Morality and Politics
The following is slightly adapted from a comment I made at the Secular Right blog today:
I find myself reluctantly reevaluating the value to me of participating here. It held such promise; yet I suppose I expected more political discourse, and a whole lot less theological debate. I really appreciate the quality of minds and discourse found here, both from the posters and the majority of commenters. This obviously speaks well of the moderators ability to consign moonbats’ comments to the bit bucket.
I enjoy the philosophical and psychological discussions; but not the theological wrangling that so many threads devolve into. I perceive an existential need for those of us pining for maximum individual Liberty, and the minimal government necessary to secure it as envisioned by our Founders, to free ourselves from the dogmatic battle between the Politically Correct forces on the Left, and the Piously Correct forces on the Right.
If our republic is truly meant to be secular, their competing moral codes have no relevance to good government. We make a huge mistake by allowing these two factions to frame the debate in elections for our representatives, with their litmus tests for conformance to their PC dogma. Their struggle is pointless to individuals with more enlightened moral codes of their own, which they have no desire to impose on others.
We need a Secular Party that rejects the imposition of any particular moral code on individuals. Since the game is rigged against third parties, it seems more practical to hijack one of the two major ones. The Democrat Party is currently held hostage by the Marxists, who invented labor strife, socialism, environmentalism, and Political Correctness. The Republican Party is currently held hostage by the fundamentalist Christians; but at least it prefers capitalism for an economic model, even if corporatism seems to be gaining the upper hand over liassez faire.
It thus seems more practical to target the Republican Party and throw its “faith based” religious leaders under the bus, so that all the true secularists on the Left, who are not PC Marxists or environmental wackos, could also feel at home among us. I posit that today we are the silent majority, and could get this country back on track if we just stopped legitimizing the moralists’ PC issues.
I suspect that most individual Christians would be happy to let go of their need to bring their Piously Correct morality into the public square of political debate, if they were assured that the Politically Correct camp couldn’t impose theirs on us all either. The opposite may also be true, although I am less convinced of it. In any case, I would like to see more practical discussions regarding how to reverse the trend toward statism evinced by the last couple of elections.
In the meantime, I will just have to learn to discipline myself not to waste time reading the likes of the comments above, and the rebuttals they attract. I am sure she is a nice lady, and she writes of her beliefs well; but I moved past the slightest interest in what Jesus or the bible says forty years ago, and I just don’t see their relevance to practical discussions among the Secular Right.
It may not be pleasant telling such people that their faith has no standing in our quest for good government, and I take no pleasure in offending them by doing so; but sooner or later we are going to have to, if we have any hope of saving our country from the trend toward a Marxist tyranny. The effectiveness of the messianic personality cult underlying Obama’s campaign was particularly disturbing. The faithful have become a decided hindrance to the cause of Liberty, even if they think they are trying to help. â—„Daveâ–º
Then, in rebuttal to a reply from a member of the Religious Right, I said:
You cannot recover or sustain liberty without us.
I didn’t intend to. I made the point that most Christians would accept a secular government in DC, if they could get the ACLU off their backs in Peoria. The question is, what would it take to get the abortion or gay issue off the table? These morality issues are losers, for here the Religious Right is decidedly outnumbered. By forcing Republican candidates to take a public stand on them to get the nomination, other secularists are driven into the camp of the Progressives as perhaps their lesser of two evils.
Obama et al is permitted to claim to be a Christian and pro-choice/gay at the same time. Except in the North East, Republicans are not. The devout may take comfort in a President claiming to get on his knees and pray for guidance from his god; but there are a whole lot of folks that are made extremely nervous by such a notion.
They would prefer a President who took responsibility for his own actions and mistakes, rather than smugly resting assured that he was following his god’s will, and the noisy vox populi be damned. The Progressive Public School factories are churning out these Politically Correct voters, much faster than the churches are creating Piously Correct voters. Fundamentalists are losing the demographics game, and increasingly are just playing the role of spoilers.
