George Weigel's Blind Spot

It’s true, I’m no fan of George Weigel. But the purpose of this post is not to rehash old arguments. My aim here is modest: I just want to highlight two instances of Weigel’s recent writings that seem startling in their lack of self-awareness.

First, from a few weeks ago:

Underwriting that self-centered (indeed, selfish) concept of freedom is the idea that the human person is just a twitching bundle of desires, the satisfaction of which is what we mean by “human rights.”

And then more recently:

Shaw’s contention is that Hecker and those of his “Americanist” cast of mind did represent an assimilationist current in U.S. Catholic thought—a tendency to bend over backwards to “fit into” American culture—that eventually made possible Ted Kennedy, Barbara Mikulski, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden… My own view is that the failure of Catholics to infuse American politics with Catholic social doctrine has had a lot more to do with creating Joe Biden & Co. than Isaac Hecker and the nineteenth-century “Americanists.”

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