THE COUNTRY IS NOT WITH US
by Thomas A. Droleskey

May 28, 2001

     The decision by Vermont Senator James Jeffords to 
bolt from the Republican Party has all sent so-called 
"conservatives" into states of apoplexy. The reflexive 
apologists of President George W. Bush have really 
convinced themselves that the fact that their hero is 
president is a sign that the country accepts his agenda. 
It does not. Indeed, these apologists have embraced the 
delusional notion that the 2000 election signaled a 
return to the "conservatism" of the 1980s, ignoring the 
inconvenient little fact that the combined popular votes 
of former Vice President Albert Arnold Gore Jr. and 
Ralph Nader eclipsed the total won by Bush by more than 
three million votes, a clear sign that the country has not 
embraced any retreat from legalized baby-killing and 
the ever more intrusive growth of the power of the 
federal government.

     Secular conservatives are people who are convinced 
that there is some purely secular and religiously 
indifferentist way to view the world and resolve 
various social problems. This belief flies in the face of 
Catholic social teaching, which instructs us that a 
society which rejects the Social Kingship of Jesus 
Christ and the authority of His true Church is bound to 
descend to the level of abject barbarism, all of which 
augments the power of state unfettered by any 
submission whatsoever to the primacy of the Divine 
positive law and the natural law over us men and our 
civil societies. Alas, the delusion folks in "conservatom" 
demonstrate that they are soulmates of the ultimate 
relativist, Bill Clinton, trying to spin the actual state of 
the real world to conform to their own delusional 
notions that everything is going to be fine as long as we 
exalt the flawed nature of the American founding, avoid 
any discussion of "divisive" things such as 
denominational religion, and keep making one 
compromise after another in order to win the favor of 
"moderates" and "independents" who want to keep baby-
killing legal and who want no end to the entitlements 
provided them by the government.

     President George W. Bush himself embraces this very 
delusional notion. His effusive praise of the late 
President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Great Society 
demonstrates that he (or those who write the copy he 
reads so eagerly and so uncritically) accepts the 
expansion of the power of the federal government, 
largely engineered as a result of the various Masonic 
attacks on the stability of the family, as an 
unquestioned part of American government. There is no 
effort on the part of the new president even to make the 
case against the Great Society on the basis of the clear 
words of the American Constitution, which do not give 
the federal government the sort of power it has been 
exercising since the 1930s and the 1960s, no less an 
understanding borne of the natural law and of Catholic 
social teaching which stresses the principle of 
subsidiarity. No, the addle-brained president mouths 
slogans to make him appear palatable in our ethos of 
entitlement. He even goes so far as to praise the likes of 
Father Theodore Hesburgh, the former president of the 
University of Notre Dame, for his "contributions" to 
higher education, ignoring the fact that it was 
Hesburgh's embrace of government and anti-Catholic 
foundation grant monies which helped to expedite the 
de-Catholicization of almost every Catholic university 
and college in this nation.

     The delusion state of most conservatives is such 
that they failed to understand the political dynamics 
which did indeed exist in the real world following the 
2000 election. We were told time and time again by 
reflexive conservatives that a Bush election would mean 
the restoration of sanity in the federal judiciary. As I 
and others pointed out consistently last year, Bush 
demonstrated as governor of Texas quite a penchant for 
appointing pro-aborts and pro-sodomites to his state's 
judiciary. Additionally, though, anyone with a modicum 
of common sense could have seen that the United States 
Senate, though nominally in the hands of the Republican 
Party as a result of its 50-50 split and Vice President 
Richard N. Cheney's tie-breaking vote, had an effectively 
57-43 pro-abortion majority within its midst. That is, 
there were (until Jeffords's defection) seven Republican 
senators who supported the destruction of innocent life 
in the womb as a matter of constitutionally protected 
rights (in contradistinction to those Republicans who 
support abortion in some instances while claiming to be 
"pro-life"). The six who remain the Republican fold are: 
Maine's Olympia Snow and Susan Collins (who is a 
Catholic), Rhode Island's Lincoln Chaffee, Pennsylvania's 
Arlen Specter, Virginia's John Warner, and Colorado's 
Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Jeffords's defection to vote 
organizationally with the Democratic Party only 
strengthens the hands of the baby-killers in his former 
party, who will now be emboldened to join ranks with 
their ideological soulmates in the Democratic Party to 
oppose any of Bush's judicial nominees who even are 
suspected of being a threat to Roe v. Wade. That is why I 
wrote several pieces in the immediate aftermath of the 
election ("Justice Will Lose No Matter Who Wins," "A Long 
Four Years Ahead," "Get a Grip on Reality," and 
"Unprecedented Access") to remind people about the actual 
reality of the situation we face. How ironic it is that the 
very people who claim to be pragmatic realists ignore 
reality to continue to insist that the delusional notion of 
the pursuit of justice without regard to a frank, 
confessional reliance on Christ the King and the 
authority of His true Church is not only possible but 
desirable.

