Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 5:05am

Andrew Cuomo, Father Barron and Alexis de Tocqueville

Statue of Bigotry

Hattip to cartoonist Michael Ramirez for his brilliant Statue of Bigotry cartoon.  A guest post by commenter John By Any Other Name:

 

 

Father Robert Barron, who no one could credibly call a firebrand, had a post at National Review Online that caught my attention:

“In the course of a radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo blithely declared that anyone who is pro-life on the issue of abortion or who is opposed to gay marriage is “not welcome” in his state of New York. Mind you, the governor did not simply say that such people are wrong-headed or misguided; he didn’t say that they should be opposed politically or that good arguments against their position should be mounted; he said they should be actively excluded from civil society!”

The good guv’ner somewhat walked back his comments, trying to spin it that it wasn’t that people who were pro-life, pro-“assault weapons” and “anti-gay” (these were the other two descriptors Cuomo used) weren’t welcome, just that they would have a hard time winning office in the state.  Yet, Father Barron properly captures the evil of this in his observation: “they should be actively excluded from civil society!”
This is precisely what Alexis de Tocqueville was discussing in the below quote.  I stumbled across this one while looking for another quote from Democracy in America.  I confess I haven’t actually read the book, though it’s on my reading list after I finish the Knox translation of the Bible and a few other important books.  Emphasis is mine.

Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else.  But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than  death.

Father Barron concludes saying that what ought to bother us is that once one group (Catholics) are excluded from civil society, the tactic will be re-applied as necessary to any who aren’t in line with the establishment.

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Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 6:19am

Andy and his father Mario are Catholic – pro-infanticide, pro-sexual perversion Catholics in public! They brag about it! Why aren’t they publicly excommunicated as St. Paul did to the sex pervert in 1st Corinthians chapter 5? Or as Hymenaeus and Alexander were excommunicated in 1st Timothy chapter 1? What is wrong with Cardinal Dolan and Bishop Hubbard? It is one thing to have private sin even sexual, fail but try to do good again. It is another to brag about and extol one’s perversion.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 7:43am

Cuomo is a thug who needs to be held responsible.

NYS is the worst-taxed state in the US, with NJ a close second worst.

All the libs have are class hate/war, gender, race-baiting, and sexual orientation.

Your so-called social justice is class war with a thin vaneer of pious-sounding claptrap. (N.B. I stifled myself from typing a more colorful metaphor.)

First they came for the Jews, and I did nothing . . .

Do something. That could be desultory, passive resistance or emigration to remnant America.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 8:12am

“”You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.””

This is called white martyrdom. It may be called segregation. It is called taxation without representation. How can Andrew Cuomo represent his constituency, when he refuses to acknowledge their existence and sovereign citizenship, even as they constitute the state?
Ostracism, also known as exile, and shunning were intended to drive evil from your midst, as called for by Moses and his law. This was mandated to maintain purity, innocence and virginity in the tribes of Israel. Innocence and purity are necessary virtues to deliver Justice. It is the duty of the state to deliver Justice. Therefore, it is the duty of the state to protect and provide for innocence and virginity. Here, Andrew Cuomo drives innocence and virginity away from our midst, making of the people a thoroughly criminal class unable to deliver Justice.
Andrew Cuomo is an indecent and unjust man who ought to be impeached for not representing his constituency.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 9:28am

Paul W Primavera: “Andy and his father Mario are Catholic – pro-infanticide, pro-sexual perversion Catholics in public! They brag about it!”
Andy and Mario Cuomo are wannabe pro-abortionists, wannabe homosexual sodomists. These are campaigning for the pro-abortion and pro homosexual sodomy vote and disenfranchising, disengaging and discarding their constituents. Pro-abortionists and pro-sodomists have already exiled themselves from the halls of Justice because vice and lust can never be changed into virtue and love. They have self-excommunicated themselves and probably do not receive Holy Communion. It is up to the Catholic parishioners to make sure that they do not.
This is the end fruit of embracing: “I am personally opposed to abortion but I cannot impose my morality (or lack thereof) on anyone.” Read: “I do not do abortions and I do not commit sodomy but so, I must impose my vacuum on all of my constituents for the abortion and gay vote” Immorality imposed, constituents disavowed, bigotry enacted.

c matt
c matt
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 11:16am

These are campaigning for the pro-abortion and pro homosexual sodomy vote and disenfranchising, disengaging and discarding their constituents.

Well, if they keep winning elections, then it would seem they are not disenfranchising, disengaging and discarding their constituents, or at least not enough of them to lose office. Cesspools like NY, NJ and the Left Coast will remain what they are until those who feel marginalized “vote with their feet.” Although I would think that, politicians being what they are, the average Joe gets shafted while muckety mucks (who you would think would like to avoid such high-tax places) get back room deals to make it worth their while to stay.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 11:22am

There are the motives for the left’s long-running campaigns to control education and chuild-rearing (latest is all day pre-school); seize your guns; tax your income; and confiscate/regulate (how you use) your property.

