SoCons and Libs will be debating forever about population control. India, China, the poverty pockets all over Africa will be held up as exhibits for the prosecution. Tokyo, NYC, Singapore, and most Western cities will be held up as examples of wealth and prosperity. It’s a classical Conservative vs. Progressive issue. High population (“over-population” being a subjective measurement) as a root cause of poverty is questionable at best. I happen to believe that, everywhere “population control measures” are applied, they are a political tool aimed more towards eugenic rather than humanitarian goals. Whatever side you come down on, it has always been against US foreign policy to fund forced sterilization. But what do you call it when the targeted population is military, getting its direction to sterilize from on high? Is it forced? Well… anyone who’s ever been attached to a government operation of any kind knows that combining quotas and “initiatives” equals a directive.

Front Royal, VA, 02/09/11 — Steven W. Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute (PRI), expressed outrage today at a clear instance of U.S. tax dollars being used to aid a coercive campaign to sterilize 700,000 Rwandan men in 3 years. The program is being carried out under the active influence of at least two USAID-funded special interest groups: Intrahealth and Family Health International. Mosher vowed that PRI would “do everything in its power” to expose and halt the use of U.S. taxpayer funds on this campaign against the Rwandan people.

Is anyone monitoring to see which of Rwanda’s ethnic groups will be sacrificing the greater share of their progeny to the god of population control? Is there a chance that the do-gooders of the US State Department are happily staving off more bloody genocide with the “civilized” genocide of government forced sterilization?

Well, that is the moral part of the argument. Now if the alleged FiCons are still with me, here is where the money is coming from according to a Larry Nowels, formerly of the Congressional Research Center:

Global Health Initiative. Last year, the Obama Administration issued the outlines of a $63 billion, six-year health plan that aims to broaden the Bush signature President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program to other health investments, including maternal and child health, nutrition, and health system strengthening. USAID’s health budget for FY2011 is $2.6 billion, nearly $600 million higher than FY2010. [USAID partners with the State Department and Health and Human Services for a total Global Health Initiative budget of something over $9.5 billion government-wide.] The largest increases in USAID’s health request are for maternal and child health (+48%) and neglected tropical diseases (more than double FY2010 amounts).

OK. There’s AIDs funding there, money that was originally part of Bush 43′s massive package for Africa that the MSM largely ignored. But I’d like an AIDS specialist to tell me why money to fight AIDS is being used for massive drives to circumcise African and military age college men. The Population Research Institute (PRI) has a clue:

According to the BBC and Rwandan news outlets, the Rwandan government is introducing this campaign on the heels of a large-scale effort to circumcise men (a procedure which allegedly “protects against” HIV/AIDS infection). However, as the New Times reports, the real reason circumcision was included was simply because “it allows us get to the men’s reproductive system and in the process we advise them on condom use and vasectomy.”

Here we have a prime example of Third World “relief” in the guise of “Fighting AIDS” being diverted to Liberal social engineering mischief if not outright ethic cleansing. The mingling of AIDS “help” with forced sterility initiatives in the 3rd World will look like genocide to future generations no matter how you color it.

Hey… Congress! Looking for some ideas for contributing to that $100B in cuts? Sterilizing 3rd World males – or females for that matter – en masse ain’t by any stretch of the imagination “Fighting AIDS.”

I have an idea… let’s bring those Peace Corps (or USAID, or whatever) doctors and their vasectomy snippers to the State Department first, then work their way around inside the beltway until we can be sure that the Washington Bureaucrat over-population issue is completely addressed.

Vigil to Expose Planned Parenthood’s exploitation of underage sex trafficking to further the abortion industry

Posting this for RS Conservative viewing.

Lila Rose’s organization was behind the recent stings to bring out the truth of what Planned Parenthood is really about. Let’s not let the MSM kill this story in the minds of our legislators.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t think it’s anybody’s business if children are enslaved as prostitutes, so why should they think it’s anyone’s business if children receive abortions?

