COVID Lockdowns: Does Francis have a “Culture of Death” Jeffrey Sachs “Malthusian Mindset” that could Kill Millions of the Poor by Starvation?

September 06, 2020

The American Spectator said that the apparently “culture of death” Francis has a “Malthusian mindset” which teaches that the planet needs to be depopulated. This elitist teaching has been associated with the Nazi eugenics movement which passed laws that targeted what it called “useless eaters.“

World depopulation is pushed by global elitists such a Jeffrey Sachs who is a collaborator of the pro-COVID-19 lockdowns Francis.

[http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2017/12/does-pope-francis-work-for-soros-un_27.html?m=1 and  http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/01/are-anti-ewtn-where-peter-is-lewis-gay.html?m=1] 

The Spectator article said that “Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who forthrightly condemned the culture of death underlying their [“Malthusian mindset”] liberalism. But this pope [Francis] ratifies their [“culture of death”] propaganda”:

The pope’s one-sided treatment of technology, free markets, and consumerism is astonishing. He completely ignores all of the evidence that those developments have alleviated poverty, improved health, and raised standards of living. He decries the old “colonialism” while peddling a new one: a global environmentalism emanating from the UN that keeps poor nations poor in the name of saving the planet.

Out of his Malthusian mindset he welcomes the economic shutdowns that followed the emergence of Covid. Never mind all the havoc that has wreaked on human lives across the world. Under the pope’s socialism, equal misery is to be preferred to unequal wealth.

Is it any wonder why Jeffrey Sachs and company celebrate this pope? They chafed under Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who forthrightly condemned the culture of death underlying their liberalism. But this pope ratifies their propaganda. At the beginning of his pontificate, they cheered his comment that the Church is too “obsessed” with abortion and artificial birth control — stances that environmentalists regard as a major obstacle to their climate change agenda. In Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “Global Marshall Plan” with “fertility management” at the core of the plan — meaning ubiquitous government-regulated abortion and contraceptive use.

 Past popes quoted the scriptural admonition “Be fruitful and multiply,” but this pope, to the delight of environmentalists, says Catholics should not breed “like rabbits.” “Good Catholics,” he said, should practice “responsible parenthood.” Even the hideous CNN anchor Carol Costello couldn’t believe her ears, tweeting: “As a Catholic, it’s kinda shocking to hear @Pontifiex say, ‘Catholics must not breed like rabbits.’ Really?”

Elaborating on that remark, the Malthusian pope recalled the time he rebuked one of his parishioners — a mother who had seven children by caesarean section — for “tempting God.” She was guilty of “irresponsibility,” he said…

 … Once again it becomes clear that traditional teaching, not departures or politicizations of it, serve as the only hope for mankind. “Be fruitful and multiply” is a slogan of hope. The modern church traffics in despair. Perversely, it sees in Covid a chance to gloat and a pretext for its propaganda. The modern church also takes the meaning out of sacrifice and “austerity,” turning it from glorious to grim: a giving up not of good things but of bad things. The environmentalism to which this pope subscribes is increasingly a religious cult, but not a salvific one, for in saving the earth under it man must first destroy himself. [https://spectator.org/the-malthusian-pope/]

The Epoch Times reported that the COVID-19 lockdowns may have a “Malthusian” world depopulation effect that could bring about a “culture of death” outcome of “reduc[ing] 100 million people to grinding poverty while causing suffering and death”:

Pandemic-related lockdowns in developing countries may reduce 100 million people to grinding poverty while causing suffering and death on a scale that may dwarf the human effects of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19, sources say.

Experts say that in recent years, growing economic freedom has lifted huge segments of the world population out of destitution.

“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in 2018. “This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”

But the sharp, sudden economic contraction caused by COVID-19 has inflicted serious damage on the global economy.

Steven J. Allen, distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Capital Research Center, told The Epoch Times that the effect of the spread of free markets “on the poorest people, has been to raise them out of poverty, and then, this comes along and just knocks them right back down.”

The lockdowns “don’t appear to have had any positive effect in terms of stopping the virus,” added Allen, who earned a doctorate in biodefense from George Mason University.

“Progressives [who have supported the lockdowns more strongly than conservatives] never really think about the impact their policies have on those who can’t afford them. It’s going to take years to recover from this.”

The outlook for the economy is grim, according to Kenneth Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. The “economic catastrophe” caused by the pandemic is “likely to rival or exceed that of any recession in the last 150 years,” he wrote in April…

 … David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, said in the spring that while the world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s “also on the brink of a hunger pandemic.”

“Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the specter of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”

While 135 million people currently are close to the brink of starvation, Beasley said his organization projects that “due to the Coronavirus, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”[https://www.theepochtimes.com/developed-worlds-lockdowns-may-be-catastrophic-for-third-world-poor_3466168.html]

 Is it possible that the COVID lockdowns could kill millions of the poor by starvation? 

According to The Guardian, the coronavirus “[c]urbs on the movement of people, because of the lockdown, also threatens to create shortages of farm labour at a crucial time of year for many crops” which “could double [the] number of people going hungry.”
Another reason for this The Guardian reported is because “[f]ood supplies across the world will be ‘massively disrupted’ according to “some of the world’s biggest food companies have warned.” (The Guardian, “Coronavirus could double number of people going hungry,” April 9, 2020)

It appears that the totalitarian lockdowns are not just anti-Christian and unconstitutional, but also could possibly kill millions more than could be killed by the coronavirus.

Are the coronavirus lockdowns a kind of genocide against the poor on a worldwide basis by the media, the globalists and the cowardly conservative world leaders? Headlines across the globe show this may already be happening:

“Divided [India] Delhi under lockdown: ‘If coronavirus doesn’t kill me, hunger will'(The Guardian, March 2020)

“Navajo Nation [in the United States]: Fears of hunger as COVID-19 lockdown to intensify”(Al Jazeera, April 8, 2020)

“In Zimbabwe, ‘you win coronavirus or you win starvation”(ABC News, March 14, 2020)

The above ABC News article showed that dying from the coronavirus is a minor concern for Africans compared to the real concern of dying from hunger:

“‘It’s better to get coronavirus while looking for money than to sit at home and die from hunger,’ Kampira said, to the loud approval from other vendors.”

Are the totalitarian lockdowns killing thousands of Kampira and possibly millions like him by starvation?

Are all the leftist American and world leaders who are continuing to issue the totalitarian lockdowns willing to commit a type of starvation genocide against the poorest of the poor on a worldwide basis?

Are they willing to become like Joseph Stalin who killed millions by starvation in the Ukraine in 1932-33?

There is a German government assessment reporting that the totalitarian lockdowns could kill many more than could be killed by the coronavirus:

Tichys Einblick revealed that a leaked impact assessment from the German Ministry of the Interior says that the lockdown may kill more than the COVID-19.

Lockdown Sceptics reported:

“The following is a translation of a press release put out by Tichys Einblick, a German magazine”

“The lockdown and the measures taken by the German federal and central governments to contain the coronavirus apparently cost more lives – for example of cancer patients – than those actually killed by it. This is the result of an internal analysis by the “Protection of Critical Infrastructures” unit in the Federal Ministry of the Interior which has been made available to members of the ministry’s crisis team and leaked to Tichys Einblick magazine.”

“The 86-page paper with its critical evaluations – for example, of the data submitted by the Robert Koch Institute – has since been dismissed by the ministry as being an “isolated individual opinion”. According to information from Tichy’s Einblick, the paper’s author – a senior official at the ministry”

“– has now been suspended.”

“The study claims that the decisions of the ministry’s crisis team are exaggerated and that they cause more damage than they avoid.”

‘At the moment, supposedly protective measures cause further serious damage every day, financially as well as medically. They supposedly even cause a large number of avoidable deaths. It is the crisis management that has to be held responsible for this,” the author writes. “Coronavirus essentially kills people who would statistically have died anyway because they had reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies could no longer bear additional everyday stress factors. The danger of Covid-19 was therefore overestimated.’

“With Covid-19, there have been no more than 250,000 deaths worldwide over this quarter of the year, while the 2017–18 flu outbreak alone claimed 1.5 million lives. ‘The risk is obviously not bigger than with many other viruses, so we have probably been dealing with a global, yet unnoticed, false alarm all along.’”

“Even worse: ‘The collateral damage is now higher than the apparent benefit.’”

“The seriously ill will die due to a lack of treatment because intensive care beds are now reserved for coronavirus patients. Operations are being postponed. ‘The deaths caused by that cannot be assessed seriously, yet experts already assume that there are between 5,000 and up to 125,000 patients who will die or have already died due to postponed surgery.’”

“The paper also sees a higher death rate as a result of the coronavirus measures in nursing: ‘The forced reduction of care in nursing homes in March and April 2020 will have caused premature deaths. For 3.5 million people in need of care, an additional death rate of 0.1% would result in 3,500 additional deaths. In the absence of more precise estimates, it is not known whether there are more or fewer.’”

“The data provided by the Robert Koch Institute used by the ministry’s crisis team as the basis for their decision-making are criticized as being unusable: ‘The ratings are often speculative, sometimes implausible. Unfortunately, the crisis team’s evaluations rely solely on these data.’ It is necessary to improve the data so that the pandemic can ‘finally be assessed with reasonable accuracy’”.

“Conclusion: ‘The actual crisis management and the actions by the political decision-makers could be causing gigantic preventable damage for our society that could far exceed the potential damage of the coronavirus itself and could in the process cause unimaginable suffering.’”[https://lockdownsceptics.org/analysis-by-a-senior-official-at-the-german-ministry-of-the-interior/]

Moreover, the Irish Society for Christian Civilization report on the COVID-19 apparently says that the lockdowns could kill millions of poor due to hunger and starvation:

The Devastating Social Impact of the “Great Shutdown”: the Pandemic of Extreme Poverty 
On April 9, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, declared we would see “the worst economic consequences since the Great Depression” of 1929, causing a drop in income per inhabitant in over 179 countries. The senior official added that poor or emerging countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America “are at high risk,” all the more so as capital is migrating out of them at a rate three times faster than the 2008 financial crisis, which will trigger liquidity and solvency problems.[22] 
 Just five days later, the I.M.F. released its forecasts regarding what it called “the Great Shutdown”: a contraction of 3% of world GDP in 2020, with Europe and the United States being the most affected by the depression (-7.5% and -6.5% respectively). It does not rule out the possibility of an even more brutal drop in 2021. The social effect of the recession will be severe, with unemployment in the Eurozone increasing by 40% (reaching 9.2%) and tripling in the U.S.A. to reach 10.4% of the total workforce.[23] “Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe,” stated Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labor Organization.

