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Evidently not enough reading has been done. I’ve read the articles (both referred to here) and this is total BS. I urge people to read the good doctor’s articles themselves.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is a great an compassionate man. His Lancet article (which is a great read BTW) is about how one should allocate care in terrible situations when you cannot save everyone. The quote about dementia in the other article, crucially misses the whole point by ignoring the next few lines in the actual article. When he’s talking about “basic” care he’s referring to specific list of things which should be guaranteed to a normal patient capable of benefiting from them, such as say an Autistic child being guarantied educational therapy which would not benefit an someone suffering from dementia. In the later case another system would need to be in place to address effectively the needs of such an individual.

I waited a long time to post my comment. When I first read the thread there were only a few posts. By the time I decided what I wanted to say the thread had advanced. The whole time I was in the composing window debating with myself as to weather it was worth objecting to the initial sentiment expressed by the first few posters. I was hesitant to comment since I’ve been chewed-out before for arguing the basic humanity of immigrants in the past.

Well the United States has been the (undeclared) enemy of the Church off-and-on since it’s founding. It’s an odd situation really... and most priests and politicians are completely unaware of the conflict between their mutually exclusive goals. Or they ignore it as a side-effect of modern secular society. If you want to see just how opposed the two institution are at heart you should read Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. Of course sometimes the two institutions have worked together, but this was primarily a self serving alliance on the part of the US; which will either become more Catholic in the future, and have to change much of its secular premises; or it will become less Catholic and hence even more the enemy to Church.

These people were vulnerable before they even thought about migrating, and if the Catholic Church is so concerned about their plight they should be working to improve their lives in their country of origin.

The Mexican government is a secular republic with a history of hostility to the Church. It is also the result of interference from, and the spread of socialist ideology by, their northern neighbor... the US.

you don’t leave a man to die at sea... that’s what pirates do. Whatever else he was he was still a human and this was murder. Get your collective heads out of your asses and remember that your particular ideological background with regard to your attitude to illegal immigration is just an intellectual conceit, this individual’s humanity was a fact.

Well if it’s all the same, I’ll stick with the Church of Ba’al Moloch (Reformed).

Golly! He IS bad, isn't he?

It is generally true that when one wishes to attack Christianity in-general it is the Church they target, not just because of its antiquity but because of its claim of catholicity. The adversary and his followers know what their enemy is, and they know that Christian unity is the most dangerous aspect of it. This was true right from the beginning; for example the adversary did not tempt them both at once, he did it individually and for a reason. Division is his strength, not ours.

"socialist=democratic government?"

No, if you mean democratic as a practice (mind you, even we don't mean it in that sense most of the time).

But yes if you mean democratic as a supposed legitimizing factor, although "republic" -- that is a res publica or government drawing its authority ostensibly from the people -- would be a better word in that case.

The President is NOT a moral leader. I don't look to politicians for moral leadership. People who want to do that should look to their clergy.

Yes well, there is no middle ground unfortunately. One is either a moral leader or an immoral leader. Granted, the moral standards in elected officials will always be determined by the aggregate of the total electorate, so the relative morality of our leaders doesn't so much effect that of the nation as it is a reflection of the nation.

"A bishop can’t say anything different than what I said,” he added.

Thank you Sandoval.

It will be a real tragedy if the legacy of this war is the extermination of the Christian population in Iraq and the rise of a Iran-like state...and we’ll have nobody to blame but ourselves and the idiotic politically correct assumptions that our elected officials make about the world.

Technically we have ourselves (at lest partly) to blame for Iran too. Thank you Jimmah Carter and your wonderful notions of an allies responsibilities!

Of course living in and around Detroit I have no idea what an urban racial group can do.

How delightfully plebeian.

In all fairness there are many Americans who don't like Mexicans for cultural reasons. Many feel that Mexican immigration will somehow degrade American culture. They probably want a return to the immigration quotas of the early last century, and for the same reason those quotas were originally established; to preserve America's unique culture, language, and identity; which are threatened by immigration legal and illegal.

I can marshal no sympathy for their arguments because I'm still looking for American culture. And, given the history of American immigration policy, I feel the legalist argument is problematic at best.

