O piissima Virgo Maria,
non esse auditum a saeculo, quemquam ad tua currentem praesidia,
tua implorantem auxilia, tua petentem suffragia,
esse derelictum.
Ego tali animatus confidentia,
ad te, Virgo Virginum, Mater, curro,
ad te venio, coram te gemens peccator assisto.
Noli, Mater Verbi,
verba mea despicere;
sed audi propitia et exaudi.
Amen.

Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone who fled to Thy protection,
implored Thy help or sought Thine intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired by this confidence,
I fly unto Thee, O Virgin of Virgins, my Mother;
to Thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in Thy mercy, hear and answer me.
Amen.

*A prayer beginning, "Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary." Of unknown authorship, it has been attributed to St. Augustine, to St. John Chrysostom, and with more reason to St. Bernard or to Claude Bernard, "poor priest" of Paris. Passages in sermons of St. Bernard echo the theme (PL 183:428), but none comes close to the actual wording of the Memorare. The manuscript tradition can be traced only to the 15th century. It appears as a section of a longer prayer in the Antidotarius animae of Nicolas Salicetus (1489). J. Wellinger included it, possibly as a separate invocation, in his Hortulus animae (1503). Claude Bernard (1588–1641) …

Leo Driver Diaries - Canaryville to Leo High School

August 16, 2012  "Canaryville is a predominantly Irish American neighborhood, with borders from 40th to 49th streets between Union Pacific railroad ..."

Canaryville (St. Gabriel's Parish)  gave Leo High School hundreds of great men - Bro Farrell, Fr. Bill McFarlan, Dean Fuller, A Score of Brackin Boys,  Hugs Hughes, Square Lanham, John Caponera, Gabe Caponera, Lt. John Lehner, CFD and now Canaryville is back.

I get to Leo High School before 5AM, after picking up a box of 50 glazed Munchkins and a 20 oz. coffee.  The donut holes are for the gents that I will pick up and the coffee is mine.  At Leo High School, at 79th & Sangamon Street in the heart of Gresham,  I answer e-mails and do prospect research  beyond the Leo Alumni who give lavishly to their Alma Mater.  President Dan McGrath and I are widening the shores of the giving pond and reaching out to private and corporate sponsors.  These generous individuals, foundations and corporations provide much needed revenue to off-set tuition costs and also sponsor projects for capital improvement.

The biggest need in the last several years has been tuition assistance which, due to the lousy economy, cancerous unemployment and rising water, lighting, gas, insurance and up-keep expenses, eats into operating expenses.  You can set tuition, but families can only pay what they are able to pay. The balance is made up in fund-raising.  Increasing enrollment has helped some.

Last year, Leo welcome the first white student in decades to this Catholic college prep school for young men.  The previous year, the first Hispanic graduate in decades was our Gates Millenium Scholar, Eder Cruz; his success changed this school's demographic from 100% African American to Leo Diverse!

Five more Hispanic gents enrolled as did one young man from St. Gabe's parish in Canaryville.   Ten more white ethnc ( Catholics) enrolled, entered the summer school program and the 2013 Freshman Class.  More Carnaryvillians are expected in the next few weeks. Two others, who intended to begin high school here opted to attend De LaSalle Insitute in their own backyard.

These ten gents are tough.  Their parents work hard.  Canaryville is reputed to be one of the toughest neighborhoods in America - always has been.  It is to Chicago as Hell's Kitchen is to NYC.   My Mom's family were Canaryville tribesmen.  Her Dad had been a Ragen Colt, as well as a Lather.  Her uncle was a Ragen Colt as well as a Viatorian priest.  They were called Earl and Headsy - the Donahue boys. How one became Earl, when baptized a Francis is one of those Canaryville mysteries.  Tough is determined not so much by how much one can dish out, but by how much one can take.

Canaryville folks can take plenty. The myth goes something like this -



I drive one of the school vans to pick up Leo Students from Bronzeville and then Canaryville.  The van is Ford 15 passenger that also serves the athletic teams in the afternoons. To say the least, this conveyances gets a daily work-out that would exhaust Gale Sayers.

Here was yesterday's route:

6:40 - Depart Leo heading east on 79th Street to the Dan Ryan - construction crews are laying out barrier cones and barricades; gang trucks and back-hoes signal crowded and slow return trip. N.B. Classes begin at 7:45 AM.  Think, Hickey.
6:45 - Northbound on the Dan Ryan at State - remain in Local lanes - so good, so far.

