Like I said, I figure the religious outreach by Dean died with Terri Schiavo if the reaction by the usual suspects yesterday was anything to judge by.

More proof, if any was needed, that the inmates are now running the asylum.
Dan Darling | Homepage | 04.20.05 - 6:19 pm | #

I can't even click on the Dailykos link. That guy has become a complete self delusional lunatic.

Remember what he said about the US contractors who were mutilated, burnt and hung in Fallujah? "Screw them".

I vote for candidates in both parties, but goodness gracious, some of these people just make it difficult to stay non-partisan.
ElCapitanAmerica | 04.20.05 - 6:53 pm | #

Brought to you by the same witless adolescent fools who think that saying "Bush is a Nazi" is sooooo clever.
SEB | 04.20.05 - 6:56 pm | #

Hell yeah re your Dean comment. Seconded one hundred per cent. Imagine if the Cardinals had elected someone with an African or Arabic surname and the Klan started to make fun of it. Kos has lost it.
Tom R | 04.20.05 - 7:24 pm | #

Kos has lost it.

You can't lose what you don't have.
Publius | Homepage | 04.20.05 - 8:01 pm | #

One leftist blogger said how appropriate it was that Ratzinger named himself after an infamous traitor. That commment tells you everything you want to know about that person.
Patrick Rothwell | Homepage | 04.20.05 - 8:39 pm | #

Evidently "neoconservative" has completed the descent from "the people who read and write the Weekly Standard" to "conservative and Jewish" to "conservative I dislike for disagreeing with ME" to join "fascist" as an all-purpose pejorative.

Verbicide. I hate it.
Will | Homepage | 04.20.05 - 8:49 pm | #

Hehe, there was this MENSA sponsored contest wherein you changed or added one letter to a word and give it an all new meaning. I find one of the more popular entries to be most appropriate for a guy like Kos...

Ignoranus (n.) - a person who is both ignorant and an ass****.
JonathanR | 04.20.05 - 10:39 pm | #

The term "neoconservative" lost any meaning it had long ago. The way it has been utilized as a pejorative against Catholics like George Weigel is pathetic: "Weigel is a 'neocon', so anything he may have to say about any subject (even if it's not about politics) should be ignored".

Will, you are correct: it now means "any conservative with whom I disagree."
Jay Anderson | Homepage | 04.20.05 - 11:42 pm | #

Actually, the new Holy Father does have something in common with the notion of "neoconservatism" in the original sense (the Irving Kristol / Norman Podhoretz / Daniel Patrick Moynihan etc. sense). He was a formerly "progressive" theologian who moved in a much more traditional direction (without rejecting modernity altogether) in part because of the student unrest of 1968. In this sense, his itinerary is very much like that of other religious neoconservatives, like Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak. Student radicalism and the events of 1968 played a big part in helping many of these previous liberals and radicals getting "mugged by reality", and sparking their neoconservative turn.

Of course, this kind of neoconservatism has nothing to do with the "evil plot to take over the world on behalf of Israel" neoconservatism which the press has obsessed about forthe past couple of years.
Mark C. | 04.21.05 - 6:42 am | #

Wow. Dan's comments boxes get REALLY wild.
Ed | 04.21.05 - 10:49 am | #

I'm a liberal Democrat. I am also a committed, practicing and (I hope) devout Catholic. Reading the various liberal blogs over the past few days has been a nauseating experience. They mix in equal helpings of no-nothingism, ignorance of what the Church is, an implacable dislike of anything that suggests that, yes, there are real external moral standards which trump what we are comfortable with, as well as absolutely bone-headed contempt.

It's sickening and disgraceful.

Maybe worse was Charles Curran's self serving op-ed in the LA Times this AM, complaining about the fact, in essence, that he was not allowed to continue marketing himself as a Catholic theologian at a nominally Catholic university while claiming that the Catholic view of sexual morality is 180 degrees away from what the Magisterium teaches. (He should have been sued by his students for false advertising).

The brief period when the media was not sniping at the Church for being old-fashioned or "out of step with today's thinking" is over, and the bashing will begin anew.

