Progressives Try To Lure Religious Voters – OpEd
Whenever one of the two major parties gets walloped, it leads to a lot of soul searching. That’s what’s going on now. The Democrats readily admit that they have a hard time getting men, the working class and religious folks to vote for them. Regarding the latter, there is clearly a push to attract more religious voters, and those leading the charge are banking on social justice issues to garner their support. But will it work?
Progressives like to point to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, as the springboard that put its agenda squarely in religious circles. They tout its commitment to fair wages, unions and the rights of labor as a platform to pursue the cause of social justice. What they fail to say is that this document pointedly rejected socialism.
This encyclical was a staunch defense of private property—an anathema to socialists. The pope also dismissed the socialist quest for the primacy of the state, holding that nothing was more important to the good society than strong families, units that should remain outside the purview of government.
Today’s progressives also need to be reminded of what their leaders said during the Progressive era, when Rerum Novarum was issued. Richard T. Ely was their star. He co-founded the American Economic Association and was considered to be sympathetic to the plight of blacks. But he was also a racist. “Negroes,” he opined, “are for the most part grownup children, and should be treated as such.”
Margaret Sanger was also a prominent activist during the Progressive era, and active in the Socialist Party of New York. She, too, was a racist. The founder of Planned Parenthood believed that blacks were inferior and needed to be “weeded out.”
Megan Romer is one of the leading lights in progressive circles today. She is a co-chair of the DSA and a lay leader in the Presbyterian Church (USA). But her ambitions do not sound like the social justice agenda that most would recognize. She wants to abolish the police and empty the prisons, as well as allow an unlimited number of illegal aliens to crash our borders. She never explains how social justice is achieved by letting serial murderers and child rapists run free while at the same time justifying a mass invasion of our country.
Zohran Mamdani, the Marxist Muslim Millionaire Mayor of New York City, is the poster boy for progressives and socialists of all stripes. In his inaugural address he boasted, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” This was his way of saying he abhors capitalism and loves socialism. But history tells us that the only “warmth” that collectivism provides emanates from the body bags it spawns.
The other problem that today’s progressives face in attracting religious folks is its fixation on sexual libertinism.
They still defend the insane, and inherently dangerous, idea that genital mutilation, chemical castration and puberty blockers are a good thing to do to troubled young people, most of whom are women. They also defend the destruction of women’s sports by allowing men to compete against them, as well as the destruction of privacy rights by allowing guys to shower with them. Are these policies now part of the social justice agenda?
Most of those who attend religious services—across faith communities—hold to traditional moral values, which is why progressives have such a hard time reaching them. They may engage in “God talk,” but as long as their policy prescriptions are rooted in the politics of extremism, few will listen, and fewer still will follow. Alas, some things never change.
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