Openhand on MMA

This was just too entertaining not to quote. I have made a couple of small edits for language. Not that I haven't heard it all before--I've been in the Corps, y'know--but there are some that come here that would just as soon avoid it.

I keep reading Blog's, that “tip-toe” around the whole MMA issue, and frankly I'm sick of it. These individual's are skilled “sports” figures. They are by no means skilled combatants. If you watch one of these matches, note that every one of them, is in prime physical condition. They're young, strong and full of ---- and vinegar. ALL, notable attributes for a “sporting” contestant. I would defy you to take any of them, at age 45 or older, and see if anything (that they presently do in this MMA ----) even works for them at that time. When you can present to me, multiple 70+ year old practitioner’s of any of this MMA (or related) trash, that's even able to do it (much less force any of it to work) then maybe I'll consider bestowing any respect towards it. The difference being (between that tripe, and what I practice) is that I have an example to aspire towards. Granted, he isn't 70 year's old (he's freakin' 83 year's old!), but I would definitely feel more confident knowing what he knows, compared to anything that these MMA/ground-fighting/what-ever mook’s are selling.

Truthfully, most people that I know have hardly any interest in martial arts at all, so they basically don't listen to me ramble on about it, but once in a while, very rarely, someone will ask me why I insist that RyuTe is different from what they have come to know as "karate."

I always point first to myself (48 years old, about 200 pounds, of which only about 15 is excess, in tolerably decent shape, that is, resting pulse rate usually about 66 bpm, blood pressure good) and then to my instructor (62 years old, probably no more than 160 pounds, weak from the ongoing therapy to completely eliminate a cancer, on oxygen, only about 30 percent lung capacity) and note that, yes, he can make the techniques work on me. No hay problemo. You do not need to be Hoss Cartwright to make this system work.

If that doesn't get your attention, I don't know what will.

The 83-year-old to whom Openhand refers, if you didn't already know, is Taika Seiyu Oyata.

Are Catholics Christians?

I just read/skimmed a post and comments wherein a Baptist preacher was being royally torched for, among other things, having taught that Catholics aren't Christians, and characterizing Catholics as "cult members."

It kind of interested me that no one really contested the torching, and it was a Baptist blog. Time was that most Baptists would tell you that Catholics weren't Christians, but things have changed. I have had Sunday School class members tell me, just directly out and out tell me in class, that Catholics were Christians.

That's quite a change. You have to wonder what happened. Let me see if I can suggest a possibility or two.

One thing is that I am certain, dead certain, that hardly any Baptists, and precious few Catholics, actually know what official Roman Catholic doctrine is. That may sound like an absurd thing to say, especially about the Catholics, but I am totally convinced it is true. Over the years, I have repeatedly had the experience of asking people--sometimes whole classrooms of people--to tell me exactly what the differences between Baptists and Methodists are, or between Baptists and Catholics. Only once or twice has someone even come close on either count. I long ago grew convinced that your average modern Southern Baptist knows virtually nothing of doctrine other than "Jesus saves" and that it is "by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God," and "faith without works is dead." Not that they haven't heard more doctrine than that, but there is a heap of difference between having heard something, even repeatedly, and knowing it.

Now, you might think that that is just those dumb ol' Southern Baptists and that the Catholics are more knowledgeable, but I wouldn't bet on it, not if I were you. I have had the experience of talking to a lady--a lady who attended, I think, Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church--whilst her car was being washed during one of our outreach events. My job was to talk to people who stopped by to get their cars washed, and as I talked to this lady, I kept saying things that I knew from my reading went directly counter to official Roman doctrine. To my complete and utter shock, she agreed with every single thing I said! "That's what we believe, too," she kept saying.

To appreciate how significant that was to me, you have to understand that it's not like I haven't read anything about the Reformation! I've read Luther's The Bondage of the Will and part of his Commentary on Galatians, both of which spoke directly against Catholic doctrine. I've read some of Calvin. I've read a pretty fair amount of what James White has to say about Catholicism. I've read books by other authors on the subject, the names of which I cannot recall right now. I've read--or at least I am pretty sure I recall reading--The Council of Trent, wherein the Roman Church specifically anathematized a number of protestant doctrines. I know that Trent has never been recanted. I know the Roman Catholic doctrine on Scripture and Tradition, on the veneration of Saints, on justification, on the interpretive authority of the Magisterium, on the Mass, on the Eucharist, and so forth. I know, and I'm telling you, that the Reformation was not over simple miscommunication!

