Robbing The Fire Of Intolerance Of Its Fuel

Anti-Catholicism in the 'Era of Tolerance'

Knights of Columbus spokesperson Kathleen Blomquist (...) spoke of a long history in America of discriminating against Catholics (...). “Our country’s sad history of anti-Catholic bigotry contributed to the founding of the Knights of Columbus, and we are proud of the many Catholics who overcame this hurdle to contribute so greatly to our country,” she told the Catholic News Agency.

And now anti-Catholic bigotry is coming back in the guise of progressivism.—Rod Dreher, American Conservative

A New York Post article exposes two Democratic Party members' imposition of a religious test on a prospective candidate for the US District Court for Nebraska.

The NYP article identifies the serious reoccurring problem with progressivism and its adherents: the violent scapegoating of those they consider a threat to their partisan definition of tolerance. Blinded by 'their own truth', which is or should be an obvious contradiction in terms, progressivists sacrifice anything or anyone that threatens them on the altar of their comfortable sense of entitlement. Their intent is to impose their irrational policies on citizens and bully those who offer any resistance to progressivist/socialist ideology. In that regard, the Democratic Party of progressivists, liberals and socialists is no different than any other fascist organization.

• DC Knights of Columbus respond to Anti-Catholic Bigotry
• Catholic Herald
• Washington Examiner
• The American Conservative
• The Christian Post

Socialist is as socialist does: pogroms and purges are the modus operandi of progressivists who feel threatened. Feelings can be made to serve any cause, and the obvious disconnect between Hirono's and Harris' feelings and the US Constitution, which "explicitly forbids imposing any religious test for public office", suggests a serious mental break from reality. Certainly a break from morality and decency on the part of Hirono and Harris.

Progressivism, like its parent socialism, cannot handle real debate so it enables its adherents to cast themselves as the victims of hatred, victims who in turn demand blood. These days, progressivists generally fill a lake with the blood of anyone who dares to challenge the progressivist agenda.

Kevin D. Williamson at the New York Post writes:

Sens. Mazie Hirono (left) and Kamala Harris say a Trump nominee is too extreme for a judicial position because he belongs to a Catholic organization.

Funny who is an “extremist” these days.

Senators Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono (Democrats of California and Hawaii, respectively) are challenging the nomination of Brian Buescher to the US District Court for Nebraska because he belongs to a religious organization that takes positions they describe as “extreme.” Which organization?

The Knights of Columbus.

(T)he Constitution explicitly forbids imposing any religious test for public office, which is what Sens. Harris and Hirono here propose to do for the federal judiciary. The second and related issue is that it is not the Knights of Columbus that opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, but the Catholic Church. If a KOC member is ineligible to serve on the federal bench because of the beliefs of that organization, then every Catholic in the United States — and the world, for that matter, all 1.2 billion of them — is ineligible for similar office, since they belong to a much larger and much more prominent organization that is the source of those “extreme positions.”

[...]

Sen. Harris, in a wondrous display of utter ignorance, demanded of Buescher: “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?” Buescher deserves credit for declining to respond, “Is the pope Catholic?”

But note the classically McCarthyite formulation of the question.

One of the ironies here is that the Knights of Columbus was founded in part to counter such anti-Catholic bigotry, which traditionally has been associated with the Democratic Party and its military arm, the Ku Klux Klan. If the Democrats were more historically literate, they would blush to pursue such an obvious course of bigotry and illiteracy.

But that is politics at the end of 2018: Every political disagreement is a prelude to Nuremberg, every nonconforming thought an invitation to be cast into the outer darkness.

Under the standard articulated by Sens. Harris and Hirono, every Catholic in the United States would be a political suspect and a second-class citizen — and the First Amendment would be in tatters. It would be a return to the 19th century.

For the Democrats, some things never change.

Surely it's time for Catholics to abandon support for the Democratic Party, the New Democratic Party (Canada), the Liberal Party (Canada) or any group that seeks to marginalize Catholics and others by denying them the right to run for public office or work in the courts for the people. Do recall Justin Trudeau's own version of a religious test when he banned from his caucus anyone who holds pro-life views, and more recently when he tried to ban groups from receiving summer jobs funding. Liberalism is a monster with an insatiable appetite for power which, having captured one of its prey, attains the strength to devour larger prey.

CBC: Pro-lifers need not apply

BBC: no funding for faith groups

Calgary Herald: no funding for faith groups

Isn't it time that the progressivist heresy be robbed of its fuel? When a fire burns out of control, fire suppression cannot depend on water (reasoned debate) or chemical retardants (the press, mainstream media) alone. A fire depends upon fuel to spread. The Democrat fire depends on Catholic fuel, that is, the support of ill-informed Catholics who do not understand that they themselves are the fuel that stokes the fire of Democrat/Socialist intolerance, and like all fuel, it/they will be burned up as Democrats leave a trail of ash and soot vaguely resembling the charred corpses of Catholic Americans who wittingly or unwittingly supported the Democratic Party war on people of faith and morals.

Open Letter From DC Knights of Columbus

https://oboyle.dcknights.org/index.php/news/66-open-letterto-senators-concerned-about-the-knights-of-columbus