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Feb. 13, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
37:42
February 13, 2012, Monday, Hour #2
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Greetings, folks.
Welcome back.
Great to have you.
Rush Limbaugh, the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
We do have soundbites from CPAC.
We got Daniel Hannan.
We have Sarah Palin.
We'll get to those as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears.
Now, this Jack Lew guy, the chief of staff, L-E-W, he said this twice over the weekend, not just one time where it could have been a mistake.
He said it twice.
It wasn't an accident.
The White House backed him up.
And what he said was that you can't pass a budget in the Senate without 60 votes, and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support.
So unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid's not going to be able to get a budget passed.
And I think he was reflecting the reality of that.
It could be a challenge.
He said it twice.
Means it was on purpose.
White House has backed him up.
It is an out-and-out lie.
So it's clear what this regime has decided to do.
They're going to take advantage.
In fact, this report, they got a fact-checker guy.
I think his name is Glenn Kessler.
I'm not certain.
I think that's the name at the Washington Post who reviews this stuff.
And his technique is to award up to four Pinocchios for people who are found to be lying or dead wrong.
And in this case, Jack Lou gets four Pinocchios in the Washington Post for this.
So it's clear Obama is going to use his association with the media and just lie.
Just going to lie for the consumption of his voters, who he's acknowledging know so little about how this country works, how the government works, that whatever he says is what they'll believe.
So he's presented a budget that has no prayer of being passed.
And he wants his voters to understand it's the Republicans' fault.
Right in line with this do-nothing Congress that he's campaigning against.
So he sends Jack Lou out there to lie, even to these people that host the shows on the networks who also know this is a lie.
But they didn't have any kind of reaction that would indicate they knew it was a lie, kind of maybe a cocktail, but they didn't challenge him.
Certainly not enough to cause any change in what's been said.
So it's a flat out-and-out lie.
Now, we had a caller, last caller, the end of the previous hour, who basically said that she think Romney fakes it, whatever he has to say, whatever.
Clearly not a Romney supporter.
And I had to run through something pretty quickly here.
Let's spend a little bit more time with it because it dovetails with what she said.
Peter Robinson at ricochet.com had a little post on the front page of the New York Times Sunday morning.
A long story on Mitt Romney's positions on abortion in both his unsuccessful 1994 Senate race, his successful 2002 gubernatorial race.
The Times notes Romney campaigned as unambiguously pro-choice by 2005, with Romney eyeing a possible presidential bid.
He began to distance himself from his pro-choice position in an article in June of 2005 in National Review.
Romney said, my political philosophy is pro-life.
Now, Mr. Robinson says there's a sentence in this story that he wishes he hadn't read.
Which brings us to the sentence that made me wince.
That same article, the June 2005 National Review, in which Romney said my political philosophy is pro-life.
That same article quoted his top strategist at the time, Mike Murphy's consultant, as saying that Romney had been a pro-life Mormon faking it in Massachusetts as a pro-choice friendly.
Now, Mr. Robinson writes, faking it?
As best I can tell, there really is no other way of construing this.
Mike Murphy was suggesting that Romney intentionally misled the people of Massachusetts.
So I just wanted to mention that because it dovetailed with her call.
And this is one of his own people saying, essentially, that Romney told the people of Massachusetts what he thought they needed to hear in order to win an election there.
And, in fact, we've heard much the same thing said when defending Romney care comes up.
Well, remember now, I was a governor of Big Blue State.
Look, folks, as you know, I've not endorsed anybody, and I've not chosen anybody.
I've not expressed a preference here.
And this is a microcosm of why.
I want to endorse early, have stuff come up that you can't defend.
You can't.
Well, you have to make some flimsy excuse for.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's just an information item.
And the only reason I'm even spending any time on it is because Romney's own consultant is the author of the sentence.
The 2005 National Review article quoted Mike Murphy, top strategist at the time, saying Romney had been a pro-life Mormon, faking it as a pro-choice friendly.
That's in quotes.
Pro-life Mormon, faking it as a pro-choice friendly.
Now, Daniel Hannon, member of the British Parliament, spoke Friday morning at CPAC.
From what I understand, it was not televised.
You had to get it streaming.
That's what Cookie told me.
I told her this morning, get me some Daniel Hannon.
