I demand Jesuitical discussion of the IWR and its consequences!

Let the inquisition begin!

The one piece of history you can't change or try to explain.

:rofl:

Jesuitical?

:popcorn:

TORQUEMADA.

Bring out the gimp!

I know that's harsh, but that's the tradition I was brought up in by those who created the real Pro-Life perspective (I won't call it a movement because it has never truly been a movement).

And I wouldn't probably be saying this sort of thing now, if it weren't for the fact that these folks voted not just once, but TWICE for the same SOCIAL ABORTIONIST who is reasponsibble not only for the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who didn't need killing and who killed 3900 American soldiers in the process, but who also robbed a whole bunch of our surviving troops of their Humanity by lying them into a situation in which they had to do horrible Horrible things in order to survive and now they are left with the psychological wounds of having their psychological essence raped and brutalized by Bush's War.

Hillary didn't do this all by herself.

To condemn Edwards and Clinton for voting Yes on a resolution that was ignored by a man intent on starting a war is misplaced anger, imo.

and the rule of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Rule over the human mind by corporate "memes"--whether religiously or financially motived (or both)--combined with pervasive corporate control of society and government by one set of almost invisible presumptions (invisible because they are so pervasive in peoples' lives and are never questioned)--control that crosses borders, and is international in nature, and even has its own language (Latin then, Corporatespeak now), creates very odd...legal rulings and other twistings of what should be more or less objective truth.

I was struck by one of these twisted, corporate-ruled, legal rulings recently, in the FL-13 2006 election controversy. A private corporation with close ties to far rightwing causes--ES&S--sold the district electronic voting machines that are run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code. These machines 'disappeared' 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic areas, and awarded the seat to a Bushite with a margin of only 350 votes. When the lawyers for the Democrat (Christine Jennings) took the matter to court, and asked to review ES&S's "trade secret" code--in order to figure out what happened to those 18,000 votes--ES&S REFUSED and argued that their "right" to profit from our elections with "TRADE SECRET" (and evidently to steal our elections as well), TRUMPS the right of the voters to know how their votes are counted. And the Jeb judge agreed. Nope, our sacred right to vote, won at such dreadful cost and sacrifice over the centuries, is obviously nothing compared to the more sacred "right" of corporate profit.

I mean, I was mind-boggled by this ruling. How could any American judge rule this way? But, more than this, how could our so-called Democratic Congress--whose power trumps that of the courts and all other entities on matters of Congressional elections (it's in the Constitution)--NOT do anything about it? (They have not--it languishes it committee, while the unelected Bushite sits in Congress.)

To understand it, you have to understand the position of someone like Galileo, who discovered--by looking through a telescope and doing some calculations--that the sun is the center of the solar system, not the earth (the Church's belief on this scientific question). The Church's power was so pervasive that truth didn't matter, in the end. Poor Galileo was forced to sign a disavowal, and stop promulgating his scientific findings...because the Church said so. They had the power to hold and interrogate him, and punish him--torture him, kill him, put him under house arrest and ban his writings (they did the latter). How could they have such power? Because they had sold the illusion, over many centuries, that their power was inherent, that it came from God, and most people would not even think of challenging that. It would not occur to them--so pervasive was this "corporate meme."

Of course corporate profits and corporate control trumps our once open and democratic voting system! Isn't it obvious? To think otherwise is to be a heretic, and put yourself in great danger--sometimes actual physical danger, but these days more the danger of getting "swift-boated" by the corporate-controlled media, losing donations needed for expensive corporate TV campaign ads, getting marginalized and ridiculed by the corporate news monopolies, getting "Diebolded" by corporate-controlled voting machines, getting spied on by corporate telecoms in cahoots with the rightwing government, getting blackmailed or set up for dirty tricks, getting blackballed by your pro-corporate colleagues, and losing any chance at power within this corporate-controlled political establishment. That's why Congress has done nothing--because they are fearful of being deemed a heretic who challenges corporate rule, or--in the case of too many of them--they agree that the Church...ahem, the Corporate Rulers should "count" all our votes with secret code, and the public shouldn't have the right even to review that secret code, let alone have our votes counted in the open, in public view. They will not challenge "the Church of the Corporation," no matter how absurd that Church's assertions are.

And similar pressure is often inflicted on non-politicians as well--on scientists and other experts, certainly on judges. Challenge the pervasive "corporate meme" of corporate "rights" and power, and prepare to be blackballed. Your career will be over.

This is not different in any significant way from the Galileo story. Jesuitical argument came in later, as a means of trying to reconcile the absurd notions of the Church, as to its power, its lineage and its crazy doctrines, against a growing rationalist, scientific movement. The Jesuits became the "Catholic rationalists," trying to explain things like the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, mortal sin vs. venial sin, what constitutes a sin (issues like intentions, and mental reservations), how God can tolerate evil happening to good people, how vast corruption in the Church and the Papacy does not invalidate its "authority," infant Baptism (pristine babes are "guilty" of Adam and Eve's sin), etc. They got very good at it--and they actually run pretty good schools now. (It doesn't matter what you argue about--if you learn to argue, and articulate positions, you can learn to learn, and you can learn anything.) But Jesuitical argument--defending the irrational with rational-sounding argument--became something of a joke, in secular society. Only Jesuitical argument--defense of the irrational and the indefensible--can justify the IWR. The Democrats who voted for it had "mental reservations," obviously, which made it not a sin. They thought, "No, I don't want war, but I'll just vote for this for the greater good--my career, my ability to have the power to do good in the future."

Well, whoever used this--and I don't know the context (haven't seen the news on it)--is correct that Jesuitical argument is definitely needed to justify that vote. Ordinary, secular argument, based on reason and fact, cannot justify it. A full confession would be better, though. Why did you vote for it REALLY?