Caesar's Latest Power Grab, part one

Although many commentators are decrying Caesar Barackus Obamus Ignoramus's latest power grab in full violation of Article I, Section 8, Subsection 4 ("Congress shall have the power. . . . To establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States) as he arrogates unto himself the right to ignore Congressional legislation that forbids a president from granting the kind of blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants that he did by means of an executive order that was signed on Friday, November 21, 2014, the Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, more than a few of those commentators did not seem to be bothered by an announcement made earlier this week by the soon-to-be Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Addison Mitchell McConnell (R-Kentucky), that there would be no effort unto the massive spying by the National Security Agency on ordinary Americans that is part of the sordid legacy of Caesar Dubya's unconstitutional expansion of the powers of the Federal government:

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked a sweeping overhaul of the once-secret National Security Agency program that collects records of Americans’ phone calls in bulk.

Democrats and a handful of Republicans who supported the measure failed to secure the 60 votes they needed to take up the legislation. The vote was 58 to 42 for consideration.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who drafted the bill, blamed what he said was fear-mongering by the bill’s opponents for its defeat. “Fomenting fear stifles serious debate and constructive solutions,” he said. “This nation deserves more than that.”

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, worked hard to defeat the bill, which had the support of the Obama administration and a coalition of technology companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

“This is the worst possible time to be tying our hands behind our backs,” Mr. McConnell said before the vote, expressing the concerns of those who argued that the program was a vital tool in the fight against terrorism.

But Tuesday’s vote only put off until next year a debate over security and personal liberties. While a Republican-controlled Senate is less likely to go along with the kinds of reforms that were in the bill, which sponsors had named the U.S.A. Freedom Act, the debate could further expose rifts between the party’s interventionist and more libertarian-leaning wings.

The new Congress will also be working against a hard deadline because the legal authority for the data collection will expire next year.

Under the bill, which grew out of the disclosures in June 2013 by Edward J. Snowden, the former intelligence contractor, the N.S.A. would have gotten out of the business of collecting Americans’ phone records. Instead, most of the records would have stayed in the hands of the phone companies, which would not have been required to hold them any longer than they already do for normal business purposes, which in some cases is 18 months.

The N.S.A., Mr. Snowden revealed, was systematically collecting telephone metadata — information about who called whom, but not the content of what was said — from major American phone companies. The program began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based on an assertion of unilateral executive power by President George W. Bush. In 2006, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court secretly brought the program under its authority and started issuing orders to the companies under the Patriot Act.

The proposed legislation would still have allowed analysts to perform so-called contact chaining in which they trace a suspect’s network of acquaintances, but they would been required to use a new kind of court order to swiftly obtain only those records that were linked, up to two layers away, to a suspect — even when held by different phone companies.

In January, President Obama announced some changes to the program, including requiring court approval before a new number could be used to query the database, and limiting analysts to scrutinizing the records of callers two — down from three — layers removed.

The Republican-controlled House passed a version of the bill in May, but it was watered down before passage, losing the support of civil liberties groups. The deadline for new legislation is next June, when the legal basis for the phone records program, a provision of the Patriot Act, expires.

After that, when the 90-day orders to phone companies requiring them to turn over their customers’ records expire, the surveillance court would be unable to issue a new round of orders.

The Obama administration, warning of the potential for “brinkmanship and uncertainty” next spring if the bill did not pass, had strongly urged the Senate to support it even though it initially resisted efforts on Capitol Hill to rein in the N.S.A. programs.

And it may not be any easier for a compromise to be reached over the bill next year. Some of its opponents, like Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, believe it went too far in curbing the N.S.A. Others, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, thought it did not go far enough.

One possibility would be a bill that is scaled back enough to win over more hawkish Republicans, while relying on the votes of some Democrats, like Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who were more skeptical of broad-based reform.

It is unknown how the 11 new Republicans who will join the Senate next year might alter the debate. For instance, Cory Gardner of Colorado, who will replace Senator Mark Udall, one of the Senate’s staunchest advocates of N.S.A. changes, has been supportive of ending bulk record collection. Steve Daines, the incoming Republican senator from Montana, also voted yes with Mr. Gardner on a contentious proposal to strip funding for bulk collection when the House took up the issue last year.

Other Republican members of the House who will join the Senate next year — Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and James Lankford of Oklahoma — voted no.

But resistance from inside the Republican Party has been unrelenting. Before Tuesday’s vote, two top former officials from the Bush administration — Michael B. Mukasey, the former attorney general, and Michael V. Hayden, the former N.S.A. and C.I.A. director, essentially called the bill a gift to terrorists in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal that carried the headline “N.S.A. Reform That Only ISIS Could Love.”

The debate over curtailing the N.S.A.'s ability to collect telephone call data is just one example of how Republicans will continue to grapple with questions of privacy and security as the 2016 presidential elections near. At the center of the debate on Tuesday were three senators considering a run for president: Mr. Paul of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

Mr. Rubio voted against the measure, calling it “a reaction to misinformation and alarmism.” Mr. Paul also voted no, but because he believed it did not do enough to restrict the N.S.A. Supporters of the overhaul had worked all day to persuade him to switch his vote, to no avail. He said Tuesday he would prefer the entire Patriot Act be allowed to expire.