She looked, and the only place she could find it was stream.
We got it.
It doesn't matter.
But we have three bites.
It's, and his focus was the importance of the congressional elections.
He wanted everybody at CPAC to know that you can have the best president in the world.
You guys can elect the best Republican conservative in the world.
And if Harry Reid and Pelosi are running Congress, you got nothing.
Here's what he said.
If you repeat our mistakes, if you shift power from the 50 states to Washington, from the elected representative to the federal czar, from the citizen to the state, we know exactly what lies in store for you.
I've been a member of the European Parliament for 12 years.
I am living in your future, or at least the future towards which your present leaders seem intent on taking you.
And believe me, my friends, you are not going to enjoy it.
He continued thus.
European healthcare, European daycare, European college education, European nuclear disarmament, European carbon taxes, the whole package.
And I tell you, when you adopt those things, you don't just become like any other country.
You become less prosperous, less independent, less democratic, and less free.
We are at the end of the road that you have just set out along.
We're screeching towards the cliff.
And a couple of us, a very small number of us, in the parliaments of Europe are trying desperately to jam the brakes on while there's still time.
And you know what?
We look up, and what do we see in our rearview mirror?
We see you trying to overtake us, accelerating frantically in the direction that we have been going in.
My friends, there is still time to turn aside.
This is a profound warning because it comes from somebody who's living where we are, or where we're headed.
He's there.
That first bite, if you repeat our mistakes, if you shift power from the 50 states to Washington, I'm living in your future, at least the future towards which your present leaders seem intent on taking you.
And believe me, my friends, you are not going to enjoy it.
You're going to enjoy less freedom.
You'll become less prosperous, less independent, less democratic.
By the way, all of that will happen if Obamacare alone is implemented.
That's all it would require.
But of course, Obamacare is not all that's on Obama's agenda.
But with just that, Daniel Hannon is correct.
Here's the final soundbite.
Let me end with a heartfelt imprecation from a British conservative who loves his country to American conservatives who still believe in theirs.
Honor the vision of your founders.
Cleave to the most sublime constitution devised by human intelligence.
Don't be the generation that cuts itself off from the wisdom of your fathers and disinherits your children.
Never be afraid to speak to and for the soul of this nation, of which, by good fortune and God's grace, you are privileged to be part.
God bless you, my friends.
God bless America.
And God bless the alliance of the free English people.
Daniel Hannon, that was Saturday afternoon in Washington at CPAC.
And he also made the point that while the presidential election is important, that gaining ground in Congress is as important.
It is just as crucial.
The best president in the world could be elected.
And if Pelosi and Reid are running the House and the Senate, it won't matter who the president is.
He'll be stopped at every turn.
Because if Pelosi and Reid are running the House and the Senate, the media is right behind them.
Powerful stuff from Daniel Hannon.
Sarah Palin.
We'll have her soundbites coming.
No, I've not forgotten.
We're going to do the Paul Rahe analysis of the Catholic Church and how it ended up where it is now.
Vis-a-vis Obama's lie about...
I told you on Friday, nothing had changed.
Not once.
In fact, it got worse.
With Obama's little announcement on Friday morning and he's going to pass the buck and now the insurance companies will have to provide free contraception and all.
It got worse.
This is one of the biggest tricks played in American politics.
And Obama was counting on the fact that all he had to do was stand up and say, OK, OK, I've heard you.
Church won't have to buy it.
Well, as I said at the end of it, it's still the law of the land that the government is requiring contraceptions, abortion-related facilities to be provided.
It is wholly unconstitutional.
The president does not have the power nor the ability nor the freedom himself to do what he did.
I remember there were people Friday morning cheering, we beat Obama, we beat...
You didn't beat Obama.
You didn't beat him back.
You didn't do anything.
It is as bad, if not worse.
And that is the context in which the Paul Rahe piece at Ricochet is...
You wait until you hear it.
It's profound.
We'll get to Sarah Palin and her CPAC speech when we get back.
Just remember, folks, when Jack Lew goes on television and lies, the Republicans won't vote on Obama's budget.
It's Harry Reid.
It is Harry Reid who is going to keep Obama's budget from ever being voted on.
Make no mistake about this.
Republicans aren't going to have a thing to say about this.
