Paul Kengor is a professor of political science and the executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Paul Kengor is the author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007) and The Communist — Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink 2012).
Paul Kengor is a professor of political science and the executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. Paul Kengor is the author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007) and The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink 2012).
Ecumenism at its best was recently demonstrated at the Vatican, where dozens of faith leaders worldwide assembled to remind us of the essential complementarity of men and women in life, marriage, and parenthood. It was enough to prompt a high-five between Pope Francis and evangelical pastor James Robison.
Of course, do we really need reminding that male and female are different? Absolutely, especially with the advent of same-sex marriage, which is prompting assertions that it "doesn't matter" whether two men or two women parent a household.
Ask any parent if males and females are different. My wife and I have eight children under our roof, and the boy-girl differences are dramatic.
Here's a typical Saturday morning exchange at our house: "Daddy!" my 7-year-old son yells, running toward me in camouflage hunting clothes. "I had a dream last night that I stabbed Bigfoot nine times with a spear!" Not missing a beat, his 3-year-old sister prances and dances toward me in a flowered pink dress: "Daddy, I had a dream about a ladybug!"
The 3-year-old goes by "Princess Cupcake." She's of the age where she dresses up and displays herself in front of me waiting for me to gush, "Wow, you look like a princess!" She beams. Her older sisters did the same thing. The first time I said that to her oldest sister, she calmly glowed to her mom, "He said I look like a princess."
Needless to say, the boys have never done that - not once in 20,000-plus days of combined lives.
My wife and I have nothing to do with these differences, other than providing the chromosomes.
My 7-year-old boy, long before fancying himself a Bigfoot slayer, declared himself "Wolfboy." My wife and I certainly didn't come up with that one. She will tell you that she did not give birth to a wolf boy. No, it was he alone who transmogrified himself into this half-beast, half-boy.
Wolfboy sauntered around the house creeping, preying. We attempted to keep these wild manifestations at, shall we say, bay - a more restrained Wolfboy. One day at the home of friends, he politely asked my wife if he could go outside to "howl," to the giggles of my friend's teenage girl.
Fortunately, the Wolfboy thing eventually cooled. One afternoon he grabbed two chopsticks for fangs, shoving them into his throat. Wolfboy had to be taken to the hospital. We've since had several full moons with no reappearances.
That brings me back to the differences in the sexes. These traits follow us into adulthood, marriage, and parenting. There are things my wife does that I just can't. She happily jumps up in the middle of the night at the slightest cry. I lay there groaning. On the flip side, she has no yearning to take the teenage boys hunting in 20-degree weather with rifles and crossbows to shoot and gut and hang and skin and butcher a deer. My boys crave that, and they're utterly mystified at their sisters' insatiable interest in the Duggar family's weddings.
In short, all of this is obvious, observable. Really, to deny it is to be warped by ideology, culture, politics, or some agenda.
That brings me back to the ecumenical gathering at the Vatican, where these gender differences in married and family life were acknowledged and celebrated.
"The biggest threat to marriage is that people have forgotten its purpose," said Pastor Rick Warren, the 28th speaker at the conference:
Children who grow up with the presence of a mother and father are more successful in life, are healthier, are stronger, are less likely to be involved in crime, are less likely to go to prison, are less likely to be involved in drug abuse, are less likely to live in poverty. If you really want to support children, we need to support two-parent families, a husband and a wife, a mom and a dad.
The Bishop of Rome didn't disagree with the Saddleback Church pastor.
"Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother," said Pope Francis. Such households are best "capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity."
Of course, not all children get that ideal, but it's an ideal our culture should strive for rather than against. We were made male and female, and from birth to death and childhood to parenthood, those differences have a distinct and complementary purpose.
Editor's note: The following is part one of a series of Q&As with Professor Paul Kengor about his new book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage.
V&V: Dr. Kengor, you're an established bestselling author who has written over a dozen books on the Cold War, Communism, socialism, conservatism, progressivism, as well as biographies of figures as diverse as Ronald Reagan and Hillary Clinton, Why this topic in this book? Why wade into this Culture War issue?
Kengor: The answer is precisely because of my background in those areas. I know from decades of research, study, writing, and lecturing that the political left - first with Communists, socialist utopians, and then on to secular "progressives" - have sought to reshape, redefine, and effectively take down natural-traditional-biblical family and marriage for two centuries. They've long looked to alter the so-called "nuclear family," which they saw as an outright menace. I know that ideological past. I know how it fits into the present. Most people don't, including those today who are willing to redefine the historic Western/Judeo-Christian conception of male-female marriage. The vast majority of those who are willing to do that have no idea of the deeper, darker ideological-historical forces long at work in this wider movement. They are signing on to something that, whether they know it or not - most do not - have important links to much older and more sinister attempts by the far left to redefine family and marriage.
V&V: Could you expand upon your point on the lack of understanding by the "vast majority" advocating same-sex marriage today?
Kengor: Yes. The typical American who supports same-sex marriage has friendly motives, looking to extend what the current culture deems a new "right" or new "freedom" to a new group. I get that. I don't agree, but I understand. Unfortunately, these Americans don't realize that, for the far left, gay marriage is a vehicle, a kind of Trojan horse, to achieve what the earliest radicals on the far left, and specifically Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, called the "abolition of the family." Marx and Engels noted then, way back in 1848, that the abolition of the family - this bold ambition to redesign the original Designer's conception of marriage - was already "an infamous proposal of the Communists." To many Americans, gay marriage is about "marriage equality," but to the far left, it's about the final takedown of the family that it has long desired.
By the way, I must underscore up front that gay people are absolutely correct in noting that heterosexuals - Christians included - have done an excellent job themselves in hurting marriage, which, for Christians, is supposed to be sacred. Through divorce, infidelity, abortion, men and women have pounded marriage and family mercilessly. But even with these self-inflicted wounds, which are recent on the historical-social radar, marriage as an institution survived and was never redefined. Same-sex "marriage" will forever redefine marriage's once-established boundaries. It's the breach that changes everything. That's the difference.
V&V: You state clearly and repeatedly at the start of your book that you're not alleging that today's gay-marriage advocates are part of a grand Communist conspiracy. Why are you so sensitive about making that clear?
Kengor: Because I know how easily these things get caricatured by opponents. Yes, I very carefully state that this isn't a conspiracy. I want to be clear on this. I implore people not to caricature me and this important reality that needs to be understood. We do a disservice to the truth when we boil down complex things to simple caricature.
However, just as we can easily overstate things, we can also easily understate them, and to do the latter likewise would be a mistake here.
What the left has steadfastly said and written and done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries cannot be ignored. Those actions have been undeniable contributing factors - along with many other factors - that in part help explain where we are today.
Same-sex marriage is not a Marxist plot. It is, however, a crucial blow to marriage - the only blow that will enable a formal, legal redefinition that will open the floodgates to all sorts of new configurations beyond our multi-millennia Western standard based on natural law and the laws of God. It has distinct origins traceable in part to the far left's initial thrusts at this once unassailable monogamous, faithful male-female institution.
V&V: At the opening of the book, you further caution: "I am not laying the entirety of the culture's collapse at the feet of Communists. I am not asserting that Marxists have given us gay marriage."
Kengor: That's correct. And yet, as I note after that quotation, what the left has steadfastly done to marriage and the family over the last two centuries - from Marx and Engels and early utopian socialists like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier to modern cultural Marxists and secular progressives - cannot be ignored. The current rapid redefinition of the male-female marital and parental bond that has undergirded civilization for multiple millennia is the end-road of a steady evolution that should not be viewed entirely separate from some very successful attacks by the radical left. The journey had many prior destinations. A people do not just one morning wake up and ditch the sacred and natural character of the male-female marital union that served their parents, grandparents, and great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents. Ground had been plowed to ready this soil.
V&V: And it was the far left that helped ready the soil?
Kengor: Absolutely. No question.
V&V: As you note, however, the likes of Marx and Engels and the many socialist utopians that you detail were not advocating homosexuality or certainly gay marriage.
Kengor: Of course, not. Sure, some of them, especially the cultural Marxists, were pushing sexual intercourse within the same gender, but anyone advocating something as culturally unthinkable as male-male or female-female "marriage," in any time other than ours, would have been hauled off by authorities as dangerous public menaces. Marx and Engels were under surveillance by the governments in their countries simply for arguing for non-monogamous marriage. Even gay people weren't thinking they'd soon live in a culture where not only was the mainstream population supportive of gay marriage but where liberals - in the name of "tolerance" and "diversity" - would be suing, picketing, boycotting, demonizing, and dehumanizing a Baptist grandma who begs them not to force her to make a cake for a gay wedding. Marx and Engels and even wild cultural Marxists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich - who broke down sexual barriers in areas like homosexuality and bisexuality - would be rolling over in their graves. Nonetheless, they would be thrilled to see that everyday (non-Communist) Americans have finally found a vehicle to assist the long-time Communist dream of "the abolition of the family."
V&V: But you do emphasize one important source of clear commonality, from the early 19th to early 21st centuries that unites these old left-wing extremists with modern liberals in their general willingness to redefine marriage and family. What is it?
Kengor: Yes, it is this: As modern liberalism/progressivism and the Democratic Party have become increasingly secular, often anti-religious, or certainly dismissive of traditional notions of morality, this striking willingness of individuals to redefine marriage has become possible. For Communists, two centuries ago and still today, that requisite anti-religious secularism has been there all along. That disregard if not outright rejection of Christian ethics has brought all of these forces full circle in a joint willingness to permanently alter the historic Western/Christian understanding of male-female matrimony.
They share the fatal conceit first expressed in the Garden of Eden: Ye shall be as gods.
V&V: What do you mean by that?
Kengor: They are their own determinants of truth, of morality, of what is right and wrong. They render unto themselves the right to determine everything from what is marriage to what is life. These things used to be the province of nature and nature's God. Now, each and every individual renders that right unto himself or herself. And when someone disagrees with them, they are often attacked with fire and brimstone.
V&V: Clearly, you're coming at this from a religious perspective.
Kengor: My position is 100 percent consistent with my faith. But I come at this issue not only spiritually but with numerous other influences that have shaped society's position on marriage and family for, oh, several thousand years. It has long been common sense and experience that the best thing for a society and for children is a home with a mother and father. Pope Francis says that every child has a "right" to a mother and father. To be sure, not all children will get that. But when they don't, it hasn't been because the culture and state are creating a new form of "marriage" that is motherless or fatherless. A fatherless or motherless home has never been what society has strived for as a matter of deliberate policy. That is now changing with this fanatical, no-second-thoughts push for gay marriage.
V&V: We're going to pick up this conversation in our second interview, but tell readers what you describe as the "ultimate kicker" in this rapid willingness to redefine what you call "the laws of nature and nature's God," because it really sums up what you've said here today.
Kengor: It's really a rather stunning development: The radical left could never have achieved this ultimate takedown of marriage without the larger American public's increasingly broad acceptance of gay marriage. The public has been the indispensable handmaiden to the radical left's ability to at long last redefine marriage and the family. That is a realization that ought to give the public pause.
V&V: One additional stunning development, a crucial point we'll pick up in the next interview. You note that today's Communist movement is "gung ho" for gay marriage.
Kengor: That's correct. People's World, the flagship publication of Communist Party USA (CPUSA), is constantly pushing gay marriage. As I write, it has posts celebrating "LGBT" Pride Month. You can see this at the CPUSA website, in speeches of CPUSA leaders, and even in places like the once militantly anti-gay Cuba. This is a big deal. CPUSA once expelled gays like Harry Hay. Not anymore. Why such a shift? A major reason is that Communists are anti-tradition, anti-God, anti-family, anti-marriage, and all about fundamentally transforming society. They see same-sex marriage as a major opportunity.
V&V: What do you say to those who dispute your thesis?
Kengor: Well, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but it's not something that is disputable. Look, the facts are very simple: for some two centuries, extremist elements, from radical socialist utopians to Communists to secular progressives, have sought to redefine and reshape and fundamentally transform the natural, traditional, Biblical, nuclear family. In gay marriage, they finally have a vehicle with mainstream public support to enable that redefinition, that reshaping, that fundamental transformation. There's no disputing that. People may not like to hear it. I don't like it either. But it's not a matter of dispute.
V&V: So, which side are the bad actors, or the ones acting in bad faith?
Kengor: Again, it isn't usually gay Americans or the typical millennial stumping for gay marriage; they're motivated by what they believe are beneficent and entirely unsinister forces: their notions of love, freedom, tolerance, "equality." I get that. I do not agree with their applications, but I fully understand that (for most of them) their intentions are not malicious. They do not see themselves as working on the same page as Communists or whatever other type of left-wing radicals. And indeed, this isn't a willful conspiracy. Nonetheless, the far left could care less how the rest of the culture gets there, with whatever slogans or well-intended notions, so long as it gets there.
V&V: You mention in Takedown having received an important email about a year ago from someone responding to an article you did on gay marriage. He was once part of the "gay left." Tell us what he said and how it motivated you.
Kengor: He noted that most gay people, who are either not especially political or certainly nowhere near the extreme left, have no idea how their gay-marriage advocacy fits and fuels the far left's anti-family agenda, and specifically its longtime takedown strategy aimed at the nuclear family. He is exactly right, and inspired me to begin collecting the material that became this book. Most of the gay people I have known are Republicans, not leftists. Generally, I have always had no problem dialoguing with them, though it is now getting more difficult, as liberals are doing their best to convince gays that I, as a conservative, hate them. It's an uncharitable smear, based on great crudeness and ignorance, which utterly misunderstands conservatism.
That kind of nasty intolerance by liberals is terribly divisive, destroying real dialogue and civil debate.
But as for gay people, even when they're socially liberal - and, even then, mainly on matters like gay rights - the gay people I've met have been economic conservatives, not to mention pro-life on abortion, which I always especially appreciated. But in signing on the dotted line for gay marriage, they have, whether they realize it or not (again, most do not), enlisted in the radical left's unyielding centuries-old attempt to redefine the family.
V&V: So, you believe that unlike the older leftist extremists who sought to deliberately undermine the traditional family, the vast majority of today's proponents of same-sex marriage have friendly motives?
Kengor: Yes, I think that's largely true for the typical supporter of same-sex marriage - though there are, admittedly, some supporters who candidly admit that they're looking to take down marriage. They're very open about it. I quote them in the book.
V&V: You write that you, as a Christian, have no right to redefine marriage.