The heart of the gospel itself was at stake--but the lady I was talking to sure as thunder didn't know it. I had to conclude that either she was lying to me, or she--and maybe the bulk of the people in her church, too--simply didn't know what the official doctrine of their denomination was.

What on earth could have caused that?

A few years later, I found out about something--something in addition to the general doctrinal ignorance prevailing in these times--that might be part of the explanation. It seems that quite a number of years ago the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (the BGEAs) started working with Catholic churches in their crusades. This move got the BGEAs royally torched by more Baptists than you might think; it was seen as serious doctrinal compromise. But this is the thing: in order for a Catholic church to participate in a BGEAs crusade, it had to agree to use BGEAs material, which is pretty standard Southern Baptist stuff, and which takes a good month or more to get through. So there were lots of people going to these crusades, and yes, some of them went to Catholic churches afterward, but they were getting, for several weeks, Protestant doctrine.

(At this point, somebody who believes in the "trail of blood" stuff will up and say, "But MOTW, Baptists aren't protestants!" Look, save it for now, ok? I'll get to the Trail of Blood another day.)

At any rate, to my mind, when you've had Catholic churches all across the country teaching Southern Baptist doctrine as part of the crusade "deal" for decades, you shouldn't be shocked that a lot of American Catholics no longer know what official Catholic doctrine is.

I've often pointed out to people that Martin Luther did not leave the Roman Catholic church. They kicked him out. Was he a non-Christian right up 'til the time he got kicked out, and then a Christian thereafter? It seems absurd, but that is kind of where you have to go if you automatically assume that Catholics aren't Christians.

The upshot is this: if you compare official Roman Catholic doctrine with the text of the Bible, it is clear, very clear, that Roman doctrine conflicts with what the Bible says at a number of key points, including the gospel itself. I do not believe that the official doctrine of Rome is the saving doctrine of the Bible--BUT I am quite convinced that despite attendance at Mass, despite liturgy, and so forth, rather a lot of American Catholics simply do not know what their church's doctrine actually is. Shoot, their local priest may not believe Rome's official doctrine!

You just have to talk to people on a case-by-case basis. Some have their faith in Christ and Christ alone, and some have their faith in the Catholic church and a mixture of faith and their own works. You don't know 'til you talk to 'em.

Inflated Ideas About Your Martial Art?

I really wanted to include some video here...

See, I was in Oklahoma City today, and coming out of one of my clients' driveways, I saw a vehicle that had a web address written across the back window, a web address for a martial arts club.

I am so trying to be circumspect and non-offensive here...

At any rate, I recognized the name of the system. I've read a little bit about it and the man who started teaching it in this country. Every time I've read anything about it, the websites touting it focused on its "brutality," "extreme efficiency," and so forth. It is not a "sport," or even a "martial art," they say, it is a "combat art." It is "well-rounded," not like Judo, which is just throwing, or Karate, which is just punching and kicking (so they say on these sites).

Well, naturally, I was curious, and I visited the OKC site. Same boilerplate material, so I went to YouTube, and sure enough, I found video from that very school. Some demonstrative material, and some material from someone's brown belt test.

Now, I am not trying to be hypercritical, nor do I want to make it sound as though I'm really in a position to judge things. God knows I'm no grandmaster...

BUT...

I have seen a thing or two...

What I saw on those videos, frankly, was nothing that you wouldn't see in a lot of Americanized JuJutsu classes, or some American Kenpo classes. Not that this is necessarily bad. I'm just saying that I didn't see anything in those videos that would justify all the hype as regards the alleged exceptional brutality and efficiency of the system under discussion.

And one other thing: these people were clearly play-acting, that is, the attackers were visibly cooperating with the defender, to the point where I am confident that many of the techniques might well not have worked had the "attacker" been serious.

Now, you do want cooperation when you are starting to learn a technique. But eventually, at least sometimes, you want to see if you can actually make your techniques work on a resisting opponent, don't you? You do have to be careful. Some of these techniques can dislocate or break joints and so forth, and I'm not advocating that you backfist someone in the temple to make sure it works. But you don't want to always have your partner totally cooperating, either. That seems like a sure-fire way to acquire an inflated idea of your technique's effectiveness.

