Opinion: Time for a New Republican Party and New Republican Party Candidates

By Keith A. Fournier
1/25/2013
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

As a Nation we have lost our moral compass and we are dangerously close to losing our freedom

The idea that we can ever separate moral issues from fiscal issues is a serious error. There is a moral basis to every political and social concern, including economics.The Republican Party is once again at a crossroad. What is needed is a New Republican Party and New Republican Party candidates for this hour.

Lies, Truth, and the Call of Conscience.

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CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - I write as a private citizen and a reluctant Republican. I left the Democratic Party many years ago, after its leadership was taken over by the current morally incoherent coalition of social and cultural engineers. However, I am concerned about some in the current leadership of the Republican Party retreating from defending the moral foundations of a free society.

We are living under the effects of what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) once called a Dictatorship of Relativism. Relativism is a philosophy which says there are no truths. When there is nothing objectively true - which can be known by all and form the basis of our common life - then there is no basis for true freedom. Freedom can never be realized, nor can it flourish, unless it is exercised in reference to choosing the true and the good.

As a Nation we have lost our moral compass and, as a result, we are dangerously close to losing our freedom. When a society fails to recognize that persons are more important than things, when it loses sight of the primacy of the inviolable dignity of every single human person at every age, every stage and of every size, it soon devolves into a form of practical materialism, worshipping a new golden calf. It uses the language of human rights but has lost its true moral content.

I write on the evening of the fortieth anniversary of the horrid US Supreme Court decisions of Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton. Those two decisions opened the floodgates to the killing of nearly sixty million children through legal abortion. When there is no recognition of a preeminent right to life, there soon follows an erosion of the entire structure of all human rights. Human rights do not exist in a vacuum; they are goods of the human person.

There is a hierarchy of rights. Without acknowledging the preeminent right to life, all derivative rights and the entire infrastructure of human rights is placed in jeopardy. Without the freedom to be born, all of the talk about compassion for the poor and the promotion of freedom throughout the entirety of life, and how we attain it, is hollow and empty.

Failing to recognize that our first neighbors in the womb have a right to be born and live a full life in our community is a foundational failure of our obligation in solidarity to one another and the entire ethic of being our brothers (and sisters) keeper. There can be no enduring lasting solidarity in a culture that kills its own children and then calls it a right. We face a moral crisis in America, and a serious leadership crisis which flows directly from it.

In 1994 Mother Teresa put it clearly: "America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience."

"It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

In addition to defending Life we must also defend authentic marriage against those who seek to redefine it out of existence. Marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of the universe. Truth does not change, people and cultures do; sometimes for good and sometimes for evil. Marriage is the first society into which children are to be born, learn to be fully human, grow in virtue, flourish and take their role in families and communities.

Children have a right to a mother and a father. Of course we should care about the single parent family and the many broken homes. However, their existence does not change the norm necessary for a stable and healthy society. In tact marriages and families are the glue of a healthy and happy social order.

Morally based positions are not simply religious. They are based upon a Natural Moral Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason. Acknowledging the existence of such a Natural Moral Law is the ground upon which every great civilization has been built. It is the source for every great and authentic human and civil rights movement.

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1 - 10 of 45 Comments

SaraPalen
3 months ago
sure Karl, neither party is doing a good job right now, that's why I was talking about Lincoln and true conservatism as he saw it (not that he was perfect either) and spoke about it. Because the repubs now are gettin kinda whiggy. But this thing about how the dems are the party of peace and anti-war, nonviolent, is just false.and the killing of the unborn is directly part of their "peace" plan. I was just pointing that out, as a statement was made to the contrary. The most evil national crime since slavery is outright endorsed by the Dems and sometimes in the shadows endorsed by the doughfaced repubs. Sometimes it is tacitly endorsed by Catholics who see no problem with government interfering with religious exercise-and tax payer funding of abortion and contraception-just more rediculous rhedoric, right?

Screaming doesn't work with my kids-why would it work here. I too am with the deacon-I too have been repeatedly stating that we need to get back to the law of Nature and nature's God, to the foundations of the "declaratoray charter of our rights". To not separate our positive law from these moral things that all men and women can realise through reasoning. To go away from moral relativism.

Believe it or not I still vote for democrats sometimes if they are closer to these things than others.

good to know that you are for marriage between a man and a woman too if your'e standing with the deacon, because I think a few more of those whiggy repubs are a little weak in the knees on that one too.

God bless, Karl
KarlVDH
3 months ago
Sara, do you realize tht in the course of discussion, your argument has basically become that we shouldn't criticize the Republicans for doing things Democrats have done? Really? Don't you thonk we should be demanding more, and better instead of this partisan "Yeah? Well... they did it too!" mentality?
I'm standing with the Deacon, and restating what every real Catholic should be screamong about: we are not represented by either party. We are used, over and over. And it's time to DEMAND better, or go get it ourselves. The Republican Party as it is now is NOT something we should be supporting any more than the Dems are. We need to remake it, or make our own. These people CLEARLY don't care about us.
SaraPalen
3 months ago
Rob, right, they were not fully aware, but at the time of the revolution there was, an enlightening happening to the rights of Africans. England was already changing its laws, and at the same time there were advances in biology. I am convinced, had they known of the scientific insites we have now, it would have proven further the heinousness of the act as they had already known it to be. At the time abolitionists were fighting for the rights of slaves, they had an awareness of life of the unborn, many laws solidified protection for the unborn life during the 1800s. MOre than one of the founders was aware of both the natural rights of Africans and life of the unborn. (These guys would be rolling in their graves at the defense of partial birth abortion, which even the medical community, the honest ones, anyway would say is never necessary-they pretty much admitted it was a big fat lie under the Clinton veto of that law, but our president has no problem with it. Instead it is a manufactured right under some penumbra of evil. Privacy, just like they used privacy to go about the business of killing blacks, keep your laws off my private property). The awareness was based on natural law and science. They wrote and lectured on it. Some of the founders did own people, but some of those same also knew it was wrong, even so. Some used the positive law, separated from the natural to promote the evil of slavery, just like abortion today.

but one of the detail men for the constitution and a signor of the Declaration said that life from its beginning to its end was beautifully and consistently protected, when he was describing what life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness means. I cannot see this man, one who was respected for his knowledge of the law at the time, appointed by our first president, going along with Roe v Wade. Far from it.