I reckon that if there was only a Secular Party and a Progressive Party, most considering themselves among the Religious Right, would vote for the PC-neutral Secular candidate anyway. Perhaps as only the lesser of two evils; but the Secularists would get their votes by default, without any need to pander to them, which is what is inexorably killing the Republican Party.
There is plenty of common ground to be found in our shared wish to restore constitutional (limited) government and free enterprise.
Agreed. Help us devise a strategy for getting the PC morality debate off the table, and I will happily vote for you as Sarah Palin’s VP in ’12. 🙂 â—„Daveâ–º
I think it is odd that you keep referring to the Democrats and Republicans as if they are extremists on opposite ends of the spectrum. I see it as the opposite; they have both become the worst sort of moderate.
I think the problem stems from the media. It seeks to boost the underdog and discredit the front runner in order to have a close race that makes daily news. This leaves both parties pandering for every little vote and trying to please everyone. The easiest way to keep those votes is to just give everyone what they want: more programs and less taxes. They both strive for both political and pious correctness.
I certainly agree with your overall point. I presume by now you have read my “Incumbrepublocrats” piece. However, the two wings do their best to convince the sheeple that there is a great difference between them, to keep their “base” frightened of their opposition and stuck to their coalition. My motive in hammering the PC² meme is to get those taken in by either side to notice how similar they are to the other.
I.e. Political Correctness is a moralizing dogma that is much like a religion, which they abhor; and Piety Correctness is a moralizing dogma that resembles the behavior regulating PC agenda, which they abhor. One of my favorite questions to either side is, “Would you give up your desire to regulate their behavior, if they would stop trying to change yours?” It has been my observation that most on both sides think they are playing defense, to preserve their very way of life. It would seem that therein lay the makings of a compromise that could really foul up the politician’s game. â—„Daveâ–º
You have an uphill battle on your hands. It is fast becoming an argument between the meddlers and the anarchists. Our ranks are growing as the obvious unsustainability of the taxless spenders becomes apparent, but we are vastly outnumbered and outranked.
Pope Benedict XVI’s stated in his Christmas message 12-22-08 that the human race is as threatened by gay and lesbian families as are the rain forest from wanton destruction. The pope declared that the church “must defend not only the earth, the water and the air as gifts of creation belonging to everyone, but it must also protect mankind against the destruction of itself. The tropical forests deserve our protection, but man as a creature deserves it no less.”
I don’t think the two parties have the same core ideology, they just both set it aside in order to act in their own self interest. George W. Bush’s 12-24-08 statement, “I abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.â€, shows that this goes straight to the top. The statement is somewhat echoed In Pat Buchanan’s statement about ‘Toyota Republicans’ that I wrote about the other day. I’ve been trying to pull that crowd back a bit towards free market, going so far as making a funnel site for the term (I explain the concept on one of my other blogs http://www.4hourfollowers.com/?page_id=3).
Whoops, Just noticed I posted the wrong link. http://www.4hourfollowers.com/2008/12/funnel-sites/
We both have an uphill battle. I liked the “meddlers vs. anarchists” meme. It sort of fits with my UP/DOWN concept. I enjoyed exploring both of your links. I have been using AdBlock and NoScript with Firefox for so long that I often forget the commercial nature of most blogs. â—„Daveâ–º
I’m enjoying the commercial nature. I’m not really making money yet, although I’m still just starting out, but I think advertising is changing. The nature of modern contextual or hand picked affiliate advertising makes it vastly less irritating than either the rabbits singing about toilet paper we are forced to endure in the middle of a suspenseful TV show, or those irritating pop up windows that gave internet advertising a bad name. It may be because I’m more attuned now, but I actually deliberately look at the advertising on blogs now because it gives me useful links sometimes. If you are going to recommend a book you think your readers would appreciate, why not give them a convenient link to it on amazon? They get convenience and a great book ,and you get a cut. It is free market at its best. More people are waking up to this as they start up their own blogs and pick out a few ads to put up. We are seeing the birth of a system that puts both the media and paid advertising in the hands of individuals. We do a better job of it.
I did a bit more thinking about the two dimensional political graph and still couldn’t come up with anything I was satisfied with. I think the computer with its many dimensional wisdom may have to come to the rescue.