6: 50 Exit at 35th Street and head east to Dr. Martin Luther King Drive; take a left into the lot of BP Gas station. Wait. Big Daylon . . .freshman 14 years old and sports a XXXXXL  Leo Polo shirt -6'3" and all of 350+ lbs.  and the kid can move. Daylon smiles gets to work on the Munchkin box.

7:00 - 7:14 AM Now, head out to Canaryville - 35th Street East to Wentworth frontage over by Sox Park  Head south to 43rd Street; go left to 
558 West 43rd Street - Pizza Nova - Pick up Two

7:15 Head East to 35th & Emerald take a left south to Graham Elementary parking lot - there they are!

A Collection of Youthful Hope and Determination.

" How come no Chocalate Milk, Mr. Hickey?"

When you guys all make Honor Roll on October, then we'll negotiate the breakfast menu.  Eat what's there.

" Thanks! No Powder! Awesome! AJ give over!  BK you got five! So? Can we stop at Subway?  The air's too cold. You listen to Old Man music. . . .," Remembering the street work, I exit at 75th grooveup to 76th head east and pass the big dark brown apartment building at 76th Union where I was born and continue to Morgan

7:35 AM - Leo Parking Lot and the tribe alights!

Is this a great life, or what?

Chicago -Meet Samuel Johnson's "London"

 Not too much has changed in human nature and in politics. The virtuous people get the shaft and the artful dodgers get more pie.  There has always been group think and wormy acceptance of public frauds and their policies. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is very much like Jack Wilkes.

Jack Wilkes, Lord Mayor of London, was journalist/demagogue of the 18th Century, who used radical rhetoric to become a political icon and autocrat.  London was a pest hole of corruption vice and gang-violence.  "Wilkes and Liberty!" was the shout of the day and murders were as common as flies on an uncollected corpse.

Dr. Samuel Johnson was a lexicographer, poet, scholar, wit and Tory.  A Tory was a conservative who believed in God, King and Country.  Tories arose from the Cavalier Party which took the side of the Monarchy over Oliver Cromwell's progressive dictatorship.  In modern sensibilities, President Obama is much akin to Oliver Cromwell.  The word Tory comes from the Irish word - tóraidhe; - which means Outlaw.

How's that for irony?

If you believe today that abortion is murder, you are an outlaw.  If you believe today that marriage is between a man and woman, you are an outlaw.  If you believe today that the sweat of your brow is your capital, you are an outlaw.

Jack Wilkes as Mayor of London encouraged an Occupy Movement that railed against King George, his wars in America, and Catholics.  In 1778 and act to end anti-Popery Laws in England against Roman Catholics ( which were not unlike Obama's HHS Mandate), angered the 18th Century MSNBC-like pamphleteers and they the mob.  The words King Mob became the 99%ers of London.  The Gordon Riots against Catholics, the King and the Bank of England broke out in 1780.

Guess what; when the Mob ( 99%er OWS of London) marched on the Bank of England, Rahm Wilkes ordered the militia to fire of the crowd.

Dr. Johnson wrote of his London:

Besides, with Justice, this discerning Age
Admires their wond'rous Talents for the Stage:
Well may they venture on the Mimic's art,
Who play from Morn to Night a borrow'd Part;
Practis'd their Master's Notions to embrace,
Repeat his Maxims, and reflect his Face;
With ev'ry wild Absurdity comply,
And view each Object with another's Eye;
To shake with Laughter ere the Jest they hear,
To pour at Will the counterfeited Tear;
And as their Patron hints the Cold or Heat,
To shake in Dog-days, in December sweat.

How, when Competitors like these contend,
Can surly Virtue hope to fix a Friend?
Slaves that with serious Impudence beguile,
And lye without a Blush, without a Smile;
Exalt each Trifle, ev'ry Vice adore,
Your Taste in Snuff, your Judgment in a Whore;
Can Balbo's Eloquence applaud, and swear
He gropes his Breeches with a Monarch's Air.

Those are Chicago Values, kids!

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/london.html
http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/summer03/wilkes.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots

Laundering History with Patrick T. Reardon - The Fort Dearborn " Collision of Visions"

 

Patrick T. Reardon, a former scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, is a member of the board of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, sets us all straight -a massacre is a vision collision. 

