Self-Reflection and Regressive Progressives
I’m becoming increasingly amazed at how deluded Obama’s supporters are. They call those of us who oppose him sheep of the Koch brothers or racist troglodytes waging a war on women, and think the “Rethuglicans” are a corrupt party of big business. They pride themselves on how tolerant and open-minded they are even as they wage an ideological war to silence anyone who questions what Obama & crew have done. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a blatant display of self-delusion exhibited by a group since the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. These people aren’t just drinking the kool-aid, they are bottling it, advertising it and selling it as champagne.
Obama has always acted in the best interests of the groups he represents. Everything he has done has been to feed one leftist interest group or another. His close friends and golf buddies hail from the largest companies in the country including banks such as Chase and Goldman Sachs. I’ve even stopped thinking of him as a socialist since that would require him to adhere to something bigger than himself and I don’t think he believes anything is. His ego knows no bounds. He’s more in line with 3rd world dictators who take power and immediately set about making their friends and family rich. The only differences between him and Hugo Chavez is that the source of Chavez’s wealth is oil and for Obama it’s taxpayer money, and at least Chavez really believes in socialism whereas Obama only believes in himself.
Does a liberal question his or her beliefs? There isn’t a day that I don’t wonder if I’m wrong, that I’ve somehow gotten caught up in some kind of right-wing hysteria, so I try to be objective. I work hard to recognize my biases and question my assumptions. I try to listen to alternative opinions and not dismiss them without due consideration, thinking critically about facts and opinions regardless of source. I’m just as skeptical about claims by the Right as I am over claims by the Left. It’s the way I was educated, first by a no-nonsense mother and later by the Jesuits. The result of this is that over the years I have changed my opinions on issues. The only consistency I’ve found is I maintain a strong populist streak thanks to my upbringing by extremely poor parents. That’s not an exaggeration; my parents often went without food to feed my siblings until the mid 1950’s, saying they weren’t hungry while the kids ate dinner.
I look at liberals and I’m amazed at how closed minded they are. Instead of thinking of them as “progressive” I’ve begun considering them as “regressive” because that’s how they are increasingly appearing to me.
Take the “war on women” meme that has exploded in the blogosphere. No one is banning birth control. No one is demanding that women be paid less for doing the same job as a man or expecting her to stop working, return home and raise children. It’s all a straw man. The Left knows it can’t win the argument that the Catholic church shouldn’t fund contraceptives. So they start this attack, and the idiot Rick Santorum just makes it all that much easier for them by dancing to their tune.
Some of my liberal friends will shake their heads and say, “Scott, you’ve got this all wrong. There is a war on women and you’re just as blind as you claim we are.” And I’ll ask, where’s the proof of that? They’ll claim Santorum wants to ban contraception. Two points to this. First, where did he say that? Second, you realize you’re ignoring the GOP front runner, a man who has more than double the amount of delegates than Santorum? Regarding the second point, a recent liberal commenter from abroad on this blog thought Rick Santorum was “batsh*T insane” yet made no mention of Romney. Either the commenter wasn’t aware that Romney was the front-runner or didn’t understand the primary process (for this I hold the RNC partly to blame.) Evidently while Santorum is getting the press, Romney is getting the actual delegates. Given my dislike of Santorum that’s just fine by me.
As to the first point, liberals such as Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews have claimed Santorum wants to ban birth control. Okay, so show me where Santorum himself says that. What Santorum actually has said is that the states should decide contraception laws for themselves. I watched the CNN debate where he said that and he was booed by the Republican audience and attacked by the other GOP candidates. His point was a constitutional one, that there is no right to birth control in the constitution and federal laws on the subject are an example of federal overreach. The constitution is clear that powers not outlined in the document fall to the people and the states. It’s a constitutional argument but a narrow one and nowhere near a “ban” that the Left claims.
They could then bring up Sandra Fluke’s testimony in front of Congress and how Georgetown, a Catholic Jesuit-run institution, must offer to offset the cost of contraception for her and other women. A war on women? Seriously, this is the best you’ve got? Fluke’s perjured testimony ignores three fundamental tenets of Roman Catholicism that has been at its core for hundreds of years if not longer. First, only those married should have sex because the purpose of sex is procreation. Second, that procreation is a process controlled by God Himself and should not be interfered with by humans. Third, that life begins at conception and current birth control techniques such as the morning after pill and some IUDs destroy early stage embryos. These three tenets are not negotiable in the eyes of the Church.
Catholics themselves struggle with these tenets and most probably break them, but just because they have sex before marriage or use the Pill doesn’t mean the institution’s foundations need to be rebuilt. No, it means Catholics must strive to live up to their Church’s teachings. If they can’t do this then they must leave it. I understand this because as a man born and raised Roman Catholic and trained by the Jesuits I decided that I could no longer accept the Church as it is, so I left it. It wasn’t an easy decision for me and it’s one that I continue to question at times but I knew that I personally could not accept the Church’s teachings anymore so instead of trying to destroy the Church or undermine it in any way possible, I simply left it in my heart as well as my head. I am not a Catholic, and I have very good reasons for my leaving the Church of Rome. But they are my reasons and even though I am no longer a Catholic I still have a deep respect for Roman Catholicism and those who practice it. They are good people and don’t deserve the hatred that has been flowing their way.
What hatred? This hatred.
Liberals have gone beyond the pale and I have to ask myself, is this what you want? Is this the hope and change you voted for in 2008? Today the “progressive” movement advocates religious intolerance by attacking Catholics and Christians. Progressives are behind efforts to silence opposing voices and points of view through boycotts, legal threats, slurs and even violence. It supports censorship through hate speech laws and anti-pornography crusades. It infantilizes women by turning them into victims that are incapable of defending themselves and who are so weak they swoon like some Victorian Lady of the House over a single word, forcing the State to step forward like some chivalrous knight to defend their honor. And for what? A poorly written health care bill that’s possibly unconstitutional and does nothing to curb health care costs or access?
There is a war on women just not the one progressives think. All over the Middle East and Europe the freedom of women is being curtailed or destroyed completely by Islam, a religion that Progressives have allied themselves with. While they have gone, to quote my liberal commenter “batsh*t crazy” over the Catholic church’s stance on contraception, they have completely ignored the increase of assaults on women in Europe by Muslim immigrants, the rise of honor killings in the West, and the complete rollback of basic human rights throughout the Islamic world. What access to contraception do women have in Pakistan, a place where women are discouraged from walking without a male “minder,” or to pursue a career in post “Arab Spring” Egypt? When people like me raise these issues we are immediately attacked as being “islamophobes” because liberals are blinded in their politically correct belief that all cultures and people are the same, ignoring the comments of a true Progressive nearly two centuries ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson who said ““The wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in gradation, and his scale of creatures and of merits is as wide as nature. The foolish have no range in their scale, but suppose every man is as every other man.”
The progressive movement has become exactly what it fought against. Intolerant of dissenting opinions. Bigoted. Uncompromising. Anti-intellectual. Pro-censorship. Anti-freedom. In fact it’s the same movement I fought against a generation ago when I protested against the Religious Right. Perhaps I haven’t changed as much as I thought. I’m still fighting against dehumanizing forces, only the names of these forces have changed.
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