Tuesday, November 23, 1943. Victory at Tarawa and Makin.

Unit patch of the 2nd Marine Division.  Only during World War Two did the Marine Corps ultimately adopt divisional patches.

The Battle of Tarawa concluded at 1:00 p.m., local time, after 77 hours of combat.  The Battle of Makin also concluded.

U.S. Army 27th Infantry Division unit patch.

FWIW, there are 138 miles between the two islands.

Tarawa would add to the status of the Marines that Guadalcanal had already conveyed. The fighting was horrific.  The public, however, was stunned by the level of US losses.

The Deutsche Opernhause in Berlin was destroyed in a British air raid, as was the Berlin Zoo, which resulted in the loss of most of its 4,000 animals. Over the week Berlin would further lose the German National Theatre, the National Gallery, the Invalidenstrasse Museum, the Hotel Bristol, the Charite Hospital, the City Hospital, the Schulstrasse Maternity Hospital, the Lichterfelde-East Rail Station, and the embassies of France, Sweden, Turkey, Iran and Slovakia.

Hitler witnessed a demonstration of the ME262.  Perhaps because of events like that described above, he ordered that the jet fighter be redesigned to carry bombs, thereby delaying production of the aircraft.

The extent to which people like to satirical claim that "Hitler was the best general the Allies had" has been overdone. Frankly, quite a few of his strategic and even tactical decisions during the war were correct over the opposition of his general.  By this point, however, he was starting to make really significant blunders, of which this was one.  Germany's task at this point, from the position of its airspace, was to defend it, which the ME262 would prove quite able at. The resulting delay was accordingly significant.

German forces landed on Samos in the Aegean.

Roosevelt, at the Cairo Conference, sent a message to Congress regarding the post-war return of servicemen.

Message to Congress on the Return of Service Personnel

to Civilian Life

November 23 , 1943

To the Congress:

All of us are concentrating now on the one primary objective of winning this war. But even as we devote our energy and resources to that purpose, we cannot neglect to plan for things to come after victory is won.

The problem of reconverting wartime America to a peacetime basis is one for which we are now laying plans to be submitted to the Congress for action. As I said last July:

"The returning soldier and sailor and marine are a part of the problem of demobilizing the rest of the millions of Americans who have been working and living in a war economy since 1941. . . . But the members of the armed forces have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and they are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems."

At that time I outlined what seemed to me to be a minimum of action to which the members of our armed forces are entitled over and above that taken for other citizens.

What our service men and women want, more than anything else, is the assurance of satisfactory employment upon their return to civil life. The first task after the war is to provide employment for them and for our demobilized war workers.

There were skeptics who said that our wartime production goals would never be attained. There will also be skeptics who will question our ability to make the necessary plans to meet the problems of unemployment and want after the war. But, I am confident that if industry and labor and Government tackle the problems of economic readjustment after the war with the same unity of purpose and with the same ingenuity, resourcefulness, and boldness that they have employed to such advantage in wartime production, they can solve them.

We must not lower our sights to prewar levels. The goal after the war should be the maximum utilization of our human and material resources. This is the way to rout the forces of insecurity and unemployment at home, as completely as we shall have defeated the forces of tyranny and oppression on the fields of battle.

There are, however, certain measures which merit the immediate attention of the Congress to round out the program already commenced for the special protection of the members of the armed forces.

The Congress has already enacted a generous program of benefits for service men and for the widows and dependents of those killed in action.

For example:

(1) Under the National Service Life Insurance Act, life insurance at low premium rates is now available to members of the armed forces in amounts not less than $1,000 and not more than $10,000 per person. A total of nearly $90,000,000,000 of insurance has already been applied for.

(2) In addition, provision has been made, under the Soldiers' and Sailors' Relief Act, for the guarantee by the Government of the payment of premiums on commercial policies held by members of the armed forces while in service. Premiums on insurance totaling $135,582,000 have been guaranteed, as a result of 56,276 applications by service men for such relief.

(3) The Congress has also enacted legislation making provision for the hospitalization and medical care of all veterans of the present war, and for the vocational rehabilitation and training of those suffering from disability incurred in, or aggravated by, military service, when such disability results in a vocational handicap preventing reemployment. Similar provision has been made for the rehabilitation of disabled persons in civil life, who, with proper training, can be equipped to play a useful part in the war effort at home. Men who are rejected for military service because of physical or mental defects, or who are discharged from the armed forces because of a disability existing at the time of induction, are thus eligible for such rehabilitation services and training as may be necessary and feasible in order to fit them for useful and gainful employment.

(4) By recent legislation, our present service men and women have been assured the same pension benefits for death or disability incurred in the line of duty while in active military service as are provided for the veterans of prior wars. The pension rates for the family of those killed in this war were recently increased by the Congress.

The Veterans Administration will, from time to time, request the consideration by the Congress of various amendments of existing laws which will facilitate administration, and which will correct any defects in our present statutory scheme which experience may disclose. I am confident that the Congress, in line with the historic policy of this Government toward its ill, injured, and disabled service men and women, will provide generous appropriations to the Veterans Administration with which to carry out these laws.

(5) Numerous other measures have been adopted for the protection of our service men such as the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act suspending the enforcement of certain obligations against members of the armed forces, the creation of reemployment rights under the Selective Service Act, and the provision for emergency maternity care to the wives and infants of enlisted men.

However, I believe that we must go much further.

We must make provision now to help our returning service men and women bridge the gap from war to peace activity. When the war is over, our men and women in the armed forces will be eager to rejoin their families, get a job, or continue their education, and to pick up the threads of their former lives. They will return at a time when industry will be in the throes of reconversion. Our plans for demobilization of soldiers and sailors must be consistent with our plans for the reconversion of industry and for the creation of employment opportunities for both service men and war workers. Already the armed forces have returned many thousands of service men and women to civil life. The following further steps seem desirable now:

(1) To help service men and women tide over the difficult period of readjustment from military to civilian life, mustering out pay will be needed. It will relieve them of anxiety while they seek private employment or make their personal plans for the future. I therefore recommend to the Congress that it enact legislation and provide funds for the payment of a uniform, reasonable mustering-out pay to all members of the armed forces upon their honorable discharge or transfer to inactive duty. This pay should not be in a lump sum but on a monthly installment basis.

