All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.Samuel Johnson
Phil Krone is missed. He was the last of the Gentleman Liberal Patriots. Phil Krone invited debate, drank in opposing ideas and courteously offered thoughtful rebuttal without ever raising the volume, let alone insulting his combatant.
My political beliefs differed from Mr. Krone, though we both registered and tended to vote as Democrats.
Phil was an ideological Keynesian Liberal -like John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Simon and the great Paul Douglas, with just a pinch of Henry Wallace.
I adhere to the urban Ward-level empirical Regular Democratic point of view, that never parses away moral and religious convictions.
My political hero was my uncle and the Hickey family patriarch after the death of my grandfather - Larry "Bud" Hickey.
Uncle Bud was the Chief Engineer for Cook County Hospital from the 1950's until the 1980's. He was then made the Chief Engineer of Cook County by George W. Dunne. Uncle Bud and his large family lived in Meyer Hall - the former Cook County Hospital Doctors Residence at Taylor and Wolcott -because Uncle Bud was on duty 24 hours a day. The great surgeon and former Director of Admissions for Loyola Medical School, Dr. James H. Kennedy,MD once told me that as young resident at CCH he told, "See the Medical Director, but, above all, pay attention to Larry Hickey."
When Abortion, got its bloody foot in the door of the American soul in the late 1960's, Progressive forces, like the bed bugs now scourging urban American, bullied politicians with Policy. False tickling Policy. In the late 1970's, Cook County purchased an incinerator for the sole purpose of burning aborted fetuses.
Uncle Bud installed the gas operated incinerator and welded its doors shut. No Fetuses would be burned. it operated, but absolutely no fetuses were burned. The children would be buried with human dignity. You see, Uncle Bud was a Catholic, when that meant something, and Catholics, at that time, were prohibited from cremating the human body. All of that was parsed out by clerical Vatican II Cupcakes, don't you know.
News of this got out. The Policy hit the fan. Uncle Bud told Dunne, "Fire Me, but those doors stay welded shut."
George Dunne ended abortions at Cook County Hospital, except to save the life of the mother, because he agreed that Cook County Hospital had become no more, in the Cook County President's words, 'an Abortion Mill,*' Uncle Bud and George Dunne were Democrats. Dick Phelan bowed to Planned parenthood as Cook County President.
Policy, Phil Krone would argue, took into consideration the idea of a Woman's Choice - the euphemism for abortion -and Policy overtook the empirical act of killing a child in the mother's woman.
Gentlemen can agree to disagree - Policy holds that war is bad. A combat veteran understands that sometimes you need to squirt napalm into a cave and incinerate twenty enemy combatants in order to make Peace Happen.
Phil Krone unlike Uncle Bud believed that a Policy of Choice would bring about a better world. Phil Krone had a great heart and a wonderful intellect. Uncle Bud had a gas-operated incinerator that would burn the aborted fetuses of children. Gentlemen can disagree.
I raise the issue of abortion,only to make the distinction between Policy and Politics.
Phil Krone's voice was never the strident, arrogant, divisive pusillanimous caw of the Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, or Rachel Maddow. Phil Krone put his money where his heart was and entered the political arena in the New York Primary, though suffering in the last months of his heroic life.
Phil Krone believed in Civil Rights, Peace, Human Dignity, Liberty and Justice.
More importantly, Phil Krone respected the people who believe in those very same principles, but disagee with the path to them.
May Christ throw open His Arms for a Gentleman Liberal Patriot! God Bless you, Phil!
*
Dunne's views on women's sexuality are hypocritical
Click here for complete article
Date: May 4, 1988
Publication: Chicago Sun-Times
Page: 32
Word Count: 528
Excerpt:
As the powerful Cook County Board president, George Dunne has been almost singlehandedly responsible for the fact that poor women cannot obtain abortions at Cook County Hospital.
While the issue of this abuse of power through the use of sex is the foremost issue publicly raised by the Better Government Association, there is another issue here: Sex carries with it the risk of pregnancy.
It is time to take notice of the hypocrisy of male politicians on the issue of women'...
