Friday's Thoughts: Pope Francis, Corbyn's Labour Woes, and Some Other Stuff

By Kit

It is a double-post today. First, a few words on the Pope's speech and then an op-ed column-length post on the latest woes for the new UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. And after that, some random stuff on Japan and the Trump.


Thoughts on Pope Francis

Papal infallibility is a funny thing. In theory, other than canonization of saints, it applies only to those statements that deal with the faith and morals of the whole church. The result is that it has a rather narrow application, just how narrow is up for debate. Some cast a fairly wide, though still narrower than often believed, net, others very narrow. Some have argued that only six statements by Pope’s in the past few hundred years are grounded in infallibility.

In practice, however, it’s application is a tad muddier. You see, it is often applied only to those statements where the Pope and the person speaking are in agreement, and the Pope whose infallibility is being referenced need not even be alive for it to matter. And a later or earlier Pope’s statement may contradict him. All that matters is the Pope whose opinion is being referenced is in agreement with the person speaking on this particular subject.

Thus, our current situation.

As a Protestant, what the Pope says has little sway on my opinion but what he says can have an impact on what a lot of other people think about economics or immigration. Or, rather, what they think he is saying about economics or immigration.

Therefore it behooves American conservatives to (respectfully, mind you) both point out where he is wrong and correct him, articulating just why he is wrong while acknowledging where he is right, or at the very least has a point, and give the conservative movement’s response to that issue, be it concerns about income inequality or the environment. American conservatism has answers for each of those concerns or issues.

We live in a country where, as Thomas Sowell has repeatedly stated, most of the people in the bottom twenty percent will end up in the top twenty percent at some point in their lives. That is the miracle of the Free Market system. The least we could do is argue for it. Passionately and respectfully.

There is a lot to like in his speech, though there are, naturally, many points of disagreement, such as the death penalty. But instead of shirking from the debate, shrieking in shrill tones about the “Marxist Pope!” we should be using it as a starting point for stating where we differ and why we differ and, when we find places of even some agreement, using it to find common ground. This speech can serve as a basis for many arguments on behalf of American Conservatism.

And, who knows? Maybe the Pontifex will hear us.


Corbyn's New New Labour Woes

Since hard-left Jeremy Corbyn became head of the Labour Party, riding a wave of very vocal support from the Russell Brand Red Twitter Youth, he has done exactly what Tony Blair and and the rest of the New Labour folks predicted he would do; make the Labour Party look like a bunch of crazed commies who make the raving Caledonian lunatic George “I miss the USSR” Galloway look remarkably sane and lucid. (Ok, maybe not lucid)

In the past week or two we have had at least two, no three, controversies flare up over his election as Labour leader, most involving his Shadow appointments. Now, before we go on, a “Shadow” appointment is an appointment in Parliamentary governments made by the leading opposition party. They sort-of serve as spokesmen and women for the opposition party on various issues. A “Shadow Home Office Secretary” will serve to present the Party’s positions on Home Office-related policies in opposition to the governing party’s policies.

First, there was John McDonnell, picked as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to their Secretary of the Treasury, sort of). It turns out, in 2003 the man called for the IRA terrorists to received honors. Really.

At a meeting to commemorate Bobby Sands, the IRA terrorist who died during a hunger strike, he said, “It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table.”

Now, considering it was Irish Republican terrorists who spent 30 years bombing or shooting Britons and Northern Irish Protestants, ultimately killing 2,139 people, 1,771 of them killed by IRA, including a few Tory MPs, this did not go over well, especially once it was brought up by MP Nigel Dodds during the Prime Minister’s Questions (which you can see here: LINK) and McDonnell was forced issue an apology, which was more of an “I’m sorry if you were offended” apology than the more appropriate “I’m sorry for being a terrorist-loving twit” apology.

Oh, and in 2010 he joked if he could go back in time he would “assassinate Thatcher”, which the IRA tried to do in 1984. Classy. (He “apologized” for that one, too)

Second, despite having a majority-woman cabinet, none of those women held senior leadership posts, prompting an uproar from the Feminist wing of the Labour Party. Women were appointed but all to junior posts like “Shadow Secretary of State for Farming” (for an idea how that particular appointment has gone, see below) or some similar post that no federal government with a population of 50 million or more with a country that is more than capable of federalism should have. As one feminist tweeted, “It doesn't count as a majority women shadow cabinet if you just make up clearly more junior positions for the women.”

But, really, they shouldn’t be too surprised, as one departing Labour Party member said, this is a man who has been best buddies with the kind of Islamist preachers who have deep, thoughtful, and intellectual discussions on under what circumstances a man may beat his wife. And it wasn’t like this was unknown, there were numerous stories in the papers about his connections with radical Islamists, but these hard-core Feminists never seem to care about domestic abuse or sexual slavery when carried out in the Muslim world. After all, those men are probably just reacting logically to white patriarchal imperial aggression, or something.

Third, one of his female appointees, this Kerry McCarthy, a self-proclaimed “militant vegan”, as shadow environment and agriculture minister, (a choice The Guardian a week ago called “a good move”) stated she wants a massive, widespread public service campaign depicting the dangers of and the “evils” caused by meat-eating similar to the public service campaign done a decade or so earlier against smoking.

She, like McDonnell, has a history of nutty. 3 years ago, for instance, she took to twitter to call a fellow passenger wearing a somewhat risqué t-shirt on a train a “lager drinking oaf” who “should’ve been killed before he could breed.” Oh, and she had earlier been named the Labour Party’s “twitter tsar” before she apparently got canned for releasing some election results too early (which is illegal in the UK).

What a charming group of folks Mr. Corbyn has surrounded himself with! May they bring us many more joys in the years to come. Anyway, here is a good song for Mr. Corbyn, one that I think he will appreciate: LINK


Miscellaneous

Rich Lowry joked on Fox News that Carly Fiorina cut off Trump’s balls. Trump, who has said far worse, took offense, and went to twitter about it, proclaiming that he should be fired and fined by the FCC.
First, the FCC has no jurisdiction over Cable news.
Second, Trump has said far worse.
Third, trying to sue the Club for Growth for running ads and demanding Lowry and Fox News be fined by the FCC has a whiff of Putinism to it; using the powers of the state against political enemies.

A study was done at Fukushima on possible illnesses caused by the leaked radiation. Apparently, the stress caused by the evacuation in fear of the radiation was more dangerous than the radiation itself. Far more dangerous. There were 1,600 deaths stress-related deaths caused that have been connected to the evacuation while “Even among Fukushima workers, the number of additional cancer cases in coming years is expected to be so low as to be undetectable, a blip impossible to discern against the statistical background noise.”
Proving once again that, unless the reactor was built by the Soviet Union, nuclear power is pretty safe.
(Source: New York Times)

On Japan, the Japanese Diet, their parliament, passed a law re-interpreting the Japanese post-war constitution’s (that we wrote) provision renouncing war “as the policy of the nation” (that we put in) to allow for defense of allies (which we have been asking them too do for years).
If South Korea is upset by this, I would remind them that while Japan did many terrible things, most infamously the forced sexual enslavement of the “Comfort Women”, that today it is in China-sponsored North Korea that the use of Comfort Women still occurs, among many other depravities inflicted by that Kim-lead cult regime.

Thoughts?