Culture War: September 2004 Archives

Interesting. Even Newsweek is admitting that abortion is killing the Democrat Patry by driving Catholic voters -- a traditional Democrat constituency -- over to the GOP. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article in question:

The Democrats are likely to lose the Catholic vote in November—and John Kerry could well lose the election as a result. It’s about abortion, stupid. And “choice,” make no mistake, is killing the Democratic Party.

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It begins with the tale of Tom Ampleman, “a blue-collar union member who lives … just outside St. Louis, says he voted for Bill Clinton twice and then Al Gore, but … is now grappling with deep religious misgivings about the Democratic Party.” He says, “I’m not happy with the moral issues at all with the Democrats. The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it’s probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff.”

First, I find it wonderful that there are Tom Amplemans out there for whom voting is not only an economic calculation—a what’s-in-it-for-me? decision—but a moral exercise, a matter of trying to do the right thing.

But Democrats don’t seem to get that. And they don’t get Tom at all.

Hindu militants who burn down churches and mosques, Muslims who kill Hindus and Christians in the name of Allah, Evangelicals asking "Are you saved?" to bus passengers &mdash all pretty much the same thing. Or so Algore tells us.

Gore’s mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush’s public kind of faith. “It’s a particular kind of religiosity,” he said. "It’s the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it’s not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don’t hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don’t hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It’s the vengeance, the brimstone."

By the "tree trunk," Gore (probably inadvertently) brings up an allusion to the lignum vitae, the cross on which Jesus hung. Is that really a bad thing to hang onto, whether we're in a time of "change" or stasis?

Gore seems to be attacking religion as an independent standard for measuring whether or not a "change" is desirable. He doesn't bother to refute this idea: he just condescendingly implies that Evangelicals such as President Bush are scaredy-cats who need their faith-blankies to make it through this life. Not like strong, virile Alpha Male Algore, who is unafraid of change. (Except climate change. That scares the crap out of him.)

Were we saved through the Sermon on the Mount? Nope. The Beatitudes, which Gore apparently thinks is separate from the Sermon on the Mount? Again, no. Are we saved by giving to the poor? Well, in a way: if we unite our wills to God's, and perform works of mercy, that's part of how we "work out our salvation," as the Bible says.

Salvation begins, is sustained, and ends in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins on the "tree" which Evangelicals, like other Christians, hold onto for dear life. Algore was a divinity student for a while -- maybe he skipped class the day they covered this topic. And why is he saying such nasty things about tree-hugging, anyway?

Fr. Rob Johansen reports some extremely disturbing news over at Thrownback. It appears that Terri Schindler-Schiavo's exit protocol (aka detailed execution order) has been leaked.

Ralph Peters, unlike secular liberals, is angry about the mass murder in southern Russia and wants to fight the murderers:

"If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those "men of faith" will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral...."

"Negotiations are the heroin of Westerners addicted to self-delusion...."

"A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.

"The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing's a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America."

Amen, brother. As President Bush astutely saw very soon after the September 11 attacks, the world is dividing itself between those who want to fight international Islamic terrorism, and those who support it or appease it. For all countries, the options are either Austria (let yourself be co-opted by it) Switzerland (pretend to be neutral, but bankroll the murderers), or Britain (fight until victory, or the last Briton is choking on his own blood, as Churchill put it.)

So this slaughter of the innocents was just like the Columbine massacre, times ten. What do you want to bet that liberals won't get as angry at Islamist terrorists as they did at American gun owners? Will Michael Moore's new movie be "Bowling for Chechnya," blaming the whole thing on radical Islam's penchant for indiscriminate violence?

Nah. Because as I've said many times in this space, to liberals, Islamist terrorism is just a force of nature, and you cannot ascribe any blame to the perpetrators: because they're essentially sub-human, and we shouldn't have provoked them in the first place.