If I ever hear another pro-abortion liberal use the words “For the children,” I will indeed hurl.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
English author & mystery novelist (1874 – 1936)

What we have going on here at RedState this week reflects the Gramscian crisis in the general culture. “The long march through the institutions” begun by the progressives about five generations ago is reaching the high point in the road. Institutional memory, passed down for literally thousands of years as Judeo-Christian “Tradition,” is obscured, confused, diluted – even villainized – by the very caretakers – the schools, churches, the governments – in which western society had entrusted it.

If Conservatism is tied to Tradition, it’s no wonder it is in turmoil. Where are Christian Traditions to rest their head when most every gathering of Christians calling itself a “church” today takes upon itself to undergo mitosis and split over arguments of biblical interpretation? How can adults raised in the Tower of Educational Babel that were the 1970′s forward be expected to respect what they consider to be the alien social norms of those raised in something so innocuous (to us) as a two parent home? How is the very tradition of procreating to be respected when it has been contracepted out of Western Civilization’s middle class and exterminated out of its poor through an ongoing holocaust called abortion? I could continue this litany from marriage to sports competitions to national holidays… their definitions all being having been changed by the Marxist/Gramscian usurpers of our greater institutions.

So here we are. Good people, many new, among us here at RedState have been formed minus any internal instrument by which to know, understand, or value “Capital T” Tradition. And because every definition of every concept was taught to be amorphous and malleable in their formation, we find ourselves in contention with them over Tradition’s meaning, and thus the meaning of Conservatism. For what are we to conserve if Tradition – the continuation of operative, normal ideas, practices, and memories attached to cultural survival – are optional?

With a h/t to Socrates, whose diary of this mornng prompted this little essay, here’s what’s not Conservative: To debate “what’s Conservative.” To argue with social liberals, atheists, passivists, hedonists, and sodomites over “What is good” is to agree to their terms that “what is good” is up for argument. No, that’s decidedly not being Conservative.

To wit. There are pro-abortion liberals attending Catholic mass every Sunday, taking part in Holy Communion while eschewing the sacrament of Penance and selective dogmatic teachings of the faith. They call themselves Catholics. They would vehemently disagree that, by their own beliefs and actions, and Church teaching itself, they have excommunicated themselves from the Church. The Church today, however, in its wisdom, chooses not to prosecute the Culture Wars in its own sanctuaries and leaves its 2000 year old teachings intact for those who would respect them and carry them forward. It’s the mark of good Catholics to make more good Catholics. So it is with Conservatism. Good Conservatives will – must – make more good Conservatives. Those practicing socially liberal, atheistic, hedonistic, non-procreating lifestyles will not. It’s that simple.

If liberals want to argue their way into the Conservative tent, they will not thrive where real Conservatism bound by Traditions is present. They will do what they always have done, they will split off and go their own way. It will be up to the Conservative bound by Tradition, then, to hold on and preserve that which it values, Life being the greatest of these things.

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.(John 10:10 KJV)

As I write this diary, only my second feeble attempt in my 5 years plus on RS, I’m watching the end of one of my favorite faded color classics of the 70′s… “Soylent Green,” on cable.  The idea of the dead being harvested for food was once the realm of wild apocalyptic vision sci fi.  Today, what we know as fact about the “enlightened progressive” left has us wondering not whether, if left unchecked, they would actually go so far as “socialized cannibalism,” but how long it would take them to get there.  We’re not shocked anymore when we read about lefty environmentalist and “Family Planning” zealots not only believing that humanity is a pestilence upon Mother Earth, but actually putting themselves in the role of exterminators – on the taxpayers’ dime.  Unimaginable two generations ago.  Unthinkable one generation ago.  Politics as usual today.  Which brings me to my topic.

I hereby accuse the Republican ruling class – names to be named – of high treason for having, with malice of forethought, sabotaged the two party system across the United States in general, and in Washington D.C. in particular.  Their motive was nothing so common as ideology or greed.  It was just politics, politics with a small p.  Or, more appropriately, I guess, a contempt for mere politics.  You see, if you are an elite, a member of the ruling class, all that icky arguing and disagreeing is beneath your so-called dignity.  And, what the hell, with your mainstream Protestant or lapsed Catholic ethics of Moral Equivalency, you pretty much agree with your counterparts in the D party anyway.  So, why not throw the urban elections their way?  And look how popular you’ll be with your Country Club spouses and friends when you reach across the aisle… for the children, of course.

