Today on Kresta - May 28, 2010

Talking about the "things that matter most" on May 28

LIVE FROM WMET - 1160 A.M. in WASHINGTON, D.C.

4:00 – The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898
On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor. Although there was no evidence that the Spanish were responsible, yellow newspapers such as William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal whipped Americans into frenzy by claiming that Spain's "secret infernal machine" had destroyed the battleship. Soon after, the blandly handsome and easily influenced President McKinley declared war, sending troops not only to Cuba but also to the Philippines, Spain's sprawling colony on the other side of the world. As Evan Thomas reveals in his rip-roaring history of those times, the hunger for war had begun years earlier. Depressed by the "closing" of the Western frontier and embracing theories of social Darwinism, a group of warmongers that included a young Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge agitated loudly and incessantly that the United States exert its influence across the seas. These hawks would transform American foreign policy and, when Teddy ascended to the presidency, commence with a devastating war without reason, concocted within the White House—a bloody conflict that would come at tremendous cost. We look at the story of six men at the center of a transforming event in U.S. history: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, McKinley, William James, and Thomas Reed.

4:40 – Fighting for Faith, Family and Virtue at the UN
As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. One of the most important places to defend those principles is at the United Nations. Austin Ruse has been doing it for years, and is here to discuss the most pressing issues facing the family at the UN.

5:00 – Authentic Reform in the USCCB
Few people know the inner workings of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops like Russell Shaw. He served for two decades as Communications Director for the USCCB and has written Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication, and Communion in the Catholic Church. He joins us to discuss the abuse of secrecy in the Church, the scandals it has caused and the serious problem of mistrust that exists in the credibility of the Church. In this beautiful vision of the Church, his aim is to make a contribution to realizing this vision in the concrete circumstances of the present day, by helping to end the culture of secrecy, especially within American Catholicism, and replacing the destructive culture with an open, accountable community of faith.

5:40 – TBA