Sargent Shriver, RIP

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The last pro-life Democrat on a national ticket has died. R. Sargent Shriver, 1972 running mate of the best Democratic nominee since Al Smith, was an admirer of Catholic Worker founder and saint-to-be Dorothy Day and an active member in 1940-41 of College Men for Defense First, which merged with the America First Committee, the largest antiwar organization in American history. A seamless garment Democrat: oh, for more of these.

4 COMMENTS

  1. […] Consider the most clearly sorted partisan issue: abortion. While pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans are sometimes viable on the state or local level, it is now effectively impossible to get the Democratic presidential or vice-presidential nomination without endorsing abortion rights or to get on the Republicans’ national ticket without doing the opposite. Yet as the historian Daniel Williams’ new book Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement Before Roe v. Wade reminds us, there was a time when leading members of the anti-abortion movement did not merely consider themselves liberals but saw their movement as a liberal one—in Williams’ summary of their views, “an effort to extend state protection to the rights of a defenseless minority.” The last pro-lifer to get on a national Democratic ticket wasn’t some Blue Dog conservative; it was McGovern’s running mate, Sargent Shriver. […]

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