[Wallace T.]

You are correct in your statement that Protestants have aligned with rationalists, or more particularly, secular humanists. Universal state-run education (where the secular humanists suckered Protestants into believing that public schools would be entirely under local control) and the statism of the Progressive Era (income taxes, direct election of Senators, the Federal Reserve, Federal regulation of commerce were not opposed by conservative Protestants in exchange for Progessive support of Prohibition) were direct results of this unfortunate collusion.

However, the results of political activism by Catholics in the same time period was also deplorable. The big city political machines, such as those run by the Pendergasts in Kansas City, Curley in Boston, and Tammany Hall in New York, were riddled with corruption. These big city Democratic political machines, which were mostly run by Irish Catholics, essentially created mini-welfare states. They were a model that Franklin Roosevelt used for his New Deal programs.

Neither Protestants nor Catholics were friends of limited government or individual liberty, by and large, from the late 19th Century forward. However, it appears evangelical Protestants have come to their senses more quickly. We need only to contrast the predominantly Protestant South and its more conservative politics with that of the Northeast, which is simultaneously both the most liberal and the most Catholic region of the nation.

[kittymyrib]

One need only look at the abortion-loving Democrat politicians to see that Catholics do not listen to the Pope and their church. They allow people like Kennedy, Pelosi, Daschle, et all to claim they are Catholics and millions of Catholics disobey their church's doctrine by re-electing them year after year.