John, what is good about this column is that it is a great illustration of the distance between what people really feel and what they are told that they ought to feel. I suppose that in the interests of civil discourse, we ought to defer to that ought-to-feel, but it would be nice if civil discourse would take just a little note of what people actually feel.

Wonderful piece, John.  Spot on.  Keep ‘em coming--Lord knows we can use more pieces by you.

Your taxes eat up about a third of your salary. (For WHAT, exactly? Border control?)

No, to occupy Iraq forever, and to insure the windfall profits of the oil gougers.

You really have no choice BUT to vote for Obama--who really doesn’t despise your folks HALF as much as you have let the main stream media convince you of.

http://gopcatholics.blogspot.com/2008/04/national-debt-at-all-time-high.html

John,

Great piece and I identify with every bit of it even though coming from a different background (I had to go through RCIA to get into the Church, for crying out loud: that was my penance for being born Protestant). On the credit cards, since Her Honor seems to be identified as the Grinch on this in some circles, I suggest a read (I have to do it, too) of the paper which can be downloaded at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=141470

“You really have no choice BUT to vote for Obama--who really doesn’t despise your folks HALF as much as you have let the main stream media convince you of.”

Read his autobiography. He despises us more than the media lets on.

3rd party is the only honorable choice.

McCain, Clinton, and Obama all agree on more of the above immigration.  McClob will take your job.  If you have a bad job, a Mexican will get it, or keep it bad.  If its a good job it goes to someone from India.

The US exports know-how and ownership of us and imports food, products made with our know-how, debt and people.

McClob is the end of America.  Support Chuck Baldwin for the Constitution Party.

John, you know you’re going to vote for Mad Jack Ripper McCain in spite of knowing he will blow up millions of innocents some where and your rant reminds me of an Eric Idle rant from Monty Python. Which is a good pick me up otherwise.

...barging into the queues. And if you’re not at your table spot on seven you miss your bowl of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, the first item in the menu of International Cuisine.
Every Thursday night there’s bloody cabaret in the bar featuring some tiny, emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some fat bloated tart with her hair Brylcremed down and big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners. And adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy, bandy-legged, wop waiters called Manuel. And once a week there’s an excursion to local Roman remains, where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleedin’ Watney’s Red Barrel.

The thing is, you don’t really blame him. You know his people got screwed even worse than yours did.

I was with you until here.  Blacks could’ve made that claim before the 1960s, but not today.  For the last forty or so years it has been an obsession of the intellectual and cultural elites in this country to raise the socio-economic status of African-Americans and they’ve been willing to spit on every other American and moral principle, including states rights, freedom of association, public safety, limited government, high standards, respect for scientific inquiry and basic fairness in employment and education in order to do it.

Nobody in the history of the world has had more opportunities to succeed then American blacks in the last 40 years.  Famous political pundits and writers are for the most part spineless, retarded sheep (remember how they all became neo-cons for a couple of months?) but hearing them talk about “healing” and coming together and all that Obama represents is sickening at a totally different level.

Dear Durant,
I would never vote for John McCain. Not if he were running against Woodrow Wilson. Okay?

What happened to blacks AFTER the 60s was in some ways worse than what happened before. They were finally welcomed into the American mainstream--just as the New Left was poisoning it. They were invited into big cities---to take the manufacturing jobs we were about to ship overseas. They listened to our songs (and some of their own) and got into the drug culture--but didn’t have rich parents to support them while they went into the Peace Corps or rehab. They got the invitation to collect from social programs--just as those social programs became morally neutral (welfare workers stopped visiting homes, sniffing people’s breath, etc., around 1960).

(I’m just glad my Irish ancestors didn’t arrive, poor and unskilled, in the Newark of 1965.)

None of this was intentional, but it happened. None of it justifies affirmative action, or even the anti-discrimination bureaucracy we’ve set up. But it’s real, and pretending it isn’t makes us look like bastards.

Glad to hear it John. I especially like the On Eagles Wings comment. Following the Papal Masses from the New Liturgical Movement website was like being at a convention. Everyone booing and hissing as the action unfolded. Not THAT heretical hymn. Sicut Verus huzzah. Why are thosse candles on the ground. Sung Gospel.

Trying to restore some of the sacred music to the Church is as daunting a battle as trying to get the neo-cons to repent and return to the fold. I try to not be cynical and pray for them but it tries the soul.

