June 15, 2004

Religion and the Bush Administration

Tom Teepen applies a religious test to the Bush administration. His verdict: it's ok for one's religious values to influence their actions in politics if they are a liberal, but if one is a conservative evangelical, then it's just wrong. Why? Bush policies do not "do not reflect the broad practice and values of most mainstream Christians but rather the dogmas of conservative faiths." I don't know why that's a defining measure for why it's right or wrong though - if you consider abortion to be a human rights issue, as I do, then religious doctrine is just an aside. Today's religious conservatives have as much right to speak up on right-to-life issues as nineteenth-century abolitionists (also a minority) did to speak out against slavery.

And just another little fact: if abortion is an unalienable right due to the words of a Supreme Court decision, by that standard, ownership of slaves is also an unalienable right - another decision by our Supreme Court from our past. Of course the latter proposition is ridiculous. What isn't said very much nowadays, but should be, is that the first propostion is ridiculous also, for the same reason.

Posted by Joel Fuhrmann at June 15, 2004 10:00 PM
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