Gibbon “Decline and Fall . . . “ paraphrased: “An educated, well-informed populous, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince (despotism).”

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 12:37pm

T Shaw is correct. Democracy is the despotism of a simple majority ignorant of principle and intent on voting themselves bread and circuses, thus are Democrats like Mario and Andy Cuomo despots. Only in a Republic does T. Shaw’s educated, well-informed populous, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies exist. Today’s populous of Facebook, reality TV and gay sex promoting Grammy Awards is NOT that populous, but rather a people with whom the likes of Caligula would be most at home.

I hate Democracy – two wolves and one sheep voting on what is for dinner. I love liberty – a well armed, well educated sheep contesting the vote.

Democracy – the tail side of the coin whose head is Socialism.

Liberty – freedom – is always contrary to both Democracy (dictatorship by the majority) and autocracy (dictatorship by an autocrat).

Democracy – 1st Samuel chapter 8 in action.

CatholicsRock!
CatholicsRock!
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 2:56pm

My father had the great misfortune to work for Mario Cuomo, He thought Mario was an egomaniacal gas-bag, who shamelessly unleashed the powers of his office on anyone (and there were several of these people) who Mario did not like. Mario personally saw to the destruction of an industry that employed thousands of people. It was an industry for which New York State was famous. Mario did not like the people running the industry. So he wrecked it, and put thousands of people out of work, and left huge, rusting, unused buildings on the horizon.
My father said he had exposure to Andrew the evil spawn. Andrew, “man of the people” that he is, yelled and screamed at a parking lot attendant at a NYS facility, for not recognizing the then 20-something lawyer as the “Governor’s son”. My father said Andrew did this in order to impress the senior NYS officials who were with him at the time. My father was not favorably impressed.
The Cuomo’s are a bunch of filthy, oppressive, elitist scumbags, on both a political and personal level. I moved out of New York State a long time ago. Although I am generally regarded as “the stupid one” of all my parent’s children, the fact that I got out of New York before that greasy, loudmouthed slimeball Andrew took over gives me an automatic win when I am with my siblings. So I am grateful to the Cuomo clan for that, I suppose.
Andrew Cuomo is certifiably insane. I have no doubt that he is going to take care of himself, and as he goes down the political toilet to dwell with the Eliot Spitzers and Anthony Wieners of this world, we will all simply pray for a second flush, to somewhat alleviate the stink he left behind.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 3:37pm

Not that I want to pile on . . .

But, you won’t see this anywhere in the media.

A. Cuomo was head of US HUD late in the Clinton maladminsitration.

I don’t know if he has had all the copies burned, but he misspent tax money to publish a big, glossy magazine type publication touting his vast achievements as US Housing Cappo di Cappi (spelling?).

He controlled FNMA/FHLMC/GNMA/FHA. He dictated that the mortgage agencies (government sponsored entirprises) that 50% of their trillions of $$$ home loan purchases had to be to “low-to-moderate” income borrowers.

The rest is history.

A. Cuomo mightily helped inflate the housing bubble, crash, and the great recession.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 4:16pm

The majority voting idiots of New York State elected the imbecilic Cuomo, just as the elected his father three times.

I invite the good, observant Catholic New Yorkers and other pro life New Yorkers of any Christian belief to pack up and get the hell out of Cuomo’s empire. Policies enacted by the NYC majority have made the most of the rest of New York State an economic disaster.

I dread the day when Philadelphia and its suburbs lord it over the rest of Pennsylvania as NYC and its burbs do to the rest of New York State. Ed $pendell was elected twice as Pennsylvania governor with his power base in Southeastern Pennsylvania and God help us if another Filthy-delphian pol takes the Governor’s Mansion.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, January 29, AD 2014 9:08pm

Andrew Cuomo swore an oath to uphold the Constitution on inauguration day. For Andrew Cuomo to turn around and refuse to represent some of his constituents after swearing an oath to represent all of his constituents and after taking in the citizens’ tax money is more than bigotry, it is malfeasance in office, subject to impeachment.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Thursday, January 30, AD 2014 6:17am

Meanwhile, back in the Land of Lincoln, we have someone who appears to be a lakefront Chicago liberal Democrat in GOP clothing — gazillionaire Bruce Rauner — going all out to buy, I mean win, the Republican primary for governor by flooding the airwaves with campaign commercials and raking in huge campaign donations.

