Liberally biased Facebook sends me a notification with a "fact-checking" website which is itself liberally biased...

We all know that Facebook has a liberal, anti-conservative bias.  See here.
Yesterday I received a notification from Facebook regarding an article I shared on Francis.  The notification read:

I responded on Facebook:

Within an hour or two, I couldn't post on Facebook.  Not a word.  Retaliation?  It wouldn't surprise me.  See here.

Canon 212: An authentic Catholic news site which exhibits a strong, critical spirit of the zeitgeist

A sound source of Catholic news and views: Canon212

"..once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church's participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society...The preparation of committed lay leaders and the presentation of a convincing articulation of the Christian vision of man and society remain a primary task of the Church in your country; as essential components of the new evangelization, these concerns must shape the vision and goals of catechetical programs at every level.." (Pope Benedict XVI).

President Obama, dictatorship and control

In my last post, I compared President Obama's new executive order with the Third Reich's "Decree for the Protection of the German People."  Every dictatorship, or every country en route toward dictatorship, justifies its lust for power and control by asserting that such power grabs are for the "good of the people" or "public safety in times of crisis" or for reasons of "national security."  But all of the bovine scatology in the world cannot conceal the fact that control is the driving force behind dictatorship.

In an article for the Canada Free Press entitled "Obama's obsession with control," Doug Hagmann and Joseph Hagmann write:

In the event you missed the Friday news dump, Barack Hussein Obama issued yet another executive order. Titled “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions,” it may be read in its entirety on the White House website here. At first blush, it appears that the order modernizes previous communications functionality, particularly as it relates to the continuity of governmental communication during wartime or national crisis as defined by Obama.


The text of the order itself consists of 2,205 words and seven-(7) sections and multiple subsections. The policy statement (section one) seems innocuous and actually beneficial to the continuity of communications within the U.S., until one begins to dissect the order and consider it in context with other Obama issued directives. Extensive analysis of this order, in tandem with other recent Obama orders and signed legislation, suggests a disconcerting pattern of potential overreach by Obama into the area of normal and customary commercial communication systems.

Based on our analysis of this order, it would appear that the implementation of emergency communications by Obama, using all forms of wired and wireless communication systems, is redirected through the Executive branch and could expand such takeover abilities beyond the limits of an actual act of war, national emergency, or other event impacting the national security of the U.S. The order also mandates that the Department of Homeland Security develops and submits such a plan to Obama within sixty-(60) days of this order (section 5.2(h)).

Additionally, Obama’s order completely revokes Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984, as amended, which established and defined the National Communication System (NCS). The purpose of the NCS is to “assist the President” in matters of emergency communications in war-time emergencies, and during “those crises or emergencies in which the exercise of the President’s war power functions is not required or permitted by law.” By the stroke of his pen, such distinctions are removed.

Security or control?

After reviewing this order, one is forced to wonder whether the actual function of this order is to assure continuity of communications during an actual emergency, or if this order is designed to expand the control of all communications by implementing measures that redefine crises and emergencies. In the context of the most recent orders implemented by the stroke of his pen, it would appear that Obama is more concerned with command and control than ensuring continuity of communications during times of actual national emergencies."

Total control of the means of communication is necessary for a dictatorship, or emerging dictatorship, so that through mass communication the individual may be propagandized and molded into conditioned responses.  It is necessary to destroy the individual's ability to figure things out for himself.  And as this ability atrophies, the individual is inundated with entertainments [think of Juvenal and his comment about bread and circuses] which prevent him from reflecting on the fact that his authorities are deceitful and manipulative.

The dictatorship wants, the dictatorship needs, to reduce the individual to being an apathetic machine devoid of independent, critical thought.  The individual is subjected to a process of "massification" until he or she is completely dependent upon the State.  It was Hitler's boast that: "..sixty thousand men have outwardly become almost a unit, that actually these men are uniform not only in ideas, but that even the facial expression is almost the same.  Look at these laughing eyes, this fanatical enthusiasm, and you will discover how a hundred thousand men in a movement become a single type."

If you believe that Americans are "too intelligent" and too "fiercely independent" to succumb to intellectual and emotional subjection through the use of mass communication, rallies, emotional oratory and slogans, consider how a man of no particular intelligence or experience seduced so many into believing that he would effect positive change in the United States.  Has Barack Obama delivered?  And how often do you come across people whose views are merely a regurgitation of what they read in their local newspaper or hear from the mainstream media?