This Aboriginal American is not, in fact scalping some white dude with an imperialistically flawed vision of Manifest Destiny, or Prof. Keating would hold  ReMaxing the Plains. Nope, the noble and much put upon Red Gent is protesting the bullies according to the statutes of Injun Anti-Hate Law.

Speak on it Patrick T. ( from the Chicago Tribune -8/15/2012)

What happened two centuries ago on Aug. 15, 1812, on the Lake Michigan shore near what is now 18th Street has long been called the Fort Dearborn Massacre.
But it wasn't a massacre. - Patrick T. Reardon

It wasn't?  Well, I'll be dipped and rolled!  What was it there, Patrick T.?

The real story of Fort Dearborn is a collision of those visions. - Patrick T. Reardon

Dang!  How so?

The word "massacre" was used immediately after the battle as a rallying cry for the American war effort. It led to a series of attacks by U.S. forces on Indian villages (just as the Aug. 15 battle was itself in partial revenge for an American assault on the village at Tippecanoe 10 months earlier). - Patrick T. Reardon

Were those "assaults" visions, like Nancy Pelosi's ghost-whispers to Maggie Sanger and Sojourner Truth?

 Chicago was "a symbol of an imposed colonial presence."The hamlet of Chicago was made up of a few homes of traders and farmers around Fort Dearborn in what was known as Indian Country. This was a vast area around Lake Michigan where the American-European world and the Indian culture coexisted, often uneasily, for the purpose of trade.
In 1812, there were three visions of the future of Indian Country:
•Indians wanted to retain their wide-open spaces where they could freely range and hunt as they had for centuries.
•American presidents and officials wanted to take the Indian land and "turn it into real estate," to use Keating's phrase — land that could be bought, sold and developed.
•Trader John Kinzie and other Americans and Europeans who lived and prospered on the edge of white civilization, often marrying Indian women, wanted to keep Indian Country as it was. - Patrick T. Reardon

Patrick T., were those colonialist Americans set to deconstruct the rubric of the Aboriginal American Confederation via a semiotic construct of their own - like scalping the Red buggers?

Looking back from the 21st century, we may be tempted to say, well, the victory of the white civilization was inevitable. That misses the point — even if true.
The story of Fort Dearborn is a creation narrative of our city. The real story isn't about good guys and bad guys. It isn't about a massacre. - Patrick T. Reardon

It ain't? So, it never happened . . .the way the sculptors and Abe Lincoln and and all them frog-eating Voyageurs and Jean Baptiste Du Sable seemed to go along with until a Park Lady and her her historical back-up lady,  Professor Real Estate Keating,  wanted to PC up some open space in the south Loop?
Sort of the Century 21-ing of the 19th Century and ReMaxing Injun Land,  through genocidal wars of one-way victors, what be white eyes? I am soooooo ashamed of my see-through Irish pelt, Patrick T.!

This is important to Chicagoans today because we live in an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic city — and an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic nation. - Patrick T. Reardon

Now, hold the phone there, Patrick T. . . . Were there not multiculturals and multi-ethnics sharing visions amidst the wild onions and swamps along the lakefront, the three colliding visions of 1812 were not the results of multicultural contretemps? Hmmm? Or, are you holding that only now have we multicultural diversity one big world of many hues and Hughs of many sizes and shapes?

If we recognize the competing visions that were present at our city's inception, we will have an easier time recognizing, understanding and dealing with the competing visions of our own time.
If we insist on the false and simplistic good-versus-bad view of an event 200 years ago, we're going to have a hard time ever finding common ground.

 Let me back up to your openers, Patrick T. - better yet you say it . . .

It was a battle in two simultaneous wars. Some 500 Potawatomis and their allies encircled the 110 men, women and children who had marched out of Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River that morning, heading for Fort Wayne in Indiana Territory. The soldiers from the garrison formed a line and advanced on the Indians.
Sixty-eight of the Fort Dearborn contingent lost their lives in the fighting and its aftermath. Fifteen of the Indian attackers were killed.

500 Potawatomis - the casino ancestry?  Okay, we can safely assume by your scholarly delineations that the 500 Potawatomis were all gents, males, patriarchal war-mongering, testosterone fueled danglers against "the soldiers and the ladies and the kids.  The score was 68 -15; a sport might call that a massacre and not a real estate initiative, much less a collision of visions. Imagine if they had diversity, anti-bullying, racial sensitivity and CeaseFire back then!