Kengor: I believe that marriage is not ours to redefine. Christians like myself believe that creating our own definition of marriage would blaspheme God, who "created them male and female." "What God joined together man cannot tear asunder." That's in Genesis (Old Testament) and Matthew (Jesus himself speaking in the New Testament). And beyond that, words have meanings. A cat is a cat, a dog is a dog, a tree is a tree, and marriage is marriage. If gay-marriage advocates would like, they can call their new spousal arrangements something else, but I personally and religiously cannot concede to join them in designing new configurations of "marriage." To me and billions before me, marriage is a male-female creation determined by nature and nature's God.
V&V: In fact, in the previous interview, you said that those eager to redefine marriage were acting as their own gods, with their own definitions of morality, of right and wrong, of marriage.
Kengor: Correct. In my faith tradition, marriage was instituted as a male-female bond by Christ and is literally sacramental. It would be downright heretical to arrogate unto myself the extraordinary ability to define what is marriage. Liberals can happily take up that task to themselves, but I will not. I already have enough to answer to God for. It's funny, liberals accuse same-sex marriage opponents of arrogance. That's hardly the case. We have humbled ourselves to an absolute Creator's position that we believe we have no right to change.
V&V: Let's get back to your historical treatment. Give us the three main points that you want people to take away from Takedown.
Kengor: First, people need to understand that, for two centuries, the far left - from Communists to socialists to various self-styled "progressives" - have sought to reorder the natural-traditional-Biblical understanding of family and marriage. From the likes of Marx and Engels to Herbert Marcuse, Kate Millett, Betty Friedan, the Bolsheviks, the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxists, to a host of 1960s radicals and many others still, they created their own definitions of marriage, family, parenting, education, sexuality, even gender. They spoke openly and candidly of what some called "abolition of the family." In fact, those are the exact words of Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. Marx once wrote to Engels, "Blessed is he who has no family."
Second, for the first time ever, the far left has finally found a vehicle to enable this long-sought takedown of family and marriage: gay marriage. This 21st century novelty is utterly without precedent in the ancient sweep of Western/Judeo-Christian history. Though Communists, socialists, and even early progressives could have never conceived of the idea of same-sex marriage, they are now firmly on board for this fundamental transformation of marriage and family.
And third, the American mainstream and even the gay community itself have no idea that their support of same-sex marriage actually enables the far left to achieve this takedown. Most chillingly, their support of gay marriage also allows the far left to successfully attack religion - its long-reviled foe - in a way it never thought possible with such wide public acceptance.
V&V: That part is indeed chilling, and a major part of your book. You give numerous examples of how the far left has used these ideas on remolding family and marriage as a tool to hammer religion.
Margaret Sanger is a saint in the feminist church. She is a charter member of the Progressive Hall of Fame. Liberals revere this woman who preached "race improvement" and denounced what she called "human weeds," "morons," "idiots," "imbeciles," and the "dead weight of human waste."
Hillary Clinton glows that she is "in awe of" Sanger. She said so in 2009 upon receiving Planned Parenthood's "highest honor" that year: its coveted Margaret Sanger Award. Likewise, effusive was Nancy Pelosi when she proudly accepted the award in 2014.
Speaking to Planned Parenthood a year earlier, Barack Obama, America's first African-American president, hailed the organization founded by this racial eugenicist committed to creating a "race of thoroughbreds" and purging America's "race of degenerates." "Thank you, Planned Parenthood," and "God bless you," said Obama to a giddy crowd of ecstatic pro-choice women. The president commended Planned Parenthood's "extraordinary" and "remarkable work."
The love by liberals for Planned Parenthood and its founder knows no bounds. A professor blogging at The New York Times argues for placing Margaret's mug on the $20 bill.
And alas, no less than the Smithsonian, America's museum, boasts a handsome bust of Sanger in its stately National Portrait Gallery. Margaret is there enshrined in the Smithsonian's vaunted "Struggle for Justice" exhibit.
This brings me to my reason for writing here today: a group of African-American pastors are demanding the removal of Sanger's bust from the Smithsonian.
Perhaps the Gallery is unaware that Ms. Sanger supported black eugenics, a racist attitude toward black and other minority babies, an elitist attitude toward those she regarded as "the feeble minded"; speaking at a rally of Ku Klux Klan women; and communications with Hitler sympathizers . . .
states the letter from Ministers Taking a Stand. "Also the notorious 'Negro Project,' which sought to limit, if not eliminate black births, was her brainchild." The pastors quote an infamous December 1939 letter from Sanger to Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Eugenics Society where, in the context of discussing the Negro Project, Sanger wrote:
We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out the idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
The succinct, powerful statement from the pastors adds: "Despite these well-documented facts of history, her bust sits proudly in your gallery as a hero of justice. The obvious incongruity is staggering!"
Amen to that.
Liberals must be baffled by this. This isn't the esteemed Planned Parenthood founder they learned to admire in their college classrooms. Margaret Sanger, a racist? Huh? They never heard that in American History 101. Where could these crazy charges possibly come from?
The answer is a myriad of authoritative sources. For starters, one might consult Sanger's own words. On pages 366-367 of her 1938 autobiography, published by W.W. Norton, one of the leading New York publishing houses, she spoke warmly of her May 1926 speech to the women's chapter of the KKK in Silverlake, New Jersey. Sanger seemed eager to speak to the group. After getting off the train, she was escorted by car along winding roads to a barn hidden in the country. There, the undeterred Planned Parenthood matron waited patiently for nearly three hours while her white-hooded sisters engaged in their incendiary routine. She observed "figures parading with banners and illuminated crosses. I waited another twenty minutes. It was warmer and I did not mind so much." "Eventually," recorded Sanger of the toasty atmosphere, "the lights were switched on, the audience seated itself, and I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began to speak."
Sanger was tight-lipped regarding what she shared with the Klanswomen at their rally, though apparently she was extremely successful and satisfied with herself:
I believed I had accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were finally through it was too late to return to New York. . . . It was nearly one before I reached Trenton, and I spent the night in a hotel.
The Planned Parenthood founder's KKK talk was a smash hit. Not only did it go very late, after a long wait, but it earned Sanger a dozen new invitations from the Klan sisters. The KKK was quite excited about the work of Planned Parenthood's founder.
Thus, it hardly comes out of nowhere when a group of African-American pastors today asks the Smithsonian:
How can a person like Sanger, who found common cause with the racial agenda of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), be ranked among true champions of "justice?"
Precisely. Such words pierce the liberal heart like a dagger. As many conservatives have experienced, when you point out to liberals that Planned Parenthood aborts (by far) a disproportionate number of unborn African-American babies, they go wild with rage and name-calling. You're apt to be reflexively called every name in the liberal playbook for raising this one. As we watch weekly the ghastly Planned Parenthood video expose released by the Center for Medical Progress, in which Sanger's organization's "medical personnel" nonchalantly discuss dissecting baby parts while sipping Chianti and nibbling Caesar salad, bear in mind that most of these babies are African-American. Which among them might have been another Rosa Parks, Ben Carson, Martin Luther King Jr., Arthur Ashe, or even Barack Obama?
These African-American pastors know that. Indeed, they show (with a map included) that 70 percent of Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Thus, they're undertaking their own expos. Their letter, they say, will be but one "in a series of actions we will be taking to expose the evil of honoring Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood."
Again, amen to that.
If liberals genuinely care about justice, they should join these African-American pastors in seeking the removal of Margaret Sanger's bust from the "Struggle for Justice" exhibit at America's preeminent museum. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink 2012.
Speaking on Fox News Channel's "The Five," pundit Greg Gutfeld said that "gay marriage, in my opinion, is a conservative idea." He noted that the left "generally hates traditions" and is all about "breaking with traditions," and that gay marriage offers conservatives an opportunity to "embrace a tradition" that strengthens families and communities.
I should acknowledge that Gutfeld spoke without notes, unscripted, live and off-the-cuff. I often talk with inexactness when I'm speaking live. Live speaking is a perfect venue to make mistakes. It's easier to type your thoughts and have the benefit of reflection, revision, and a word processor.
That said, let's go with Gutfeld's words, because they do represent a position held by some conservatives, and especially younger conservatives.
With all respect to Greg Gutfeld, who I usually agree with, gay marriage is absolutely not a conservative idea. Not unless, as liberals do with marriage, one redefines conservatism.
How is that? What is conservatism? That itself can be problematic. If you ask ten self-identified conservatives for a definition, you might get ten different answers. This much, however, can be said:
Conservatism aims to conserve the time-tested values, ideas, and principles that have been sustained over time by previous generations and traditions. (Here, a crucial correction to Greg Gutfeld: gay marriage is not a tradition.) These are values, ideas, and principles - usually with a Judeo-Christian basis - that have endured for good reason and for the best of society, citizens, country, culture, and order. That's a brief summation that the late Russell Kirk, probably conservatism's preeminent philosophical spokesman, would endorse - as would Ronald Reagan, the face of modern conservatism.
In an important speech at CPAC in February 1977, Reagan stated this:
Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before. The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations - found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow.
That's a solid definition of conservatism. Gay marriage, merely by its total newness alone, fails that rudimentary definition. Gay marriage has never been done before. One would never expect a conservative to rush into something as utterly unprecedented - and that directly repudiates the laws of nature and nature's God - as this completely novel concept called "gay marriage." Same-sex marriage not only revolutionizes marriage but also human nature generally and family specifically, the latter of which conservatives have always understood as the fundamental building block of civilization.
One would expect a progressive to support redefining marriage, because for progressives, everything is always in a state of never-ending, always-evolving flux. Progressives have no trouble rendering unto themselves the ability to redefine human life itself. Redefining marriage is small potatoes. A progressive can wake up tomorrow and conjure up a new "right" over a grande skim latte at Starbucks. For secular progressives especially, there is no absolute, set standard for things like marriage or, really, even for right or wrong. They are relativists who don't subscribe to established absolutes. Redefine marriage? Sure, says the progressive. Redefine family, parenthood, motherhood, fatherhood, womanhood, manhood, gender? Sure, says the progressive.
For conservatives, however, this is unthinkable. Indeed, a conservative cannot even "conserve" when it comes to gay marriage, because gay marriage is an untried idea unimaginable by any people until only very recent days.
To be sure, conservatives, especially those whose conservatism springs from religious underpinnings, should recognize and respect the inherent human dignity of all gay people - being fellow human beings made in the image of God - and should not mistreat them. But those conservatives cannot, in turn, blatantly violate (if not blaspheme) the teachings of their faith and their God on the sanctity of male-female matrimony.
As I write this, I implore readers to please understand that I've dealt with this issue at length. Last year, I did a book called 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. When I did the speaking tour, I spoke to many young conservatives. Gay marriage came up constantly. My latest book, just released, explores the deeply disturbing ideological history of those who sought to abolish marriage and family outright. In that book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, I detail how the goal of fundamentally transforming family and marriage has been a staple of the far left for two centuries, from Marx and Engels to cultural Marxists in the Frankfurt School, to '60s radicals, to progressives today.
The point: a radical leftist is eagerly willing to remake marriage and family in his own image, but a conservative is not. To the contrary, the task of the conservative is to fight that rebellion, to affirm and defend and preserve and conserve the natural-traditional-biblical family - i.e., that time-tested institution that Reagan called "the most important unit in society," "the most durable of all institutions," "the nucleus of civilization," "the cornerstone of American society." And children, said Reagan, "belong in a family" with a mom and dad. In fact, Reagan maintained that it is in a family that children are not only cared for but "taught the moral values and traditions that give order and stability to our lives and to society as a whole." America's families must "preserve and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish." Above all, Reagan stated that our "concept of the family" "must withstand the trends of lifestyle and legislation."
And yet, gay marriage is no mere trend of lifestyle and legislation. By breaking the ancient Western standard of marriage between one man and one woman, it will forever alter our concept of family that has formed the nucleus of civilization.
I'll wrap up with a key question that I get asked all the time by conservatives on this issue: Can one still be a conservative and support gay marriage?
I'd have to say that if someone is conservative on 90 out of 100 issues, but gay marriage isn't one of them, that person probably ought to still be regarded as a conservative - albeit with a really skewed misunderstanding of how gay marriage fits their conservative worldview.
But while some conservatives will support gay marriage, gay marriage is flatly not a conservative position.
This time last year [Memorial Day] I did a commentary on five brothers who served in World War II. Very impressive. Imagine my surprise when someone who caught the commentary sent me a package with this note:
Dear Professor Kengor: Your [commentary] about the family whose five sons served in WW II was interesting. You might be interested to know about families who had more than five sons who served in WW II.
Well, Ted Walters of Uniontown, Pennsylvania certainly had my attention. He continued:
My mother, Stella Pietkiewicz, had seven sons serve in WW II. She had the honor to christen the plane, Spirit of Poles, because she had the most sons who served in WW II.
Yes, seven sons.
Along with Ted Walters' letter was an old newspaper clipping that showed six Pittsburgh-area mothers, all of Polish descent, who had thirty-three sons in service. Anna Lozowska, Maryanna Sawinska, Katarzyna Antosz, and Mrs. Joseph Wojtaszek each offered five boys to the cause. Honorta Lachowicz provided six sons. Stella Pietkiewicz took the prize with seven.
Bless their souls. These moms gave their boys to the cause of freedom.
The ladies were brought together by an organization called the Central Council of Polish Organizations in Allegheny County for a fundraising effort called the "Spirit of Poles" bomber campaign. The campaign sold over $500,000 worth of war bonds, a lot of money at the time.
The Polish influence is a big part of the story. World War II started in Poland in September 1939, first with the Nazis invading from the West and then the Soviet Red Army invading from the East. Ultimately, Poland suffered a higher proportion of death than any country in the war. It also had a huge Jewish population, which was corralled into dens of unspeakable evil, such as Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto. When the Nazis were finally defeated, Poland's reward was four decades of brutal occupation by totalitarian Communists headquartered in Moscow.
And so, these Pittsburgh-area Polish women knew this battle was worth fighting. Their sons did, too. And Stella Pietkiewicz gave the most.
I don't know the fate of all thirty-three boys, but Stella's sons, remarkably, all returned home safely. For the benefit of their one hundred-plus descendants reading now, here were the boys' names: Edmond, Walter, Wilfred, Roderick, Vitold, Leon, and Stanley. Some of the boys later took on their father's first name, Walter, as their last name (they added an "s," making it "Walters"). It was much easier to pronounce and work with.
