[annabenedetti]

Obama's Catholic Church Gambit: Lessons from American Communists

Last paragraph sums it up:

If Obama can frame his mandate as a matter of contraceptive freedom -- rather than an obvious constitutional affront on religious liberty -- he may be able to successfully pit large numbers of Protestants and even many Catholics against the institutional Catholic Church. It would be the kind of religious agitation that would make the Marxists of the last century -- particularly Obama's mentor -- very proud. How's that for "hope" and "change"?

Also - interesting, but not surprising for anyone who has read any history of the American Communist Party:

In my book, Dupes, I shared the case of Anna Louise Strong. Strong was an editor to the flagship publication of the communist front Friends of the Soviet Union, which masterfully manipulated progressives like Upton Sinclair. We published a photo of Strong and Sinclair together on the "Friends" editorial page, where a stoic Sinclair vows to "expose the lies and slander" against poor old Joe Stalin -- maligned by those mean American anti-communists.
Anna Louise Strong was a loyal American Bolshevik. In a July 1953 report, Congress described her as "one of the most active agents for the Communist International." She did dutiful propaganda work for Moscow, shamelessly arguing that Stalin had "conquered wheat," even publishing a widely read pamphlet by that name, when, in fact, Stalin launched a famine that killed millions.
Among Strong's propaganda work was to enlist Protestant clergy against the Catholic Church. One egregious example was an incendiary letter to the editor Strong placed in the October-November 1941 issue of The Protestant. There, she made the claim that the Vatican was calling for religious freedom in the USSR not because the Soviets were blowing up churches, killing priests, and gulaging nuns, but because the Church was seeking control of Russia. This was ludicrous, but it was just what some anti-Catholic Protestants wanted to hear.

That letter from Strong was so deceptive and such blatant Soviet propaganda that it was highlighted by Congress in a major report on subversive activities by American communists.

Among the communist organs that Anna Louise Strong wrote for was the Chicago Star, known to locals as the "Red Star." The editor-in-chief and co-founder of the Star was Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, who was a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA.

Here's the thing: if conservatives fail to address the contraceptive/abortion/sterilization mandate as an assault on religious freedom, they risk turning this into an argument over the morality of contraception and we will have lost.

Rush mentioned this week that this was set in motion last month when in one of the debates, the moderator kept asking Romney and Santorum if states had the right to ban contraception. He kept pressing the point until Mitt told him he knew of no state even contemplating the issue, and the incessant questions regarding it were "silly."


...I keep putting in the links to these and hoping someone will go and read the whole article...this one is really interesting.

[aCultureWarrior]

Informative. Thanks for sharing.

[chrysostom]

Originally Posted by annabenedetti

If Obama can frame his mandate as a matter of contraceptive freedom -- rather than an obvious constitutional affront on religious liberty -- he may be able to successfully pit large numbers of Protestants and even many Catholics against the institutional Catholic Church. .

this will work because the women are going to buy into it
and
there are not enough men around with the guts to stand up for what is right

[PureX]

Originally Posted by annabenedetti

Here's the thing: if conservatives fail to address the contraceptive/abortion/sterilization mandate as an assault on religious freedom, they risk turning this into an argument over the morality of contraception and we will have lost.

The thing is that by stating the issue as it has just been stated ("the contraceptive/abortion/sterilization mandate"), it has already been positioned as a moral argument over the use of contraception. Because stated in this way, it appears that the government is forcing people to use contraception, have abortions, and be sterilized. Which is completely false, as well as absurd. It's exactly this insistence on absurd extremism that turns the public off.

Originally Posted by annabenedetti

Rush mentioned this week that this was set in motion last month when in one of the debates, the moderator kept asking Romney and Santorum if states had the right to ban contraception. He kept pressing the point until Mitt told him he knew of no state even contemplating the issue, and the incessant questions regarding it were "silly."

No more silly than the conservative's insistence of framing the debate exactly as the questions being asked, implied: that the government is trying to force people to use contraception, have abortions, and be sterilized. This is what happens when republicans try to manipulate language to imply untruths, so as to stir up hatred toward Obama, and it blows up in their face.

What's going to happen when someone asks Romney or Santorum if they believe that religious faith exempts people from obeying the laws of the land? Because sooner or later, someone is going to ask this question, and they aren't going to be able to say 'yes', for obvious reasons. But when they 'no', they're going to be asked why they are supporting and promoting the claim that the government is wrong to force religious institutions to obey the same laws everyone else has to obey. And at that point they will be caught up in their own self-contradiction. Not a pretty place for a presidential candidate to be.