The election is almost upon us, and many of us have made up our minds as to whom we are going to vote for, or whether we will even bother to vote at all. On the slight chance that someone from the ever-shrinking pool of undecided voters in a critical county in a vital swing state stumbles upon this blog post, the even less likely chance that they are Catholic, and the even less likely chance that their Catholic faith informs their political conscience, I’ll make one last appeal for a GOP vote.
I say a GOP vote, and not a Romney vote, because a) the most important issue at stake in this election really only depends upon which party, not individual man, is in power, and b) many people on the fence probably aren’t very enthused about Romney the man. I’ll admit that even as someone who has made up his mind, I am still not enthused. Granted, Romney isn’t as awful as many of us imagined him to be before he took Obama to the woodshed in the first presidential debate, it still isn’t easy to joyfully rally to his banner. He lacks the consistency and commitment to principle of the enigmatic Ron Paul, a pretty old guy who manages to get thousands of modern American 20-somethings to care about things other than themselves, which is nothing short of miraculous in its own right. Still, he has emerged as a capable enough candidate for the highest office in the land. But let’s return to the issues.
What is the most important issue in this election? For many voters, it is the economy, plain and simple. In my view, that is the second most important issue, and I will discuss it below. The most important issue is the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty. If economic problems can be likened to the physical problems of a body, an assault on religious liberty can be compared to an assault on the soul inhabiting the body. Our Lord warns us not to fear those who can merely harm our bodies, both those who can destroy both the body and the soul (Mt. 10:28). Obama can’t exactly destroy our individual souls with his ill-conceived policies, but he can cause lasting damage to the soul of the nation if he is allowed to continue his Kulturkampf in a lame-duck presidency.
The HHS mandate represents everything that is rotten about the Obama regime. Lest Catholic voters forget, the Obama White House threatened the U.S. bishops conference, suggesting that it heed the “voices of enlightened accommodation” (i.e. traitorous apostates) within the Church rather than, and this was unsaid but obviously implied, continue their annoying campaign to exist as authentic Catholics. In spite of the obviously false claims that the mandate was sufficiently altered to respect religious freedom, the bishops, other Catholic institutions, and individual business owners have filed numerous lawsuits against the administration. Resistance continues even well after the supposed “accommodation” from pulpits all across America, in Catholic churches, Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, even Islamic mosques, if reports such as this one are accurate. People of good will, religious or not, who are concerned about the condition of liberty in the United States have rallied en masse against Obama’s repressive reproductive bureaucracy. One thing that can be said about Mitt Romney is that he will almost certainly and hopefully immediately eradicate these policies.
Now to the economy, issue number two. In Romney we have an experienced businessman who, if nothing else, has probably forgotten more about what it takes to run a successful and profitable enterprise than Barack Obama will ever know in his entire life. Obama likened his brief stint in the private sector, the only real job the man has ever held, to “working behind enemy lines.” His massive investment failures are reflective of the fact that he not only harbors a deep contempt for business, but has never so much as operated a lemonade stand.
Then there is the matter of property rights, closely related with the overall economic condition. Like the rest of the vagocracy, Obama believes that your unwillingness to pay for Sandra Fluke’s IUD implant, to which she has a divine and inalienable right, is tantamount to your depriving her of it. Your property is not your own. At the end of your work week or month, it belongs to Obama, becoming a part of his infinite “stash“, and only when he has distributed as much of it as he pleases to those whom he pleases (and please him) will he allow you to pretend that it is yours. Of course a Romney administration will also collect taxes, but at least Romney has promised to eliminate capital gains taxes on small businesses, which ought to result in significant job creation.
The third most important issue, at least to me, is foreign policy. Upfront I must state that I absolutely deplore the thrust of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. I am a non-interventionist who believes that America should not spend another dollar, shed another drop of blood, or throw away another smidgen of prestige in the pursuit of neoliberal or neoconservative fantasies abroad. Military adventurism in the service ideals that the allegedly “oppressed” peoples of the world vehemently reject is the height of foolishness and the worst symptom of imperial decadence. Consequently, both Barack “innocent children murdered in drone strikes that make me ashamed of my country” Obama and Mitt “Russia is our greatest geopolitical foe” Romney get my two big thumbs down. I am anti-war (for the most part) and anti-drone because I am pro-life, but it hardly matters in this election.