Patrick T. thanks for sharing your historical visions, fully filtered through a Marxist lens.  Old Karl had an interesting spin of the Civil War back when he was covering it for old Horace Greeley's  New York Daily Tribune*.  Looking forward to your views on the Pullman Agreement to Disagree of  1894, The St. Valentine's Day Spat, The Republic Steel Collision of Vission, and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Contention.


Pat Hickey is a good fellow of the Morgan Park Kean Gas Coffee Salon and a really sarcastic guy who makes fun of pretentious fops who wear berets in America, or drive Hummers in the city, and also unchallenged pedantic academic yahoos; yet, he  only waters his lawn during droughts and soberly  recycles according to the dictates of Rahm Emanuel's Zone 6 ( serviced by Waste Management).
 *

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world. [B]

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association, the Central Council:

Longmaid, Worley, Whitlock, Fox, Blackmore, Hartwell, Pidgeon, Lucraft, Weston, Dell, Nieass, Shaw, Lake, Buckley, Osbourne, Howell, Carter, Wheeler, Stainsby, Morgan, Grossmith, Dick, Denoual, Jourdain, Morrissot, Leroux, Bordage, Bocquet, Talandier, Dupont, L.Wolff, Aldovrandi, Lama, Solustri, Nusperli, Eccarius, Wolff, Lessner, Pfander, Lochner, Kaub, Bolleter, Rybczinski, Hansen, Schantzenbach, Smales, Cornelius, Petersen, Otto, Bagnagatti, Setacci;

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0815-dearborn-20120815,0,1083021.story

http://patricktreardon.com/

White Rose and Red Rose - St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe - Polish Martyr of WWII

“Courage, my sons. Don’t you see that we are leaving on a mission? They pay our fare in the bargain. What a piece of good luck! The thing to do now is to pray well in order to win as many souls as possible. Let us, then, tell the Blessed Virgin that we are content, and that she can do with us anything she wishes” (Maximilian Mary Kolbe, when first arrested in 1941).

I'd like to be a good man. I fall very far short.   I am offered choices everyday.  The choices come down to what exactly have I learned and believe weighed against what is easy, what is safe, what is fun and what is sure to be kept private and out of the public eye against circumstances and necessity.  Sixty years of folly, repentance and slips off the path  have not fully erased the desire to be a good man.

Modeling ourselves on good people is only a start.  

The better of us abandon themselves to better angels - devotion to the spirit and the work of making sense of and combating evil.  

A young Polish kid with a devotion to Mary Mother of God, as well as science, prayed for direction.  He saw a vision of the Christ's Mother. She offered him a white representing purity and the red rose of martyrdom. This kid chose both and lived up to each.  Maximilian Mary Kolbe stepped forward years before his test in Auschwitz Death Camp.  

The young Kolbe knew that purity and all that virtue requires was the only path to Red Rose - you can't have one without the other.  Martyrs, we like to forget, work at it.

I have a long way to go and a short time to get there.

From Catholic Saints - American Catholic.org

Ordained at 24, he saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of the day. His mission was to combat it. He had already founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with the witness of the good life, prayer, work and suffering. He dreamed of and then founded Knight of the Immaculata, a religious magazine under Mary’s protection to preach the Good News to all nations. For the work of publication he established a “City of the Immaculata”—Niepokalanow—which housed 700 of his Franciscan brothers. He later founded one in Nagasaki, Japan. Both the Militia and the magazine ultimately reached the one-million mark in members and subscribers. His love of God was daily filtered through devotion to Mary.
In 1939 the Nazi panzers overran Poland with deadly speed. Niepokalanow was severely bombed. Kolbe and his friars were arrested, then released in less than three months, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
In 1941 he was arrested again. The Nazis’ purpose was to liquidate the select ones, the leaders. The end came quickly, in Auschwitz three months later, after terrible beatings and humiliations.
A prisoner had escaped. The commandant announced that 10 men would die. He relished walking along the ranks. “This one. That one.” As they were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Number 16670 dared to step from the line. “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.” “Who are you?” “A priest.” No name, no mention of fame. Silence. The commandant, dumbfounded, perhaps with a fleeting thought of history, kicked Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek out of line and ordered Father Kolbe to go with the nine. In the “block of death” they were ordered to strip naked, and their slow starvation began in darkness. But there was no screaming—the prisoners sang. By the eve of the Assumption four were left alive. The jailer came to finish Kolbe off as he sat in a corner praying. He lifted his fleshless arm to receive the bite of the hypodermic needle. It was filled with carbolic acid. They burned his body with all the others. He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982.

https://www.americancatholic.org/features/saints/saint.aspx?id=1107

This Song Has a Singer - All The Things You Are

This Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein tune is brutal -beautiful lyrics and musical path that requires real talent.