 
The I.L.O. did indeed release an April 7 report, saying that “the crisis is causing an unprecedented reduction in economic activity and working time. As of 1 April 2020, estimates indicate that working hours will decline in the current quarter (Q2) by around 6.7 percent, which is equivalent to 195 million full-time workers.”[24] Huge losses are expected at all income levels but especially in high to middle-income countries (7% loss, equivalent to 100 million full-time workers), which is much greater than the effects of the 2008 financial crisis. The sectors most affected will be hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, retailing, administrative activities, and services. The ILO report states that there is a high risk that the final figure will be much higher than the initial projection of 25 million unemployed.[25] This figure of 25 million certainly was extremely optimistic, since a study by the African Union suggested that Africa alone would see the suppression of 20 million jobs, and indebtedness would escalate.[26] As far as the United States is concerned, it went from almost full employment in February “to mass unemployment expected to reach 20% in April. In less than a month, 22 million jobs have disappeared,” says the Figaro’s Washington correspondent.[27] The global result will be an exponential increase in extreme poverty. “I see no historical equivalent to the threat that COVID-19 poses to the most vulnerable populations,” said Robin Guittard, Oxfam campaign manager in France.[28] In a study released on April 8, researchers at King’s College London and the National University of Australia predict that the pandemic could bring extreme poverty to half a billion of the planet’s inhabitants, destroying the progress made in the past three decades.[29] 

The Increase in Deaths From Hunger in Poor Countries Will Be Much Greater Than That of COVID-19 Victims 

hed populations will be disastrous. Even the World Health Organization, the biggest promoter of strict stay-at-home measures, recognizes that there is a close link between extreme poverty and poor health. 
In a study published in conjunction with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it recognizes the obvious, namely, that “The poor suffer worse health and die younger. They have higher than the average child and maternal mortality, higher levels of disease, and more limited access to health care and social protection.”[30]

Consequently, more than 3.42 million people died of hunger in the first months of 2020, a daily average of 30,800 deaths. 

That is, almost five times more than the global number of deaths by COVID-19 on April 5, the day registering the highest number of fatalities (6,367 victims) worldwide so far. The World Food Program predicts that the loss of tourism revenues, the decrease in remittances and travel and other restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic will double the number of poor people suffering from acute hunger, adding 130 million to the approximately 135 million already existing in that category. “‘COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread,’ said Arif Husain, chief economist and director of research, assessment, and monitoring at the World Food Programme (WFP).”[31] David Beasly, WFP Executive Director, exclaimed in an interview with The Guardian: “Now, my goodness, this is a perfect storm. We are looking at widespread famines of biblical proportions.”[32] Statistically, this increase in acute hunger resulting from the economic collapse caused by confinement measures could be responsible for 30,000 additional daily deaths. 

A sizable share of those deaths would probably have been avoided if instead of listening to WHO ayatollahs and media icons, the authorities had listened to the opinions of other experts who suggested vertical isolation or smart virus control measures. In so doing, they would protect the population at risk (the elderly and people with serious underlying diseases) and quarantining those infected by the virus after carrying out thousands of tests.[33] This is not an unrealistic alternative. This plan was highly successful in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Georgia, and Iceland.[34] In the first three Asian countries mentioned and in Japan, work stoppages affected only 10% of the active population.[35] The effectiveness of this strategy so far has been largely demonstrated. The total number of deaths in these four countries, with a combined population of 257.4 million people, today amounts to only 489, which corresponds to a mortality rate of 1.9 victims per million.

In contrast, in Italy, despite the horizontal insulation strategy followed, where the entire population was ordered to stay at home, the figure was 391.32 victims per million (23,660 deceased), that is, 205 times more! 

A March 19 editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it well, three days after the release of the Imperial College’s fantasy projections and even before the Oxford University report. It was titled “Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown: No Society Can Safeguard Public Health for Long at the Cost of Its Economic Health.”[36] It is a pity that neither this editorial nor the above figures were shown to government officials who, driven by the good intention of saving lives and advised by WHO directors and Imperial College researchers, decided to halt “non-essential” economic operations in their countries. The impact of this paralysis will be all the more acute as “isolation, even if intermittent, should go on until 2022 in several parts of the world if a vaccine does not appear,” according to the magazine Isto é, referencing “a study by Harvard University, published in the journal Science.”[37]

[https://www.isfcc.org/post/the-most-monumental-social-engineering-ideological-transshipment-effort-in-history-is-bolstered]

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Also, pray an Our Father now for God to give President Donald Trump and Catholic cardinals and bishops the grace to do His will in this present crisis.

RIP MCINTYRE

WAR By: E.P. Unum September 5, 2020 No sane person relishes the thought of War.  War is the greatest scourge of mankind and anyone who has been to war will tell you that. But make no mistake, America is at war today. The guns are silent in this conflict but our nation has been paralyzed by fear from largely an unknown and invisible invader known as COVID-19. It was unleashed on the world by China who seized upon an opportunity to launch a virus manufactured in a lab in Wuhan, China and that virus, is a weapon of mass destruction equally as potent than any cyber or nuclear attack. We were caught asleep at the wheel as were 188 countries around the world. We have responded with typical American resilience, tenacity, dedication, ingenuity and resolve. But what if it happens again? Do we have the stamina, the will to achieve victory? The other day while picking up a prescription from my pharmacy, I asked a very bright pharmacist how he would re-open America. Well, I wish I’d had a camcorder to record his emotional, justified tirade. “Joe I just don’t have the facts, and it seems that neither does anyone else. I turn to one source for information and they say one thing. I turn to another and they say something different. There are the “openers” and there are the “status quo” advocates looking at the same available information like economists and coming up with different conclusions. People are increasingly afraid – big time – and no one seems to be able to explain the true story to them because they are confused themselves. I’m frustrated as hell and give up on trying to figure things out. Frequently, the patients ask me for my opinion and I feel like I let them down for I have none.”  So, this is an attempt to help clarify what is the broader message of COVID-19 and, in addition, suggestions on how to begin to open America, alleviate fear and focus attention on the things we can do to address this crisis.                                      THE TRUE UNTOLD COVID-19 STORY This relatively benign virus, as far viruses go, arrived like a thief in the night, and all we had as a defense against it were questionably effective masks, gloves, social distancing and ventilators for when patients were in crisis.  Our nation’s military has satellite imagery capable of viewing a gnat on the ass of an elephant from hundreds of miles in space, sophisticated radar able to track missiles and aircraft, but none of these modern military technologies were capable of identifying this invader! Puzzlingly, few asked why we had no other weapons. More importantly, we have been lulled into incorrectly believing that a COVID-19 vaccine is the solution to this national continuing catastrophe. It is not! Not by a long shot. Let me explain. There are few vaccines that are totally effective against viruses and bacteria. Regarding viruses, to develop a single vaccine – to my knowledge no one has proposed administering two different types of vaccines together – requires an enormous effort, time and costs. Even if successful, it won’t be 100% effective as well as not lasting a lifetime. That is the nature of vaccines. Just think about the flu vaccine…people still get the flu and die from the flu…and we have a vaccine for it! Succinctly put, COVID-19 will not disappear but become dormant and will remain with us. That is a clinical fact. Let us assume for the moment that the FDA proudly announces on October 1, 2020 that they have tested a vaccine and it is efficacious (it works!) and is completely safe. How do we go about insuring everyone in America is vaccinated? The hard-nosed answer is we cannot. There are people who will refuse the vaccine based on the fact that they feel it cannot be safe and because democrats and their media twits will say “Trump forced this into the market too fast.” Then there are those who will refuse vaccination for themselves and their children because they read someplace that vaccines cause autism. I have no doubt the machinery is in place to effectively distribute the vaccine but getting people to accept it is entirely a different subject.  If you think giving Governors and Mayors power over people in their states and cities works, think about this: How about new rules which say restaurants cannot serve patrons who have not been vaccinated! So, all of a sudden you will need a card from a physician or clinic indicating you have been vaccinated in order to go out to eat. What about school? Can you imagine children being turned away from school because they have not had the magical COVID-19 vaccination?  The list is endless and puts power into the hands of the wrong people who have demonstrated that they are woefully inept during this crisis. I give you Andrew Cuomo Governor of New York and Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey. Now, just imagine if another different coronavirus is “accidentally” released into our country. I am not trying to create unnecessary fear but such an occurrence is not very difficult to imagine and must be viewed as likely to happen. When that happens, the entire lengthy vaccine process must begin anew with virtually zero probability of success for the total eradication of the infection. These are just the facts and Anthony Fauci, MD and Deborah Birx, MD know it full well. Modern, inexpensive, relatively easy to perform technology such as CRISP and gain-in-action experiments makes it possible to create new, highly infectious and lethal microorganisms even in a hidden small rogue controlled laboratory. For example, the bacterium which causes the bubonic plague that historically has killed multi-millions of people and changed the course of history is still with us.  Fortunately, current antibiotics are effective clinical treatments against this lethal bug. But, with modern bioengineering technology, however, the genome may be modified to make it resistant to such antibiotics. The unequivocal message of COVID-19 is that biological warfare, in addition to conventional, nuclear, and cyberspace warfare, has arrived, and we are woefully unprepared to fight potential enemy microorganisms. A daunting challenge to any President regardless of political party or affiliation.  Yes, we have the Biological Weapons Convention which prohibits the creation of lethal microorganisms and the dismantling of existing ones, but it is generally ignored and impossible to regulate. Because of the power of our competitive, pervasive modern information-misinformation system, and a mainstream media who long ago scrapped the disciplines of journalistic integrity, the public and even our leaders have been lulled into believing that a COVID-19 vaccine is the answer to our problem. It clearly is not. We must continue to develop a vaccine, but let’s not be fooled. What then is the answer? It is to develop pharmaceuticals or drugs like penicillin and insulin or biologicals which, for example, contain mixtures of immunological substances that will effectively treat and cure viral and bacterial infections.  Unlike vaccines which require thousands of patients and long periods of time for testing of efficacy and safety, treatment remedies can be rapidly and inexpensively clinically evaluated to determine their effectiveness in a small number of patients within months. But, of course, continued research and development of vaccines must also continue for there is the possibility of discovering treatment vaccines however remote and, also because the scientific knowledge gained is invaluable. Though treatment therapies are clearly the answer, for some reason this solution is generally ignored by the media and, therefore, the public is generally unaware of it. For example, physician and former Commissioner of the FDA, Scott Gottlieb, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal emphasizing that treatment therapies such as pharmaceuticals or drugs are the best answer. To date, however, I have seen no media follow-up on this critical message which is a statement unto itself regarding our information system and understanding what we are dealing with.  Fortunately, I do know that President Trump and the NIH has authorized ongoing research into therapeutics while the search for a vaccine continues but that one salient fact is largely unknown because the media hasn’t publicized it. That brings us to the next question of what exactly is going on with research. That’s difficult to precisely answer for we, with certain exceptions regarding controversial drugs, are inundated by information solely regarding vaccines. The good news is that expanding technology such as Artificial Intelligence coupled with our superb men and women scientists and research-oriented medical doctors are now in full gear. Stephen DeFelice, MD, a close friend and colleague, is now retired from a lifetime of medical research which included a time at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Dr. DeFelice, among many other things, introduced a drug into the United States that saved the lives of thousands of children and adults with mitochondrial myopathy, a devastating often fatal condition in children and adults. Steve has been heavily involved with medical discovery and clinical research for over half a century. He tells me that our capacity to discover new therapies is now breathtaking and he would not be surprised if some major medical breakthrough of some type comes soon.  Orchestrated by the swift action and leadership of President Trump, it’s marvelous to observe how our private pharmaceutical and biotech industries have, with never before experienced speed, teamed-up together with the government to meet the COVID-19 challenge. For example, because of growing antibiotic resistance and increasing deaths due to septicemia, particularly in the hospitalized elderly, private pharmaceutical companies have teamed up in a novel type of joint venture to conquer these stubborn superbugs, the discoveries of which can be applied to bacterial warfare.  Regarding research, efforts on pharmaceuticals and biologicals, though with surprising little media coverage, continues unabated, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a treatment discovery for COVID-19 will be discovered before a truly effective vaccine is. Now the gripping question is what do we do in the meantime?  WHY AND HOW TO OPEN AMERICA For a number of technology–driven reasons our country is in a phase of turmoil, fear and social unrest, much of it fueled by COVID19, but a great deal of it driven by well- funded Marxist and Communist groups who have seized upon the upheavals in our society to throw gasoline on the fire. If truth be told, much of this is encouraged by liberal/ progressive democrats who want to use this as a reason to drive President Trump and his administration from office. In this climate of hate and fruitless division, our domestic and international adversaries, and they’re more than a few beginning with China, are observing how this relatively benign virus is paralyzing our country and wondering about how an “accidental release” of another coronavirus or other type would play out. Make no mistake about it, we are at war with this virus and need a battle plan to defeat it, and that plan should also be helpful in responding to future microorganism attacks.   A DECLARATION OF WAR The first step is for the Congress to declare war on this virus; to justifiably label COVID-19 as an enemy of war similar to those of World War II where lives were both risked and lost in order to defeat the enemy. The famous Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz, wrote that, “War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.” Is there any doubt that COVID-19 is forcing us to bend to its will? It has permeated every aspect of American life from economic stability to defenseless children.   A long- time friend and colleague of mine, whose career has been exclusively dedicated to helping parents of children with disabilities and disease, told me how this virus is depriving children, such as children with autism, from receiving their critical therapies as well as causing familial turmoil among their parents and siblings. This exists for other conditions as well such as cerebral palsy, neuromuscular disorders, epilepsy, tourette’s, etc.. In America, that cannot continue. There are 6.0 million families in America caring for children with disabilities and special health care needs – conditions that medicine cannot cure – we cannot abandon them. I do not hold out much hope for the Congress to take such action, but, if they do not, the President should clearly call for it, and act as if we are indeed at war. As General Douglas MacArthur so ably reminded us, “in warthere can be no substitute for victory.” The logical and compelling conclusion is to immediately have a strategy to re-open our country and to do so resolutely and with purpose.  So let us take stock in what we have learned over these past ten months. What we have learned in dealing with COVID-19 is that we have developed excellent treatment regimens and therapeutics to deal with serious cases of the infection so that a relatively minuscule number of people actually die from the disease. We now know that only .003 of our population actually dies from this infection. We also know that the vast majority of serious level infections occur in the elderly, so we should be able to focus our attention on that segment of our population. We must remember that the vast majority of people who do contract the infection recover quickly and completely. That needs to be driven home often and with conviction because it is true. Two close personal friends, husband and wife, ages 77 and 78 were hospitalized back in February 2020 with COVID 19. They were in serious condition and on ventilators. They were treated with a cocktail of  Hydroxychloroquine, AZT and Zinc and recovered completely in one week’s time. Both are doing fine today. AMERICA NEEDS TO OPEN: Currently, there are two major paths regarding a national strategy:  (1) stay the course and continue our retreat until an unequivocal effective therapy is discovered, or, (2) boldly move forward with the opening. Regarding the latter, we need to stop the media’s attention to the rising level of those testing positive for COVID-19 because in many respects, the testing we are doing is extremely sensitive and picks up traces of bacteria that are actually dormant and have little consequence in terms of manifesting serious illness. Sort of like discovering a human hair in a room which the person has left. The likelihood that the infection will cause sickness in non- elderly patients with no comorbidities is remote. We must stop fear mongering and dwelling on the number of deaths 24/7 because it has now been established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that only 6% of the recorded deaths actually were due from COVID-19 as opposed to dying with COVID-19. There is a huge difference in these terms! It is a major distinction.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt calmly and directly in his famous Fireside Chats, told a nation in the depths of the depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. His words seem fitting today. We must stop seeing shadows and put aside our fear and get on with living our lives. We are not facing an existential threat. Stop worrying about dying and start enjoying living. Our schools need to open and our teachers need to get back into the classroom because it is safe to do so and because they owe it to those young girls and boys to provide them the best education possible. That is why they became teachers in the first place. Honor your commitment to education; it takes priority over your membership in a union. Again, the preoccupation with the number of cases is essentially irrelevant. There is more harm to our population in terms of depression, anxiety, fear, drug addiction and an inability to put food on the table and care for those in need by keeping our schools closed than by reopening. Ditto for small businesses, airlines, hotels and restaurants. Machiavelli wrote that “in threatening times people are highly receptive to trustworthy leaders and will, despite the real or potential spelled-out hardships, eagerly accept and follow their leadership.” Emmanuel Kant echoed this in his writings as well.  President Trump has demonstrated the skill, courage and will to guide us through this crisis. The democrats would have you believe that his actions have been deficient, but that is pure nonsense. He orchestrated a private sector/government partnership and quickly resolved the state deficiencies in PPE such as ventilators; ordered the retrofitting of two U.S. Navy Hospital Ships and deployed them in record time to New York and New Jersey and Los Angeles where they sat for over a month unused despite a 1,000 bed modern hospital/ surgical rooms. Trump used the Army Corps of Engineers to build massive 3,000-bed hospital facilities at the Javits Center in New York and Mosconi Center in San Francisco where they went essentially unused. He did the same in NYC’s Central Park. Trump launched a massive effort to conduct research into development of a vaccine by streamlining to less than a year a process that typically takes 4-7 years before approval is given by the FDA. At the same time he authorized under “Operation Warp Speed” the simultaneous research into vaccines, biotherapeutics and treatment regimens. All have yielded remarkable positive results.  Had Trump not taken immediate action to restrict travel to the U.S. from China and Europe, we would have had millions dead rather than 183,000! So, regardless of your personal opinion about President Trump – he is the right man at the right time in the right spot. He gets things done, which is what we need in a leader.    If we are to be successful as a nation, the media needs to put aside its unproductive hatred for our President and stop inducing fear through its pointed broadcasts and efforts to discredit the President at every turn. This is about our ability to survive and defeat an enemy just as we did in World War II. It is time to show courage. Speaking of courage, it was Aristotle who rated courage as the highest virtue because of its quality to overcome fear in order to achieve goals and objectives and to help others. It was his student, Alexander the Great, when asked what was one of the greatest qualities of his leadership answered, “Do not hesitate in times of crises.” The time for bickering and posturing is over. We are at war. Act accordingly. Email Link  https://conta.cc/3jSRYGs RIP MCINTOSH

Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who forthrightly condemned the culture of death underlying their [“Malthusian mindset”] liberalism. But this pope [Francis] ratifies their [“culture of death”] propaganda

COVID Lockdowns: Does Francis have a “Culture of Death” Jeffrey Sachs “Malthusian Mindset” that could Kill Millions of the Poor by Starvation?

September 06, 2020

http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/09/covid-lockdowns-does-francis-have.html?m=1

The American Spectator said that the apparently “culture of death” Francis has a “Malthusian mindset” which teaches that the planet needs to be depopulated. This elitist teaching has been associated with the Nazi eugenics movement which passed laws that targeted what it called “useless eaters.“

World depopulation is pushed by global elitists such a Jeffrey Sachs who is a collaborator of the pro-COVID-19 lockdowns Francis. [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2017/12/does-pope-francis-work-for-soros-un_27.html?m=1 and  http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/01/are-anti-ewtn-where-peter-is-lewis-gay.html?m=1] 

The Spectator article said that “Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who forthrightly condemned the culture of death underlying their [“Malthusian mindset”] liberalism. But this pope [Francis] ratifies their [“culture of death”] propaganda”:

The pope’s one-sided treatment of technology, free markets, and consumerism is astonishing. He completely ignores all of the evidence that those developments have alleviated poverty, improved health, and raised standards of living. He decries the old “colonialism” while peddling a new one: a global environmentalism emanating from the UN that keeps poor nations poor in the name of saving the planet.

Out of his Malthusian mindset he welcomes the economic shutdowns that followed the emergence of Covid. Never mind all the havoc that has wreaked on human lives across the world. Under the pope’s socialism, equal misery is to be preferred to unequal wealth.

Is it any wonder why Jeffrey Sachs and company celebrate this pope? They chafed under Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who forthrightly condemned the culture of death underlying their liberalism. But this pope ratifies their propaganda. At the beginning of his pontificate, they cheered his comment that the Church is too “obsessed” with abortion and artificial birth control — stances that environmentalists regard as a major obstacle to their climate change agenda. In Earth in the Balance, Al Gore called for a “Global Marshall Plan” with “fertility management” at the core of the plan — meaning ubiquitous government-regulated abortion and contraceptive use.

 Past popes quoted the scriptural admonition “Be fruitful and multiply,” but this pope, to the delight of environmentalists, says Catholics should not breed “like rabbits.” “Good Catholics,” he said, should practice “responsible parenthood.” Even the hideous CNN anchor Carol Costello couldn’t believe her ears, tweeting: “As a Catholic, it’s kinda shocking to hear @Pontifiex say, ‘Catholics must not breed like rabbits.’ Really?”

Elaborating on that remark, the Malthusian pope recalled the time he rebuked one of his parishioners — a mother who had seven children by caesarean section — for “tempting God.” She was guilty of “irresponsibility,” he said…

 … Once again it becomes clear that traditional teaching, not departures or politicizations of it, serve as the only hope for mankind. “Be fruitful and multiply” is a slogan of hope. The modern church traffics in despair. Perversely, it sees in Covid a chance to gloat and a pretext for its propaganda. The modern church also takes the meaning out of sacrifice and “austerity,” turning it from glorious to grim: a giving up not of good things but of bad things. The environmentalism to which this pope subscribes is increasingly a religious cult, but not a salvific one, for in saving the earth under it man must first destroy himself. [https://spectator.org/the-malthusian-pope/]

The Epoch Times reported that the COVID-19 lockdowns may have a “Malthusian” world depopulation effect that could bring about a “culture of death” outcome of “reduc[ing] 100 million people to grinding poverty while causing suffering and death”:

Pandemic-related lockdowns in developing countries may reduce 100 million people to grinding poverty while causing suffering and death on a scale that may dwarf the human effects of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19, sources say.

Experts say that in recent years, growing economic freedom has lifted huge segments of the world population out of destitution.

“Over the last 25 years, more than a billion people have lifted themselves out of extreme poverty, and the global poverty rate is now lower than it has ever been in recorded history,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said in 2018. “This is one of the greatest human achievements of our time.”

But the sharp, sudden economic contraction caused by COVID-19 has inflicted serious damage on the global economy.

Steven J. Allen, distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Capital Research Center, told The Epoch Times that the effect of the spread of free markets “on the poorest people, has been to raise them out of poverty, and then, this comes along and just knocks them right back down.”

