On the Square Today

In his latest On the Square column , Russell E. Saltzman says that America’s politics is a mix of partisanship and pragmatism:

Based on my own political experience in the 1970s, I related I did not in all my time in politics know any politician prepared to live or die by the rigidities of an ideology. What I saw were real men and real women making real decisions affecting real people in real places, and they typically sought real solutions. They were partisan, sure; it was politics. One of the best political tricks is to brand your opponent as an ideologue. But finally it does come down to reality: real people, real choices, for real reasons.

Also today, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput discusses religious freedom and World Youth Day :

Freedom of religion cannot coexist with freedom from religion. Forcing religious faith out of a nation’s public square and out of a country’s public debates does not serve democracy. It doesn’t serve real tolerance or pluralism. What it does do is impose a kind of unofficial state atheism. To put it another way, if we ban Christian Churches or other religious communities from taking an active role in our nation’s civic life, we’re really just enforcing a new kind of state-sponsored intolerance—a religion without God.