(2) We must anticipate, however, that some members of the armed forces may not be able to obtain employment within a reasonable time after their return to civil life. For them, unemployment allowances should be provided until they can reasonably be absorbed by private industry.

Members of the armed services are not now adequately covered by existing unemployment insurance laws of the States. It is estimated that approximately one-half of them will have no unemployment insurance protection at all when they leave military service. Benefits payable to those who are covered by State law 'are unequal, and will vary greatly among the States because of the wide differences in the provisions of the State laws. The protection in many cases will be inadequate. It is plainly a Federal responsibility to provide for the payment of adequate and equitable allowances to those service men and women who are unable to find employment after their demobilization.

For these reasons, I recommend to the Congress that a uniform system of allowances for unemployed service men and women be established.

I believe that there should be a fixed and uniform rate of benefit for a fixed period of time for all members of the armed forces who, after leaving the service, are unable to find suitable work. In order to qualify for an unemployment allowance each person should 'be obliged to register with the United States Employment Service, and, following the usual practice in unemployment insurance, must be willing to accept available and suitable employment, or to engage in a training course to prepare him for such employment. The protection under this system should be continued for an adequate length of time following the period for which mustering-out payment is made.

At present, persons serving in the merchant marine are not insured under State unemployment insurance laws, primarily because the very nature of their employment carries them beyond the confines of any particular State. I believe that the most effective way of protecting maritime workers against postwar unemployment is to enact without delay a Federal maritime unemployment insurance act. There has been in effect since 1938 a railroad unemployment insurance act, and a similar act for maritime workers is long overdue. Marine workers are, however, insured under the existing Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law.

(3) Members of the armed forces are not receiving credit under the Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law for their period of military service. Credit under the law can be obtained only while a person is engaged in certain specific types of employment. Service in the armed forces is not included in these types. Since the size of the insurance benefits depends upon the total number of years in which credits are obtained, the exclusion of military service will operate to decrease the old-age retirement benefits which will eventually be payable to service men and women. Furthermore, a large number of persons whose dependents were protected by the survivors' insurance benefits at the time they entered the armed forces are losing entirely those insurance rights while they are in service.

I therefore recommend that the Congress enact legislation to make it possible for members of the armed forces to obtain credit under the Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law during their period of military service. The burden of this extension of old-age and survivors' insurance to members of the armed forces should be carried by the Federal Government, and the Federal contributions should be uniform for all members of the armed forces irrespective of their rank.

I have already communicated with the Congress requesting the enactment of legislation to provide educational and training opportunities for the members of the armed forces who desire to pursue their studies after their discharge.

The Congress will agree, I am sure, that, this time, we must have plans and legislation ready for our returning veterans instead of waiting until the last moment. It will give notice to our armed forces that the people back home do not propose to let them down.

It's worth noting the extent to which the Allied leaders in the west were taking the view that victory was simply inevitable. 

Putting another log on the fire. Joe Biden stokes the inflationary fires with debt forgiveness.

 High school students, Pennsylvania, 1942.

First, even though I know that it'll make for a really long post, let me put in the White House's actual announcement on its forgiving student debt decision.

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Student Loan Relief for Borrowers Who Need It Most

AUGUST 24, 2022•STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

A three-part plan delivers on President Biden’s promise to cancel $10,000 of student debt for low- to middle-income borrowers

President Biden believes that a post-high school education should be a ticket to a middle-class life, but for too many, the cost of borrowing for college is a lifelong burden that deprives them of that opportunity. During the campaign, he promised to provide student debt relief. Today, the Biden Administration is following through on that promise and providing families breathing room as they prepare to start re-paying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.

Since 1980, the total cost of both four-year public and four-year private college has nearly tripled, even after accounting for inflation. Federal support has not kept up: Pell Grants once covered nearly 80 percent of the cost of a four-year public college degree for students from working families, but now only cover a third. That has left many students from low- and middle-income families with no choice but to borrow if they want to get a degree. According to a Department of Education analysis, the typical undergraduate student with loans now graduates with nearly $25,000 in debt. 

The skyrocketing cumulative federal student loan debt—$1.6 trillion and rising for more than 45 million borrowers—is a significant burden on America’s middle class. Middle-class borrowers struggle with high monthly payments and ballooning balances that make it harder for them to build wealth, like buying homes, putting away money for retirement, and starting small businesses.

For the most vulnerable borrowers, the effects of debt are even more crushing. Nearly one-third of borrowers have debt but no degree, according to an analysis by the Department of Education of a recent cohort of undergraduates. Many of these students could not complete their degree because the cost of attendance was too high. About 16% of borrowers are in default – including nearly a third of senior citizens with student debt – which can result in the government garnishing a borrower’s wages or lowering a borrower’s credit score. The student debt burden also falls disproportionately on Black borrowers. Twenty years after first enrolling in school, the typical Black borrower who started college in the 1995-96 school year still owed 95% of their original student debt.

Today, President Biden is announcing a three-part plan to provide more breathing room to America’s working families as they continue to recover from the strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. This plan offers targeted debt relief as part of a comprehensive effort to address the burden of growing college costs and make the student loan system more manageable for working families. The President is announcing that the Department of Education will:   

Provide targeted debt relief to address the financial harms of the pandemic, fulfilling the President’s campaign commitment. The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples). No high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action. To ensure a smooth transition to repayment and prevent unnecessary defaults, the pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended one final time through December 31, 2022. Borrowers should expect to resume payment in January 2023. 

Make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers by:

Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing a new income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income—half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under most existing plans. This means that the average annual student loan payment will be lowered by more than $1,000 for both current and future borrowers.

Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program by proposing a rule that borrowers who have worked at a nonprofit, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit toward loan forgiveness. These improvements will build on temporary changes the Department of Education has already made to PSLF, under which more than 175,000 public servants have already had more than $10 billion in loan forgiveness approved. 

Protect future students and taxpayers by reducing the cost of college and holding schools accountable when they hike up prices. The President championed the largest increase to Pell Grants in over a decade and one of the largest one-time influxes to colleges and universities. To further reduce the cost of college, the President will continue to fight to double the maximum Pell Grant and make community college free. Meanwhile, colleges have an obligation to keep prices reasonable and ensure borrowers get value for their investments, not debt they cannot afford. This Administration has already taken key steps to strengthen accountability, including in areas where the previous Administration weakened rules. The Department of Education is announcing new efforts to ensure student borrowers get value for their college costs.