Mr. Cruz voted yes, saying, “It is imperative that we stand together protecting the Bill of Rights.”

Four Republicans voted to advance the bill: Mr. Cruz, Mike Lee of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dean Heller of Nevada. One Democrat voted no, Bill Nelson of Florida. (Bill to Restrict NSA Data Collection Blocked in Vote by Senate.)

Caught up in the heat of the moment, many “conservative” Americans lose all sense of perspective in their own Manichean search for “good guys” to defeat the nefarious schemes of the “bad guys.”

As I noted in Sin Maketh Nations Miserable, nothing has changed in the past ninety years since Gilbert Keith Chesterton wrote the following:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. (Gilbert Keith Chesterton, London Illustrated Review, April 24, 1924.)

The false opposites of the “left” and the “right” play all manner of cynical games as they attack each other’s presidents for taking measures that are clearly beyond their constitutional authority. Each, however, applauds their own presidents when they exceed or ignore the provisions of the Constitution of the United States of America.

As noted just above, the adherents of the organized crime family of the naturalist “right,” the Republicans, gave George Walker Bush carte blanche to violate the Constitution of the United States of America in the name of “national security,” including government surveillance of our phone conversations, e-mails, banking records, purchases and our very movements, in full violation of the provisions of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Congressional Republicans also indemnified Bush the Lesser at every turn as they voted to support unjust wars that have enriched the coffers of the military-industrial complex while destabilizing Iraq and a good deal of the Middle East in the process without making a dent in the entrenched power of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

It was as Bush the Lesser’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dragged on, however, that Congressional Democrats, including then United States Senator Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro (D-Illinois), criticized the Republican president for exceeding his constitutional authority by issuing executive orders for widespread domestic surveillance and by conducting limitless wars against “terror” that have used “enhanced interrogation” on prisoners as a matter of routine.

For his part, of course, President Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro, has continued his predecessor’s policies of executive overreach. Obama/Soetoro’s overreach, which has extended to the realm of rewriting his “Affordable Care Act” whenever he has found it expedient to do so. The currently reigning caesar’s recent executive order that deferred the deportation of those who are the parents of American citizens in full violation of a 1996 law that forbade such deferred deportations and despite his, Obama/Soetoro’s, having stated on numerous occasions that he lacked the authority to do what he has just done, is simply the logical consequence of the inexorable growth of the power of the executive branch of the government of the United States of America that has gone almost entirely unchecked since the days of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Frankin Delano Roosevelt.

It is not the purpose of this commentary to dissect in every detail the substance of Obama/Soteroro’s executive order, which he hath not the legal authority to issue, or even to note that he could have persuaded a compliant Congress to give him that authority at any point between January 20, 2009, and January 3, 2010, or to note that Republicans will, after much huffing and puffing, find a way to endorse most of what caesar has “ordered” to be done even though he has exceeded his own authority and is deserving of being impeached.

Actually, of course, the latest overreach is just one of many impeachable offenses the currently reigning caesar has committed. Included in a list of such offenses would be Obama/Soetoro’s order the non-enforcement of existing immigration laws, thereby permitting thousands upon thousands of people to enter into this country illegally, free go to without any effort on the part of the United States Department of Homeland Security to keep track of their travels and to ascertain if they are carrying any communicable diseases. Many of these recently-entered illegal aliens will have children born in future years, making such parents themselves subject to another executive order to “defer” their deportation in the name of keeping families together. There is no end to this madness.

I discussed the substance of immigration policy four years ago in a two-part series, Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 1 and Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 2, and I see no need to revisit anything that was written at a time when Caesar Obamus was making noises about following up his ObamaCare triumph with a Congressional rubber stamp of the reform of immigration laws he desired to be made. The unpopularity of ObamaCare in 2010 was such, however, that it became politically inexpedient for caesar to ask his willing sycophants in the organized crime family of the naturalist “left” to put themselves even more at risk than they had become because of enacting the statist takeover of the health care industry.

No, the purpose of this commentary is to remind the very few remaining readers of this website that the root cause of these problems is the Constitution of the United States of America itself, which has made it possible for us to live under the “soft” tyranny of the duopoly of the “left” and the “right” whose adherents disagree only on the degrees of statism that should control our daily lives and about the specific kinds of unconstitutional wars that should be fought to enhance the coffers of the military-industrial complex.

The adherents of both the organized crime families of the “left” and of the “right” are completely agreed on the belief that it is unnecessary to make any public recognition of the Incarnation, Nativity, Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady’s Virginal and Immaculate Womb by the power of the Third Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, God the Holy Ghost, or to be submissive in all that pertains to the good of souls to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church. The adherents of the “left” and of the “right” agree that men can be virtuous without belief in, access to and cooperation with Sanctifying Grace.

Although there is much talk at present of Barack Hussein Obama/Barry Soetoro’s having “killed” the Constitution, readers of this site know that it was dead-on-arrival on September 17, 1787. A written document that admits of no higher authority that its own text will be as defenseless in the hands of positivists and relativists as Holy Writ is in the hands of Protestants and Modernists. We are only seeing the deepest effects of rigamortis become more and more manifest one hundred ninety-five years after McCulloch v. Maryland, March 6, 1819, one hundred fifty-seven years after Dred Scott v. Sandford, March 6, 1857, seventy-seven years after National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Company, March 18, 1937, seventy-two years after Wickard v. Fillburn, November 9, 1942, seventy years after Korematsu v. U.S, December 18, 1944, fifty years after Katenbach v. McClung, December 14, 1964, and forty-nine years after Griswold v. Connecticut, June 7, 1965, which set the stage for Roe v. Wade and Doe v, Bolton, January 22, 1973, Eisenstadt v. Baird, March 22, 1967, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, June 29, 1992, and Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor, June 26, 2014.