Their father was no slacker either. Walter Leon Pietkiewicz, born March 25, 1883, immigrated to America and thrived. By age 23, he graduated from the University of Pittsburgh's pharmacy school. He became a pharmacist in Pittsburgh's Polish Hill section.
The boys were all over the map during this terrible war: Europe, the Philippines, Okinawa, Tokyo Bay, Morocco, Africa, the Middle East. Wilfred was decorated for invading and occupying Iwo Jima. His ship bombed the Japanese mainland. Edmond fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Five of the seven brothers went overseas.
Stella was apparently pretty tough herself. She gave birth to 14 children, nine boys and five girls. (One boy was born stillborn.) Ted was the only boy who didn't serve in World War II; he was too young. He later volunteered for and served in the Korean War. Of the entire clan, only Ted and one sister, Hope, are still alive.
It's quite a story of quite a family. And the Pietkiewicz family wasn't the only family that lent multiple sons to the cause. The Pietkiewicz family was fortunate enough, however, to have them all return home.
But while that part of the story has a happy ending, there's a definite tragic component: Stella did not survive the war. She died of cancer before the war ended. She didn't live to see all her boys come home.
All that time, she kept a stoic silence. "There wasn't talk about it [the war] around the house," remembers Ted, who was 12 years old when the war ended. His parents "didn't talk about it much." The same was true for the brothers once they came home. Ted says he never heard any war stories from his older brothers. Ted's wife, Pat, adds: "And we were with them a lot! But we never heard any war stories from them."
They did their duty, came home, raised families, and served their country in other ways.
Seven boys. Seven boys in World War II.
How can we repay families like these for their sacrifices 70 years ago? We can start by not destroying the America they were willing to die for. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink 2012.
As soon as a conservative Republican emerges as a serious presidential frontrunner, liberals in the media suddenly yank out the microscopes they've been keeping away from Barack Obama since 2007. They couldn't care less what Obama did in college, how he got into college, who paid for his college, who wrote his letters of recommendation, what his grades were, and on and on - but we already know everything about Scott Walker and college. Obama's media protectors couldn't give a rip that he had a mentor who was a literal card-carrying member of the Communist Party in the Stalin era. But as soon as someone like Scott Walker starts gaining ground, wow, "journalists" lunge for the magnifying glass and became real reporters again, profusely digging and questioning, looking for mole holes to make into vast mountains of scandal.
On Walker, there will always be a new scandal as long as he remains viable. I don't want to be regularly drawn into defending the man, but here are two recent episodes I've been asked to weigh in on, specifically, because of their parallels to Ronald Reagan:
First, there was Walker's comment at CPAC (I was there) on fighting ISIS and fighting government unions. Asked how he would handle a foe like ISIS as president, Walker said, "If I can take on a 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world."
The answer was immediately blasted. It shouldn't be.
Obviously, the public-sector unions that Scott Walker faced in Wisconsin are not equivalent to ISIS. They're not beheading anyone. They're not killers. We know this, and we know that Scott Walker knows this. In fact, the day after his CPAC comments, he explained:
My point was just, if I could handle that kind of a pressure and intensity [in Wisconsin], I think I'm up for the challenge for whatever might come, if I choose to run for president.
It's fully appropriate and necessary for Walker to clarify that he was not equating Wisconsin public employees with ISIS, and to apologize for any such ridiculous misunderstanding, and it's also appropriate and necessary for his opponents not to abuse his point.
Abuse his point? Yes, because he made a good one. The truth is that it isn't easy to do what Scott Walker did as governor in Wisconsin. That's the main reason he so impresses conservatives. The enmity and utter hatred that he and his family and extended family (including his elderly parents) felt constantly, from union members and their militant "progressive" allies in his own backyard, at the state house, in the halls, at his office, in his neighborhood, at his church, at the grocery story, at Starbucks, at the car wash, on the street, at Boy Scouts meetings, at soccer games, at dance practice, at baseball games, at theaters and musicals, and on and on and on, is something awful that people can scarcely imagine enduring. Public-sector union thugs can be brutes and can make your life miserable. For Walker, it equated to a nasty pressure that was omnipresent. In a way, it really would be more personally distressing than a president dealing with ISIS because the president, fully protected, never gets anywhere near an ISIS killer. That's not true for Governor Walker.
It's a point that Ronald Reagan could have related to. Asked about dealing with the Soviets, or Brezhnev, or Gorbachev, Reagan often told reporters that he could handle them because he still had "scars on my back" from fighting unions.
"I know it sounds kind of foolish maybe to link Hollywood, an experience there, to the world situation," he said from the White House, "and yet, the tactics seemed to be pretty much the same." When aide Lyn Nofziger cautioned him about the Soviets at Reykjavik, he responded: "Don't worry. I still have the scars on my back from fighting the communists in Hollywood." He judged this Hollywood experience "hand-to-hand combat."
Was Reagan thereby insulting, say, the boys who invaded Normandy and fought at Iwo Jima who experienced true hand-to-hand combat? Of course not. We know that.
Consider another moment that Ronald Reagan never forgot: As an actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he was on location in an isolated rural area when told by a crew member that he had a telephone call waiting at a nearby gas station. At the time, Reagan was preparing an important report for SAG relating to a major 1946 strike. Spearheading the strike was the Red-dominated Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), led by a thug named Herb Sorrell, who Reagan charitably described as "a large and muscular man with a most aggressive attitude."
Reagan arrived at the gas station and answered the phone. "I was told," he said later:
. . . that if I made the report a squad was ready to take care of me and fix my face so that I would never be in pictures again.
Specifically, the caller threatened to splash acid upon Reagan's unsuspecting million-dollar face - the source of his livelihood.
Such fears were nothing new for Reagan. Police began guarding Reagan's home and children, and he began packing a Smith & Wesson revolver, which he took to bed each night.
I bet that Scott Walker had a gun for protection, or at least a security guard always near his side.
The vituperation and dripping, red-hot anger directed at Walker by unions in Wisconsin was a sight to behold. What he endured in Wisconsin was extremely distressing. But don't expect Walker's opponents to try to understand that.
Second, another Walker-Reagan comparison/clarification is in order. It began with a January 28 item in PolitiFact that stated:
As momentum builds for a possible 2016 presidential run, Gov. Scott Walker has spent more time speaking on foreign policy.
One of his talking points: Leadership trumps experience when it comes to managing affairs overseas. Look at Ronald Reagan.
That was Walker's response Jan. 21, 2015 when he was asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" about the importance of foreign policy experience. First, the governor criticized the secretary of state record of Hillary Clinton, the leading potential Democratic candidate for 2016.
Then he turned to Reagan, one of his political heroes, and one of the Republican president's early acts in office - the mass firing of most of the nation's air traffic controllers. . . .
In his MSNBC interview, Walker asserted that the move was one of the most important foreign policy decisions "made in our lifetime," showing allies and adversaries around the world "that we were serious."
Then he added this:
"Years later, documents released from the Soviet Union showed that that exactly was the case. The Soviet Union started treating (Reagan) more seriously once he did something like that. Ideas have to have consequences. And I think (President Barack Obama) has failed mainly because he's made threats and hasn't followed through on them."
So, Walker goes beyond stating an opinion about the foreign policy implications of Reagan's move. He states as fact that there are Soviet documents showing the Soviets treated Reagan more seriously because he fired American air traffic controllers.
That's a bold claim.
A bold claim? Gee, those of us who have written about or followed Reagan have heard this account many times. What is PolitiFact so upset about? It explained its beef with Walker's assertion:
When we asked for evidence to back the claim, both the governor's office and Walker's campaign cited statements from a variety of people. Each essentially said the firings showed Reagan meant what he said, and that he was to be taken seriously.
PolitiFact then listed the examples that immediately came to my mind, apparently getting them from Walker's office and campaign. Here they are:
Reagan special assistant Peggy Noonan wrote in her White House memoir that George Shultz, who became Reagan's secretary state a year after the firings, had called the firings the most important foreign policy decision Reagan ever made. Joseph McCartin, the author of a book on the strike, wrote that when House Speaker Tip O'Neill, a Democrat, visited Moscow not long after the strike, "He learned that the Soviet leaders had been deeply impressed by Reagan's actions." And Reagan biographer Edmund Morris wrote: "Former Soviet apparatchiks will tell you that it was not his famous 'evil empire' speech in 1983 that convinced them he meant strategic business, so much as photographs of the leader of the air traffic controllers union being taken to jail in 1981."
Precisely, PolitiFact. That's exactly what I remember. I don't get it? Why are we having this conversation? What's wrong with what Scott Walker said? PolitiFact provided its answer:
Those are perceptions of Americans, however. [Actually, no, it was Americans reporting Soviet perceptions.] Walker's claim was the Soviets treated Reagan more seriously after he fired the controllers, and that Soviet documents prove it.
But he did not provide us anything referencing Soviet documents. ?And apparently there are no such documents that have been made public.
Ah, that's the issue? The lack of "documents?" That's the big deal? But why? Tip O'Neill apparently talked to "Soviet leaders" and Edmund Morris's sources were "former Soviet apparatchiks." And George Shultz dealt with the Soviets daily. Surely that's a solid-enough measure of evidence.
But the issue, apparently, is "documents." No documents. Frankly, I hadn't even noticed in my initial read that Walker used the word "documents," even when I first read his statement on MSNBC. It went right by me. And I specialize in dealing with Cold War documents.
Nonetheless, PolitiFact continued on that point, quoting experts adamantly and testily objecting to this apparent lack of "documents."
Five experts told us they had never heard of such documents. Several were incredulous at the notion.
McCartin, a Georgetown University labor history expert who wrote the book about the strike that Walker cited, said: "I am not aware of any such documents. If they did exist, I would love to see them."
Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russia programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, told us she "had to listen to the Walker interview twice, so ridiculous is the statement about the air traffic controllers. There is absolutely no evidence of this. I would love to see the released Soviet documents on this subject that he has apparently seen."
James Graham Wilson, a historian at the U.S. State Department, also told us he was not aware of any Soviet documents showing Moscow's internal response to the controller firings. He speculated that there could be such records, given how some Soviet experts characterized the firings.??
Wilson and other have noted the perspective of Richard Pipes, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Harvard University. Pipes said the firings showed the Soviets that Reagan was "a man who, when aroused, will go to the limit to back up his principles."
. . . In any case, the lack of Soviet records described by Walker is clear.?? Reagan's own ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, told us: "It's utter nonsense. There is no evidence of that whatever."
Nonsense? What is nonsense? Walker's general point isn't nonsense but apparently the lack of "documents" is being judged a gigantic faux paus by Walker. PolitiFact thus concluded by applying a "rating" to Walker's statement:
Walker cited no Soviet documents showing that the firings made the Soviets treat Reagan more seriously. And experts, several of whom felt Walker's claim is outrageous, told us they are not aware that any such documents exist. For a statement that is false and ridiculous, our rating is Pants on Fire.
The minute that this PolitiFact item was released, I got an email from a fellow Reagan expert who was really steamed. "Paul, you've got to take this on!" he wrote.
Because a politician in an unscripted TV interview referred to documents rather than reports by biographers, he's a liar with his pants on fire? Should we hold a governor to the standard that we do scholars because he used the word "documents" in an off-the-cuff remark to a TV guy? Do we expect our politicians to be archival experts in Cold War documents in order to make general points with the utmost academic-scholarly precision?
Walker had indeed correctly read that the Soviets were impressed by Reagan's actions, and just as clearly assumed (understandably) that the authors he remembered writing about the incident (being authors) probably had used some sort of "documents" for their research.
But because he used a work like "documents" instead of, say, "biographers" we're going to denounce him, "Liar, liar, pants on fire?!"
I guarantee you that I could start digging in archives, and especially the voluminous Soviet media archives that I've collected over the decades, and find an example of Moscow officials communicating about Reagan and PATCO. It might take me hours or days or even weeks, but I could find them. I have read hundreds of Soviet memoirs, and I could go back through and start checking those, too. If PolitiFact wants to pay me for my time (by the hour, please), I'll start looking. But I warn them: Finding actual "documents" is never easy. It always takes a lot of time. So, this could cost them.
Another warning: Such "documents" probably will not be a big deal. They would likely simply offer a written communication of what we already knew, a mere hardcopy communication from one Soviet official to another. That's all that "documents" often are.
Peggy Noonan, at the end of her long piece on this, writes:
I have never heard of such documents. No one I spoke to for the book referred to them. If Walker got it wrong, he should say so. Though I'm not sure it matters in any deep way. Of course the Soviets saw and understood what had happened with Reagan and the union. Of course they would factor it in. They had eyes. They didn't have to write it down.
That's right. I've shared thousands of perceptions from people in articles and books I've written. The vast majority, I'm sure, were never recorded in documents. Bill Clark, Reagan's closest aide in the attack on the Soviet Union, had an explicit policy of not writing down sensitive information that he and Reagan feared could be leaked. Boy, if I could've had just one of the many napkins or paper scraps that Clark scribbled on after his meetings with Cardinal Pio Laghi, John Paul II's apostolic nuncio in Washington, which Clark then took to Reagan to refer to while briefing the president. Unfortunately, Clark always dropped them in the trash.
The lack of those "documents" frustrated me as his biographer, but that was the way it was. It didn't mean that those communications didn't happen.
As Peggy Noonan details in her current piece, "So was Scott Walker right about the importance of Reagan and PATCO? Yes." It mattered on the international stage and especially to Moscow.
A final Walker-Reagan comparison: Scott Walker has unintentionally uncovered something else he shares with Ronald Reagan: the media's ability to place every inexact word of his under microscopic scrutiny and trounce him when he isn't perfect to the letter of his word. This is something the media does not do to Barack Obama - never has and never will.
As Scott Walker moves on, he can expect to get much, much more. Ronald Reagan certainly did. Don't let it bother you, governor, you're in good company. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama' s Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
Rudy Giuliani is being roundly criticized for several recent statements he has made about President Barack Obama, including the claim that Obama in his youth was influenced by a literal Communist. I cannot address all of Giuliani's remarks, but I can certainly speak to the influence of the Communist he referred to. In short, Rudy was correct and he even had Obama's exact age (nine) right when he was first introduced to this person.
"From the time he was 9 years old, he was influenced by Frank Marshall Davis, who was a Communist," Giuliani said.