The lockdowns “don’t appear to have had any positive effect in terms of stopping the virus,” added Allen, who earned a doctorate in biodefense from George Mason University.

“Progressives [who have supported the lockdowns more strongly than conservatives] never really think about the impact their policies have on those who can’t afford them. It’s going to take years to recover from this.”

The outlook for the economy is grim, according to Kenneth Rogoff, the Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy and professor of economics at Harvard University. The “economic catastrophe” caused by the pandemic is “likely to rival or exceed that of any recession in the last 150 years,” he wrote in April…

 … David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, said in the spring that while the world is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s “also on the brink of a hunger pandemic.”

“Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the specter of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.”

While 135 million people currently are close to the brink of starvation, Beasley said his organization projects that “due to the Coronavirus, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020. That’s a total of 265 million people.”[https://www.theepochtimes.com/developed-worlds-lockdowns-may-be-catastrophic-for-third-world-poor_3466168.html]

 Is it possible that the COVID lockdowns could kill millions of the poor by starvation? 

According to The Guardian, the coronavirus “[c]urbs on the movement of people, because of the lockdown, also threatens to create shortages of farm labour at a crucial time of year for many crops” which “could double [the] number of people going hungry.”
Another reason for this The Guardian reported is because “[f]ood supplies across the world will be ‘massively disrupted’ according to “some of the world’s biggest food companies have warned.” (The Guardian, “Coronavirus could double number of people going hungry,” April 9, 2020)

It appears that the totalitarian lockdowns are not just anti-Christian and unconstitutional, but also could possibly kill millions more than could be killed by the coronavirus.

Are the coronavirus lockdowns a kind of genocide against the poor on a worldwide basis by the media, the globalists and the cowardly conservative world leaders? Headlines across the globe show this may already be happening:

“Divided [India] Delhi under lockdown: ‘If coronavirus doesn’t kill me, hunger will'(The Guardian, March 2020)

“Navajo Nation [in the United States]: Fears of hunger as COVID-19 lockdown to intensify”(Al Jazeera, April 8, 2020)

“In Zimbabwe, ‘you win coronavirus or you win starvation”(ABC News, March 14, 2020)

The above ABC News article showed that dying from the coronavirus is a minor concern for Africans compared to the real concern of dying from hunger:

“‘It’s better to get coronavirus while looking for money than to sit at home and die from hunger,’ Kampira said, to the loud approval from other vendors.”

Are the totalitarian lockdowns killing thousands of Kampira and possibly millions like him by starvation?

Are all the leftist American and world leaders who are continuing to issue the totalitarian lockdowns willing to commit a type of starvation genocide against the poorest of the poor on a worldwide basis?

Are they willing to become like Joseph Stalin who killed millions by starvation in the Ukraine in 1932-33?

There is a German government assessment reporting that the totalitarian lockdowns could kill many more than could be killed by the coronavirus:

Tichys Einblick revealed that a leaked impact assessment from the German Ministry of the Interior says that the lockdown may kill more than the COVID-19.

Lockdown Sceptics reported:

“The following is a translation of a press release put out by Tichys Einblick, a German magazine”

“The lockdown and the measures taken by the German federal and central governments to contain the coronavirus apparently cost more lives – for example of cancer patients – than those actually killed by it. This is the result of an internal analysis by the “Protection of Critical Infrastructures” unit in the Federal Ministry of the Interior which has been made available to members of the ministry’s crisis team and leaked to Tichys Einblick magazine.”

“The 86-page paper with its critical evaluations – for example, of the data submitted by the Robert Koch Institute – has since been dismissed by the ministry as being an “isolated individual opinion”. According to information from Tichy’s Einblick, the paper’s author – a senior official at the ministry”

“– has now been suspended.”

“The study claims that the decisions of the ministry’s crisis team are exaggerated and that they cause more damage than they avoid.”

‘At the moment, supposedly protective measures cause further serious damage every day, financially as well as medically. They supposedly even cause a large number of avoidable deaths. It is the crisis management that has to be held responsible for this,” the author writes. “Coronavirus essentially kills people who would statistically have died anyway because they had reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies could no longer bear additional everyday stress factors. The danger of Covid-19 was therefore overestimated.’

“With Covid-19, there have been no more than 250,000 deaths worldwide over this quarter of the year, while the 2017–18 flu outbreak alone claimed 1.5 million lives. ‘The risk is obviously not bigger than with many other viruses, so we have probably been dealing with a global, yet unnoticed, false alarm all along.’”

“Even worse: ‘The collateral damage is now higher than the apparent benefit.’”

“The seriously ill will die due to a lack of treatment because intensive care beds are now reserved for coronavirus patients. Operations are being postponed. ‘The deaths caused by that cannot be assessed seriously, yet experts already assume that there are between 5,000 and up to 125,000 patients who will die or have already died due to postponed surgery.’”

“The paper also sees a higher death rate as a result of the coronavirus measures in nursing: ‘The forced reduction of care in nursing homes in March and April 2020 will have caused premature deaths. For 3.5 million people in need of care, an additional death rate of 0.1% would result in 3,500 additional deaths. In the absence of more precise estimates, it is not known whether there are more or fewer.’”

“The data provided by the Robert Koch Institute used by the ministry’s crisis team as the basis for their decision-making are criticized as being unusable: ‘The ratings are often speculative, sometimes implausible. Unfortunately, the crisis team’s evaluations rely solely on these data.’ It is necessary to improve the data so that the pandemic can ‘finally be assessed with reasonable accuracy’”.

“Conclusion: ‘The actual crisis management and the actions by the political decision-makers could be causing gigantic preventable damage for our society that could far exceed the potential damage of the coronavirus itself and could in the process cause unimaginable suffering.’”[https://lockdownsceptics.org/analysis-by-a-senior-official-at-the-german-ministry-of-the-interior/]

Moreover, the Irish Society for Christian Civilization report on the COVID-19 apparently says that the lockdowns could kill millions of poor due to hunger and starvation:

The Devastating Social Impact of the “Great Shutdown”: the Pandemic of Extreme Poverty

On April 9, Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, declared we would see “the worst economic consequences since the Great Depression” of 1929, causing a drop in income per inhabitant in over 179 countries. The senior official added that poor or emerging countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America “are at high risk,” all the more so as capital is migrating out of them at a rate three times faster than the 2008 financial crisis, which will trigger liquidity and solvency problems.[22] 

 Just five days later, the I.M.F. released its forecasts regarding what it called “the Great Shutdown”: a contraction of 3% of world GDP in 2020, with Europe and the United States being the most affected by the depression (-7.5% and -6.5% respectively). It does not rule out the possibility of an even more brutal drop in 2021. The social effect of the recession will be severe, with unemployment in the Eurozone increasing by 40% (reaching 9.2%) and tripling in the U.S.A. to reach 10.4% of the total workforce.[23] “Workers and businesses are facing catastrophe,” stated Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labor Organization.

 
The I.L.O. did indeed release an April 7 report, saying that “the crisis is causing an unprecedented reduction in economic activity and working time. As of 1 April 2020, estimates indicate that working hours will decline in the current quarter (Q2) by around 6.7 percent, which is equivalent to 195 million full-time workers.”[24] Huge losses are expected at all income levels but especially in high to middle-income countries (7% loss, equivalent to 100 million full-time workers), which is much greater than the effects of the 2008 financial crisis.

The sectors most affected will be hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, retailing, administrative activities, and services. The ILO report states that there is a high risk that the final figure will be much higher than the initial projection of 25 million unemployed.[25] This figure of 25 million certainly was extremely optimistic, since a study by the African Union suggested that Africa alone would see the suppression of 20 million jobs, and indebtedness would escalate.[26] As far as the United States is concerned, it went from almost full employment in February “to mass unemployment expected to reach 20% in April. In less than a month, 22 million jobs have disappeared,” says the Figaro’s Washington correspondent.[27] The global result will be an exponential increase in extreme poverty. “I see no historical equivalent to the threat that COVID-19 poses to the most vulnerable populations,” said Robin Guittard, Oxfam campaign manager in France.[28] In a study released on April 8, researchers at King’s College London and the National University of Australia predict that the pandemic could bring extreme poverty to half a billion of the planet’s inhabitants, destroying the progress made in the past three decades.[29] 

The Increase in Deaths From Hunger in Poor Countries Will Be Much Greater Than That of COVID-19 Victims The consequences of this exponential increase in poverty on the health of impoverished populations will be disastrous. Even the World Health Organization, the biggest promoter of strict stay-at-home measures, recognizes that there is a close link between extreme poverty and poor health. 
In a study published in conjunction with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it recognizes the obvious, namely, that “The poor suffer worse health and die younger. They have higher than the average child and maternal mortality, higher levels of disease, and more limited access to health care and social protection.”[30]

Consequently, more than 3.42 million people died of hunger in the first months of 2020, a daily average of 30,800 deaths. 
That is, almost five times more than the global number of deaths by COVID-19 on April 5, the day registering the highest number of fatalities (6,367 victims) worldwide so far. The World Food Program predicts that the loss of tourism revenues, the decrease in remittances and travel and other restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic will double the number of poor people suffering from acute hunger, adding 130 million to the approximately 135 million already existing in that category. “‘COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic for millions who are already hanging by a thread,’ said Arif Husain, chief economist and director of research, assessment, and monitoring at the World Food Programme (WFP).”[31] David Beasly, WFP Executive Director, exclaimed in an interview with The Guardian: “Now, my goodness, this is a perfect storm. We are looking at widespread famines of biblical proportions.”[32] Statistically, this increase in acute hunger resulting from the economic collapse caused by confinement measures could be responsible for 30,000 additional daily deaths. 

A sizable share of those deaths would probably have been avoided if instead of listening to WHO ayatollahs and media icons, the authorities had listened to the opinions of other experts who suggested vertical isolation or smart virus control measures. In so doing, they would protect the population at risk (the elderly and people with serious underlying diseases) and quarantining those infected by the virus after carrying out thousands of tests.[33] This is not an unrealistic alternative. This plan was highly successful in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Georgia, and Iceland.[34] In the first three Asian countries mentioned and in Japan, work stoppages affected only 10% of the active population.[35] The effectiveness of this strategy so far has been largely demonstrated. The total number of deaths in these four countries, with a combined population of 257.4 million people, today amounts to only 489, which corresponds to a mortality rate of 1.9 victims per million. 

In contrast, in Italy, despite the horizontal insulation strategy followed, where the entire population was ordered to stay at home, the figure was 391.32 victims per million (23,660 deceased), that is, 205 times more! 
A March 19 editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it well, three days after the release of the Imperial College’s fantasy projections and even before the Oxford University report. It was titled “Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown: No Society Can Safeguard Public Health for Long at the Cost of Its Economic Health.”[36] It is a pity that neither this editorial nor the above figures were shown to government officials who, driven by the good intention of saving lives and advised by WHO directors and Imperial College researchers, decided to halt “non-essential” economic operations in their countries. The impact of this paralysis will be all the more acute as “isolation, even if intermittent, should go on until 2022 in several parts of the world if a vaccine does not appear,” according to the magazine Isto é, referencing “a study by Harvard University, published in the journal Science.”[37][https://www.isfcc.org/post/the-most-monumental-social-engineering-ideological-transshipment-effort-in-history-is-bolstered]

Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Mass and the Church as well as for the Triumph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Also, pray an Our Father now for God to give President Donald Trump and Catholic cardinals and bishops the grace to do His will in this present crisis.