Harry Reid's going to take care of that.
It is Harry Reid that doesn't want that budget vote, which, by the way, also in this budget, little things keep being discovered here.
However, Obama is now...
He proposes raising the tax on dividends all the way to 40%.
He was talking originally about raising it 15 to 20%.
Now he's going to double that, up to 40%.
It's not going to see the light of day, but it's in there as a proposal, as a window into his mind.
Here's Sarah Palin standing up for capitalism and bringing down the house at CPAC.
He says that he has a jobs plan now.
A jobs plan to win the future.
WTF.
I know.
The idiot.
WTF plan.
Well, he'll invest your money in bullet trains to nowhere, but he'll stop Boeing from building airplanes anywhere.
Bankrupt green energy companies get sweet loans and grant offers, but oil pipelines not allowed to give you job offers.
We say his plan isn't winning the future.
It is losing our country.
We have a better jobs plan, and it's called the free market, and it worked before this president, and it will work...
The applause went on and on and on, but we edited it so that we could get all these bites in in one segment.
We've suffered massive job losses out there.
Washington is hiring.
But the question is, they're hiring for what?
They don't manufacture.
They don't mine.
They don't drill.
They don't harvest.
They produce nothing.
And the services that they provide, they increase dependency, not freedom.
They don't create wealth.
They take it.
This is Obama's Washington.
It's not the Washington of our founders, but the Washington of the permanent political class.
It is something that our forefathers never envisioned, and they would have sworn their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor to change.
Sarah Palin, that's Saturday.
She did the keynote.
But one minor bit of disagreement.
The founders most definitely envisioned this.
They fled it.
They most definitely, in the sense, they feared that it was the natural state of things.
The Constitution was to be the exception.
I'm not...
What she means to say is that they never dreamed that somebody like Obama would come along and have this kind of success in this country.
But they clearly envisioned this kind of government.
They knew it was the history of the world.
And that's why the Constitution was written.
And that's why it was put together as it was.
Just a minor little point, but that's the brilliance of it.
That's why it survives intact with its original intent from the 1700s, from the 18th century forward.
Here's more from Sarah Palin, CPAC, on Saturday.
The conservative movement has never been stronger or brighter with people at the grassroots.
And yet, the federal government has never cast a bigger shadow.
So for the last three years, we've been waving a bold banner that shouts, don't tread on me.
See, the Tea Party rose up because Americans woke up.
It is bigger than one person.
It is bigger than one candidate.
It is bigger than one party.
It's about one country united under God.
We aren't red Americans.
We're not blue Americans.
We're red, white, and blue.
And President Obama...
And little Reverend Jackson Ryme in there from Sarah Palin.
And she was just getting revved up.
When I listened to his State of the Union last month, I was really struck that he barely mentioned unemployment and entitlements.
What did he talk about?
He gave us more promises, promises to give us, quote, an economy built to last.
Well, Mr. President, we don't want an economy built to last.
We want an economy built to grow.
And we certainly don't want your economy built to last.
We want your administration to end.
Right on, right on, right on, right on.
And she was then on Fox News Sunday.
Chris Wallace interviewed her.
He said, do you trust that Mitt Romney is an instinctive conservative?
I trust that his idea of conservatism is evolving.
And I base this on a pretty moderate past that he has had, even in some cases a liberal past.
I am not convinced.
And I don't think that the majority of GOP and independent voters are convinced.
And that is why you don't see Romney get over that hump.
He's still in the 30 percentile mark when it comes to approval and primary wins and caucus wins.
He still hasn't risen above that yet because we are not convinced.
Sarah Palin on Mitt Romney.
Given that, let's move forward some by 16.
Sunday morning on CNN's State of the Union, Candy Crowley had Santorum on.
She said, you had a great first of the week with that sweep of three states.
Not such a great Saturday.
I found it surprising that CPAC, this collection, basically your base that's fueled your campaign, collection of conservative groups had a straw poll.
They voted for Romney.
38 to 31 percent.
What happened there, Rick?
Those straw polls and CPAC, as you know, for years Ron Paul has won those because he just trucks at a lot of people.
Pays for their ticket and they come in and vote and then they leave.
And I'm not, you know, we didn't do that.
We don't do that.
I don't try to rig straw polls.
