Author: Eric Johnson

Eric is back
I have returned from active duty with the Marines a day early. I can’t say where we were because the mission is still ongoing, but I can report that everything went quite well. Once again, I am convinced that it would be really scary to fight against the Corps, which is great because it means the mere threat of sending in the Marines is often enough to keep violent men in check.

A good night for the Republicans
The night isn’t over yet, but things are looking good for the Republicans: they’ve won several key races, and it’s hard to see the Dems coming from behind. Pro-abortion pseudo-Republican Rep. Connie Morella lost her seat in Maryland, and good riddance. When asked who she’d vote for as majority leader if there were one vote separating both parties in the House, she said she didn’t want to get into hypotheticals — and she said that after the national party pulled out all the stops to help her re-election. How can a Catholic woman who raised nine kids think abortion is okay?
Even better, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost the Maryland governorship. (As I said a few weeks ago, every time a Kennedy goes to jail or loses an election, an angel gets his wings.) To top it off, the bloggers of Catholic Light in northern Virginia will not have their taxes raised to pay for transportation “improvements.”
P.S. Thanks for your good wishes as I depart — I’ll try to post from the U.S.S. Iwo Jima, and we will have Internet access there, but it’s from a secure area of the ship and I really don’t want to break any security rules.

Eric is leaving for a while
Those of you who have met me know that I’m a sergeant in the Marine Reserves; those of you who don’t may have suspected it. My annual training is set to begin this Wednesday, and between that and working on election coverage, I’ll probably be checking out for the next two weeks. A team from my unit is going to be training with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), doing anti-terrorism and special operations exercises around Jacksonville, Florida. It sounds like it’s going to be a lot of fun, but since there is always an irreducible amount of risk involved in this kind of training, please pray that everything goes well. While you’re at it, pray for all servicemen who spend a lot more time than a mere two weeks away from their families and loved ones.
Since many of you are taxpayers and you’re financing all of this, you might be interested in what a MEU does. There are seven MEUs, three in the Atlantic and four in the Pacific. There are about 2,000 Marines and sailors in each one, and they’re something like a military in miniature: they have ships, planes, helicopters, assault vehicles, and infantry, with tanks being the only major piece of equipment they lack. If the United States is the world’s policeman — and it is, to a very limited extent — the MEUs are the beat cops, always prowling around the oceans in case of trouble. Though the numbers in each unit are comparatively small, their striking power is all out of proportion to their size.
One of the best essays that I’ve never written is about the similarities between the Marine Corps and the Church, which isn’t that surprising because the Corps is one-third Catholic. Maybe when I return, I’ll get around to it. Also, if you would like anything in the greater Jacksonville area destroyed in the next couple of weeks, please let me know.

Pro-life liberals ever more endangered
The northern and midwester industrial states used to send plenty of pro-life liberal Democrats to Congress, back in the 1970s and even the ’80s. There are now even fewer of that species, as Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has decided this year that the government should pay for abortions in military hospitals. It would appear that he is traveling the well-trod road of ambition in the Democratic Party — dumping his pro-life beliefs for the sake of higher office. The trailblazers on this path have names like Gore, Kennedy, Jackson, and Gephardt.
And so it goes: pro-life Republicans are expected to support pro-abortion politicians “for the sake of the party.” Pro-life Democrats are shamed into submission if they want to run for anything big. For you non-Americans reading this, the Democrats are the “tolerant” party, and the Republican party is the “narrowminded” party. Got that?

Proposal: Make a publication
I would send this question to the Catholic Light contributors privately, but what the heck — I’ll send the question urbi et orbi. The posts on this blog are getting to be a mixture of bite-sized, blogesque paragraphs and multi-hundred-word essays. I think we should consider starting a Catholic Light online publication, with the blog being one of the sections. We could divide up the essays into Arts & Culture, Faith, Apologetics, Politics, or what have you, and have a home page featuring several essays at once. We could also accept contributions from people who are outside the Chosen Few.
It wouldn’t be a huge undertaking to write a content-management system to handle the site, and between the contributors we have more than enough talent to make a technically excellent site. Given the low cost of hosting, I’m sure we could figure out how to pay for it somehow (I don’t think we’d need more than $50 a month or so).
We’re generating a ton of material here — I think it’s quickly outgrowing the blog format. What do you all think?