Posted on 11/13/2004 7:26:55 AM PST by Slyfox
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.
Because those folks are morally confused. They have no problem with killing off the "little piggies," to quote Tereza Kerry. But they realize that, being morally facile, they might find themselves behind the eight-ball in such a criminal conviction and sentencing. Thusly, the life they clamor for might someday be their own.
Obversely, there are those 99% opposed to abortion who also favor the death penalty. Their logic? Criminals deserving of the death penalty had their chance at life and blew it; the aborted unborn never had the chance...(nutshell analysis).
This approach can be expounded on for paragraphs, but you get the idea.
The Democratic Party is owned by the abortion lobby, the trial lawyers and the NEA -- and now it is being redecorated by the homosexual lobby. It has become a pathetic charicature of a charicature, like a bad sitcom. Governor Casey was not allowed to speak at their '92 convention because his views were not 100% in line with the views of the big money donors. I get so tired of how they preach "tolerance" when they do not tolerate dissent or even critical thinking in their own ranks.
"Morally confused" is putting it kindly..My question was posed rhetorically, to point out the obvious..but you did a far better job than I..
So true!! They also are the first to support not eating animals, not hunting, and the lastest, cruelty to animals in farming.
I don't know. I think Ralph Nees and the NOW groups are the worst tumor.
How are gays portrayed on TV? They're cast as clowns, and have been ever since the inception of TV. Remember Uncle Miltie dressed up in drag? How about Flip Wilson and his Geraldine character? America roared with laughter. Then Ellen Degeneres tried to turn her comedy show into a lesbo soap opera and her show and career nose dived.
That's why boycotting doesn't work--Americans have and will laugh at homos.
Because it's ok to kill an undefined tissue mass (read baby in the birth canal) because that's innocent life, but it's not ok to kill a murdering scumbag (read potential or probable Democrat voter.)
Until the dems get rid of the Clintons .. there will not be any change.
Within hours, Carville had changed his stance from one of the dems need to change .. to his usual over the top statements.
I guess it's a matter of when will the "real" dems step up to the plate.
"....but to ask who is the real "social justice" Catholic in my fmaily????? The libs who claim it but don't do it? Or me, the evil Republican who doesn't talk about it, just does it?"
Prob'ly ought to warn you that I'm one of those addled, stoopid, ig'nert Red State people - but it's possible that I figured out the answer to your question. Okay, here goes, are you ready.......YOU are the real "social justice" Catholic in your family! Did I get it right? Did I, huh, huh?
bttt
Yep, and he has done so much to help the conservatives that I'm beginning to think that he is an undercover agent for the GOP.
amazing...sure you aren't really a member of the Manhattan elite????
You're right. I'm just amazed that gays don't throw hissy fits at the way they are portrayed on network TV. Will and Grace? I asked a good friend of mine, a gay man, why the gay community would celebrate such repulsive stereotypes. His response was that just having a TV show about gays was enough, that there was a time you couldn't even say it and the movies that did come out where just horrible, like that stupid one with Al Pacino. I still don't get it. I do, however, have to tell you that I do watch Will & Grace, it's a funny adult comedy, although after watching it I always think to myself that this is not a good show for Gay people. It depicts gays as self-absorbed, sex-addicts who think of nothing but superficial and material things (and, of course, sex.)
One day I made the mistake of poking fun at those neanderthal Catholic views on abortion.
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