From the desk of Charlie Churchill’s Parrot
“Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution” – St. Thomas Aquinas.
Words matter to the extent they accurately represent the concept for which they were originally intended. When you wish to make a piece of toast, for example, you request a “toaster” not a “philodendron.” Surely some concepts are more abstract than others. This reality, however, is no justification for obfuscation nor does it make holding the loftier terms to their original definition any less important. Indeed, quite often it is more so.
But what with ever-slackening educational standards and minds liquidated from endless hours before the tele, modern man can hardly be expected to prevail in the Herculean task of holding words to their meaning. Thus “freedom” today is synonymous with perversion, “greed” refers to any instance of any creature acting in its own self-interest, and “justice” equates to making sure everyone has the same number of points at the end of the game.
It is this last abomination of explication upon which we wish to focus.
It is our contention that the Obamanon by which America is currently disfiguring herself was made possible by this contemporary misinterpretation of justice. The laughably un-American policies and proposals, the bald-faced contempt for free-market values, the sanctimonious arrogance of apologizing to the world for American greatness, all are made acceptable to the American people to the extent they believe these atrocities to be acts of “justice.”
After all, under the modern definition of justice, the realities of poverty and suffering can only exist as a result of some injustice, and could never be the by-product of human stupidity, fecklessness, impulsiveness, or outright evil. Inequality of circumstance simply IS injustice, and Bob’s your Uncle! Ergo the gains of the rich, clearly ill-gotten, must be redistributed. The ventures of the capitalists, pure wanton profiteering, must be shackled. And American influence in the world, nothing but imperialistic bullying, must cease and desist. Only thus can justice be restored. Yes we can. And the people nod in passive agreement.
But, as has been pointed out so many times before by others nearly as brilliant as ourselves, equality of circumstances for all is not justice. In fact, the key ingredient in establishing equality of circumstances for all is injustice, usually in the form of jack-booted thugs, firing squads, tanks, and secret prisons.
Alas, modern man, in his zeal to demonstrate his compassion, his empathy, his sense of justice for those less fortunate, is in the process of securing the exact opposite of all for all. He has removed actual justice from the equation and need now only sit back and await validation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ supposition, “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution” i.e. chaos, anarchy, tumult, pestilence, suffering, and death.
Which brings us to Sonia Sotomayor; wise Latina, President Obama’s nominee for Supreme Court justice, and the embodiment of all of the above. By her words and actions this woman has demonstrated her conviction that justice is not the preservation of equality of opportunity, but the establishment of equality of circumstances. It is attainted and maintained not by adherence to a mutually beneficial rule of law, but by quotas, affirmative action, and the intrinsic knowledge that she knows better. She will judge others not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin. She has been called – and rightly so – a racist, a supremacist, an irresponsible even reckless jurist, and she will win confirmation as a justice on the highest court in the land on or about July13.
In the objective world, a toaster remains distinct from a philodendron, justice remains distinct from empathy and preference, and dissolution is dissolution. But in this era of the new “justice,” we must do everything in our power to pretend otherwise, lest we find ourselves held in contempt.
May God help America.
Cheers,
Charlie
















2 users commented in " The Mother of Dissolution "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackYou gotta admire Charlie’s rigorous editing. While Sonia Sotomayor has been a jurist for more than a decade, Charlie spares us the tedium of reading actual citations to legal decisions supporting Charlie’s thesis.
Indeed, Charlie’s sole citation is not to Sotomayor, but to St. Thomas Aquinas:
“Alas, modern man, in his zeal to demonstrate his compassion, his empathy, his sense of justice for those less fortunate, is in the process of securing the exact opposite of all for all. He has removed actual justice from the equation and need now only sit back and await validation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ supposition, ‘Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution’ i.e. chaos, anarchy, tumult, pestilence, suffering, and death.”
Ya know, that Aquinas guy had some good thoughts, and might have gone far if only he’d had a little more editorial discipline like Charlie. Thank goodness Charlie spared us the burden of wading through Aquinas’ needlessly wordy sentence: “Justice without mercy is cruelty; mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution.” Appreciate it, guy.
My Dear nobody.really said,
We are most appreciative of your commentary and always respectful of those who seek editorial integrity.
On St. Thomas Aquinas’ quote, you are quite right, there is more to it. We fail to see, however, how that in any way alters the truth of what he (and we by way of citation) are saying. Indeed justice without mercy is cruelty. We believe this tenet is firmly entrenched in modern western jurisprudence, as it should be. What is currently contributing to the disintegration of that jurisprudence, however, is our failure to appreciate the significance of the other part of that quote, “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution.” Thus our post.
As for the tedium of Miss Sotomayors legal decisions, Ricci v. DeStefano, Maloney v. Cuomo, and the Didden v. Village of Port Chester are tops among those which ruffle our feathers. Look them up. There’s no shortage of commentary from others. There is also no shortage of commentary upon Miss Sotomayor’s rather bombastic statements about how justice ought be decided and parceled out in her version of America. We disagree with her profoundly (again, thus the post.)
A fan of her’s our you then? Please do enlighten us as to how and why.
Cheers,
Charlie
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