Once the individual has succumbed to totalitarian ideology, the critical faculty is suspended.  And it is difficult, if not impossible, for the brainwashed individual to revert to his former self.  Collective totalitarian thinking [which again is the goal of every dictatorship] may be compared with schizophrenia.  In both, says Joost Meerloo in The Rape of the Mind, there is, "a loss of an independent, verifiable reality, with a consequent relapse into a more primitive state of awareness."  In both, thought and action are arrested at the infantile level of development.

Such a person is easy to control and manipulate. 

And that's exactly what Barack Obama is about: control.

Those who are critical of Rick Santorum for speaking of Satan are thereby critical of Christian doctrine...

We can expect presidential candidate Rick Santorum to continue to come under heavy fire for warning that, "Satan has his sights on the United States of America" and that  he is "attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."

We read here that, "The former senator from Pennsylvania warned in 2008 how politics and government are falling to Satan. 'This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions.' Santorum made the provocative comments to students at Ave Maria University in Florida."

We are experiencing various signs of demonic activity throughout our troubled culture and even many of our shepherds have not taken this seriously. Demonic abortion continues to be practiced even while our society rushes to embrace a culture of sodomy and same-sex "marriage." Many individuals, including some Catholic priests, have abandoned themselves to sexual perversions, violence, and drug use.

Our culture has been so secularized that any mention of the supernatural realm is greeted either with complete indifference or with ridicule.


The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Les formes de la superstition," helped the faithful better understand the Church's teaching regarding demonic spirits. The document said that, "It would be a fatal mistake to act as if history were already finished and redemption had achieved all its effects, so that it were no longer necessary to to engage in the struggle [against the Devil and demons] of which the New Testament and the masters of the spiritual life speak...To maintain today, therefore, that Jesus' words about Satan express only a teaching borrowed from his culture and are unimportant for the faith of other believers is evidently to show little understanding either of the Master's character or of his age. If Jesus used this kind of language and, above all, if he translated it into practice during his ministry, it was because it expressed a doctrine that was to some extent essential to the idea and reality of the salvation that he was bringing....Satan whom Jesus attacked with his exorcisms and confronted in the wilderness and in his passion, cannot simply be a product of the human ability to tell stories and personify ideas nor a stray survival of a primitive culture and its language...Satan's action on man is admittedly interior but it is impossible to regard him as therefore simply a personification of sin and temptation....It was for all these reasons that the Fathers of the Church were convinced from Scripture that Satan and the demons are the enemies of man's redemption, and they did not fail to remind the faithful of their existence and action..."

Pope Paul VI, in a general audience on November 15, 1972, asked, "What are the Church's greatest needs at the present time?" and provided an answer: "Don't be surprised at our answer and don't write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: one of the Church's greatest needs is to be defended against the evil which we call the Devil...Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others....It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the Devil's existence...or to explain the Devil as a pseudoreality, a conceptual, fanciful, personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes....St. Paul calls him the 'god of this world,' and warns us of the struggle we Christians must carry on in the dark, not only against one Devil, but against a frightening multiplicity of them..."

Back in 2010, Archbishop Charles Chaput gave a keynote address to the Emmanuel Community of Rome's conference on "Priests and Laity in the Mission."  During this address, His Excellency elaborated on a major theme of his talk - the reality of Satan and the importance of "spiritual combat," saying that, "I think we live in disappointing times, in times of confusion, and in some ways that is the result of our failure to understand that we have an enemy in the Devil, but also we have enemies in the world around us."


Then His Excellency pointed to a "great talk" from an American Protestant pastor he once heard which was entitled "We preach as though we don't have enemies," and reflected that this sentiment "is true in the United States..." adding, "I think it's important to understand that we are in a battle, we really do live in a time of spiritual combat and I think we've lost that sense of the Church," Archbishop Chaput stated.

Archbishop Chaput continued with a comparison of the temptation we face to be like "everyone else" like the Israelites from the Old Testament wishing for a king like the other nations. They wanted a king ... they got Saul and he was a good man, and then he became a politician and he lost his faith. We're just like that...In America, we don't want to be different than our Protestant brothers and sisters, or the secular forces around us. And, I think that's the great danger of our time, we don't love God enough and we don't enter into combat with the enemy enough and we need to recommit ourselves to doing that," he urged.

Those who criticize Rick Santorum for addressing the reality of Satan and the spiritual combat which we find ourselves in are not just criticizing Mr. Santorum.  They are ridiculing the teaching of Jesus and His Apostles (and most notably St. Paul).  They are ridiculing the Church Fathers, the Popes and the Saints who taught on the reality of Satan.  They are ridiculing more than 2,000 years of Church tradition.

How is that for going "well over the line"?