Democrats versus Republicans - the great divide on life

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JohnStrachan

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As a student of everything political I am perplexed as to how the two main parties in America became identified with their position on abortion. What is it about a laissez faire approach to life and economics that engenders such strong support for life? Conversely, what is it about a party that is more inclined toward equality of outcome and so-called social justice that inclines them to support abortion on demand? Has it always been this way? If not, when did the change take place?
 
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Always, I think. Generally speaking, one side is interested in the human person, while the other wants to save humanity. Those that attempt the latter generally tend to destroy many human persons in the process. Notice that the democrats are interested in groups and not individuals. They are very willing to sacrifice millions of individual human beings to save the planet, for example. All social engineering projects known to man cost millions of lives.
 
When Gov. Bob Casey Sr. was denied the opportunity to give a pro-life speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention, it pretty much sealed the deal. The Democratic Party had become the abortion party.

 
It wasn’t always that way. There was a point in time where the left in America cared about equality of opportunity and treating each person as an individual rather than as a member of a group. The change took place probably around the 60s and 70s when the left started taking on collectivist ideas about society and how it should function. During that time we saw the sexual revolution in action; people started to take the position that we could abandon moral standards for the sake of “free love.” And that of course led to people abdicating moral responsibilities to their spouses and bringing life into the world; think no fault divorce and legalization of abortion.

Basically the left became perverted with Marxist ideas and post modernist thinking and the people who were in their youth at that time became professors and or parents to children.

It comes down to a long burning culture war. And I think a lot of Christians are incapable of fully grasping the ideas driving the culture wars for the left. It’s about social and political dominance. Structured bodies like the Church are an obstacle to their plans for society.
 
Yay!

My husband and I have often wondered the same thing! It doesn’t make any sense!

The Republican Party is traditionally the Party of “small government,” and the Democrats are the Party of Big Government. So it’s the REPUBLICANS who should be “hands off” when it comes to medical procedures and it’s the DEMOCRATS who should be making laws regulating every aspect of medical procedures (which they do, except for abortion!).

And IMO, BOTH Parties should recognize that all human beings in the U.S. are entitled to LIFE and the protection of that life. The Issue is whether or not the fetus and/or embryo is a human being. The science of genetics would say “Yes.” Why is it that “science” is touted to prove and/or disprove “climate change,” but ignored when it comes to abortion?
 
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The change took place after Roe v Wade which gave rise to the religious right.

Some very liberal law professors foresaw that this would happen and criticized Roe for going a step too far and basically causing the religious right to become a big political force in USA.

There is also an underlying issue of the Republicans simply not wanting to pay for more medical procedures, which is in keeping with their general policy of reducing government spending on entitlements and social programs.
 
I must confess to some confusion regarding some of the posts here. I would consider myself something of a leftist, with left-leaning friends. Some of the posts seem to be describing something so far removed from anything either I or my friends believe or fight for, that it is hard to even identify those comments as bad caricatures.

Of course, from where I am standing, the Democrats and Republicans largely differ only in the amount of corruption, the exact amount of tax cuts given to the rich, climate change, and a couple of social issues. A select few shine out as exceptions, and I hope they become the rule. Otherwise, the selective outrage between the two seem to be nothing more than sports ball team rivalries.
 
The political divide is due to 1) the culture of the victim demanding recompense in millions rather than the criminal prosecution of the guilty; and having the public pay for it 2) the lack of understanding of the difference between welfare and charity 3) the ability of house and senate to a) pass laws that apply only to themselves and not to others and b) apply to themselves and not to others 4) not having a sensible and practical environmental understanding of the stewardship of nature as a communal reponsibility.
 
To be blunt - the reason you are asking this question is because you (like millions of others) really do not understand the fundamental differences between the Republicans and Democrats. It goes way farther than economics.

Democrats are the intellectual American descendants of the Enlightenment thinkers. Just like many of the socialist and liberal political parties around the world.

