Category: Politics

My friend Jonah Goldberg swats one out of the park today:

What Maher, Raines, and Smiley fail to grasp is that all morality is based upon transcendence — or it is merely based on utilitarianism of one kind or another, and therefore it is not morality so much as, at best, an enlightened expediency or will-to-power. It is no more rational to vote based on a desire to do “good” than it is to vote based on a desire to do God’s will. Indeed, for millions of people this is a distinction without a difference — as it was for so many of the abolitionists progressives and civil-rights leaders today’s liberals love to invoke but never actually learn about.
Love, in fact, is just as silly and superstitious a concept as God (and for those who believe God is Love, this too is a distinction without a difference). Chesterton’s observation that the purely rational man will not marry is just as correct today, because science has done far more damage to the ideal of love than it has done to the notion of an awesome God beyond our ken. Genes, hormones, instincts, evolution: These are the cause for the effect of love in the purely rational man’s textbook. But Maher would get few applause lines from his audience of sophisticated yokels if he mocked love as a silly superstition. This is, in part, because the crowd he plays to likes the idea of love while it dislikes the idea of God; and in part because these people feel love, so they think it exists. But such is the extent of their solipsism and narcissism that they not only reject the existence of God but go so far as to mock those who do not, simply because they don’t feel Him themselves. And, alas, in elite America, feelings are the only recognized foundation of metaphysics.

Denis Boyles on NRO. Read this amazing intro:

In the middle of the thundering herd’s race to blame the values issue for Kerry’s defeat, Jeff Jacoby — the Boston Globe’s tenuous link to reason — had some bad news for the idiots of the global village this week: “For four years, Americans watched and listened as President Bush was demonized with a savagery unprecedented in modern American politics….And then on Tuesday they turned out to vote and handed the haters a crushing repudiation.”
Very cutting edge, Americans. We may be on to something again. In the ’60s, it was free love. Nobody had to pay for it. Now it’s free hate — and nobody’s buying that, either. Virtually every major European newspaper is giving away lifetime supplies of toxic text and poisonous bile, all directed toward George W. Bush and the Americans hate-filled Brian Reade in the Mirror calls “the frightened and clueless…self-righteous, gun-totin’, military lovin’, sister marryin’, abortion-hatin’, gay-loathin’, foreigner-despisin’, non-passport ownin’ red-necks…who hijack the word patriot and liken compassion to child-molesting.” Persuasive, no?

No, it’s not. The party without a soul has some soul-searching to do.

In the previous post, I used the phrase “Loony Left,” which I apply not to honest, intellectually serious people who hold liberal views, but to the people on the left who are truly unhinged.
If you want a working definition of the Loony Left, look at these pictures from an anti-Bush rally in Berkeley the day after the election. [WARNING: bad language on a few of the signs.]
My favorite is the “CAN WE SECEDE ALREADY?” sign. Yes! Yes, you can! Do you want just the Bay Area, or all of California?
The runner-up is “I’M ASHAMED TO BE AMERICAN.” I’ve always thought it was easier to change yourself rather than change the world around you, so maybe that guy should emigrate. That way, he won’t have to be ashamed, because he won’t be an American. And we have one fewer nut-case on the streets. Everybody wins.

Many of you, like me, have been drowning in election-related news this week, but let’s not lose sight of a remarkable fact: two powerful pro-abortion pseudo-Catholics went down to defeat, in large part because they were pro-abortion.
Senator Tom Daschle won his seat as a pro-lifer, but once his ambition seized him, he dumped that stand, going so far as to sign a fundraising letter for Planned Parenthood. South Dakota voters, among the most conservative and religious in the nation, dumped him for a staunchly pro-life candidate.
Senator John Kerry, who went around saying that he was an altar boy in his youth (just like Hitler!), was one of the most reliable pro-abortion votes in the Senate. You probably heard that he lost to that pro-life other guy, whatshisname.
In Daschle’s case, his bishop explicitly and publicly singled him out for his crimes against human life &mdash and it worked. Despite winning numerous statewide offices over a quarter-century, and despite the clout he brought South Dakota by being the minority leader, voters turned him out.
Kerry’s case is much less clearly linked to an episcopal rebuke. However, many bishops made it clear that Catholic politicians must not cooperate with evil by voting for laws that violate human life. In the crucial states that Kerry lost (Ohio and Florida in particular), that resonated.
Don’t believe me? Consider this: John Kerry, only the third Catholic nominated for the presidency by a major party, received a minority of Catholic votes — fewer than Protestant Algore did in 2000.

I’ve never been more proud to be a Casey Democrat. Bush’s narrow victory, Tom Daschle’s defeat, and the overwhelming support for ballot measures defending the traditional definition of marriage send a clear message to the DNC elite. We will not be silenced when it comes to defending our moral values. Keep pushing abortion and homosexual “marriage” and you alienate a nice chunk of your traditional base. This will haunt you come election day.
Kerry could have won this election. In fact, Kerry would have won this election if wasn’t such a pro-abort and pro-homosexual extremist. Republicans put together a nice coalition, but they simply did not have the numbers to re-elect Bush. Casey Democrats — that is, pro-life Catholic Democrats — are what put Bush over in both Florida and Ohio. And we will likely continue putting over pro-life Republicans so long as there are no pro-life Democrats for whom we can vote.