Stories by Paul J Cella
Posted at 8:45am on Jun. 27, 2008 One tendentious opinion away.
From the same tyranny.
By Paul J Cella
A quick read of this article will surely leave you outraged. The story is simple enough: a neat amalgam of barbarism and PC bureaucracy, the sort of anarchy compounded by oppression that Liberalism so excels at producing.
A former British soldier endures as his neighborhood terrorized by a pack of feral young thugs (“yobs,” as they call them over there) for several days. He calls the police; they never come. He looks for an officer; finds none. Coming home one day to find his wife in tears and terrified, he finally has enough, and goes out to execute a citizen’s arrest, dragging one of the thugs into house and calling his mother. Thereupon the police arrive with the mother — and naturally arrest the homeowner.
This is justice under Liberalism.
Let it be noted that there was a somewhat similar case in Illinois five years ago, where a man who fought off an intruder in his house was charged with a handgun violation. State Sen. Obama voted against bills to remedy this manifest injustice twice.
Yesterday we all sat around in worried anticipation, hoping the Supreme Court would manage, this time, to maintain the plain meaning of the words of our Constitution and restore to us our self-government. The outcome was a good one — barely. But the tyranny of the Court is still in place. The four Liberals very frequently succeed in persuading Justice Kennedy to join them in their usurpations. They care not one whit about the plain meaning of the Constitution. They do exactly as they please.
Here in America, packs of feral youths exist in appalling abundance, just like in Britain. But most of them are well aware that their potential victims may be armed. On that fact, friends, much of our liberty hangs.
And we are only a tendentious opinion from one of the Liberal Usurpers on the Court, or their creature Kennedy, under the spell of the New York-DC elite adulation — one tendentious opinion citing foreign law, or sweet mystery of life, or mystical evolving standards, away from the same tyranny that would send the homeowner who defends his wife against thugs to jail, while showering the thugs with sympathy.
Posted in D.C. v. Heller | Great Britain | Guns | Law | Supreme Court | thugs — Comments (5)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:35am on Jun. 26, 2008 Christians still persecuted in Iraq.
By Paul J Cella
The situation in Iraq is improving, alright, but we should never forget the persecution suffered by Iraqi Christians. This New York Times article details at length the re-reappearance of the jizya, the ancient method of extortion reserved for Christians and Jews under Islam’s celebrated system of tolerance for People of the Book. It appears that a refusal to pay the jizya is what cost Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, the leader of the Chaldean Catholics in Mosul, his freedom and then his life.
Meanwhile, a Canadian parliamentary committee has uncovered some horrifying details of the unspeakable campaign against Christians in Iraq:
Muslim militants are crucifying children to terrorize their Christian parents into fleeing Iraq, a parliamentary committee studying the persecution of religious minorities heard yesterday.
Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.
One infant was snatched, decapitated, burned and left on his mother's doorstep, the committee was told.
May our Lord give them strength, comfort, and that peace which passes all understanding. May His justice find their persecutors swiftly. And may the religion of fire and sword which enjoins this persecution be discredited and banished from the world of men.
Posted in dhimma | Iraq | Iraqi Christians | Islam | War — Comments (13)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:17pm on Jun. 25, 2008 Lou Barletta for Congress
By Paul J Cella
Lou Barletta is one of the good guys. An unsuccessful baseball player but very successful businessman, he entered local politics in his hometown of Hazelton, PA, as a Republican in a very Democratic place. Then in 2000 he was elected mayor, above all on his commitment to bring prosperity to his town, which he did, earning several state-wide awards in the process.
Mayor Barletta came to national prominence when he shepherded through a series of city ordinances designed to resist the mischievous and impoverishing effects of illegal immigration. These ordinances included provisions imposing a $1,000-per-day fine on landlords who rent to illegals, revoking the business license of any employer who hires them, declaring English as the official language and barring city employees from translating documents to another language without approval.
