Semantic Gymnastics and Language Manipulation

Do you ever think about how your are being twisted and turned by experts in language manipulation, semantic gymnastics, and propaganda? I first encountered the term, "semantic gymnastics," in a 1970 editorial in a medical journal, California Medicine. It was titled A New Ethic for Medicine And Society. The unidentified author wrote:

Sometimes Things Aren't as Bad as You've Been Led to Believe!

New study suggests more than two-thirds of Catholics believe the Eucharist is truly Jesus

Language matters. How you frame a question influences the answers you receive. Think about it. That's one of the ways media manipulators work. If they don't like what someone says they discredit him with a slur. Even some conservative people of color have been described as recipients of "white privilege." The only way Roe v. Wade could be adopted by the Supreme Court was through "semantic gymnastics." This is what the California Journal of Medicine published in 1970 about Roe:

Sunday Meditation: On Living in a Mad, Mad World that Desperately Needs the Truth!

Catch sinners with the golden goose of truth.

For behold, the days shall come, wherein they will say: Blessed are the barren, and the 
wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck. [Luke 23:29]

Well....I'm back from retreat, back to the real world that has become an exaggerated version of the Twilight Zone.

I could say I'm back to the real bizzaro world where Bruce Jenner wants to adopt a baby so he can pretend to be a mommy and women who can be mommies are getting sterilized because they're mad about Roe v. Wade being overturned. It's a head shaker, but on the bright side, a sterilized liberal won't scandalize a poor, innocent child.

Some grammarian will no doubt tell me I'm wrong to use the word "mad" and say the women are "angry." But I use that word "mad" very deliberately. We are living in a mad, i.e. insane, world. 

Why Are They Raging When Abortion Is Still Legal?

For the benefit of the ignorant in the raging mobs, let me underline what happened last Friday. Dobbs overturned Roe, but did not ban abortion. It is still legal except in those states that had trigger laws linked to the end of Roe. And even in those states, many allow abortion in certain circumstances. Our work to end the murder of babies is just beginning.

Abortion Businesses are Closing! Less Access to Abortion Means Fewer Dead Babies!

One of the most effective ways to save babies is to limit abortion access.  The fewer abortion businesses, the fewer dead bodies. Life Dynamics spread that message decades ago. Mark Crutcher, author of Lime 5, is an authority on the exploitation of women by abortion. How many know about the reality of what goes on in many of these filthy places and the abortionists who run them. If you read Lime 5, you'll be shocked! 

Abortion is a disaster for women! Now, that access is limited, we have to continue getting that message out. Women need to know they have alternatives. Most women will not turn to illegal abortion if it's not easily available, but will seek help. Which means we need to beef up support for pregnancy help centers. 

Abortion facilities are closing all over the country. Praise God and help a crisis pregnancy center today in thanksgiving for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

THE LEFT Hates Democracy! Which is Why They are Misrepresenting the Roe v. Wade Draft Decision.

Barack's autobiography 
written by Bill Ayers

Considering the hysteria over the Alito draft leak, one can't help but wonder if Democrats can read. Maybe they just don't bother because it's so exhausting to have to think. Does that explain why so many liberals, over the years, committed plagiarism or had ghost writers pen their books? Who can be bothered with reading and writing, eh? 

 JFK's Profiles In Courage was not his work, but primarily that of his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen. Bill Ayers, Weather Underground terrorist turned professor, wrote Obama's autobiography, Dreams of My Father. (It gives new meaning to the term "auto-biography.") Joe Biden has a long record of plagiarizing including a paper with five pages stolen from a law review article when he attended Syracuse University Law School. He flunked a first year course for doing it, but that obviously didn't cure him of the practice. Has the man ever had an original thought?

Morning Thoughts on Acts of the Apostles

I've been reading Acts of the Apostles most mornings since Easter and it's amazing how relevant it is to 

what's happening in our day. Paul's missionary journeys expose him to much of the same types of controversy boiling over here and now. People don't change. Envy, greed, and the other deadly sins operate today just as they did in Paul's time.

Consider Acts 19. Paul and his associates preach the gospel and the dissent from some elements is so vehement it causes riots! Sound familiar? 