To sum up: most of us like to believe we practice the roughest, toughest form of self-defense known to mankind, or, if we don't already practice something, that's the stuff we'd like to seek out, right? But just because someone tells you that they practice badmammajamma-jutsu, the most "brutal, efficient, combat art" in the universe, don't necessarily make it so. You just might want to bring your capacity for objective thought to this subject.

Why Scientific "Consensus" Means So Little

Anyone familiar with the subject will not find the following material from the prologue to Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease unfamiliar:

...the argument can be made that, to fully understand obesity alone, researchers should have a working familiarity with the literature in clinical treatment of obesity in humans, body-weight regulation in animals, mammalian reproduction, endocrinology, metabolism, anthropology, exercise physiology, and perhaps human psychology, not to mention having a critical understanding and familiarity with the nuances of clinical trials and observational epidemiology. Most researchers and clinicians barely have time to read the journals in their own subspecialty or sub-sub-specialty, let alone the dozens of significant journals that cover the other disciplines involved. This is a primary reason why the relevant science is plagued with misconceptions propagated about some of the most basic notions. Researchers will be suitably scientific and critical when addressing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel because that's what they were taught in medical school, however many years earlier, or because they read it in The New England Journal of Medicine. Speculations, assumptions, and erroneous interpretations of the evidence then become truth by virtue of constant repetition.

By "the subject," of course, I did not mean the study of obesity. That just happens to be the example discussed. By "the subject," I meant scientific "consensus."

Look, I'm fairly familiar with bright, well-educated people. I spent years in Mensa before I got tired of it (When I was first a member, it was fascinating. People from all walks of life and with all sorts of interests were involved. Now--at least last time I tried it--nobody attends the meetings without spending the whole time talking about computers.); my family is just chock-full of them. Radiologists, engineers, lawyers, and so forth.

I know bright people. I mean, I know how they think, how they act, and so forth. And I will tell you wholeheartedly that as a rule, if you get them off "their" subject(s), they don't know any more than the next man.

Seriously.

Just for example, I've got an uncle who is really quite a high-level electrical engineer. I mean, this guy's tops, flies back and forth to Europe with some regularity because Nokia uses him as a consultant. One time, I was discussing taxation with him, and got to discussing the Fair Tax in particular. As I was explaining the subject, it gradually became clear that a fair amount of it just wasn't registering, and eventually he said, "I really don't know much about economics."

Of course he doesn't. He doesn't have time. He's flying back and forth to Europe, for goodness sake, to consult with Nokia. Who has time to read The Fair Tax Book?

Now, I know economics is one of the soft sciences at best, but you take my point. Highly specialized personnel often--remarkably often--do not know as much about things in general as you think they do. More often than you might think, when they say something, they are relying on information that they either half-remember, or don't fully understand, or haven't checked out in detail.

When someone says, "Scientists say," or refers to the "scientific consensus," take it with a grain of salt.

Way Past Time to Defend the West

I'll just let these snips from the American Thinker pass without commentary save for the emphasis, which is mine. I'm allegedly trying to get ready for work.

Europe finally appears to be waking up to the dangers of multiculturalism. Last October German Chancellor Angela Merkel confessed that multiculturalism was "a total failure" and British Prime Minister David Cameron more recently agreed, even linking "state multiculturalism" to Islamic terrorism. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is the latest to join this chorus...

[snip]

Chancellor Merkel, Prime Minister Cameron and President Sarkozy, among many others, misdiagnose the problem. All speak as if cultural/ethnic separatism were the chief culprit. Not entirely true.

[snip]

The problem is boiling hatred of the west and a willingness to pursue this hatred, not physical or cultural separatism per se. Lack of cultural assimilation does not breed terrorism; rather, the urge to destroy the host

nation impedes assimilation.

[snip]

So, if assimilation campaigns are incomplete answers, where does the counter-attack begin? It begins by identifying the toxin that lies at the heart of multiculturalism -- the dogmatic belief that all cultures are equally "valid" and worthy for believers, a view construing culture as a choice no different than preferring vanilla over pistachio at the local Baskin Robbins. Rejecting this equivalence of cultures is a change for us, not them -- Islamic fanatics hardly embrace cultural relativism. It is this wooly-headed cultural relativism permeating the west that permits the triumph of zealots against those who barely lift a finger to protect their own culture. The battle is a mismatch if one side refuses to defend forcefully its own heritage.

[snip]

This understanding means that we must be free to defend our values as superior and this inescapably means offending our enemies.