Provide Targeted Debt Relief, Fulfilling the President’s Campaign CommitmentTo address the financial harms of the pandemic for low- and middle-income borrowers and avoid defaults as loan repayment restarts next year, the Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in loan relief to borrowers with loans held by the Department of Education whose individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples) and who received a Pell Grant. Nearly every Pell Grant recipient came from a family that made less than $60,000 a year, and Pell Grant recipients typically experience more challenges repaying their debt than other borrowers. Borrowers who meet those income standards but did not receive a Pell Grant in college can receive up to $10,000 in loan relief.

The Pell Grant program is one of America’s most effective financial aid programs—but its value has been eroded over time. Pell Grant recipients are more than 60% of the borrower population. The Department of Education estimates that roughly 27 million borrowers will be eligible to receive up to $20,000 in relief, helping these borrowers meet their economic potential and avoid economic harm from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Current students with loans are eligible for this debt relief. Borrowers who are dependent students will be eligible for relief based on parental income, rather than their own income.

If all borrowers claim the relief they are entitled to, these actions will:

Provide relief to up to 43 million borrowers, including cancelling the full remaining balance for roughly 20 million borrowers.

Target relief dollars to low- and middle-income borrowers. The Department of Education estimates that, among borrowers who are no longer in school, nearly 90% of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year. No individual making more than $125,000 or household making more than $250,000 – the top 5% of incomes in the United States – will receive relief.

Help borrowers of all ages. The Department of Education estimates that, among borrowers who are eligible for relief, 21% are 25 years and under and 44% are ages 26-39. More than a third are borrowers age 40 and up, including 5% of borrowers who are senior citizens.

Advance racial equity. By targeting relief to borrowers with the highest economic need, the Administration’s actions are likely to help narrow the racial wealth gap. Black students are more likely to have to borrow for school and more likely to take out larger loans. Black borrowers are twice as likely to have received Pell Grants compared to their white peers. Other borrowers of color are also more likely than their peers to receive Pell Grants. That is why an Urban Institute study found that debt forgiveness programs targeting those who received Pell Grants while in college will advance racial equity.

The Department of Education will work quickly and efficiently to set up a simple application process for borrowers to claim relief. The application will be available no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments terminates at the end of the year. Nearly 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because their relevant income data is already available to the Department.  

Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, this debt relief will not be treated as taxable income for the federal income tax purposes.

To help ensure a smooth transition back to repayment, the Department of Education is extending the student loan pause a final time through December 31, 2022. No one with federally-held loans has had to pay a single dollar in loan payments since President Biden took office.

Make the Student Loan System More Manageable for Current and Future Borrowers

Fixing Existing Loan Repayment to Lower Monthly Payments

The Administration is reforming student loan repayment plans so both current and future low- and middle-income borrowers will have smaller and more manageable monthly payments.

The Department of Education has the authority to create income-driven repayment plans, which cap what borrowers pay each month based on a percentage of their discretionary income. Most of these plans cancel a borrower’s remaining debt once they make 20 years of monthly payments. But the existing versions of these plans are too complex and too limited. As a result, millions of borrowers who might benefit from them do not sign up, and the millions who do sign up are still often left with unmanageable monthly payments.

To address these concerns and follow through on Congress’ original vision for income-driven repayment, the Department of Education is proposing a rule to do the following

For undergraduate loans, cut in half the amount that borrowers have to pay each month from 10% to 5% of discretionary income.

Raise the amount of income that is considered non-discretionary income and therefore is protected from repayment, guaranteeing that no borrower earning under 225% of the federal poverty level—about the annual equivalent of a $15 minimum wage for a single borrower—will have to make a monthly payment.

Forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of 20 years, for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. The Department of Education estimates that this reform will allow nearly all community college borrowers to be debt-free within 10 years.

Cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest, so that unlike other existing income-driven repayment plans, no borrower’s loan balance will grow as long as they make their monthly payments—even when that monthly payment is $0 because their income is low

These reforms would simplify loan repayment and deliver significant savings to low- and middle-income borrowers. For example:

A typical single construction worker (making $38,000 a year) with a construction management credential would pay only $31 a month, compared to the $147 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of nearly $1,400.

A typical single public school teacher with an undergraduate degree (making $44,000 a year) would pay only $56 a month on their loans, compared to the $197 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of nearly $1,700.

A typical nurse (making $77,000 a year) who is married with two kids would pay only $61 a month on their undergraduate loans, compared to the $295 they pay now under the most recent income-driven repayment plan, for annual savings of more than $2,800.

For each of these borrowers, their balances would not grow as long as they are making their monthly payments, and their remaining debt would be forgiven after they make the required number of qualifying payments.

Further, the Department of Education will make it easier for borrowers who enroll in this new plan to stay enrolled. Starting in the summer of 2023, borrowers will be able to allow the Department of Education to automatically pull their income information year after year, avoiding the hassle of needing to recertify their income annually.

Ensuring Public Servants Receive Credit Toward Loan Forgiveness

Borrowers working in public service are entitled to earn credit toward debt relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. But because of complex eligibility restrictions, historic implementation failures, and poor counseling given to borrowers, many borrowers have not received the credit they deserve for their public service.

The Department of Education has announced time-limited changes to PSLF that provide an easier path to forgiveness of all outstanding debt for eligible federal student loan borrowers who have served at a non-profit, in the military, or in federal, state, Tribal, or local government for at least 10 years, including non-consecutively. Those who have served less than 10 years may now more easily get credit for their service to date toward eventual forgiveness. These changes allow eligible borrowers to gain additional credit toward forgiveness, even if they had been told previously that they had the wrong loan type.

The Department of Education also has proposed regulatory changes to ensure more effective implementation of the PSLF program moving forward. Specifically, the Department of Education has proposed allowing more payments to qualify for PSLF including partial, lump sum, and late payments, and allowing certain kinds of deferments and forbearances, such as those for Peace Corps and AmeriCorps service, National Guard duty, and military service, to count toward PSLF. The Department of Education also proposed to ensure the rules work better for non-tenured instructors whose colleges need to calculate their full-time employment.

To ensure borrowers are aware of the temporary changes, the White House has launched four PSLF Days of Action dedicated to borrowers in specific sectors: government employees, educators, healthcare workers and first responders, and non-profit employees. You can find out other information about the temporary changes on PSLF.gov. You must apply to PSLF before the temporary changes end on October 31, 2022.