For reasons that would take all day to explain, I really, REALLY don’t trust this guy and if the general election ends up being Rauner vs. incompetent, bumbling Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn, I refuse to vote for either. His signature issue is reining in state employee unions and abolishing (not just reforming, but abolishing) their pensions (which is a serious issue); never mind the fact that he made a substantial chunk of his fortune off of investing… wait for it… state employee pension funds!

By the way, Rauner contributed LOTS of money to Ed “Spendell” just a few years ago and he’s a close enough buddy of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel that their families have taken vacations together. Why he’s running as a Republican, I don’t know, unless he’s trying to make sure that the more socially conservative candidates (there are 3 others, at least 2 of whom are pro-life and pro-2nd Amendment) never get past the primary.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, January 30, AD 2014 8:01am

Meanwhile, back in the Land of Lincoln, we have someone who appears to be a lakefront Chicago liberal Democrat in GOP clothing — gazillionaire Bruce Rauner

One gets the impression that if you all had Carol Mostly Fraud in the governor’s chair you wouldn’t have worse policy but the conduct of public business might be more amusing. Did her fiancee ever turn up or is he still on the lam?

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, January 30, AD 2014 8:10am

Penguin’s Fan: the Mohawk Valley, the Southern Tier, and Western New York have some abiding problems but otherwise the state is in passable condition. Cuomo was returned to office in 1990 because of the state GOP’s self-destructive stupidity, which is an abiding feature of political life in New York. The electorate was so fed up with him by 1994 that they put goodfella George Pataki in office.

And Cuomo is not an imbecile, the voters are. They could not tolerate David Patterson, who is the only normal human being who has occupied the governor’s chair in the last 30 odd years; he retired in part because his poll numbers were wretched. They’ve spurned a number of class acts over three decades (Jacob Javits, Harry Wilson, and Herbert London to name three) in order to put the likes of Alphonse d’Amato, Charles Schumer, and George Pataki in office.

As for Cuomo, ‘borderline psychopath’ might come closer to the mark.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, January 30, AD 2014 9:03am

She was evicted from her home in 2012.

Well, then, she needs the work.

Botolph
Botolph
Thursday, January 30, AD 2014 5:49pm

Haven’t we been hearing for years from ‘pro-abortion Catholic politicians’ that they have to represent all of their constituents? Governor Cuomo shows that ‘politically pious dribble’ to be an outright lie

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 2:00am

In the interests of accuracy, Gov. Cuomo NEVER said that pro-lifers, etc. were “not welcome” or “should be excluded from civil society.” He said, in the context of a discussion of GOP politics in the state of New York, that they “had no place” there, and that “that’s not who New Yorkers are”. These statements are open to different interpretations, the most likely (and the one later confirmed by the governor himself) being that social conservatives “have no place” in the NYGOP because voters won’t vote for them. Which is, as I’ve said before, a sobering enough statement as it is. However, Fr. Barron doesn’t help his credibility by misquoting the guy.

Dante alighieri
Admin
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 7:38am

Sorry Elaine, but the logical conclusion of Cuomo’s comments is that pro-lifers are not welcome in New York. Yes, technically the statement was about elected Republicans (or those who hope to be elected Republicans), but if pro-life Republicans are not welcome in the New York state GOP, then logically pro-lifers are without a representative voice, ergo they would be unwelcome in their own state.

Pat
Pat
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 8:41am

‘Tyranny in democratic republics … It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul.’
Once the souls of ‘Christians’ are overcome, such as that of the lost governor, contagion rages, spreading deadly and insane symptoms of weak and mean character throughout society. The debates over what comprised the so called platform of the D party in the last ‘election’, for example, revealed the weak spot for such as the overcome heads of state to eliminate. Capitulation, apathy, ignorance, and fear keep the diseased overpaid and actively contagious, urging more to sell their souls.

John by any other name
John by any other name
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 11:18am

Elaine, I submit to you that Fr. Barron wasn’t actually misquoting or taking him out of context. Also, my selection of de Tocqueville’s point about tyranny’s manifestation in a democratic republic is precisely supported by Cuomo’s original statement as well as the “clarification”. Let me line these up (hopefully the HTML works with me…):

Cuomo: “if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York. Because that is not who New Yorkers are.”

Cuomo clarification (per the statement excerpt at Politico): “If you read the transcript, it is clear that the Governor was making the observation that an extreme right candidate cannot win statewide because this is a politically moderate state.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/new-york-gop-ed-cox-andrew-cuomo-102436.html#ixzz2r4tibn39

Father Barron: “he said they should be actively excluded from civil society!”

de Tocqueville: ” For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that.”

Personally, I can see how the “clarification” has the veneer of making the statement appear less offensive…but to me, I still hear the hollow ring from the application of public relations spin. Maybe I’m jaded, but that’s why I’m looking to what a host of other more learned folk are saying, including Father Barron.