Moreover, the Constitution of the United States of America has been defenseless against efforts by various presidential administrations, staring with that of the second president himself, the anti-Catholic bigot and notorious blasphemer named John Adams, to silence opposition voices by having Congress enact the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were passed on July 14, 1798, and  made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious" writing against the government of the United States of America and its officials.

The sixteenth President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln, did not exactly "cotton" to political opposition during the War Between the States from 1861 to 1865, as he intimidated judges, shut down newspapers, suspended the writ of habeas corpus without an Act of Congress, held opponents in prison without trial and put civilians on trial in military courts at a time when civilian courts were open. And this is just a partial listing of what led John Wilkes Booth to cry out, "Sic temper tyrannis!" as he jumped onto the stage of the Ford Theater in Washington, District of Columbia, on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, from the balcony where he had just shot Lincoln in the head, a wound that would take Lincoln's life early the next morning, Holy Saturday, April 15, 1865.

Suppression of opposition to American involvement in World War I under the administration of President Thomas Woodrow Wilson was so extensive that Senator Hiram Johnson of California, who had run as former President Theodore Roosevelt's Vice Presidential running-mate on the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party ticket in 1912 when Wilson was running for his first term as President against Roosevelt and then President William Howard Taft, who had defeated Roosevelt, to say on the floor of the United States Senate: "It is now a crime for anyone to say anything or print anything against the government of the United States. The punishment for doing so is to go to jail" (quoted in Dr Paul Johnson's Modern Times). (See also my Fascists for Freedom.)

Just as an aside, President Thomas Woodrow Wilson wanted to use the unconstitutional Federal Reserve System, created in an act passed by the Congress of the United States of America and signed into law by Wilson on December 23, 1913, as the means to centralize the banking and monetary systems under the authority of the government of the United States of America in order to restrict the legitimate freedom of Americans to control their own private property and to make private industry dependent upon the "direction" provided it by governmental regulators and overseers. It was for this reason as well that Wilson saw to it that Congress enacted legislation, following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, to create our current system of confiscatory taxation on our incomes. And it was Wilson, of course, who believed that the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico, aping the "example" established by the French Revolutionaries, could "build" or "engineer" the "better" society in Our Lady's country by the killing of thousands upon thousands of Catholics:

Wilson replied [in 1915, to Father Francis Clement Kelley, who was a representative of James Cardinal Gibbons, the Archbishop of Baltimore, for whom Wilson had such contempt that he addressed him as Mister Gibbons]: 'I have no doubt but that the terrible things you mention have happened during the Mexican revolution. But terrible things happened also during the French revolution, perhaps more terrible things than have happened in Mexico. Nevertheless, out of that French revolution came the liberal ideas that have dominated in so many countries, including our own. I hope that out of the bloodletting in Mexico some such good yet may come.'

"Having thus instructed his caller in the benefits which must perforce accrue to mankind out of the systematic robbery, murder, torture and rape of people holding a proscribed religious conviction, the professor of politics [Wilson] suggested that Father Kelley visit Secretary of State Williams Jennings Bryan, who expressed his deepest sympathy. Obviously, the Wilson administration was committed to supporting the revolutionaries (Robert Leckie American and Catholic, Doubleday, 1970, pp. 274.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the Internal Revenue Service to audit his "enemies." He contravened the law in numerous ways as he used the legislative powers illicitly given to regulatory agencies by Congress during the Great Depression and during World War II to set the stage for Barack Hussein Obama's rule by decree and presidential fiat. Roosevelt, the fifth cousin of the Republican statist and fellow thirty-third degree Freemason, Theodore Roosevelt, the uncle of Eleanor Roosevelt, even ordered his Attorney General, Robert Jackson, to engage in domestic espionage. Roosevelt’s directive took the form of a memorandum dated May 21, 1940.

Robert Jackson, who was appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States of America on July 11, 1941, did not like the directive as he believed that Franklin Roosevelt had authorized domestic surveillance on anyone suspected of being subversive. Jackson’s successor, however, Francis Biddle, who took office as the Attorney General of the United States of America on August 25, 1941, had no qualms about the directive, delegating the task of carrying it out to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Edgar Hoover, who was more than happy to run with this new expansion of his authority to investigate anyone at any time for any reason. The history of the Federal government’s surveillance since that time is one of completely unchecked growth.

The Fourth Amendment?

Our minders in the Federal government of the United States of America have, in effect told us, “We don’t need no stinkin’ Fourth Commandment.

Moreover, it has been case for most of this country’s history that our minders in the Federal government of the United States of America have violated the laws of God and of men to suit their sorry purposes whenever they deemed it “necessary” to do so.