And you can’t even get a glass of Watney’s Red Barrel because you’re still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you’re thirsty. And the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ashtrays. They keep telling you it’ll only be another hour, but you know damn well your plane is still in Iceland, and has to come back and take a party of Swedes to Yugoslavia, before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the morning. And then you sit on the tarmac for four hours because of unforeseen difficulties, i.e. the permanent strike of air traffic control over Paris. When you finally get to Malaga airport, everybody’s queueing for the bloody toilet,

“Nobody in the history of the world has had more opportunities to succeed then American blacks in the last 40 years.”

Only if your idea of success is defined as residing on the welfare state’s plantation, or serving as a guinea pig in one of the most destructive social engineering experiments ever performed. Had I been born into Newark anytime in the last 50 years, I have to figure I would have enjoyed a typical, short-lived career as a middle-manager in one of the city’s gangs or drug cartels. Nothing more.

For those of you who believe Obama is any more likely than Hillary or McCain to change our current interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East, think again. Geopolitical realities, energy dependence and the Israeli Lobby have far more control over Washington than do our so called leaders. Will Obama pull us out of Iraq? Maybe. But will he pull us out of the Middle East? Get real. A war with Iran looms ahead. Accept it.

I also disagree with this statement:

The thing is, you don’t really blame him. You know his people got screwed even worse than yours did.

American blacks have a greater quality of life and more socioeconomic opportunities than any other blacks in the world

By the way, Durant… as a precocious 11-year-old I used to memorize Monty Python routines from the records I bought--and the Travel Agency sketch was my favorite. (I can still recite most of it from memory.) I used to pursue my mother around the apartment, repeating it. Until she smashed all those records. Served me right!

Readers will be interested in the very nice write up on John done by Elizabeth Lev (Mary Ann Glendon’s daughter and an art prof. in Roma) at Zenit.org: http://www.zenit.org/article-22401?l=english

Mike,
“A war with Iran looms ahead. Accept it.” No need to accept that as inevitable.  A large-scale conflict with Iran makes reinstating the draft an absolute necessity.  This fact again makes any US administration think twice. After all, it was the very concrete reality of being personally drafted and shipped to Nam that motivated people to participating in the campus riots against the Vietnam war, and those scenes would very probably be repeated.  Only totally neocon-controlled candidates, such as McCain and Hillary, would take this kind of a risk.  Obama is the one who may have enough liberty to say no to the neocons.  Instead of damaging Obama, the doubts people have raised about his subservience to The Lobby may be a very strong positive in terms of votes.

“Abortion. Your daughter can have one, without anybody telling you. But she needs a permission slip to go with nuns to the friggin’ Planetarium. And she’s going to live with you until she’s 30. Then again, when she gets divorced, for another 5 years after that.”

But your daughter can hide a pregnancy, give birth in the bathtub, and leave the baby at a hospital, fire station, or police station with no questions asked under Safe Haven laws in every state.  (If, that is, she survives).  The laws encourage young women to do so through the curriculum (ex: CA, IL and the Catholic school curriculum in parts of FL) and with slogans like “Nobody will ever have to know you had this baby.” and “No Blame, No Shame, No Blame.”

So, in effect, the state encourages your daughter to not tell you she’s pregnant, hide her pregnancy, go without pre-natal care, and give birth under dangerous circumstances in which she and/or the baby can die.

SH laws are considered “pro-life.” Are they?  Would you want your daughter to follow the propaganda?

You know his people got screwed even worse than yours did.

Which people would that be, Mr. Zmirak, privileged Kenyan grad students or self-hating naive white Kansans?

I would think you’d want to bitch slap Hagee who thinks the Catholic church was the great whore, a false cult, and compared it to Hitler which insults men like your father [my condolences, btw]?

As for your pavlovian desires to bitch-slap someone for a perceived slant brought about more by political ideology rather than actual insult...be the bigger man and ignore the urge to entertain such thoughts. They solve nothing.

I went to public school and never got stabbed, period.

I drove thru and lived in ‘bad neighborhoods’ and never sped up to get thru them nor got mugged.

I guess I will never understand all this emotional sky is falling stuff from conservative writers. Always something to fear....who knew that old women in casinos wearing depends was something to fear?

