More from @GrayConnolly

Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

22 Nov

On this day in 1963, the US President, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas. Kennedy was a naval officer and war hero in WWII, then a Congressman and Senator. A complex man whose presidency was cut short, yet was also significant for the crises it faced in its 1000 days.

Kennedy served in WW2 in the US Navy - by contrast to the Boomer generation & Vietnam, young Kennedy, with a terrible medical history, lied in order to join the US Navy, first serving in Naval Intelligence and then in the SW Pacific.

In 1943, the US Navy's PT-109, serving in the Solomon Islands campaign. is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. The boat's Skipper, LT(JG) John F. Kennedy, swam for 4 hours to rescue & then save his sailors. Australian coastwatcher, SBLT Arthur Evans, helped save the crew.

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

21 Nov

@BarnasJoe

Very sound #Catholic reading for a Sunday on left by ⁦@BarnasJoe⁩ .... sadly on right is a very amateurish caricature that is doing the rounds & is a form of penance one must endure. We must be understanding of error but vigilant in its correction

That ‘against integralism’ piece was so bad. I am not even an integralist (albeit it asks good questions about a just society) and this review was just a bonfire of straw men amid the spirit of 1965.

Catholic theology needs a “prisoner swap” with higher protestant theology. This is abysmal. Also Catholics use Tradition not “tradition”. This is just a hot mess of 1965 redux

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

21 Nov

Noting debates here over the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (March-May 1954), it remains my position that the French loss (esp post-Korean War armistice) was a needless disaster & that the Allies should have helped the French resist the Communist insurgency. I blame Ike. 🇫🇷 ⚜️

The brilliant war correspondent & historian, Bernard Fall, wrote superb histories of the French experience in Indochina, include the Dien Bien Phu denouement

Bernard Fall's account of the end of the French war in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu was a lesson that awaited 'learning', less for the successor Vietnam War (which was a just war of assistance to Sth Vietnam) than for the Afghan War of our times.

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Gray Connolly

@GrayConnolly

19 Nov

https://twitter.com/MassimoFaggioli/status/1329529036813557766

A moral equation of the 'body count' between abortions and state executions is simply absurd....also, an execution usually follows an exhaustive if at times flawed process. They are two separate species of 'death penalty' & culpability of the 'executed'.

https://twitter.com/MassimoFaggioli/status/1329529036813557766

Biggest problem for advocates of the death penalty: the criminal justice system can and does make horrifically unjust errors.

Biggest problem for opponents of the death penalty: what do you do with those tried and convicted at Nuremberg in 1945-1946?

What if the death penalty is to be viewed, historically at least, as the domestic application of war powers the State will use abroad? The Sovereign's duty was to protect the realm, against enemies foreign and domestic. Do those to be 'droned' deserve any due process?

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