Protecting Borrowers and Taxpayers from Steep Increases in College Cost

While providing this relief to low- and middle-income borrowers, the President is focused on keeping college costs under control. Under this Administration, students have had more money in their pockets to pay for college. The President signed the largest increase to the maximum Pell Grant in over a decade and provided nearly $40 billion to colleges and universities through the American Rescue Plan, much of which was used for emergency student financial aid, allowing students to breathe a little easier.

Additionally, the Department of Education has already taken significant steps to strengthen accountability, so that students are not left with mountains of debt with little payoff. The agency has re-established the enforcement unit in the Office of Federal Student Aid and it is holding accreditors’ feet to the fire. In fact, the Department just withdrew authorization for the accreditor that oversaw schools responsible for some of the worst for-profit scandals. The agency will also propose a rule to hold career programs accountable for leaving their graduates with mountains of debt they cannot repay, a rule the previous Administration repealed.

Building off of these efforts, the Department of Education is announcing new actions to hold accountable colleges that have contributed to the student debt crisis. These include publishing an annual watch list of the programs with the worst debt levels in the country, so that students registering for the next academic year can steer clear of programs with poor outcomes. They also include requesting institutional improvement plans from the worst actors that outline how the colleges with the most concerning debt outcomes intend to bring down debt levels. 

***   

More information on claiming relief will be available to borrowers in the coming weeks. 

Borrowers can sign up to be notified when this information is available at StudentAid.gov/debtrelief.

This is going to be controversial.

So, let's cut to the chase.

We've posted on the American student loan system before, which exists in the happy mythical world of the 1960s, really.  In that world, high school students, rather than get manual labor jobs at General Motors, are given a chance to get a bachelor's degree, as any bachelor's degree means that they can walk into any office across the United States, wearing a clean white button down shirt and black tie, with gray wool slacks, and become an executive.

And in the 50s, 60s and 70s, there was a lot of truth in that, which is why the GI Bill, which in some ways all American "loan" programs are based on, was such as success.

That world hasn't existed for a long time.

Since World War Two, Americans became highly acclimated to loans in general.  Going back before the war, usually the only major loan that most people had was on their house, although surprisingly automobile loans date back all the way to the 1910s, and Ford Motors introduced financing for their cars in 1919.  There were installment plans on some things as well, such as major appliances, but for real personal debt, houses were it, followed by cars.  Credit cards didn't start to come into existence until the 1950s and 1960s, and had very limited, and often specialized, use.

American student loans did not exist until 1958, when they came into existence as part of the National Defense Education Act. That act was structured the way that student loan bills still should be, it provided loans only in categories of national strategic need, specifically engineering, science and education.  In 1965, however, loans were broadened out with the Higher Education Act of 1965, which saw advancing higher education as a means of advancing social mobility.  I.e., it was part of Johnson's Great Society.

It was in 1973, however, that the entire project took a giant leap with the Student Loan Marketing Association, Sallie Mae, which joined the group of female named Federal guaranteed loan projects which took the moral hazard out of lending for certain dicey propositions, such as home loans or educational endeavors with no real long term prospects.

Educational institutions really picked up on this, and it resulted in tuition inflation that came to grossly outstrip inflation.  It also encouraged the creation of pseudo disciplines in education and the resulting massive increase in the student bodies resulted in grade inflation.  This resulted, over time, in the devaluing of a college education.

No more walking out with your baccalaureate and into the boardroom.

In recent years this has led people like Bernie Sanders to suggest the solution for everything is to have the government pay for everything, as if too much isn't solving a problem, way too much surely will.  The better evidence is that at this point in time we'd be better off going back to the original loan model, or ending loans entirely.

Stepping into this now is Joe Biden, who is trying to follow up on a campaign promise to address this issue by hurling money at it, which gets into the Sanders mindset.  Sanders would likely just forgive them all and then pay for all higher education, because if making an education easy to get hasn't devalued it enough, then making it free surely will. . . oh, wait.

Biden's act doesn't contribute to that, but it's inflationary without a doubt.  Loan forgiveness is income.  Indeed, normally, loan forgiveness is taxed as income, but due to the Inflation Reduction Act this particular example at least will not be.   As this is the equivalent to passing money out, there's no two ways about it.

And the propaganda about it being aimed at lower income people is just that.  Providing relief to the children of couples who make up to $250,000 per year is clearly aimed at the middle class, as is the suggestion that it won't go to the "top 5%" of income earners, that being a category which is unlikely to have student loans in the first place.

So what this is, is a species of temporary subsidization of education for mostly the middle class.  It'll hit lower earners too, but the middle class will be the primary beneficiaries.

For a time.

But at the same time, it'll be inflationary, which hits the middle class the most, and given the level it's at, its benefit to the target audience is of low value anyhow.  So it contributes to the reduction in value of what everyone makes, contributes to the devaluing of education, provides cash to banks for making bad loans, and advances the concept that any higher level education is of economic value.

It's not the 1950s or 60s anymore.  It's not even 1973.  If we're going to have a government supported program, it ought to support a national purpose. This one really isn't anymore.  

And I'm not suggesting that a college education has no value. Far from it.  It's become, except for those born into fortunate circumstances, necessary.  Rather, I'm suggesting that this be protected.  As Kris Kristofferson noted, via Janis Joplin; "freedom's just another word for nothing else to lose, nothing don't cost nothing, but it's free".  I don't find this to be universally true, but in this instance, as with a lot of things that are "free", they come to have low or no value over time.  This has us headed one step further in that direction.

But benefits once conferred are difficult to withdraw.

Did the Vietnam War wreck the country?

A theme of the recent Burns and Novik documentary on the Vietnam War was that rifts had developed in the country during the war and they've never been healed. That is, the war split the country between left and right, and the country's never come back together again.

It's an appealing thesis.  But is it true, and if it is, what does that mean?

Let's start with the common image of things.

The sort of general common background to this story is the belief that prior to the Vietnam War, American society was united and existed in sort of an Ozzy and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, state. This society, we're told, had a common set of conservative societal values.  Along came the Vietnam War and put that all under stress and fractured the country into a liberal and conservative camps that have diametrically opposed views on everything and are now further apart than ever.

