In today's National Review Online, John Derbyshire laments the Age of No Consequences. I lament it too, John.
His article reminds me of a post that's been brewing in my head over the last few days, one I'd like to commit to writing before I let it go - the idea of inconsistencies in thought from Religious Left types.
I know people who hate the Religious Right because they say radical-right-types are just out to tell everyone how to live. One of them is a member of PETA, which is just as actively trying to get people to commit to vegetarian diets, even going as far as picketing seafood restaurants near the Jersey shore (they consider cooking lobsters in boiling water to be inhumane-apparently there is a fundamental right of all animals, with the exception of certain classes of human beings, to be free from pain). So coercion is a tactic employed by both right and left, and there must be another reason for their disrespect for the Religious Right: namely, different values, though some values are just too flaky to state explicitly I guess.
Our Constitution recognizes the right of the people to keep and bear arms, noting that the existence of well-regulated militias is an important component of maintaining a free state. Our Constitution does not mention abortion, or even reproduction. So what's a Constitutional right: the so-called "right to choose" or the right to buy a handgun? You can tell a lot about someone's political views just by noting their answer to this one question.
Speaking of abortion; abortion is considered to be a fundamental human (or women's) right because of a single judicial decree: Roe vs. Wade. The institution of slavery is justly considered to be a great evil in spite of a similar nineteenth-century judicial decree protecting it, the Dredd Scott case. It is just not true that past Supreme Court decisions define fundamental human rights.
After 9-11, Unitarian Universalists and other liberal religious groups, such as The Interfaith Alliance, who usually decry mixing church and state, fell over themselves in supporting the Islamist cause, choosing to overlook the fact that in countries implementing sharia law, there is no freedom from a state-imposed religion (and it isn't Unitarian-Universalism either - UUA churches would be banned along with all those with plus-signs on them)
Another aspect of sharia law, is the practice of dhimmitude (discussed here by Batt Yeor in National Review Online), where Christians and Jews are forced to live in conditions worse than what existed here in the USA under Jim Crow. Almost all Americans rightly consider the Jim Crow period of our history to be a grave injustice, but liberals seem to think that dhimmitude doesn't exist, or if it does, is just a neutral aspect of Muslim culture, for all practical concerns, none of our business. Who are we to judge?
I'm sure that I could think of many more examples of inconsistent thinking; indeed I could come up with some from the right: (Why in the world did President Bush ever sign the Campaign Finance Reform bill for starters? He believes in free speech!) If you want to add some via comments, I'd sure appreciate seeing them.