Newt Gingrich Controversies

[Winchester]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1327181524' post='2372844']
It is moral and one has the constitutional right to grow, dry, and smoke the leaves of a naturally-occurring green plant called tobacco to attain a chemically-induced pleasure.
It is immoral and one does not have the constitutional right to grow, dry, and smoke the leaves of a naturally occurring green plant called marijuana to attain a chemically-induced pleasure.

I don't get why you're not following this. Is it not clear cut enough for you?
[/quote]
Oh. I see what you did there.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Winchester

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='FuturePriest387' timestamp='1327183127' post='2372863']
There is a difference: The people I mention are Traditional Catholics, this Archbishop obviously was not. Just because they support him does not mean we have to or should give us incentive to, but it does say something about Newt Gingrich. If you're going to say that anyone who supports him supports clown Masses, I think you should rethink your logic.
[/quote]
What does Traditional Catholic mean to you?

[PhuturePriest]

[quote name='Winchester' timestamp='1327183048' post='2372861']
Vices are not crimes.


No, he says the the Federal government doesn't exist to pass such laws. Is murder a federal crime?
[/quote]

The Government certainly has the power to stop murder. If the Government can make such a decision as to call murder illegal, they certainly have the power to enforce it. Perhaps you should read just what the three branches of the government are and their purposes. The executive branch is specifically made to enforce laws. Now you're attacking the system of the government?

[PhuturePriest]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1327183313' post='2372866']
What does Traditional Catholic mean to you?
[/quote]

It means you follow the rules of the Church, and don't call for radical changes in it.

[Winchester]

[quote name='FuturePriest387' timestamp='1327178871' post='2372803']
You know, I find it quite ironic that when I say I like Santorum more, and think he's more Conservative, everyone ignores that post.
[/quote]Santorum is as conservative as Newt. Which is to say he isn't. He's also voted to fund Planned Parenthood.

[quote name='FuturePriest387' timestamp='1327183326' post='2372867']
The Government certainly has the power to stop murder. If the Government can make such a decision as to call murder illegal, they certainly have the power to enforce it. Perhaps you should read just what the three branches of the government are and their purposes. The executive branch is specifically made to enforce laws. Now you're attacking the system of the government?
[/quote]Laws against murder are enforced at the state level, kid.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='FuturePriest387' timestamp='1327183391' post='2372869']
It means you follow the rules of the Church, and don't call for radical changes in it.
[/quote]
When did Mahoney call for radical changes within the Church?
Also, Pope Benedict called for a higher usage of the Traditional Latin Mass for those who wanted it, after some 40 years of it having been suppressed. That seems like a pretty radical change. Is Pope Benedict a Traditional Catholic?

In any case, if I went out and found a seminarian, a priest, and a Benedictine monk who didn't like Gingrich, would I be justified in disliking him? Who would be right then, your seminarian, priest, and Benedictine monk or mine?

[Jaime]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1327183793' post='2372872']
When did Mahoney call for radical changes within the Church?
Also, Pope Benedict called for a higher usage of the Traditional Latin Mass for those who wanted it, after some 40 years of it having been suppressed. That seems like a pretty radical change. Is Pope Benedict a Traditional Catholic?

In any case, if I went out and found a seminarian, a priest, and a Benedictine monk who didn't like Gingrich, would I be justified in disliking him? Who would be right then, your seminarian, priest, and Benedictine monk or mine?
[/quote]

You're not 15. Now your profile says your 20 so it's not so hard to remember when you were young(er) and was looking towards others to help form your opinions. I don't agree with everything futurepriest is saying or going to say. But I'm an adult and have a different perspective. I do like HOW he goes about developing his own opinion. And I like how he's honest about his approach. We all start out doing the exact same thing and work our way to developing critical thinking. Granted some of us never get there but I'm not going to fault the kid for starting off on the right foot.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='jaime' timestamp='1327186723' post='2372895']
You're not 15. Now your profile says your 20 so it's not so hard to remember when you were young(er) and was looking towards others to help form your opinions. I don't agree with everything futurepriest is saying or going to say. But I'm an adult and have a different perspective. I do like HOW he goes about developing his own opinion. And I like how he's honest about his approach. We all start out doing the exact same thing and work our way to developing critical thinking. Granted some of us never get there but I'm not going to fault the kid for starting off on the right foot.
[/quote]
I am twenty, and I remember when I was 15 and was looking towards others to help form my opinions. I remember earlier this afternoon when I was looking towards others to help form my opinions. I haven't attacked futurepriest's character at all, nor have I criticized anything about him (or, for that sake, his arguments). Consequently, I'm kind of confused at your rebukes. I disagree with futurepriest's positions, and (this is not meant as an affront to him) find them a bit naïve. All I'm trying to do is get him to develop those critical thinking skills that you're talking about by having him consider his rhetoric in a different light.
If you'd like to treat him differently because he's younger, you may, but thinking back to my 15-year-old self, I would have preferred for people to discourse with me as an equal, not as a child. Therefore, I will afford him the same respect and treatment that I would have appreciated at that age.