[snip]

These politically incorrect statements send a powerful message: we are no longer afraid to offend when protecting the west and so the days of politely looking the other way are over. Moreover, we will not be intimidated if called racists, right-wing-Nazis extremist and all the rest. If you feel that you can't live among "racist Nazis," return home. Ironically, this strategy mimics the "in-your-face" militant gay liberation movement -- we're here and we're Queer, get used to it.

To repeat, being terrified of the "racist" label," the refusal to defend one's own civilization so as not to offend those who hate us only emboldens the miscreants. Who wants to assimilate to a civilization too scared to defend itself?

Red Fork's Emily Knocks One Out of the Park

Inadvertently proving that reactionary old conservatives (like moi) and relatively liberal-ish folks (like Emily) CAN find points of agreement, she writes:

...I am sick to death of this ludicrous notion that Tulsa would suddenly become the Magic Kingdom, with a soaring economy, a zero-percent unemployment rate, and choirs of angels floating above its gold-paved streets, if only we could provide more entertainment for unmarried twentysomethings.

Amen, an' amen!

Now, I don't know that she would necessarily go to the same place I am about to go, but from where I sit...

...well, I've been living in this city for the overwhelming majority of my life. My ancestors on both sides of the family, to the very best of my knowledge, have been in Oklahoma since before the War of Northern Aggression. After suffering the humiliating misfortune of being born in a Godforsaken hole an Arkansas military hospital, I spent a year in France, and then a year or so in Wisconsin, and then wound up in Broken Arrow for several years. Since the age of eleven, except for Marine Corps boot camp and duties, I have resided in Tulsa.

I remember when I used to go down to the grocery store and buy a candy bar and pay--to the best of my recollection--four cents of sales tax per dollar of sales. Just call me crazy, but I seem to recall that there was a fire department, that there was a police department, there were roads, and there weren't bizarre homeless people everywhere. There weren't sick little old ladies bein' thrown out onto the streets or any other such thing.

Over the years, we have added a penny here, a penny there, a ha'penny there, and so forth, until we are now paying darn near ten cents on the dollar in sales taxes. And so help me if every darn cent of it wasn't "sold" on the premise that it was an "investment" that would draw in new blood and new business by virtue of improving something, ANYTHING, but streets, fire, and police! Well, okay, some of it was ostensibly supposed to accomplish certain "investments" in the streets themselves, as though we weren't supposed to notice that the sales taxes we were ALREADY paying were supposed to be, in part, for that, and it wasn't getting done, and the tax was supposed to be "temporary," which only a DURNFOOL would believe, NO tax is ever "temporary," there's always war, death, and murder involved in either in repealing one or in letting it die a natural death. Over and OVER and OVER again, it was "Let's tax ourselves to do X, which will draw people in, and they will spend money, and that way we'll get the sales taxes to do streets, fire, police, and so forth."

I've been hearin' that stuff all my LIFE an' it ain't never happened as promised YET.

When I started hearin' it about downtown, I darn near threw up. Them yokels wanted me to believe that by building some dadgum arena downtown, "business" would be revitalized downtown and the whole cotton-pickin' city would somehow magically be reborn as a utopian metropolis--with good roads, too!

Well, "business," if by "business," you mean "bars and restaurants" did spring up downtown, an' I ain't knockin' it. But I have noticed and continue to notice that the rest of the city continues on in much the same fashion it has for the 37 of my years that I have lived in it. The "build a bunch of watering holes downtown approach" has, from my perspective, been a distinct failure as regards most of the city.

And yet every stinkin' time I turn around, there's some other yahoo out there seems to think that if ONLY we had a few more places to wet one's whistle, then Tulsa would be an okay place to live.

Heck with THAT. Been there, done that, it ain't worth a tinker's...ah...cuss.

Just my two cents, written in a hurry. Hope it didn't ruffle no feathers too much.

It Wasn't Always This Way

I'm not sayin' a word about the rest of the post from which this line comes--I gots my 'pinions, y'know, but I ain't gonna take the time ta lay 'em out tonight--but this line kind of caught my attention:

...a church system that exists primarily to pay professional ministers and to build and maintain buildings.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Hmmm.

Y'know, it's kinda hard to dispute.

I don't have a problem with paying ministers. The Bible does actually say, you know, that preachers are entitled to get their living from preaching the Gospel, and I don't begrudge that one little bit. But is that the reason that the "church system" exists? To pay ministers?

To build and maintain buildings?

Well, I know those aren't supposed to be the reasons, but looking at what actually goes on in a lot of churches and para-church organizations might make you wonder.