Here is the great Tony Martin



Then Jo Stafford -



Francis Albert of Course -



Now get a load of Miss Ella



Translated musically by Charlie Parker Sax



and Joe Pass Guit-box

Obama Campaign Has The Goods on Paul Ryan

Look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you.
Paul Ryan
Read more athttp://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/paul_ryan.html#yRo88wgvKmov2G0D.99

R2 = Mitt Picks the Mick

The choice of Ryan will bring the debate over how to reduce government spending and debt to the forefront of the race for the White House. Chicago Tribune

Money marbles or chalk?

My guess it means more vigorous tossing of the many race cards/more grannies getting scalped (A DNC homage to Bessie SquaWarren in MA)/ reports on Mormon ethnic cleansing  of wives of steel workers/tearful accounts of Sandy Fluke's monthly cash outlay for Personal Products ( rubbers, diaphrams, pill compacts, STD testing & etc.)/  - stuff like that.

I tend to look to the math.  I am no math whiz, but I know that if I do not enough nickels in my checking account to cover the dimes that I spent, I will get a call from Beverly Bank's Beth, Gloria, or Donna.

It is the same with National economics.  Since 2009, more families have applied for tuition assistance at Leo High School than at any time in its history.  These are mostly African American Families who have lost work, due to lay-offs.  In 2008, we had surplus cash in the bank and since President Obama took office, we have had modest deficits.  It's math and it is historical fact.  We need to raise more money so that more kids from Chicago's inner city do not need to opt for the lousy Chicago Public Schools. Is it President Obama's fault?

Who's to say?

What could change the situation? Here's the squared correlation coefficient -R2

R2 - Ronald Reagan?         Been there done that.
     -  R Squared (economics) -R-squared values range from 0 to 100. An R-squared of 100 means that all movements of a security are completely explained by movements in the index. A high R-squared (between 85 and 100) indicates the fund's performance patterns have been in line with the index. A fund with a low R-squared (70 or less) doesn't act much like the index.

A higher R-squared value will indicate a more useful beta figure. For example, if a fund has an R-squared value of close to 100 but has a beta below 1, it is most likely offering higher risk-adjusted returns. A low R-squared means you should ignore the beta.

   - Risk/Reward ?  Plenty -change the horse because the stream is too tough for the nag

   - Romney/Ryan?  Two Republicans will face two Democrats - R2 ( a Mormon & a Mick ( Irish Catholic) versus D2 ( a Christian Non-Sectarian & A Planned Parenthood Catholic).

R2 v.D2 = Election Day November 6, 2012

The outcome is that important.  I'm cancelling R2 over another D2 vote this go-around; it will be up to another voter to determine the outcome.

Do the math.



  Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/r-squared.asp#ixzz23F7rgzfl

How to Reply to Obama Media Shills - Jonathan Alter e.g.

Here's how to reply to Media repitilia - Arch-nebbish Jonathan Alter with Big Ed e.g.



 
Jonathan Alter - Newsweek Nebbish and Obama Spokes-Pal .
. on MSNBC's Big Ed  Göring Show 

Canard DuJour: 

Jonathan Alter -'No, we're not calling Mitt Romney a murderer, what we are saying is that if he's elected president, a lot of people will die.' 

Proper Response 

Me, for example- Name 'em.

Terry Sullivan and the Chicago Jazz Caravan at 12 West Elm -Sunday August 12 @ 3PM

CHICAGO JAZZ CARAVAN

with vocalist Terry Sullivan

Sunday, August 12, 2012

3:00 pm

TWELVEWEST nightclub

12 West Elm, Chicago

Admission $10

Limited seating; reservations recommended

at 312/337-3200 or www.12westelm.com

Dress: business casual or better

                                                           

The CHICAGO JAZZ CARAVAN

is a roving ensemble of some of

Chicago’s most seasoned jazz musicians,

performing music reminiscent of

New York jazz supper clubs of the ‘fifties.

