Moral issues held for ransom
The Republican party acts like they’re the only ones to ever think about right and wrong. Not true.
I’m not picking on Prickly City here, because I like the comic, but it’s as good an example as any of how the notion of “moral issues” has been distorted by the Republican party ... as if they’re the only ones who ever think about right and wrong.
I probably don’t qualify as a real “Hollywood liberal” but I voted for Kerry expressly on moral issues. The kind of screwing that gets my moral attention is the kind that Enron did to old ladies’ pensions. There were environmental, constitutional, economic and war-related issues - all part of my understanding of public morality. The Republicans did a good job pretending they “owned” morality by focusing on wedge issues like gay marriage and “The Pledge,“ but “morality” is a bigger subject than that.
(By the way, Prickly City, I agree that most of the people on that list are total nitwits, with the exception of Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg, and George Soros. That’s a big problem the Democratic party has… it lets anyone near a microphone.)
Extended Text:
Moral Issue: Weakening environmental issues: we have to hand this planet over to our kids someday.
Moral Issue: The deficit: we have to hand this economy ober to our kids someday.
Moral Issue: Security: we’re less secure because our president insisted on tying up our military attacking the wrong country. Iraq was not a threat to us. We do not have the resources to take out every bad guy in the world - have to pick our battles more carefully. We might need that military for real threats.
Moral Issue: Security II - we have not finished the job in Afghanistan. And we have the support of the world on that one!
Moral Issue: Energy policy: Cheney wouldn’t say who helped him write it - is he willing to deny it was his cronies from Enron?
Moral Issue: Constitutional freedoms, especially the first amendment. The Bush administration has suppressed free speech even to the extent of having people wearing Kerry buttons at Bush rallies arrested. And if theocracies are so great, why don’t they go live in one? They can deny it all they want, but that’s the direction we’re headed.
Moral Issue: Drug policy. Our inner cities are turned into war zones, and crime cartels made rich and powerful by the misguided “war on drugs.“ Let’s grow up, shall we? At the very least, can we agree that if smoking weed makes a terminally ill person feel better, we should let him?
Moral Issue: Right to die. What right does the government have to decide this for me?
Moral Issue: Gay rights. People who want to form stable partnerships are by definition, decent people. What is so terrible about letting them?
Moral Issue: stem cell research. Once more, a “wedge issue” without real substance. The embroyos that would be used to find new stem cell lines are frozen leftovers. They will be flushed down the drain if they are not used. They will never be born in any case.
Across the red/blue fence, what do we have in common? Belief in the promise of America? Devotion to the constitution? (I hope!) The connections of our economy? (Many essays have been written by people in red and blue states about how the other state couldn’t survive without them. Hello! We need each other!
With all that going for us, it must be possible to find a connection.
I agree that some in the Right have seized on the Moral Issues bit to claim it as theirs, unjustly. Ironically, they’ve been enabled in it by those on the Left who’ve let them, who’ve pooh-poohed Moral Issues as troglodyte rural hick talk, something Those Red State Yokels dither on about. Especially Moral Issues that are supposedly informed by Those Christian Yahoos, Who Are Constantly Inserting Their Moral Beliefs Into Clear-Cut Policy Debates.
Not everybody on the Left is talking like that, not by a long shot. But you don’t have to go far to find some who are.
Just as all politics are local, most political decisions are grounded in morality, on what is perceived as Good and Just and Virtuous and (for those as feel that way) Desired by God. If the majority on the Right will grant that to the Left, and the majority on the Left will accept it as well, then we have some basis for further discussion on these matters. Otherwise, Left and Right will continue to just scream at each other.
Posted by *** Dave on 11/22/04 at 08:38 AM
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