Look at the Southern Baptist Convention. You know the reason it was formed, and what it was formed from? It was formed from a lot of Baptist churches--independent, every one of 'em--that wanted to have a means to cooperatively support missionaries and seminary education for preachers.

Looking at the SBC today, churches don't seem quite as independent as they used to be--or at least, as I've read they used to be. I really, strongly get the sense that the organization that was meant to be a tool for accomplishing the goals of the churches now sees the churches as tools for accomplishing the goals of the organization.

But maybe that's just me. And truth be known, the solution is always available: the people in the pews can always educate themselves and get involved. If they don't--

--well, they've no one to blame but themselves.

Republicans, Tariffs, "Free Trade," and Economics in an Easy-to-Understand Nutshell

The estimable Pat Buchanan writes:

As for “protectionism,” Harding did approve the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act of 1922, doubling rates to 38 percent. But he also slashed Woodrow Wilson’s income tax rates by two-thirds, back to 25 percent.

Result: Unemployment, 12 percent when Harding took office, was 3 percent when Calvin Coolidge left. Manufacturing output rose 64 percent in the Roaring Twenties. Between 1923 and 1927, U.S. growth was 7 percent a year. At decade’s end, America produced 42 percent of the world’s goods.

Compare this economic triumph with the fruits of W’s free-trade policy that wiped out 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, one of every three we had, and put America in hock to China.

The protectionism Bush calls “evil” was the policy of 12 Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Coolidge, who made the GOP America’s Party and converted this country into the industrial marvel of mankind.

Is Bush oblivious to this? Did someone at Phillips Academy, Yale or Harvard Business School tell him Lincoln, William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt were free-traders?

Now, don't waste my time pointing out the negatives of tariffs. Of course there are negatives. Every kind of tax has negatives. Income taxes have negatives, too. I am only contending, as always, that on balance, tariffs are better than income taxes. I think the track record is there.

Just How Much Can You Get Wrong and Still Be a Christian?

Shortly after I got saved, I heard one of our church deacons say--I'm afraid I can't remember the context--that we didn't have to have perfect understanding of all the Bible in order to be saved, and that was a good thing, as otherwise we'd all be in trouble.

I have thought of those words many times since then. I thought of them last night. You see, I just read a post, and skimmed/read the comments thereon, that reminded me of them. I rather got the impression that a pretty fair number of folks in the Christian blogosphere have come to the point where they are seriously ready to say that anyone who doesn't publicly denounce a person who's made certain doctrinal errors as a false teacher or a heretic is himself a false teacher or a heretic.

Now, before I go on, let me say that Scripture, in the main, is not that hard to understand, and the main--principle--points of doctrine are really quite unequivocal, and that THERE ARE points beyond which a person cannot go and still be considered a Christian. To deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, for example, is one of those points. To deny that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, is another. Those are what one blogger--I almost hesitate to mention his name, so controversial is he in some circles--Wade Burleson, might call "primary" doctrines. Those are doctrines that one cannot simultaneously deny and be said to be holding to the Christian faith.

But there are other doctrines, what Burleson and others might refer to as secondary or tertiary doctrines, which, while important and certainly worth the effort of getting right, the denial or misunderstanding of which would not necessarily be an indication of a person having left the Christian faith. Problems--to say the least!--arise when some folks act as though every doctrine is primary, as though a deficiency in understanding about mode and timing of baptism or poor reasoning about the nature of "filthy talking" is enough to make one a false teacher or an apostate.

Sometimes issues arise when people just make mistakes, or are taken out of context. I have read, in the dim and distant past, some people say, for example, that Martin Luther taught justification by works, that is, that it was necessary, in order to be saved, that a person get certain sacraments right. I will admit that I have not read Luther exhaustively--actually, all I have read is his The Bondage of the Will and part of his Commentary on Galatians, but in those, Luther's insistence that salvation is by grace alone, that it is all of God and none of man, that man's works are of absolutely no avail when it comes to salvation, comes across so clearly that I can't help but think that people who are willing to say that Luther was a heretic who taught works-salvation have seized on some of his words to the exclusion of others and greatly mistaken his meaning.

I get the impression that there are bloggers out there who would separate from a preacher if he shared a stage with Martin Luther, or if he, not possessing exhaustive knowledge of every jot and tittle of some other preacher's doctrinal irregularities, generously assumed that the other preacher wasn't a heretic until it was definitively proved otherwise. I would suggest that when you have gotten to this point, you have gone a little bit too far.