Personnel:

Tom Muellner, piano        

Larry Kohut, bass     Terry Sullivan, vocals

TWELVEWEST is Chicago ’s

sophisticated new gold coast nightclub.

Mother Jones 2012 is Sarah Palin

  

The American Mothers Jones -2012/20th Century








Diane Reece of the Washington Post,  a very talented writer who did not need a pile of dough from George Soros, Bill Burton, David Plouffe, or Mother Jones magazine to rent a house next to the Palin Family, is critical of Palin but honest and fair-minded. Rather than do a standard Joan Walsh Salon bitch, Diane Reece made an honest and forthright attempt to witness the impact of Sarah Palin on a crowd of people.  Diane Reece wrote for the Washington Post -

It was the first time I’d ever seen Palin in person, and it was well worth the 19-mile drive from my suburban Kansas City home to The Berry Patch, a you-pick blueberry farm near Cleveland, Mo., population 665, in rural Cass County.
Not because I’m a fan or even agree with her ideology, but to see what all the fuss has been about.

There has been fuss aplenty!  I believe that I am the only member of my vast family who admires Sarah Palin.  The very pious, elegant and well-spoken woman who deigns to be seen in public with me is put off by Gov. Palin's rhetorical choices and her God-given voice.  Coming from a blue-collar Irish Catholic family where Party loyalty equals Union (Real Labor) fidelity Ms. Palin's own Family Labor background gets lost in translation by my dear tribe, as well as the American Progressive Smart-Set.  The same family members, my Mom most loudly, who hold that Ms. Palin must be "nuts" are not in the least put off by Nancy Pelosi's ghost whispering. Second to the mental health canards, comes the Celtic charge of being a "total phony!"  Could be.  It's lost on me.

I like and admire Sarah Palin.  She can lead.  President Obama, in the words of Hockey Dad and Chicago's own Bobby Hull, "couldn't lead a dog out of a thunderstorm with a T-bone steak." The man can baffle with soaring bullshit, I'll give him that . . .not that he writes any of it.

 I'd follow Sarah Palin into a Jenny Craig Program; I would not follow President Obama into Old Country Buffet.

I understand that some people might be put-off by fashion, couture, and un-filtered plain-speak.  Ms. Diane Reece is first mainstream journalist to make those objections personal and not universally dogmatic:

When Palin took to the makeshift stage in the middle of a Missouri farm field, she was dressed more for the part of Hollywood celebrity than serious politician. I know someone’s going to remind me that just last week, I said it was sexist to focus on the wardrobes of women in politics.
But it was hard for me to take Palin seriously dressed as she was.
First, her shoes: Five-inch wedges. Her black capris weren’t quite skin-tight but tight enough, and her t-shirt with its Superman logo (a Steelman campaign shirt emblazoned with “Our freedom. Our fight.”) emphasized her figure. She never once removed her oversized sunglasses.
I’m sorry, but I’d like my minister, my doctor and yes, my politicians, to look and dress for their parts.
Once Palin spoke, I couldn’t help but think she sometimes sounds like a caricature of herself. Perhaps it’s her unique manner of speaking or her overuse of certain phrases.
There were moments during her 15-minute speech that I felt like applauding and there were certainly moments that I groaned.

I do know that Sarah Palin scares the marrow out of people that I would not particularly care to spend any amount of time with, much less value their opinions -MSNBC's entire Clown Opera, Il. Gov. Pat Quinn, The jerks John McCain hired in 2008,  The Second Wave Feminist Dowagers of the Abortion Industry, David " Crisp Britches" Brooks,  or Martini Mo Dowd.  Most of all the editors and contributors of Mother Jones Magazine have worked over-time to defraud American history and be-smeer the name of Mary Harris Jones, who was the Sarah Palin of the last century.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones is an Irish Catholic woman, who lived a life that not only bridged America's Industrial Revolution to the Rise of American Labor, but defended the traditional family, unborn children and children forced into work, women torn from the hearth and most of all "Her Boys!"  Mother Jones was tough old broad who had watched her working man husband and children die of fever, the business that she built with her two skilled hands burn in the Chicago Fire, and working men struggle for wages, reasonable working hours and conditions, as well as basic human dignity, and labor, politcal, social welfare frauds work against them.

