Nancy Pelosi, right on cue and completely (or strategically?) clueless

First, if I might, a couple of lines from my post today over on the Catholic World Report blog:

To me, the most maddening and common quality shared by the afore-mentioned issues is the complete lack of logical, practical purpose save power, power, and more power. Pelosi didn't need to know the health care bill details because she knew it would eventually accomplish one thing: increase statism and further cripple the opposition. Keep tearing away at the last vestiges of moral fiber until they are replaced with pseuo-populist pablum that scoffs at responsibility and mocks virtue while demanding an all-regulating, all-controlling, all-everything central State. In the blunt words of the U.S. Court of Appeals (Eleventh Circuit), in an August 12, 2011, ruling (PDF file) against the embattled health care legislation:

In sum, the individual mandate is breathtaking in its expansive scope. It regulates those who have not entered the health care market at all. It regulates those who have entered the health care market, but have not entered the insurance market (and have no intention of doing so). It is overinclusive in when it regulates: it conflates those who presently consume health care with those who will not consume health care for many years into the future. The government's position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual's existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point of their life.

Yep, from womb (that is, if you make it out) to tomb. Or, in the direct words of Jeffrey Sachs, the author of The Price of Civilization: "Yes, the federal government is incompetent and corrupt—but we need more, not less, of it." Such a "need" is neurotic; it speaks to a misshapen and warped understanding of man, duty, government, and the purpose of life.

And today, Nancy Pelosi said the following, as reported by LifeNews.com:

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took her pro-abortion rhetoric to a new level, today saying Republicans "want women to die on the floor" in expressing her opposition to a bill stopping taxpayer funding of abortions in Obamacare.

"For a moment, I want to get back to what was asked about the issue on the floor today that Mr. Hoyer address," Pelosi said. "He made a point and I want to emphasize it. Under this bill, when the Republicans vote for this bill today, they will be voting to say that women can die on the floor and health care providers do not have to intervene if this bill is passed. It's just appalling."

Pelosi is bastardizing a portion of the bill that reinstates conscience protections for pro-life medical workers who don't want to be involved in abortions.

For Pelosi, the "right" to kill one's child trumps your right to keep innocent blood off your hands. The fact is, calling her "completely clueless" is not correct, for it understates the severe perversion at the heart of her obsessive commitment to abortion. This is about power and corruption. "Power tends to corrupt", Lord Acton (d. 1902) famously said in his letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely." I'm not sure, but perhaps Acton's statement drew upon an earlier statement by Edmund Burke (d. 1797), who wrote, "Unnatural power corrupts both the heart and understanding."

Oftentimes, when I hear of "Catholic" politicians demanding more "pro-choice rights" and demonizing anyone who objects, I think of two passages of Scripture. There are, the author(s) of Proverbs notes, "six things the LORD hates, seven which are an abomination to him:

haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers. (Prov 6:16-19)

And from 2 Peter:

They promise them freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption; for whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved. For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, The dog turns back to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire. (2 Pet 2:19-22)

Finally, on a closely related note, see Sister Mary Ann Walsh's post, "The ABC Factor at HHS - Anybody But Catholics", on the USCCB site.