I can't say for certain that Rudy Giuliani read my book, which is titled, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor, but he has those facts absolutely right. If I may, I'd like to add some crucial detail:
Frank Marshall Davis (1905-87) was a hardcore Communist, an actual card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (CPUSA), who spent time with a young Barack Obama throughout the 1970s, right up until the moment Obama left Hawaii for Occidental College in 1979.
Davis joined the Communist Party in Chicago in the early 1940s. CPUSA members swore an oath to "ensure the triumph of Soviet power in the United States." They were dedicated to what CPUSA leader William Z. Foster had openly called "Soviet America." Notably, Davis joined CPUSA after the Hitler-Stalin Pact, a time when many American Communists (especially Jewish Communists) had bolted the Party in disgust that their Soviet Union had allied with Hitler.
As we know from Davis's declassified 600-page FBI file (and other sources), his Party card number was 47544. He was very active. In 1946, he became the founding editor-in-chief of the Chicago Star, the party-line newspaper for Chicago. There, Davis shared the op-ed page with the likes of Howard Fast, a "Stalin Prize" winner, and Senator Claude "Red" Pepper, who, at the time, sponsored the bill to nationalize healthcare in the United States.
Davis left the Star in 1948 for Hawaii, where he would write for the party-line organ there, the Honolulu Record. His politics remained so radical that the FBI had him under continued surveillance. The federal government actually placed Davis on the Security Index, meaning that in the event of a war between the United States and USSR, Barack Obama's mentor could be placed under immediate arrest.
Frank Marshall Davis's targets were Democrats more than Republicans, given that Democrats, like Harry Truman, held the White House and opposed Stalin's Soviet expansion at the time. In December 1956, the Democrat-run Senate Judiciary Committee called Davis to Washington to testify on his activities. Davis pleaded the Fifth Amendment. No matter, the next year, the Democratic Senate published a report titled, "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States," where it listed Davis as "an identified member of the Communist Party."
Frank Marshall Davis would eventually meet a young Barack Obama in 1970, introduced by Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, for the purpose of mentoring. The boy's grandfather felt that the fatherless boy was in need of a black-male role model. For that, Dunham chose one of the most politically radical figures in all of Hawaii. He introduced the two in the fall of 1970. An eyewitness, a woman named Dawna Weatherly-Williams, who knew Davis so well that she called him "Daddy," was present the first time Obama and Davis met. She described the relationship as very influential, with Davis impacting Obama on "social justice," on "life," on "what's important," on no less than "how to use" his "heart" and "mind."
So deep was Davis's influence that Obama, in his huge bestselling memoir, Dreams from My Father, would cite him repeatedly over thousands of words and in each and every section (all three parts) of his memoirs - though he referred to him only as "Frank." "Frank" is mentioned 22 times by name, and far more times via pronouns and other forms of reference.
It is extremely telling that in the 2005 audio version of Dreams, released to help package Obama for the White House, "Frank" was completely purged from the memoir. As noted on the back cover, the audio version was personally "approved" by Obama himself.
How often did Obama and Frank Marshall Davis meet?
Only Obama himself knows and could answer that question. The Washington Post's excellent writer David Maraniss, in his acclaimed biography of Obama, writes that "Obama later estimated that he saw Davis 'ten to fifteen times'" during their years together in Hawaii. Maraniss didn't provide his source, but he must have gotten it directly from Obama in an exclusive interview for his book. I haven't seen that figure cited anywhere else.
For the record, 10 to 15 times is notable, especially given the nature and duration of these one-on-one meetings - often long late-night evenings together. (Some people cite mentors who they've barely met or not even met at all.) The two would drink and even got drunk together. In reality, I bet the number of Obama-Davis meetings is much greater, given that Obama would be expected to understate Davis' influence. Consider the print and audio versions of Dreams from My Father.
Again, one person could easily clarify the whole thing in a sentence, if he were asked by our "journalists": Barack Obama.
Now, the billion-dollar question: What's the relevancy of all of this? Does this Davis stuff mean that Barack Obama is today a closet Communist? No, of course it doesn't. We all know that. It does, however, explain how and why and where Obama went so far to the left, and why he's so far to the left to this day. In my book on Davis, I quote at length a student Communist leader at Occidental College who knew Obama immediately after he left Davis and knew him as a Communist. I'm confident from my research that the young Obama was once a Communist, and that Davis was surely an influence in that regard. The unknown is precisely how much Davis influenced Obama, and - the true big question - when and where and how and why Obama ever rejected that Communist past. To this day, Obama has never, despite two pre-presidential memoirs and thousands of interviews, told us about this radical background and why he supposedly left it. And the media refuses to ask, instead they dump on those like Rudy (and myself) who bother to ask.
As I've said repeatedly in my interviews on the Frank Marshall Davis book, Barack Obama could have crushed all wild speculation in 2008 by simply being candid about the Communism in his background and explaining when he (allegedly) left it all behind. My primary biographical subject, Ronald Reagan, once had been a self-described "hemophiliac" liberal duped by Communists. He told us all about it. George W. Bush told us about his alcohol struggles. Hillary Clinton has told us about her shift away from being a Goldwater girl.
So, where is Obama's conversion narrative? Again, the media refuses to ask.
All of which brings me back to Rudy Giuliani and Barack Obama. There's a super-quick way to clear up what Rudy is raising: Instead of interrogating Rudy, just once, finally, for the first time, ask Barack Obama about the Communist, Frank Marshall Davis, whom he spent time with throughout the 1970s. We're still waiting for just one question.
On February 19, 1945, 20-year-old Bill Young of Mooresville, North Carolina, disembarked an LST onto a miserable hunk of black rock called Iwo Jima. He was part of a 75-mile-long convoy of ships preparing to dislodge the Japanese from this volcanic remnant of an island. The territory was formally part of Japan, meaning it was considered literally sacred ground to Japanese soldiers.
Just how many Japanese were there, and where, was a mystery to Bill and the approaching Marines. It took his crewmen six weeks to arrive. They slept in cots under a tarp erected on the deck; all beds below were taken up by as many men as the U.S. military could jam onto one boat. But that little bit of discomfort was nothing compared to what was unexpectedly awaiting them.
"The plan was to be at Iwo Jima just a few days to mop it up - less than a week we were told," Bill told me. They would tidy up things and then move on. The Japanese, however, had other plans.
"I ended up there for 37 days," says Bill, who stayed for the full duration of the unforeseen hell ahead. "We ran into more resistance than we ever thought imaginable. It was a real killing field."
It became the bloodiest battle for American troops during all of World War II, with 7,000 killed and 20,000 casualties. Bodies, bullets, and death everywhere.
"You could just shoot into a crowd and kill someone, there was so many people," says Bill of those first waves that stormed the beaches. "We lost one Marine every 45 seconds, more than one per minute, for the first three days. We didn't have anywhere to bury them. We laid them out side by side, put a raincoat over them until we could build a cemetery."
I asked Bill about those early moments. In his low-key voice, he recalled that things happened so fast he didn't have time to dwell on the calamity. In between firing their weapons, he and the others tried to make foxholes but couldn't because of the odd lava rock. Their instinct was to simply survive.
The Japanese weren't on the island, explains Bill, they were in the island. They were hidden in a wild labyrinth of caves, intricate tunnels, and camouflaged concealments.
The Japanese dead numbered around 19,000, with only about 200 taken prisoner - those too injured to kill themselves with their grenades. The Japanese homeland was only 600 miles away. They would (and did) fight to the death. And they took a lot of good American boys with them.
As for Bill, he survived without a scratch, but most weren't so fortunate. Of the six men who raised the famous flag photographed atop Mount Suribachi, only three left the island, with two of them, John Bradley and Rene Gagnon, going on to lead normal lives. Bradley is the subject of the superb book-turned-film, Flags of Our Fathers. The third surviving flag raiser was Ira Hayes, a Native American.
Bill Young knew Ira Hayes. He vividly remembers leaning on the ship rail and shooting the breeze with Ira for several hours on the boat home. "They didn't think nothing of it," says Bill of Ira and his fellow flag-raisers. "They just grabbed a pipe, put a flag on it, and raised it."
But everyone else thought something of it. The moment was captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and became a national sensation. Indeed, Ira's time with Bill on the ship was cut short when a helicopter nabbed the instant celebrity to rush him off to sell war bonds. He and Bradley and Gagnon became a huge hit touring the country.
The adulation, however, couldn't heal Ira Hayes, who used alcohol to cope with the horrors he experienced. He died a sad death after returning home.
Bill Young didn't get home right away. He readied for an even worse dnouement with the devil: an invasion of Japan's mainland. He was spared when President Harry Truman dropped the atomic bomb, finally compelling the Japanese to surrender.
Bill Young eventually made his way home. He married his sweetheart, Arvelle. They were together for 58 years before her death. Today, at age 90, Bill lives next door to the house where he grew up.
Asked how he feels about his time in World War II, Bill recalls the entire experience, beyond just Iwo Jima, and says simply: "I'm glad I did it. I enjoyed it, as much as you could something like that."
Yes, as much as you could enjoy something like that.
Iwo Jima was, says Bill Young, a real killing field. On the anniversary of that ferocious battle, let's remember Bill and all those who sacrificed so much.
Given the somber anniversary of Roe v. Wade - source of 40 million abortions since 1973 - I thought I'd share an excellent but forgotten speech by President Ronald Reagan. The speechwriter was Peter Robinson, featured guest of our Reagan Lecture this year.
Reagan's remarks, made in July 1987 to pro-life leaders, are moving to read and watch (or listen to). They are prescient in light of the widening abortion abyss we face under the Obama administration and Pelosi-Reid Congress.
Reagan began with a reminder I often share with my secular-liberal friends. He told the pro-life activists:
[M]any of you, perhaps most, never dreamed of getting involved in politics. What brought you into politics was a matter of conscience, a matter of fundamental conviction.
That point cannot be underscored enough. Few things rile me more than demands that pro-lifers - especially those motivated by their faith - keep out of politics. Quite the contrary, many did just that, quietly going to church and reading their Bibles, until one day they awoke to learn the Supreme Court had passed Roe v. Wade. . . and the hellacious assault was on. They entered pro-life activism reluctantly, as a reaction to what was thrust upon their culture and country. The last thing they wanted was to get involved in politics. The Death Culture came to them.
Reagan next added:
Many of you've been attacked for being single-issue activists or single-issue voters. But I ask: What single issue could be of greater significance?
Agreed. For me, the life issue is my starting point, of far greater value than where a politician stands on social security or the minimum wage. Obviously, other issues matter. The right to life, however, is the first and most fundamental of rights, without which other rights are impossible. And if you, personally, are unsure when life begins, consider Reagan's recommendation: "If there's even a question about when human life begins, isn't it our duty to err on the side of life?"
Reagan saw the onslaught against America's unborn as so ferocious that he favored a "human life amendment" to the Constitution. At the time, this seemed extreme, but we've learned that unless amendments are attached to bill after bill - the Hyde Amendment, the Stupak Amendment - anonymous powers ensure all sorts of "unintended" consequences, including taxpayer funding of abortion.
Speaking of such funding, Reagan also acknowledged his "Mexico City policy," which blocked U.S. taxpayer funding of international "family planning" groups. One of the first things President Obama did was rescind that policy - immediately after the March for Life in January.
Another policy Reagan highlighted in his speech was the prohibition of federal funds to finance abortions in the District of Columbia. This, too, was overturned, thanks to a Democratic Congress and president that rejected funding for school vouchers for poor children in Washington, DC, but supported funding for abortions for the mothers of those children.
Yes, I know the contrast is breathtaking, but it's true.
Reagan talked more about abortion funding, and specifically "the so-called Grove City [College] legislation sponsored by Senator [Ted] Kennedy." "This bill," noted Reagan,
. . . would mean that all hospitals and colleges receiving federal funds, even those with religious affiliations, would be open to lawsuits if they failed to provide abortions.
The usually affable Reagan said: "this one really touches my temperature control."
There was much more Reagan said in this speech, but I'll close with two poignant thoughts: "Many who turn to abortion do so in harrowing circumstances," Reagan emphasized, including women "misled by inaccurate information."
. . . [W]e must remind those who disagree with us, and sometimes even ourselves, that we do not seek to condemn, we do not seek to sit in judgment. . . . [I]t is our duty to rise above bitterness and reproach.
Pro-lifers must heed that call, respecting the human dignity of everyone. All victims require love and charity. On that, Reagan finished with this:
I'd like to leave with you a quotation that means a great deal to me. These are the words of my friend, the late Terence Cardinal Cooke, of New York. "The gift of life, God's special gift, is no less beautiful when it is accompanied by illness or weakness, hunger or poverty, mental or physical handicaps, loneliness or old age. Indeed, at these times, human life gains extra splendor as it requires our special care, concern, and reverence. It is in and through the weakest of human vessels that the Lord continues to reveal the power of His love."
Here was a warning against the pallbearers of the progressive death march, from Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger - who hoped to expunge the gene pool of "human weeds" - to the euthanasia precipice to which America is being dragged. It starts with the weakest of vessels: the infant in its mother's womb.
Timeless words of wisdom to bear in mind this week, as America struggles to survive another year of Roe v. Wade. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
Editors Note: This essay was written just after the midterm elections.
"Today I had a chance to speak with John Boehner and congratulated Mitch McConnell on becoming the next Senate majority leader," said Barack Obama in the opening of his White House press conference following the Democrats' Tuesday massacre. "And I told them both that I look forward to finishing up this Congress's business and then working together for the next two years to advance America's business." The president is looking forward to "working together to deliver for the American people."
Obama struck an optimistic, cooperative tone. Of course, he had better. If he wants to have any relevance going forward, what choice does he have but to play nice with Republicans, or at least talk nice?
This begs the trillion-dollar question: Is Obama still relevant? Given the truly historic proportion of this Republican victory, is Barack Obama about to become the lamest of lame ducks?
Before Republicans get too excited, I would caution that a president is never irrelevant, simply due to the sheer power of the office. We don't call it the Bully Pulpit for nothing. There are plenty of muscles for the commander-in-chief to flex, even if the opposing party runs the fitness center.
I would point conservatives to a notable example from their presidential icon, Ronald Reagan. Six years into his presidency, in 1986, Ronald Reagan's party likewise lost the Senate, and again lost the House. And yet, Reagan's final two years were rich with success. He and Mikhail Gorbachev held four summits, in Reykjavik, Washington, Moscow, and New York. They signed history's greatest nuclear-missile treaty: the INF Treaty. Domestically, Reagan reaped the benefits of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, a further boon to economic prosperity.