Mother Jones was a  force of nature. Mary Harris Jones was tough and very happy  little widow. The Press, the Governors and frauds hated her.

Mother Jones magazine performed post-mortem hysterical castration on the historical Mary Harris Jones, denuding her memory of her Catholic Faith and identity, as well as her counter-Marxist methodologies.Mother Jones was no Emma Goldman, no Jane Addams, no Margret Sanger; Mary Harris Jones was an honest woman who never cashed in on her celebrity and never played ball with the radical phonies. She was no atheist.  Mother Jones made war on phonies, weaklings, cowards, Prohibitionists, and do-gooder frauds, as well as capitalists. John L. Lewis made her sick to her stomach.  Big Bill Haywood she considered a pawn to booze and Bolsheviks.  Dowager abortionists?  Forget about it.

Sarah Palin is the clearest image of Mother Jones.  She is happy, honest, courageous and not a good fit for MSNBC. - Mother Jones would have turned Rachel Maddow into quivering  belaboring curds of word-whey.

At the end of her article, Ms. Reece wondered if the SuperMan T-shirt, 5" Heel Wedgied Mother Jones would would help steer a Missouri Hawkey Mawm to the Senate Race.   Nope. Like Mother Jones herself, sometimes your are the Grizzly and sometimes just a hard working Mom.



Mary Harris Mother Jones -“Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers.”

Governor Sarah Palin-“It’s unbelievable to me that you spent last week in campaign mode, gallivanting around the country to start raising the billion dollars for your reelection bid that is still 19 months away ‘while Rome burns.’ . . . As was recently asked: When do you ever just ‘roll up your sleeves, unplug the teleprompter’ and do the job of governing and administrating for which voters hired you? I know, I know, granted you will be even busier very soon. After all, golf season kicks into high gear shortly. NBA and NHL brackets await.”


http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/pgs/portraits/Mother_Jones.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/sarah-palin-mama-grizzlies-united/2012/08/06/23393f12-dfc6-11e1-8d48-2b1243f34

The Media Never Even Got Close to The Pitch -Cardinal George Smokes It Past Them

Francis Cardinal George has more hop on the ball than Jake Peavy, at least these last few hours anyway. Kansas City went over the Sox 5-2 and Peavy took the loss hard.

Cardinal George fanned every "news" outlet in Chicago, again.   Louis Farrakhan gets more favorable treatment and coverage from our Chicago Values Media than Cardinal George.  Is the Medill Empire basically anti-Semitic ?

Hey, I heard from a guy very close to Senate Leader Harry Reid that Chicago Tribune Editor Bruce Dold has been given to wearing bow ties, lately . . . just sayin'!

Cardinal George, the Archbishop of the Chicago, a Catholic guy, wrote a wonderfully articulate reposte to Mayor Chicago Values over his remarks concerning Chick fil A River North and elsewhere.  Every paper ignored the Cardinal's teaching document.

When Chicagoans noticed the Cardinal's words without any help from Manya Brachear ( Trib), or Carol Marin (Cosmic Local), the  Fruit of Islam Chicago Tribune Editorial Board Minister Brutha Dold offered up a Chicken . . . Chick fil A . . .acknowledgment.  Nothing Dold-idian Less than  " Cardinal enters Chick-fil-A fray!" The Media went all Chick fil A on Bruce Dold's say - Google it your own bad self! Every news out outlet went all chicken . . . .

http://www.archchicago.org/blog/comments.aspx?postID=276

Here is a link above to the Cardinal's original response to our public yahoos in office - no chick, chicken, egg, poultry, feathers  . . .& etc.

I don't believe I recall seeing the words Chick, Fil, A, or Chicken anywhere in Cardinal George's response to Ald. Proco-Joe Moreno and Mayor Coon Eyes Emanuel Mussolini Improve.  It take a DOLD to build this village of the blind.  The Chicago Tribune has had its bat on its shoulder since Dave Axelrod pow-wowed about a Barack Obama White House.

Cardinal George is no Louis Farrakhan afterall.

Here is Cardinal George's fireball follow-up!

Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Chicago Values, Revisited: it’s not about chicken!

Responses to my reflections last week on “Chicago values” fell into two camps. There were almost universal plaudits for recognizing that the government should be concerned about actions and not about thoughts and values. The media, of course, are in this camp, because they are concerned about the free speech that is at the heart of their profession.

