Hatred.
 
A conversation with a much more left wing friend over the weekend made me realize that most of my conservative politics, are not conservatively sourced. They are sourced in my own personal form of liberalism, which is often repelled by the political rhetoric of other liberals.
 
Gay marriage for instance. I was once, a decade or so ago, for civil unions. I was considered a liberal for being so. I reveled in the fact of being Catholic and how entire groups of monks were using their own vow of celibacy to volunteer for AIDS research. Then, overnight it seemed, in March 2004 I became a conservative on this subject. I didn't change- but I was now bigoted for actually believing sacramental marriage was still possible and that children raised by their biological parents might actually be the ideal situation. Oh, and of course, for discriminating against gays and not allowing them to get married.
 
Gay marriage doesn't matter to me anymore. After all the attacks and vandalism, I wouldn't vote for those people if they were trying to save baby whales.
 
But back to my own attitudes. Abortion, Divorce, Contraception, Homosexuality, Fractional Reserve Banking, Free Trade, Wage Suppression, euthanasia. I see these all as full of violence and hatred; and against human dignity. But worse than any of them, are the tactics used to shame more normal people into allowing them to continue; the intolerance of the supposedly tolerant. Tolerance is only a virtue if the thing you are being tolerant of is a sin; when that thing ceases to be a sin and becomes instead a model, tolerance quickly turns to enabling and intolerance for those who don't fit that model.

Think Philadelphia is the only city where they don't inspect abortion clinics enough to keep their victims from dying? Here are a few others from around the country- including a few Planned Parenthood clinics.

It's amazing what a man can see by the light of a burning bridge.
 
I've often laughed at The slippery slope argument, but hearing on the news this morning about a significant group of psychiatrists who want to remove pedophila from the DSM (like they did 40 years ago with homosexuality) I now have to admit that political slippery slopes are real- and proven by 40 years of experimentation.

It is truly amazing what a man can see by the light of a burning bridge.

Money and sex kills children.

A great example of what this means, of the type of Cardinal Reinhard Marx.

A fine proof for why "there is no God" is axiomatic rather than proven

So instead, I'm posting this link here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2013/04/a-very-important-reminder-tweet-gosnell/

This is the story NOBODY IN THE MSM WANTS TO TOUCH. I do not understand why.

80 million dead in the 20th century proves that humanity can't handle liberty.

Or maybe it is just the New Atheists, who rarely are skeptical enough about their own arguments.

But Faith and Hedonism are incompatible. Faith and Anarchy are incompatible.

Three different Catholic blogs have pounded this into my head the last couple of days.

The first- a blog that has been invaded in the combox by an ex-Catholic New Atheist who claims that he's scared to come out to friends and family as an atheist, made the startling claim yesterday that many New Atheists are only Atheists because they can't tolerate the idea of a being telling them what to do, and thus, reject the idea of a God-given morality not as much because of the God part, but because of the morality part. The resident atheist-in-the-closet actually confirmed the theory rather than arguing against it, saying that he thinks God doesn't exist because the Church teaches against pre-marital sex and contraception.

In a second blog, this one from a Catholic convert from Atheism, I was presented with the "Good without God" crowd, to which I responded pretty much my standard way- that "Good without God" requires a definition of Good that I define as evil- particularly when it comes to the business and sexual practices of that crowd.

Finally, came a funny joke: A libertarian atheist says to his friend "I refuse to do anything anybody tells me is good for me. Look at this bottle of breath spray. It says on the side "Do not spray in eyes". So I'm going to do the opposite." As the libertarian begins to scream in pain- his friend says "They tried to warn you!"

It occurs to me that Catholic teaching, based initially on revelation but refined over the centuries by the largest, most scientific study of human behavior and culture ever attempted, is kind of like those Nanny State warnings on the sides of products. Do you really need to be told NOT to use the hair dryer in the shower? With the average lifespan of homosexuals even in committed relationships being 20 years less than heterosexuals, do you really need to be told that being homosexual is a bad idea? With the divorce level at 75% and now a new study showing that divorce creates lifelong problems for male children, is it really that hard to understand that MAYBE doing the hard work of staying faithful and working problems out is a good thing?

Apparently, some people do- and that's why the Church has a billion members.

Moveon Edition:
 
 

After months of promises that, in the wake of Newtown, this time would be different, congressional Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, are on the verge of caving on the three most critical gun violence prevention proposals: universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons, and a ban on high-capacity magazines.

 
and later in the same letter
 
 

What's looking most likely to end up in the final bill? A provision encouraging guns in schools.

 
It appears to me that neither side has been listening to the other AGAIN. Only ONE of these four proposals stands any chance at all of reducing random mental-illness driven gun violence. Can you guess which one? The other three stand no chance at all of doing anything for the problem other than annoy people.
 
Your wing nuttiness will be based on your answer, but here is a hint: The real cause is mental illness, NOT guns.

Because Pope Francis really is a public transit taking living saint as opposed to a blowhard who built a career on "community building".

I know that my handle is Marxist Hacker. That comes from an earlier time when I too was tempted by liberation theology.

Funny how now, with the election of Pope Francis, the Main Stream Media seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, to the tune of repeating government propaganda as if it was fact, thus committing the very crime that they accuse Pope Francis of- conspiracy with an Argentine Dictatorship.

As it comes close to voyueristic porn* around here, but hands down the best reason why NFP is NOT "Catholic birth control" that I've ever read .

-------------
*in that few, if any slashdoters have the biological equipment necessary to make this worthwhile, unless they are married. But information wants to be free, is the first rule of the old MIT Hacker's Ethic, and I provide that link in that context.

Pudge (yes, the pudge that many of us have had a problem with) finally engaged in an argument I can agree with him on. MORE THAN THAT, he posted what I have to say, after 3 hours of listening to it, the definitive link for our side.

http://open.biola.edu/resources/is-faith-in-god-reasonable

The debate might have started out "Is faith reasonable"? But it quickly turned out to be a disproof of quantum randomness and a disproof of the problem of evil.

In the end, Prof. Craig utterly destroyed the idea that Uranium emitting an Alpha Particle destroys the idea of God. And he ridiculed the problem of evil so completely that from now on I'm going to laugh at atheists that bring it up.