I know that there was some unhappiness at the announcement.
Well, you have to talk to the Romney campaign and how many tickets they buy.
We've heard all sorts of things.
Well, I don't remember where I read it, but somebody I read this morning is accusing Romney of doing that.
I don't know if it was Santorum.
It's obviously not Santorum because he denied it there.
But somebody, maybe it was just a friend of mine casually mentioning it.
I don't recall.
But Romney, by the way, won straw polls at CPAC in a lot of years in the past, in the years that Ron Paul didn't win it.
And the years that Ron Paul did win, that's exactly what happened.
He just bussed a bunch of people in, paid for their ticket to get it at CPAC.
They voted and they left.
This can happen is the point.
I, frankly, does it mean anything?
At the end of the day, it doesn't, this is, it doesn't mean one thing.
It doesn't mean one delegate.
The straw poll, it's not going to provide momentum.
It's not going to kill.
Romney won the CPAC straw poll in 07, 08, and 09.
And he came in second to Ron Paul in 2010 and 2011.
And what did it mean?
Not to put CPAC down.
There are just certain things that happen here that don't really matter all that much.
And straw polls anywhere are one of them.
Boy, we just keep learning things about Obama's budget.
Get this, 800 million.
800 million dollars been proposed in the Obama budget.
Aid for the Arab Spring.
White House announced plans on Monday to help Arab Spring countries swept by revolutions with more than 800 million dollars in economic aid while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.
That means the Muslim Brotherhood.
That's an earmark for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Which, they're not our buddies.
They're not our friends.
800 million dollars for the Taliban?
800 million dollars for Al-Qaeda?
These guys are going to be upset.
Muslim Brotherhood against 800 million?
Obama's not giving money to the Taliban?
Wait till Mullah Omar hears about this.
And wait till Eamon al-Zawahiri at Al-Qaeda hears about this.
Yeah, Eamon al-Zawahiri is still alive.
He's number two.
Bin Laden now at the bottom of the ocean, ostensibly.
But the Muslim Brotherhood with 800 million dollars in aid.
To the phones, here is Mike in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Glad you waited, sir.
Great to have you on the program.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
I called because I found the critique of the Catholic Church to be wrong, number one.
And there has been no church that has stood up better on the issue of abortion than the Catholic Church.
Which critique are you referring to?
Mine?
The critique at the beginning when you were quoting Rahe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've read Rahe in the meanwhile.
And he's saying what George Will said in yesterday morning's show.
George Will said, huh, the Catholic Church brought it on itself.
Well, the Catholic Church has the right to freedom of conscience.
Whether it's liberal or conservative, it has a right to freedom of conscience.
And what Obama did on Friday, as you said, it's just a fig leaf.
But there's actually a very real way in which it's not even constitutional.
What he's done is he said insurance companies have to pay for the Catholic Church's expense of providing contraceptive services to employees.
Right.
That's an establishment of religion.
Oh.
Nobody's really said that, but that's the real, that's a huge problem for it.
Oh, I got a problem, I got a problem with free exercise?
Well, make the insurance companies pay for it.
Wrong.
That makes it an establishment of religion.
Well, I don't know about that, but you don't even need to get there to find unconstitutionality in what Obama is doing, mandating that insurance companies or anybody provide anything, pay for anything.
He can't tell them what to charge.
He can't tell them what policies to offer.
He can't tell them that the states can pass laws that limit competition and this kind of but Obama as president cannot dictate this stuff.
And I know Jack Lew, the chief of staff, they're going to implement it and they don't care.
This is totally in your face.
This regime is holding nothing back.
To those of us who say what you're doing is unconstitutional, they say stop us.
They just say, I challenge you to stop us.
We're going to do it.
So what they know is they can do anything they want if nobody stops them.
They know that despite the fact that you can't rob a bank, people rob banks.
They know that despite the fact you can't murder anybody, murder still happens.
Well, the Constitution cannot be violated, but it can.
As long as nobody's going to stop you, you can do whatever you want.
This is what Obama knows.
Who's going to stop him?
Public opinion?
He doesn't care.
The only people who can stop him, just like the recess appointment business.
This recess appointment business, when he appoints, when he makes recess appointments, when there's not a recess, if the Senate isn't going to stop him, he's going to keep doing it.