 The Cleavers in Leave It To Beaver. . . the way that American society of the 1950s, and earlier, has sort of been imagined. The show ran from 1957 to 1963, so it was set as much in the early 60s as the 50s, but then the early 1950s are in the "50s", as imagined, and the early 1950s, aren't.  How realistic was this portrayal anyhow?  Chances are, not very, other than that they were a nuclear family.

Is that right?

Well, in order to analyze the central thesis of that, that the war drug a certain demographic (largely white, largely well educated) to the left, where it's kept on sliding to the left, and left another group on the right, which is going further to the right, I guess we'd have to look at the right and the left before that to make certain its true.

And we'd have to even figure out where to start to do that, and that wouldn't be easy, as it turns out.

We'll start therefore in the early 20th Century. We could start earlier (you could arguably start before the Civil War quite easily), or you could start later, perhaps in the 1920s or 1930s. But this is a good compromise point to start.

And the reason that its a good compromise point to start.

The early 20th Century was a time of considerable political and social turmoil. The Progressive Movement, a political movement that sought to address economic and social ills and to spread the vote to women, who mostly didn't have it, was in full swing.  Liberal in the context of its time, it was for a stronger Federal government to protect the rights of the average man against ever increasing corporations and against the abuses of local governments.  Varying widely in the scope of its views, it ranged from moderately Progressive to fully radical, sometimes during the political life of a single individual.  Probably the best example of Progressivism is Theodore Roosevelt, who went into his Vice Presidency and Presidency as a fairly pronounced Progressive, and who finished up his political career as a fairly radical Progressive. The success of the Progressive movement is perhaps also symbolized by the fact that Roosevelt's last campaign, the three way race in which he went down in final defeat, saw Woodrow Wilson, another Progressive, elected.

 Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette.  He'd more than given Bernie Sanders a run for his money on being a socialist. . . he was a real socialist.

Roosevelt and Wilson were not the only left of center politicians in that race by any means.  The Socialist Party was on the rise and a serious political party at the time.  Part of the rallying cry for Progressives, to Conservatives, was that if the Progressives weren't elected and didn't address the nation's ills then the Socialist would succeed and their medicine would be much more radial.  And while that vision was extreme, in reality Socialism of that time was as radical as it would ever be.

Socialism up to the mid 1920s at least was a global movement and it had more than a toehold in the United States.  It was a major force in Europe.  Communism was also a rising force in Europe, and getting a little toehold in Europe, and because it was a younger and less developed type of Socialism the distinction between the two, which would later become enormous, was not terribly clear at the time.  Parties in Europe, like the Social Democratic Party in Germany, weren't Communist but they were so close (prior to coming to power in 1918) that it was hard to make the distinction between Communism and Socialism.  And here's where we begin to get into really radical, but fairly widespread, movements that well predate the Vietnam War.

The Socialist movements of the World War One era were extreme in every sense, and also had a fairly large following amongst European working classes and a not inappreciable one amongst American working classes. Believing in the collectivization of labor, they also at their core held a lot of radical social beliefs that would sound familiar in certain circles of the far left today.  In Communist circles they were opposed to marriage and were open to "free love", but radically opposed (outside of what would soon be the USSR) to having children. They were open practitioners of abortion.  For a lot of their more radical views in this area, and so that I don't have to list them, I'd cite to Whitaker Chamber's life, but it's also worth noting that just about any significant Soviet spy ring of the 20s, 30s, and 40s exhibits a fair amount of conduct that's right out of a sexual sewer.  All this existed at a time at which there were genuine problems in the work force and real social inequality, particularly for African Americans.

 Whitaker Chambers, who came from a middle class background but had an extremely troubled childhood and early life, turning in course to Communism.  His biography on his life as a Communist, and his path out of it, including his efforts to expose it, is one of the greatest biographies ever written.  Witness details much of the truly radical nature of the Communist movement in the west, including its depraved nature.

World War One killed the Old Order in Europe leaving nothing to replace it and hugely radical movements came up in the wake of the collapse of the Ancien Régime.  The more powerful the forces of the old order had been, and the less democratic they had been, the more radical the movements that flowed in their wake were.  Communism took over in Russia and the USSR was born.  Communism made a run at the states that bordered the new USSR, resulting in war and civil war.  Civil war was fought in German streets where the contesting forces increasingly gave rise to a big swing in the right and the left.  Socialism in Italy gave way to a nationalistic socialist political force known as Fascism.  The same impulses gave rise to extreme right wing parties in Germany just as the Communist forces were rising and after a while, in the early 1930s, Communist and Nazis would battle in German streets.  Communist and Socialist elements in Spain sought to terminate the democratic fragile republic there and the Army rose up, allied with Spanish Fascists, in that country in a bitter civil war in the 1930s.  Never every European country had some sort of extreme right wing and extreme left wing political movements, all of which rejected notions of democracy, traditional religious views, and many traditional social views.  The time was as radical as any which have ever existed.

That, of course, was partially sorted out during World War Two which saw Fascism first defeated and then completely discredited it as the hateful product of its rule was exposed wherever it had been.  That left, of course, the Communist in place where they were.  The full horrors of Communism, every bit as lethal, and more, as Fascism would take decades to be really fully revealed and the whole horror of it all would not become fully evident until the 1990s by which time it was expiring.

In the 1930s that horror was not evident and hardcore leftism was therefore not fully discredited.  In the United States the Depression saw hardcore leftists come into the Federal Government in some numbers but more than that saw a large element of Federal experimentation in government in an effort to address the ills of that economic disaster.  This was followed by World War Two which required a really big government.

And this takes us into the era where we started out.

After the Second World War, we're told, Americans craved to return to normal.  And not doubt after the Depression they did.  But that view of normalcy may not be what we think it was.  Prior to the Cold War really ramping up there were quite a few Americans who retained fairly left wing political views on some things, products of the Depression, accepted left wing politics during it, and World War Two.  For example, at that time, a large percentage of Americans were actually favorably disposed towards the evolution of the United Nations towards being a truly world government of a type.  Truman was flirting, albeit unsuccessfully, with national healthcare, something the British brought in right after World War Two.  Communism wasn't seen as a real global threat up until 1947 or 1948.  While the United States was more rural then as compared to now, gun control was widely viewed favorably and according to older polls all the way through the 1950s and 1960s there was widespread support for banning handguns (and, it should be noted, there were considerably more violent deaths of all types then, as opposed to now).

