As a service, I read Hugh Hewitt’s rant (‘Hating the Religious Right’) in the Weekly Standard denouncing John Danforth’s principled stand against the shift the Republican party has recently undertaken. It all boils down to these final sentences:
These and other developments have indeed mobilized new activists across the country, many of who see a vast disparity between what they believe ought to be public policy and what is becoming that policy by judicial fiat. They have every right to participate in politics, and they can be expected to refuse to support elected officials who ignore their concerns.
Attempts to silence them, marginalize them, or to encourage others to do so are not arguments against their positions, but admissions that those positions represent majorities that cannot be refused a place at the law-making table.
Shorter Hugh Hewitt:
Decrying a theocracy merely affirms the rights of theocrats to impose their rule.
Glad we got that cleared up.
Sav
Good to see you rebutting his points.
John Cole
Umm. I don’t have to. Hugh did it for me.
Try reading the post again.
Sav
Don’t need to. You said something about a theocracy that never was nor ever will be by putting words in Hewitt’s mouth.
Ed
It appears that Mr. Hewitt believes that his opinion is the majority opinion, and that a small minority has used the court system to overturn the will of the majority.
In other words, he seems to be affirming the right of the majoity to rule via the democratic process.
At least, that’s what I’m reading in the snippit you’ve reproduced. I’m not sure where you are assuming a theocracy.
BTW, considering the various doctronal differences between the various religious groups in this country, talking about a theocracy in America is absurd. Even the Catholics in this county, who are supposed to be governed by a strict hierarchy, cannot agree on everything; imagine a group of protestants coming together.
John Cole
They are not the majority. On this issue alone, upwards of 75-80% believe that Congress overstepped its bounds.
Rick
John,
If 75-80% of the public believes Congress overstepped its bounds, and that data is controlling, then we’re more in danger of living in a dumbocracy than a theocracy.
The legislative and executive branches were entirely within their Constitutional rights to act as they did viz the third branch.
Cordially…
Sav
Apparently 20% is all it takes to turn a Constitutional Republic into a theocracy.
Excuse me. Twenty percent and James “Killer” Dobson.
AST
Since when did the right to participate in the political since require a denial of one’s faith?
George T
To Rick, when did you graduate law school? To claim that the President and the Congress ” … were entirely within their Constitutional rights …” tosses out more than 200 years of well-settled and accepted American jurisprudence (since the landmark Marbury v Madison), and it is either ignorant of this or just asking for trouble. The courts cannot be ordered to do something in a single case by another branch; the reverse is another story, as the courts exist to in fact tell the President and the Congress when they have acted in a manner contrary to the Constitution. That is why our Founding Fathers created this third co-equal branch of our government, as a check against the power of the other two branches — that IS THE POWER of the courts!! Congress writes the laws; the President carries them out; the Courts determine when the other two screw up. It really is quite plain and direct. To choose to ignore the plain meaning of the Constitution is to ignore facts that are just too inconvenient for some who don’t like the outcomes, but that is called the “rule of law” that Amereica was founded upon and by which we have been governed since that time.
To answer AST’s question, um, ever since the Constitution was ratified. It’s called separation of powers, but also separation of church and state. You can be motivated by your faith, as I believe most people are. You just cannot make your view, on how to behave, the sectarian law of the land. You can’t get major groups of Christians to agree on basic things like the right to not be killed by a bomb (think Northern Ireland); how can we expect them to agree on everyday aspects of our private conduct, such as using birth control pills, or anal sex with one’s spouse (whether of the same gender or the opposite), or anything else we do as “kings in our own castles”, a/k/a the privacy of our own homes? Griswald v Connecticut first elucidated the principle that our first amendment rights are meaningless if we cannot exercise them when acting in private; that is the foundation of an embedded right to privacy that eventually led to Roe v Wade. If Scalia and Thomas and the other “Constitution-in-Exile” brethren get their way, you may soon see yourself arrested for merely looking at what some would (using their very subjective and ever-shifting standards) call porn on the internet. THAT’S why YOUR faith and MINE must stay out of telling us how to behave in our personal lives.