Posted by
Mark McConnell on Tuesday, October 24, 2006 4:43:16 PM
RedState blogger, Rory Weeks worries, "
Have Religious voters blinded us from real politics?". He's joining the chorus of "Goldwater conservatives", social-libertarians from
John Dean to
Andrew Sullivan, who are embarassed by the "Jesusland" caricature of the "red state" conservatives. "The sudden reincorporation of religion into politics is dangerous.", Weeks warns.
Weeks' blog entry was sparked by Heather Mac Donald's OpEd column for USA Today 10/23, titled,
"Conservatism doesn't need God". Atheistic and agnostic Republicans appear to be afraid that we are losing voters to the Libertarians and even the Democrats, because the "Religious Right" so dominates public perception of the GOP.
But, if all that these writers want the world to know is that conservative politics is not the same thing as conservative religion, that much would be obvious to anyone who knows the history of either, the Christian religion, or the current conservative political consensus. These writers are saying more than this.
Andrew Sullivan says that the GOP has "lost its soul", and John Dean warns that the GOP has no "conscience". Everywhere, there are alarms raised against the people Goldwater called "religious kooks", who according to Weeks "want to see America turned into a theocracy". Weeks, MacDonald, Dean, Sullivan, and many others, are saying that there is no such thing as a "conservative" politics, if it is also "religious" politics. As MacDonald's sub-head dictates: "The GOP has become the party of religion, and Democrats have been scrambling to play catch-up. The truth, though, is that piety doesn't belong in politics."
These authors all assert as a postulate that needs no proof, that Reason is the only rule given to direct us in how to glorify and enjoy humanity. They take it as axiomatic that Reason only produces good results in government, and that piety only produces evil. Bad results arise only from bad reason - obviously!
Therefore, Rory Weeks thinks he sounds scary, when he says:
"For those 'moral values' voters who would like to see America turned into a theocracy remember that the last time the world had one people got burned at the stake."
It's interesting that this commentis "for" the religious voters themselves. He means to adopt the tone of a sensitive husband, cautioning his captive wife to be on guard against her genetic tendency toward insanity. Remember, Christian, although you don't know it yourself, what you really want is to burn people at the stake. Once let yourself think that you can go outdoors by yourself, without the gentle tutelage of Reasonism, and you will become the monster that you are prone to be! Don't ever forget, dear Christian, that when God became involved with politics, in the end he died
in an asylum! With no brain at'all! According to Weeks, the clear lesson of American history is that credit for the greatness of America belongs to the Constitution; certainly not to God.
"Our founding fathers resisted the simple path of incorporating God into the Constitution; in spite of the fact, he had been placed consciously in the Declaration of Independence and many of the colonial laws of the day. The fact that the founders sought to keep religion and politics separate is indicative of what has made this country great throughout the centuries."
"Incorporating God" was "the simple path" (the childish way), that blinded the earlier colonies from real politics, until the constitution steered the new nation into adulthood.
The only thing proven to the free-thinkers by the practically incalculable evil of thinkocrats since the French Revolution is that, no government has yet appeared on the earth, sufficiently purged of "piety": The lesson uniformly taught by history, and especially by this country, is that as religious people acknowledge God less, the better off they are!
The conservative consensus will not be maintained on the terms dictated by the social libertarians. What's next?