By Francis X. Maier
I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, under the fading shadow of World War II. My uncle Joe had served on an attack submarine in the South Pacific. My uncle Bill was the sole survivor of a mobile anti-tank gun that took a direct hit and exploded in the Battle of the Bulge. My dad had an “essential worker” deferment, overseeing truck production at a General Motors defense plant. All three, like my entire extended family, were Catholic. And all three, like my entire extended family, were Democrats. There was one notable exception. My mother (of poor Irish stock, but wickedly smart and not a woman to be trifled with) voted Republican in 1960, less out of conviction than from a deep contempt for the behavior of the Kennedy men.
This Independence Day, I wonder what any of them would think of the country we’ve become—the nation they once loved, supported, and risked their lives for. The truth is fairly simple: the Democratic Party they saw as “theirs” cast people like them aside decades ago. And—unsurprisingly, in the end—it was a great many ordinary people like them who then committed the unforgivable crime of electing Donald Trump twice. This, despite his narcissism and legion of sins and flaws. This, despite all the really smart advice from all the really smart analysts in our complacent, intellectual-class media; ten years of it, nonstop: He’s a fascist! He’s an existential threat!
My family’s Democratic Party today champions abortion, disordered sex, collapsed borders, and a truckload of other destructive ideas. Are there good people in the party? Of course, and plenty of them. But they’re not the ones running the show. And given the results of the party’s hard-left primaries so far this year, the “good people” won’t be running it anytime soon.
All the relentless venom aimed at Donald Trump over the past decade—some of it justified, much of it wildly excessive—is now bearing bitter fruit: three assassination attempts on a sitting president, harassment of Supreme Court justices and their families, organized street brawls with federal law-enforcement agents, and angry young political assassins like Luigi Mangione and Tyler Robinson.
We’re watching a political party in the process of matriphagy: I mean the kind of spider that lays its eggs and is then devoured by its offspring as they hatch.
Does any of the above make Donald Trump a “good” man? Not by a light-year. Nor does it absolve the Republican Party of its own many sins. Trump is simply the catalyst for a deeper conflict over national purpose and identity that has been brewing for a long time. Now it’s here.
As the United States turns 250, I want my family’s party back. More importantly, I want the country I love back. And that won’t happen unless Catholics and other Christians take seriously the task of living what we claim to believe—in private, in public, and yes, in the voting booth.
About the author:
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church.