Alas, there was one key negative in Reagan's final two years: the Iran-Contra hearings. With the help of the Dan Rather-media, Democrats in Congress tried to turn Iran-Contra into the second coming of Watergate. The sharks were in the water. They wanted Reagan's demise.
Could Republicans seek the same against Obama? I doubt it. Any attempt to do so, no matter the validity, would be met with the loudest wails of "racism" and everything and anything else from the progressive corner. Republicans will not want to jeopardize their chances for the White House in 2016. Impeaching Obama would be politically counterproductive.
But while Barack Obama might not be the subject of Capitol Hill hearings, the Democrats' presumptive nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton, likely will be. This seems inevitable, given that Benghazi demands continued investigation.
But back to the Reagan analogy: Ronald Reagan generally enjoyed an excellent final two years from a policy standpoint, especially in foreign policy. Could Obama do the same? No, I don't think so. Consider:
In foreign policy, Obama is plainly not a leader. I don't think he wants to be. His view of America in the world is a diminished America. He has willingly and happily diminished his own leadership role. There will be no Obama-Putin moments similar to Reagan-Gorbachev ones - quite the contrary.
Domestically, his signature policy achievement, Obamacare, will be slowed if not stopped. It has now lost all momentum and assistance from the Congress. Obama is no longer on offense. That's especially true given his pronounced inability to reach across the aisle over the past six years, an opposition he once called "hostage-takers."
"I continue to believe we are simply more than just a collection of red and blue states," Obama told the press on Tuesday, seeking a more conciliatory tone. "We are the United States."
The rhetoric is nice, but given Obama's ideology and perhaps psychology, I don't foresee him suddenly becoming the great unifier, initiating a cascade of bipartisan triumphs. I can't even imagine what those would be.
So, for Obama to implement much of anything from his agenda, what will it take? His main source of impact will not come in bipartisan achievements but in unilateral overtures. We may see him attempt to further rely on executive orders, which would be unfortunate and even more divisive. He will also hammer out a long-term liberal legacy with the courts, where he can help shape law and culture. Given the opportunity, he will seize the chance to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with another leftist in the mold (and youth) of Elena Kagan. The long-term impact on issues like religious freedom could be dismal. If Obama has made any particularly discernible "change," it is in the courts.
So, is President Barack Obama still relevant? Yes, but much less so. His own radicalism in attempting to fundamentally transform America has prompted Americans to fundamentally transform his plans.
Ecumenism at its best was recently demonstrated at the Vatican, where dozens of faith leaders worldwide assembled to remind us of the essential complementarity of men and women in life, marriage, and parenthood. It was enough to prompt a high-five between Pope Francis and evangelical pastor James Robison.
Of course, do we really need reminding that male and female are different? Absolutely, especially with the advent of same-sex marriage, which is prompting assertions that it "doesn't matter" whether two men or two women parent a household.
Ask any parent if males and females are different. My wife and I have eight children under our roof, and the boy-girl differences are dramatic.
Here's a typical Saturday morning exchange at our house: "Daddy!" my 7-year-old son yells, running toward me in camouflage hunting clothes. "I had a dream last night that I stabbed Bigfoot nine times with a spear!" Not missing a beat, his 3-year-old sister prances and dances toward me in a flowered pink dress: "Daddy, I had a dream about a ladybug!"
The 3-year-old goes by "Princess Cupcake." She's of the age where she dresses up and displays herself in front of me waiting for me to gush, "Wow, you look like a princess!" She beams. Her older sisters did the same thing. The first time I said that to her oldest sister, she calmly glowed to her mom, "He said I look like a princess."
Needless to say, the boys have never done that - not once in 20,000-plus days of combined lives.
My wife and I have nothing to do with these differences, other than providing the chromosomes.
My 7-year-old boy, long before fancying himself a Bigfoot slayer, declared himself "Wolfboy." My wife and I certainly didn't come up with that one. She will tell you that she did not give birth to a wolf boy. No, it was he alone who transmogrified himself into this half beast, half boy.
Wolfboy sauntered around the house creeping, preying. We attempted to keep these wild manifestations at, shall we say, bay - a more restrained Wolfboy. One day at the home of friends, he politely asked my wife if he could go outside to "howl," to the giggles of my friend's teenage girl.
Fortunately, the Wolfboy thing eventually cooled. One afternoon he grabbed two chopsticks for fangs, shoving them into his throat. Wolfboy had to be taken to the hospital. We've since had several full moons with no reappearances.
That brings me back to the differences in the sexes. These traits follow us into adulthood, marriage, and parenting. There are things my wife does that I just can't. She happily jumps up in the middle of the night at the slightest cry. I lay there groaning. On the flip side, she has no yearning to take the teenage boys hunting in 20-degree weather with rifles and crossbows to shoot and gut and hang and skin and butcher a deer. My boys crave that, and they're utterly mystified at their sisters' insatiable interest in the Duggar family's weddings.
In short, all of this is obvious, observable. Really, to deny it is to be warped by ideology, culture, politics, or some agenda.
That brings me back to the ecumenical gathering at the Vatican, where these gender differences in married and family life were acknowledged and celebrated.
"The biggest threat to marriage is that people have forgotten its purpose," said Pastor Rick Warren, the 28th speaker at the conference:
Children who grow up with the presence of a mother and father are more successful in life, are healthier, are stronger, are less likely to be involved in crime, are less likely to go to prison, are less likely to be involved in drug abuse, are less likely to live in poverty. If you really want to support children, we need to support two-parent families, a husband and a wife, a mom and a dad.
The bishop of Rome didn't disagree with the Saddleback Church pastor.
"Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother," said Pope Francis. Such households are best "capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity."
Of course, not all children get that ideal, but it's an ideal our culture should strive for rather than against. We were made male and female, and from birth to death and childhood to parenthood, those differences have a distinct and complementary purpose. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
It was October 19, 1984 - 30 years ago this week. A gentle, courageous, and genuinely holy priest, Jerzy Popieluszko, age 37, found himself in a ghastly spot that, though it must have horrified him, surely did not surprise him. An unholy trinity of three thugs from Communist Poland's secret police had seized and pummeled him. He was bound and gagged and stuffed into the trunk of their cream-colored Fiat 125 automobile as they roamed the countryside trying to decide where to dispatch him. This kindly priest was no less than the chaplain to the Solidarity movement, the freedom fighters who would ultimately prove fatal to Soviet Communism - and not without Popieluszko's stoic inspiration.
The ringleader this October day was Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, an agent of Poland's SB. Unlike Jerzy, who grew up devoutly religious, Piotrowski was raised in an atheist household, which, like the Communist despots who governed Poland, was an aberration in this pious Roman Catholic country. The disregard for God and morality made Piotrowski an ideal man for the grisly task ahead, which he assumed with a special, channeled viciousness.
Piotrowski's first beating of the priest that evening was so severe that it should have killed him. Jerzy was a small man afflicted with Addison's disease. He previously had been hospitalized for other infirmities, including (understandably) stress and anxiety. But somehow, the priest was managing to survive as he fought for his life in the cold, dark trunk of the Fiat. In fact, somehow he unloosened the ropes that knotted him and extricated himself from the car. He began to run, shouting to anyone who could hear, "Help! Save my life!"
He was run down by Piotrowski, a dedicated disciple of what a Polish admirer of Jerzy, Pope John Paul II, would dub the Culture of Death. "I caught up with him and hit him on the head several times with the stick," Piotrowski later confessed.
I hit him near or on the head. He fell limp again. I think he must have been unconscious. And then I became - never mind, it doesn't matter.
It did matter. It certainly mattered to the helpless priest. What Piotrowski became was something altogether worse. He seemed overtaken by another force. As recorded by authors Roger Boyes and John Moody in their superb book, Messenger of the Truth, which is now a gripping documentary, Piotrowski's accomplices thought their comrade had gone mad, "so wild were the blows." It was like a public flogging. Jerzy's pounding was so relentless that it wouldn't be misplaced to think of Christ's scourging at the pillar. This young man in persona Christi, not much older than Jesus Christ at his death agony, was being brutally tortured. It was a kind of crucifixion: the kind at which Communists uniquely excelled.
One is tempted to say that Piotrowski beat the hell out of Father Jerzy, but such would be inappropriate and inaccurate for such a man of faith. Really, the hell was coming out of the beater, in all its demonic force and fury.
After another round of thrashing, Piotrowski and his two fellow tormentors ramped up the treatment. They grabbed a roll of thick adhesive tape and ran it around the priest's mouth, nose, and head, tossing him once again in the vehicle, like a hunk of garbage on its way to the heap.
Though he could barely breathe or move, Father Jerzy somehow again pried open the trunk as the car continued to its destination. This set Piotrowski into a rage. He stopped the vehicle, got out, looked sternly at the priest, and told him that if he made even one more sound, he would strangle him with his bare hands and shoot him. Boyes and Moody report what happened next:
He [Piotrowski] replaced the gun and lifted [his] club. It came down on the priest's nose, but instead of the sound of cartilage breaking, there was a plop, like a stick hitting the surface of a puddle.
The perpetrators didn't realize it quite yet, but it was the final, deadly blow. They had no doubt the next time they saw Father Jerzy.
The killers drove to a spot at the Vistula River. They tied two heavy bags of stones, each weighing nearly 25 pounds, to the priest's ankles. They lifted him in a vertical position above the water and then quietly let him go. He sunk into the blackness below them. It was 10 minutes before midnight, October 19, 1984. "Popieluszko is dead," announced Lieutenant Leszek Pekala to his collaborators in this revolting, sad crime. The third helper, Lieutenant Waldemar Chmielewski, solemnly and simply affirmed, "That's right."
They drove away, downing a bottle of vodka to try to numb what they had done. Pekala thought to himself as he drank, "Now we are murderers."
Indeed they were. Of course, so was the system they represented. It and its handmaidens had consumed countless Jerzy Popieluszkos and tens of millions of others whose names tragically will never be remembered on the anniversary of their deaths.
This priest, however, was remembered, by the millions. When he didn't show for 7:00 a.m. Mass the next morning, his parishioners were immediately alarmed. This wasn't like the loyal and punctual man of the cloth. A search for his whereabouts quickly commenced. It would take some time, but the truth eventually prevailed, as it did against Communism generally. Among those sickened by the news was a Polish priest in the Vatican, Karol Wojytla - Pope John Paul II. The shocked pontiff could relate: he had experienced many fellow Poles and priests killed by totalitarianism. He himself was a survivor. The Communists had wanted him dead as well; they tried to assassinate him three years earlier.
And like John Paul II, Jerzy Popieluszko's torment at the hands of devils was not in vain. Millions of Poles poured out of their homes and into churches to pay him homage, as they had for their native son, Karol Wojtyla, back in June 1979 - a historic, life-changing visit that a young Jerzy helped coordinate. Ironically, Jerzy had been charged with working between the Vatican and Polish Ministry of Health to arrange emergency safety measures during that trip. Then, too, he had the mission of protecting people from harm - harm by Communism.
Ultimately, Jerzy Popieluszko's struggle, like that of his pope, was not in vain. As Tertullian once put it, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. The Communists could not extinguish the Poles' desire for the Church, for God, and for freedom. It would take another five years after his death, but the saintly priest's demise had further fueled the flames for the torch of freedom and the corresponding crash and burn of Communism.
In retrospect, Jerzy's murder in 1984 marked the mid-point between two cataclysmic events that put nails in the coffin of Communism: John Paul II's June 1979 visit to Poland, and the crucial free elections held in Poland in June 1989. Those elections, more than anything else, signaled the coming collapse of Communism. Mikhail Gorbachev later said that when those elections were held in Poland, he knew it was all over. It was no coincidence that the Berlin Wall fell five months later.
Father Jerzy Popieluszko was one of many martyrs at the hands of atheistic Communism. But his cause was an especially significant one. His service and death were not in vain.
I've said it before, and I'm hardly alone. Many have observed it. Liberals revere tolerance. They practically worship it. It's like a religion to them. Well, now comes a study that supports the point.
A new survey by Pew Research finds that when it comes to teaching children, liberals place a far higher priority on teaching "tolerance" than teaching religion. That liberals do this in schools is abundantly clear, but they apparently do it in their homes as well.
In this, Pew finds, liberals are the opposite of conservatives. "The starkest ideological differences [between liberals and conservatives] are over the importance of teaching religious faith," reports Pew.
Among those who have consistently conservative attitudes across a range of political values, 81 percent think it is especially important for children to be taught religious faith. . . . Among those with consistently liberal views, just 26 percent rate the teaching of religious faith as especially important, and only 11 percent regard it as among the most important child-rearing qualities.
Moreover, finds the survey, a staggering 88 percent of "consistently liberal" Americans list tolerance as their most important value in teaching their children.
While this data is significant, it's also limited. It depends first and foremost on how one defines "tolerance," and especially how liberals professing tolerance define tolerance.
I believe, in general, that liberals are not tolerant. Liberals tolerate only what they what want to tolerate. They tolerate things they agree with - which, of course, isn't tolerance. Tolerance is about accepting the often-difficult differences between you and someone you strongly disagree with, and respecting that person's right to an opposing point of view. Obviously, that's not liberalism. This could be demonstrated multiple ways, but consider two salient examples pervasive in daily headlines: liberals' behavior regarding same-sex marriage and abortion.
Liberals are relentless in denouncing, demonizing, boycotting, picketing, prosecuting, suing, fining, and even threatening to jail people who disagree with them on same-sex marriage. If your family owns a barn in New York (or elsewhere) and declines to rent it to a gay couple for a wedding ceremony, because such an arrangement violates your religious beliefs and freedom, liberals will fine you $13,000. If you're Elaine Photography in New Mexico and beg not to photograph a same-sex wedding, liberals will sue you. If you are the Kleins in Oregon and plead not to make a cake for a same-sex ceremony, you will be picketed, hauled before state commissions, and have your livelihood ruined by liberals. If you are Jack Phillips, a baker in Colorado, or a florist in any number of states, who likewise prefers not to service same-sex events, you will be threatened with imprisonment. If you are the owner of Chick-fil-A or other businesses, and you dare admit that you're against redefining marriage because you believe your God says you can't, liberals literally will assert at your death that Jesus is going to send you to hell. I could go on and on with such examples: Mozilla, Craig James, the owner of Barilla pasta, the governor of Arizona, etc., etc., etc.
Liberals refuse to tolerate those who refuse to redefine marriage.