Congress after Congress abdicated its legislative authority to the Executive Branch of the Federal Government of the United States of America from the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” forward, although, as noted earlier, a lot of the spade work had been done during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Woodrow Wilson. Nearly seventy independent or quasi-independent regulatory agencies within the Federal government exist to this very day, each composed of commissioners who are beyond the control of a president to remove and who chafe at the thought of true legislative oversight of their unconstitutional “rule-making” authority (deemed to be “constitutional” by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Company).

Readers will note I claimed that independent regulatory commissions (and the quasi-independent commissions) are unconstitutional. I have taught this in my government classes over the decades. I will make this claim whenever I write about this subject (or teach about it, if that opportunity is ever to occur again within the Providence of God) no matter the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that such agencies, which are staffed by commissioners who are appointed by a president for a term, usually seven years, that is longer than one presidential administration but shorter than two, and confirmed by the United States Senate are constitutional (see, for example, Humphrey's Executor v. United States of America, May 27, 1935).

My reasoning is simple: these agencies exercise each powers that are particular to each of the three branches of government as they make rules that having the binding force of law (which rules are supposed to be founded in Congressional legislation) and also enforce the very rules that they create while serving finally as the court of first instance for litigants to appeal decisions made about the enforcement of these rules. Although readers of this site, few in number though you may be, know that I am a critic of the founders of this nation, they are the individuals who crafted the Constitution in order to prevent what they believed could be a tyranny of the majority. Writing in The Federalist, Number 47, James Madison explained:

No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. (Federalist No. 47.)

Behold a system, however, that has indeed degenerated to a point where non-elected officials have the accumulated powers of the three branches of government--legislative, executive, and judicial. This has occurred because James Madison, a virulent anti-Catholic who is considered to be the "father" of the Constitution, believed that there were sufficient safeguards contained within the Constitution to provide a check upon the consistent misuse of power by those serving in the three branches of government.

Such a belief was illusory as men who have revolted against the Catholic Faith and thus the Social Reign of Christ the King will have no more regard for the words of a written constitution that they have for the words of Sacred Scripture, believing themselves to be their own "interpreters" of Holy Writ. Who are the framers of the Constitution to limit our actions in our "modern" era. Shouldn't the Constitution be "updated" to meet new needs caused by changes in technology and economics and even public opinion? The Constitution was at its beginning and remains now utterly defenseless against itself, a truth that has been used by the statists to make short work of its actual provisions in order to expand the size, the scope and the power of the Federal government of the United States of America. Barack Hussein Obama's socialistic minions are very happy to expedite this process along to the point of a quasi-totalitarian dictatorship by regulation and executive order as the "people" feast on their bread and circuses.

The defenselessness of the Constitution of the United States of America against the determined actions of a president and/or Congress to proceed without regard for the laws of God and men is just part of the legacy of this country.

There has been a logical progression from the likes of Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Woodrow Wilson to Franklin Roosevelt and those who have followed in the past sixty-nine years.

Indeed, President Andrew Jackson, who was a bloodthirsty hater of Indians, engaged in a massive exercise in American social engineering in the forced relocation in 1831 of the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws and, Choctawas from Georgia and Florida into what is now Oklahoma. Even his fellow Freemason and Tennesseean, United States Representative David Crockett, voted against the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Jackson’s darkened, Masonic heart was completely unmoved by the cruelty experienced along the Trail of Tears and the several thousand deaths that it caused, evoking, of course, memories of the Grand Derangement of the Acadians out of Nova Scotia in 1755 (see Applause For Killers).

This is part of what Crockett wrote in 1834, three years after the removal of the Indians had commenced:

I have almost given up the Ship as lost. I have gone So far as to declare that if he martin vanburen is elected that I will leave the united States for I never will live under his kingdom. before I will Submit to his Government I will go to the wildes of Texas. I will consider that government a Paridice to what this will be. In fact at this time our Republican Government has dwindled almost into insignificancy our [boasted] land of liberty have almost Bowed to the yoke of Bondage. Our happy days of Republican principles are near at an end when a few is to transfer the many. (Davy Crockett on the removal of the Cherokees.)

Unfortunately for Davy Crockett, he did not understand that he was witnessing even at that early stage in American history the degeneration of a nation founded on false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously-indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles. He thought Texas was to be a place of refuge. Many think so today as well. While Texas is a freer state than most, there is really no hiding place from the slave drivers. No hiding place at all.

As I will never cease to remind the readership of this site, a Constitution that is based on no need to even recognize Christ the King, no less submit to His Social Kingship over men and their nations by means of the Indirect Power of His Catholic Church in all that pertains to the good of souls, will produce men who have respect neither for the laws of God or the true meaning of its own text.

Pope Pius IX explained what the end-product of the anti-Incarnational civil state of Modernity would look like:

For you well know, venerable brethren, that at this time men are found not a few who, applying to civil society the impious and absurd principle of "naturalism," as they call it, dare to teach that "the best constitution of public society and (also) civil progress altogether require that human society be conducted and governed without regard being had to religion any more than if it did not exist; or, at least, without any distinction being made between the true religion and false ones." And, against the doctrine of Scripture, of the Church, and of the Holy Fathers, they do not hesitate to assert that "that is the best condition of civil society, in which no duty is recognized, as attached to the civil power, of restraining by enacted penalties, offenders against the Catholic religion, except so far as public peace may require." From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity," viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way." But, while they rashly affirm this, they do not think and consider that they are preaching "liberty of perdition;" and that "if human arguments are always allowed free room for discussion, there will never be wanting men who will dare to resist truth, and to trust in the flowing speech of human wisdom; whereas we know, from the very teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, how carefully Christian faith and wisdom should avoid this most injurious babbling. (Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, December 8, 1864.)

