Free Republic

Y'all should know that 'possums are champs at playing dead, and then popping right back up when it suites 'em.

As an anti-modernist you do have to do some philosophical gymnastics to embrace capitalism.

With respect to all those devices you recognize, again I am flattered.

Considerable hairsplitting over what is conservative, a democracy versus a republic, and what is an 'ism. As an aside on the issue of capitalism, you seem to be applying the famous American Catholic buffet approach of embracing a moral perspective that the pre-modernist Church condemned (usury)and that John Paul II, and Benedict XVI criticized (free market neo-liberalism) even as you join them in condemning things you find objectionable.

In a conventional historic or cultural sense of modernism the American political system(whatever you choose to call it), certainly the French revolutionary pamphleteers, the Bill of Rights and and the Rights of Man would come under the heading modernist. Freedom of expression, forbidding the establishment of a state religion - These are clearly enlightenment ideas. Of course there are continuities between Medieval and modernist thought, in this conventional sense. Parts of Aquinas could stand on either side of that line.

Seems that aside from the fussing about definitions, the substance of your comment lies in Pius X's injunction against what he considered to be modernist heresies (65 of them!)in the Catholic Church around the beginning of the 20th Century - the Lamentabili Sane and his oath against modernism that was imposed on several generations of Church leaders. This is actually quite interesting, and indeed helpful, in understanding the historical context of Ratzinger's denunciation of modernism. Apparently the Holy Office kept dossiers on church leaders suspected of modernist deviations, including at least two who later became Popes. The current Pope Benedict XVI's namesake - Benedict XV and also John XXIII. John insisted on reviewing his file after becoming Pope and returned it to the Holy Office with the bemused note "Yes, but now we are infallible." It is also interesting how Ratzinger played enforcer both against Liberation theologians, which is not surprising, and also against strident anti-modernist Society of St. Pius X. The shifting tides in Catholic orthodoxy argue against allowing any faction to capture the apparatus of the Church and use it to drive out what it deems to be heretical. This is something that Averroes, the Moslem anticipator of Aquinas' project of reconciling philosophy and revealed truth, observed. Many ideas that were once banned as heretical were later accepted, so the religious institutions have not been able to say with any timeless certainty what is heretical. It undermines the authority of anyone (even a Pope) who would try to use means besides persuasion to define the parameters of the faith.

Somehow my earlier reply did not get through. You seem to raise a serious question, deserving a serious answer. I saw a priest in Nicaragua who ran schools, churches, womens' centers, and reconciliation meetings between Contras and Sandinistas. He would travel on foot and by mule with a group of lay workers hundreds of miles throughout the countryside around the town of Waslala. He spent something like 150 days on the road each year establishing the link between the Catholic Church and the tiny communities in the nearby mountains. His perspective came from the tradition of Vatican II and liberation theology. He said we should see the face of Christ in the face of the shoe shine boy. People worked with him who were both Sandinista and Contra and everything in between. His people served as "delegates of the word" in the tradition of the Christian Base Communities of Liberation Theology. Ratzinger's crackdowns and censures were directed against people like him, people who clearly had great faith in the church, who were clearly within the house, and were building it and holding it together. Yes, you would have to say that in driving people like these out of the Church, Ratzinger was creating and giving life to the very heart of darkness, he is ostensibly fighting against.

One would have to say that Pogo is a bit more than a children's book. It's clearly for adults, and one of the most respected, and thoughtful comic strips of all time. What is Gala about? You're definitely right about the freak part, though. I guess that goes with the territory.

What are libertarian worshipers of their own bellies?

Doesn't take much to get y'all going, does it?

Ratzinger has a considerable public resume. He would not deny that he has been quite clear about where he is going. He was pretty straight forward in his long statement after John Paul's death.

Flattered.

Just because we are conservative doesn't mean we are anti-modernist, does it? The Catholic Church certainly embraces science and philosophy. What are American democracy, capitalism, the bill of rights, and internet blogging if not modernist?

As a world religion that has participated in, and suffered from, harsh religious conflict for two millenia, the Church has found that repression of evil and false doctrine can lead to creation of even greater evils. The Church has made its peace with considerable variation in doctrine and practice: priests with common law wives in Peru, Santeria in the Caribbean, Candomble in Brazil, Americans who use artificial contraceptives, conservatives and liberals. It has apologized for the violent way it has suppressed what it considered false in the past. The experiences of religious conflict have taught the Church and all other world religions that a degree of religious tolerance is necessary, that you cannot prove your love of God by silencing, excommunicating and driving out those who do not conform to the latest doctrinal shifts. The first amendment of the US Constitution embodies a recognition that religious tolerance is necessary for people to get along in the modern world. The Catholic Church, while not a political nation, is the denomination which has the biggest, and perhaps most elastic tent of all the world religions. That is inherent in the name Catholic, all-encompassing. Ratzinger has moved away from this big tent approach that the Church has evolved over centuries. He has been very selective about which currents and which individuals he would suppress, not going after the most violent, or most in violation of Catholic sexual morality, or farthest from official doctrine. There is a clear political bias, reflected, rather than a broad opposition to evil, or even false doctrine.

Alison Acosta Fraser at the Heritage Foundation Website says:
"The truth is that a system of personal retirement accounts will involve up-front transition costs, but it will actually save money in the long run."
These upfront "transition costs" will make the socialist boondoggle look more like, well, a socialist boondoggle. The government will need to borrow money to pay off these obligations for several decades that it will not be able to get from social security taxes.
Harry Binswanger in Capitalism Magazine (In Defense of Individual Rights) says, "The only difference, in the short term, is the means by which the blood-letting is accomplished: without privatization it's done by Social Security taxes; with privatization it's done by lower Social Security taxes and higher borrowing and/or inflation."; He says, "There are no "transition costs" in this picture." There are, as he would say no additional transitional costs. There would simply be less transitional income. And there would, as he says be "blood-letting". His suggestions on how to let the blood are for the government to borrow money to pay the SS obligations, or to simply run at a deficit and allow higher inflation, further sticking it those old people milking the system who we want to get rid of anyway. Thomas Saving defending the president’s SS reform plan says, "In a sense, a transition to benefit prepayment does not generate any additional costs, but only brings forward the pain of paying off the existing debt."
So we win. The system struggles in the short term, looking worse, and losing support. But there are fewer obligations in the long term. Then we can end, as Binswanger calls it, "welfare for the aged". No more stealing from productive young to subsidize unproductive old.

Let us pray that the new Pope joins conservative evangelicals in the great spirit of Christian brotherhood against Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Lutherans, the wrong kind of evangelicals, New Age believers, gays, liberals, and Moslems. (Did we leave anybody out?)

Yes, but wouldn't it be better to actually hurry SS on to it's well-deserved demise? If there is not enough SS tax income to cover SS obligations to retirees around 2018, then encouraging people to put their SS taxes into private accounts, rather than into the SS trust fund, would make the shortfall worse. The worse the shortfall, the sooner this socialistic transfer of wealth from the lucky rich to the unlucky poor can be put behind us. President Bush is a lot smarter than liberals give him credit for being.

What is boreon's precious lock box?

The haves are smarter and deserve to have adequate retirement income. The have-nots are stupid and don't.

People who disagree with us are soooo dumb.

How could anyone believe in anything as transient and ephemeral as the US Government or its ability to pay up on its bonds?