Our Secretary of State, pictured above in her school days when she must have been busily not paying attention in at least some of her classes, visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe On Thursday March 27. After observing the image of Our Lady, Clinton inquired who painted it? She then told a group of Mexicans outside that they had a “marvelous virgin”. I must say that I am proud to have such a sophisticated, intelligent and well read person as Mrs. Clinton representing the U.S. abroad. I trust that she will not forget the “Montezuma’s Revenge” reference on a future trip to Mexico. Paying “homage” to Our Lady was squeezed in on her way to accepting the Margarent Sanger award Thursday night in Houston from Murder Inc., aka, Planned Parenthood.
Update I: “Reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women’s rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of this administration,” Clinton said in Houston, where she received the Margaret Sanger Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “
Update II: Ed Morrissey notes at Hot Air that Clinton said that she had been at the Basilica 30 years before. Hopefully she was paying more attention this time.
With all due respect, the hatred here is palpable.
You are correct Mr. DeFrancisis. Clinton obviously does not think much of either Catholics or fetuses. In the case of Catholics I would say it is stupidity rather than hatred. In the case of fetuses it might be hatred.
Ironically enough, Our Lady of Guadeloupe’s grace led to the conversion of an entire culture that was built on destroying life. Let’s pray that even this PR encounter leads to more conversion.
Mr. McClarey,
I just know that you can do better that this. These types of posts add a foul air to the general atmosphere of discussion.
Mr. DeFrancisis, your anger towards me is misdirected. I merely report the news and point out the follies therein. It is people such as Mrs. Clinton who engage in the follies and much worse. I tremble for our nation when, and it is when and not if, she has to wrap her tremendous knowledge base around a dangerous foreign crisis.
I am no fan of Hillary, but cut her a little slack here. Sheesh, there are CATHOLICS in this world who don’t know about Our Lady of Guadalupe; it doesn’t surprise me that a non-Catholic wouldn’t have heard about its miraculous significance. She’s probably seen it but assumed it was a painted icon like Poland’s Black Madonna, or Russia’s Our Lady of Vladimir.
One could argue that because she is Secretary of State and is supposed to be an expert on foreign cultures, particularly those of strategically important nations, she should know better. However, GOP presidents and administrations aren’t immune to similar gaffes. Bush’s last press secretary, for example, admitted she didn’t understand an analogy to the Cuban Missile Crisis because she didn’t know what it was.
I agree with Rick that given Our Lady’s success in turning around another culture of death, this might be a hopeful sign.
I have heard that President Reagan (whose father and brother were Catholic although he was not) knew about Our Lady of Fatima and was intrigued by her promise of Russia’s conversion.
While I’m not a Hillary fan (to put it mildly), I would be more surprised if she was aware of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Of course she is not a mere tourista. Secretaries of State are extensively briefed before foreign visits. I find the idea that she seems to be oblivious of Catholic beliefs regarding the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to be risible in the extreme, especially as part of the brightest and most sophisticated administration in our nation’s history, or so what is left of the mainstream press keeps assuring us.
When I saw the outrage from Mark I assumed part of the story was fabricated. In particular, I assumed the bit about the Margaret Sanger award was added as a joke. However, after reading the linked article it turns out she went from paying homage to Mary to receiving an award from PP named after a racist advocate of abortion as a way to clean up the gene pool. Yet, the outrage is directed at the author of the post and not towards the Secretary of State who would accept such a heinous award, or the President who would name such a character as SECSTATE. Seems our outrage is misplaced. I don’t care that she had no knowledge of the history of the shrine in Guadalupe. I do care that she has lived her sorry life in such a way that disgusting people like PP feel obliged to honor her. As a society we should be ashamed that PP exists and yet no less a figure than our SECSTATE deems them worthy of her presence. Yet, we have people more concerned about internet posts adding a foul air??? Ridiculous.
Last year when she was trolling for Catholic votes Clinton wore a “madonna” bracelet with an image of our Lady of Guadalupe. I guess it was boob bait for Catholics stupid enough to think it meant anything to her other than as a piece of jewelry.
http://www.splendoroftruth.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?search=madonna+bracelet&IncludeBlogs=1
I would think that if she was making a visit to the shrine, her staff should have provided her a one-sheet on Our Lady of Guadalupe. That’s the sort of cultural sensitivity and competence we were assured we could expect from this administration.