However. There is still something to be said about the way Obama has bungled the Benghazi situation. I suppose it isn’t as much a foreign policy blunder as it is a sign of deep corruption within the administration, all the way up to the President himself. In any case, it appears as if the regime has no legitimate excuse or defense for its actions, or lack thereof, regarding the assault on the U.S. embassy. For several days various public officials blatantly mislead the American public about its causes.
All Romney really has to do for me to be at least placated, in the end, is not antagonize Russia with a missile shield and not start a war with Iran. I would ask that he not arm Christian-hating Al Qaeda rebels in Syria and other countries with stinger missiles and AK-47s, but that would be too much. America is committed to empire, all the more so because, unlike other empires, it doesn’t acknowledge that it is an empire. That’s an icky word. Good guys don’t have empires!
Well, there it is. I probably haven’t changed anyone’s mind, and probably bored some of you by now, but it felt good to say all that stuff. Happy voting!
Permit me to say:
WE HAVE LEARNED OUR LESSON!!
Contrary to what Muslim apologist Obama, the progressive liberal agenda, and their adoring media want you to believe America is still a Christian nation in spite of all their ill begotten and somewhat successful efforts to lead us away from the God we proclaimed in our founding documents and in whom we have placed our trust for two hundred and fifty years making us the most generous defender of freedom and champion of peace in the history of the world.
It has taken an electorate, deceived by media hype and the slick talk of a community organizer with a snake oil political platform built on the sand of Marxist social justice and constructed with inverted racism packaged as hope and change for a better future, four years to realize their tragic mistake but we are there now and the curtain of corruption has been lifted revealing the true and obvious nature of the beast of bureaucratic socialism set to use the next four years to finish the destruction of our country by virtual dictatorship of the most anti-Christian regime ever to occupy the White House. It must not happen.
Over the years we have gone to every corner of the globe giving every ounce of blood sweat and tears it took to rid the world of tyrants in the name of freedom. Many of those were by all means monsters of madness which sprang up on distant shores but the one we face today has had the audacity to raise its ugly head from within our own house by cleverly deceiving the trust and compassion of, yes¸ the Christian majority of the nation wanting to show the world how tolerant and unbiased we had become. We were foolishly betrayed. That will not happen again this November, we have learned our lesson Christians.
Bill Sr.
Watching the movie “The Hope and the Change” last night gives me some comfort in knowing that those who thought they were voting for a messiah have taken off their rose-colored glasses and faced reality. Let it be Lord, that with the wake up call of Sandy and Benghazi we may vote our consciences, informed and conformed, by the Truth.
[…] Election 2012: One Last Argument for Mitt – Bonchamps, The American Catholic […]
Bill Sr.
You Are Permitted!
Awaken the sleepers.
Blow a trumpet.
Defend our freedoms.
By God let the poles resound with a cry; “In this Nation we serve God by living the ten commandments and giving testimony that Jesus Christ is King!”
It is and will always be…Our Father who art in Heaven / Not our father who art in Washington.
We have reached the precipice.
We will change direction and repent. Or we will fall.
Lord have Mercy.
I disagree about the missile shield comment. We have a right to defend ourselves. That being said, I have no objection to sharing missile defense technology with the Russians. After all, it’s not an offensive weapon system. Why can’t we work together to defend our individual countries against rouge states like Iran? Hey, if we’re not supposed to engage in wars of adventurism in lands of Islamic fascism for access to mineral slime (otherwise known as oil), then why can’t we defend ourselves from the weapons that these mad men will eventually and inevitably get?
BTW, want to stop wars in the Mid-East? Go nuclear and stop buying their accursed oil! Stop financing them! We can generate plenty of our own liquid fuels from our own American coal using the heat of nuclear energy from our own uranium and thorium, or alternatively switch over to cleaner hydrogen from nuclear energy. Stop the corporate socialism! Stop financing Exxon-Mobil, Shell, Gulf and all the rest! Treat all energy companies the same: just like nuclear, you don’t get to dump your trash into the environment, and just like nuclear, you get to finance your own self in the free market. This is simple: no more govt loans for anything. No more govt protection for anything. Just common sense regulation applied equally to everyone to protect the public. OK – enough of my diatribe. I am waaaayyyyy off track.
Overall, good post, Bonchamps, even though I disagree about a few things.