More complicated, on the other hand, was the reaction to the “value” that was the case in point: same-sex “marriage.” Some who are comfortably in the first camp deserted the field of argument on gay marriage. An argument is always made in a context that determines what can be considered sensible, and it seems to me that some of us are arguing out of different contexts.
There are three contexts for discussing “gay marriage”: 1) the arena of individual rights and their protection in civil law, 2) the field of activities defined by nature and its laws, and 3) the realm of faith as a response to God’s self-revelation in history. Unfortunately, when the only permissible context for discussing public values is that of individual rights protected by civil law, then it is the government alone that determines how it is acceptable to act. Every public actor (including faith communities) then becomes the government’s agent. This is a formula for tyranny.
We can see how appeals to pluralism and toleration gradually become tyrannical in the development of how we are now expected to regard the killing of unborn children. When the individual civil right to abort a living child was discovered in the Constitution, its justification began as a “necessary evil” for the sake of a woman’s health; it was then applauded in nobler terms as a positive symbol of a woman’s freedom; it is now part of the value system of our society and everyone must be involved in paying for it, either through taxes or insurance. It is mainstream medicine and settled social policy. Its opponents are relegated to a quirky fringe, outside of the American consensus not only on what it is legal to do but also on what it is good to support. When the government, the media and the entertainment industries agree to agree on how to use words and shape the argument, society itself is deliberately transformed in ways that bring academics, judges, legislators, lawyers, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, actors, psychiatrists, doctors and every other public professional into public agreement, all portraying themselves as original thinkers. Anyone opposed to the new consensus, no matter the reason, is dismissed as a throwback to an earlier age, to be tolerated, perhaps, but removed from public life and, eventually, punished. It’s a very old story.

Getting people to think outside the context of “civil rights” is difficult. It’s as if Americans were forbidden to think beyond politics. What is singularly peculiar about the “gay marriage” argument is the way its proponents dismiss the field of nature itself as in any way normative for human actions. We would think it odd if the government, in order to please those who desire to fly without an airplane, were to repeal the law of gravity. If nature gets in the way of a new civil right to “gay marriage,” however, that’s too bad for nature. This strikes me as bizarre.
Entering into the context of faith, the believer looks to how God has intervened in history through the calling of the Jewish people to a particular vocation, through inspiring the Hebrew prophets, by the incarnation of the eternal Son of God in Jesus of Nazareth, and the founding of the Church that speaks in Jesus’ name until he returns in glory. The God who created order in nature also reveals his plan for us in history; and the religious teaching on the nature of marriage is eminently clear. Those who dismiss any religiously based argument as simply private and therefore not publicly normative are at least consistent with the secularism that makes protection of individual “civil rights” entirely determinative of public life.
What is puzzling is the case of those who, while claiming to be believers, ignore the history of salvation and reduce God to a cosmic wimp who smiles and blesses whatever comes down the track, as if God were without intelligence or the ability to discern right from wrong. Jesus is certainly “inclusive” as the savior of the whole world who invites all to follow him. But Jesus calls us to convert to his ways, which are not ours. Among the sayings of Jesus, there are about as many that start “Woe to you…” as there are those that begin “Blessed are they…” A Jesus reduced to our wishful thinking is useless.
What remains a Gospel imperative, of course, is a respectful and loving concern for those who identify themselves as gay or lesbian, including them in the community of faith and accompanying them in their quest for holiness of life. The Archdiocese attempts this response, in part, through AGLO and Courage groups.
Thanks to all who responded to last week’s blog; apologies to anyone who feels unfairly judged. I’ve tried to keep it at the level of ideas and social trends that seem to me to be dangerous to us all, Chicagoans or others.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI (emphases my own)

 You broke the clock gun there, Cardinal! They never even heard it coming, let alone saw it whiz by, Your Eminence!


https://www.google.com/search?q=google+search&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268#q=Cardinal+George+and+Chick+Fil+A&hl=en&tbo=1&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268&output=search&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:w&sa=X&psj=1&ei=RGUiUKDTDsnxygGY3YAo&ved=0CAYQpwUoAw&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=416d567912eb08ea&biw=1007&bih=613
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-08-02/news/ct-met-cardinal-george-chick-fill-a-0802-20120802_1_gay-marriage-chicago-values-chicago-cardinal-francis-george