A system of morality based exclusively on human reason robs man of his highest dignity and lowers him from the supernatural to the merely natural life. Not but that man is able by the right use of reason to know and to obey certain principles of the natural law. But though he should know them all and keep them inviolate through life-and even this is impossible without the aid of the grace of our Redeemer-still it is vain for anyone without faith to promise himself eternal salvation. "If anyone abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire, and he burneth" john xv., 6). "He that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi., 16). We have but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime. (Pope Leo XIII, Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus, November 1, 1900.)

These are perfect descriptions of the world in which we live today at a time when our minders make it their business to mind everything about our own business as they promote all manner of moral and social evils while surrendering national sovereignty and failing to abide by the very constitution that they swore to uphold. 

Rabbi Mayer Schiller explained the situation very well in a privately circulated set of comments that has made its way to the internet:

Yes, it is true that the pseudo opposition party, symbolized by the large creature, aptly labeled Dumbo, claims to like Warfarism better than Welfarism, but we all know that these claims are cunning lies inevitably abandoned when possessing power (see 1968-1978, 1980-1988 etc. ad nauseum). And, despite increasingly weakened bleatings about restoring the morality of Christianity and Judaism,  these flag waving phonies are less concerned about Roe vs. Wade or the now lunatic sexual "policies" of the Manic Revolutionaries, aka the Democrats, than I am about the results of Australian Rules Football.And yes, it is true that the Manic Revolutionary Party, having assumed power in 1932 has never, in effect, relinquished it. This pseudo, anti-Warfarism Party does bellow a bit about not liking endless, Imperial Warfarism, before plunging into yet another Messianic Crusade to "spread democracy" in Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Somalia and against whatever Islamic country we are bombing at present. They, too, do so love the wars. Remember, it was the donkey party that gave us manufactured incidents on the Rio Grande in order to invade Mexico in 1845. Yes, it's true that blowing up the Maine, and shouting "bully" was elephant fun, but who can forget the insatiably itch of Woodie who, clearly delusional even before his stroke, had over a hundred thousand Americans led to their slaughter in order to "fight the war to end all wars" and "promote democracy" in tandem with the Czar.

And, yes, the Manic Revolutionary Party pontificates on matters of ecology, while never seriously attempting to change our national life style which will eventually leave a planet unfit for all except a future remnant of hardy survivors.

Fortunately, almost two thirds of Americans are sentient enough to disregard elections in non-presidential years, while a still encouraging 45% abstain from presidential voting. This would seem to indicate that, despite endless exhortations by technocrats, "educators" and our ruling class, many of us still know a con when we see it.

Leaving aside the strange anomaly of 1964, there are precious few Americans  alive who may yet harbor a childhood memory of elections which presented any alternative to the policies uniformly endorsed by Tweddledee and Twiddledum, who in the nursery rhyme formulation, "agreed to have battle."

For it is not since the 1920's that either of the "major" parties has offered a candidate that dissents from the dogmas of our essentially one party state. The axioms which may never be called into question under our soft totalitarianism are several. In no special order they are 1) assent to never ending expansion of Welfarism, 2) assent to never ending expansion of Warfarism 3) increasingly intense cultural suppression of traditional religion and morality 4) universal war against the European basis and identity of the nation, 5) fiscal policies yielding increasing economic enfeeblement and inevitable collapse 6) environmental suicide geared to plunging the nation and mankind into chaos. (Chronicles: A Voice from Internal Exile on the Evil Party, the Stupid Party, and the Futility of Elections.)

Catholics know that that this must be the only logical result from any social system that makes as little space for the Social Reign of Christ the King, which has been jettisoned by the conciliar revolutionaries to place themselves in full accord with the naturalists int he secular world, as there was for the Newborn King in Bethlehem over two millennia ago.

Yesterday, Saturday, November 22, 2014, was the Feast of Saint Cecilia. The reflection offered by Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., on the time in which this great martyr lived and offered herself up for Christ the King has great relevance to the situation of statism facing us today under the reign of the caesars who are kindred spirit of the caesars of yore:

Caecilia united in her veins the blood of kings with that of Rome's greatest heroes. At the time of the first preaching of the Gospel, more than one ancient patrician family had seen its direct line become extinct. But the adoptions and alliances, which under the Republic had knot more closely the great families by linking them all to the most illustrious among them, formed as it were a common fund of glory, which, even in the days of decline, was passed on intact to the survivors of the aristocracy.

