From Logos Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
Four Challenges for Moral Theology in the New Century
by Michael S. Sherwin, O.P.



Secularists please indulge me in my theological diversion here. I found this article to be politically attractive from a Catholic/Christian standpoint. It begins by the author invoking four challenges for us to befriend as metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw spoke of in his poem entitled “Wishes to His (Supposed) Mistress". In place of the mistress, theology is carefully set. In light of our persistent confronting of the challenges of history, of nature, of graced moral development, and of the spiritual life, we may see the truth of Crashaw's poetic insight within ourselves.

From American Prospect:
Don't feel sorry for
Colin Powell
He has no one to blame but himself

...On the most critical issue confronting the United States, the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, Powell helped Bush implement a course of action conceived by the neocons. What he didn't do -- because he couldn't -- was propose a different course of action that might have led to the same goal of political reform in the Arab world but that wouldn't have involved waging an unpopular war on a trumped-up pretext, a war that has extracted an enormous cost in American lives and American prestige. Bush, by most accounts, is an impressionable sort -- "malleable," as one Bush family friend uncharitably puts it -- but selling him on an alternative vision would have required actually having one, which Powell plainly did not. That alternative vision -- hardheaded about the dangers facing the U.S. but aware that the war on terrorism can't be won without international cooperation -- will have to wait for a Kerry administration.

Scalia quacks mockingly at justice and democracy

The arrogance! They must either think the American public is incredibly naive or that we just don't care.
I haven't talked to one person yet who thinks Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from this case looks good for him, the Supreme Court, or Cheney.
Who the hell do these people think they're kidding?

Le Monde:
The America that will vote for Bush

I found this article to be quite interesting because the writer raises realistic points that Democratic stategists are seemingly failing to grasp or take seriously. Those voters who embrace the falsity of the right wing populists aren't some extremist group. They are everyday "Joe-Americans".

Excerpts from the article:

Republicans are still the party of corporate management, but they have also spent years honing their own populist approach, a melange of anti- intellectualism, promiscuous God-talk and sentimental evocations of middle America in all its humble averageness....Bush is merely the latest and one of the most accomplished in a long line of pro-business politicians expressing themselves in the language of the downtrodden.......This right-wing populism works; it is today triumphant across the scene; politicians speak its language, as do newspaper columnists, television pundits and a cast of thousands of corporate spokesmen, Wall Street brokerages, advertising pitchmen, business journalists, and even the Hollywood stars that the right loves to hate.......The all-Americans despise the affected elites, with their highfalutin ways and that’s why they vote for plainspoken men like George Bush..........liberals refuse to take backlash populism seriously. They simply don’t bother to answer the stereotype of themselves as a tasteful elite, seeing it as a treacherous and obvious deceit mounted by the puppetmasters of the right...........they believe that conservative populism is merely camouflage for racism, which they believe to be epidemic in the US. The problem, they think, is neo-Nazis or right-wing militia types like Timothy McVeigh. That’s the real expression of middle America, the thing we ought to be investigating.

Political obsession with behavior:
"...without the so-called "libertine" or "secular humanist" enemy, as the Christian Right would call them, where would the Republicans be?"

Step right up-
get your Dubya action figure

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