Want to See the REAL Threat to the Republic? Hint: It Wasn't the January 6th Protest! It's THE LEFT'S mob politics!

The country that serves Christ the King, receives the blessing of His protection.

After Angry Mobs Protest Justice Alito’s Home, Virginia Gov. Youngkin Sends Letter Asking Local Police to Set Security Perimeter Around Justices’ Homes

THE LEFT is threatening to "shut down" the Supreme Court if they don't get their way. Alito, Thomas, and Barrett all live in Virginia. They are fortunate to be in my state since we have a governor ready to protect them. Maryland governor Larry Hogan joined with Youngkin in signing a letter calling for the Justice department to protect the judges who reside in their respective states. As the protestors left Alito's home they chanted profanities and screamed, "Abort the Court." Concerned citizens need to call for consequences for these insurrectionists.

Intimidation Politics and Democrat Thuggery

If anyone needed to see the level of fascist thuggery exercised by the left, they had only to watch the response to the leaked draft of the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Both sides demonstrated at the Supreme Court, but the leftist thugs attacked their opponents physically, shouting obscenities and even following them as they left the site. Riots also erupted in L.A., Portland and other liberal cities. Now there are threats of Catholic church invasions this Sunday. Many liberal talking heads are trying to turn the leaker into a courageous hero rather than a leftist undermining the neutrality of the Supreme Court who obviously intended to spark outrage in order to intimidate justices into changing their position.

Remember Chuck Schumer threatening the judges. No accusation of insurrection against that liberal thug! "You won't know what hit you!" I believe he also said "We're coming for you." And these leftists mean what they say. Just look what they did burning our cities. This is their m.o. They shout down those who disagree with them and threaten physical violence. The left are barbarians who will stop at nothing to accomplish their goals and force them on the body politic. To call it "intimidation politics" is mild. 

Thoughts on a Drizzly Wednesday Morning

• I transplanted some day lilies yesterday so I welcome today's soft rain that will help their roots set -- makes me think of grace that helps the "roots" of our spiritual resolutions set.

Guest Post: "Don't Emanate in the Penumbras" -- Aborting Roe v. Wade!

Is the devil in the details? Or is he in the penumbra? Have you ever heard the phrase immanentize the eschaton? All these terms have one thing in common. They point to the verbal gymnastics exercised by flip-flopping, somersault-turning liberals, especially liberal judges who love to make up laws that agree with their opinions. Like the amazing gymnast dazzling an audience with flips, jumps, handsprings, scissors leaps, etc., liberals keep their true believers oohing and aaahing with their mind bending antics. That 66% of Democrats still approve of Biden's demented performance as the economy takes a nosedive and the price of heating our homes, feeding our families, filling the gas tank, etc. skyrockets - while the invasion at our southern border continues - illustrates a head-shaking insanity. Where are their minds? Do they have any common sense at all? Do they have eyes to see and ears to hear? Seems doubtful.

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

My little granddaughter,  
Anya, waiting in safety
under her mama's heart 

January 22, 2021

58th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade

Dear Nancy, 

I'm writing to you today as a fellow Catholic and fellow alumna of Trinity College (class of 1968). You graduated a few years before I arrived, so we never had the chance to share a coke at Cuvilly's snack bar, but I've followed your career in the media and in the alumnae journal for decades. I pray for you often, even when it requires me to suppress feelings of anger.

"Alabama is going to lead the nation in protecting the sanctity of life,”

If I ever leave Virginia, I think I'll head for the "heart of Dixie," Alabama! The people of the Yellowhammer state truly have a big heart for God's littlest lambs and they proved it yesterday by passing HB 314, the Human Life Protection Act which heads for the governor's desk. It takes direct aim at Roe v. Wade identifying the baby in the womb as a "person."

State Senator Clyde Chambliss told the Washington Post:

“Planned Parenthood can try to derail the bill, as they did in spending over a million dollars to unsuccessfully oppose a pro-life ballot measure last fall in Alabama. But the outcome will be the same: Alabamians will stand on the side of life.” 

Abortion, Vaccines, and Atrocities

In light of the videos from the Center for Medical Progress, this testimony is enlightening.