A federal judge overturned most of these ordinances in 2007, on the grounds that immigration is a federal matter. The ordinances, he wrote, “disrupt a well-established federal scheme for regulating the presence and employment of immigrants in the United States.” Whether the judge was aware of the bitter irony that the ordinances would be quite unnecessary if the federal government was not itself “disrupting” the “well-established” “scheme” of federal maintenance of America sovereignty, namely by its studious neglect of immigration law, is a question that remains unanswered.
Read on and contribute here.
Posted in 2008 | congressional races | Immigration | Lou Barletta | Paul Kanjorski — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:35am on Jun. 19, 2008 Tolerance and tyranny.
By Paul J Cella
Only a man of uncommon obtuseness could fail to predict this. In New Jersey, a homosexual couple wants to get married on a pavilion owned by a Methodist organization.
When Bernstein and Paster asked to celebrate their civil union in the pavilion, the Methodist organization said they could marry on the boardwalk — anywhere but buildings used for religious purposes. In other words, not the pavilion. [Rev. Scott] Hoffman says there was a theological principle at stake.
“The principle was a strongly held religious belief that a marriage is between a man and a woman,” Hoffman says. “We’re not casting any aspersions or making any judgments. It’s just, that’s where we stand, and we’ve always stood that way, and that's why we said no.”
The refusal came as a shock to Bernstein, who says Ocean Grove has been revived by the gay community.
“We were crushed,” she says. “I lived my whole live, fortunately, without having any overt prejudices or discrimination waged against me. So while I knew it was wrong, I never knew how it felt. And after this, I did know how that felt. It was extremely painful.” [. . .]
So the couple filed a complaint with New Jersey’s Division of Civil Rights, alleging the Methodists unlawfully discriminated against them based on sexual orientation. Attorney Lawrence Lustberg represents them.
“Our law against discrimination does not allow [the group] to use those personal preferences, no matter how deeply held, and no matter — even if they’re religiously based — as a grounds to discriminate,” Lustberg says. “Religion shouldn’t be about violating the law.”
Do I even need to tell you which side the court found for? Read on.
Posted in Christianity | Culture | Liberty | Same-Sex Marriage | Tolerance | Tyranny — Comments (100)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:13am on Jun. 14, 2008 Betraying Free Speech.
By Paul J Cella
Canada persecutes Mark Steyn for writing that Islam is a threat to the West. The New York Times, having ignored that drama for months, takes the opportunity to dilate tendentiously on the uniqueness of American tolerance for Free Speech, implicitly comparing Steyn to Nazis, and naturally burying his response in the last two paragraphs of a long article. The few European politicians and thinkers with the guts to stand up to creeping Islamization, find themselves betrayed and denounced in America, and likewise compared to Nazis and fascists, by prominent bloggers. Readers will recall the pitifully tepid response from the West to the beleaguered Danes during the Cartoon Jihad.
And now we have this, as reported by Josh Trevino: In Kuala Lumpar, at the Third International Conference on the Muslim World, three prominent Muslim leaders called on the West to renounce Free Speech in order to accommodate Islamic sensibilities; and the three Westerns who spoke uttered not a word of protest.
Read on.
Posted in Anti-Free Speech Liberals | Archived | free speech | Islam | Liberals | Mark Steyn | the Jihad — Comments (12)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:56am on May 30, 2008 Yonder stands your orphan,with his gun.
By Paul J Cella
Men who have forgotten more about the earthy rough-n-tumble of politics than I shall ever know assure me that the device of “email blasts” — occasional notifications, sent out to a self-selected list, of the need for action on specific issues of consequence — is a highly useful one. “We're already having an impact with our Redstate Action Emails,” one of these political savants tells me. “But the bigger the list, the more impact we have.”