“We have a right to defend ourselves”
The missile shield doesn’t defend us. It eliminates Russia’s first strike capability, which puts it in a weaker geopolitical position and increases the potential for a conflict with NATO. Really it is time to dismantle NATO.
Even with oil out of the equation, there are still self-righteous imperials who believe that the majority of Muslims harbor a secret wish to live in a Western-style democracy and eat at McDonalds, and that it is our duty to ensure that they are able to do so.
“Go nuclear and stop buying their accursed oil!”
After Fukushima, the after-effects of which still threaten all life on Earth, I’m a little less enthusiastic about the prospect of building more nuclear power plants. However, I think Palin had it right when she said “drill baby drill.” Drill it all up, as far as I’m concerned.
Fukushima happened because the plants were built next to the shore line without sea wall protection for the air intakes to the emergency diesel generators. So after the tsunami struck, the diesel intakes were flooded and AC electricity was lost. The plants were on the batteries that last only 8 hours. When the batteries died, the power to the governor controls for the steam inlet valves to the High Pressure Coolant Injection was lost. Those valves went shut. The HPCI steam turbines stopped, making their pumps stop. That resulted in a loss of core cooling. Eventually core heatup resulted in a zinc water reaction that produced the hydrogen gas which subsequently detonated. In spite of ALL of this, only SIX people died outright from Fukushima, and they were plant employee volunteers. NO MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC DIED FROM FUKUSHIMA. But a nearby town of 17000 people was completed flooded by a failure of the hydro-electric dam that cracked and crumbled from the Sendai Earthquake that caused the tsunami. And the natural gas and oil refinery tanks in the Chiba Prefecture burned for TEN DAYS, spewing their never ever to decay away toxic carcinogens into the environment. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people died, but NOT from nuclear. Additionally, the NEW Westinghouse AP1000 and GE ESBWR passive safety designs obviate this ENTIRE failure scenario. These designs have 72 hour submarine type batteries and do NOT require electricity for emergency core cooling. Additionally, their spent fuel pools are located BELOW grade unlike the Mark 1 BWR containments at the Fukushima plants. I personally KNOW this because I worked on ESBWR and at a BWR and at a PWR for 30 plus years. One last thing: the safety upgrades that US plants did in the 1980s were offered to the Japanese, but they decided not to implement them. Now they got Fukushima, and your suggestion is no nukes, making them MORE reliable on dangerous fossil fuel failures like one that happened in the Chiba Prefecture. Kindly stick to Ron Paulism. it’s what you’re good at. I am a nuclear engineer and know what I am talking about. The Japenese screwed up – period. God help them. And donate to the nuclear workers at Fukushima instead of complaining.
Sorry for the spelling / grammar errors. Hate this I- Pad. Neverthless, I know what I am talking about. 30 years of training and experience. I am not lying. I am not misrepresenting the facts. I am a nuclear professional. AndI will defend the safest and cleanest form of energy God gave man with the same vigor that Inapply to other topics here at TAC or anywhere else for that matter.
Folks,
Now that I have calmed down – there is very good information on the response of the US commercial nuclear industry to Fukushima here:
http://www.nei.org/keyissues/fukushima-response/
Please click on the various daughter links to learn more.
For the passive safety features of the new GE-Hitachi ESBWR design, please go here and use the media gallery to view an interactive video:
http://www.ge-energy.com/products_and_services/products/nuclear_energy/esbwr_nuclear_reactor.jsp
For the passive safety features of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 design, please go here and use the on-screen instructions to view the various animations:
http://ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/station_blackout_home/
A Fukushima event in the US is very, very, very unlikely, but failures from hydro-electric dams that can threaten millions are likely, as are explosions of natural gas pipelines. We should also note that 30,000 people die annually in the US from fossil fuel pollution due to particulate emissions from coal-fired power plant plants and other fossil fuel emitters.
I can provide more information on spent fuel if need be, but the answer is the same: it’s safe – use spent fuel in fast neutron burner reactors like the GE-Hitachi PRISM or the Carlo Rubbia Energy Amplifier to consume the long lived actinides and leave only short lived ash residue. But waste from fossil fuel – including oil and natural gas – kills.
