Liberals Can Become Conservatives . . . But Will Catholic Dems Distance Selves From Party Extremism?

By DEXTER DUGGAN

Radio talk host and writer Seth Leibsohn recalled for his audience how he began his journey away from the political left.
Raised in a liberal family, the Phoenix-born Leibsohn went to a socialist bookstore in high school — back in 1987 — but was surprised that the first work he saw prominently displayed was “an anti-Israel screed that swallowed whole the PLO line that Israel should not exist and that it did exist at the expense of Palestinian human and civil rights,” Leibsohn told his listeners at the Phoenix-based KKNT (960 AM) on July 8.
The PLO is the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Leibsohn, who went on to become a conservative political activist on the national level and a producer in Washington, D.C., for the Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio talk program, returned to Phoenix and went on the air at KKNT in 2011.
In another example of his political transformation, Leibsohn recalled on July 8 that he took an upper-level psychology course in his college freshman year and received a B-minus on a paper, while a senior-class friend received an A-minus. Reviewing the friend’s paper for hints on how to improve, Leibsohn saw it was peppered with grammatical and spelling errors and reasoning unworthy of college.
Curious at how he could better his own grade, Leibsohn spoke to their teacher and, in the course of the conversation, mentioned his friend’s higher grade. She replied that her grading took into account his different background.
The friend was Hispanic, but that hadn’t mattered to Leibsohn. However, he wondered, why didn’t his own personal background matter in the teacher’s race-conscious evaluation, too?
Such nagging questions led him away from his earlier political convictions to a different philosophy while concern for the unfortunate and helping others remained preoccupations.
“I was a member of the Youth Socialist Alliance and went off to college thinking I would bolster my left wing bona-fides and help change the world. I was committed to helping the poor, I believed in keeping sacrosanct the Bill of Rights, and I loathed racism. I was a big believer in human rights,” Leibsohn told listeners on KKNT.
“I thought welfare should be expanded to help the poor, I thought drugs should be legalized, I thought our military buildup was a bad idea and came at the cost of helping the poor, especially minorities, and I thought tax reform should mean taxing the wealthier more,” he said.
The former young socialist went on to become vice president of Empower America, an influential think tank, one of whose founders was Jack Kemp, a so-called “bleeding heart” conservative former GOP congressman, vice-presidential nominee in 1996, and cabinet secretary.
A March 2018 article in Arizona’s Jewish News said, “Empower America was a right-wing think tank founded in 1993 by Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett, with Jeane Kirkpatrick as a prominent member. Leibsohn described the group as ‘three of Reagan’s greatest foot soldiers.’
“He said they focused on issues related to education, urban development, taxes, foreign policy, and substance abuse,” the Jewish News article said. “Leibsohn worked as the organization’s vice president while serving as chief of staff to both Kemp and Bennett.”
Bennett had been President Ronald Reagan’s chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, then his secretary of Education, in the 1980s. Kirkpatrick was a former young socialist who became a Democrat, served as Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, then became a Republican.
Kirkpatrick reportedly asked Reagan if he minded having a Democrat on his team, to which the GOP president replied that he previously was a Democrat, too. Kirkpatrick had grown increasingly disillusioned with the Democratic Party, in part because of what she saw as its growing weakness on foreign policy.
There comes a point when a person concludes his loyalties are betrayed by those he had aligned with and he needs a new political home, as did Leibsohn, Reagan, and Kirkpatrick.
These days one wonders how much longer some Catholics can continue their affiliation with the Democratic Party after it not only became the official party of death and depravity for massive abortion and sexual disorientation, but also due to its closeness to the extremists favoring the current Marxist-inspired Black Lives Matter (BLM) and physical attacks on Catholic churches and religious imagery.
One reason may be that dominant left-wing media continue to downplay and ignore the growing virulent anti-Catholic vandalism and arson being done supposedly with the excuse of something like “social justice and equality.”
If Donald Trump supporters with their MAGA caps committed these deeds, they’d be blasted at the top of every news hour with demands that White House officials crawl around in penance. But when the dominant left wing of Democrat leadership yawns over the extremism of radical activists, they get a pass, and Democrats aren’t shamed for maintaining their party allegiance.
On July 13 the conservative Media Research Center’s News Busters posted: “Over the weekend of July 12, at least five Christian churches were vandalized by vandals and suspected arsonists. But most people haven’t heard about this rash of violence. None of the major news networks have mentioned it.
“Out of 270 minutes of NBC, ABC, and CBS nightly news coverage for Friday, July 10, Saturday, July 11, and Sunday, July 12, not one second was spent on these violent anti-Christian attacks,” News Busters added.
On July 11 priest-blogger Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (wdtprs.com) posted about the latest anti-Catholic attacks under the headline, “It’s someone else — until it’s your turn: churches attacked, burned in these U.S.A!”
Zuhlsdorf included a report from the Los Angeles Times about the burning of the nearly 250-year-old California Mission San Gabriel, founded by the leftist-despised St. Junipero Serra, and, on the other coast, the Ocala (Fla.) News’ story about a man who crashed his vehicle into Queen of Peace Catholic Church there then set it ablaze with cans of gasoline as parishioners prepared for morning Mass.
No one died in either fiery attack.
Meanwhile, among other incidents, statutes of the Blessed Virgin were vandalized in Elmhurst, N.Y., and Boston. These followed statues of St. Serra being torn down in California, while statues of various U.S. historic figures abhorred by left-wing thugs were yanked down here and there.
The Virginia-based Les Femmes — The Truth blog (lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com) commented sardonically on July 12 about the lack of publicity on the church burnings:
“Imagine if a mosque or a meeting of Black Lives Matter was the target. We’d be hearing about it non-stop! ‘A hate crime!’ But, no — ho-hum. Hey, nobody was hurt. It’s just Catholic churches and they all need to be knocked down anyway with those statues of the white Jesus inside. Yup — they all have to go.”
In Phoenix, preaching at the Saturday evening, July 11, Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, visiting priest Fr. Ryan Lee urged steadfast adherence to the faith and prayer for the conversion of its attackers. He was applauded by the congregation.
Rejecting the concept of some kind of corporate guilt, Lee said, “I will not apologize for sins and crimes I have not committed, and I will only apologize to the Lord my God for my sins, for I am only responsible for my own actions.”
Lee urged prayer for the conversion of the attackers, “all those who are coming against (the Church), that they may be saved.”