Amen, an' Amen, and Yet Another Amen

---

Via Kat.

---

Boy, howdy, did I like this one. It was with difficulty that I refrained from quoting the whole thing. Emphasis in the original:

...despite the fact that he (McCain) was as much a Washington insider as any of them, YOU decided that he was "electable."

So YOU nominated him.

And YOU found out that he wasn't "electable" at all.

Now along comes a gal who says and does everything right. One who walks the path of Ronald Reagan. One who never wavers from her conservative principles. One who doesn't give a damn what the Washington establishment thinks of her. One who shares - and champions - your values. One who is willing to suffer the slings and arrows - attacks of the most pernicious kind - willing to pursue YOUR goals with headheld high and steady determination in her voice - so as to make this country of ours a better place.

And what do you do?

Run in fear.

I read things like this and I get so angry:

"I like her enthusiasm and ability [to] energize people," said one woman.

"Would you support her for president?"

"Well, we're more Mitt Romney people."

"I like her," says one man. "I'm not sure she's presidential, but she gets the message out."

"Could she become presidential?"

"Hell, if Obama can be president, so can she."

"We like her personally, but can she win?" said another woman. "We're very worried. She's been so demonized."

My God.

You are nothing but frightened children. You don't deserve her.

Ask yourself: Who made the determination that Sarah Palin isn't "presidential" while Mitt Romney is? I'll answer for you: The same people who "so demonized" her. And you accept that? You let the likes of ChrisMatthews and Katie Couric determine for you whether she can run this country? Do they also change your diaper?

I'd tell y'all more about what I think about Sarah Palin, 'cept that you've heard it all before.

The American Thinker on Roe and the Constitution

I think I can pretty much let this stand without commentary. Wouldn't hurt ya none to go read the whole thing, though:

From a constitutional perspective, moral arguments are irrelevant. Properly understood, the abortion question is a matter of federalism. Our Constitution lays out a governmental framework that is really quite simple. The powers of the national government are enumerated in Article 1, Sec. 8. The Tenth Amendment then tells us that any power not enumerated as a federal power (or prohibited by the Bill of Rights) is reserved for the states. This includes a wide range of state regulatory powers (known as "police powers") which include authority over many moral and social issues. For example, the Constitution does not mention prostitution; therefore, it is a question for the states to decide according to their own local morals. The state of Nevada has chosen to legalize prostitution; forty-nine other states have chosen to outlaw it.

The same logic should be applicable to abortion -- and it was, prior to Roe. By 1973, four states had legalized abortion, and forty-six others had restricted it. But the Supreme Court decided that it was going to ram abortion down the nation's throat, whether it had constitutional justification to do so or not. The end result was a train wreck of an opinion. Conservatives who oppose Roe ought not speak about it in hushed moral tones, but rather with derisive hoots, jeers, and catcalls. The decision is intellectually fraudulent, and anyone who takes it seriously reveals his own intellectual insolvency.

[snip]

Roe is so bad it makes other controversial decisions -- like Plessy v. Ferguson or Dred Scott -- look like models of Solomonic wisdom by comparison. In those cases, the Court was clearly biased, but it at least made an attempt to pay lip service to the Constitution.

What Roe revealed about our modern political elites is this: they simply do not give a damn what the Constitution does or does not say, and they know they can get away with ignoring it. The specious type of "reasoning" in Roe ultimately leads to Nancy Pelosi snarling incredulously, "Are you serious? Are you serious?" when asked by a reporter how the Constitution justifies ObamaCare; it leads to Justice Kennedy citing
the European Court of Human Rights when declaring that the Constitution guarantees the right to anal sex; and it leads to Justice Breyer quoting the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe.

When our courts fail to heed the actual text of the Constitution they are supposedly applying and replace it with inane drivel about "the Ephesian, Soranos" and with foreign law, one is forced to conclude that we no longer live in a constitutional republic, but in a dictatorship of the judiciary -- where reading the "supreme Law of the Land" on the floor of the House is a controversial event.

James Madison must be rolling in his grave.

Well, actually, come to think of it, there's one thing I feel compelled to add, for the sake of those who sneer at those who take the Tenth Amendment seriously, or those who think the General Welfare clause authorizes the federal government to do 'most anything: at least take a gander at an opposing view, okay? Before you comment on this post? It might save you from looking a complete fool.