I wish it were just my conservative wingnut imagination at work here.  But when I was asked by a GOP operative, some twenty-five years ago – with no political experience to save my life – if I would consider running for a state political office out of Philadelphia as a Republican, it was understood that actually getting elected was in no  way part of the offer.  I had no reason to believe that hundreds, maybe thousands of such conversations had not taken place among Republicans in blue cities across the country.  How far a stretch is it that, in more than a few cases, such offers went to democrats, just to keep things looking honest?  No, really.  We’re talking about the home town of Snarlin’ Arlen here.  Such deals were, in all appearances, Politics as Usual.  I suppose the enlightened call it “realpolitik.”  I call it what it is… old fashioned corruption.

This brings me to the hot topics of the day, Karl Rove and Art Chance, two guys who I know in my heart that I would enjoy as friends or fishing buddies… but who, in my view of the world, have been part of the problem all along.  You see, in their estimation, the rest of us should have just STFD and STFU and let them go on about their jobs showing us all how it’s done.  Remember the tantrum Rove had in 2004 telling the “Christian Right” to stay home if they didn’t like the flight to the moderate middle that the GOP was taking?  How did he get away with that and then get on Fox as a Conservative Guru?  I’m no pundit and I won’t analyze it.  It was enough for me to watch Rove hold the GWB presidency under water until the bubbles stopped as the media yelled “Bush lied!  People died!”  That wasn’t political incompetence, it was calculated political murder.  It was the realpolitik of staying popular in the circles of power.  It has always amazed me and disappointed me at the same time that geniuses of all stripes are capable of total treachery for the sake of expediency or even popularity.  This is “the world,” we are warned about in scripture.  As for achance, well… let’s face it… Stevie Wonder saw that one coming.  I don’t have to like him… but I still love the guy enough to pray for him.

Karl, Art, we’re coming, like it or not.  And it won’t be politics as usual.

Long critical of the McCain campaign’s clumsy strategeries, Philly talk radio host Michael Smirconish outed himself to his radio audience at the tail end of his Friday morning show that he is voting for Obama. The former Bush 41 HUD appointee and celebrity MC at Bush 43 campaign events in Pennsylvania defended himself by not defending himself. Instead, he pointed out that he has never been “a talk radio ideologue in the vein of Rush, Hannity, or Glen Beck.” My late father – a Kennedy and trade union democrat – would see through such hubris by pointing out that “he obviously believes his own B.S.”

Smirconish boasted of making his decision after interviewing both candidates multiple times and hearing their party convention acceptance speeches live. In the end, Smirconish admitted to “waking up early last Saturday morning, putting on his jacket, and driving to Progress Plaza (a North Philly strip mall adjacent to Temple University) and standing in the crowd to hear Obama one more time” before making up his mind.

From my years of occasionally tuning in to Smirconish on Philly morning talk radio, I long ago concluded that he had gone over to the other side in the culture war. His gigs on CNN and, more recently, MSNBC only confirmed my opinions of him as a liberal media wannabe. The last vestiges of his republican leanings could be heard only in his occasional faint praise of Ronald Reagan, but his only ties to the party of Reagan could be found in his friendship with frequent guest Arlen Spector.

OK, so now that Smirconish has admitted exactly what he is, let us see just what price he ends up negotiating for his soul. For a local talk radio jock who propelled himself to national recognition on the back of slain Philly police officer Daniel Falkner… let’s see how Smirconish’s “non-ideological” endorsement of the candidate most likely to pardon Mumia propels him to greatness with the MSM. He’ll need the pay raise as he already admits that Obama’s tax plan will cost him dearly at his income level.

Smirconish will further explain his media-liberal “coming out” in this coming Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer.