Why I Can't Help Voting GOP
Tuesday May 9, 2006
My book "Crunchy Cons" is filled with Sturm und Drang over the complicated and anxious relationship conservatives like me have with the Republican Party. But it takes something like Maggie Gallagher's must-read cover story in The Weekly Standard to remind...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Rod, would you've been voting GOP during the Civil Rights movement?>
" But I have complete faith that the Democrats will do their best to destroy it."
This is a rude remark. I had hoped to hear better from you. This is worthy of your predecessor.
The Democrats actually have much more respect for freedom of religion than the Republicans, who use it for political gain, and want you to follow it, but don't live it personally.>
I would have voted Democratic during the civil rights movement (though coming from the South, that wouldn't have meant anything; our Dems were segregationist back then).
Dovid, you might find it a rude remark, but I think it's true. Your subsequent statement is a non sequitur. I wish the Dems could be trusted on the freedom of religion issue in this context, because I don't like feeling boxed in to vote for the GOP. Do you really believe that Democrats can be trusted to protect the right of religious organizations to follow their own teachings, even if it means discriminating against gays? If so, tell me how. And if not, will you at least admit to the justice of my fear?>
I disagree. I think that there is more totalitarianism exhibited by and flowing from this type of conservatism we are experiencing with this very administration. I myself would not vote for more of the demise of democracy.>
During most of the civil rights movement, the republicans were a northern and midwestern party that was generally supportive of civil rights. The biggest obstruction to civil rights legislation came from entrenched southern democrats who had seniority positions based on near permanent democratic party control of congress. This was the new deal coalition.
The new deal was constructed as a coalition between intellectual leftists, working-class union members, and southern segregationists. Some members were in more than one group.
When civil rights came to mean group rights, the individualist position of the republican party from the ascendent west eventually became the mainstream party position and still is.>
dreher:"...to defend religious liberty in this coming war. But I have complete faith that the Democrats will do their best to destroy it."
Religious liberty? Lets remember the early christians were the first to be called atheists, because they did not want to extend any religious liberty in their theology to other roman citizens, even though their 'god' was already being worshipped in the roman pantheon as the 'god'- Io.>
Tovart, I wonder if you know what totalitarianism means. It is one of those words the left loves to throw around in connection with President Bush. Do you know anything at all about life in the Soviet Union, North Korea, Eastern Europe under communism? If you do, I don't see how you can play so fast and loose with the term. Or do you have something specific about the Bush administration that is actually totalitarian? -- that is, to quote one definition, "a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed.">
gadje:
What in heaven's name does "did not want to extend any religious liberty in their theology to other roman citizens" mean? In what sense were Christians denying religious liberty to others when they refused the pinch of incense to Caesar?>
Okay, okay, theocracy, "moral authority" then. A rose by any other name. Anywho I won't consider it laissez faire.>
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