Free Republic

Author and historian Garry Wills is accusing the Catholic Church of being wishy-washy on abortion. Instead, he says, those who stubbornly advocate for life belong to a “cult of the fetus.” His words are misleading – at best. Here’s why. On June 27, the New York Times published an opinion piece claiming, “The Bishops Are Wrong About Biden — and Abortion.” Wills, an emeritus history professor at Northwestern and the author of numerous books (including one called “Why I Am a Catholic”), took the opportunity to criticize Catholics and evangelicals who recognize abortion as the “worst crime a society can...

Evangelicals are adamant, but religion really has nothing to say about the issue What makes opposition to abortion the issue it is for each of the GOP presidential candidates is the fact that it is the ultimate "wedge issue" -- it is nonnegotiable. The right-to-life people hold that it is as strong a point of religion as any can be. It is religious because the Sixth Commandment (or the Fifth by Catholic count) says, "Thou shalt not kill." For evangelical Christians, in general, abortion is murder. That is why what others think, what polls say, what looks practical does not...

March 20, 2006 issue - Garry Wills's latest book, "What Jesus Meant," should affront most of his fellow Christians—right from the foreword, which argues that Christ was not one of them. The megachurch set won't care to hear that "Jesus did not come to replace the Temple with other buildings, whether huts or rich cathedrals." The Christian left, committed to good works, won't care to hear that Jesus "does not work miracles from humanitarian motives." The Christian right, cozy with secular power, won't care to hear that "if they want the state to be politically Christian, they are not following...

Democrats, according to pollsters, receive votes from the least educated and the most educated, from grade school dropouts to college presidents. This suggests parallels between the undereducated and the overeducated that most professors don't wish to entertain. Illiterates and intellectuals form the odd couple of the Democratic Party. How did it happen? One explanation is that both groups are drawn to the party's emotional demagoguery. Having lost contact with common sense through a skeptical distrust of reason, postmodernist professors more or less decide their politics on raw emotion -- the same passions that stir their uneducated fellow Democrats. In a...

This election confirms the brilliance of Karl Rove as a political strategist. He calculated that the religious conservatives, if they could be turned out, would be the deciding factor. The success of the plan was registered not only in the presidential results but also in all 11 of the state votes to ban same-sex marriage. Mr. Rove understands what surveys have shown, that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution.

On February 11, 1801, the House of Representatives was called upon to break a tie in the Electoral College in which Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr had each received 73 votes, besting the incumbent, John Adams, who got only 65. Seven days and 36 ballots later, the House elected Jefferson to the presidency. Before the week was out, Adams wrote to him: "I shall leave in the stables of the United States seven Horses and two Carriages with Harness. These may not be suitable for you: but they will certainly save you a considerable Expense." With this gesture of federal...