Or perhaps, being an “ugly American” tourist is more bipartisan than is generally claimed.
If she’d had the question sprung on her (in a Katie Couric interview?) on some unrelated occasion I’d consider it fair to allow her ignorance, but if you’re going to visit a national shrine you should know the five minute version of its story.
Frankly, I’m surprised by her gaffe. She has made a gross error.
On Donald’s point, I agree, that bracelet was mere pandering to the Catholic vote, a meaningless gesture worn by the former first lady.
Donad,
There is no anger or outrage on my part, but mere pity– that you have to bring the blog down to the level you sometimes do.
Your pity is misplaced Mr. DeFrancisis. I will attack absurdity and evil wherever I find them. If you do not regard Mrs Clinton’s ignorant perfomance at the Basilica as aburd, and her acceptance of the Margaret Sanger award as evil, then you and I clearly have different definitions of those terms.
I certainly do not agree with anything Margaret Sanger or Planned Parenthood stands for.
However, I think pro-lifers would be well advised to stop citing statements Margaret Sanger made back in the 1920s as “proof” that the modern-day Planned Parenthood is explicitly racist and bent on genocide.
That would be like insisting that Jews today shouldn’t buy Ford products because Henry Ford was anti-Semitic — even though Henry Ford’s personal views nearly 100 years ago have little if anything to do with how the company is run today. It’s an argument that makes pro-lifers, not PP, look like fools who resort to irrelevant ad hominem attacks to make a point.
In the early 20th century a LOT of educated and otherwise well-intentioned people considered eugenics a legitimate science that held the promise of eliminating poverty, disease, etc. The Nazis didn’t invent eugenics. They did, however, exploit it for their own racist and nationalistic purposes, which hastened its demise.
If I were looking for proof that the modern PP is racist, I would look for more recent evidence than that. Margaret Sanger died in 1966, I believe, and she gave interviews as recently as the late 1950s. She had to have been aware of the civil rights movement. Did she ever repudiate, take back or explain her earlier comments about “Negroes”? If she did repudiate those views later in life, then no matter how loathsome or offensive we may find her views on sexuality, I don’t think it would be fair to charge her or the modern Planned Parenthood with racism.
There are plenty of solid arguments against Planned Parenthood’s approach to sexuality without resorting to a rather lame charge like this.
Check this out Elaine http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338529,00.html
Then we have Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., who is one of the leading critics of Planned Parenthood in the black community:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13943
A group of black pastors in Washington attacked Planned Parenthood last year.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=13943
Now admittedly charging a group that kills children in the womb with racism does seem rather behind the point. However it is interesting how many Planned Parenthood abortion clinics are located near black population centers:http://www.lifeissues.org/connector/display.asp?page=05oct.htm
Elaine,
I think you’re missing the bigger picture with respect to the association of Margaret Sanger and PP. The larger issue is that the early 20th century progressive movement was in favor of eugenics because it was completely unmoored from any idea of natural right or law. The same is true of today’s progressives and many so-called conservatives as well. Both ideologies are suffering from a divorce from the reality of natural law; in the case of progressives, there is nothing eternal and transcendent, only the traditions that “hold us back” from the “progress” we should be making. In the case of many conservatives, it’s more of a Burkean “tradition for tradition’s sake” than anything else.
And so you have two sides basically trying to shout louder than each other with almost nothing in the way of first principles. In this respect, I think it’s *extremely* pertinent to point out the historical heritage of today’s progressives with those of the Sanger era. It’s not surprising at all that today’s progressives seem to have nothing in common at all with the racist eugenicism of Sanger; that’s because there’s nothing fixed in the ideology — there’s only the desire to defeat human nature and replace it with the pragmatic concerns of the zeitgeist.
Christian seems to be onto something — the notion that “progressivism” basically denies original sin and the need for repentance and conversion, because man can achieve perfection in this life if only he tries “something” hard enough.
Sanger’s belief in eugenics dates from an era when science and technology were thought to be the key to establishing “heaven” on earth. She comes from the same era as inventors like Ford and Thomas Edison, along with utopian fiction writers and thinkers like H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, etc.
It took World War II and the invention of the atom bomb to disabuse most people of the notion that science could solve all problems. After that, came the notion that “tolerance” and “just getting along” with people of different races, religions, etc. would solve everything. More recently we have the notion that a good education, a good job, regular checkups and counseling whenever something bad happens will cure war, crime, hunger and all other bad things.