The economic and defense arguments make more sense, but both often suffer from being combined with the sentiments of the cultural Identitarians (Identitarianism, I should point out, is historically a leftist idea).

Why doesn’t His Eminence also condemn the many Irish Catholic politicians who are also pro-abortion?

You know why Irish Catholics are the way they are? Inferiority complex with regard to their faith. Because of a relative lack of Catholic intellectualism in Ireland (off the top of my head I can only think of those who left their faith: Liam O'Flaherty, James Joyce, Francis Hackett, Sean O'Faolain... compared to the Catholic Intellectualism of England for example). Or take for example the IRA; a leftist socialist organization the nature of which most Irish Americans are anywhere of.

Don't get me wrong, most Irish immigrants had a great zeal for their faith, but there was nevertheless a despondency and cultural timidity which resulted in their need to prove the Protestants wrong when challenged on their loyalty to their adopted country as opposed to the Pope.

While helping them to assimilate into what was perceived to be the American system, this compromise of placing their Catholicism in subordination to their Americanism has been the ruin of the Catholic culture of the Irish American community. Instead of trying to Baptize America, they tried to Americanize Catholicism.

Italian Americans have had a similar problem, but to a lesser degree, and stemming mostly from the cultural anti-clericalism of the old country.

You don't actually think I meant any of that, do you? I thought it was pretty obvious -- given my handle, as well as the precision idiocy of my post -- that absolutely none of what I wrote was legitimate sentiment.

We owe the First 10 Amendments to the constitution and much of our personal freedom to the Anti-Federalists who, led by Thomas Jefferson, refused ratify the Constitution without them.

Likewise we owe most of the progressivist and leftist elements of our culture to the Jeffersonian Republicans. In an effort to defeat their political enemies they established the precedent of appealing to emotionalism and romanticism. Even supporting the French Revolution long after it was clear were that leftist nonsense was leading Europe (to 1918 Moscow and 1935 Nuremberg).

A series of crises and calamities, such as the Great Depression, WWII and the Cold War pushed the Anti-Federalism even further from the dialog.

No, the leftist elements completely defeated the Federalist. After Jackson America adopted the French School of democratic politics. Oh sure, from time to time conservative whigish and Federalists intellectualism has attempted to assert itself, but the reality is, only emotionalism can win elections. The Whigs and Lincoln Republicans which followed, to one degree or another, the Federalist ideal in some areas still needed to appeal to the people by adopting populist anti-Federalist language.

The real irony is that irreligious, sanctimonious... gentleman, Mr. Jefferson, is now remembered as the champion of the common-man, who he detested but like most leftists was willing to use. His saveing grace was that he didn't in the end trust the hoi polloi; though his vision of a mammonistic elite eventually governing the country was thankfully unworkable.

Give me rational Hamiltonianism any day.

"E Pluribus Unum."

"Unius linguae uniusque moris regnum imbecille et fragile est"- St. Stephen, King of Hungary.

Nonetheless, there will be divisions between Christianity and Judaism. Still, if we purport to model the heart of the Lord, His heart is clearly for Israel, Jerusalem, and the Jewish people. As His servants, we should serve His people and purposes, not expecting anything in return.

Yeah but not expecting anything in return actually makes it look more suspicious. All of what you just said could be construed as an effort to subvert the walls which separate Christians from Jews, especially since you framed it in Christian terms.

I mean, you have to admit, as a Christian, you would like to see the Jews converted. Actually if Israel's Christian allies did have obvious expectations of getting something in return, like something material or political, there would be less suspicion. In this sense you're sort a caught in a catch 22; the nicer you are as Christians the more you'll be accused of trying to convert.

Bush is a Beaner lover with no respect for Anglo-Saxon culture or achievements. What we need is a strong leader who can speak to the people of America and galvanize them into a new conservative movement so that we can throw off these Rockefeller Republican elitists wannabes. Bush, on top of his fair whether conservatism, is a poor speaker and always has been. We don't need some one who can ape speaking our (conservative) language of pro-nationalism, pro-isolationist (remember his stance before 9-11?), pro-middle class. In short, what we need is a real leader of the people, not some elitist liberal aristocrat. It's the only way we will be able to win elections in the long run.