As for abortion, liberals not only refuse to respect your opposition; they insist you pay for their abortions. From Hobby Lobby to the Little Sisters of the Poor, they're making you pay. If you don't, you will be fined mightily.
I could go on and on with other examples from other issues. Look at how liberals run the universities, the training grounds for their missionaries of diversity. The faculty at these colleges are 80-90 percent liberal, and conservatives are not only marginalized but often barred from speaking on campus or angrily protested by these self-professing champions of free speech and open-mindedness.
All of this tells us much about liberals, but it especially reveals the phoniness of their claims to "tolerance."
In truth, what liberals really practice is a selective "tolerance." And when that selective tolerance doesn't extend to you and your viewpoint, they tell you that you're against tolerance, that you're against diversity, and that you "hate."
All of which brings me back to the Pew survey. I think it reveals something even deeper. Many liberals have left religion because it doesn't accord to their definition of what religion (or God) should be. They've jettisoned Christianity because certain aspects don't accord to their worldview. Their Christianity is, at best, a kind of cafeteria Christianity, where they pick and choose the elements they like and discard those they don't. It's a selective Christianity.
Liberals are instead embracing the faith of tolerance. But here, too, it's a selective faith.
And most ironic, this selective tolerance often excludes the religious - or at least the religious that liberals disagree with.
Two years ago, I wrote about a scandalous presidential reality. I'd say I'm shocked to report that the scandal continues, but I'm not. And that's even more scandalous.
In October 2012, I commented on the revelation that President Obama had been absent from the vast majority of his daily intelligence briefings. According to a then-study by the Government Accountability Institute, Obama failed to attend a single Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) in the week leading up to the recent anniversary of 9/11, and despite the chaos that erupted in the Arab world, most notably in Libya. The mere fact that we were approaching a 9/11 anniversary was an essential enough reason to attend all the briefings. And yet, President Obama attended none. That's right, not one.
Worse, this was nothing new. Obama attended only 43.8 percent of his Daily Briefs in the first 1,225 days of his administration. For the year 2012, he attended a little over a third.
There was no excuse for this. It's unacceptable for a president, especially one criticized for spending so much time vacationing and campaigning.
By comparison, President George W. Bush not only didn't miss the PDB but actually expanded it to six meetings per week. Or consider President Ronald Reagan, who, ironically, liberals portrayed as a detached, lazy, unengaged, uninformed idiot. In my 2012 piece, I quoted two advisers who briefed Reagan. One of them was Bill Clark, Reagan's right-hand man at the National Security Council. As Clark's biographer, he told me often how Reagan craved that regular morning update. Reagan ate up these briefings. He devoured the written report and then asked probing questions of his advisers during the live briefing that followed. Reagan used the briefings precisely as presidents should.
That brings me back to Barack Obama.
When this was reported in October 2012, it was embarrassing to President Obama and potentially damaging politically, with the presidential election only a month away and Mitt Romney moving ahead in the polls. One would think that, by now, this would have been corrected by Obama, not only for political reasons, but (more important) national-security concerns. This president has an ongoing PR problem with ill-advised statements about not having strategies and dashing for the golf course and fundraisers immediately after beheadings and aircraft downings.
But alas, we now learn that this problem continues to fester: The Government Accountability Institute is back with a new report revealing that President Obama has missed over half of his briefings in his second term, obviously learning little (literally) since the first term.
The man has skipped hundreds of daily briefings.
My colleague Wynton Hall notes that these findings come on the heels of Obama's "60 Minutes" comments on Sunday, where he seemed to blame the surge of ISIS and events in Syria on his intelligence chief James Clapper.
I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria. . . .
Obama averred, coolly passing the buck. (For the record, this was something that a Ronald Reagan would never have done to his CIA director, Bill Casey, and nor would George W. Bush.)
The defense and intelligence community was not pleased with Obama's statement. Wynton Hall quoted the liberal Daily Beast, which reported that Pentagon officials were "flabbergasted" by Obama's passing the blame. "Either the president doesn't read the intelligence he's getting or he's bulls---ing," said one angry official.
Hall added:
. . . others in the intelligence community similarly blasted Obama and said he's shown longstanding disinterest in receiving live, in-person PDBs that allow the Commander-in-Chief the chance for critical follow-up, feedback, questions, and the challenging of flawed intelligence assumptions.
No question about that. The facts speak for themselves. And the president's resultant lack of facts has evidently and obviously hurt our foreign policy.
But here's a troubling question: Do President Obama's supporters even care? They'll make ludicrous excuses they would never make for a Republican president. "No big deal," they'll shrug; "He's fine."
Indeed, in 2011, two of Obama's top spokesmen, Jay Carney and Tommy Vietor, did just that, insisting that "the president gets the information he needs." Sorry, but there's no substitute for the give-and-take that comes with daily briefings by advisers and experts. Obama doesn't have ESP-like, Solomon-esque powers; he cannot place briefing papers aside his extraordinary brain and divine all contents and any questions that might have been hashed out during briefings.
And meanwhile, the world burns.
Yes, the world is on fire. And as it is, we're stuck with this dismal White House leadership for another two years. I'm not asking for a perfect president, but I'd at least like a president who attends his security briefings. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
In 2010, I wrote a piece titled, "Death's Progress," which was widely published. What I laid out needs to be reiterated and updated. Unfortunately, it will need to be regularly reiterated and updated in the years ahead.
Right now, in the aftermath of the Hobby Lobby decision and Obama HHS mandate, we're witnessing another crucial evolutionary stage in the progressive movement's ever-changing advance of abortion. In 2010, I underscored the core problem with progressivism, particularly when applied to issues of unborn human life, where the problem becomes a catastrophe. Bear with me as I excerpt my original words:
One of the only things we really know about progressives, and that they know about themselves and their ideology, is that they favor constant "change," "reform," an ever-shifting, ongoing "evolution," or, yes, progression. And therein is an inherent, significant difficulty: Progressivism offers no clear, definable end. . . .
For the rest of us, this ambiguity is troubling bordering on maddening, as we can't, by the very nature of progressivism, get an answer from progressives as to where, exactly, they intend to stop. . . . [But] here's where the confusion has the potential to become downright destructive: Think about the consequences of their philosophy when applied to the very life and culture of America:
Take the example of Planned Parenthood. It took off in the 1920s, initially as the American Birth Control League. At first, Margaret Sanger and friends wanted birth control. They also advocated eugenics. Sanger was a racial eugenicist. She had hideous views, not only toward the poor ("human weeds," she called them), to the mentally slow ("imbeciles" and "morons"), but, among others, to black Americans. Progressives today dare not raise the grim specter of Sanger's "Negro Project" or infamous 1926 speech to a KKK rally.
But what about abortion? . . . Planned Parenthood's progressives weren't there yet; they had to warm up to that.
It will shock pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike to hear this, but Margaret Sanger initially denounced abortion. "It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn," wrote Sanger in the January 27, 1932 edition of The Nation, "[S]ome ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not."
Nonetheless, for these progressives, what began as birth control and eugenics - aimed at halting life at conception - needed only a few decades to snuff out life after conception.
As with much of what progressives do, where they started wasn't enough. And, naturally, once legalized abortion came along, it, too, was not enough. Today, progressives tell us abortion should be funded by taxpayers. . . .
Still, that, likewise, will not be enough. What might be next in the progression? . . .
It serves us all - including unborn future generations - to want answers to some hard questions as far as ultimate objectives are concerned. I sincerely beg progressives for some contours, a vague estimate: Could you please, this time around - where human life is concerned - establish some boundaries, set an end-goal or two, offer an inkling of predictability, a modicum of expectation, some flicker of a suggestion as to where you want to take us?
Unfortunately, they can't, as such is the crux of their ever-changing philosophy.
I wrote that four years ago. In light of progressives' genuinely scary reaction to the Hobby Lobby decision, it's time to update.
We've arrived at another new stage in the progressive march. Just 20 years ago, it was unthinkable that an overwhelming consensus of progressives/liberals would compel everyone, including conscientious objectors invoking their sacred First Amendment religious freedoms, to forcibly pay for others' contraception, sterilization services, and drugs that induce abortions. My "pro-choice" liberal friends assured me they'd never be so crude as to ask me to pay for their abortions. That would be completely over the line. And to pay for their contraception, too? "No way!" they scoffed. Please, that would be beyond ridiculous. They merely wanted me "out of their bedroom" to allow them their "safe, legal, and rare" abortions.
To repeat: They would never ask me to pay for their abortions and contraception. It was unimaginable. They were liberals, after all. They believed in freedom and tolerance. They would never be so "fascistic."
Well, here we are, 2014, and the unfathomable is now the unwavering position of liberals/progressives.
How did they change so much so fast? The short answer is that they had to progress, to evolve to this current understanding that they consider more enlightened. As for those of us who haven't changed, who once shared the same position as these liberals/progressives, we are now deemed the extremists, the intransigents. We're said to favor a "war on women." In pleading with liberals/progressives not to force us to violate our sacred beliefs on human life by subsidizing their abortions, we're told that we're "imposing" our religious beliefs, and also "denying" women the contraceptives they remain fully free to purchase with their own money.
To say this is frustrating is insufficient. Liberals already had everything they demanded on abortion. And yet, that's not enough; it's never enough. Today's leftists want you to be party to their abortions, to enlist you in their behavior, even if you and your faith consider the behavior gravely sinful. If you beg not to do so, they will call you nasty names and accuse you of hatred.
I need not here detail the astonishing examples of liberals/progressives demonizing those who disagree with them on this. I could expend thousands of words quoting their incensed reactions to the Hobby Lobby case: Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and those screaming that Hobby Lobby stores be vandalized and even burnt to the ground. (They're equally vitriolic toward those who disagree with them on same-sex marriage.) Hillary Clinton compared Hobby Lobby's position to brutally misogynistic Muslim regimes. Senate Democrats went so far as to sponsor legislation to "overturn" the Hobby Lobby decision.
The National Organization for Women devised a list of the "Dirty 100" who oppose Obama's HHS mandate. Included are the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Alas, this is where progressives have progressed on unborn life. It's the next stage. It is, yet again, a new stage that furthers death. It uses force not only against the victims, the unborn, but against those pleading not to be party to the victims' destruction.
Again, all that we really know about progressives, and that they know about themselves, is that they're always changing. Because of that, neither we nor they can tell us where they will stand on issues X and Y in 20 years. We can't know because they don't know. They'll tell us when they get there.
But we do know this much: What's seemingly inconceivable to all of us right now - including to progressives themselves - may become the dogmatic position of progressives in a generation. The once-inconceivable absurdities become reality, and when they do, the progressive shrugs and then shouts - at you. If you suggest that a certain impossible position might become progressives' position in, say, the year 2034, they will scoff, insisting they could never hold such an intolerable position. Alas, when they arrive at that position in 2034, they'll tell you that you are the crazy one; more than that, you are the vile extremist for disagreeing with their newfound position. And they will attempt to force your compliance under the coercive power of the state.
When it comes to these vital matters of literal life and death, the ongoing progressive evolution is proving to be downright frightening. Where will progressives be 20 years from now? Where will death's progress advance next? Stay tuned. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
Unless you've been sleeping under a rock, you've noticed the growing clash between religious freedom and issues like same-sex marriage and forced funding of abortion. Last week, the Supreme Court heard a landmark case on whether the federal government can compel a business to fund abortion drugs in defiance of the religious beliefs of the business owner. It's merely one such case amid a flurry of lawsuits that even includes the Little Sisters of the Poor. Or, consider these situations involving gay marriage:
In Oregon, a couple that owns a bakery, the Kleins, are being sued and called before the state for not making a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. The Kleins note that being forced to make such a cake against their will would violate their Christian beliefs and freedom of conscience.
In Colorado, another bakery owner, Jack Phillips, awaits a possible jail sentence for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple.
In Washington State, a florist is being prosecuted by the state's attorney general for declining to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.
In Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a Methodist camp meeting association lost its tax-exempt status for declining its wedding pavilion to two lesbians for a same-sex ceremony.
In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court ruled against the owners of Elane Photography, judging that they violated the state's Human Rights Act by refusing to take pictures for a same-sex ceremony. The ACLU opposed Elane Photography, as did one of the justices, who recognized that the ruling violated Elane's religious freedom but argued that such is the price of "citizenship" in America today.
In Massachusetts and Illinois, Catholic Charities, one of the oldest and most established private adoption agencies in America, has been forced to cease services because it will not provide adoptive children to gay couples.
And then there's any number of figures demonized, boycotted, picketed, pressured, or fired for expressing their opposition to gay marriage: the president of Chick-fil-A, the owner of Barilla pasta, Craig James of Fox Sports, or Arizona's governor.
These are merely a few of many examples. All involve religious believers invoking their sacred First Amendment rights, only to have those rights rejected by those describing themselves as "liberal" and professing "diversity" and "tolerance." In truth, you are not free to disagree with liberals on this issue. They won't let you. They will compel you. They will see you in court, in bankruptcy, maybe even in jail.
Liberals tolerate only what they agree with.
But what's really going on here? What's the bigger picture? Well, these actions of liberals/progressives aren't a surprise when you delve deeper into the logic of their ideology. Consider:
Liberals/progressives have a hierarchy of rights. They don't look at competing rights in a pluralist system in the typical way that we've long been accustomed to in America. For instance, Americans typically - through the political and judicial process - have carefully sought to balance competing rights: property rights, civil rights, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, speech, press, federal rights, state rights, the right to life, and so forth. Picture all of these rights laid out in a line, with each prudently considered among the others, and with respect to the others.
Unfortunately, that is not how liberals/progressives operate. They act according to a hierarchy of rights that - consistent with progressivism - is always progressing, or changing, or evolving. Right now, for liberals/progressives, sitting atop the totem pole in this hierarchy are so-called "marriage rights" and "abortion rights." In the past, they called these things not rights but "gay marriage" or "freedom of choice." Quite shrewdly, however, they've framed these "freedoms" as "rights," along the lines of "civil rights." Equally shrewd, they push them forward under the mantra of "tolerance." It's a brilliant move that's working extremely effectively with millions of Americans.
But here's the main point: for today's liberals/progressives, the likes of "marriage rights" and "abortion rights" rise superior to other rights, certainly above religious rights and property rights. We see this in the gay marriage examples listed above. It also applies to the Obama HHS mandate requiring religious believers to fund abortion drugs. In all these cases, there's one commonality: liberals/progressives disregard the religious rights and property rights that they are steamrolling in the name of gay marriage and abortion. Religious rights and property rights are subjugated to a kind of liberal/progressive gulag. They are deemed bottom-of-the-barrel, and in no way nearly as important or worthy of consideration.