But that doesn't mean that the nation was otherwise socially radical. The nation was coming around to completing the work commenced in 1860-65 in that making sure that blacks had full civil rights, but otherwise people held conservative social views.  Divorce was much rarer then than now.  Unconventional sexual behaviors were not looked upon favorably or even legal.

The idea however of a united country in favor of military intervention around the world is misconstrued and in fact much about immediate post war international history is misunderstood due to a very successful immediate revisionist effort on the part of the Democratic Party. At first, after World War Two, that was not the view of most Americans or really of either political party.  The GOP had been isolationist before World War Two and it still was following World War Two, although it had been anti Communist in both eras. The Democratic Party figured that the war had been won and the world was now in a liberal political state of bliss and wasn't too interested in any foreign involvement.  That all ended when China fell and Berlin was blockaded.  The shock of those events sent both parties on the same course in regards to international affairs.  At the same time the exposure of the penetration of Soviet agents into American government during the Roosevelt Administration was basically shouted down and buried by the Democratic Party which was embarrassed by it.

This takes us to the 1950s.  What we find is that the United States, in the 1950s, was internationalist in outlook, strongly anti Communist, and had expressed generally conservative social views while as the same time it was struggling to the bring blacks fully into society.  It's really the 1950s, not the 1960s that saw the real strong rise of the Civil Rights movement, but that would complete, at least for that phase, in the early 1960s.

Which we are now up to.

A lot of Americans hold a view of the early 1960s which is basically that expressed in the film American Graffiti, which is of course set in the early 1960s.  In that film all of the really significant people are, of course, teenagers or those immediately dealing with teenagers. Those young teens are out for a single evening driving around aimlessly in sort of a motorized courting ritual reminiscent of that which was once common in Mexican towns amongst young men and women of marriageable age in the public plaza on special days or Saturday market days.  And frankly there's quite a bit of truth to that (and I need to add that film to my reviewed Movies In History list).  The country, in the 1950s, was rich, much richer than it had ever been before, strong, relatively socially conservative, and faced with only one real rival, the Soviet Union.  

And then came the Vietnam War.

Well, not just the Vietnam War.  Quite a few other things arrived just about the same time the war did, and some other things arrived a little bit earlier and were really making an impact about the time the Vietnam War started to.

For one thing, for the first time ever, university became sort of an expectation of the middle class. That was a byproduct of World War Two.

The United States went into World War Two in the back stages of the Great Depression.  Like the United Kingdom, the expectation in the US is that once the war ended, the Depression would return.  That expectation proved to be wrong, and the world didn't slide into a global depression following the Second World War, in part because of the war itself an din part because the Depression had been so long, but those western nations that could plan around that expectation did so. That's why the United Kingdom introduced its national healthcare system and that's why the United States introduced the GI Bill.

The GI Bill allowed thousands of Americans to attend college who came from demographics that had no prior expectation of doing so.  That ended the era in which most college attendees in the US were white Protestants and opened up college and university enormously.  It also brought Federal money into education for the first time.  That meant, on the faculty level, that for the first time the paying customer was, in some ways, the public trough and in others a wider cross section of American public.  By extension it meant that, for private schools, the need to pay attention class distinctions, even if in a radical subversive way, were lessened and for public schools, the need to pay attention to local industries was reduced. And as any college degree meant employment at that time, the students' long term employeabiltiy didn't merit much attention as it was virtually guaranteed.

Hence, by the 1960s, a large, second and first generation student body that had much less attachment to the economically elite than ever before, and which was also much more certain of economic success, no matter what, than ever before.

They also had less connection with the demographics that produced them.  

The GI Bill not only flooded the colleges with new students and government money, it mean that there were now a lot of students who had been born into ethnicities for which college was previously nearly out of the question, in college.  First Catholics, and then blacks, started entering college for the first time in large numbers, followed by other formerly blue collar ethnicities.  As this occurred some of those ethnicities started to redefine themselves as white collar middle class ethnicities.  Irish Americans are a good example as during this period they exited what had been called the "Catholic Ghetto" and sought to redefine themselves as middle class Americans.  North of the border in Catholic Quebec the same thing was occurring on a large scale.  If the 1968 Chicago Police Riot has been portrayed as father against son, there's a real element of truth to that as Chicago was, to a large extent, as series of blue collar ghettos and the protestors of the 1968 Democratic Convention were largely the college educated sons and daughters of blue collar workers.

All that would have created enough turmoil but added into that there were peculiar social changes that were also afoot, some of which would have been quite disruptive in their own right and others which contributed to the mix. Two of these involved women.

The big change involving women is well known, but grossly misunderstood. By the 1950s (not the 1960s, as so often claimed) women's roles in the office and at home were changing.

This is usually claimed to be a byproduct of World War Two, but it isn't.  It was rather the result of the onset of really effective domestic machinery in the home, a process that had been going on since the early 20th Century but which had been retarded by the Great Depression.  Greatly improved domestic machinery that would have come onto the market fairly rapidly in the 1930s and 1940s instead simply bust onto the market in the 1950s.  This meant that much of the necessary heavy labor performed by women in the house was no longer as labor intensive. For the first time, many women and even girls could seriously consider entering the workplace and not really have to make a choice between a domestic life or that of the "spinster" life.

The same machinery, washing machines, massively improved kitchen stoves, dryers, etc., also meant that younger women could actually leave the household as they were not required for domestic labor. That was a huge change in and of itself.  And it also meant that young men were free to live on their own without the close support of their families or living in boarding houses, all of which had been true before and all of which were due to the daily amount of domestic labor just to stay alive.  Young men had expanded personal freedom in an age in which there were still a lot of good jobs that didn't require a college degree, even if many were receiving them.  Young women were really free to opt for work for the first time. So were married women.

It is really with married women, we should note, that the change was the most revolutionary, although it was generally across the board.  Many younger women who entered the work force actually did so only temporarily at the time.  But the change was setting in fairly quickly, even if the fact that it was a change was clear to everyone.  Using television as a mirror, by 1970 television had gone from the Cleaver family as a subject to the office life of Mary Tyler Moore.

The cast of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which included several women characters, only one of whom was a homemaker.

