INCONGRUITIES THREE

1. INCONGRUITY #1: The next time you hear someone argue that President Bush deserves to be impeached because he is a "dictator", a "liar" and has "assault[ed]" our freedoms and that "the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments...amount[ing] to a quiet coup, ultimately more insidious than a blatant putsch like [Pakistani] General Musharraf's", remind them gently that, if all that were really true, then a) the Democratic-controlled Congress would have impeached Bush by now and two-thirds or more of the Senate would have convicted him and run him out of office already, and b) the people insisting that all this is true would be treated just like this woman is being treated, just for saying those sorts of things out loud.

This point was essentially made by Jonah Goldberg of National Review Magazine in The Week column of the Dec.2, 2007 issue (subscription required), but prior to the Muhammed teddy bear story breaking:

Frank Rich of the New York Times — and I am not making this up — flatly said that President Bush "assault[ed]" our democracy so severely that we are little different from Pervez Musharraf's Pakistan. He said it after Musharraf imposed martial law.

...Rich is hardly alone in suggesting that Americans are living under a quasi-dictatorship. It is, in fact, a common theme in liberal polemics of late. It seems lost on all of them that if what they were saying were even remotely true, they wouldn't be allowed to say it.
(emphasis added)

2. INCONGRUITY #2: The next time you know someone who either tacitly supports by remaining silent or actively argues support for covering a Virgin Mary statue in elephant dung or immersing a crucifix in a beaker of urine, ask that person if s/he also thinks there's no need for vocal outrage over folks who wield "clubs and knives" and call for the execution of that woman just for naming a teddy bear Muhammad.

Then ask that person this question: If this is what such folks do over a teddy bear, what does that person think would happen if someone immersed a statue of Muhammad in a beaker of urine or a pile of dung?

Catholics and Christians have had their share of "certifiables" over the centuries, as has any religion, but in my lifetime and probably those of my parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents at least, no Catholic or Christian has set fire to such blasphemers or desecraters, picked up clubs or axes, convicted such folk for blaspheming the name or image of Our Lord or descrating our sacred items, or threatened, never mind committed, any violence in order to get such a person jailed or executed.

Terrorism is as terrorism does, and what those Sudanese are doing is terrorism.

Since terrorism and torture have been in the public consiousness and candidate debate a lot lately, I looked up what my Church says about them.

I know such folks who laser-focus on the wrongs of the Catholic Church revel in throwing the Inquisition and Torquemada in our faces. Fair enough. I can only urge everyone to read what the Church believes about terrorism, torture, related topics and those dark times in the Church's history:

2297
Kidnapping and hostage taking bring on a reign of terror; by means of threats they subject their victims to intolerable pressures. They are morally wrong. Terrorism threatens, wounds, and kills indiscriminately; it is gravely against justice and charity. Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.

2298
In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.
(emphasis added)

3. INCONGRUITY #3: Many liberals seem to think that those on the Right want to eliminate Social Security entirely by privatizing it. Not true, firstly, as the idea is a partial privatization one.

But the idea of deciding for ourselves where to invest even some of our payroll tax money should mean having the chance to make more of the investment and to avoid the inability of Social Security to pay us all what we're owed when it comes our time to receive checks.

Many liberals think that's expecting too much of most Americans; to handle their own accounts is far too "risky:"

"Critics claim that private markets are dangerously risky and only knowledgeable and experienced investors can successfully handle such risks."
~ "Common Objections to a Market-Based Social Security System: A Response" by Melissa Hieger and William Shipman, for The Cato Institute.

"One of the main stumbling blocks to Social Security reform is the view that left to their own devices, many people will fail to save for their own retirement, and 'we as a society' can't allow them to live in poverty."
~ "Who's More Irresponsible?" by Bryan Caplan, the Library of Economics and Liberty.

These same liberals who think these same common Americans—who can't save and wisely invest in a no-brainer mutual fund or two, who need the government to safeguard their money for them, who shouldn't have any Social-Security-replacing Personal Retirement Accounts—are the same common Americans capable of not needing the government to tell them right from wrong and are capable of making wise, privatized decisions regarding life, death and who gets which.

Many liberals are perfectly OK with us making moral and divine decisions on life and death but not at all with making financial decisions. They think common Americans are all well-qualified geniuses about who lives or dies, but we're blithering idiots about money.

Do they even listen to themselves sometimes?

(eye twitching...)