Edited January 21, 2012 by USAirwaysIHS

[Jaime]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1327189427' post='2372917']
I am twenty, and I remember when I was 15 and was looking towards others to help form my opinions. I remember earlier this afternoon when I was looking towards others to help form my opinions. I haven't attacked futurepriest's character at all, nor have I criticized anything about him (or, for that sake, his arguments). Consequently, I'm kind of confused at your rebukes. I disagree with futurepriest's positions, and (this is not meant as an affront to him) find them a bit naïve. All I'm trying to do is get him to develop those critical thinking skills that you're talking about by having him consider his rhetoric in a different light.
If you'd like to treat him differently because he's younger, you may, but thinking back to my 15-year-old self, I would have preferred for people to discourse with me as an equal, not as a child. Therefore, I will afford him the same respect and treatment that I would have appreciated at that age.
[/quote]

No dude that's not what my problem is. I think you're critiquing his style of how he forms his opinion. The whole "should I listen to Cardinal Mahoney.." logic infers that you don't think he should gather his opinions from people he admires and looks up to. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing with (or being frustrated with for that matter) someone who is a lot younger. I don't have a problem with you challenging him to critically think. My point is that you seemed to attack how he formed his opinions in the first place. And we all do that at the beginning.

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='jaime' timestamp='1327190445' post='2372926']
No dude that's not what my problem is. I think you're critiquing his style of how he forms his opinion. The whole "should I listen to Cardinal Mahoney.." logic infers that you don't think he should gather his opinions from people he admires and looks up to. I don't have a problem with you disagreeing with (or being frustrated with for that matter) someone who is a lot younger. I don't have a problem with you challenging him to critically think. My point is that you seemed to attack how he formed his opinions in the first place. And we all do that at the beginning.
[/quote]
I can see how it would come off in that manner. I didn't mean it like that, it was my poor attempt at Socratic Dialogue, I suppose. I merely wished to illustrate the dangers of believing something merely because somebody you know/like/respect believes it. Of course, that's not to say that following the opinions of a respected individual is a bad reason to believe something, but one should use that as a starting point to investigate the belief, rather than a foundation for one's own belief or as taking it as the Gospel truth.

(Also, sorry if my responses are unclear today - I've been doing a lot of writing and my brain is a little mushier than usual.)

[Jaime]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' timestamp='1327190793' post='2372929']
I can see how it would come off in that manner. I didn't mean it like that, it was my poor attempt at Socratic Dialogue, I suppose. I merely wished to illustrate the dangers of believing something merely because somebody you know/like/respect believes it. Of course, that's not to say that following the opinions of a respected individual is a bad reason to believe something, but one should use that as a starting point to investigate the belief, rather than a foundation for one's own belief or as taking it as the Gospel truth.

(Also, sorry if my responses are unclear today - I've been doing a lot of writing and my brain is a little mushier than usual.)
[/quote]

All of that I would agree with. (BTW I'm bouncing between a homework presentation and PM so my brain is half mush as well). I get the whole "let's treat everyone as an adult online" argument. I don't know if I agree with it tbh. If someone can't make a stand alone argument at the age of 25, I'm not going to give him/her much slack. But if a 15 year old can't make a good counter argument and is being somewhat respectful (we've had twelve year olds who couldn't do that) then I'm going to give more latitude. Heck even if they aren't being respectful, I'll give them some latitude. While futurepriest is a bit impassioned, I haven't seen him take any real cheap shots at anyone. (not to say i didn't miss them)

I realize I haven't shared my own opinion on Gingrich. I welcome him to the Church. I think he's wicked smart. I agree with everyone here who says he's not a true conservative. And last but not least as it looks like he's about to win South Carolina, I think he's the only one in the field with a shot at beating Obama.