Mary Tyler Moore (in the 1970s television sitcoms were sometimes simply named after the actual names of the principal actor) was centered on the life of a young female single professional.  The casting of Moore, who had previously been casts in roles based on her physical appearance in no small part, was both brilliant and intentional.  Moore was the new young working woman of the age, surrounded in part by accepting men and in part not.  Betty White was portrayed as an older somewhat radical woman worker, perhaps the first female character cast that way and definitely contrary to her later roles.  While using television as a reflection of the times is dangerous, the huge success of the show does demonstrate the extent to which it reflected a contemporary world that was just recently changed.  That it was recently changed is evident just from watching it, as so much of the old world remained as a point of reference.

As noted, that would have been disruptive in and of itself, but added to that a combined pharmaceutical discovery and the ooze that Hugh Hefner released operated in concert with a lot of young men and women no longer living at home to start what would ultimately become a disastrous social change that reflected itself differently in different demographics.  As has been addressed here before, including quite recently, Hefner managed to exploit an already existing market that had been expanded by World War Two by making it male mainstream. In essence he portrayed the girl next store as dumb, heavy chested, and available.  In 1953 when the magazine hit the girl next door was in fact largely unavailable and her reputation would have been ruined had she been, but the male expectation was created.  By 1963 however she was living outside of the home in increasing numbers and the birth control pill came out.

Hormonal birth control pills created a revolution in human behavior in the western world that had real negative impacts.  Had the same pharmaceuticals come out only today, chances are high that they would not be allowed by the FDA as the physical dangers of them are so well known.  At the time, however, that they'd have an impact on behavior to the extent that they would was not anticipated by many (it was by some), nor was it the case that it was known that pressure would develop, and fairly rapidly, for female behavior to be libertine in response.  Certainly not all of it was, but in some sectors it increasingly became so over time and ultimately arrived upon a very widespread social expectation.  

Now, it should be noted, there's been retreats and adjustments to much of this, so a person can't assume that this is all a straight line in any fashion.  But what we're doing is simply setting the stage to ask the question that Burns and Novik posed, and then assumed an answer for.

So, by the late 1960s we have the general conditions described above. And then along came the Vietnam War.

The war did put a section of young people, and some not so young people, out on the streets protesting against the war.  And as all of these things hit at one time, there was a section or two of the American population that really formed its ideas about the world at that time.  Those sections were largely white (which most Americans were, and are).  One section was located in increasingly large cities and the other on their peripheries and outside of the cities.  One section was well educated and, over time, increasingly came to have very small families, if any families at all, and had a fair amount of surplus cash and highly liberal views. The other section had more traditional family structure, although decreased from earlier times, and suffered from economic up and downs extensively.

Now, there was a lot of crossing over from one to the other. And both sections had their roots quite clearly in earlier times.  But the times did change them as well.  Prior to the 1970s real political radicalism in the United States depended upon a radicalized and Unionized working class. That simply ceased to be the case after the 1970s, and indeed unions died themselves.  The concept of social change and justice being based on the lives of the common man ended, as instead it came to be centered in the social views of a fairly rarefied section of the wealthy white urban class that had previously made up what were termed WASPs.  And that's where we are today.

And, indeed, I've noted how that reflects today in our current politics.

But is that the fault of the Vietnam War?

Well, at least partially.  The war did create a rift that seems to have grown bigger over the years, if we take in a lot of years at a time. But it can't be said that it wouldn't have occurred anyhow.  Perhaps the desire of a white upper middle class student body to avoid serving in the war got us to the rift, or maybe it only accelerated it.  If it created it, Richard Nixon's behavior in expanding the war late in its unpopularity and then in trying to cover up the break in of the  Watergate Hotel didn't help it much.  Rampant inflation in the 1970s didn't help much either.

But where this plays out, and how much of the current social viewpoint disparity is directly related is another question entirely.  Technological innovation and advancement, changes in the global economy and the like have all played a role and, from the long view, maybe a greater role than something like the Vietnam War.  

And I suspect that much of this turmoils is reaching a high tide point, and will start to recede.  It always seems to over a long period of time, but that it takes a long time is often missed.  Even with all of the current truly odd developments, many of which are deeply opposed to human's actual nature on one hand, and deeply politically regressive on the other, the overall culture of the nations, struggled for as it is, remains there.

So, while Burns and Novik can Quixotically hope that their documentary starts to heal the political and social rift of the country, chances are that something will slowly change all that anyhow, even if it doesn't completely heal any rift, as some rifts have always been there.

Politics and the Ambo

 From and of the ghetto, even in wealth.  St. Patrick's Day Parade, New York City, 1913.  John D. Crimmins, contractor, Catholic layman and philanthropist; John Cardinal Murphy Farley, and William Sulzer, governor of New York

Something different has been going on this election.  It's something we haven't really seen since the 1960 election, when the country unfortunately elected John F. Kennedy to the Presidency.  

No, I'm not going on to analyze the disastrous Kennedy presidency, although I do have to wonder how a guy with such lecherous personal behavior and whom nearly got us into a shooting war with the Soviet Union. . . twice, and who did get us into the swamp of Vietnam, still comes across as a hero, but that's another story that I've already written about.

Now, what's different is that for the first time in a very long time Catholic figures, including clerics are starting to address politics from the ambo and the pen/computer.

About time.

Okay, should not Catholics continue on reading this? That presumes anyone reads these entries in the first place, a big assumption, but this actually tacks pretty close to the purpose of the blog, so maybe so.   And it won't be strictly a "Catholic things" in any event.

People speak about the "Catholic Vote", but there hasn't been one for a really long time. Since 1960 more or less.  When there was one, prior to 1960, that vote tended to be a minority vote in opposition, something Catholics have forgotten. That was because Catholics were on the outside.  Indeed, people at that time spoke of the Catholic Ghetto.

The Catholic Ghetto wasn't a physical place, although a Catholic Ghetto was real enough in a lot of places, but an intellectual one.  There are a lot of Catholics in the United States, to be sure, and there has been a significant number ever since the Great Famine in Ireland. There was a trickle of Catholics in the country before that, but not really all that many.  Indeed, Catholics in North America were most strongly represented in those places where the French had colonized or that Spain had, which of course had long included some areas of the United States, which following the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican War  would include a larger and larger area (our purchase of Alaska, interestingly, would bring in the sole region of our country where the Russian Orthodox are strongly represented, mostly amongst native populations).  Indeed, riffing off of Orthodoxy here, what I'd note about the Catholic Ghetto is that there was also an Orthodox one, and a Jewish one as well, all in the sense I've noted here.

