This column by David Brooks is a real clunker:
Abraham Lincoln gathered his cabinet to tell them he was going to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He said he had made a solemn vow to the Almighty that if God gave him victory at Antietam, Lincoln would issue the decree.
Lincoln’s colleagues were stunned. They were not used to his basing policy on promises made to the Lord. They asked him to repeat what he’d just said. Lincoln conceded that “this might seem strange,” but “God had decided the question in favor of the slaves…”
One lesson we can learn from Lincoln is that there is no one vocabulary we can use to settle great issues. There is the secular vocabulary and the sacred vocabulary. Whether the A.C.L.U. likes it or not, both are legitimate parts of the discussion.
Another is that while the evangelical tradition is deeply consistent with the American creed, sometimes evangelical causes can overflow the banks defined by our founding documents. I believe the social conservatives’ attempt to end the judicial filibuster is one of these cases.
Shorter David Brooks: If you oppose the end of the filibuster in judicial nominations, you probably would have opposed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The debate at hand is not religion, per se. What is being debated is the role of a narrow view of religion in shaping and creating public policy. This is a sectarian battle for primacy and domination over others who believe differently before it is a battle over those who do not believe at all. No one debates that religion has a role in society- it does, and it should. What I oppose is a specific brand of religion flexing its muscles and telling everybody else what to do with the force of law.
And comparisons between the lunatics who represent their narrow brand of Christianity through Dobson, Terry, Robertson and Falwell and the broad ecumenical message and non-sectarian forces who struggled to end slavery and segregation just pisses me off. Trying to pretend that the message advanced by liberal Quakers and Jews and Martin Luther King and others is the same as the bitter, exclusionary, and bigoted sectarian nonsense being advanced by Focus on the Family just infuriates me and defies logic and history.
Brian C.B.
Well, apparently God didn’t weigh in on whether McClellan should have pursued the disorganized remnants of the Army of Northern Virginia as it recrossed the swollen Potomac into winter quarters, from which it would emerge in the summer of 1863 to kill tens of thousands of Union soldiers and once again invade the Northern states. Apparently, God is objectively pro-carnage, if anti-slavery.
This is about the weakest Brooks column, ever. And, it’s still better than any of John Tierney’s Times columns, so far. There are thoughtful conservatives, out there, I’m told. Couldn’t the NYT hire them and tell these two to go out into that heartland they both so love, yet from afar?
Birkel
Surely religious folks have every bit as much right to flex their political will in a democracy as any other group. Right John? If not, then this sectarian fight you mention is explicitly anti-religion and anti-religious. To forbid any group from asserting its own self-determining will withing a democracy is itself an undemocratic act.
So how do you justify this comment?
“What I oppose is a specific brand of religion flexing its muscles and telling everybody else what to do with the force of law.”
Do those people have less right to participate in democratic politics than others?
Stormy70
I don’t like MoveOne.org., who I see as “bitter, exclusionary, and bigoted (towards Christians), but they have a right to participate and lobby their government. So do all these groups you despise, and that is how it should be. Let these groups put their ideas out into the marketplace of ideas, and let her rip.
TJ Jackson
Its good to see people whose views like Robertson are to be banned from the public arena while the annointed determine whose views are acceptable.
Rick
Stonewall:
Dare I say “Amen” on this website? Because I don’t want to be thought of as advancing “bitter, exclusionary, and bigoted sectarian nonsense.”
Cordially…
lowcost web hosting
web hosting web hosting |