It has now been demonstrated by the undeniable witness of monuments that Christianity from the very beginning took possession of that glory, by adopting its heirs; and that by a wonderful disposition of divine Providence, the founders of the Rome of the Pontiffs were these last representatives of the Republic, thus preserved in order to give to the two phases of Roman history that powerful unity which is the distinguishing note of divine works. Heretofore bound together by the same patriotism, the Cornelii and the AEmilii, alike heirs of the Fabii, the Caecili, Valerii, Sergeii, Furii, Claudii, Pomponii, Plautii, and Acilli, eldest sons of the Gentile Church, strengthened the connections formed during the Republic and firmly established, even in the first and second centuries of Christianity, the new Roman society. In the same centuries, and under the influence of the religion preached by St. Peter and St. Paul, there came to be grated on the ever vigorous trunk of the old aristocracy the best members of the new imperial and consular families, worthy by their truly Roman virtues, practised amid the general depravity, to reinforce the thinned ranks of Rome's founders, and to fill up, without too sudden a transition, the voids made by time in the true patrician houses. Thus was Rome working out her destiny; thus was accomplished the building up of the eternal city being accomplished by the very men who had formerly, by their blood or by their genius, established her strong and mighty on the seven hills.

Caecilia, the lawful representative of the unparalleled aristocracy, the fairest flower of the old stem, was also the last. The second century was passing away, the third, which was to see the empire fall from the hands of Septimus Severus first to the Orientals and then to the barbarians from the banks of the Danube, offered small chance of preservation for the remnants of the ancient nobility. The true Roman society was henceforth at an end; for, save a few individual exceptions, there remained nothing more of Roman but the name: the vain adornment of freedmen and upstarts, who, under the princes worthy of them, indulged their passions at the expense of those around them.

Caecilia therefore appeared at the right moment, personifying with the utmost dignity the society that was about to disappear because its work was accomplished. In her strength and her beauty, adorned with the royal purple of martyrdom, she represents ancient Rome rising proud and glorious to the skies, before the upstart Caesars who, by immolating her in their jealousy, unconsciously executed the divine plan. The blood of kings and heroes, flowing from her triple wound, is the libation of the old nobility to Christ the conqueror, to the Blessed Trinity the Rule of nations it is the final consecration, which reveals in its full extent the sublime vocation of the valiant races called to found the eternal Rome.

But we must not think that to-day's feast is meant to excite us in a merely theoretical and fruitless admiration. The Church recognizes and honours in Saint Caecilia three characteristics, which, united together, distinguish her among all the blessed in heaven, and are a source of grace and an example to men. These three characteristics are, virginity, apostolic zeal, and the super-human courage which enabled her to bear torture and death. Such is the threefold teaching conveyed by this one Christian life.

In an age so blindly abandoned as ours to the worship of the senses, is it not time to protest by the strong lessons of our faith, against a fascination which even the children of the promise can hardly resist? Never since the fall of the Roman Empire have morals, and with them the family and society, been so seriously threatened. For long years literature, the arts, the comforts of life, have had but one aim: to propose physical enjoyment as the only end of man's destiny. Society already counts an immense number of members who live entirely a life of the senses. Alas for the day when it will expect to save itself by relying on their energy! The Roman Empire thus attempted several times to shake off the yoke of invasion: it fell, never to rise again. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year.)

Will the same be written one day of the United States of America?

Dom Prosper Gueranger's description of ancient Rome, especially in the last paragraph quoted above, could be a description of the United States of America as it has degenerated more and more over the decades as a result of its false premises that stem from the heresies of the Protestant Revolt and the anti-Incarnational naturalism of Modernity, so exemplified by the contemporary civil state.

Today, November 23, 2014, is, of course the Last Sunday after Pentecost and the Commemoration of Pope Saint Clement I, our fourth pope, and of Saint Felicity. It is also the eighty-seventh anniversary of the martyrdom of Father Miguel Agustin Pro, S.J., at the hands of the Masonic revolutionaries in Mexico.

Dr. Michael Kenny provided a poignant testimony to how Dwight Morrow made it a point to travel with Plutarco Elias Calles the day after the execution of Father Miguel Augustin, Pro, the great champion of Christ the King, in Mexico City that outraged the citizenry of the country and that, quite sadly, was ignored entirely by the producers of For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada (other than a filmed reenactment of the event during the end credits that was not identified specifically whatsoever):

Coincident with Mr. Morrow's arrival in Mexico, the reign of terror was at its height, and continued unabated. I have pictures before me of hundreds of young men and priests and even girls, who were seized without charge and executed without trial, often with prolonged and excruciating tortures. In the summer and fall of 1927 indiscriminate shootings and hangings and torturings of suspected friends of the Cristeros were multiplied, with the view of terrorizing the armed forces of revolt. These and the murder of scores of the worthiest priests, and the barbarous torturing of Fathers Batiz and Reyes and other widely venerated pastors had the contrary effect, of inflaming and swelling the ranks of the Cristeros.

But there was one young priest whose assassination stirred public feeling most and who is is now venerated as the "Martyr of Mexico." This was Father Miguel Augustin Pro, a young Jesuit whose cheerful sanctity and zeal and his adeptness in reaching all classes with his ministry and evading the pursuivants on his track made him universally beloved as a saint and a hero.

But his marvelous feat in foiling the suppressors of Catholic worship had marked him for government vengeance. Seized on the obviously false pretext of connection with an assault upon Obregon, he was shot down November 23, 1927 without charge or trial; he died as he had lived with a smile upon his face, forgiving cheerfully and praying heartily for the executioners of himself and his brother and fellow victims.