The Dems Plan to Steal the Presidency By William L. Gensert September 5, 2020(emphasis added) It comes as a stark and frightening realization that the Democrats are not the idiots they appear to be. Stark, because they tried to use the Steele Dossier, a folder full of ridiculous and easily debunked rumor and imaginative narrative, to at first steal an election and then, depose a president. And they are now trying to convince Americans that “law and order” Trump, who has decried the riots from the beginning and offered federal support to Democrat-run cities and states to stop them, is somehow now responsible for all the destruction and violence.   It is obvious they think Americans are the stupid ones. It is frightening because the realization comes with an understanding that the Democrats have a many-faceted plan to steal the Presidential Election, now less than two months away. They tried everything in Trump’s first term, from the aforementioned dossier to the “phone call” impeachment. None of it worked. Then, the disease from the despicable Chinese befell America. It was a tragedy for America but a stroke of luck for Democrats. They have used the pandemic to so frighten the nation into serial semi-permanent shutdowns intended to so immiserate Americans through the destroyed economy as to cost Trump the election. And mephitic Dems have tried to blame their intention to maintain perpetual lockdowns on Trump’s mismanagement of COVID. The rioting was another fortuitous opportunity for Dems. With the coopting of the BLAME (Black, Latin, Antifa, and Minority Excluded) agenda as their own, they hoped to keep support for the rioting high enough to continue through the election, thereby allowing the Dems to use the rioters as stormtroopers at the polls in November to deny Trump voters their right to vote. Of course, they mistook sympathy for a cause as support for the violence and destruction and are only now coming to the epiphany that would seem to have obvious non-epiphany status to non-morons: People don’t like their lives, families, property, and livelihoods threatened by violent anarchists who will never be pleased no how much they are given. Oh… and Americans as a group are loath to surrender to outsiders breaking and burning their stuff as they prosecute bodily harm to their loved ones.  And, now that the polls are turning against the rioters, it may seem idiotic that the Dems are trying to blame Trump for the riotous havoc laying waste to our cities they have fomented and excused for months, if not years. Yet, it is all part of their plan. Apart from having Antifa intimidate at the polls, the Biden Campaign has hired hundreds of lawyers to supposedly prevent Trump from stealing the election, but who, in reality, are intended to muck up with legal technicalities and lawsuits what is looking more and more to be a Trump landslide. At least until they “find in someone’s trunk” or manufacture enough votes to turn the election. Republicans have always seemed remarkably flaccid in their response to these “lost” and “found” votes always being cast for the Democrat.As Angelo M. Codevilla warned: “Consider the 2020 election. In July, the Democratic National Committee engaged some 600 lawyers to litigate the outcome, possibly in every state. No particular outcome of such litigations is needed to set off a systemic crisis. The existence of the litigations themselves is enough for one or more blue state governors to refuse to certify that state’s electors to the Electoral College, so as to prevent the college from recording a majority of votes for the winner. In case no winner could be confirmed by January’s Inauguration Day, the 20th Amendment provides that Congress would elect the next president.* Who doubts that, were Donald Trump the apparent winner, and were Congress in Democratic hands, that this would be likelier than not to happen?” COVID is essential for this as well because Dems are going to maintain that since Democrats believe in science and the Chinese flu is more dangerous than ever, most Biden supporters will elect to vote by mail and with the vote totals known early on Election Day, Dems will know exactly how many votes they will need to “harvest” in the days succeeding the election to steal the election. In addition, look for the fabled “October Surprise.” For instance, the NY attorney general will probably attempt to charge Trump with some imaginary crime before election day. It is common knowledge a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, and there is no bigger ham than Trump — all they need do is make the sandwich. If they have problems vote-harvesting enough votes to steal the election, Dems will, as they did in 2016, roll out media heads, celebrities, and prominent Democrats to convince members of the Electoral College not to award their votes to Trump. This time they will coerce through doxing, violence, economic intimidation, tweetstorm, and social media ostracism to impel electors to award their votes to Biden. Of course, they will facilitate illegals voting as well as people illegally voting more than once. And then, there are the Democrats’ strongest supporters, the dead, and the almost dead, whose ballots they will complete and deliver for them. Talk about vote harvesting… Americans need to be aware of the harassment they will receive from Democratic Party paramilitary members at the polls and be prepared. Trump must have a plan in place to fight for this victory and organize a resistance to the Democrats installing Joe Biden as president. *Section 3 of the 20th Amendment:”If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.” Email Link   https://conta.cc/35b8v4G Rip McIntyre

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Nancy’s Blow Out Could Lead to a Blowout Election by: Newt GingrichSeptember 3, 2020 Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given us a unique opportunity to perfectly understand the modern Democrats’ belief in aristocratic superiority. Her recent hypocrisy in going to her hair salon, which was supposed to be shut down due to San Francisco’s stringent (and Pelosi-supported) COVID-19 rules, is just one more example of Democratic members of the political aristocracy believing they are superior to citizens (the opposite of the founding premise of America). The American people have long resented the hypocrisy and arrogance by which a political aristocracy believes one set of rules applies to the public and a totally different set of rules applies to its interests and its family members. We knew that this double standard deeply offended most Americans in 1994, and that is why the first commitment of the Contract with America was to “require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress.” In a year when the political aristocrats have been imposing ruthless rules on the rest of us, there have been numerous examples of these same politicians breaking the rules – or allowing their family members to break them. Speaker Pelosi’s hair salon visit may be one of those rare sparks which sets off a huge fire. The outrage that the salon owner, Erica Kious, felt at being closed for months and then having Pelosi blatantly break the rules led to a video ambush which will become one of the major events of the 2020. Of course, Pelosi is trying to deflect the focus from her hypocrisy by claiming she was “setup.” Now – in addition to struggling to keep her business open due to the restrictions – Kious has been receiving death threats from Pelosi’s radical mob. Even CNN’s Don Lemon has called out Pelosi for her setup claim. The arrogance of Pelosi’s rule breaking is understandable to every person who gets a haircut – and every small business owner who is facing bankruptcy because of cumbersome, overbearing rules imposed by the political class. This same arrogance is being exercised across the country by other political elites. In addition to Pelosi, we’ve seen other Democratic leaders ignore or exempt themselves from onerous pandemic rules. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered 19 Central Valley counties to disallow indoor operations at restaurants, wineries, and a host of other businesses. Curiously, he did not include Madera County, where he and his wife own stock in a winery consortium, despite it bordering several other counties on the list. His winery only closed after Newsom’s hypocrisy and arrogance were called out. As most of his constituents in Arizona were quarantined and advised to stay home – and after Democrats pushed to allow remote voting in Congress because they said travel was too dangerous – US Rep. Greg Stanton traveled with his family to Utah to vacation. He even called into a House Transportation Committee hearing while he was on a boat. The message was clear: Regular Americans are supposed to remain locked down in their homes, but members of Congress get to go on vacation. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney disallowed in-door dining in the city he runs, but he was fine traveling to Maryland to have a meal inside. Americans stay home. Aristocrats dine out. As millions of Americans have been forced to forego traditional, in-person funerals for their loved ones, more than 50 members of the political elite (including Pelosi, numerous members of Congress, and Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser) attended the large indoor funeral for the late Rep. John Lewis of Georgia – and Bowser exempted attendees from DC’s quarantine travel rules afterward. Again, normal Americans have to limit their grieving rites. The political elite do not. Normal New Yorkers are told they must limit social interactions and public activities, while Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio goes to the gym. After lecturing Virginians to wear masks everywhere they go, Gov. Ralph Northam strolls the Virginia Beach boardwalk taking unmasked selfies with his supporters. Again, do as we say – not as we do. But this hypocrisy goes beyond coronavirus rules. As violence, looting, and riots pour through Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered a police detail to her neighborhood to protect her home and her family. In addition to this, she banned protests outside her home. Everyday Chicagoans have to cope with violence and a gutted police department. Lightfoot does not. Similarly, Minneapolis Council members Andrea Jenkins, Phillipe Cunningham, and Alondra Cano all started receiving taxpayer-funded private security ($63,000-worth) after violence broke out in their city. They all support defunding the city’s police department. The same goes for anti-police Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez. She had two LA police officers as personal security for herself and her home for two months while at the same time calling to defund the department. So, the political class deserves security, while normal citizens do not. Finally, a host of members of the political aristocracy oppose school choice for normal Americans but send their own children to expensive private schools. Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and many other Senate Democrats derided and mocked US Education Sec. Betsy DeVos for supporting school choice programs during her confirmation hearings.Meanwhile, Whitehouse himself and his children attended elite private boarding schools. In his own words, Whitehouse chose to send his kids to private schools to offer “the best education that I can for them, and I felt that, in their circumstances, the places that I chose to send them were the best schools for them.” Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) also opposed DeVos and school choice yet sent his children to elite private schools. These examples of aristocratic arrogance are exactly what President Donald Trump was referencing during his nomination speech at the Republican National Convention: “[Biden] takes his marching orders from liberal hypocrites who drive their cities into the ground while fleeing far from the scene of the wreckage. These same liberals want to eliminate school choice while they enroll their children in the finest private schools in the land. They want to open our borders while living in walled-off compounds and communities in the best neighborhoods in the world.  They want to defund the police while they have armed guards for themselves.” These double standards should form the basis for a privileged resolution in the US House of Representatives. It should state that Pelosi’s breaking the rules brought dishonor on the US House. Vice President Joe Biden should be challenged to condemn Pelosi’s violation (by the way, his children went to a private school while he opposes choice for the rest of us). And every Democratic House and Senate candidate should be challenged on whether they approve of Pelosi and others’ aristocratic rule breaking and arrogance. This could have a profound impact on federal, state, and local elections across the country this November. It can also force governments in Democratic-run states to realign and return to working for the People, not the political class. Email Link   https://conta.cc/2QXttLX Rip McIntosh

Archbishop Viganò: We will remain in the Church, fight the modernists who undermine the faith

‘It is not the traditional faithful – that is, true Catholics, in the words of Saint Pius X – that must abandon the Church in which they have the full right to remain and from which it would be unfortunate to separate; but rather the Modernists who usurp the Catholic name, precisely because it is only the bureaucratic element that permits them not to be considered on a par with any heretical sect.’Fri Sep 4, 2020 – 11:56 am EST

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September 4, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, responding to a set of questions published by LifeSite’s journalist Stephen Kokx, sets the record straight with regard to the ongoing battle for the faith in the Church. That is to say: he makes it clear that one has to remain in the Catholic Church and that, instead, those who undermine the faith as it has been handed down to us from the apostles have to leave. He calls upon faithful Catholics to fight and to live a life of sanctifying grace.

This new statement is important, inasmuch as in recent days, both Father Thomas Weinandy, as well as Father Raymond de Souza, spread the suspicion that the Italian prelate might be “schismatic,” thus intending to leave the Catholic Church. This suspicion had arisen because of Viganò’s critique of the Second Vatican Council and its detrimental effects on the life of the faith in the Church. For example, de Souza’s article is entitled: “Is Archbishop Viganò’s Rejection of the Second Vatican Council Promoting Schism?” And Weinandy stated: “My concern is that, in his radical reading of the Council, the archbishop is spawning his own schism.”

In an August 22 article published by the traditional Catholic newspaper Catholic Family News, Kokx had asked Viganò a set of questions with regard to what faithful laity can do in the midst of this Church crisis that is going back to the Council. 

Kokx suggested Viganò needs to give more advice to laity and priests on what to do next: “He’s certainly diagnosed the problem, but what are his solutions, if any? What, in other words, is it that he believes Catholics in the 21st century should do in response to the crisis?”

Archbishop Viganò’s response as published on September 1 by Catholic Family News (see full text below) is clear: it is not the faithful Catholics who oppose the changing of the faith, but those who perpetrate these changes that ought to be questioned. He writes that we need to discuss “the position of those who, declaring themselves Catholic, embrace the heterodox doctrines that have spread over these decades, with the awareness that these represent a rupture with the preceding Magisterium. In this case it is licit to doubt their real adherence to the Catholic Church, in which however they hold official roles that confer authority on them.”

If people who hold heterodox views are in positions of authority in the Church, he continues, “It is an illicitly exercised authority, if its purpose is to force the faithful to accept the revolution imposed since the Council.”SUBSCRIBEto LifeSite’s daily headlinesSUBSCRIBEU.S. Canada World Catholic

Thus, Viganò continues, “it is not the traditional faithful – that is, true Catholics, in the words of Saint Pius X – that must abandon the Church in which they have the full right to remain and from which it would be unfortunate to separate; but rather the Modernists who usurp the Catholic name, precisely because it is only the bureaucratic element that permits them not to be considered on a par with any heretical sect.”

In addition and on a practical level, the Italian prelate gives us advice on how to live and grow in the faith, working on our sanctification and remaining in the state of “sanctifying grace.” But at the same time, we are to assist and “comfort” good priests and bishops, seeking out reverent Masses. 

“Faithful laity have the right and the duty to find priests, communities, and institutes that are faithful to the perennial Magisterium,” Viganò explains. “And may they know how to accompany the laudable celebration of the liturgy in the Ancient Rite with adherence to sound doctrine and morals, without any subsidence on the front of the Council.”

Finally, Archbishop Viganò also praises the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which has defended the traditional faith for decades now. They “deserve recognition” for their work of preserving the Catholic faith, he says, and adds that he considers Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the founder of this Society, to be a “confessor of the Faith.”

Here we might remember that just recently, a cardinal stated that Lefebvre will one day be declared a “Doctor of the Church” and that he was “prophetic.”

Let us close with Viganò’s last words of his response to Kokx’s questions:

“The cure for rebellion is obedience. The cure for heresy is faithfulness to the teaching of Tradition. The cure for schism is filial devotion for the Sacred Pastors. The cure for apostasy is love for God and His Most Holy Mother. The cure for vice is the humble practice of virtue. The cure for the corruption of morals is to live constantly in the presence of God. But obedience cannot be perverted into stolid servility; respect for authority cannot be perverted into the obeisance of the court. And let’s not forget that if it is the duty of the laity to obey their Pastors, it is even a more grave duty of the Pastors to obey God, usque ad effusionem sanguinis.”

Below is the full statement by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, reprinted with permission:

Disclaimer: The following positions adopted and advice offered by Archbishop Viganò do not necessarily represent the views of LifeSiteNews and are presented only for your information.

Dear Mr. Kokx,

I read with lively interest your article “Questions for Viganò: His Excellency is Right about Vatican II, But What Does He Think Catholic Should Do Now?” which was published by Catholic Family News on August 22 (here). I am happy to respond to your questions, which address matters that are very important for the faithful.

You ask: “What would ‘separating’ from the Conciliar Church look like in Archbishop Viganò’s opinion?” I respond to you with another question: “What does it mean to separate from the Catholic Church according to the supporters of the Council?” While it is clear that no admixture is possible with those who propose adulterated doctrines of the conciliar ideological manifesto, it should be noted that the simple fact of being baptized and of being living members of the Church of Christ does not imply adherence to the conciliar team; this is true above all for the simple faithful and also for secular and regular clerics who, for various reasons, sincerely consider themselves Catholics and recognize the Hierarchy.

Instead, what needs to be clarified is the position of those who, declaring themselves Catholic, embrace the heterodox doctrines that have spread over these decades, with the awareness that these represent a rupture with the preceding Magisterium. In this case it is licit to doubt their real adherence to the Catholic Church, in which however they hold official roles that confer authority on them. It is an illicitly exercised authority, if its purpose is to force the faithful to accept the revolution imposed since the Council.

Once this point has been clarified, it is evident that it is not the traditional faithful – that is, true Catholics, in the words of Saint Pius X – that must abandon the Church in which they have the full right to remain and from which it would be unfortunate to separate; but rather the Modernists who usurp the Catholic name, precisely because it is only the bureaucratic element that permits them not to be considered on a par with any heretical sect. This claim of theirs serves in fact to prevent them from ending up among the hundreds of heretical movements that over the course of the centuries have believed to be able to reform the Church at their own pleasure, placing their pride ahead of humbly guarding the teaching of Our Lord. But just as it is not possible to claim citizenship in a homeland in which one does not know its language, law, faith and tradition; so it is impossible that those who do not share the faith, morals, liturgy, and discipline of the Catholic Church can arrogate to themselves the right to remain within her and even to ascend the levels of the hierarchy.

Therefore let us not give in to the temptation to abandon – albeit with justified indignation – the Catholic Church, on the pretext that it has been invaded by heretics and fornicators: it is they who must be expelled from the sacred enclosure, in a work of purification and penance that must begin with each one of us.

It is also evident that there are widespread cases in which the faithful encounter serious problems in frequenting their parish church, just as there are ever fewer churches where the Holy Mass is celebrated in the Catholic Rite. The horrors that have been rampant for decades in many our parishes and shrines make it impossible even to assist at a “Eucharist” without being disturbed and putting one’s faith at risk, just as it is very difficult to ensure a Catholic education, Sacraments being worthily celebrated, and solid spiritual guidance for oneself and one’s children. In these cases faithful laity have the right and the duty to find priests, communities, and institutes that are faithful to the perennial Magisterium. And may they know how to accompany the laudable celebration of the liturgy in the Ancient Rite with adherence to sound doctrine and morals, without any subsidence on the front of the Council.

The situation is certainly more complex for clerics, who depend hierarchically on their bishop or religious superior, but who at the same time have the right to remain Catholic and be able to celebrate according to the Catholic Rite. On the one hand laity have more freedom of movement in choosing the community to which they turn for Mass, the Sacraments, and religious instruction, but less autonomy because of the fact that they still have to depend on a priest; on the other hand, clerics have less freedom of movement, since they are incardinated in a diocese or order and are subject to ecclesiastical authority, but they have more autonomy because of the fact that they can legitimately decide to celebrate the Mass and administer the Sacraments in the Tridentine Rite and to preach in conformity with sound doctrine. The Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum reaffirmed that faithful and priests have the inalienable right – which cannot be denied – to avail themselves of the liturgy that more perfectly expresses their Catholic Faith. But this right must be used today not only and not so much to preserve the extraordinary form of the rite, but to testify to adherence to the depositum fidei that finds perfect correspondence only in the Ancient Rite.

I daily receive heartfelt letters from priests and religious who are marginalized or transferred or ostracized because of their fidelity to the Church: the temptation to find an ubi consistam [a place to stand] far from the clamor of the Innovators is strong, but we ought to take an example from the persecutions that many saints have undergone, including Saint Athanasius, who offers us a model of how to behave in the face of widespread heresy and persecuting fury. As my venerable brother Bishop Athanasius Schneider has many times recalled, the Arianism that afflicted the Church at the time of the Holy Doctor of Alexandria in Egypt was so widespread among the bishops that it leaves one almost to believe that Catholic orthodoxy had completely disappeared. But it was thanks to the fidelity and heroic testimony of the few bishops who remained faithful that the Church knew how to get back up again. Without this testimony, Arianism would not have been defeated; without our testimony today, Modernism and the globalist apostasy of this pontificate will not be defeated.

It is therefore not a question of working from within the Church or outside it: the winemakers are called to work in the Lord’s Vineyard, and it is there that they must remain even at the cost of their lives; the pastors are called to pastor the Lord’s Flock, to keep the ravenous wolves at bay and to drive away the mercenaries who are not concerned with the salvation of the sheep and lambs.

This hidden and often silent work has been carried out by the Society of Saint Pius X, which deserves recognition for not having allowed the flame of Tradition to be extinguished at a moment in which celebrating the ancient Mass was considered subversive and a reason for excommunication. Its priests have been a healthy thorn in the side for a hierarchy that has seen in them an unacceptable point of comparison for the faithful, a constant reproach for the betrayal committed against the people of God, an inadmissible alternative to the new conciliar path. And if their fidelity made disobedience to the pope inevitable with the episcopal consecrations, thanks to them the Society was able to protect herself from the furious attack of the Innovators and by its very existence it allowed the possibility of the liberalization of the Ancient Rite, which until then was prohibited. Its presence also allowed the contradictions and errors of the conciliar sect to emerge, always winking at heretics and idolaters but implacably rigid and intolerant towards Catholic Truth.

I consider Archbishop Lefebvre an exemplary confessor of the Faith, and I think that by now it is obvious that his denunciation of the Council and the modernist apostasy is more relevant than ever. It should not be forgotten that the persecution to which Archbishop Lefebvre was subjected by the Holy See and the world episcopate served above all as a deterrent for Catholics who were refractory toward the conciliar revolution.

I also agree with the observation of His Excellency Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallerais about the co-presence of two entities in Rome: the Church of Christ has been occupied and eclipsed by the modernist conciliar structure, which has established itself in the same hierarchy and uses the authority of its ministers to prevail over the Spouse of Christ and our Mother.

The Church of Christ – which not only subsists in the Catholic Church, but is exclusively the Catholic Church – is only obscured and eclipsed by a strange extravagant Church established in Rome, according to the vision of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. It coexists, like wheat with the tare, in the Roman Curia, in dioceses, in parishes. We cannot judge our pastors for their intentions, nor suppose that all of them are corrupt in faith and morals; on the contrary, we can hope that many of them, hitherto intimidated and silent, will understand, as confusion and apostasy continue to spread, the deception to which they have been subjected and will finally shake off their slumber. There are many laity who are raising their voice; others will necessarily follow, together with good priests, certainly present in every diocese. This awakening of the Church militant – I would dare to call it almost a resurrection – is necessary, urgent and inevitable: no son tolerates his mother being outraged by the servants, or his father being tyrannized by the administrators of his goods. The Lord offers us, in these painful situations, the possibility of being His allies in fighting this holy battle under His banner: the King Who is victorious over error and death permits us to share the honor of triumphal victory and the eternal reward that derives from it, after having endured and suffered with Him.