[4588686]

[quote name='Era Might' timestamp='1327180739' post='2372834']
I agree. That's why Ron Paul is the only consistent one. He doesn't stop at economic regulations and welfare.
[/quote]

Ron Paul is consistent with his political ideology. Conservatives are generally consistent in their theoretical opposition to what they designate as "big government" but support for the military. They make no bone about the fact that they consider government spending for a robust defense force a perfectly legitimate function of the state. If you want to impose a different sense on the phrase than is intended and then be pleased to show how you've caught them in a contradiction of your own creation then that's fine, but I'm not sure what your point is. Yes, Conservatives support for the military is inconsistent with a libertarian politician's understanding of what constitutes 'big government' but not with their own. I don't see what's significant about that.

[kujo]

Honor is a very important issue to me. You either have it, or you don't. And Newt Gingrich, the man who has cheated on his wives inumerable times--all while lambasting President Clinton for his sexual perversions--has a serious lack of honor, as far as I can tell. He says he's a changed man, having found his way to the Church. I sincerely hope and pray that his conversion is a true and sincere one, for his soul and for his family's spiritual well being. Nevertheless, I know his history, and whether or not it's right or wrong, I simply cannot vote for or support a man like him. He sacrificed his honor, and his word, all those times he was unfaithful to his wives. IMHO, as a voter, there's no coming back from that.

(P.S.- He's a right-leaning progressive)

[4588686]

[quote name='kujo' timestamp='1327191869' post='2372942']
Honor is a very important issue to me. You either have it, or you don't. And Newt Gingrich, the man who has cheated on his wives inumerable times--all while lambasting President Clinton for his sexual perversions--has a serious lack of honor, as far as I can tell. He says he's a changed man, having found his way to the Church. I sincerely hope and pray that his conversion is a true and sincere one, for his soul and for his family's spiritual well being. Nevertheless, I know his history, and whether or not it's right or wrong, I simply cannot vote for or support a man like him. He sacrificed his honor, and his word, all those times he was unfaithful to his wives. IMHO, as a voter, there's no coming back from that.

(P.S.- He's a right-leaning progressive)
[/quote]

He was led to the Church by his wife who is every bit as much a hypocrite as he is. It takes a great deal of moxie to stand up and sing in a Cathedral's choir while you've been servicing a married man for the past six years.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Hasan

[BG45]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1327113573' post='2372420']
OK, let's go through these one by one:



Granted, if he's still in the race when Illinois has it's primary, my vote for him will be despite his personal life, not because of it. However, let's see who also of recent memory has been in the White House:

-someone who gave an interview to a porn magazine
-a divorced and remarried man
-someone who didn't spay his dog
-someone who was considered a draft dodger
-someone who had a DUI
-someone who did cocaine

[/quote]

In other words, the president, like most politicians unsurprisingly, tends to be a person with moral problems. Personally, I didn't vote for any of those people, and I had the chance to vote for two of them.

[quote name='Norseman82']
Valid point, but Democrats also derailed the nomination of Robert Bork because they thought he would be the vote to overturn Roe v Wade, and how many southern Democrats filibustered civil rights legislation.
[/quote]

I made sure to put the Democrats first in part of my blame for that because I figured someone would have to cry I was persecuting Republicans and decide they had to bring up the percieved evils of the Democratic party.

[quote name='Norseman82']
OK, but the concept of "3 strikes" should still be applied for violent criminals - and that includes drug dealers.
[/quote]

Drug dealers often aren't violent criminals. As for violent criminals, maybe, who knows if that would work. I'd like to see a study on it.

[quote name='Norseman82']
Didn't Pope Benedict XVI (while still a cardinal) say that there could be a legitimate disagreement on the death penalty?
[/quote]

He did. I'm legitimately disagreeing with Newt's support of it.

[quote name='Norseman82']
Well, where are we going to put the criminals that you want to spare the death penalty?? I mean, gee, one minute you want to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment, the next you are against expanding the prison system which wouid be necessary to hold them.
[/quote]

Actually when you do something like abolish the death penalty and then transmute the sentences into life without the possibility of parole like Illinois did in 2011 due the fact they realized they had executed so many innocent people, you tend to convert existing facilities rather than waste tax dollars. That is, unless you're a politician who needs to be "tough on crime" and wage a campaign of fear and misinformation on a woefully underinformed public. In that case, the public lets you build prisons, and once you have prisons you fill them to overcapacity because that's how it works.

