In spite of their hatred, it's a mistake to call Marcotte and McEwan bigots in the strong sense. True bigotry involves irrationality, i.e., blurring of distinctions that the bigot himself deems important, whence bigots treat all Jews or all blacks under the same description of opprobrium, whether a given individual exhibits the despised quality or not. Further, the bigot will cheerfully indulge his bigotry even if his own interests suffer therefrom, as when the anti-Semite hires a less-competent gentile salesman in preference to a more competent Jew. There's no indication that the Edwards bloggers succumb to either sort of irrationality (as McEwan says, she voted for Kerry -- unquestionably her kind of Catholic). My sense is that if these gals and I were involved in a prisoner exchange, they would place the correct tags on the correct people and assign to each the proper level of utility or harm: "Ratzinger's your guy; Cawcutt is ours; Sam Brownback's your guy; Nancy Pelosi is ours." ... Marcotte and McEwan's [hatred] is not hot and diffuse but cold and well-targeted -- too cold to arraign them for bigotry.Diogenes, as usual, makes an excellent point, but I don't agree that it's en point.
For these reasons the usual exchange of complaint and concession disguises the key factors in this controversy. Those Catholics for whom extracting an apology is important can only get one by playing along with the identity politics game, and that means feigning (or exaggerating the centrality of) hurt feelings -- feelings, that's to say, that libs are willing to concede Marcotte and McEwan may have wounded. But to my thinking this ploy is largely disingenuous. A man's feelings are hurt not by injury simply, but by injury where good will is expected. Five minutes' browsing on the damsels' blogs suffices to show there's no good will to abuse. And, paradoxically, when one belligerent openly declares open war on another, it can thereafter hurt everything pertaining to its enemy except its feelings. Marcotte and McEwan may be "offensive" in the military sense of aggressive, but for Catholics to complain of being offended by their antipathy is to imply a human bond that isn't there. In sum, it's to pay them a compliment they don't deserve.
The point of course, is not that a couple of liberal bloggers with Catholic educations (one attended St. Edward's in Austin, the other Loyola) have been educated to hate the Church, and have made a hobby of expressing their hatred in the most vitriolic terms on-line.
The point is that a top-tier Presidential candidate of the world's oldest political party in the world's greatest nation could choose these women to represent him. When someone makes a practice of putting their personal viewpoints into the public forum, and is subsequently engaged as a spokesman for a would-be political leader, it really does constitute an endorsement of the spokesman's previously-expressed views by the candidate.
The hiring of these women is John Edwards' appeal not only to netroots liberals, but also to Catholics and indeed all religious people. Edwards may call those remarks offense and try to distance himself, but at best, he's trying to have it both ways.
(Liberals love to have it both ways. McEwan claims that her vote for Kerry in 2004 acquits her of anti-Catholicism. Indeed? And do my votes for Alan Keyes in 1996, 2000 and 2004 disprove charges of racism against me?)
Senator Edwards is telling those who are so virulently opposed to magesterial Catholic teaching that he's their guy. But he also wants people of faith to believe that in some sense, our values are his values. But that other group despises us and wants us dead. He's lying to one group or the other.
Once again, Edwards should not fire Marcotte & McEwan. Having hired them, he has chosen sides, once and for all. He has declared, much as he may now deny it, his contempt for Catholics and indeed all Christians and other people of faith who hold to traditional Judeo-Christian morality. This declaration would not be rescinded by the simple act of firing the two. That would only demonstrate his lack of spine for those whose side he has chosen: the extreme liberal netroots haters of all things moral.
As I've said, I find this level of honesty in a presidential campaign to be refreshing. John Edwards has clearly and unmistably declared himself to be, not just my political opponent, but the implacable enemy of everything I believe in: the sanctity of human life, the importance of our inalienable rights, the supremacy of our Constitution, the necessity of our national defense, the idea we used to call "common decency", and even the notion of basic courtesy.
John Edwards has (reliably, albeit perhaps inadvertantly) revealed the fundamental evil of his character and his program by aligning himself with women who have repeatedly and unmistakably preached hatred and evil in public over an extended period.
There is no further need for those who disagree with his ideas to pretend faith in his personal good intentions, nor treat his proposals with any sort of courtesy. John Edwards and his supporters, and his political program are all essentially evil. He has embraced the devil, and deserves the contempt of all moral folk.
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