Republicans are the indirect descendants of Catholic Thought.

WHAT??? Republicans and Catholic thought? How can that be???

Well, it really has to do with the idea that historic Catholic thought is that true democracy is bad. And that the best possible form of govt is a monarchy (provided you have a good monarch). But since you sometimes there are bad monarchs, therefore, the only acceptable compromise is a republic.

A republic is focused on subsidiary - which is a very Catholic idea. Republics, while they can use democratic elections, are usually protected from mob rule (at least far more than true democracies).

Republicans strongly believe what their name suggests: in being a republic.
Democrats strongly believe in being a democracy.

This is why Democrats typically change their positions with the polls and believe in “voter mandates.” This is also why you have Democrats who say they are personally against abortion but are pro-choice. They feel that America is a Representative Democracy, where the rep must vote the way his/her voters want.

Republicans don’t view it this way. In a republic, you vote for your representatives and then they vote on each issue using their own professional, academic, and moral judgment on each issue. If the representative does a good enough job, they get re-elected. This is why Republicans rarely (at least compared to Democrats) flip on issues. This is also why Republicans are less united than Democrats in Congress.

But really, it all comes down to that key word I said before: subsidiarity. While you rarely hear non-Catholic Republicans use the term, Republicans are practically all in on subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a concept that is taught in almost all Churches … (even if indirectly) and the majority of Republicans attend Church services. And the pro-life message, is a form of subsidiarity because every individual life is special and every life has the right to life, liberty and to follow the American dream. Which means, a parent doesn’t have the right to end a child’s life.

Obviously, the issues are far more complex than I can write here. But I do recommend this one podcast and then book.

Podcast: https://www.patrickcoffin.media/america-will-perish-without-rome/
Book: Catholic Republic: Why America Will Perish Without Rome by Timothy Gordon, JD

God Bless
 
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ontheway1 said:
Always, I think. Generally speaking, one side is interested in the human person, while the other wants to save humanity. Those that attempt the latter generally tend to destroy many human persons in the process. Notice that the democrats are interested in groups and not individuals. They are very willing to sacrifice millions of individual human beings to save the planet, for example. All social engineering projects known to man cost millions of lives.
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This is astute.

The political left has, for quite some time, been various degrees of utopian. And part of that involves “correcting” the human species. This is why the left adopted eugenics so early: human evolution can’t be left up to chance; we have to direct it to get rid of the unfit from society. The phrase “survival of the fittest” wasn’t coined to refer to Darwinian evolution; it was in reference to eugenics.

The individual has always been expendable for the goals of “progress,” and the modern view of “progress” is extremely hedonistic: sex must be divorced from procreation so that it can become pure pleasure. And so abortion is necessary to that vision.
 
With the exception of abortion, there is no other issue I agree with Republicans about.
Paul Ryan did all he could to try to destroy social security and medicare.
He and his bunch tried to undo the Affordable Care Act, but had nothing to replace it with. Thank God, the late Senator John McCain voted no.
Republicans are against a raise in the minimum wage.
These are just a few issues.
 
I believe the change started with Reagan’s ability to sell the evangelicals after he had more than advanced abortion in all of California. Carter previously received the endorsement of the evangelicals. To this day you will find him at odds with the Democrat pro-abortionists.

Then you have the blue dogs coming out every now and then to give the Democrats the majority.
 
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Also, because of the Democrat’s intellectual lineage with the enlightenment thinkers, they are far more susceptible to cultural marxism and they have bought into the fundamental driver of cultural marxism 100% - which is feminism.

Marxist feminism needs birth control, needs abortion, needs women working, needs star run day care (to indoctrinate the children) all because Marxism wants to destroy the family and the patriarchy.

Since Republican are NOT descendants of the enlightenment, they are less susceptible to cultural marxism (though not immune)

God bless
 
Small government? The national debt went up during the time that Ronald Reagan, HW Bush, W Bush, and now Trump have been in office.
The idea that the GOP is for government is pure hogwash.
 
phil19034 said:
Since Republican are NOT descendants of the enlightenment,
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Big if true.