His sisters and his aged father dipped their kerchiefs in his blood and departed joyously; and despite the Calles soldiery, hundreds of thousands crowded to his obsequies, struggling for a relic of the martyr. The gathering masses on the streets obstructed the passage of the presidential automobile, in which, beside Plutarco Calles, the American Ambassador was seated.

Failing even to acknowledge a legal protest submitted to him by a lawyer's committee, Mr. Morrow hastened to tour the country with Calles, who gaily played Toreador to amuse his friend. He thus impressed the world that all was well with Mexico, and made it clear to his own people and the Cristeros that even in the savagest excesses of persecution, the United States Government stood back of him. It is precisely the same despairing realization that oppresses then now when they see our Ambassador Daniels also go out of his way to show friendliest courtesies to the same or the like persecutors today and to eulogize the same Plutarco Calles, after the latter had forged and wielded a deadlier weapon to assassinate the souls of their children.

While Mr. Morrow's friendly services were securing arms and countenance from our government for Calles, and holding strict embargo against the League of [Religious] Liberty, the Cristeros, as we have seen, managed somehow to make headway, though with slight ecclesiastical encouragement. It was only in the face of relentless universal persecution, after millions of petitions had been scouted and thirty thousand injunction protests had been overruled en masse, that reluctantly the bishops tolerated recourse to arms. But Archbishop [Jose] Mora, the Mexican Primate, was exiled for defending manfully before Calles the fighters for liberty; and Archbishop Gonzales Valencia of Durango, who still stands by the fighters for liberty, had heartened the belligerents by his Pastoral form Rome, February 11, 1927, "having ascertained the heart of the Pope"; and recalling his many brave priests abused, imprisoned, deported as criminals and who, like Fathers Batiz and Lopez, gave up their lives for their flock, he glorifies God for giving him sons "who will not succumb before the persecutors nor abdicate the dignity of Christians and of men." (Dr. Michael Kenny, (Dr. Michael Kenny, No God Next Door: Red Rule in Mexico and Our Responsibility, William J. Hirten Company, Inc., New York, 1935, republished by CSG and Associates Publishers, pp. 130-132.)

It was not only Dwight Morrow who gave public support to Plutarco Elias Calles in the immediate aftermath of the martyrdom of Father Miguel Augustin Pro, who cried out Viva Cristo Rey! as the bullets were fired at him. The folksy American humorist, columnist and actor named Will Rogers, a Freemason, of course, did so as well:

Strong hands, quick to become doubled fists, a hard jaw, and a heavy scowl have sometimes been called the typical externals of President Plutarco Elias Calles. The fact that he once publicly alluded to "the grunts of the Pope" caused some to fear that his mind might resemble his fists. Last week such mistaken impressions were given the lie when Senor Calles proved himself not only supple of body but adept at mellow geniality. Scene: the $375,000 private train of the President of Mexico which puffed all week, from one hospitable ranch in northern Mexican states to another. On board were the new U. S. Ambassador to Mexico, Dwight Whitney Morrow (onetime Morgan partner), and tart-witted cowboy-clown Will Rogers. They, and other guests of the President, were privileged to see him in playful mood. At Pabellon Ranch, State of Aguascalientes, Senor Calles seated his guests around a bull ring. He had a surprise for them, he said. Quietly picking up a matador's red cape, he entered the arena.

At a flirt of the red, a small but purposeful bull charged, horns down, to gore the President of Mexico. Swirling the cape through a classic "pass," he pivoted and dodged—his chunky body suddenly achieving grace. While guests Morrow and Rogers gripped their seats, President Calles brought off three more hazardous "passes." Then, having shown his guests the dexterous and dangerous phase of bull-baiting, he strode from the ring. No bull was killed, or even pinked, lest U. S. gorges rise.

Came luncheon, provided on the scale of a local fiesta. Peasants and the local gentry mingled. President Calles, beamingly in his element, led hearty singing of mellow Spanish songs. What did the U. S. guests think?

Mr. Morrow, rising to a toast, said something in English which was apparently not understood. Mr. Rogers then quoted Mr. Morrow in Spanish as having said: "... how could the United States ever enter into armed conflict with people like these? ..." Amid shouted cheers President Calles sprang up and clasped the Ambassador's hand. Later Mr. Morrow said to U. S. correspondents: "All this is very interesting." (President at Play - TIME.)

The same afternoon, Calles demanded that [General Roberto] Cruz make an example of the Pros. In a battle worthy of wits worthy of Pontius Pilate and the Sanhedrin, Cruz tried to called Calles into allowing some legal cover. But Calles told him "to hell with" legalities and reminded him that he had his orders and only had to obey. Cruz appeared before reporters and explained that evidence had been accumulated showing all the parties guilty in the attempted assassination of [Alvaro Obregon]. Apparently, Calles had ordered that these executions were to have a high profile. So journalists and photographers from all over Mexico and the whole world were invited.

Even so the game was not entirely over. the morning of the execution, an enterprising lawyer, Luis MacGregor, had convinced a quite brave judge, Julio Lopez Masse, to sign an amparo, a stay of execution. It is doubtful that Cruz and Calles would have paid any attention to this paper obstacle. But they did not have to. MacGregor was locked outside of the proceedings at the police station, and the executions--quite odd for such widely advertised events--were carried out a half-hour earlier than scheduled. A last-minute request from the Argentine delegation to Mexico earned Roberto, the youngest of the [Pro] brothers, a reprieve.