Well, it's not inside baseball.
There's nothing inside baseball about this at all.
People want to know, how can Obama do this?
He doesn't have any moral compunction against it.
He doesn't have any moral guidelines that say don't do it.
He doesn't have any respect for the Constitution.
That's how he can do it.
And if there's nobody that's going to stop him, if violating the Constitution in such a way that it transgresses on someone else's liberty, if the victim here is not going to stand up and stop it, he's going to keep doing it.
That's who he is.
We're dealing with a community organizer Chicago thug here, folks.
It really isn't complicated, and it's not inside baseball.
It's very simple to understand.
I mean, Mitch McConnell and John Bader are not to pick on them.
They can stand up and say they deplore this all day long.
Obama's going to laugh at them.
You think Obama's going to stop because somebody deplores his actions?
You think Obama's, oh, you know, wait a minute.
I guess we better not do this because House and Senate leadership said that I couldn't do this.
If all they do is say you can't do it, there's nothing to stop him.
You think words are going to stop this guy?
You think deploring the action, statements, expressing strong disfavor with this are going to stop?
I understand, but he doesn't care.
I know there's nothing that's a genuine outcome, but he doesn't care.
Now, I want to take the occasion of Mike's call here to get into the Paul Rahe piece that ran on February 10th at ricochet.com.
It's American Catholicism's Pact with the Devil.
I printed this out.
It goes to six pages, and let me pick it up in progress.
I'll jip Mr. Rahe's piece.
He, by the way, is a professor at Hillsdale College.
This is what the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot.
In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions.
In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute in the Depression, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal.
They glorified in the fact that FDR made Francis Perkins a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent, secretary of labor, and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post, and they welcomed Social Security, which the church did, which was her handiwork.
They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents.
When your parents get old, it's your job to take care of them, not the government's.
The church had always believed that.
FDR's New Deal came along, and the church said, wow, we can support this because this is charity.
And his point is that when the church began to equate redistribution of wealth at the government with charity, it was all over for the church.
They didn't stop to consider, the church didn't, whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport.
They didn't stop to think, in the process, the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long been ensnared, or long before ensnared, a great many mainstream Protestants.
The notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity, and so they fostered state paternalism, undermined what they professed to teach, that charity is an individual responsibility, that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the church to alleviate the suffering of the poor in its place.
They helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism, the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people's money and redistribute it.
And that started in the 1930s.
FDR, New Deal, transfer of wealth, depression, help the poor, help the suffering.
The church, the Catholic Church, cast aside what it had always believed, and then began to say it is our Christian duty in equating the redistribution of wealth to charity.
And by the way, this survives to this day.
How many people do you know who are not even Catholic, Obama, the regime, who equate liberalism with Christianity?
And they claim to find liberalism throughout the Bible.
And they claim to find it in the notion that taking from the rich and giving to the poor by the government is charity, and that it is their Christian duty to confiscate other people's money and redistribution.
When the church went along with the notion that Christianity equals government redistribution, that was the end.
At every turn in American politics since that time, you'll find the hierarchy assisting the Democrat Party and promoting the growth of the administrative entitlement state.
At no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals.
Remember, we had a call on Friday, near the end of the program, from a woman who said, look, the Catholic Church is not an innocent victim here.
They got in bed with the liberal Democrats long ago.
And this is what prompted my interest in the Paul Rahe piece, because this woman that called was fiery, she was passionate, and she was dead on right.
She was exactly, and I got an email, a bunch of emails agreeing with that caller, such as this one.
Dear Rush, I totally agree with a female caller who criticized the Catholic Church.
The Catholic bishops and the clergy have been in bed, quote-unquote, with the Democrats for decades.
How else could Pelosi, Kerry, and Biden be considered faithful Catholics when they are pro-choice?
They even get front-row seats for communion with the Pope.
The prominent Catholic clergy gave lip service to church teachings, but they will still support Obama, like that lady, and they supported Obamacare, by the way.
The Catholic Church hierarchy was one of the first to sign on to Obamacare.
They looked at it as charity, and the church stands for charity.
They made the mistake of equating charity with government taking from some and giving to others, which is prior to this in the 30s.
The church was not about that.
Like that lady said, they teach more socialism from the pulpit than they do Catholicism.