One last thing, Folks:
Ash and other residue from coal fired power plants that supply 50% of US electricity releases more radioactivity into the environment in the form of naturally occurring uranium, thorium and radium than any US nuclear power plant does.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste
http://www.uswag.org/usgsradash.pdf
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html
But in spite of that, the amount of radiation released to the public does NOT constitute a danger. What does constitute a danger are the carginogens that burning coal, natural gas and oil release, but Bonchamps motto is, “Drill, baby, drill.” My motto is: “Recycle the spent nuclear fuel and stop dumping your fossil fuel excrement in the air that I breath.”
You don’t have the right to insult me on my own blog, so your offensive comment was deleted.
Look, I’ve read what I’ve read about Fukushima. I’m sure your expertise is extensive and your opinions educated and valid. There are others who are equally if not more experienced and educated who disagree. My positions on energy aren’t set in stone and final – its not really a moral issue like abortion – and I am able and willing to change my views as new information comes to my attention.
Now that you know this, kindly refrain from insults, hysterical CAPITAL LETTERS, and multiple postings on posts of mind that mention energy in passing.
Fine, Bonchamps, but when something is said wrong about Fukushima or the US nuclear industry, I will correct it. Kindly read the link to NEI that I provided. One goes to a brain surgeon for brain surgery and to a rocket scientist for a rocket. One should go to the nuclear engineers at NEI and the NRC for Fukushima and not the news media or the anti-nuke kooks (didn’t say you did). To get back to the topic of this post, Mitt Romney is a viable candidate in part because he does support a sane energy policy that includes nuclear as well as fossil energy. Nuclear is best. Fossil is better than no energy, but not nearly as good as nuclear. Mitt Romney is sane about these things. Obama and his support for useless wind and solar energy is not. And yes, energy policy can be a moral issue when tens of thousands die from fossil fuel pollution every year and those deaths can be prevented or minimized by increasing the percentage of nuclear used in the energy mix, which Romney will do. It is one of many reasons why I support Romney, which is the topic of this post. But wheverever nuclear is mentioned, people cite Fukushima, Chernobyl and TMI, and the explanations on these are complex and involved and difficult to understand to a person who knows nothing about radiation, nuclear engineering and related sciences. Too often the people making the initial comments don’t know anything about what they are commenting on – not their fault, they just haven’t been trained in science properly, thanks to our school system (a different topic for a different day). That said, Romney for President!
PS, I should not have used the word ignorant in a previous comment, Bonchamps. I apologize sincerely. It would have been better to have said misinformed instead of using emotionally charged terminology that is now regretted.
I’d say anything that can defensively eliminate Russia’s first strike capability, or any other nation’s with which we do not have aligned interests, is in the best interest of the US and its citizens.
But as to the thrust of the post, Amen.
As a former nuclear submarine reactor operator, I agree with Paul D. Defense against aggression is always moral. I recommend Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s “The Strategy of Technology.” He was Ronald Reagan’s science advisor on the Strategic Defense Initiative. And Romney’s support for SDI is another reason to vote for Romney. He won’t sell out to the Russians.
One thing that can be said about Mitt Romney is that he will almost certainly and hopefully immediately eradicate these policies.
Almost and hopefully. How reassuring. That said, I suppose it’s better than the persecution full steam ahead by the O.
I am almost as PaulBot as one can be, but I agree w/ Paul on the nukes. France is what, 70-80% nuke, and I don’t recall hearing anything about them. Why look to Japan rather than France as the model, particularly given that the US has far more geographical choice about placing the plants than Japan does?
and by the second Paul, I meant Paul Primavera, obviously.
Thank you, C Matt. The new French socialist President is against nukes – no surprise there. He wants to de-nuke France to 50%. Foolish. I will write about this whole thing on my blog and post the link here to that discussion, but that’s not the topic of Bonchamps post and we should respect that. However, the statement Bonchamps made – “After Fukushima, the after-effects of which still threaten all life on Earth…” – is an example of anti-nuclear propaganda (no offense against Bonchamps intended) and unsubstantiated by web links to reputable nuclear engineering resources. As a nuclear engineerof 30+ years and a former submarine reactor operator, I know the statement to be demonstrably incorrect. I posted web links to reputable sources. Science is science and not open to public opinion. Not Bonchamps fault. He isn’t a nuclear engineer. We can’t expect an expert in one area to be an expert in all. And I should respect him and not use terms like “ignorant.” Confession time for me. But I can’t discuss more here since it’s not on topic. Romney for President and a sane energy policy that embraces nuclear power! OK, gotta go to Neutrons ‘R Us and keep your lights on and your refridgerators running!