Again, the startling irony is that these same people fancy themselves champions of tolerance, diversity, and "equal rights." That has never been accurate, and they are proving it now with special uncompromising rigidity. They are pursuing what they've always pursued: selective tolerance, selective diversity, and selective equal rights. Religious rights are not among their select.
A quotation that sums up this thinking comes from gay activist, law professor, and EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum. When asked about the conflict between gay rights and religious rights, Feldblum said, "I'm having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win."
That's very clear. An attorney colleague of mine says of Feldblum: "Supposedly a Constitutional Law scholar, she holds that view despite the fact that religious freedom is actually in the Constitution!"
Yes, but to liberals/progressives it doesn't matter. They have a hierarchy of rights, one that's always changing. And right now, religious rights are their bottom-dwellers. For religious believers who disagree with them, too bad. They'll see them in court.
February is the month that we recognize our presidents. It has also become the month that Republicans remember Ronald Reagan. Reagan's birthday is February 6, the forerunner to Lincoln's birthday (February 12), Washington's birthday (February 22), and President's Day (February 17). Throughout the nation, county and statewide Republican groups have been changing their longtime annual Lincoln Day dinners into Reagan Day dinners. On February 25, we at the Center for Vision & Values will host our superb Ronald Reagan Lecture.
Thus, this is also a time when conservatives reach back for various nuggets of wisdom from the Gipper that are badly needed as our current president fundamentally transforms the nation. Among those nuggets, one that you likely will not hear is a gem of a Reagan speech delivered in Dallas 30 years ago. It offers a desperately needed message on religious tolerance - the subject of our April Center for Vision & Values conference.
Today's liberals/progressives, who incessantly preach diversity and tolerance, have been unrelenting in their current campaign of religious intolerance. They mandate that everyone, including religious believers, pay for contraception and abortion drugs; those who disagree are framed as favoring a "war on women." They vigorously demonize and sue anyone who disagrees with them on gay marriage.
It's a good time for a lesson on genuine religious freedom. So, here it goes - a poignant speech and healthy reminder of religious tolerance that not even Reagan aficionados remember.
On August 23, 1984, Reagan was in Dallas to address an ecumenical prayer breakfast. He spoke at 9:30 a.m. in the Reunion Arena. He was introduced by Martha Weisend, the co-chair of the Texas Reagan-Bush campaign. A choir had just regaled the crowd. Reagan called the performance "magnificent."
The president began by saying that he was speaking not as a theologian or scholar but as someone who had "lived a little" as an American and had been active in the political life of the nation for about four decades. During that time, Reagan had experienced much. He had been a self-described "hemophiliac liberal" (a bleeding-heart liberal), a Democrat, an FDR Democrat, a Harry Truman Democrat, a progressive Democrat, a Democrat for Eisenhower, a Democrat for Nixon (1960), and finally a conservative Democrat, a Republican, and a conservative Republican. "I speak," he told the crowd, "I think I can say, as one who has seen much, who has loved his country, and who's seen it change in many ways."
He himself had changed in many ways, but not one way: He had always believed
. . . that faith and religion play a critical role in the political life of our nation - and always has - and that the church - and by that I mean all churches, all denominations - has had a strong influence on the state. And this has worked to our benefit as a nation.
Reagan then followed with a brief history lesson on religion and the republic:
Those who created our country - the Founding Fathers and Mothers - understood that there is a divine order which transcends the human order. They saw the state, in fact, as a form of moral order and felt that the bedrock of moral order is religion.
The Mayflower Compact began with the words, "In the name of God, amen." The Declaration of Independence appeals to "Nature's God" and the "Creator" and "the Supreme Judge of the world." Congress was given a chaplain, and the oaths of office are oaths before God.
James Madison in the Federalist Papers admitted that in the creation of our Republic he perceived the hand of the Almighty. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, warned that we must never forget the God from whom our blessings flowed.
George Washington referred to religion's profound and unsurpassed place in the heart of our nation quite directly in his Farewell Address in 1796. Seven years earlier, France had erected a government that was intended to be purely secular. This new government would be grounded on reason rather than the law of God. By 1796 the French Revolution had known the Reign of Terror.
And Washington voiced reservations about the idea that there could be a wise policy without a firm moral and religious foundation. He said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
That Washington quote was one of Reagan's favorites, as was the image of America's first president (while he was still a military general) kneeling to pray in the snow of Valley Forge, which Reagan called the "most sublime image" in American history. Why? Because it showed that from the outset this nation's leaders humbled themselves and looked beyond themselves - to God - for guidance in the goodness of their actions. "I believe that George Washington knew the City of Man cannot survive without the City of God," Reagan told his audience in Dallas, "that the Visible City will perish without the Invisible City."
Reagan also invoked his other favorite prayer line from a president. He loved the line in which Lincoln said that he was often driven to his knees by the "overwhelming conviction" that he had "nowhere else to go."
How fitting that this month of February marks these three presidential birthdays: Lincoln, Washington, and Reagan. The three were linked not just in birthdays but in prayer.
Reagan continued:
Religion played not only a strong role in our national life; it played a positive role. The abolitionist movement was at heart a moral and religious movement; so was the modern civil rights struggle. And throughout this time, the state was tolerant of religious belief, expression, and practice. Society, too, was tolerant.
Here, Reagan had arrived at the religious tolerance portion of his remarks. He said that this tolerance had begun to slip in the 1960s, when "great steps" were taken by those seeking to secularize the nation and remove religion from its "honored place." He gave examples, beginning with the removal of prayer in schools and words like "Under God" from the pledge of allegiance. Reagan believed that the simple acknowledgement of God in the pledge taught children that their inalienable rights come not from government but from God. If they come from government - from men - then government can take them anyway. If they come from God, however, government cannot dare taken them away.
As I read Reagan's words now, I'm floored by the thought that the ACLU, which purports to champion civil liberties, would be leading some of these lawsuits suing Christian bakers and wedding photographers who invoke their sacred religious freedom in the First Amendment of the Constitution. These people of faith, citing their faith, beg not to be compelled to make a cake for or photograph a same-sex ceremony. The liberals tell them they must, by force of their trembling hands, or they will be forced out of business.
Ronald Reagan would not be shocked. He understood liberals. He had been one himself. He knew their claims of open-mindedness were self-serving. He saw how extreme the left could become when equipped with power. Such realizations drove him out of the increasingly left-drifting Democratic Party.
Along those lines, Reagan told the crowd in Dallas:
And the frustrating thing for the great majority of Americans who support and understand the special importance of religion in the national life - the frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance, freedom, and open-mindedness. Question: Isn't the real truth that they are intolerant of religion? They refuse to tolerate its importance in our lives. . . . So, I submit to you that those who claim to be fighting for tolerance on this issue may not be tolerant at all.
Reagan sensed that religion's "special place" in the American polity was already disappearing, and he knew what a tremendous loss that would be.
There are, these days, many questions on which religious leaders are obliged to offer their moral and theological guidance, and such guidance is a good and necessary thing. . . .To know how a church and its members feel on a public issue expands the parameters of debate. It does not narrow the debate; it expands it.
Again harkening back to George Washington's understanding, Reagan said:
The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
Again, tolerance. Reagan kept returning to the need for religious tolerance. And here, nearing his closing, he expressed some powerful lines that every self-proclaiming liberal/progressive in America needs to read and heed:
A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state. If you practice a religion, whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or guided by some other faith, then your private life will be influenced by a sense of moral obligation, and so, too, will your public life. One affects the other. . . . We establish no religion in this country, nor will we ever. We command no worship. We mandate no belief. But we poison our society when we remove its theological underpinnings. We court corruption when we leave it bereft of belief. All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief, to apply moral teaching to public questions.
Note the words "decent," "command," "mandate," "poison," "corruption," "free." The refusal by liberals/progressives to tolerate the religious beliefs of Americans who disagree with them on matters from marriage to abortion poisons and corrupts discourse and disagreement in this nation.
Reagan reiterated along those lines:
I submit to you that the tolerant society is open to and encouraging of all religions. And this does not weaken us; it strengthens us, it makes us strong. You know, if we look back through history to all those great civilizations, those great nations that rose up to even world dominance and then deteriorated, declined, and fell, we find they all had one thing in common. One of the significant forerunners of their fall was their turning away from their God or gods. Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society.
This is also, said Reagan, a danger to a word that progressives invoke incessantly: democracy. Reagan understood that as well:
And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.
With that, Reagan concluded:
I thank you, thank you for inviting us here today. Thank you for your kindness and your patience. May God keep you, and may we, all of us, keep God.
That was Ronald Reagan in Dallas 30 years ago. He would be horrified at what liberals are doing today, though not surprised.
The coarsening that America is undergoing in this current assault on our most basic First Amendment religious freedoms is undermining the Shining City on a Hill that Ronald Reagan cherished. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from The American Spectator. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
More than any other figure, David Axelrod made Barack Obama president. He was the brain behind the winning message, right down to the words "Hope and Change." The New York Times dubbed him "Obama's Narrator." He was the architect and author. The Obama persona was in large part Ax's carving.
As such, David Axelrod is a significant figure worth knowing and understanding. Two years ago, in a feature for The American Spectator on Axelrod ("David Axelrod, Lefty Lumberjack," March 2012), I endeavored to uncover his roots. Among my findings, Axelrod's Chicago mentors - the Canter family - were not only old hard-line pro-Soviet Communists, but, in an amazing twist, they knew and worked with Frank Marshall Davis, who would meet and mentor Obama in Hawaii in the 1970s. The senior Canter was brought to Moscow during the height of the Stalin period to work as an official translator of Lenin's writings.
But as I dug deeper into Axelrod's roots, one area proved exasperatingly elusive. I tried to discern his mother's politics, given that she seemed more politically involved than his father. Eventually I was able to report in this publication what a few others already knew, namely that the mother had worked for an extremely political newspaper, the left-leaning New York daily, PM.
The newspaper was a battleground between non-communist liberals and progressives and closet Communists who masqueraded as liberals and progressives, with the latter using the former as dupes to advance the Soviet line. Communists on staff, who concealed their associations, pushed for a post-war U.S. alliance with "Uncle Joe"; the liberals resisted. These tensions ripped at PM's seams. It was often hard to know which writer stood where. The self-proclaimed liberals/progressives ranged from I. F. Stone to the famed Arthur Miller, a small-c communist who considered joining the party.
As for Stone, later hailed by liberals as the "conscience of investigative journalism," he appears to have been a paid Soviet agent. The careful historians John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev concluded: "To put it plainly, from 1936 to 1939 I. F. Stone was a Soviet spy." KGB general Oleg Kalugin stated that Stone "was a KGB agent since 1938. His code name was 'Blin.'" Kalugin said that when he "resumed relations" with Stone in 1966, "it was on Moscow's instructions." In The Venona Secrets, the late Herb Romerstein reported: "it is clear from the evidence that Stone was indeed a Soviet agent."
To his credit, Stone reportedly later rejected Communism and became a non-communist leftist of some sort. That said, PM was founded in 1940. Thus, if the above dates on Stone are accurate, then Stone was working for the Kremlin immediately prior to PM, and possibly (we would suspect) retained certain sympathies.
Which brings us back to David Axelrod's mother. Where did Myril Axelrod stand in these battles? The answer, unfortunately, has been unclear. As I noted two years ago, nearly every profile of David Axelrod relates that his mother was a journalist at PM. A few state that she covered "education." I sent a researcher to a library with every old copy of PM, but he could not find a single article with Myril's byline. The question remained: Was Myril one of the closet Communists supporting Henry Wallace and his pro-Stalin Progressive Party, or was she on Harry Truman's side in opposing Stalin? Such answers would tell us something worth knowing about the home in which David Axelrod, who shaped the current leader of the free world, was himself shaped. I've written that Barack Obama is arguably our first Red Diaper Baby president, given his political upbringing. Had Axelrod been a Red Diaper Baby, too? All that I could vaguely say is that Myril was somewhere on the left.
After the publication of the article, I continued to periodically revisit the puzzling absence of information. Even nailing down Myril Axelrod's maiden name and date of birth was an inexplicable and seemingly unnecessary mess. The information published by major newspapers was contradictory. I couldn't find out where and when she was born. I couldn't pinpoint the names of her parents. I looked through old Senate and House committee reports for any "Myril Bennett Axelrod" or similarly related "Bennett" in the New York area who was involved in left-wing activities in the 1940s and 1950s. Yet I came up empty-handed again and again.
In the course of a conversation on David Axelrod about six months ago, I raised the riddle with another researcher (who prefers to remain anonymous). She had experience searching ancestries, but like me she was surprised to find absolutely nothing - nada, zilch, zero. I said to my fellow researcher: "Apparently, it will take Myril's death for us to learn these details. We won't find them until she dies."
Well, a few weeks ago, Myril Axelrod died at age ninety-three. On that, I sincerely express my condolences to her son, despite our political differences. Besides, if Myril was an anti-communist liberal, the type I've always admired, I'd have great respect for her.
A few outlets published small obituaries, which again told us virtually nothing. But at long last, on the funeral home's website, some new information miraculously materialized.
Myril was born on April 4, 1920 in Weehawken, New Jersey. To my great surprise - and this in itself solves one major riddle - she was not born Myril Bennett, but instead Myril Jessica Davidson. I had searched everywhere for Bennetts, not Davidsons. Where did the name Bennett come from?
According to the obituary, after Myril's first husband (David's father) tragically committed suicide, she remarried a marketing executive named Abner Bennett (who died in 1986). This I had not known. And then another long-awaited tidbit: her parents' names, Louis and Gertrude Davidson. I cannot begin to convey how incredibly elusive that simple fact had been. The father had reportedly fled Russian pogroms as a teen and became a dentist in Hoboken, New Jersey. The mother, also a child of immigrants, became a teacher. Myril had two siblings, one of them named Bill, a writer who reportedly entered the NYU journalism program.
With this information finally in hand, I checked the three best sources on Communist/leftist activity from the relevant era. One of them is the prodigious 2,100-page "Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States," known among insiders as "Appendix IX." It was produced in 1944 by the Democratic Congress under FDR's attorney general. I also checked part five of the July 1953 congressional report "Investigation of Communist Activities in the New York City Area." Lastly, I looked at the index of the huge 1970 compilation done by the House Committee on Internal Security, likewise run by Democrats. I did not find Myril listed anywhere, nor Gertrude. I did find references to Louis Davidson and also a "William" or "W" Davidson, but I can't say for certain if these men were Myril's father and brother, respectively. There is not adequate additional information.
