Ah! Yours was a better one then mine ... explains the point perfectly!

In the transcript, it's obvious that the FEC lawyer feels entitled to go anywhere and ask anything, and expects the witness (Ollie North, of all people) to answer every question.

I have been asking you a series of questions about your relationship with Pat Robertson, the Christian Coalition. . . . It is relevant to this inquiry what relationship you had with Pat Robertson andI have asked you whether Pat Robertson had indicated to you that he was praying for you.

I'll bet Ollie North was going to admit that Pat Robertson was praying that Ollie kick a heroin habit, or stop sleeping with prostitutes, or gasp, that Ollie would campaign for Robertson on the GOP ticket. (Sure. Right.)

Doesn't matter why, of course, that the FEC lawyer asked the questions. The point is that the lawyer felt empowered to ask anything.

I still think credit has to go to the original Benghazi whistleblowers, and the committee Republicans who gave them a forum. They deserve some appreciation.

Brave emotional rhetoric, but let's face facts. By your own definition, stated on this thread, millions of babies are indeed being killed.

Funny. I don't see you taking up arms against the government.

And your straw man is itself a straw man. "Taking up arms to prevent mass infanticide does not require killing everyone in favor of abortion. That's just a straw man." I suppose that was silly of me to suggest that we'd be killing all abortion opponents. But then again, you can't logically take up arms and then not expect to kill anyone. So I guess it'll be just some of them?

Where to begin? This is utter nonsense.

I wrote a post saying that the global financial crisis and its effect on the poor can't be measured by income. You somehow interpret that as admitting I was wrong about income statistics.

I wrote several posts, earlier on, about the pope's point that the poor shouldn't be treated merely as pawns in an economic theory. You responded, absurdly, hilariously, that we should forget about what the pope actually said and instead treat is as an economic analysis.

Then you leap entirely into bubble-dom by saying that I "seem" to have formulated the point that life is more than economics to save face. Never mind that I had been making that point from the beginning.

You want to see some "calling out?" The pope criticized capitalism and you freaked out. Talk about hitting a nerve ...

I'll leave you to your bubble.

Because ... and this is the essence of conservatism ... we believe that the government's authority comes from the consent of the governed. And if the governed doesn't consent, then we have no moral right to employ the powers of government, even when it's a grave and serious matter.

The other option is to go completely radical, and start killing people who disagree, on your own, without the government. Which is to say that the response to killing should be more killing. But if you're  actually pro-life, that's hardly a coherent position.

The only way to stop abortion without killing all the abortion opponents is to energetically and ceaselessly participate in the democratic process. 

Do you think I'm happy or passive about where abortion is? Then you don't know me at all. (Obviously - this is the internet, why should you?)

But the first step in a persuasion fight is to make an argument. Connect the dots. Answer the objections. 

What do I claim to know? (I think I may have lost track of this thread in the conversation - been a busy day!)

If I understand you correctly (please correct me if I don't), you're asking where to draw the line.

I say that the impulse to draw a line in the first place is the false assumption. Why do we have to draw a line somewhere? The only evidence for anything is that there's life. Human life. 

But to justify abortion, one has to invent a boundary that imagines that on one side of the boundary is personhood and civil rights, but that on the other side it's just uterine material with no rights. 

Where did we get the idea that there must be a line in the first place? Why isn't life enough?

No, that's not the answer. That's simplistic.

We don't live in a democracy where everyone's opinion is tolerable, unless it's about something really important, in which case we're entitled to rage murderously through the country. Neither the seriousness of the matter, nor the urgency of your belief, is an excuse. 

It is one thing to believe strongly that something is morally wrong. It's another thing to deny that others might have a different view, and that our commitment to democracy isn't just a pleasant platitude. This is the cost of democracy, to accept that others have a different view, even on grave matters. 

Well, I know what you and Salvatore are saying, and I understand the numbers. But we have to wrestle over more than just the income numbers.

The pope's speech was entirely about not treating the poor simply according to numbers. They're not just just consumers.

You often hear people argue that the poor are better off because they now have cellphones. Great. But their education sucks, their unemployment is much higher, and their ability to move upward -- to make a better life -- is that any better? And that's just in North America; put yourself in other countries that don't have our traditions.

Again, if the pope's criticism is that life is more than economics,  citing economic statistics really isn't a reply.

To me, you can't get much a higher compliment.

ad maiorem dei gloriam -- "to the greater glory of God" -- the motto of the Jesuits. 

Many thanks, Nanda.

Answer to the question in headline:

No, but it seems to be America's present.

Forget the semantic games. Instead, it's important to recognize that you're downplaying the effect of the crisis on the poor, simply because you want to support the notion that markets have been good for people.

From Phillip Lawler's comment:  

a powerful argument can be made that capitalism, tempered by a Christian moral framework, is the best available solution to the problem of poverty.

Nothing that Pope Francis said—nothing that any Pope has said—would rule out that approach. (Pope John Paul II opened the door to a Christian defense of capitalism inLaborem Exercens, then pushed it wide open in Centisimus Annus.) To be sure, the teaching magisterium has been critical of the excesses of capitalism, and of capitalism raised to an all-encompassing ideology. Pope Francis today repeated that condemnation of “ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good.” Hard-core libertarians will be uncomfortable with that language, certainly. But then hard-core libertarians are often uncomfortable with the Ten Commandments.

It might seem strange only if you assume that medical science should be as capable of preventing natural miscarriages as it's capable of preventing other disease. I certainly don't make that assumption, especially since most of these "spontaneous" abortions occur before the woman is even aware that she's pregnant. It would be a massive (not to mention intrusive) process to examine every possible pregnancy, diagnose what of a million things could have gone wrong, devise a quick-acting treatment ... all for a completely natural process.

This is just a middle-class inconvenience?

Obama has a habit of saying things that make things worse. 

"I found out about it from media reports."

It reminds me the great story of G. Wilson Goode, who was once  the mayor of Philadelphia. A radical group called MOVE had been ordered to evacuate their headquarters in the city; MOVE refused; the Philly cops (according to the story) wanted to shake them out of their houses, so they dropped a explosive. Yes, not only did the "incendiary device" make a loud noise and scare people for miles around (the intended effect)... it also set the neighborhood on fire (an, uh, unintended effect).

After the incident, reporters wanted to know who gave the order to drop a bomb within the city. According to legend(?), the reporters confronted the mayor. 

The mayor excused himself for not knowing, on the excuse that the television in his office in City Hall didn't get good reception, and the local news he was watching (this was pre-cable in Philly) was "snowy."

Reporters, shocked at the answer, had to re-ask the question, so Goode showed them the problems he had with reception on his TV.

Sorry, I have to re-enter this discussion again. I thought it had gotten silly, but it's important to focus on something.

Are we saying that notwithstanding the global financial crisis, the poor's lives are getting better? Then why was the global financial crisis a problem? Why worry about it? All is well!