Fortunately, we know that even the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the faith.
Ace | 04.21.05 - 11:19 am | #

First the reelection of Bush, then the election in Iraq, and now the election of this wonderful orthodox pope: the leftists in this country are being driven to distraction by elections! No wonder they are panicking about judicial appointments - no one will be left to defend their agenda...
John Hearn | 04.21.05 - 12:21 pm | #

Ed:

You only take flak when you're over the target ...
Dan Darling | Homepage | 04.21.05 - 3:54 pm | #

Mark C:

I would disagree with your analysis and I would never group Neuhaus and Novak with Ratzinger. Whatever term you want to apply to Neuhaus/Novak/Weigel/etc., their theological approach isn't in my opinion the same as what some would call the communio school, of which I would count our new Pope a member.
JACK | Homepage | 04.21.05 - 6:15 pm | #

Don't the ultra-trads use "neocon" in a different, non-political sense? I'm pretty sure I read a left-leaning guy who had picked up a trad analysis and said basically "oh, this new pope is just a chaplain for the GOP!"

Poor dope.

Oh, and US neocons still stink. Weigel and Rev. Neuhaus just shower more than the others.
Kevin Jones | Homepage | 04.21.05 - 9:04 pm | #

Don't the ultra-trads use "neocon" in a different, non-political sense?

Arguably. It was first put into wide circulation by Chris Ferrara and Thomas Woods in The Great Facade as a perjorative for people who more or less fall in the range of Mr. Shea and Mother Angelica in the Church's theological squabbles: orthodox, devout, but cleaving to the party line on the value of Vatican II and the changes, especially in the liturgy, that came after it; and therefore, to the authors anyway, compromised in some sense, albeit against their own good will. I am suspicious of their intentions here, since both of them are, indeed, opponents of neocons in the political sense of that term, and many so called religious "neo-cons" are political "neo-cons", but there is no evidence I know of that would definitively tie the two uses together. It has the ring of a factional label to me, but I can't pin it down for sure.
Anonymous Coward | 04.21.05 - 10:11 pm | #

Today we have a cultural war between Christians and secularists. Because of Benedict XVI's extreme parochialism the cultural war in 10 years will be between Catholics and every other kind of Christian in the U.S. Catholics will be marginalized and vilified, and they will have only themselves to blame.

I'm celebrating Regnum Antichristi in Benedict's honor.
Iblis | 04.24.05 - 1:37 pm | #

And I'm laughing as Benedict's enemies commit themselves to prophetic announcements that are as foolish as they are wrong. You guys are going to look so silly.
Mark Shea | 04.24.05 - 7:18 pm | #

"Today we have a cultural war between Christians and secularists. Because of Benedict XVI's extreme parochialism the cultural war in 10 years will be between Catholics and every other kind of Christian in the U.S. Catholics will be marginalized and vilified, and they will have only themselves to blame."

Hmm . . . One might come to this conclusion, Iblis, if one has no consistent contact with Christians of other faith communities. I regularly attend Christian men's group meeting of which I'm the only Catholic & , I must say, that this large group (they're mostly Evangelicals) would very much disagree with your above statement! In fact, I recently read a piece by Chuck Coulson praising our new Holy Father. (And, darn it, I can't find that link now. When I do, I'll post it.) Lumping secularists & "every other kind of Christian in the U.S." is quite a broad statement. Based on my personal experience, I've not found that to be the case at all. Care to specify?
Gene Branaman | Homepage | 04.24.05 - 11:49 pm | #

Here's the Chuck colson piece you're referring to.

http://www.pfm.org/AM/ Template.c...CONTENTID=15889
Luciana | 05.12.05 - 11:18 pm | #

I almost thought it was going to be a decent article, but that was short lived. Gosh I hate it when I finish such an article and think of all the other truly interesting things I could have been reading.....sheesh.
Lucy | 06.17.05 - 11:15 pm | #

Neo Con?

Was it not he along with his liberal theologians who added the "subsists? in Lumen Gentium and made an entire generation of Catholics search for the "truth", because the Catholic church for some amazing turn of events lost the truth and it wound up possibly under Buddah, Hindu, or sheik's house?

He unfortunatly is the wolf in sheeps clothing our lord warned us about. Neo con because he has a heavy heart for the destruction of the church and liturgy that he pushed forth and now feels guilt maybe
John | 08.06.05 - 4:42 pm | #