Senator John F. Kerry yesterday called for a new national commitment to reduce the number of abortions, saying that both sides on the abortion debate can reach “common ground” on the sharply divisive cultural issue that was prominent in his defeat in the 2004 presidential election.

In an intimate speech laced with references to his Catholic upbringing, Kerry chastised abortion-rights supporters and anti-abortion activists for the “overly partisan” tone that has polarized the nation. Despite their intense opposition, Kerry said, there are areas of agreement — such as tax credits for adoptive parents, more government aid for working mothers, and health insurance for everyone.
“Even as a supporter of Roe v. Wade, I am compelled to acknowledge that the language both sides use on this subject can be, unfortunately, misleading and unconstructive,” Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, told an audience at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. “Instead of making enemies, we need to make progress.”
The speech is Kerry’s most extensive attempt to describe his religious views and define where he stands on so-called “values issues” since President Bush defeated him for the presidency in 2004. Bush and the Republican Party used abortion, gay marriage, and other controversial social issues to motivate conservative voters to the polls against Kerry.
Throughout his career, Kerry has said he is personally opposed to abortion but would not impose his views on others. On the campaign trail in 2004, Kerry said he believed human life begins at conception but asserted that, if elected, he wouldn’t appoint a Supreme Court justice who would “undo a constitutional right” by overturning Roe.
Kerry said in a telephone interview yesterday that the speech is in the same vein as his past comments about the need to make abortion safe, legal, and “rare.” He said he wanted to exhort both sides of the abortion debate to recognize the sincerity of each other’s beliefs and “be more honest about the complexity of the moral decision here.”
During the 2004 campaign, Bush often spoke of promoting a “culture of life” to contrast himself with Kerry. Some Catholic archbishops, disturbed by Kerry’s more liberal positions on abortion and stem cell research, questioned his right to take Communion and urged parishioners to vote against him.
According to the Pew Research Center, Bush, a Methodist, carried the Catholic vote by five percentage points, even though Kerry was the first Catholic presidential nominee of either party since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Exit polls in 2004 indicated that Bush swayed some voters by expressing his faith.
Kerry’s close defeat caused some soul-searching among Democrats about religion and values in politics. The senator told his audience yesterday that the bruising campaign with Bush taught him that despite his reticence to talk publicly about faith, “if I didn’t fill in the picture myself, others would draw the caricature for me.”…

If we stay home, we let them define us.

Committee chairs in a Democratic Congress:

John Conyers
Charlie Rangel
Dennis Kucinich

The German Communists said “After Hitler, us.” Most of them were killed.

“We will not win the battle against global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force.We can only win by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just than the alternative. That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded, fair and just in our application of those values.”

But what precisely are “our values”? After nine years in power, we can be quite certain that whatever Tony Blair’s values are, they most certainly are not the traditional values of the West.

Perhaps by “our values” he means liberalism, which entails materialism and individualism, and is most unpalatable to the Christian as well as destructive towards traditional Western societies. Well if that’s what this war is about, then I’d say fight on. With any luck the Islamists will kill all the liberals and the liberals will kill all the Islamists and the rest of us could go on with out business.

The trouble is that the liberal individuo-materialists (be they ‘New Labour’ or neo-con Republicans) aren’t fighting their own battle. They’re sitting back in their government offices and think tanks while the brave men (and, sadly, women) of the United States armed forces die every day for their loathsome ideology.

You have to admit, it’s a brilliant strategy. Given that the Armed Forces are not generally composed of liberal individualists, they kill two birds with one stone (almost literally). They send the more-or-less conservative-leaning army to fight the Islamists and no matter who dies, the liberal individualists have won. An Islamist dies, one less enemy abroad. An American soldier dies, one less potential threat at home. Having the army fighting abroad also keeps it from getting any ideas about, er, shall we say, re-orienting the route of government at home away from the liberal-individualist-materialist project.

“That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded, fair and just in our application of those values.”

Yet I doubt that they (since we have established that it is ‘they’ and not ‘us’) actually are evenhanded, fair, and just in their application of their values.

Fighting Islamic extremism is unappreciably important, which is why the mistakes of the Bush-and-Blair crowd are all the more woeful.

Here is a quote:

“We will not win the battle against global extremism unless we win it at the level of values as much as force.We can only win by showing that our values are stronger, better and more just than the alternative. That also means showing the world that we are evenhanded, fair and just in our application of those values.

I am amazed at how many people will say, in effect, there is increased terrorism today because we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.They seem to forget entirely that September 11 predated either. The West didn’t attack this movement. We were attacked.

This brings me to a fundamental point. For this ideology, we are the enemy. But “we” is not the West. We are as much Muslim, as Christian, or Jew or Hindu. We are all those who believe in religious tolerance, in openness to others, in democracy, liberty and human rights administered by secular courts.

This is not a clash between civilizations: it is a clash about civilization. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace in the modern world, and those who reject its existence; between optimism and hope on the one hand, and pessimism and fear on the other.
…
The danger with America today is not that they are too much involved. The danger is if they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage.

We need them involved. We want them engaged. The reality is that none of the problems that press in on us can be resolved or even contemplated without them.”

Blair gets it. Indeed, Americans *are* dying for American freedoms because it is in America’s interest to vanquish Muslim extremism abroad. Blair’s speech explains why with an eloquence and lucidity that are in high demand these days.

Given:
1) He lives in a congressional district of suburban liberals which has a solid Democratic majority.
2) His state hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential election since the year he was born.
3) Living in New York, he’s probably never voted Republican anyhow since New York has the Conservative Party line.