A Principle As Novel As It Is Wrong

Trump supporters of all stripes were praising to the hilt the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh on Monday evening after his brief acceptance speech in the East Room of the White House.  I don’t know Kavanaugh and maybe people like Laura Ingram are right when they say he’s a stellar choice.

The Whole Story the Nation Today Does Not Know or Prefers Not to Remember

Hopefully, in the coming months not years, a case will be brought to the Supreme Court that challenges the validity of the decision made in 1972 with the case Roe v. Wade.  We don’t know what form that challenge may be since it isn’t clear what the problem is in the first place.  We are clear that the now “historic decision” was then, and still is a problem, but how it will be fixed and or eliminated is anyone’s guess.

How Do You Process the Deliberate Legal Murder of a Toddler?

Is Baby Alfie smiling at Jesus?

Alfie Evans is dead -- murdered very systematically by a tyrannical health service backed up by a liberal, gay friendly judge. It's no real surprise, is it? We're accustomed to the headlines. We followed the story of Charlie Gard. 

As a mother and grandmother I have a hard time wrapping my mind around this kind of evil where doctors and judges can snatch the authority over children from good parents who love and care for their little ones and deliberately conspire to kill them. Why?

Listen Up, Pro-Lifers: We Must Run and Not Grow Weary

After 40 years of unrelenting child murder, it's not surprising if you are feeling discouraged. But Eric Scheidler gives us ten big accomplishments to fire us up for the continued fight. Read them, thank God, and rededicated yourself to prayer and work. Abortion WILL END. God will never abandon His babies.

Top Ten Accomplishments of the Pro-Life Movement, 1973-2013

How Long Before the Left Dumps Sandra Fluke?

The left is notorious for using people, squeezing them dry, and dropping them down the garbage chute. Sandra Fluke is enjoying her fifteen minutes of fame as, like a giggling school girl, she makes the rounds of the morning talk shows. But as more information comes out the likely scenario is that she will become an embarrassment to those who have used her to advance their agenda. Watch her get dropped like a hot potato. That's par for the course in the liberal war room. Use 'em and dump 'em.

I'm Ticked at Rush!

On the way home from COSTCO today I was listening to Rush whom I often find funny. And he didn't fail to give me a laugh when he said Obama's plan was to get him to retire. How is that, you ask? Well, Rush has said he'll be on the air until everyone in the country agrees with him and Obama, he said, is helping him reach that goal.

But what got me ticked off was his response to a caller who asked if he needed to support Constitutional Amendments to end abortion and homosexual marriage to be a conservative. Rush basically said, no, both those issues are states' rights matters and England didn't have an abortion controversy because the people voted on it. (I'm not sure that's true since they have an active pro-life movement there.)

I'll only address abortion here, something I've been fighting since 1972.

NO, RUSH, ABORTION IS NOT A STATES' RIGHTS ISSUE! (Am I talking loud enough?) IT'S A HUMAN/CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE!

Even Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun knew that when he wrote Roe v. Wade. Blackmun said "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense." But he also said, "The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, [410 U.S. 113, 157] for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."

Ultrasound technology and other advancements in the understanding of life in the womb have shown how much the baby is a "person in the whole sense," only a very little one. Just as slaves were not recognized as "whole persons" by the Dred Scott decision (it took the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution to make them full and free citizens) Roe v. Wade made the unborn modern slaves, the property of their mothers.

The personhood of the preborn should be self evident. If they are human genetically, they're persons. And they are. No woman ever gave birth to a cantaloupe.

The pro-life movement is the modern civil rights movement. The only difference between blacks fighting for their natural rights and the preborn is their visibility. The media showed the fire hoses, dogs, and billy clubs being used against blacks who marched for their rights. The instruments of violence used against the babies, the suction machines, knives, and poisonous chemicals, are hidden by a complicit media who don't want the truth to be shown.

But just as slavery ended so will the violence against the babies. It must. And while we fight for legal recognition by a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution, we also must continue to do everything we can to save those "being led to the slaughter" by sidewalk counseling, education (including those graphic pictures), and compassionate assistance to women in crisis.

Get it right, Rush! This is not a states' right issue. Voters can't make abortion right by a majority vote any more than they could make slavery right by majority rule. And those who want women to have a "choice" are no different than those who supported the "right to choose" for slaveowners and slavetraders.