Michael Feingold, writing for the Village Voice, a New York City alternative paper (with a huge cirrculation) wrote this piece about our election and how he interprets his faith through it. Here is an excerpt.
"For make no mistake, this is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. Today the church is no longer a religion but a tacky political lobby, with an obsessive concentration on a minuscule number of social topics so irrelevant to questions of governance that they barely constitute political issues at all. These are the points of contention tied into what are blurrily referred to as "moral values," though they have almost nothing to do with the larger moral question of how one lives one's life, and everything to do with the fundamentally un-Christian and un-American idea of forcing others to live the way you believe they should. The displacement of faith involved is eerie, almost psychotic: Here are people willing to vote against their own well-being and their own children's future, just so they can compel someone else's daughter to bear an unwanted child and deprive someone else's son of the right to file a joint income tax return with his male partner."
You can read the whole article here.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Our Vanished Values
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3 comments:
I find David's comment interesting. It seems to me that the left doesn't WANT to understand why people with conservative moral values voted for Bush. He just wants to pigeonhole them to justify his argument. It really goes back to the "conservatives are stupid" argument.
I wonder how many conservative evangelicals he sat down with to discuss the issues before writing his piece? It is this kind of continued snobbery that is off-putting to much of middle America.
And then what of those people who voted for Bush for reasons other than "moral" ones? Perhaps there were a large number who voted for Bush indicating that as their primary reason, but surely not everyone responded that way?
"It seems to me that the left doesn't WANT to understand why people with conservative moral values voted for Bush."
I think this article articulates very well that he understands that moral values were indeed involved in the decision to re-elect the President. That's his point, that moral values were the reason over and against the economy and the war in Iraq. His point was that the voters got mixed up on what he thinks is important.
I am curious about your opinion, why do you think people with conservative moral values voted for the President? Do you think there is a difference between moral values and social values?
I can't speak for why anyone voted the way they did except for me. I had two primary issues in mind. One is the life issue, and I was a little torn on this one. One problem I have with Kerry's position is that, for him it is a horrible thing that we have lost 1000+ troops in Iraq over the last year, yet it is no tragedy that we lose that in a day among the unborn.
Those troops do, at least, have a voice of their own. The others do not. I've never understood how the party of the voiceless and oppressed only speak up for those on this side of the womb. They actually speak against those still in the womb.
Nevertheless, I, too, think the loss of American lives in Iraq is tragic. It may be the cost of war, but I've never been fully convinced that this was a war that was necessary (even though the likes of John Kerry thought so, at least in the beginning).
The second issue for me is that John Kerry had a litmus test for judicial appointments requiring all apointees to be both pro-choice as well as judicial activists. That second one really bothers me. If judges can legislate from the bench (even if I happen to like their decisions) then we all lose and democracy is a thing of the past. I may like their decisions now, but what happens when it's my rights that get trampled next (and yours as well)?
I also like what Bush has done with the prescription drug benefit in Medicare and with No Child Left Behind - which had broadbased support among both parties.
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