Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Covington Boys incident, those MAGA hats at the March for Life did make the point that the pro-life movement was too close to the Republican Party.
That party has never done anything for it, and it holds and implements economic and foreign policies that are repugnant to Catholic Teaching. Policies, in fact, that are identical to those of the Clinton-Pelosi Democratic Party. As, for all practical purposes, are the Republican Party's policies on the issues addressed by the March for Life.
This problem has become particularly acute among Irish-Americans, as one strongly suspects that most of the Covington Boys were. Long the richest group in the United States, something that is rarely appreciated outside, they have largely forgotten their own radical history, and their own quite recent experience of extreme racial discrimination and violence. Nadir, at least for now, has been reached with the confirmation to the United States Supreme Court of a Justice of Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was unknown to the pro-life movement, which had submitted the names of dozens of potential nominees, all of which were rejected by a President who had previously been a major donor to Planned Parenthood. Republican Senators voted to confirm Kavanaugh after he had promised Susan Collins that he would uphold Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Obergefell v. Hodges. They gave Collins's speech a standing ovation.
Thus did they secure a Justice with the most egregious record on torture, Guantánamo Bay, mass surveillance, workers' rights, consumer protection, environmental responsibility, healthcare for people with preexisting conditions, and, it must be said, treaties with Native Americans. On any one of those issues, Kavanaugh could have been blocked, with all Democrats and enough Republicans voting against him. But the Democrats chose to make it about #MeToo instead.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh will be the only lasting legacy of the #MeToo phenomenon. But that is another story. Or at any rate, it is a different chapter in the story of the baleful decline of both main political parties in the United States. Neither of them deserves a free pass. Or very much else at all.
That party has never done anything for it, and it holds and implements economic and foreign policies that are repugnant to Catholic Teaching. Policies, in fact, that are identical to those of the Clinton-Pelosi Democratic Party. As, for all practical purposes, are the Republican Party's policies on the issues addressed by the March for Life.
This problem has become particularly acute among Irish-Americans, as one strongly suspects that most of the Covington Boys were. Long the richest group in the United States, something that is rarely appreciated outside, they have largely forgotten their own radical history, and their own quite recent experience of extreme racial discrimination and violence. Nadir, at least for now, has been reached with the confirmation to the United States Supreme Court of a Justice of Brett Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was unknown to the pro-life movement, which had submitted the names of dozens of potential nominees, all of which were rejected by a President who had previously been a major donor to Planned Parenthood. Republican Senators voted to confirm Kavanaugh after he had promised Susan Collins that he would uphold Roe v. Wade, Doe v. Bolton, and Obergefell v. Hodges. They gave Collins's speech a standing ovation.
Thus did they secure a Justice with the most egregious record on torture, Guantánamo Bay, mass surveillance, workers' rights, consumer protection, environmental responsibility, healthcare for people with preexisting conditions, and, it must be said, treaties with Native Americans. On any one of those issues, Kavanaugh could have been blocked, with all Democrats and enough Republicans voting against him. But the Democrats chose to make it about #MeToo instead.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh will be the only lasting legacy of the #MeToo phenomenon. But that is another story. Or at any rate, it is a different chapter in the story of the baleful decline of both main political parties in the United States. Neither of them deserves a free pass. Or very much else at all.
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