"A COWARD DIES A THOUSAND DEATHS" | 2000-03-11
In 1972, the American Independent Party got over a million votes in the presidential election. Its presidential candidate, John G. Schmitz announced, "We have a balanced ticket. I am Catholic, and my running mate is anti-Catholic."
As I noted in my 1976 book, A Plague On Both Your Houses, "Such combinations have been routine in American political history." For decades in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Democratic Party was made up largely of extremely Catholic Irishmen from the North and anti-Catholic fundamentalists from the South.
The Founding Fathers, and every political generation of American politicos since, has had the wisdom to realize that the political system that has the power to ban anti-Catholics from citizenship also has the power to ban Catholics. In the real world, the danger to the very existence of every faith in this country is not Bob Jones University. It is Political Correctness.
Just about every Catholic in this country who might vote Republican is fully aware of just how fanatically anti-Catholic liberals and Political Correctness freaks are. If they didn't realize it before, the rhetoric of the pro-abortion forces and the "women's movement" have made it very, very clear.
Americans of all faiths realize what I just said is true.
So why aren't Republicans saying it?
Instead, when Bill Press demands that a former Republican National Chairman declare Bob Jones to be "un-American," he does what all Republicans do. He simpers and agrees.
The Democrats in Congress are embarrassing the Republicans with demands that the Congress condemn Bob Jones University. Of course they are. And they will continue to do so as long as the Republicans keep simpering and being embarrassed about George W. Bush's appearance at Bob Jones.
Democrats are the opposite of respectable conservatives. Liberals are serious professionals. When they get a hook into conservatives, they keep it in and twist it for all it is worth. As long as Republicans simper and apologize, the issue won't go away.
"The coward dies a thousand deaths. The hero dies but one."
If Republicans took a hard stand against Political Correctness, they would come out on top. Bob Jones' father's comment about Catholicism and Mormons was about their religion. He said they're cults. So what? That is the whole point of religious freedom: you can say bad things about other people's religions.
That is what Bush was thinking when he went to Bob Jones in the first place. But now that he has been criticized by liberals, it would take guts to say that. And "a courageous respectable conservative" is an oxymoron.