Shifting Politics, Unchanging Truth

Political parties, like all secular entities, are constantly changing. This is why it is not wise to identify deeply with any particular party. A quick look at recent American history illustrates this.

When FDR brokered the New Deal in the 1930s, the Democratic Party became the Party of the immigrant and the blue collar worker, while Republicans were seen as favoring the rich and powerful establishment. Later, in post-World War II America, family values were championed – not by Republicans, but by Democrats. And in the 1960s, the civil rights movement found a home in the Democratic Party, and it seemed like the party of the future.

In the 60s and 70s, the term “Rockefeller Republican” signified the typical Republican that was economically conservative but socially liberal. Today, we call them RINOs.

Most Republicans during this time period were seen as supporting abortion – like Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush. Most Democrats, on the other hand, claimed to be pro-life, like Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and Al Gore.

All of this was soon to flip.

When hell conspired to merge the women’s liberation movement with the sexual revolution, the two political parties began to change faces. During the 1970s, Democrats fell like dominoes to the abortion lobby.

It was 1980 when the nation had its first ‘pro-life’ president, Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

In the 25 years between Reagan and Donald Trump, the two President Bushes went through the motions of being pro-life, but this was evidently not a priority for either of them. Reagan and Trump, however, attracted conservative Democrats, made the GOP the pro-life party, and defined between them the meaning of the term RINO. Both were hated for it.

Meanwhile, Democrats morphed into the party of the establishment – a party that also champions abortion and sexual perversion. No political party has ever challenged natural law like today’s Democrats. Upholding the greatest genocide of human beings the world has ever known in abortion, it is not a stretch to refer to it now as the Party of Death. At this point, support for child-killing, CRT and preferred pronouns has become non-negotiable.

Politics is the art of ideas and compromise aimed at the good of society. The underlying battle between theist and atheist world views are divided much differently today than they were 50 years ago. As many Catholics and others of good-will found out in the 1980s, faithfulness to unchanging principles might mean having to change support for political parties.

Unchangeable principles must underlie our political engagement for the common good. There can never be peace without justice, nor justice without truth. When Truth Himself (Jn 8:32, 14:6) is denied (Jn 18:38), and reason (Jn 1:1) is lost, politics devolves into a raw power play.