July 12, 2004
SUBPAR? THEY'RE INHUMAN:
The Politics of Piety: Are Kerry's expressions of faith subpar? The Republicans would have the electorate think so. (Rick Perlstein, July 11, 2004, LA Times)
The day in which any major-party presidential nominee is not a professing person of faith is not likely to come in our lifetimes. That's just a fact of political life. It's certainly a fact of Kerry's political life. God-talk peppers his speeches: "We are all God's children" … "Our prayers are with their families" "All of us fighting under the same flag, praying to the same God." But apparently Kerry is supposed to be something more: more than a former altar boy who once considered the priesthood, more than a weekly churchgoer (Bush rarely goes to church), more than a man possessed by the deeply Catholic conviction that actively supporting political programs that advance compassion count as much in God's eyes as the faith one holds in one's heart.And that's a disturbing thought. It's especially disturbing that some Democratic commentators have bought into the notion. "Kerry's Democrats" have been acting "like the Party of Secularists," wrote Beliefnet.com editor and former Clinton staffer Steve Waldman in Slate. "Most folks in national Democratic politics are completely tone-deaf when it comes to religion," said Amy Sullivan, who writes for the liberal Washington Monthly. Nick Confessore on the website of the even more liberal American Prospect noted "Kerry's unwillingness to reach out to religious constituencies in a meaningful and respectful way." What is going on here?
Democrats are letting themselves be hustled. They have become accomplices in a strategic attempt by Republicans to convince the public that the religious experience that liberals tend to favor is not "really" religion, and that the real measure of religiosity is conformity to certain Republican policy positions.
They aren't Republican, they are policies dictated by his own religious beliefs, as when he said:
I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception.
To say that and then support abortion is to be not "really" religious. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2004 10:41 AM
John Kerry is "a man possessed by the deeply Catholic conviction that actively supporting political programs that advance compassion count as much in God's eyes as the faith one holds in one's heart."
So, Kerry's political agenda, which actually would make this and future generations worse off, steal our independence and confirm us in our thralldom to the state, is motivated by his compassionate Catholic faith. On the other hand, he cannot act on his Catholic faith that life begins at conception, because preventing abortions would violate the First Amendment by to legislating his Catholic faith upon non-believers.
Posted by: David Cohen at July 12, 2004 11:52 AM