But in order to deserve the immortal glory of Heaven we are called to rediscover – in an emasculated age devoid of values such as honor, faithfulness to one’s word, and heroism – a fundamental aspect of the faith of every baptized person: the Christian life is a militia, and with the Sacrament of Confirmation we are called to be soldiers of Christ, under whose insignia we must fight. Of course, in most cases it is essentially a spiritual battle, but over the course of history we have seen how often, faced with the violation of the sovereign rights of God and the liberty of the Church, it was also necessary to take up arms: we are taught this by the strenuous resistance to repel the Islamic invasions in Lepanto and on the outskirts of Vienna, the persecution of the Cristeros in Mexico, of the Catholics in Spain, and even today by the cruel war against Christians throughout the world. Never as today can we understand the theological hatred coming from the enemies of God, inspired by Satan. The attack on everything that recalls the Cross of Christ – on Virtue, on the Good and the Beautiful, on purity – must spur us to get up, in a leap of pride, in order to claim our right not only not to be persecuted by our external enemies but also and above all to have strong and courageous pastors, holy and God-fearing, who will do exactly what their predecessors have done for centuries: preach the Gospel of Christ, convert individuals and nations, and expand the Kingdom of the living and true God throughout the world.

We are all called to make an act of Fortitude – a forgotten cardinal virtue, which not by chance in Greek recalls virile strength, ἀνδρεία – in knowing how to resist the Modernists: a resistance that is rooted in Charity and Truth, which are attributes of God.

If you only celebrate the Tridentine Mass and preach sound doctrine without ever mentioning the Council, what can they ever do to you? Throw you out of your churches, perhaps, and then what? No one can ever prevent you from renewing the Holy Sacrifice, even if it is on a makeshift altar in a cellar or an attic, as the refractory priests did during the French Revolution, or as happens still today in China. And if they try to distance you, resist: canon law serves to guarantee the government of the Church in the pursuit of its primary purposes, not to demolish it. Let’s stop fearing that the fault of the schism lies with those who denounce it, and not, instead, with those who carry it out: the ones who are schismatics and heretics are those who wound and crucify the Mystical Body of Christ, not those who defend it by denouncing the executioners!

The laity can expect their ministers to behave as such, preferring those who prove that they are not contaminated by present errors. If a Mass becomes an occasion of torture for the faithful, if they are forced to assist at sacrileges or to support heresies and ramblings unworthy of the House of the Lord, it is a thousand times preferable to go to a church where the priest celebrates the Holy Sacrifice worthily, in the rite given to us by Tradition, with preaching in conformity with sound doctrine. When parish priests and bishops realize that the Christian people demand the Bread of Faith, and not the stones and scorpions of the neo-church, they will lay aside their fears and comply with the legitimate requests of the faithful. The others, true mercenaries, will show themselves for what they are and will be able to gather around them only those who share their errors and perversions. They will be extinguished by themselves: the Lord dries up the swamp and makes the land on which brambles grow arid; he extinguishes vocations in corrupt seminaries and in convents rebellious to the Rule.

The lay faithful today have a sacred task: to comfort good priests and good bishops, gathering like sheep around their shepherds. Give them hospitality, help them, console them in their trials. Create community in which murmuring and division do not predominate, but rather fraternal charity in the bond of Faith. And since in the order established by God – κόσμος – subjects owe obedience to authority and cannot do otherwise than resist it when it abuses its power, no fault will be attributed to them for the infidelity of their leaders, on whom rests the very serious responsibility for the way in which they exercise the vicarious power which has been given to them. We must not rebel, but oppose; we must not be pleased with the errors of our pastors, but pray for them and admonish them respectfully; we must not question their authority but the way in which they use it.

I am certain, with a certainty that comes to me from Faith, that the Lord will not fail to reward our fidelity, after having punished us for the faults of the men of the Church, granting us holy priests, holy bishops, holy cardinals, and above all a holy Pope. But these saints will arise from our families, from our communities, from our churches: families, communities, and churches in which the grace of God must be cultivated with constant prayer, with the frequenting of Holy Mass and the Sacraments, with the offering of sacrifices and penances that the Communion of Saints permits us to offer to the Divine Majesty in order to expiate our sins and those of our brethren, including those who exercise authority. The laity have a fundamental role in this, guarding the Faith within their families, in such a way that our young people who are educated in love and in the fear of God may one day be responsible fathers and mothers, but also worthy ministers of the Lord, His heralds in the male and female religious orders, and His apostles in civil society.

The cure for rebellion is obedience. The cure for heresy is faithfulness to the teaching of Tradition. The cure for schism is filial devotion for the Sacred Pastors. The cure for apostasy is love for God and His Most Holy Mother. The cure for vice is the humble practice of virtue. The cure for the corruption of morals is to live constantly in the presence of God. But obedience cannot be perverted into stolid servility; respect for authority cannot be perverted into the obeisance of the court. And let’s not forget that if it is the duty of the laity to obey their Pastors, it is even a more grave duty of the Pastors to obey God, usque ad effusionem sanguinis.

+ Carlo Maria Viganò, Archbishop
September 1, 2020

Translated by Giuseppe Pellegrino

Maike Hickson

Democrat Mail Fraud Will Take Us to the Brink By: J.B. Shurk American Thinker September 4, 2020 Now that a top Democrat data analytics firm has finally confirmed that Democrats plan to claim victory weeks after the presidential election once enough of their “votes” show up in the mail to be counted, I don’t think any rational observer could view this as anything but a promise to destroy the legitimacy of the 2020 election.   The Democrats’ mission to fracture America permanently should be codenamed “Operation Chaos,” because it is chaos that they are preparing to unleash.  It was not a few thousand dollars worth of Russian Facebook posts and online internet trolls that nearly destroyed the Union after the 2016 election.  It was the way the Obama White House and an intelligence-law enforcement cabal run by the Democratic Party maliciously and intentionally magnified Russia’s limited hijinks into the greatest political hoax in American history.   The Democrats preferred to drag the United States through four years of nonsensical conspiracy theories, needless investigations, and cries of high treason rather than to acknowledge that President Trump had legitimately defeated Hillary Clinton.    The Democrats chose an unprecedented campaign of sabotage against an American president, and in doing so, they accomplished what Putin’s Russia could never have dreamed: they succeeded in convincing half of America that the 2016 election was stolen from them.  The Democrats and the Deep State that has aided and abetted their cause have sold bitter acrimony for four years and birthed our precarious pre-civil war tinderbox today. With American peace now hanging in the balance, will Democrats choose country over socialism and temper passions already overinflamed?  Of course not.  If four years of the Russia hoax has brought our nation to the brink of civil strife, the Democrats’ Operation Chaos will make it nearly impossible for wisdom and reason to succeed in the months ahead.  This fact alone should disqualify Democrats from office in 2020.  A party that is driving the country to civil war cannot be trusted to have the country’s best interests at heart.  Most Republicans (except the “useful idiots” who will look past corruption and fraud for the chance to remove President Trump) understand how the Democrats plan to use “cheat-by-mail” chaos to elevate a man who can’t remember his opponent’s name (or even his running mate’s) to commander in chief.  They have a three-tailed con in play: (1) attempt to win swing states fast and declare victory before fraudulent ballots can be scrutinized; (2) harvest loose ballots after election day until Trump vote leads disappear; (3) throw the whole mess into state and federal courts until a Democrat-leaning judge gives them a Democrat lead. At any time that one of these tails secures a Democrat victory, the “useful idiot” #NeverTrumpers and hacks in the press will aid the Democrats in quickly declaring the election over and calling for President Trump’s concession.  (When executing a good con, it’s always best to have “disinterested” third parties move the con along.)  By that point, offending ballots will be “disappeared” before they can ever be scrutinized again.  And at any stage of this dangerous game, if President Trump and his supporters fight the outcome, our efforts — not Democrat vote fraud — will be framed as “threats to democracy.”   All the chaos lying ahead was preventable, of course.   In the most modern and technically advanced nation in the history of the planet, the idea that the United States cannot vouchsafe the results of a democratic election is absurd.  All over the world successful elections take place without high-tech voting booths or sophisticated methods for tallying votes, but in America we are plagued with so much uncertainty as to whether our elections are the outcomes of massive fraud that election integrity is impossible.   You can’t have fair and equitable elections when every single American believes the vote is already rigged.  Obviously, if our constitutional republic is to utilize democratic elections to decide whether we choose Donald Trump’s “America First” policies or Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal, then safeguarding the American vote is paramount over any other responsibility of our federal and state governments.   Instead, because the political establishment in America routinely ignores the wishes of American voters, it has turned a blind eye to the corruption and inaccuracy of American elections.   Democrats (and “Republican” enablers like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan) argue that election fraud is a myth when it is, in fact, well documented.  They argue that non-citizen voting occurs in such low numbers as to be meaningless when meaningful elections every year are decided by a few hundred votes.  They argue that election judges can be trusted when many have been prosecuted for altering votes and stuffing ballots.   They argue that sensible voter identification laws are unnecessary (and racist) when votes routinely show up from dead voters, non-voters, and voters who long ago left the jurisdictions in which they’re now cast.  They argue that ballot harvesting is nothing to worry about when the outcomes of elections are overturned days and weeks after election day.  They argue that the same U.S. Postal Service that just endorsed the Democratic Party can be trusted to impartially handle Republican votes.   By never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats have so effectively guaranteed “cheat-by-mail” in swing states this year that stacks of ballots can go out with coupon mailers and come back without proper signatures or any other voter authentications and go right into the ballot box.  A recent election in New Jersey was just thrown out after it was determined that mail-in vote fraud had tainted 22% of the total vote, while twenty-eight million mail-in ballots have gone missing in the last four elections.  And a top Democrat operative revealed last week how he and others have been committing voter fraud on a “grand scale” for decades.  Gone are the days when the United States recognized the solemnity of the vote by securing for each citizen a private and uncoerced secret ballot.  Now Democrat election operatives can simply go from hospital bed to hospital bed in nursing homes around the country “collecting” votes or swallow up entire mail drops at apartment buildings before residents even hold them in their hands.    Operation Chaos will test the limits of our country’s bonds.  How does a free country governed by the people destroy itself? When elected representatives make it impossible for the people to believe they are still governing.   If we had a functioning free press in this country that hadn’t thrown out objectivity and professionalism for partisan entanglements and personal vendettas, the two biggest stories of the last four years would both center on the efforts of the Democratic Party to undermine American elections so completely that the breakup of the Union is not only a real possibility but the Democrats’ likely objective.    They sabotaged the peaceful transition of power in 2016 with the Russia hoax.   In 2020, whether they can eke out victory or not, they have implemented a “cheat-by-mail” voting catastrophe that will render the 2020 election outcome unavoidably illegitimate to the losing side.    It is a strategy intended to damage the country.   It is an operation meant to unleash chaos.  Email Link https://conta.cc/35jq9Dt

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SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

The Poorest of the Poor

ANTHONY ESOLEN

CRISIS MAGAZINE

The Lord has commanded us to assist the poor. This is not an option. How shall we do it?

