The Devil and Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster is running for Congress in the 8th Congressional District of Florida.  He is a veteran Republican politician, having served as the first Republican speaker of the Florida House of Representatives in 122 years.  He has also served as the Republican majority leader of the Florida Senate.  He is a pro-life conservative.  He is not the Devil.

His opponent is Alan Grayson.  Alan Grayson is the incumbent, being first elected to Congress in 2008.  He is a pro-abort liberal Democrat.  He is doing his best to depict Daniel Webster as the Devil.

My good friend Jay Anderson at Pro Ecclesia has a first rate post on this subject at his bog and has saved me quite a bit of work:

Back during the Bush years, I can recall debates in the Catholic blogosphere in which Catholics of a certain left-leaning ilk accused those on the right of having questioned the patriotism of anyone who had opposed the Iraq War.

The thing is that I don’t recall these instances of anyone’s patriotism being impugned (outside of David Frum’s infamous piece at National Review in which he accused conservative Catholic commentators Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak of being “unpatriotic”; but then, any conservative worth a damn doesn’t give a rat’s patoot what David Frum thinks or says).

And, in fact, the left’s protestations about having their patriotism questioned appears to have been nothing more than collective projection, imagining that their political adversaries were doing exactly what they would do if they were the ones trying to overcome opposition to a particular objective of national policy priority. This has been borne out since the election of President Obama: how many times have we seen the words “sedition” (also here, for example), “un-American” (also here, for example), “unpatriotic”, and even “siding with the terrorists” (not to mention “racist”) applied to critics of the Obama agenda?

But NEVER in my years have I EVER heard someone in politics say about someone in the opposition “He just doesn’t love America like I do.”

Until now:

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Res et Explicatio for AD 2-4-2010

[Update at the bottom of this post]

Salvete TAC readers!

Here are my Top Picks in the Internet from the world of the Catholic Church and secular culture:

1. The USCCB scandal continues as the U.S. bishops continue to issue denials of wrongdoings.

Mary Ann of Les Femmes blog asks why does the USCCB continue to cooperate with evil.

An interesting twist to this story is how the Boston Globe and New York Times covered the homosexual pedophile abuse scandal in the Church quite vigorously yet not one peep when the USCCB is caught red-handed with direct links to anti-Catholic organizations.

2. A great discussion about the origins of the phrase, “The Dunce Cap“, provided for a clarification by Friar Roderic.  He provided a video that explains the steady progression as a Protestant insult, ie, to call Catholic dunces for being aggressive in their Catholic beliefs, to the more secularized version which has turned it into a catch phrase for idiocy.

Radio Personality: Members of the Opposing Party Should be Denied Health Care

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh said that Democrats should be denied health care.  No, no, wrong radio personality!   If Rush had said anything that stupid, rest assured that you wouldn’t have had to wait to read about it on this blog to learn of it.  The networks would have been shouting the news and condemnatory editorials would have been thundering from newspapers coast to coast.  Instead it was just Garrison Keillor, National Public Radio’s Mark Twain wannabe, who decided that there are just too darn many Republicans and by gosh something should be done about it.  (As they would doubtless phrase a call for gopcide in Lake Wobegon.)  Writing in the Chicago Tribune,  Keillor has this charming sentiment:

When an entire major party has excused itself from meaningful debate and a thoughtful U.S. senator like Orrin Hatch no longer finds it important to make sense and an up-and-comer like Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty attacks the president for giving a speech telling schoolchildren to work hard in school and get good grades, one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Denying health care on the basis of political ideology.  Nice guy.  Of course Keillor was merely joking.  He has a long history of hating Republicans,   but I am sure he merely jokes, and perhaps fantasizes, about the deaths of those who have the temerity of disagreeing with him politically and in reality he would never harm a fly.  At least a Democrat fly.