There’s a lot more to the Enlightenment than leftism. How about, say, Adam Smith? Locke?

Small-r republicanism is heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. It’s important to remember that the Enlightenment was not a homogeneous movement. The English was different than the French was different than the German was different than the Scottish.

The more important difference is that American conservatism also includes Burke’s skepticism of the power of human design. The faithful progressive comes up with an idea and first says “this is brilliant and must be implemented immediately!” The faithful conservative comes up with an idea and first says “why doesn’t this already exist?”
 
Sadly, it is super super about politics, vote harvesting and $$ 😦
The good news is, we have other parties!
 
OnAJourney said:
It wasn’t always that way. There was a point in time where the left in America cared about equality of opportunity and treating each person as an individual rather than as a member of a group. The change took place probably around the 60s and 70s when the left started taking on collectivist ideas about society and how it should function. During that time we saw the sexual revolution in action; people started to take the position that we could abandon moral standards for the sake of “free love.” And that of course led to people abdicating moral responsibilities to their spouses and bringing life into the world; think no fault divorce and legalization of abortion.
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I don’t think this is entirely true. Before the Civil Rights Era, the Democrats were the party of slavery and the KKK. In the North, they where the party of giving immigrants and blacks from the South cheap housing in exchange for votes (aka local ward bosses).

The Democrats capitalized on the Progressive Era of American History to clean up their representation, but they have never been a party of subsidiarity.

Republicans on the other hand, while they did shift left during the progressive era, have really always been a party of subsidiarity.
Basically the left became perverted with Marxist ideas and post modernist thinking and the people who were in their youth at that time became professors and or parents to children.

It comes down to a long burning culture war. And I think a lot of Christians are incapable of fully grasping the ideas driving the culture wars for the left. It’s about social and political dominance. Structured bodies like the Church are an obstacle to their plans for society.
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This is true. But they had started to become perverted with cultural marxist ideas almost 100 years ago. The communists knew they couldn’t win the West with economics. So they focused on cultural issues under the guise of liberalism and progressivism.

God bless
 
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HopkinsReb said:
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phil19034:
Since Republican are NOT descendants of the enlightenment,
Click to expand...
Big if true.

There’s a lot more to the Enlightenment than leftism. How about, say, Adam Smith? Locke?

Small-r republicanism is heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. It’s important to remember that the Enlightenment was not a homogeneous movement. The English was different than the French was different than the German was different than the Scottish.

The more important difference is that American conservatism also includes Burke’s skepticism of the power of human design. The faithful progressive comes up with an idea and first says “this is brilliant and must be implemented immediately!” The faithful conservative comes up with an idea and first says “why doesn’t this already exist?”
Click to expand...
The American republic is far more influenced by Catholic Social Teaching that any of the protestant founders would have liked to have admitted.

Tim Gordon does an AWESOME job of discussing this and pointing it out. It’s striking how Catholic the Declaration of Independence and Constitution really are.
 
phil19034 said:
The American republic is far more influenced by Catholic Social Teaching that any of the protestant founders would have liked to have admitted.

Tim Gordon does an AWESOME job of discussing this and pointing it out. It’s striking how Catholic the Declaration of Independence and Constitution really are.
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The same can be said for much of the Enlightenment. This idea that there’s this monolithic Enlightenment that stands in opposition to Catholic teaching is fallacious. The Enlightenment was a very mixed bag, with totalitarianism, conservatism, liberalism, and libertarianism all having it out.
 
HopkinsReb said:
Small-r republicanism is heavily influenced by the Enlightenment
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True. However, the American Republic is founded before the movement towards Republics around the world became the vogue.

And our Republic is equally (if not more so) influenced by the Romans, the Greeks, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, etc rather than the Enlightenment.

Remember, unlike most republics in the worldwide, American isn’t a post Enlightenment republic.
 
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