Sent to me from a friend. Very good reading.
AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
Dear President Obama,You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visiblesigns of support.You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.
You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.
You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.
You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.You scare me because you will not openly listen or to or evenconsider opposing points of view from intelligent people.You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.
You scare me because the media gives you a free pass oneverything you do.
You scare me because you demonize and want to silencethe Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Reillys and Becks who offer opposing,conservative points of view.
You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Right/Left
I found this on Catholicity.com and I thought I would respost it on my blog.
Hope you enjoy it
'The Right Is Mean, and the Left Is Foul'
by Deal Hudson - April 2, 2009
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
The rising temperature of the debate over President Barack Obama's scheduled visit to Notre Dame has created some heated rhetoric on both sides. Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg criticized Notre Dame's decision but was himself criticized for complaining about the "uncivil and venomous" comments made by those opposing the honor being bestowed on President Obama.
Bishop Lynch is exactly right in raising this concern. Here is what he says:
The rhetoric being employed is so uncivil and venomous that it weakens the case we place before our fellow citizens, alienates young college-age students who believe the older generation is behaving like an angry child, and they do not wish to be any part of that, and ill-serves the cause of life (emphasis added).
Granted, some will label as uncivil any assertion about the truth of the Catholic Faith. These tactical accusations of incivility are exactly what they appear to be – an attempt to silence and discredit all who defend the Church. Putting that tactic aside, it does weaken our case for orthodoxy when it is couched in vicious name-calling, profanity, and unsupported generalizations.
Some say the coarseness of their rhetoric is justified by the truth they speak or by the crimes they decry, such as abortion. In my opinion, they either don't care about persuading anyone who's listening, or they don't know they're providing an excuse for people to ignore what they say. A good illustration of that approach is the effort of Randall Terry at Notre Dame. Terry has gone to such an extreme that Archbishop Raymond Burke had to dissociate himself from the use Terry was making of his comments.
The last thing orthodox Catholics need to do is bring discredit to a bishop who has the courage to speak his mind.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, another bishop who speaks his mind, recently spoke in an interview with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life about his experience with e-mail rudeness. He attributes the vitriol to the "immediacy" of Internet communication, "which means we immediately speak out of our emotions rather than write a letter." Just as important is anonymity behind which most people hide when making comments or posting on Web sites.
Some of the most vicious e-mails Archbishop Chaput has received, he says, are from "Catholic conservatives" who want him to excommunicate pro-abortion Catholic politicians. But he has noticed an interesting difference between how conservatives and liberals are impolite.
"The Left mail I get will use terrible words but be less vitriolic. They use the F-word and things like that, call me names like that. The Right is meaner, but they're not as foul."
The Right is mean, and the Left is foul – that observation matches my experience in the virtual world. The Left often resorts to expletives to express their disapproval; whereas the Right, including Catholic conservatives, will indict your faith, your intelligence, and your love for your mother if you happen to disappoint them.
Rudeness has nearly become the rule, rather than the exception, on the Internet. Blogs, forums, e-mails, and comment sections are hothouses for the unedited savagery of the miscreant, the coward, and the Pharisee. Yet it is the place where we have chosen to speak with a Catholic voice. As Archbishop Chaput has said of his own reaction to hateful e-mails: "The Lord reminds us that we are sheep among wolves, but it's important for us not to become wolves ourselves because of our experience."
It's a sore temptation to respond in kind to such attacks. InsideCatholic and other Catholic Web sites have achieved some level of politeness only by enforcing a posted civility policy. We agree with Bishop Lynch and Archbishop Chaput that our best chance for changing minds and being successful evangelists is speaking with a tone of voice that offers no excuse to turn away
Hope you enjoy it
'The Right Is Mean, and the Left Is Foul'
by Deal Hudson - April 2, 2009
Reprinted with permission from our good friends at InsideCatholic.com, the leading online journal of Catholic faith, culture, and politics.
The rising temperature of the debate over President Barack Obama's scheduled visit to Notre Dame has created some heated rhetoric on both sides. Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg criticized Notre Dame's decision but was himself criticized for complaining about the "uncivil and venomous" comments made by those opposing the honor being bestowed on President Obama.
Bishop Lynch is exactly right in raising this concern. Here is what he says:
The rhetoric being employed is so uncivil and venomous that it weakens the case we place before our fellow citizens, alienates young college-age students who believe the older generation is behaving like an angry child, and they do not wish to be any part of that, and ill-serves the cause of life (emphasis added).
Granted, some will label as uncivil any assertion about the truth of the Catholic Faith. These tactical accusations of incivility are exactly what they appear to be – an attempt to silence and discredit all who defend the Church. Putting that tactic aside, it does weaken our case for orthodoxy when it is couched in vicious name-calling, profanity, and unsupported generalizations.
Some say the coarseness of their rhetoric is justified by the truth they speak or by the crimes they decry, such as abortion. In my opinion, they either don't care about persuading anyone who's listening, or they don't know they're providing an excuse for people to ignore what they say. A good illustration of that approach is the effort of Randall Terry at Notre Dame. Terry has gone to such an extreme that Archbishop Raymond Burke had to dissociate himself from the use Terry was making of his comments.
The last thing orthodox Catholics need to do is bring discredit to a bishop who has the courage to speak his mind.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, another bishop who speaks his mind, recently spoke in an interview with the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life about his experience with e-mail rudeness. He attributes the vitriol to the "immediacy" of Internet communication, "which means we immediately speak out of our emotions rather than write a letter." Just as important is anonymity behind which most people hide when making comments or posting on Web sites.
Some of the most vicious e-mails Archbishop Chaput has received, he says, are from "Catholic conservatives" who want him to excommunicate pro-abortion Catholic politicians. But he has noticed an interesting difference between how conservatives and liberals are impolite.
"The Left mail I get will use terrible words but be less vitriolic. They use the F-word and things like that, call me names like that. The Right is meaner, but they're not as foul."
The Right is mean, and the Left is foul – that observation matches my experience in the virtual world. The Left often resorts to expletives to express their disapproval; whereas the Right, including Catholic conservatives, will indict your faith, your intelligence, and your love for your mother if you happen to disappoint them.
Rudeness has nearly become the rule, rather than the exception, on the Internet. Blogs, forums, e-mails, and comment sections are hothouses for the unedited savagery of the miscreant, the coward, and the Pharisee. Yet it is the place where we have chosen to speak with a Catholic voice. As Archbishop Chaput has said of his own reaction to hateful e-mails: "The Lord reminds us that we are sheep among wolves, but it's important for us not to become wolves ourselves because of our experience."
It's a sore temptation to respond in kind to such attacks. InsideCatholic and other Catholic Web sites have achieved some level of politeness only by enforcing a posted civility policy. We agree with Bishop Lynch and Archbishop Chaput that our best chance for changing minds and being successful evangelists is speaking with a tone of voice that offers no excuse to turn away
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