It has long been a lament of political operatives that Conservatives, traditionalists, libertarians, reactionaries, populists — all the raucous panoply of the American Right — are peculiarly resistant to the kind of organization that lends itself to success in democratic politics. Some of the reasons for this are plain enough: Conservatives are more likely than Liberals to be busy with private life — families, businesses, churches — and to hold public life in a certain disdain. They are much better at stopping bad things, than they are at organizing to achieve good things. But all this is only true as a generality. In specific cases it does not apply; and I venture to speculate that there are quite a few Conservatives out there who, though busy indeed, would not be averse to occasional activism which is focused and effective. Even the rough-n-tumble of politics, and all its frustrations and indignities, may now and then be necessary to vindicate a just cause.
The fact is — whatever we may think of the GOP’s failings — we face the real possibility of a party winning control of both the Legislative and the Executive branches, which, to saying nothing more, does not inspire confidence as to its judgment, its patriotism, its fortitude in the face of the Republic’s enemies. Very likely Conservatives are going to be called on again to do what they are genuinely good at: stopping bad things— resisting folly, fraud and utopian delusion.
Take heart, friend: this we can do. Contemplate the noble work that a disparate coalition of Conservatives has accomplished, in the teeth of the zealous craving of the elites of virtually every sector of our society, against the project to dispossess America by another massive, disingenuously promoted immigration amnesty. We have triumphed, many times. But the other side is regrouping, and shall hurl themselves against our ramparts again soon enough.
With all that in mind, I invite you to sign up for the Redstate Action Email list. There is no cause for despair, but there is cause for alarm. My language may be extravagant and antiquated, even comical; but the future of the Republic is no laughing matter. If by this small effort of organization we can do our part to secure that future from Socialism, from Degeneracy, from Jihad and Sharia, and a dozen other menaces, we shall have done well.
We shall have avoided the taunt that the Left is preparing for us — a taunt which, though it misuses the material, would heap scorn upon us with the famous lines of Bob Dylan:
Posted in action alerts | Bob Dylan | Conservatives | Miscellanea — Comments (4)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:37am on May 29, 2008 California tolerance.
By Paul J Cella
Suppose you are a government employee in California, authorized to conduct civil marriage ceremonies, and you object on moral or religious grounds to same-sex marriage. According to the plain logic of the California Supreme Court’s decision earlier this month, you are simply a bigot; the spring of your objection is irrational prejudice. There is no ground for tolerance for your views, precisely because your views impinge upon the fundamental rights of others. Recall that even someone (like Senator Obama) of the view that while marriage should remain an institution exclusive to a man and a woman, civil unions should be established for homosexuals, is also a narrow-minded bigot, again according to the force of the Court’s logic.
Fortunately, San Diego County is more magnanimous than the judicial despots of the Court. County employees will not be forced to perform marriage ceremonies to which they have a moral objection. Los Angeles County employees will not be so lucky. Tolerance forbids their objections. Wrote the City Attorney: “County clerks have no legal standing to grant county employees the authority or ability to choose which marriages they wish not to officiate at, based on their personal views or biases. [The Court] has been crystal clear on this issue — same-sex couples must be afforded equal protection under the law.”
It is instructive to observe the machinations of Liberalism on this issue. It is not enough that approval of same-sex marriage be institutionalized in law; disapproval of its opponents, too, must be institutionalized in law. We cannot “agree to disagree,” in the common catchphrase. For a state employee to resist blessing same-sex unions is tantamount to his denial of equal protection to a certain class of people; in short, unconstitutional.
Libertarians can hardly go a day without denouncing the “imposition” of morality by traditionalists; yet the imposition contemplated by Los Angeles County, in accordance with the Court’s clear logic, eludes their attention. In this our dear Libertarians simply resemble Liberals in their quaint innocence of what a public orthodoxy is. To use their cherished parlance, never has there existed a society that did not impose morality. The imposition of morality is a concomitant of social order. No orthodoxy, no society. That Liberals and Libertarians are uncomfortable with words like “orthodoxy” in no way changes the fact that they seek to impose one just like anyone else.
