Smug sanctimony is not a becoming look. When it’s dripping with the blood of slaughtered, unborn children? Even less flattering.
I’m speaking, of course, of Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Kaine. In last Tuesday night’s VP debate, the Virginia Senator went on and on about what a doozy of a Roman Catholic he is. He then clarified that fact would mean positively bupkis in his approach to abortion — err, “choice” — should be ascend to President Hillary Clinton’s number two.
Unlimited “abortion rights”? Roe v. Wade for perpetuity? Federal funds for abort-provider extraordinaire Planned Parenthood? Count uber-Catholic Kaine all in!
Squaring off against Republican VP and outspoken pro-life contender Mike Pence, Kaine affirmed he “tr[ies] to practice his religion in a very devout way, and follow the teachings of the church in my own personal life.” The former Virginia governor mentioned, “I was educated by Jesuits at Rockhurst High School in Kansas City. And I worked with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras now nearly 35 years ago –and they were the heroes of my life.”
Boilerplate out of the way, he then hustled along to reassure his faith would in no way influence any of his official decisions regarding baby-killing. Pro-abort diehards can rest assured it would continue murderously apace, untrammeled by any Clinton/Kaine interference. No wonder Kaine’s earned a one-hundred percent favorable rating from Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
So what exactly does it mean when the Old Dominion State lawmaker pleads his “devout” Catholic bona fides? What are the practical ramifications of his profession? That the waft of incense gives him the warm-n-fuzzies? That he entertains a sentimental attachment to a particular set of liturgies and rituals? A notional affection for the outward trappings of his religious tradition? That he enjoys allowing secret — but forever unspoken — pieties to rattle around the sequestered recesses of his brain?
Kaine does take great pains emphasizing what his “deep faith li[fe]” does not mean: That Christianity’s resolute commitment to the sanctity of life will move him in any way regarding public policy decisions. We’ve heard the like for a generation from so-called Catholic-but-pro-choice legislators and pols (Ted Kennedy, Nancy Pelosi, Mario Cuomo, John Kerry, etc.): First Amendment, “personally opposed but”, “government can’t favor one religion over another”, separation of church and state, blah, blah, blah. Kaine’s most recent child-killing-enabling riff wasn’t even particularly original or clever. For listener’s bothering to think, it was, in fact, shallow and cliché-ridden. That his argument was saturated in a tone of faux enlightened reasonableness makes it even nauseatingly harder to take.
So Catholics and other Christian variants mustn’t presume to impose their morality on the rest of the nation? As repeatedly and portentously as that standard has been intoned, it’s always been historically bogus. The
question’s never been — and never will be — whether or not “morality” should shape law, government, culture. The actual question all along has been whose morality will render that service.
Tim Kaine and fellow Lefty purists podium-poundingly insist the “rich” must cough up ever increasing levels of their income to fund the State’s good-idea-of-the-day. They never weary of demanding hard-working Americans ceaselessly underwrite lay-abouts who eschew employment but excel at producing neglected children. A citizen’s right to conveniently access firearms for the protection of his/her loved ones? Intolerable!, according to Kaine and Co. Bad, bad, bad! Government must “do something!” (The NRA has handed Kaine an “F” rating.) Public School students, they lecture, are owed a free education – one which highlights the United States’ nastiest passages, scants its noblest contributions to humanity and rarely mentions Christianity’s indispensable piece in establishing America’s peerless society.
Pardon me for inserting a dose of impertinence into the discussion, but: Whose morality is fueling all the above?
Does the good Senator believe “morality” should rudely interpose itself when an Omaha, Nebraska teen fatally tosses her premature infant out a window? His mealy-mouthed, keep-my-Catholic-beliefs-out-of-government philosophizing leaves little room to legally rule out such barbarities. The only material distinction between this situation and a workaday abortion, after all, involves the child’s geography. In the womb: Go ahead, tear the thing to pieces. Outside the womb: Homicide kicks in. Or was the mother’s only prosecutable offense littering?
Then there’s the Pennsylvania twenty-something who pitched her full-term newborn into a gas station trash can. The little one, thankfully, was found alive; no charges will be filed against the mother.
But, should authorities be involved in this matter at all, Sen. Kaine? We all know you’d have counselled nothing which might hamper a run-of-the-mill Dilation and Extraction; so why would this circumstance give you any pause? Here, at least, the party involved — unlike her Nebraska counterpart — didn’t even litter!
Inconvenient-history news flash to Tim Kaine: The abolition of slavery, anti-lynching statutes, eradication of Jim Crow laws, termination of heartless child labor practices, measures shielding abused women, the granting of the franchise to the ladies — all involved the “imposing” of someone’s morality on someone else. Kaine’s brief for barring any standards shared by religion from brushing up against the canons of civilization is specious, inconsistent, juvenile.
Moreover, another footnote for the befuddled Democrat candidate: for generations, widely affirmed biblical virtues and an unashamed Judeo-Christian worldview are what significantly energized America’s expansion; the most beneficially consequential nation of a millennia. A flawless country? Certainly not — but one shining distinctively in a fallen world.
His unctuous apologia for maintaining the sanguinary status quo, for government’s continued stepping aside so women can expeditiously murder their children is diabolical. There’s flatly nothing honorable or high-minded about it.
And during Tuesday night’s exchange Kaine had the monumental crust to look into the camera and quote the words of Jesus against Donald Trump? (Matthew 12:34; 15:18). This “devout”, Democrat churchgoer needs read on a bit – say, over to Matthew 19:13-15. The Savior decidedly frowned on those who wanted to shoo away intrusive little children. And what is abortion but the ultimate shooing-away?
Tim Kaine is a lousy Catholic; for that matter, a lousy human being. Would that some courageous and principled RC prelate somewhere would notify the Vice-president wanna-be that, until he repents for abetting the killing of innocent, pre-born people, he’s no longer welcomed participating in his professed church’s community or conventions — nor does he belong in civilized government.
Image: by donkeyHotey; https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/8007803653; CC by 2.0