One of the paradoxical results of obsessive political agitation is that it makes political discussions almost impossible. Imagine someone on a sickbed, afflicted with a disease that makes the lightest touch upon the skin feel like a thorn or a lighted match. The patient cannot rest, yet movement brings no relief. The doctor prescribes a neural block if the pain is localized in a limb, or a general anodyne if not. Such is the state of the politically agitated. Slogans do the work of the anodyne when real thought is a terror. And the neural block? A general agreement that we will not talk about certain things at all.

Yet we must have the discussions. God placed Adam in the garden to be its lord, tilling it and considering how to make it most agreeable and fruitful. Reason is the faculty whereby man shares in the creative and provident wisdom of God. “Reason also is choice,” says God in Paradise Lost, not as willfulness, but rather as singling-out and determining, just as an artist chooses one color rather than another to communicate the beauty he perceives.

If I may press the analogy, politics cannot provide for itself the principles of its action, no more than a theory of agriculture could relieve Adam from the responsibility of creative choice, or a theory of art can determine for the artist what he shall paint and how. Yet the patient, feverish, sweating, and neuralgic, cannot bear the discussion. Certain of his words resemble principles—“equality,” “mercy,” “prosperity”—but he cannot describe their essence, their mutual relations, their proper fields of action, or their applications. They have have been conscripted into slogans. The canny diagnostician can tell as much by the patient’s irritated and irrational reaction as soon as one of them is called up for analysis.https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=0&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1599240639033&ccvid=962367478&pvid=1955176066

In this state of affairs, we might try some gentle treatment, leading the patient by degrees backwards from practical choices toward first principles. Let me take poverty, for example, and let us set aside our current situation, lest the patient cry out and shut down the discussion before it begins.

When my grandfather came to the United States in 1920, he was eighteen years old and he had but a few dollars in his pocket, enough to buy a little food for a couple of days and to get him a train ticket from New York City to the small town in Pennsylvania where he would live the rest of his life. He spoke not a word of English. He had left school at eight years old to work on a road crew in dry and dusty Calabria, a land of prickly pears, lizards, mountains, gorges, fair soil, and little rain.

He was not, however, morally or sociologically poor. He took for granted that his lot in life was to work with his shoulders and his back. In the town where he settled, this meant the coal mines during the workday, and otherwise the small plot of land where he built his house. All the Italians stretched out their pay by growing most of their own fruit and vegetables and keeping chickens. He could never have managed had it not been for my grandmother, who could, like all the women, cook, sew, mend, clean, preserve food, tend the garden, wring a chicken’s neck and pluck it, and do many other things that our patient on the sickbed has forgotten or never known to begin with.

Nor was he really alone when he arrived in Pennsylvania. When the Italians moved to America, they did so as families, neighborhoods, and villages. They had known one another in Italy, and they caught up with one another in America. Most of these families were intact. And they could not have remained so, what with the fearful challenges of a new land, if they had lacked the moral virtues that help establish family life and protect it. They understood that if a boy and a girl conceive a child out of wedlock, they have let their families down, as their families have let the neighborhood and the village down. The sin was not (and is not) merely personal. It is social.

Materially, they were quite poor. They lacked many material things that the poorest among us take for granted—my grandfather never owned a car, and when my parents got married, they did not have a washing machine or a dryer or even a bathtub. But their poverty was only material. They could depend upon their brothers and sisters and neighbors, and those could depend upon them. Children played outdoors all the time, or they worked when they weren’t playing; they were never idle, because there was too much to do.

What did such people need to bring them out of poverty? Not much. They were like young men strong of limb and brain, but weak from inanition. It is easy to bring them to health: you feed them, and nature takes over. They were owed a just wage though they did not get it, but what they did earn was sufficient to keep their children in school for twelve years, making for material success in the next generation. They were owed and they got schools that did the modest work of raising up youngsters who could read and write, who could do practical arithmetic, who knew some history, and who could go on to more sophisticated studies if they chose (most did not). They were owed and they got protectionagainst vices that corrupt the family, and society depends upon strong families. Entertainment was mostly clean, and mind-emptying drugs had not yet become a common recreation.

Their poverty, for the most part, was not our poverty. Our patient is not simply weak from hunger. He is a much harder case, even though he enjoys plenty of material goods that nobody in my grandfather’s time could imagine. When the miners came up to the free air at the end of the day, they were black from head to foot, but they were not squalid. Our patient now does not live a clean life. Not many people do, but when you are poor already you cannot afford the luxury of squalor.

His bones are rickety. Men and women in my grandfather’s time had been instructed in all kinds of practical work that squeezed the juice out of every dime. Our patient now has no such skills. Money trickles through his fingers. In particular, boys once knew that they had to learn to do things that would become their responsibility when they attained the strength of full manhood. But our patient has only a loose connection to his father, and the schools—those little birds fascinated by the cobra of equality—will not move one inch to revive programs that in practice must benefit mostly boys directly and girls only indirectly, because some of the latter will marry those boys and gain the benefit of their reliability and strength.

What to do? Free college for everyone, some say. Yet college is largely a swindle, and I do not think that swindlers mend their ways when you heap them with money. And again, the slogans, the agitation, and the nettle-fire in the brain keep us from saying what should be obvious: higher education is not for everyone. Many people must make a living by their hands, shoulders, backs, and legs. Their work should never be scorned. Our Lord was a construction worker. Saint Paul made tents. Saint Peter hauled nets of fish from the stormy Sea of Galilee.

Can we have the discussion? A great part of the problem of poverty in our time is that millions of boys, many of them fatherless, are not ready at age eighteen either for college or a trade. Yet I suspect that there is ample untapped demand for the tradesman’s labor. Of course, to learn a trade well you need some virtues that we neglect or scorn: submission to a master, diligence, self-denial, the keeping of promises, and patience. You will not learn these virtues in our schools. You will certainly not learn them from mass entertainment or politics.

What about it, fellow Catholics across the political divide? Can we at least beginwith practical matters that may clear our heads for the greater moral questions?https://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/like.php?action=like&app_id=485814248461205&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fx%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter%2F%3Fversion%3D46%23cb%3Df2edbfbb6a5e8e%26domain%3Dwww.crisismagazine.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.crisismagazine.com%252Ff648dfb099118a%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=660&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crisismagazine.com%2F2020%2Fthe-poorest-of-the-poor&layout=button_count&locale=en_US&sdk=joey&share=true&show_faces=false58

By Anthony Esolen

Anthony Esolen, a contributing editor at Crisis, is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. Dr Esolen has authored several books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization (Regnery Press, 2008), Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (ISI Books, 2010) and Reflections on the Christian Life (Sophia Institute Press, 2013).

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

The Cancelling of Flannery O’Connor

DONALD DEMARCO

CRISIS MAGAZINE

It has been 56 years since Flannery O’Connor passed from the earth at the all-too-young age of 39. Her legacy as an outstanding writer and extraordinary human being seemed firmly established. However, two precipitating factors have led to her previously untarnished legacy being questioned and the removal of her name from a residence hall at Loyola University Maryland.

The first factor is the George Floyd incident, which ignited an acute hypersensitivity to racism in America. People began seeing racism virtually everywhere. No one was immune from the charge. The second is an article that appeared in a mid-June issue of The New Yorker and was written by Paul Elie, entitled “How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” Elie’s title stirs controversy, but it also poisons the well. It does not question whether O’Connor was racist. It simply assumes that she is, the question being to what degree?

Of particular concern to Elie, in marshalling “evidence” about her alleged racism, is a 1964 letter in which O’Connor states: “About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing, prophesying, pontificating kind, like the James Baldwin kind… My question is usually would this person be endurable if white.”

“A pox on both your houses,” she once said.https://secureaddisplay.com/i/view/js/?Viewable=0&isMobile=0&AULU=31049420180502T2200289306460AB42454C400A8A16937CB3EB93D7&cb=1599240196062&ccvid=962354050&pvid=1955158839

Writing for the The Catholic World Report, Marc Guerra remarks that Elie’s “essay does not reveal anything substantially new—either in terms of factual information or moral and spiritual truth—about O’Connor.” Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, a former Loyola professor, summarily rejects Elie’s claims. She argues that “Elie mines the book for what he refers to as ‘nasty’ passages, removes them from the historical and personal context necessary for understanding them, and presents them to The New Yorker readership with little explanation, all as evidence of O’Connor’s American sin of racism.”

O’Donnell is well qualified to defend Flannery. She is the author of Radical Ambivalence: Race in Flannery O’Connor, in which she carefully examined Flannery’s literary works and personal letters to make a more thorough judgment of her alleged racism. Her verdict is that Flannery O’Connor was most assuredly not a racist. Professor O’Donnell, who currently teaches a course in American Catholic Studies at Fordham University, sent a letter to the president of Loyola Maryland signed by 200 writers, urging him not to remove O’Connor’s name from the residence hall. She stated that “Flannery O’Connor is among the finest writers America has produced. More to the point, she was an observant Catholic whose work is deeply informed by the tenets of her faith. O’Connor believes in the Imago Dei, the fact that every human being is beloved of God and made in the image of God.”

Among the co-signers of O’Donnell’s letter is Alice Walker, a distinguished African American novelist who won the National Book award for The Color Purple. She testifies that the “essential O’Connor is not about racism at all, which is so refreshing, coming, as it does, out of such a racial culture. If it can be said to be ‘about’ anything, then it is ‘about’ prophets and prophecy, ‘about’ revelation. And ‘about’ the impact of supernatural grace on human beings who don’t have a chance of spiritual growth without it.”

The Flannery O’Connor issue may have a greater negative impact on Catholic education in America than in tarnishing O’Connor’s legacy. As Marc Guerra writes, “Taken as a whole, it is difficult not to see Loyola’s choice as a choice not to teach its students about the greatest 20th-century, American Catholic writer of fiction and the Church’s understanding of the mysterious relation of sin, grace, and redemption.”

Flannery O’Connor was an unswerving Catholic in the sense that she made no concessions to political correctness. She consistently saw people in the light of Christ’s vision of them. “For I am no disbeliever in spiritual purpose,” she averred. “I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means for me the meaning of life is centered in our redemption in Christ and what I see in the world I see in relation to that. I don’t think that this is a position that can be taken halfway or one that is particularly easy in these times to make transparent in fiction.”

Will Catholic educators shy away from the likes of Flannery O’Connor in the future because they will seem to be unbending? Will they deem that today’s Marxist utopian vision will supplant the traditional view that all human beings are stained by original sin? Will they interpret the Catholic view as too negative?

The president of Loyola Maryland is sending the wrong message to all Catholic educators. Angela Alaimo O’Donnell laments the effacing of Flannery’s name: “The cancelling of a writer who possesses the wisdom and the power of Flannery O’Connor demonstrates our impoverished imaginations, our narrowness, and our inability to embrace complexity.” These are strong words. But they need to be stated and reiterated. The Catholic vision is one that our society cannot do without. If O’Connor’s name is removed from the residence hall at Loyola Maryland, may it be restored where it has been forgotten, renewed where it has lain dormant, and revitalized where it has been underappreciated.

[Photo credit: spatuletail/shutterstock.com]

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By Donald DeMarco

Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus of Saint Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the Saint Austin Review and the author, most recently, of Reflections on the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Search for Understanding.