It takes a year or two of campaigning usually to build a prison, it takes decades to convince the public you can shut one down. Which is kinda sad, because usually the people who don't want it shut down aren't really benefiting from it anyway; usually the argument is made that it brings in money to the local community. Bulk suppliers supply all the goods from toiletries to food. Depending on if it's a federal facility or not, most workers won't even be from the area. The visitors tend to be spending most of their money for a bus ticket to the prison from out of town and not buying things in local shops.

[quote name='Norseman82']
Simple solution - stop doing drugs! You don't want to go to prison, stop breaking the law!
[/quote]

Easier said than done for some people. Addiction is a real thing, and we had some great anti-drug therapy programs until the 70s when one report said nothing was overly effective in rehabilitation and we shifted to a purely punitive model. Almost every meta analysis (the type of report that lead to our abandoning rehabilitation as a main goal of prisons) since has found that a number of rehabilitative practices show great promise. Multi-systemic Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and others.

[quote name='Norseman82']
So what's wrong with that? That is a GOOD thing. It's called CIVICS. It's called learning about your nation's history and Constitution and how the government works (or is theoretically supposed to work). Maybe if more people knew at least as much about civics as they do about "Jersey Shore" or the latest sports news du jour we'd be electing a better quality of candidates.
[/quote]

His discussion of the need of Patriotic Education comes from the book [i]Rediscovering God in America[/i]. He seems to feel that basically the school systems make America into an evil place. He's apparently never had the public school textbooks or teachers I was fortunate to have. I learned about my nation's history, both the good parts and the bad, and I learned how far we've come from being a collection of mostly poor farmers who didn't want taxed by a King thousands of miles away to an urban society that is now taxed by a closer collection of representatives the people have the privlege (not the right, you lose it if you're a felon and 1 in 3 black males will never serve on a jury or be able to vote sadly) to elect them...unless you're from D.C. Unfortunately the District of Columbia is a "federal" city, so it has non-voting shadow representatives in Congress; one of the favored license plates in the District protests this taxation without representation.

I learned to read the U.S. Constitution by fifth grade and had a political science teacher in high school who could recite it, and every Amendment, from memory. One person said there was no way, and he did, including the technical parts, word for word. His favorite time of the year was the field trip where he took students to D.C. to watch the government in action from the galleries in the Capitol building.

Multiculturalism does not mean pronouncing everyone's cultures to be better than the United States. It means that we need to have an understanding of various other cultures and their values, as well as our own, if we are to be able to function in a stable global society. I've never really understood why Newt and other politicians are against it; I find it fascinating to know why someone's culture believes something.

My thoughts on patriotism don't mean educating our youth to believe they're better than every other human being just because they're an American. Patriotism to me is to respect the offices that are held, even as you may disagree with the people who hold them. The ability to speak without being silenced, for or against the government. Willingness when necessary to place country before self, as the generation of World War Two did. I highly disagree with President Obama's policies, I feel his perpetuation of the genocide of the unborn is ghastly, but I still respect the office that he holds even though he will never recieve my vote.

[quote name='Norseman82']
I admit I don't know much about this point, but anything draconian would either:
-not pass Congress
-provoke a political backlash, including from his own party
-be the subject of a court challenge
-make more people take advantage of their second amendment rights
[/quote]

I would hope you would be right. People already are angry when anyone even brings up the idea of a national ID card, at least in the areas I've lived. However, recent events have shown that some really bad stuff does make it through. The National Defense of America Act for instance, which allows the government to detain US civilians indefinitely without their Constitutionally given rights is rimeniscent of the way Lincoln officially suspended Habeas Corpus in the Civil War and imprisoned, among others, the entire Maryland legislature. NDAA was passed with bipartisan support unfortunately, and gun ownership is on the rise with recent events as well, so I'd say you're right that people are taking advantage of their Second Amendment rights; which thanks to [i]McDonald v. Chicago[/i] and the Supreme Court, applies to the states so people can't ban guns legally.

[quote name='Norseman82']
Other than his criticisms of some of the questions at the debates, I admit I don't know much about this. But many conservatives criticize the mainstream media, and many liberals criticize talk radio. Old news.
[/quote]

Quite true.But the phrasing is in a language that tries to inspire division, which is one I don't like.


Next part of reply in another post. It hated the number of quote tags I was using.