Joe Biden, a Democrat who happens to be a Catholic, is now officially running for President of the United States. And he’s doing so in an effort to save what he calls the “soul” of America.
His assumption seems to be that there are two (more or less Platonic) Ideas of America currently struggling for dominance, the true Idea and the false Idea. I suppose he sees himself and his views as symbolizing the true America, while he sees Donald Trump and his views as symbolizing the false America.
If Biden is to be the Democratic candidate, he will, of course, have to embrace and endorse the beliefs and values that currently prevail in the Democratic Party, and these beliefs and values include the following:
1. Abortion is a fundamental human right.
2. Homosexual behavior is a fine thing for people who are born that way; and anybody who disagrees is a homophobic bigot.
3. Same-sex marriage is a fundamental human right.
4. The U.S. Constitution, thanks to the theory of substantive due process, protects all human rights; and it’s up to any five members of the U.S. Supreme Court to decide what is, or what is not, a human right.
5. Non-liberal whites are almost always racists.
6. It is a great duty of the U.S. government to protect those among us who are most oppressed; namely, blacks, other persons of color, women, undocumented migrants, Muslims, homosexuals, transgender persons, and criminals (including drug dealers) who have committed no violent crimes.
7. When the rights of churches or religious individuals collide with the rights of the above-listed victim groups, the former must give way to the latter.
8. When the rights of parents collide with the rights of their transgender children, the former must give way to the latter.
9. Almost all our social ills can be cured, or at least significantly mitigated, by actions of the federal government.
Lest anybody think that the above is an invidious description of the Democratic belief system given by a person who is a lifelong Democrat-hater, let me assure the reader that I once possessed very strong Democratic credentials. I think I first thought of myself as a Democrat on that day when I was about eight-years-old and my father explained to me, “The Republicans are the party of rich people. The Democrats are the party of poor people, like us.”
Later in life I became a politician in my home state of Rhode Island. I served twelve years (1981-93) as a Democrat in the R.I. Senate, two of those as majority leader. In 1992, I was the (losing) Democratic candidate in my district for the U.S. House of Representatives.
By that date, it was clear that my party had become a pro-abortion party. Yet I, a pro-life Democrat, still hoped that the party’s anti-Christian momentum could be reversed. That, as it turned out, was quite foolish.
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David Carlin is a professor of sociology and philosophy at the Community College of Rhode Island, and the author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America.
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2019/05/03/enter-joe-biden-stage-left/