Salt Lake's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral, in its "Greek Town", a physical and cultural space in Salt Lake.  Salt Lake still retains a well regarded Greek Orthodox elementary school.

St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Denver, a Polish church with a high school (which it still retains) in a once heavily Irish and Slavic neighborhood in Denver.

Still, prior to the American Civil War Catholics were openly and harshly detested.  Forgotten now, anti Catholic propaganda was common and often incredibly vile.

The Civil War started to change that, but the change was slow. Also forgotten now, the American Civil War featured a very strong religious aspect to it in that the contestants prior to the war often made strong resort to religious arguments, which for the most part omitted Catholics and therefore tended to be strongly worded arguments from different Protestant positions in various regions.  Indeed, accordingly to at least one student of the era the results of the war in the South actually had the result of changing the religious makeup of the region, which is not to say that it made religion in the South weaker but rather to say that it weakened one Protestant branch while strengthening another.  At any rate, the valiant efforts of Irish and German troops, which followed up on concerns over their loyalty under oppression during the Mexican War, had the impact of causing a lot of the open hostility towards Catholics to back off, but not end.

Indeed, as late as the late 19th and early 20th Century Catholic politicians in a lot of the United States were pretty careful about being over identified with their religion.  It's been noted, for example, that even in very egalitarian Wyoming (of that period) an early and successful Catholic politician kept his distance form over open identification with his church.  That may not have been admirable, but that sort of thing was pretty common.

Things began to change more significantly after World Wand before World War Two such that strong identification with Catholicism became less of a liability.  Indeed, this was so much the case that New York National Guard chaplain, Father Francis P. Duffy, would be regarded as a great hero of World War One and his statute would be placed in Times Square.  Presidential candidate Al Smith didn't try to shy away from his religion in his campaigns against Franklin Roosevelt, and he still remains a popular politician today. 

As  has been noted elsewhere on this blog, it was World War Two that really changed Catholic fortunes, and the fortunes of other minorities, in the United States, both figuratively and literally.  Prior to the war, Catholics were a typical American minority in some ways in that they did not generally break into what today we'd call "white collar" professions. By and large, they became middle class, but middle class in the blue collar world, with exceptions for medicine and law (exceptions which have been and remain common for other minorities). The G.I. Bill, however, changed that.  With the G. I. Bill,  the Serviceman's Readjustment Act, Catholics started going to college and broke into general American life.  This is true, of course, of other minorities that had tended to be strictly or nearly exclusively blue collar prior to that time as well.

And Kennedy was the sign of that in the 1960s Presidential campaign.  He was young, seemingly energetic (he was also subject to severe health problems that were kept secret).  And he was Catholic.  However, as has been explored before, his speech in front of the Southern Baptists neutralized that, and gave us the Catholic politician.  And beyond that, it gave us a sort of model of the modern American politician, which endorses the compromise of deeply held beliefs in the name of the expedient and popular by allowing, indeed nearly mandating, their balkanization.

Ever since then we've had the concept that Catholics, and others, could basically act against their stated beliefs, in membership in a religion states a set of beliefs, and if it is sincere it does, and still be in good standing.  This has been the case over a long series of political developments which have taken us further and further from what the Catholic religion holds to be acceptable morally.  Most of these positions are very simple to discern and are few in number, but politicians have sold themselves out on them least they lose votes.  Boiled down to their current essence, Catholics hold that abortion is murder, and so is euthanasia.  They also hold that same sex marriage if contrary to the natural law and not marriage at all.

Now, there's clearly more to the Catholic faith (and the Orthodox one) and its moral views than that, but that's what are the bulk of what Catholics have taken to calling "the non negotiables".  No Catholic holds that its easy, in this current political environment, to find a candidate who really hold to all our views, but plenty of Catholics and Catholic politicians believe that they can act on compromises and not be acting contrary to their faith in what Catholics and Orthodox view as a "grave manner". Put another way, the position hold by Vice Presidential candidate Kaine on at least a couple of these issues is so contrary to Catholic beliefs that at least a couple of Priests have publicly stated that he shouldn't show up in their communion lines.

What has been absent all of these years, however, is a concerted and blunt effort to address these matters with some authority.  It's finally come, but it's rather late in the day.

There's little excuse for this coming so late, however.  It's long overdue and more than a little late.

As an example of what we're currently seeing, in at least two of the local Catholic parishes the pastor addressed politics this past Sunday in their homilies.  In the one that I heard, the homily was largely based on the reading of Monsignor Charles Pope's September 29, 2016 article in the National Catholic Register, entitled Vote as a Catholic with a Catholic Moral Vision and subtitled Be Catholic. Vote as a Catholic with a Catholic moral vision. Advance the Kingdom of God. It's a strongly worded piece, to say the least.  Some quotes from that article.

Satan is no idiot. He has successfully convinced most Catholics that moral issues are political issues.  And in so doing he has successfully shut down a huge amount of moral exhortation and reflection. This is especially true in a political season such as this, when the distinctions between the candidates on critical moral issues could not be clearer or sharper.

That's pretty blunt, but it correctly points out that for a lot of Americans of any religious stripe there's come to be an odd belief that being informed by ones Faith is not a politically correct thing to do, when quite the opposite is the case.  A person should, rather, be informed in their political views by their deep beliefs, including their faith, and indeed most particularly by their faith, if they have one.  A political view without being so informed is deeply shallow, at a bare minimum.

Msgr Pope goes on to note

Among the moral issues that have been most politicized are non-negotiable issues for any Catholic: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and same sex “marriage.”  These are non-negotiable issues because there is no room for nuance or degree of support. You are either for them or against them. There is no middle ground. They are outright forbidden by Church teaching and no Catholic may agree with or support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research or same-sex “marriage” in any degree whatsoever. This goes for every Catholic from the highest political officials to the lowliest and most unknown Catholic in the pew. This precedes politics, party loyalties, political leanings or any such thing.

Again, that's blunt, but it is the Catholic view.  That  its only so forcefully being stated now from the ambo, however, is inexcusable.

Pope's article is of course much longer than this, but the basic point is that a person cannot both claim to be a member of a faith while ignoring its deeply held tenants.  That's clear enough. And its not some sort of horrible social crime to base your political beliefs on those tenants.  Indeed, at least up until John F. Kennedy the basic assumption is that this is what people with deep beliefs did.  Now, however, its somehow regarded as okay to do the opposite, which is intellectually bankrupt at a bare minimum.