Don't Be Selective

Are the Republicans going to ban sex-selective abortion, either? I only ask. For that matter, is David Cameron going to do so, since it is not illegal here, where in fact it is fairly widely practised, and thanks to Margaret Thatcher it is practised all the way up to birth?

Both American parties have abysmal records on abortion. Ever since it became an issue, the Democrats have nominated one Presidential candidate twice (Jimmy Carter) and one Vice-Presidential candidate once (Sargant Shriver) who were in any active sense pro-life. Carter was not re-elected, and Shriver was not elected at all. The Republicans have nominated no one pro-life for President, and only Sarah Palin for Vice-President. Several have talked the talk, but none has walked the walk. Ronald Reagan's reputation is singularly undeserved.

If black and white America, both of which are Catholic as well as Protestant (whereas Hispanics aren't really very Catholic at all, by and large - the religion of Latin America is largely the pagan misuse of Catholic terminology, symbolism, religious artefacts, and so on), really wanted to survive and thrive, then black and white Americans would breed sufficiently to survive and thrive. Furthermore, they would only vote for parties and candidates that promised to use the power of the State to assist that demographic effort, an assistance which it would be impossible to prevent from also benefiting other groups, but even so.

They understand these things in France, which is why they still have both a real bourgeoisie and a real proletariat, thinking that their own mild underclass is horrific and regarding the feral overclass of the Anglo-Saxon countries with sheer disbelief. But the failure either to reproduce, or to demand that the State aid the economic, social, cultural and political expansion and consolidation, including the demographic expansion and consolidation, of the middle and working classes and of the traditional population groups, bespeaks a death wish on the part of those classes and groups. That is manifestly the case from black and white America, to urban Britain, to secular Ashkenazi Israel. You obviously do not want to survive. If you did, then you would.

Once, there was the party that produced the Progressives and the Nonpartisan League, both of which started out as factions within the Republican Party. It pursued Keynesianism, Civil Rights and other economically and politically progressive measures into the 1970s and sometimes even beyond, within a morally, socially and culturally traditional framework defined by America's mainline Protestantism in the days when it was still numerically and theologically worthy of the name "mainline". Balancing that party, and balanced by it, there was the party of mostly urban white Catholics (and to a lesser extent Orthodox), of mostly rural white Evangelicals, and of the black church. Within that morally, socially and culturally conservative framework, it pursued Keynesianism, Civil Rights and other economically and politically populist measures into the 1970s and beyond.

Within both parties were powerful elements that insisted on strong defence against external threats, balancing and balanced by powerful elements that believed in minding America's own business and which were profoundly suspicious of the growth of any military-industrial complex. The WASP Republicans and the mighty Scots-Irish among the Democrats were hostile to attempts to control American policy by ethnic lobbies, especially if apparently or actually acting on behalf of foreign states, while the mainline Protestants in fact maintained the Near Eastern universities that were the seedbeds of Arab nationalism among, not least, the ancient indigenous Catholics and Orthodox of that region.

Very similar phenomena defined the politics of Britain, among other places. Ah, those were the days...

Why does no one vote for such parties either there or here these days? Only because we are given no such option. If we still were, then we still would. If we were again, then we would again. If Americans still were, then they still would. If they were again, then they would again.