     I am not entirely sure that these developments 
distress President George W. Bush. Oh, I am sure that he 
is not happy that James Jeffords, a real pro-abort and 
pro-sodomite, has left the party fold. After all, personal 
and party loyalty is what matters to the Bushes, not 
loyalty to the primacy of the Divine positive law and the 
natural law over us men and our civil society. Former 
President George Herbert Walker Bush evidently tried to 
convince Jeffords not to declare himself an independent 
and to vote organizationally with the Democratic Party. 
"Moderate" (read: "pro-abort") Republican Senators tried 
to persuade Jeffords to stay the course as a Republican. 
However, Jeffords's defection gives Bush the excuse I 
believe he has been looking for to appoint pro-aborts to 
the federal bench, such as White House Counsel Alberto 
Gonzales, and to push for more and more government 
involvement in our daily lives, as is being done with his 
much-touted "education reform' bill -- which paves the 
way for national testing standards and the permanent 
involvement of the federal government in a matter that 
is the sole prerogative of parents. The president will 
increasingly mimic the failed tactics of his father, who 
sought endlessly to appease opponents bent on achieving 
his complete and total political destruction. Efforts 
will be made to make "moderate" (read: "pro-abort") 
Republicans feel more "comfortable" in the Grand Old 
Party. In other words, Bush II is morphing in Bush I, with 
Tom Daschle doing to Bush the younger what George 
Mitchell had done to Bush the elder: push the president 
increasingly to the left while giving him no credit for 
moving increasingly to left.

     In actual point of fact, however, President George 
Walker Bush has been governing with a view to pleasing 
the pro-abortion wing of his party and the national 
sentiment in favor of retaining at least some form of 
legalized baby-killing. This is why the new 
administration has done nothing to reverse the Food and 
Drug Administration's licensing of the manufacture of 
RU-486 and has done nothing to stop the funding of fetal 
tissue research and experimentation. The new 
administration continues to fund the chemical abortion 
of babies internationally by means of so-called family 
planning programs. And Howard Phillips has conclusively 
demonstrated the sham that is the reinstatement of the 
Mexico City policy of denying American taxpayer funds 
to agencies and programs that either perform or 
promote abortions. These organizations have more than 
enough money of their own to continue killing babies, 
and our taxpayer dollars continue to be used for 
contraception and sex-instruction. 

      President Bush included funding for Title X programs 
in his budget, meaning that so-called "family planning" 
programs are being promoted in this country with our 
tax dollars. The new administration is proving itself to 
be exactly what I predicted it would be throughout last 
year and into this: a careerist effort to maintain itself 
in power by giving lip service to the life issue on 
various occasions while continuing to institutionalize 
the triumph of policies of death in our law and in our 
culture.

     The loss of Republican control of the Senate was 
probably inevitable. South Carolina Senator Strom 
Thurmond, who will turn 99 years of age this coming 
December, might die before his term expires at the end 
of next year. South Carolina's governor, a Democrat, 
would fill Thurmond's seat with a fellow Democrat. 
Thus, it might have been only a matter of time before 
the Democrats regained control of the United States 
Senate. Nevertheless, James Jeffords's defection 
demonstrates that the delusional hopes of secular 
conservatives rested not only on a fragile political 
coalition but upon the false premise that it is possible 
to pursue the common good without regard to Christ the 
King and the authority of His true Church, that it is 
possible for people who are active enemies of the 
sanctity of life are fit to serve in government without 
posing a direct threat to the common good conservatives 
say they want to pursue. An administration which has 
the likes of Andrew Card, Donald Rumsfeld (who is very 
homosexual-friendly), Colin Powell, Christine Todd 
Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Condoleeza Rice, and 
Alberto Gonzales is flawed of its very nature. It is 
impossible for pro-aborts, whether they serve in the 
Executive Branch or in the Congress or in the Judiciary, 
to promote the common good precisely because they are 
at war with the primacy of the Divine positive law and 
the natural law over us men and our civil societies.

     When are we ever going to learn that secular 
conservatism is not the answer? When are we ever going 
to learn that religious indifferentism one of the roots of 
our problems, not the modus operandi by which we can 
address difficult issues in a pluralistic nation. When are 
we going to take seriously the injunction given the 
Apostles by our Lord before He Ascended to the Father's 
right hand in glory to convert the world to the true 
Faith? When are conservative Catholics going to stop 
deluding themselves about the state of things and start 
to recapture the wisdom of Popes Leo XIII, St. Pius X, 
and Pius XI about the necessity of praying and working 
for the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ and the 
Queenship of His Most Blessed Mother?

     The country is not with us. It will never be with us 
unless we are united in our efforts to serve Christ the 
King through His true Church and to plant the seeds for 
the conversion of this nation to the truth that 
sovereignty resides not in the people of any nation but 
in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man.

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Dr. Thomas Droleskey, speaker and lecturer, is a 
professor of political science, the author of CHRIST IN 
THE VOTING BOOTH and THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS 
CONDITION (www.hopeofstmonica.com), and editor of the 
"Christ or Chaos" newsletter.

This column is distributed and archived by Griffin 
Internet Syndicate, http://griffnews.com. All rights 
reserved.

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