First Things chief editor R.R. Reno observed when interviewed by National Catholic Register said this:

“My predecessor [Father] Richard John Neuhaus has the answer: When orthodoxy is optional, it will eventually be prohibited. Put differently, when moral truths are made optional so as to be ‘inclusive,’ they will eventually be prohibited,” Reno told the Register.
[…]
“Andrew Cuomo’s remarks are telling,” said First Things’ Reno. “Yes, they were off-the-cuff and shouldn’t be taken as thought out or programmatic. But they reflect a sometimes unconscious liberal intolerance. Everybody is welcome — as long as they’re liberals. I see it as a political expression of the ‘dictatorship of relativism.’”
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-slippery-slope-of-mario-and-andrew-cuomo-and-abortion/

In that same article by Joan Frawley Desmond, George Weigel weighed in:

“Father Neuhaus’s observation about optional orthodoxy becoming banned orthodoxy helps a bit in explaining the slippery slope from Mario Cuomo to Andrew Cuomo. But so does a lot of obviously ineffective catechesis and preaching,” Weigel told the Register.

“Andrew Cuomo has often talked about the portrait of Thomas More in his office. He doesn’t seem to understand that he’s playing Henry VIII (or at the very least, Thomas Cromwell), not More, in the drama of Albany.”

And Desmond had linked to Michael Gerson at The Washington (com)Post:

Cuomo has reached an advanced stage of political polarization: regarding one’s democratic opponents as unfit for democracy. I imagine the feeling will now (in some quarters) be returned. And so the spiral continues — sometimes leftward, sometimes rightward, ever downward.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-andrew-cuomo-silences-the-opposition/2014/01/20/68d3af78-8211-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html

Then you have Rev. George W. Rutler over at Crisis Magazine comparing and contrasting Cuomo with Pliny the Younger (who persecuted Christians, contra Candida Moss’ “scholarship”):

“He [Cuomo] did not threaten to throw anyone to wild beasts, but the tone of the governor of the Empire State was decidedly imperious, and the threat of having to move west of Hudson River might be unsettling to even the most devout Catholics.”
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/governor-pliny-and-governor-cuomo

I really think that the crux of the quotes, citations, and such is that Cuomo is exhibiting a social intolerance for certain types of thought. As a test, if you were to substitute, say, racism/slavery as the subject of Cuomo’s rant, I daresay virtually everyone here would be onboard with him. The Ku Klux Klan has effectively been marginalized in civil society, and that’s just and proper. But here, the same exercise is being applied to a significant minority of the state (and that same minority in New York represents various majorities elsewhere in the Union). Further, whereas the positions and views that the KKK can be regarded as objectively and morally wrong, the position and views of those, at the least, on the pro-life side are quite the opposite on the yardstick of merit. The point is that since Cuomo is unanchored from any apparent moral ground as a consequence of moral relativism, he can’t make any distinction between the two. Thus, the only consistent reaction he, like other progressives can take, is the superficial equivalence of treating pro-lifers, pro-Second Amendment types, and traditional marriage supporters.
So I close with a final observation on James Madison from Gerson’s comments:

While James Madison would not be surprised, he would not approve. “In all cases where a majority are united by a common interest or passion,” he warned, “the rights of the minority are in danger.” A majority, he argued, can easily become a “faction,” seeking “illicit advantage.” This is dangerous in a democracy, not only because the rights of individuals are important but also because diversity of opinion balances factions against each other. Madison hoped that U.S. leaders would help check the passions of factions rather than inciting them for political advantage, so that “reason, justice and truth can regain their authority over the public mind.”

John by any other name
John by any other name
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 11:36am

Editing fail:
Thus, the only consistent reaction he, like other progressives can take, is the superficial equivalence of treating pro-lifers, pro-Second Amendment types, and traditional marriage supporters with legitimately wrong groups that should be excluded from civil society. Let me also add another de Tocqueville quote that I think is relevant here:

Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means of teaching men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest benefit that a democratic people derives from its belief, and hence belief is more necessary to such a people than to all others. When, therefore, any religion has struck its roots deep into a democracy, beware lest you disturb them; but rather watch it carefully, as the most precious bequest of aristocratic ages.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm#link2HCH0036

This appears to be the source of the quote “America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great”, frequently mis-attributed to de Tocqueville…which, while he didn’t write that, it still has the ring of truth to it.

Mary De Voe
Friday, January 31, AD 2014 11:55am

“”Cuomo: “if they are the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York. Because that is not who New Yorkers are.””
Cuomo does not get to say who New Yorkers are. That is like telling a woman to get gender reassignment, or a man to get sterilized.

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