And what about her work at PM? Here, the funeral-home obituary provided a stunner:
After [World War II], Mrs. Axelrod reentered journalism on the staff of PM, the liberal-leaning, advertising-free daily financed by Marshall Field III. Starting as an assistant, she worked as a "leg man" for Albert Deutsch, the journalist and social historian, on PM's science and welfare coverage. Mrs. Axelrod also helped I. F. Stone prepare his work "Underground to Palestine," a landmark account of the efforts of Jewish "displaced persons" in Europe to reach what was then British Mandatory Palestine after World War II. Mr. Stone's book began as a series in PM.
A book on post-war Displaced Persons (DPs) might not be suspected as a pro-Soviet work - unless you know the history. In fact, Stalin and Molotov tried to turn the DP issue into a major propaganda ploy, as did their comrades throughout the Daily Worker, Communist Party USA, and the international Communist movement. What the Communists did with the DP issue was utterly egregious. It was shameful, disgusting, evil, and typical. I have not read Stone's book, but it's worth tracking down to ascertain precisely where it stood vis--vis Moscow.
Note, too, the obituary informs us that Myril worked for Albert Deutsch, who cursory research suggests was a labor leftist working for the longshoremen's union. That union, incidentally, was one of the most manipulated by Communists. It helped bring Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, from Chicago to Hawaii in 1949. Deutsch apparently won the Heywood Broun award, named for the celebrated socialist reporter.
In addition, the obituary states that at PM, Myril
. . . rose to City Desk reporter, writing about labor, law enforcement, and breaking news, with a stint covering education. After PM folded in 1948, she stayed on with its successor, the New York Star, before spending most of the 1950s freelancing pieces for national magazines.
This suggests a greater role at PM than many of us suspected. Again, what did she write while there? And under what byline (I imagine now that I should have looked under "Myril Davidson")?
For that matter, what did she write for the left-wing New York Star? It lasted about as long as Frank Marshall Davis's Communist Party-line Chicago Star, which was bannered by a bright red star. Davis, who was founding editor-in-chief of the Chicago Star, folded up the publication to head to Hawaii for his political work there. He folded up almost the same time that the New York Star ceased operations. I have no idea what Myril wrote for the Star.
For the sake of history, it would certainly be useful to answer these questions. Americans today are shockingly ignorant of the dangers of Communism and what the far left has wrought, as the political success of well-known, one-time Communist Bill de Blasio, now New York's mayor, proves.
But maybe others can take up the task. I'm in no rush. This stuff torments me. Besides, what's done is done. David Axelrod elected his president.
Even now, I still can't definitely say much about where Myril Axelrod Bennett stood politically, other than that she was somewhere on the left. But the mystery is at least less of a mystery. Just don't expect a single liberal journalist to exhaust even a minute searching for any of this. It will be entirely up to conservatives like myself and publications like The American Spectator and The St. Croix Review. We will be told yet again that we are nothing more than mere modern incarnations of Joe McCarthy.
So be it. The truth is worth knowing.
It sounds like a plot right out of The Screwtape Letters. Barack Obama was given a rosary from Pope Francis last week, blessed by the popular Holy Father. Not knowing what to do with a rosary, something compelled Obama to give it to his favorite Catholic: Nancy Pelosi.
And why not? Pelosi, after all, fancies herself an authoritative Catholic, and hasn't hesitated to so represent herself to Obama and to the nation at large. She considers herself an expert on matters like "ensoulment"; that is, when life begins. In an August 2008 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," she was asked by Tom Brokaw "When does life begin?" Pelosi proceeded to speak for her Church's Magisterium:
I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator - Saint Augustine said at three months. We don't know. The point is that it shouldn't have an impact on a woman's right to choose.
It certainly doesn't impact that "right" in the eyes of this particular Catholic. Pelosi has a unique sense of the sacred when it comes to abortion, which she describes as "sacred ground" to her. Asked last summer why she refused to support a bill banning late-term abortions, Pelosi said: "As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me."
Well, it's also sacred ground to Barack Obama, who, in a speech to Planned Parenthood a year ago, tearfully thanked the faithful with an unforgettable, "Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you." Such was Obama's closing benediction to a speech/love-fest that included multiple "I love you" exchanges between himself and the giddy crowd. Obama loves what he calls Planned Parenthood's "extraordinary" and "remarkable work." He told the women that they do a "great, great job."
Planned Parenthood indeed does remarkable work, and it undeniably excels at what it does. No other group has achieved what Planned Parenthood has achieved. No question. It has annihilated countless millions of unborn babies, particularly (and disproportionately) African-American babies. In that, it is truly extraordinary. And it all began with Margaret Sanger. She is a progressive icon to liberals, a saint in the feminist church. They revere her.
That, too, is something that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi hold in common, so much so that Planned Parenthood recently feted Pelosi with its highest honor, its esteemed Margaret Sanger Award. Pelosi, of course, was thrilled, and Obama was no doubt thrilled for her (as he surely was for Hillary Clinton when she won the award in 2009).
Neither Pelosi nor Obama in their grateful words to Planned Parenthood commented on the full breadth of Sanger's "remarkable" work, such as her 1926 speech to a KKK rally in Silverlake, New Jersey, or her penchant for "race improvement," the driving motivation for her championing of birth control. The Planned Parenthood matron wanted to advance what she called "racial health," and lamented America's "race of degenerates." This meant purging the landscape of its "human weeds" and "the dead weight of human waste." For Sanger, this included a special "Negro Project" that the racial eugenicist had in mind for a particular group of Americans.
The Negro Project was dear to Sanger's heart, as shown by an odd December 1939 letter she wrote to Dr. Clarence Gamble of Milton, Massachusetts. The Planned Parenthood foundress alerted the doctor: "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population."
Sanger groaned at America's "idiots" and "morons," and how they were corrupting the gene pool and ruining her efforts to foster a "race of thoroughbreds." The progressive saint wanted to rid America of its "imbeciles."
Speaking of which, Nancy Pelosi made a jaw-dropping comment upon receiving her Sanger prize. Referring to pro-lifers, an exasperated Pelosi asserted:
When you see how closed their minds are, or oblivious, or whatever it is - dumb - then you know what the fight is about.
Yes, said the lifelong Roman Catholic, those who oppose abortion - which includes her Church - are "dumb."
All of which brings us full circle to the rosary beads blessed by Pope Francis that Pelosi got from Obama. Pelosi said she was "happy to receive a rosary blessed by Pope Francis." She said, "It means a great deal to me." It does? But why? After all, Pelosi considers Pope Francis to be stupid.
Ah, you say she never said any such thing? Really? She just last week told the ladies at Planned Parenthood that pro-lifers are closed-minded, "oblivious," "dumb," "whatever." Whatever, indeed!
Well, pro-lifers certainly include Pope Francis, the man who blessed her rosary. So, by Nancy Pelosi's formulation, this pope who means a "great deal" to her, and who blessed her rosary delivered by Obama - the curious handmaiden for this choice sacramental - is an oblivious idiot.
Nancy Pelosi said what she said. And in so doing, she has once again left us dumbfounded.
Holy Mary, pray for us. *
Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. These articles are republished from V & V, a web site of the Center for Vision & Values. Paul Kengor is author of God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (2004), The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (2007), and The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand (Ignatius Press, 2007). His latest book is The Communist - Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor (Threshold Editions / Mercury Ink (2012).
Last Tuesday, The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College hosted its eighth Ronald Reagan Lecture, a much-anticipated annual event. This year featured Art Laffer and Roger Robinson. Laffer is the namesake of the Laffer Curve, a cornerstone of President Reagan's supply-side economic policies. Robinson spearheaded the extraordinary economic-warfare campaign against the Soviet Union for Reagan's fearless National Security Council.
The discussion covered many issues, including how the policies pursued by Ronald Reagan to stimulate economic growth were so completely different from Barack Obama's. It's worth highlighting those differences here. We ignore them at our peril.
Reagan inherited an abysmal economy from Jimmy Carter. His prescription for recovery rested on four pillars: tax cuts, deregulation, reductions in the rate of growth of government spending, and carefully managed growth of the money supply. He wanted to stimulate economic growth via tax cuts, allowing the American people to keep their money and invest it more wisely and efficiently than government.
This was, in effect, private-sector stimulus - a stark contrast to President Obama's massive $800 billion public-sector (read: government) "stimulus" in 2009. Among Reagan's tax cuts, the federal income tax reduction was the centerpiece. Reagan secured a 25 percent across-the-board reduction in tax rates over a three-year period beginning in October 1981. Eventually, the upper-income rate was dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent.
In the process, Reagan also dramatically simplified the tax code. When he was inaugurated, there were 16 separate tax brackets. When he was finished, there were only two. Not only did this simplification eliminate complexity, it also eliminated loopholes and removed 4 million working poor from the tax rolls; they no longer paid any federal income tax.
Reagan presided over the largest tax cut in American history and accomplished it in tandem with a huge Democratic Party majority in the House. It was a bipartisan triumph that The Washington Post called "one of the most remarkable demonstrations of presidential leadership in modern history." Unlike President Obama, who derided his Republican congressional opposition as "hostage takers" and denounced their desire for tax cuts, Reagan found a way to work with the opposition to advance the country.
After a slow start through 1982-83, the stimulus effect of the Reagan tax cuts was unprecedented, sparking the longest peacetime expansion/recovery in the nation's history: 92 consecutive months. The bogeymen of the 1970s - chronic unemployment and the deadly combination of double-digit inflation and interest rates - were vanquished. The poverty rate dropped; the standard of living soared. The Dow Jones industrial average, which, in real terms, had declined 70 percent from 1967-82, nearly tripled from 1983-89.
Contrary to liberal demonology, African Americans and other minorities did extremely well during the Reagan years. Real income for a median African American family had dropped 11 percent from 1977-82. But from 1982-89, coming out of the recession, it rose by 17 percent. In the 1980s, there was a 40 percent jump in African American households earning over $50,000.
African American unemployment (which has increased significantly under President Obama) fell faster than white unemployment in the 1980s. The number of African American-owned businesses increased by almost 40 percent while the number of African Americans enrolled in college increased by almost 30 percent (white college enrollment increased only 6 percent).
There were likewise impressive numbers for Hispanics and women. Hispanic-owned businesses in the 1980s grew by an astounding 81 percent and the number of Hispanics in college jumped 45 percent.
Overall, the "Reagan Boom" not only produced widespread prosperity but - along with the attendant Soviet collapse - generated budget surpluses in the 1990s. Carter-era terms like "malaise" and "misery index" vanished. Only during the Obama years, and specifically in 2011, has America re-approached similar misery-index levels, reaching a 28-year high.
All of this is not just history. It's a crucial economics lesson that we need to learn and remember. We neglect it to our detriment.
I learned only yesterday that Shirley Temple, the iconic child actress, died earlier this week at age 85. Reports on her death were easy to miss. I went through my usual scan of various websites and saw nothing. I fortunately caught a buried "Shirley Temple, R.I.P." by a writer at a political website.
I was dismayed by the sparse reaction to the loss of this woman who lived a great American life. Had Shirley Temple died 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, the country would have stopped. People everywhere would have paused to give Temple her due. It would have been the lead in every newspaper.
But not today. Our culture is too obsessed with Miley Cyrus and gay marriage to give proper recognition to a woman who was one of the most acclaimed, respected, and even cherished Americans, a household name to children and adults alike.
When I caught the news of Temple's death, I groaned. I braced myself to tell my two young daughters. They've watched Shirley Temple movies for years. To them, she's a contemporary, another innocent little girl. When I informed my 11-year-old daughter, she frowned and said, "Oh, that's terrible." She was about to cry when I quickly explained that Shirley was 85 and had lived an extraordinary life. There was no reason to be sad.
For years, as my daughters and wife and I watched Temple's old movies, particularly on the superb Turner Classic Movies channel, we'd check her date of birth, do the math, and realize that Shirley probably would be with us a while longer. That time has finally closed.
I never met Shirley Temple, but a good friend of mine who died in August knew her. Bill Clark, who was Ronald Reagan's close friend and crucial adviser in taking down the Soviet Union, met Temple at the height of her popularity, when both were children.
Clark's grandfather was a literal sheriff, cowboy, and California trailblazer, known throughout the Los Angeles area. Some Hollywood publicity folks contacted the senior Clark around 1936 for a local promotion. The promotion featured four-year-old little Bill pinning a badge on Shirley Temple's vest as she was "officially" deputized by Marshal Clark.
Bill Clark always fondly recalled that moment, captured in a photo that he kept framed and that we put in his biography. He would later have pictures with the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, but here was one photo he kept close to heart.
Fifty years later, Clark and Temple served together again, this time in the State Department, where Clark held the higher rank: he, as second in command; she, as foreign affairs officer. Temple's old Hollywood friend, fellow Republican, and political ally, Ronald Reagan, had appointed her. She became an ambassador.
But Shirley Temple was, of course, known for film rather than politics. I cannot do justice to that storied career here, but indulge me as I share one of my favorite Shirley Temple movies.
In the 1934 classic, "Bright Eyes," Shirley played a five-year-old who lost her father in an airplane crash and then lost her mother. She is comforted by loving people who would do anything for her, including her godfather, who is identified as just that. The godfather behaves like a true godfather. The movie includes constant, natural references to faith, never shying from words like God, Heaven, and even Jesus.
Today's sneering secular audiences would reflexively dismiss the film as Norman Rockwell-ish. To the contrary, the movie is hardly sugarcoated. Just when your heart is broken from the death of sweet Shirley's dad, her mom is killed by a car while carrying a cake for Shirley on Christmas day.
That doesn't remind me of any Norman Rockwell portrait I've seen.
What such cynics really mean is that the film isn't sufficiently depraved for modern tastes. Shirley doesn't pole dance or "twerk." She doesn't do a darling little strip tease for the boys while singing "Good Ship, Lollipop." The references to God are not in vain or in the form of enlightening blasphemy. And the movie has a happy, not miserable, ending.
Come to think of it, maybe this isn't a movie for modern audiences!
For 80 years, Shirley Temple's bright eyes brightened the big screen. They reflected what was good and decent in this country. She embodied what made America great, and she brightened our lives in the process. *