And Mr. Rahe makes that point, brilliantly so in this piece, which you'll hear coming up.
My e-mailer says, Parishioners never hear about authentic church teachings anymore, especially on birth control, because it might offend somebody.
Study after study proves that women who claim to be Catholic use birth control as much as non-Catholic women.
We have to put up with sermons of watered-down parables and social justice.
Our tithes and Catholic sharing appeal funds go to support illegals by helping them stay in the country, destroy our economy, because it's charity.
It's all disguised as charity.
But her point is, her point was, and the e-mails in support, were that the church really doesn't have a whole lot of room to complain, because they brought all this on starting way back in the 30s, and then Cardinal Bernadine really sealed the deal in the 80s.
There's much more of this.
I've got to take a break now, but we will continue with it when we come back.
And back to the Paul Rahe piece at ricochet.com.
Theme of which, and there are many themes, I'm trying to boil this down to its essence.
The Catholic Church, in his words, sold its soul to the devil back in the 30s, when it began to equate the redistribution of wealth, liberalism, socialism with charity.
The church got behind it.
You know what's amazing about all of this is, as the church has slowly but surely been co-opted by socialism, the Democrat Party has done its best to put the church out of business, to attack it.
The left doesn't like the moral judgments they think emanate from the church.
Anyway, continuing here with Mr. Rahe's piece, at every turn in American politics since the 1930s, you'll find the church hierarchy assisting the Democrat Party, promoting the growth of the administrative entitlement state, at no point have its members evidenced any concern for sustaining limited government and protecting the rights of individuals.
It didn't cross the minds of these prelates that the liberty of conscience, which they had grown to cherish, is part of a larger package.
That the paternalistic state, which recognizes no legitimate limits on its power and scope, that they had embraced would someday turn on the church and seek to dictate whom it chose to teach its doctrines and how, and more generally, it would conduct its affairs.
And that has happened, too.
Mr. Rahe writes, I would submit that the bishops, nuns, and priests, now screaming bloody murder, have gotten what they asked for.
The weapon that Barack Obama has directed at the church was fashioned to a considerable degree by Catholic churchmen.
They welcomed Obamacare.
They encouraged senators and congressmen who professed to be Catholics to vote for it.
Now, I do not mean to say that I would prefer that the bishops, nuns, and priests sit down and shut up.
Obama's once again done the Friends of Liberty a favor by forcing the friends of the administrative entitlement state to contemplate what they have wrought.
Whether those brought up on the heresy that public provision is akin to charity will prove capable of thinking through what they have done remains unclear.
But there's now a chance that this will take place.
And there was a time long ago, to be sure, but for an institution with the longevity possessed by the Catholic church long ago, just yesterday, there was a time when the church played an honorable role in hemming in the authority of magistrates and in promoting not only its own liberty as an institution, but that of others similarly intent on managing their own affairs as individuals and as members of subpolitical communities.
In my lifetime, to my increasing regret, the Roman Catholic church in the U.S. has lost much of its moral authority.
It's done so largely because it has subordinated its teachings of Catholic moral doctrine to its ambitions regarding an expansion of the administrative entitlement state.
1973, the court made its decision, Roe v. Wade.
Had the bishops, priests, and nuns screamed bloody murder and declared war, as they have recently done, the decision would have been reversed.
Mr. Rahe believes the Catholic church could have stopped Roe v. Wade had they had a reaction then that they had last week.
Instead, under the leadership of Joseph Bernadine, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, they asserted that the social teaching of the church church was a seamless garment.
They treated abortion as one concern among many.
Here's what Cardinal Bernadine said in the Gannon lecture at Fordham University in 1983.
Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us, the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant, and the unemployed worker.
He was equating abortion as an issue with all of those.
Not a stand-alone.
He said consistency means we can't have it both ways.
We can't urge a compassionate society and vigorous public policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of society.
Quick time out.
Back with more in a second.
I hate to say it, folk.
Catholic Church has been kissing the socialist ring since the 1930s.
And now it has come back to bite them.
But I'm not thrilled with the Paul Rahe piece.
R-A-H-E is how you spell Mr. Rahe's last name.
And I've got a quick time out.
Sit tight.
R-A-H-E is how you spell Mr. Rahe's last name.
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