So basically, the only thing Sanger’s progressivism has in common with today’s progressivism is its faith in something other than natural law and morality as the ultimate solution to social problems.
Mark DeFrancis! Can’t you man get a life? Why do you always feel the need to rush to the defence of people like Ms Clinton who are so militantly pro-aborts that they actually received awards from PP precisely because of that? I understand that, much like the Bush devil’s advocates of the previous administration, you are simply engaging in the usual Coalition For Fog…but there is a point where the whole thing becomes outright disgusting…
[…] in several posts, I have been in the habit of referring to Planned Parenthood as Murder, Inc. I apologize for doing […]
Mark, in my threads I do not allow personal attacks on other commenters. Since you are new, I believe, I will not delete your comment but no further personal attacks will be allowed by me. We can all make our points without attacking each other in the comment boxes.
I also want to make it clear that my intention is NOT in any way to defend Sanger or Planned Parenthood but to insure that pro-life arguments against their worldview are as solid as possible and not tainted by unfairness or distortion of any kind. We are Christians, after all, and are supposed to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.” That includes not making outdated accusations of racism against someone IF they or their organization changed their view later in life.
Well, I do apologise Donald Mc Clarey for having gone much too far…However I am really “bothered” by the almost knee-jerk reaction of some people who rush to the defense of people like Ms Clinton who has lead such a life as to be fit to receive the highest award of PP…what do such people think they are gaining by doing this? what thoughtul contribution are they bringing to the conversation? And yes, I often read Vox Nova; I know what they have done to fellow blogger Zippy and I apprciate the fact that you did not “send me into exile from civilization” (banning) too…
However it should be noted that it is Mr Defrancisis which assumed the worst of you with his “hatred is palpable” comment. I will also not walk away from the Coalition for Fog part of my comment because it’s true though i guess that in the politics of USA 2009 it’s fair game…
Thank you Mark. I allow more discretion when comments are directed towards me if I find that I can use them to advance the discussion. If not, I delete them. My purpose in mandating civility is partially manners, but mostly because I have seen too many combox threads on too many blogs devolve into wearying back and forth between a few commenters exchanging insults. I find those threads boring to read and ultimately a waste of time. The comboxes on my threads are for exchanging insights, ideas and views and never insults. I hope I will see you frequently in my comboxes because I think you can make a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate.
“De rien” as the frenchman will say…
To wrap up my earlier tangent on Margaret Sanger’s alleged racism: a quick Google search on this topic turns up several interesting articles.
Planned Parenthood of New Jersey has an article devoted to this topic. Of course it is meant to be sympathetic to Sanger, but it does point out that some of the most offensive quotes often attributed to her (such as “the most merciful thing a large family does to one of its children is to kill it”) appear to have been either wrongly attributed or taken grossly out of context. This does not surprise me as many historical figures and celebrities (from Lincoln to Einstein) are often misquoted or assumed to have said things they never really said.
The Wikipedia entry on Sanger notes her controversial racial views as well as the fact that they were shared by a lot of people at the time. It also notes, however, that she did not approve of the state-enforced Nazi eugenics program. She did once address a KKK women’s group (in the 1920s the Klan was at the height of its popularity and was known just as much for its anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant views as its racial views) but found it to be a strange and rather disturbing experience.
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, she also made comments acknowledging that abortion was killing a baby and that she intended for contraception to reduce the incidence of abortion.
Whether Sanger’s “Negro Project” was a consciously and deceptively racist effort to reduce the black population or simply an attempt to give black women the same “right” to control the size of their families as white women had, was and still is a matter of debate, particularly among African-Americans.
A good book in regard to Sanger and her role in the American eugenics movement is War Against the Weak.
http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153064/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238497600&sr=1-2
Here is a review of the book by Wesley J. Smith:
http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/offSiteArchive/www.nationalreview.com/index.htm
Another good book on Sanger and eugenics:
http://www.amazon.com/Margaret-Sangers-Eugenic-Legacy-Fertility/dp/0786420111
[…] Our Secretary of State is such a pro-abort zealot that she doesn’t realize that lecturing Canada about “safe”, always very unsafe for at least one of the persons involved, legal abortion might not be the best thing in the world for the top diplomat of the US to do. I will be so glad when this worst Presidential administration in my life time is just a fading bad memory. […]