When Miguel's body and the body his brother Humberto arrived at the family house, old Miguel, Sr., ordered no one to mourn, for there was nothing sorrowful in such heroic deaths. Don Miguel opened the door later that night and found a half-dozen government agents outside. They came in, knelt, and prayed. A steady stream of workers, women, and professional people arrived. The Rosary was recited; other prayers were said. When the bodies were ready for transport to the Dolores Cemetery, there was an enormous crowd in the streets, even though President Calles had forbidden public demonstrations in support of the martyred brothers. But the crowd was much larger than the police could do anything about, somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand, according to some accounts larger than any ever seen in Mexico, at a funeral. Around five hundred cars took part in the funeral cortege. As the caskets came out, someone shouted, "Make way for the martyrs!" The crowd fell silent. But as the coffins went through the streets "Viva Cristo Rey!" was shouted everywhere.

The day after Fr. Pro's execution, the American Ambassador Dwight Morrow (Charles Lindbergh's future father-in-law) and the humorist Will Rogers, who had become famous as a common-sense mocker of U.S. government foolishness, took a trip with President Calles through Mexico on the presidential train. Calles had deliberately set up the trip as propaganda intended to convince Mexican Catholics that the United States would not help them. Morrow is reported to have known this, but believed he could use the influence thus gained over Calles to turn his government in a different direction. In the next few years, the government killed 250,000 to 300,000 people, many Catholic, even after a compromise had been worked out. (Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, 2000, pp. 39-40.)

Father Pro, who donned various disguises to provide the Sacraments to Catholics in Mexico after Calles had proscribed their administration that evokes memories of Father William Joseph Chaminade, S.M., during the French Revolution and was a foreshadowing of the heroics of the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican," Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, during the Nazi occupation of Rome as World War II was raging, knew that he might face death for his work. In a letter to his Jesuit superiors in Rome, he, demonstrating that he was a true son of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, said that a priest cannot live in fear of any kind:

You know very well that I am not especially inclined to anything in particular, although it is rather hard to lose the chance of going straight to heaven or of becoming a chaplain of the Marias Islands [where the government deported its prisoners].

I prefer to obey, being quite convinced that I will be of more use to those to whim I wish dedicate my work and life. I have no desire to influence your desire to influence your decision, but I would like to follow the advice that Father Crivelli sent us from Rome: please let me remain at my post until the end of the persecution.

Fear withdraws the priests from their abandoned flocks. Now, as you know, fear is not my predominant fault. I might die? What they might do or what they might do to me--all that is in the hands of God.

Would that I might be found worthy of suffering persecution for the holy name of Jesus. Do I not belong to his army? But let us repeat as in the Our Father: "Thy will be done!" (Gerald F. Muller, C.S.C., With Life and Laughter: The Life of Father Pro, published originally in 1969 by Dujarie Press and republished in 1996 by the Daughters of Saint Paul, p. 122.)

No one, least of all a priest, should live in fear of any kind at any time. Christ the King is our Divine Judge. No one else, no matter how many rationalizations they might use, has any justification before God to excuse silence in the face or social or moral or doctrinal or liturgical evils as a "virtuous" and "prudent" exercise of "self-restraint."

As Pope Leo XIII noted in Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890:

14. But in this same matter, touching Christian faith, there are other duties whose exact and religious observance, necessary at all times in the interests of eternal salvation, become more especially so in these our days. Amid such reckless and widespread folly of opinion, it is, as We have said, the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping. But, when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith, but, as St. Thomas maintains: "Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of unbelievers.''[12] To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind. This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for nothing emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good. Moreover, want of vigor on the part of Christians is so much the more blameworthy, as not seldom little would be needed on their part to bring to naught false charges and refute erroneous opinions, and by always exerting themselves more strenuously they might reckon upon being successful. After all, no one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are, moreover, born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph: "Have confidence; I have overcome the world."[13] Nor is there any ground for alleging that Jesus Christ, the Guardian and Champion of the Church, needs not in any manner the help of men. Power certainly is not wanting to Him, but in His loving kindness He would assign to us a share in obtaining and applying the fruits of salvation procured through His grace.

15. The chief elements of this duty consist in professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine, and in propagating it to the utmost of our power. For, as is often said, with the greatest truth, there is nothing so hurtful to Christian wisdom as that it should not be known, since it possesses, when loyally received, inherent power to drive away error. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 10, 1890.)

We must remember that Catholicism is the one and only foundation of personal and social order. Nothing else. And we must never be afraid to proclaim this truth no matter what it might cost us in terms of worldly respect and financial security.

The statists of Modernity and the heretics of Modernism will be vanquished by the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Why do we live in fear, agitated by all of the rush of current event, when we have the protection of Our Blessed Mother, of Saint Joseph, and the likes of Pope Saint Clement I, Saint Cecilia, Saint Felicity, Father Miguel Agustin Pro and the other Mexican martyrs?

May we, by praying as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits, lift high the Cross of the Divine Redeemer as we exclaim with Father Pro and the Mexican martyrs:

Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Pope Saint Clement I, pray for us.

Saint Cecilia, pray for us.

Saint Felicity, pray for us.