Will Hillary Clinton clean out the nest of anti-Catholic bigots in her inner circle? Or is anti-Catholicism acceptable in her crowd?
In a 2011 email on which Clinton campaign chief John Podesta was copied, John Halpin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress that Mr. Podesta founded, trashed Rupert Murdoch for raising his kids in a misogynist religion. The most “powerful elements” in the conservative movement are Catholic, railed Mr. Halpin: “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations…”
Clinton spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri agreed: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they become evangelical.” “Excellent point,” replied Mr. Halpin. “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they are talking about.”
What the pair is mocking here are both the faith decisions of the Murdoch family and traditional Catholic beliefs and social teaching. This is a pristine example of the anti-Catholicism that historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr., called “the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people.”
In another email in this latest document dump from WikiLeaks, writes Ben Wolfgang of The Washington Times, Mr. Podesta and Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, mocked the Miss America pageant, because so many finalists are Southern girls and young women. Said Mr. Podesta, “Do you think it’s weird that of the 15 finalists in the Miss America, 10 came from the 11 states of the CSA?” (The CSA would be the Confederate States of America.) “Not at all,” says Ms. Tanden, “I would imagine the only people who watch it are from the confederacy and by now they know that so they’ve rigged the thing in their honor.”
In another email, Mr. Podesta himself uses the sort of language liberals once said disqualified Nixon from staying on as president — regarding former Governor Bill Richardson. Mr. Podesta refers to him and other Hispanics whom he is trying to court for Clinton as “needy Latinos.”
What these emails reveal is the sneering contempt of liberal elites for Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Southerners, and even Hispanics loyal to them. And the contents of these emails correlate with the revealed bigotries of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
In September, Mrs. Clinton told a gathering of rich contributors at a gay rights fundraiser in New York City: “[Y]ou could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.” Responding to the cheers and laughter, Mrs. Clinton went on, “Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”
What Mrs. Clinton said to the LGBT partisans echoed what Obama told rich contributors in San Francisco in 2008, who wondered why he was not doing better in Pennsylvania. “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years.… And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Mr. Obama was saying that when small-town Pennsylvanians fall behind, they blame others and revert to their bibles, bigotries and guns. Yet Mr. Obama has never explained what caused him to sit content for 20 years—and be married and have his daughters baptized—in the church of a ranting racist like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, at the time of 9/11, roared from his pulpit “God Damn America!” What so attracted Barack Obama to Rev. Wright’s bigotry?
These latest emails confirm what we already knew: Our elites, who are forever charging others with “racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia,” are steeped in their own bigotries—toward Southerners, conservatives, Middle Americans, Evangelical Christians, and traditionalist Catholics—the “irredeemables.”
Though the election is still a month off, the campaign of 2016 has already done irreparable damage to the American establishment. Its roots in the nation it purports to lead have been attenuated if not severed. It has shown the world a portrait of American democracy at its apex that approaches the repellent. Through the savagery of its attacks on those who have risen up against it, the establishment has stripped itself of all claim to be the moral leader of American society. Its moral authority is gone. Even if Mrs. Clinton wins, it can no longer credibly speak for America.
As for the national press corps—the Fourth Estate—it has been compromised, its credibility crippled, as some of the greatest of the press institutions have nakedly shilled for the regime candidate, while others have been exposed as propagandists or corrupt collaborators posturing as objective reporters.
What institution in America today, besides the military, enjoys national respect? And if people do not respect the regime, if they believe it acts in its own cold interest rather than the nation’s, why should they respect or follow its leadership?
We have entered uncharted waters.
Republished with the gracious permission of Mr. Buchanan. Books by Pat Buchanan may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore.
Hillary Clinton isn’t a candidate worthy enough to vote for, but neither is Donald Trump. I will be sitting this election out. Refusing to participate IS the correct vote this time around, and am hoping enough others will see the wisdom in doing so too.
Sorry, but refusing to support Trump now is to at least implicitly endorse Hillary and the entire left wing agenda. We’ll get 8 years of Hillary followed by 8 years of another Dem because the GOP will be seen as too gutless to defend one of their own. When things don’t really matter, a sort of “Principled Neutrality” is fine, but when things really DO matter (like now), it’s a luxury we can’t afford.
None of this is surprising. Americans are generally ill informed insofar as Catholicism is concerned. These emails are not bigotry, merely ignorance. It’s what you can hear people say in everyday conversation. Like most emails they are expressions of popular opinion. The media is sensationalizing them and blowing them out of proportion.
The proper response to such ignorance is patient education.
Meanwhile I am not at all happy at the new convention according to which private conversations in emails are now fair game. Particularly in the executive office.
I am alarmed that our government is lax in providing the security necessary to maintain secrecy in executive action.
I voted for Trump, but things like what someone wrote in their private emails would be the last thing to influence my vote. Except that it makes me think DOD is doing a bad job.
“Meanwhile I am not at all happy at the new convention according to which private conversations in emails are now fair game. Particularly in the executive office.”
Nobody deserves it more than Hillary. She hates the entire human race, she deserves to have this fact revealed. Plus, she, a non-catholic, has the nerve to think the Catholic Church should be remade in her image – pro abortion, pro gay marriage, pro rape, etc.
I think it is sufficient that a just God reads her emails.
If one reads Mr. Buchanan’s article carefully, it will be evident that “Bigotry Unmasked” is itself “a pristine example of the…’the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people’. Albeit Arthur Schlesinger Sr’s.genius, that distinction belongs to the pervasive racism or anti-intellectualism the present U.S. inherited from the Anglo-American culture. To be fair, Mr. Buchanan should unmask the bigotry of both candidates and ask his readers to go out and vote their conscience, whether they agree with his or not. Gonzalo T. Palacios, PhD
An insight, as if you need it, into the cesspool that is the Democrat party. Their religion is government coupled with power, the aphrodisiac that has fed the would be statesmen in their dreams.
As to Trump, some hope but all in all it will be a dry season if you’re looking for statesmen