Mary’s Plan Of Peace

The Wanderer asked some of its Catholic sources for reactions to the recent attacks.
Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs the Les Femmes – The Truth blog, said on July 13: “This might be too apocalyptic for you, but that’s where I am at present. We are in real trouble and, unless there’s a miracle of grace, I see no way out except that of the Roman martyrs.
“We smell the stench of Satan in what’s happening around the country,” Kreitzer said. “We’ve moved from attacks on historical figures who owned slaves to the real target of Satan — Jesus Christ and those who follow Him. And it’s escalating, with churches torched even with people inside.
“The destruction of St. Junipero Serra’s statues in California is ironic in view of the fact that he fought so hard to protect the Native Americans there,” she said. “Do any of today’s know-nothings realize that he was the victim of violence and left a letter saying if he was killed by the natives, he wanted them set free? Do the vandals know he walked to Mexico to ask the government for policies protecting native rights?
“We see demands to destroy all statues of the ‘white’ Jesus, which is only a preliminary to destroying all images of Jesus and His friends, no matter what color they are. Statues of Mary and the saints are being vandalized and decapitated, all over the world. Churches are being defaced and destroyed,” Kreitzer continued.
“The hatred being fomented against Christianity isn’t surprising because Jesus Christ is the real target of atheistic Marxism and that is exactly what this is about, atheistic Marxism,” she said. “We are living in very dark times and people need to embrace Mary’s plan of peace revealed at Fatima. Pray the rosary every day, make the five First Saturdays of reparation, fast, and pray.
“And if you’re smart and are able, follow the scriptural advice to ‘flee the cities’,” Kreitzer said. “People used to flee to America for protection. If our country falls, there will be no place to flee but to the tabernacle. What better place to be when the barbarians attack?”
Rob Haney, a retired chairman of the Phoenix-based Maricopa County Republican Party, said on July 13:
“Satan has definitely taken over our culture and is using BLM to destroy the Judeo-Christian foundation of our constitutional republic. Tragically, many of our Catholic prelates are supporting this, leading the faithful away from our Magisterium’s true teachings.
“We only need to look at the path that the French Revolution took in attacking not only the monarchy but also the Church, to realize what is happening now,” Haney said.

Not An “Accident”

Northern California conservative commentator Barbara Simpson, enumerating anti-Catholic attacks, noted that the devastation to southern California’s Mission San Gabriel from a roof fire “happened just after it was announced that Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris will be rebuilt — itself a victim of a roof fire that destroyed the building. Talk about timing. 
“I don’t think any of this is an ‘accident.’ There has been a rash of church burnings in France — and I fear there’s more to come here. Yet, what’s hard to miss is the lack of vehement response by Catholic clergy. Only subdued comments by one bishop or another and, so far, not a word from the Pope,” Simpson said on July 13.
“There should be outrage at this insult to our religious freedom — but, crickets,” she said. “As for Rome, as the Hagia Sophia cathedral is taken over by Turkey and converted into a mosque, the Pope said only, ‘I think of Hagia Sophia and I am very saddened.’
“I’m sad too, and angry. We need a militant Pope and militant clergy who will defend our faith and our history. If not, we’ll lose it all,” Simpson concluded.