Posted on 11/12/2004 3:36:02 AM PST by Former Military Chick
My wife is a Democrat. Her family home in Chicago is lined with photos of the Kennedys. As a child, she remembers Saul Alinsky organizing neighborhood groups in her living room at the invitation of her mother and father. She volunteered on the Eugene McCarthy campaign. She worked as a floor runner at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Adlai Stevenson was a household icon.
My wife is a Democrat. Always was, always will be - at least in her heart. But she hasn't voted for a major Democratic candidate in more than 25 years. And therein lies a lesson for any Democrat who wants to understand the debris of the 2004 election.
I met my wife before I had returned to my childhood faith. One day I made the mistake of poking fun at those neanderthal Catholic views on abortion. What I got for my ignorance was a kindly but memorable tutoring on the sanctity of human life.
For my wife and her family, being a Catholic meant being a Democrat, and being a Democrat meant fighting for the little guy - literally. That included the poor, the homeless, racial and ethnic minorities, and the unemployed. It also meant defending the unborn child.
For my wife, arguing whether an unborn child was a "full human person" or a "developing human being" was irrelevant - or worse, a kind of lying. The dignity of the unborn life involved was exactly the same, whatever one called it.
In the years since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion on demand, my wife and I have struggled many times with the choice of voting Democratic. Our youngest son has Down syndrome, and Democratic policies often benefit the disabled in ways Republican policies don't.
But it's also true that children like our son are becoming extinct in part because the abortion lobby has a stranglehold on the Democratic Party platform, with all that it implies for legislation and judicial appointments. The easiest response to handicapped children is to kill them before they arrive. That's not a solution. That's homicide.
We can't build a just society while killing a million unborn children a year. No matter how much good we try to do, we can't outrun the effects of that most intimate form of violence against women and children.
Not so long ago, leading Democrats understood this. Robert P. Casey, governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995, embodied the deepest ideals of the Democratic Party: pro-worker; pro-minority; pro-economic and social justice; and also thoroughly pro-life, from conception to natural death. In arguing for the rights of the unborn child, he worried that the Democratic Party was becoming "little more than an auxiliary" of the abortion industry.
For his candor, the Clinton machine publicly humiliated him at the 1992 Democratic Convention. Other prominent "Catholic" Democrats - including fellow governor and media darling Mario Cuomo - looked the other way.
In his 1996 autobiography, Casey warned that:
"Many people discount the power of the so-called 'cultural issues' - and especially the abortion issue. I see it the other way around. These issues are central to the resurgence of the Republicans, central to the national implosion of the Democrats, central to the question of whether there will be a third party . . . \[The] Democrats' national decline - or, better, their national disintegration - will continue relentlessly and inexorably until they come to grips with these values issues, primarily abortion."
Bob Casey isn't around to see the 32-state crater his party left in this year's election. He died in 2000, loyal - to the end - to his party, his Catholic faith and his convictions about the dignity of all human life, born and unborn.
But after a decade of "ethnic cleansing" within the party by the abortion goon squad, is anybody left to learn from Casey's warning? Don't count on it. Hundreds of thousands of traditional Democrats, barred from any real voice in the party, have simply left. And the tumor within the party has only worsened as the culture war has widened from abortion to the nature of marriage.
California's Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein warns cluelessly that gay marriage was pushed too fast - as if the troglodytes in the red states (and, oh yeah, in Oregon) need more time to see the light. Others point to Bush's personality, or Karl Rove's evil genius, or John Kerry's bumbling campaign team. The list of excuses is endless.
The 2004 election wasn't about "personality." It was about character - the Bob Casey, moral values kind. Democrats used to be able to tell the difference. That they no longer can is why my Democratic wife, and millions of people just like her, had no trouble at all pulling the lever for Republicans on Nov. 2.
Francis X. Maier is chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver. The views expressed here are his own.
Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved.
I only wish the Catholic Church was as committed to making the same distinctions - firmly; publicly - denoucing - ex-communicating those who publicly rest in a double talk re this issue.
Her family are insane.
No offense, but I believe you overlooked the salient point in the lead paragraph, to wit; "My wife is a Democrat. Her family home in Chicago is lined with photos of the Kennedys."
I can attest that growing up in Chicago at that time, being a Catholic DID mean being a Democrat. Now you being from Maryland you wouldn't understand, but that's how it was.
Thankfully, most of us moved out of that hell-hole, woke up, and realized the RATS were the party of socialist-commies and DEATH.
This is a very good piece. I'm surprised to see it published at all. It seems to me that the election has finally opened up a mainstream discussion of issues that the Left has denied made a difference.
They call the tumor a clintonoma, a cancer on the body politic.
Wasn't Saul Alinsky a communist?
Which means the tumor has been active for a long time.
Very good article indeed. I've been thinking a good deal about this lately, and it seems to me that we could be on the verge of seeing a new major political party emerge. This party will be socially conservative, but economically more liberal than the Republicans. It might be the party of people like Lieberman, Buchanan, and others. It may take some time, but I think the Republican Party should be on the lookout for such a thing.
The prefix word "social" before any value (such as justice in this case) must in all cases be read as negating the value it precedes. "Social justice" is injustice.Indeed the very word "socialism" is an inversion of the source root "social." Free market society such as America exemplifies is social in nature; what leftists outside the US call "social"ism would better be called "governmentism."
But then, "governmentism" would too clearly be a synonym for "tyranny." Inside the US, even "socialism" is too clearly understood as tyranical, so rebels against responsibilty were forced to abandon the word in favor of coopting the good conservative American term, "liberalism." And by now they have worn out the deceptive nature of even that, resorting to "progressive" or "moderate" instead.
Unforutnately the hierarchy Catholic Church, in general, is full of clergy who are usually pretty economically obtuse. There appears to be some sort of conviction that all wealth is suspect accompanied by an inability to recognize those who are willfully 'gaming' the welfare system. I gave up when a couple of nuns proudly told how their 'mission' was helping some woman with 3 children by 3 different men continue her 'entertaining' life style but the 'woman' was going to be 'turning her life around' any day now - maybe after her next pregnancy!
Closer to 2 million.
bump
They will win, too, if the Republican party discards this edge by supporting Specter's candidacy as chairman of the judicial committee.
The latest findings of a large group that tracks philanthropy in the US shows exactly the opposite. The red states, led by #1 MS, gave more money per capita to charitable organizations than did the blue states, including #49 MA and #50 NH! The Dems are always generous with OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY!
Or for public schewel brainwashing to work.
>>Slowly Catholics are being weaned away from the Demoncrat Party because of their pagan values.
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Any Catholic would have to be willfully blind to not have noticed this in this past campign. sKerry stated that he believes life begins at conception. His public voting record, however, demonstrates that there is no conviction behind this belief.
For a Catholic politician like sKerry (and plenty of others), there is a decision to be made: do I accept the teachings of my religion or do I pursue my ambitions within my poitical party? No Rat politician can go far within the party without ditching all pro-Life leanings.
You can gain the world - maybe - but you must first lose your soul.
You are right, the DNC is the new arm of Communism. We should do whatever it takes to destroy the current DNC. Die hard demos that own a business shouls be boycotted out of business.
Great point! Well done.
And where is the "social justice" in letting the government rob and pillage someone else to perform the charitable works that Catholics should be doing themselves, with their own time, talents and treasure?
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