I am convinced that they knew better at the time. Right, Rob, some of today's poiticians really are clueless, because they will not make the connection that the humanity of one is linked to the humanity of all, as they said about the unborn in the 1800s in Mississipi, as they said in the 60s in Alalbama, as they say now, about the unborn. That video of the black preacher on this website says it all, to deny this is to deny the heritage of those who were treated so badly in America's past. a new slave industry. How long will this one last?
SaraPalen
3 months ago
and, who'sthe weapon mongers sending tanks to Egypt? nasty repubs-oops, I mean the current administration. who gave weapons to the criminals that killed border patrol and more? oops, american agents. what's the crime capital of america-oh yeah, Chicago- home of the daddy-less gang banger's city, run by republicans? one just came to my town, went to school with my kids, was with some others who got a pistol at the tender age of 17, and for him and his buddies strangling the cab driver and shooting at him, probation until the age of 21. The dems don't enforce laws, they are soft on crime. and they encourage a baby daddy less society. They want to do away with God at their own convention. Who endorses the direct killing of millions in their platform?
gerald
3 months ago
I cannot support the republican party because they are so anxious to go to war or send weapons of war overseas. Why do we send our children to die overseas in stupid wars. The republicans fail miserably when it comes to loving your neighbor and forgiving your enemies. The only brothers they keep are the rich ones.
Rob
3 months ago
Sara, I'm not sure I agree. Given that some of our founding fathers owned slaves, I'm not sure they were fully aware of the dignity of human life. By no means as I'm saying that they are as clueless as today's politicians, but I think every generation unfortunately seems to need their eyes opened to the evil in front of them.

starzec, I think so long as we are looking to the government to solve all of our social problems, issues like abortion, Israel etc end up being the sole issues that people base their votes on. I have no issue with that. But then we lack the courage to actually call it like it is and hold people to account to what they have actually done or not done on these issues. Parties have become like NFL sports teams and like a die hard fan, you stick with them no matter what. I think that is fine for a sports team, but it makes for a terrible government.

We the people by our interactions with eachother will create the society we want. Personally I tihnk we scream and yell at politicians as a means to escapte our personal responsibility. Far easier to point our fingers at the government regarding abortion then actually donate our time, money and energy to reaching out to people in a crisis pregnancy. It's sort of like everyone supporting the troops....everyone does, but less than 2% of the population actually steps up and serves.

We've become a nation of yellers and screamers with very little action on the ground. And that is precisely why our culture keeps slipping deeper and deeper in the hole.
SaraPalen
3 months ago
the founding fathers would have known that as soon as human life in the womb could be scientifically detected it was protected, and in contemplation of the law, abortion was considered a heinous crime, and, at one point it was, homicide. They would have known that human laws, of lesser wisdom could not replace the laws of nature or nature's God. Eventually some, during the rise of the conservatism of Lincoln, who wished to stay to that of the tried and true conservatism, of nature and nature's God, which is real liberation, realised that the comparison to the humanity of the slave, was the same as the comparison to the unborn. All humanity is inextricably llinked. But now, the religion of Molech is foisted on the American people; when men of lesser wisdom than the founding fathers, with human tribunals disguised under the blackened colour of law, unjustly war against nature, God, and man himself.
starzec
3 months ago
Bill and Rob, What happened to voting for the best person? The best person for the job is the one who has a firm grasp on the issues and knows how to get his point across to his colleagues.

The last few elections have been all or nothing propositions. Candidate A wants X,Y and Z but no W and Candidate B wants W, Y and Z but no X. For the most part, the electorate has said we want a candidate who wants it all and generally not willing to accept anything less. The electorate not willing to compromise.

And that is OK on some ideals. Abortion is one such ideal. But I think to a representative from my hometown. Republican. Catholic. But not what one would call socially conservative. This representative supported low taxes, taking care of the veterans and the elderly and supported gay marriage. For the most part, 90%, he is a Republican Dream. But that one issue, and he becomes dead to those who support everything else he does. That makes ZERO sense.

Why?

Because the founding fathers were intelligent enough to accept some ideas no matter how distasteful (slavery) because they knew the total common good was going to be served and they hoped that future generations would fix those distasteful parts.

Today's electorate needs to have the same intelligence. 90% in College is a passing mark and in the real world getting a score of 4 out 5 on performance appraisals is acceptable. Nothing is perfect. So you accept the best you can find.
Rob
3 months ago
Bill, I don't see the connection you are trying to make. My view of my fellow Catholics has nothing to do with their knowledge of who is who in the Catholic world or their knowledge of the USCCB's inner workings, documents or statements.

I just think if you took a poll, most would have no idea what you are talking about. And honestly, because of how broken DC is, most have tuned out.

What I will say however is that I believe that a large number of Catholics have no had an encounter with Christ and because of that, all of this comes across as Greek. We are so wrapped up in getting folks to vote the right way that I really believe we left Jesus out of the equation.
Rob
3 months ago
Bill, the only ignorant thing I see in our political discourse is the partisianship that has rendered our country frozen. I am done pretending that one is better than the other. But you are entitled to keep the dream alive.

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