September 5th, 2012
Thomas McDonald on the Catholic dilemma and partisan politics:
Witnessing the degradations of the Democrats, those on the right fall back into identifying with Republicans, who suck about 10% less. But the Republicans aren’t conservatives any more: they’re hawkish corporatists. This is absolutely out of line with basic Catholic teaching. As long as the holocaust of abortion continues to be the central plank of liberal social policy, we’re stuck with them, but don’t act like the Republican party is some grand solution to our problems.
-
page not found
-
He says he’d back a Republican crew that is–if I read him correctly–either more like Pat Buchanan or more like Rand Paul; or perhaps he is imagining a chimerical party that includes both (an interesting thought experiment). So he basically sounds confused, unless of course it was intended as a sarcastic lib-Catholic crack about just wanting an electorally neutered GOP
-
If the Chicago NBA franchise had been the team of John Salley or even paleoforwards like Dennis Rodman, I might have found myself more in line with them but as it stood they weren’t worthy of my support
-
“Hawkish corporatism” is a pretty good description of the social policy of medieval Christendom.
-
I don’t know Thomas MacDonald at all, but it’s hard to take a guy seri0usly who can bemoan how “We can become lazy in our thinking” and then immediately in the next sentence employ the cliche “corrupt ruling class and their lapdog media”
-
Last,
I hate you for that long and interesting detour in the middle of my day — I’m going to get nothing done if I keep reading blogs all the time 😉
As for MacDonald, I can sort of understand the sentiment, a sentiment I sometimes share that goes something like this: “wouldn’t it be great if the Republican party were more conservative and stood up for policy X, Y, and Z [which I support and I know will fix all the problems in this country]”. This is sort of what “Knicks fan” amusingly suggests with his awesome basketball suggestion (I’d just settle at this point with dumping Boozer and acquiring a real power forward — maybe we can steal Love from the Timberwolves somehow?).
Anyway, MacDonald is also just plain wrong about the Republicans: they are actually many things as a party. Locally and at the State level they are really doing great stuff and implementing true fiscally conservative reforms that could be models for the nation. Then you have Paul Ryan’s budgets which also try to seriously tackle the federal government’s debt and entitlement spending problems. And then there are folks in the Senate like Rand Paul and Tom Coburn and Ron Johnson who are trying to do something similar to Paul Ryan, sometimes with an even more aggressive timetable. And on top of these true reformers, you have the old-fashioned “hawkish corporatists”, which as “TubbyLover69 reminds us, wouldn’t feel all that out of place when it comes to Catholic social teaching (well, modern teaching tends to downplay the hawkish part, but with the way Islam is treating Christians around the world, there is really no reason for this reticence to use force to protect innocent lives).
Anyway, this is a long and tedious way of saying that a good Catholic only has one real choice in November, and it’s not such a bad choice — so quit complaining MacDonald and Last and send it your donations — they need all the help they can get:
-
“… Republicans aren’t conservatives any more: they’re hawkish corporatists.”
Sadly, the line quoted above is true. I wish there were a better name for those conservatives who are trying to “retake” the Republican Party, but we seem to be stuck with “Tea Party” activists. Whatever the name used to describe us, there ARE conservatives who are working hard to both defeat Dems AND replace “moderate” Repubs with those more in line with conservative principles. We need your help and your votes to achieve that goal.
Repeal the 17th, enforce the 10th and may God bless America!
Galley Friend J.E. September 5, 2012 at 4:09 pm
All hail Lord Acton.