Kari,

I agree with your assessment that a large-scale conflict with Iran would demand a draft which would deter many policy makers from pursuing this path. However, the war that will be brought to Iran will not be a ground war.

“I guess I will never understand all this emotional sky is falling stuff from conservative writers. Always something to fear....who knew that old women in casinos wearing depends was something to fear?”

Yeah, Zmirak, you grandmaphobe. Stop fearing the old ladies and just pay up, dammit.

This post is sheer genius. I have no idea what the conclusion is, but it’s so real it’s coming off the monitor and pointing a pistol in my face.

Sir:

As a former Marine Officer, a point of order, if you please.  When referring to former Marines, the term is “former” not “ex”.  It is therefore obvious that your ignorance of the Marine Corps and all that appertains thereto is manifest.  Personally, my head is not square, my assumption being that you view Marines as automatons.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, it is said only half in jest that you can always tell a Marine, you just can’t tell him much.
As for our foreign entanglements, if it were up to me, I would not wait till tomorrow to bring our troops home, I would start tonight.
On the subject of Barack Obama, or the neocons for that matter, there is not an appelation sufficient to express my contempt for either.

Semper Fi

@Kari Konkola:

I am not John, but I have to wonder why you consider humor and discipline at odds?  Both have their appropriate place.

If you haven’t read John’s “Bad Catholic” books, I can assure you that they are both hilariously funny and deadly serious.  No one can possibly walk away from them thinking that John is espousing an “easy” religion.

@ Kari Konkola:
Your comments regarding religion in America, and its woeful state are spot on.  Nameless, countless victims of the most obscene form of abuse by “men of the cloth” deserve far better than to have been victimized by the charges of the so-called Vicar of Christ.  Thank God for Martin Luther and thank God for John Foxe who had the wherewithal to chronicle infamy.

Sisu brother.

Joe,
I wonder what comment you refer to?  However, the “abuse cases” you mention are regularly discussed without their historical context:  do you recall the daycare center abuse hysteria of the early 90s?  On investigation, just about all accusations were found to be baseless, apparently stemming from memories produced in therapy. 

In the mid-90s, there were the parent-child abuse “fad.” On closer investigation, many of these cases also turned out to be imaginary.  The “fad” ended rather rapidly, when some of the accusers’ therapists were succesffully sued. 

The two earlier hysterias and their scant foundations in reality raise obvious questions:  how many of the cases of the current fad are real?  More particularly, how many of the accusations are based on recovered memories, and how reliable are those memories?  These questions lead to the most troubling of all: to what extent has the abuse movement in practise meant giving the psychotherapeutic profession an open season on Catholicism?

Scott,
You are right.  I have not read John’s books.  My knowledge of his religion comes from reading the articles posted on takimag, which apparently were based on the books.  The idea of a conflict between “fun and games” and “serious” Christianities again comes from the observation that overcoming sinful passions, such as pride, envy, anger and greed takes self-control that is incommensurable with impulsive, childish behavior.  The last two chapters of Peter Burke’s “Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe” sum the two types of Christianity and the conflict between them. 

As to why overcoming pride, envy anger, etc is important, it seems to me those personality traits really are as dangerous as they were thought to be.  An example of the traditional view of their effects can be seen in Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” because Hobbes took his view of human nature and its effects on society from contemporary religious psychology of pride. 

Hobbes, however, did not discuss at all the massive Christian effort to overcome people’s innate lust for power.  This omission probably explains why Hobbes’s thinking turned out to be drastically wrong:  England since the late 17th century has had very weak central governmet, yet it has been a remarkably peaceful, successful society.  The lust for power and its dangerous effects are real (evolutionary psychology provides additional evidence), but this personality trait can be controlled by methods other than a brutal, omnipotent ruler.

Kari, you don’t need to convince me of the need to overcome pride, envy, anger, etc.  In some of the earlier debates on this site about self-regard, for instance, I’m closer to you than to some of my coreligionists.

Yet I’m afraid that you must live an awfully dour life if you believe that the definition of humor is “impulsive, childish behavior.” In fact, much of the best humor requires both rather serious discipline and love for the object of the humor.

But even impulse can be good, as long as the person giving in to the impulse is virtuous.  I know a Norbertine monk, for instance, who is quite quick-witted and who uses his humor daily (perhaps hourly) to edify and instruct his companions.