To the editor:
Recently, I’ve been listening to U.S. government officials coolly defend the government’s new policy of separating children from their parents at the border with a singular rationale: “It’s sad, but we have no choice — their parents broke the law.”
To me it sounds an awful lot like the defense that some would give for abortion. “It’s sad, but what can we do? Abortion is the law of the land.”
To the editor:
Most people know a family member, friend, or neighbor who has had a traumatic health problem. In our family, it was when our two-year-old son ran into the highway as a car came over the hill. Comprehensive health insurance freed us from worrying about costs and let us concentrate on our son’s needs.
Anyone who experiences a similar disaster can imagine what other people go through in such a crisis. Empathizing with fellow Americans is natural in a country founded on the belief that we are all created equal. Equality in feeling suffering leads to equality in relieving and preventing suffering.
We Americans have always prided ourselves on having a democracy that operates fairly well.
Unlike some other countries, we usually settle our differences nonviolently (the Civil War being one big exception). We’ve relied on the ballot box to vote for our leaders.
But over recent years, it seems as if our peaceful way of governing has given way to nasty bickering and even violence in word and deed.
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I was pleased that the United States Supreme Court dismissed a suit brought by Michael Newdow, a Sacramento man who wanted to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from the nation’s coins and paper currency, as well as from the fronts of our public buildings.
The argument that the gentleman brought forward was that this custom somehow violates the First Amendment guarantee that the government shall make no law either establishing an official religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion in the United States.
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True respect for life requires us to get out of our comfort zone. Oh, we might say, “I respect life, I vote for ‘pro-life’ politicians who claim they will work to end abortion.” However, in a democracy voting is usually easy and comfortable.
But are we willing to regularly stand outside of an abortion mill on a freezing winter morning or hot summer afternoon praying and witnessing to the humanity of our unborn brothers and sisters? That’s harder and somewhat uncomfortable.
Now for those who are willing to get uncomfortable in support of the Catholic Church’s efforts to protect unborn human life, try to move into an even more uncomfortable zone: acknowledge the truth that war does much to disrespect life. War kills life — mostly innocent life.
One doesn’t have to try very hard these days to read or hear media accounts of how polarized our politics have become. The topic has been studied and commented upon at length in recent months.
Some of this commentary notes that Wisconsin is among the most polarized places in the country, where the chasm between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans is especially wide.
For one thing, as was noted recently in a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story on the topic, voters are more ideological. That is, they rarely blend conservative and liberal positions. Instead, they are more likely to embrace either a liberal or a conservative view across the board.
World Youth Day 2011, being held in Madrid from August 16 to 21, will be an important moment in Pope Benedict XVI’s campaign to remind Europe of its Christian roots and to call Europe to a nobler understanding of democracy.
As the Holy Father demonstrated in an address in Zagreb, Croatia, in early June, the two parts of that campaign — the recovery of Christian roots and the deepening of 21st-century Europe’s idea of democracy — go together.
To the editor:
On the topic of democracy, 50 years ago the Rev. John Courtney Murray, in his book We Hold These Truths, described majoritarianism as a kind of democratic tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. We see this in the American political system, where you get both war and abortion, or usury and the normalization of sodomy no matter who you vote for.
Throughout the world there seems to be a hunger for freedom and democracy. Almost every day there are people demonstrating for a better way of life in countries all around the world.
In the United States, we fought that battle hundreds of years ago and won our freedom. We established a democratic form of government with three branches of government: executive (the president), legislative (Congress with two houses), and judicial (our court system).
Anyone familiar with the recent election campaign or with the “reader comments” that accompany editorials and news articles knows that civility is often the first casualty in debates today.
Nearly anyone who makes a public argument finds his intelligence questioned, his motives impugned, or his basic decency assaulted. Some critics will even doubt the patriotism or Americanism of their opponents. Others call their opponents bigots or racists.
