By George Neumayr on 11.5.04 @ 1:08AM
Who knew Democrats had such pious longings?
Normally Democrats urge their candidates to expunge God and
morality from politics. Even the word morality grates on them. It
is a far too judgment-laden term for their taste. How about the
insipid term "ethics"? Okay, if you must -- goes the attitude --
but don't use the loaded term "morality." Yet what are we now
hearing from the Mike Barnicles and Nancy Pelosis? That Kerry
didn't talk about God enough. That he failed to satisfy the
public's hunger for spirituality and morality. Like children who
recently learned a new phrase, liberals are giving Kerry a
post-mortem drubbing for not speaking to the "moral values" of
America.
Tina Brown, a high-brow vulgarian who has bragged about tarting
up the New Yorker, turned prim in Thursday's
Washington Post. "Who among us," she wrote, "is not sick
and tired of hearing the Cialis ad discuss four-hour erections
while we're sitting there trying to watch TV with the kids?" Brown
related that she chats with other moms about "how much we worry and
strategize and push back against the tsunami of pop culture sleaze
that seeps into our kids' psyches."
Who knew Democrats had such pious longings? Who knew sexual,
let's-not-repress-the-children liberationists had such distaste for
Cialis ads? Tina Brown even dropped the pom-poms for Anthony
Lewis's wife, Margaret Marshall, the Massachusetts Chief justice
who, as Brown put it, "forced her state to authorize gay marriage."
Forced? Boy, that's a very right-wing way of putting it. Usually
the left says "freed." Karl Rove should give her a "big bouquet,"
said a piqued Brown. Got that, Marshall? Don't ever turn up the
heat so fast that the frogs jump out again. Remember, duping the
American people into avant-garde morality takes time and finesse
and you lack it. No more invites to Tina Brown's parties for
you.
Nancy Pelosi's secularism also took a rare day off after Kerry
lost. Now she, too, longs for a little more old-fashioned religion
in the public square. She is telling fellow Democrats to be more
conspicuous about their faith. "Democrats did not connect well
enough with the American people," she told CNN. "Certainly
Democrats are faith-filled. Certainly we love our country, and
we're very patriotic, but somehow or other that did not come across
when 61% of those who are regular churchgoers voted Republican --
voted for President Bush, and when 22% of Americans gave its
highest number to what determined their vote to issues relating to
morality, more than the economy, more than terrorism."
Act on your faith, Democrats, wear religion on your sleeve --
that's now the message from Democrats who find it very "troubling"
that we have a president who…acts on his faith. "I believe
that we have it within us," exhorted Pelosi. "I know that many of
the people who are in politics on the Democratic side do so
according to the -- the gospel of Matthew and indeed the Bible, but
we don't demonstrate it clearly enough and faith is such an
important part of the lives of most people in our country. They
want to know that we identify with that."
After spending the last few years trying to pry slabs of the Ten
Commandments out of public courthouses, remove God from the pledge,
deny public money to faith-based charities, and harass the Boy
Scouts, it takes a lot of gall for these Democrats to give Kerry a
hard time for insufficient religiosity. Has the ACLU been alerted
to this new threat yet? Pelosi has given the green light to a new
crop of theocratic Democrats.
Actually, Kerry did talk about God quite a bit in the campaign.
The third line of his campaign biography stated that "John Kerry
was raised in the Catholic faith and continues to be an active
member of the Catholic Church." The problem wasn't that he failed
to talk about God. The problem was that the American people didn't
believe him. When he emerged from church on Ash Wednesday with ash
on his head, the American people didn't see faith but phoniness.
Picking up a bible on his visit to black churches didn't help him
any more than picking up a rifle in Ohio.
The American people didn't respond to his religiosity, because
they knew it was religiosity without religion. Democrats can talk
and talk about God, but who's going to believe them when their
agenda is to nullify the Ten Commandments? Since their rhetoric
doesn't match reality, Americans rightly tune them out. "I have a
commitment to faith" sounded from Kerry's mouth as convincing as "I
have a commitment to national security." Democrats can't talk about
faith, then endorse partial-birth abortion and expect the American
people to take them seriously, any more than they should expect the
American people to take them seriously when they talk about
American sovereignty and endorse "global tests."
In his lunging attacks on Bush's religion, Kerry often said that
"faith without deeds is dead." The American people ended up
agreeing with him -- about his.
topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Religion, Abortion