In our country, no one imposes morality like supreme courts. We are at the point where it is possible to answer the question, Who rules America? with a single word: “Courts.” Perhaps someone among out Liberals and Libertarians would like to make a forthright argument for judicial aristocracy. That at least would have the virtue of candor.
Posted in California | Culture | gay marriage | Tolerance — Comments (414)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:34am on May 26, 2008 Memorial Day 2008
By Paul J Cella
From the Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Posted in memorial day | War — Comments (6)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:24am on May 23, 2008 Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more.
By Paul J Cella
At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan was introduced to thunderous cheers. What happened next is the stuff of legend.
Dylan came out, backed a blues band, and plunged right into a raw, blazing, hard blues rendition of “Maggie’s Farm” — a song that has about as much in common with standard folk music as chalk does cheese. There were boos, jeers, astonishment, and outrage. Pete Seeger is said to have threatened to take an axe to the sound equipment. Dylan fed off the audience’s mixed, but very vocal reaction. (Around 3:00 to 3:40 in the video below shows him answering the jeers with defiance and amusement.) “Like a Rolling Stone” was also in the set. Then later, after more commotion and confusion, Dylan returned, all by himself, to play an acoustic set — which concluded with a haunting version of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”
The episode is commonly acknowledged to signify Dylan’s declaration of independence from the moribund protest movement of the folk singers. Folk music had jumped the shark, and Dylan was not going to let these ragged commies go home from their folk festival unconfronted with that fact.
In our day of farm bill outrage, moribund movements, and a crying need for Conservatives to declare independence from the GOP leadership that is careening toward oblivion, this 1965 episode seems to me somehow apposite.
Open thread.
Posted in 1965 | Bob Dylan | Congress | conservatism | GOP | Maggie's Farm | Newport Folk Festival — Comments (11)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:52am on May 21, 2008 The drama continues.
By Paul J Cella
Under pressure from the fanaticism and treachery of the Jihad, which is abetted by the peculiar manias of Liberalism, Free Speech is perishing. In Canada a sordid drama continues, with Mark Steyn actually managing to maneuver his accusers into a public confrontation — which naturally did not turn out well for these individuals [the confrontation begins about two-thirds of the way into the video].
But it probably doesn’t matter: On June 2, Mr. Steyn and the magazine that published him are compelled to answer to the charge of “flagrant Islamophobia” before another Human Rights Commission, this time in British Columbia. More trials may follow, including a federal tribunal which is said to boast a 100% conviction rate on hate speech cases.
The thing is, under the tyranny of these human rights tribunals, there really can be no defense. Steyn quotes a Canadian Justice Department summary of the situation: “The defences of truth and fair comment remain available to torts such as defamation and seditious libel, regardless of the medium in which they occur. However, … defences that may be available in tort actions are not available in cases of hate propaganda because the prohibition is concerned with adverse effects, not with intent.” Steyn comments:
The government rarely expresses it that brazenly. Especially the justice minister of a supposedly Conservative government. By the way, by “adverse effects,” they mean not anything that’s actually happened but something that might potentially theoretically hypothetically happen maybe a decade or four down the road. If you create a justice regime predicated as a point of principle on disdain for objective reality, it’s no big surprise to find perpetually aggrieved Muslim lobby groups eager to avail themselves of it — big time.
Now my view of Free Speech, admittedly, is somewhat ambivalent. As a general proposition concerning political speech, I endorse it; as an absolute proposition, with compass over anything remotely associated with human expression, I decline to endorse it, and indeed stand ready to oppose it where absolutism threatens to conjure anarchy.
The particular insanity of our day is that Liberals who tend toward the absolutist position are, it seems, sufficiently blind to the obliteration of Free Speech augured by human rights tribunals that they cannot see the flat contradiction that stares them in the face. Islam and grievance-mongering will destroy one of their most cherished principles, and our dear dear Liberals may not even notice.