Do all the wingnuts who are shitting in their pants this afternoon following Obama’s announcement of support for same sex marriage realize that nobody is telling them to have a gay marriage? The point is to allow others to make that choice–a basic matter of individual liberty which the right wing has no understanding of. Hiding behind religion does not excuse bigotry.
Liberal Values Defending Liberty and Enlightened Thought
Blog Stuff
Mitt Romney Remains A Weak Candidate, Except Among The Very Religious
April 25, 2012 — Ron ChusidLast night’s primaries, occurring after Rick Santorum left the race, turned out to give pretty much the same picture as when there was more of a contest: Mitt Romney will be the nominee, but many Republicans would prefer to vote for someone else. Smart Politics points out the weakness of Romney’s victories:
Over the last 40 years there have been nearly 80 contests in which the presumptive Republican nominees played out the string after their last credible challenger exited the race.
In every one of these contests, the GOP frontrunner won at least 60 percent of the vote, even when ex- and long-shot candidates remained on the ballot.
But on Tuesday, Romney won only 56 percent of the vote in Delaware and 58 percent in Pennsylvania, home to Rick Santorum who dropped out on April 10th.
While Romney avoided the embarrassment of winning with a mere plurality, never has a presumptive nominee won a primary contest with such a low level of support at this stage of the race with his chief challenger no longer actively campaigning.
Clearly the author doesn’t consider either Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul to be a credible challenger, and the assumption looks valid. Even Newt Gingrich has realized this, dropping out of the race. While Ron Paul’s chances at winning are still the same as at any other point in time, zero, it will be interesting to see if he manages to receive more primary votes as the last candidate standing, allowing him to take a larger block of delegates to the convention than would otherwise occur.
Jimmy Carter says that, while he would prefer Obama, he would feel comfortable with Romney:
“I’d rather have a Democrat but I would be comfortable — I think Romney has shown in the past, in his previous years as a moderate or progressive… that he was fairly competent as a governor and also running the Olympics as you know. He’s a good solid family man and so forth, he’s gone to the extreme right wing positions on some very important issues in order to get the nomination. What he’ll do in the general election, what he’ll do as president I think is different.”
I would refer Carter to yesterday’s post on this subject. There is certainly a reasonable chance that Romney is more moderate than he now claims to be. It is really impossible to tell what opinions Romney has, or if he even has any, considering the way he can sound sincere while taking either side of any issue. Unfortunately Romney has painted himself into a “severely conservative” corner and will have difficulty moving out. Even should he prefer more moderate positions, it is hard to see him resisting the wishes of a far right wing Congress, which is the most likely result should conditions in the fall favor a Romney victory.
It is clearly far too early to predict who will win. Polls now favor Obama, but they can change by November. I am encouraged by Obama’s strength in most of the battleground states, although he is likely to lose some states he won in 2008. Republicans who were encouraged by a narrow Romney lead in Gallup’s daily tracking poll will not want to see that Obama has jumped to a seven point lead. I suspect that this is more a measure of the uncertainty among many voters as opposed to a major change in positions, but does emphasize the weakness of Romney as a candidate.
Gallup has also found that the usual partisan breakdown along religious lines still holds in a race between Obama and Romney:
Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by 17 percentage points, 54% to 37%, among very religious voters in Gallup’s latest five-day presidential election tracking average. Obama leads by 14 points, 54% to 40%, among the moderately religious, and by 31 points, 61% to 30%, among those who are nonreligious.
If this is viewed purely based upon religion, the results might not make any sense considering Obama’s religious views. There are two additional factors in play. Many Republicans are still fooled by the attacks from the right wing noise machine, with a meaningful number still believing Obama is a Muslim. The other factor is that the concern among many on the religious right is not whether a candidate is religious but whether they will use government to impose their religious views upon others. In this case, perhaps the religious right has a better understanding of the outcome of a Romney presidency than Jimmy Carter shows.
The Conservative Mind
March 31, 2012 — Ron Chusid
The differences between left and right have increasingly become a matter not of differences in opinion but in differences in facts which are accepted. This has been studied the most with regards to science, with conservative belief in science now hitting new lows. This has also been commonly seen with high profile issues ranging from false conservative beliefs that Saddam threatened the United States with WMD or was involved in the 9/11 attacks to their false beliefs that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a Socialist, and someone born outside of the United States.
Conservative rejection of science is most striking to those who understand that science is the best way to study the world around us based upon verifiable facts, but Republican anti-intellectualism is not limited to science. They promote a revisionist history to justify their policies, and promote economic views which have no basis in any sensible economic theory, even ignoring the actual economic views of capitalist economists they claim to follow. If Adam Smith were to come back to life, he would die laughing over the economic views which today’s conservatives promote, often claiming they are based upon his views.
Chris Mooney, who has written a lot on this topic, has an article in Mother Jones coinciding with the publication of his new book on The Republican Brain. Studies have shown biological differences between conservatives and liberals. These differences certainly might have some influence as to the ideology someone holds, but I suspect that this is something influenced by both nature and the influences on an individual. Therefore we see far more liberals on the coasts then in the deep south.
Kevin Drum raises the question of why American conservatives are more anti-science than those in Europe. Similar questions could be raised based upon time. At some times, such as during the McCarthy era, conservatives were as fanatic as those today, while at other times the bulk of the conservative movement tended to be less extreme. William F. Buckley, with all his faults, would probably have tried to keep the Tea Party followers out of the conservative movement as he did with the Birchers. Barry Goldwater was so repulsed by the direction that he saw the conservative movement moving that he considered himself a liberal in his later years. If Ronald Reagan were still alive and alert I suspect he would do the same.
I think this also comes down to the importance of environment impacting on possible biological factors. While other factors are at play, there are two main characteristics of today’s conservative movement which makes them more likely to reject facts. First, the conservative movement consists of alliances which have a vested interest in ignoring facts. This ranges from the religious right to those being duped into denying science change to support the interests of the petroleum industry.
Secondly, today’s American conservative movement has a propaganda machine which might be powerful than has ever been seen in human history, with the ability to get conservatives to internalize and spread beliefs which are totally irrational. Fox has been far more successful in promoting misinformation than the propaganda machines of Hitler or Stalin. In many ways the American conservative movement is far closer to the authoritarian movements of the 20th century than to any beliefs held in the past by Americans. Unlike Hitler and Stalin, the conservative movement does not need to eliminate the trappings of democracy when they can fool their followers into thinking that they are promoting freedom and limited government. Orwell certainly saw this coming.
Separation of Church and State Makes Rick Santorum Vomit
February 26, 2012 — Ron ChusidRick Santorum attacked the views of John F. Kennedy regarding separation of church and state today. Without realizing it, he was also attacking the views of many of the Founding Fathers, as well as the views of Ronald Reagan. Last year Santorum had said, “Earlier in my political career, I had the opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.” Kennedy had said:
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
Santorum defended his remarks on This Week:
Santorum defended his remarks, telling Stephanopoulos that “the first line, first substantive line in the speech, says, ‘I believe in America where the separation of church and state is absolute.’”
“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum said. “The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.”
He went on to note that the First Amendment “says the free exercise of religion — that means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square.”
“Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, ‘No, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate.’ Go on and read the speech. ‘I will have nothing to do with faith. I won’t consult with people of faith.’ It was an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent at the time of 1960.”
Later in the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Santorum, “You think you wanted to throw up?”
“Well, yes, absolutely,” Santorum replied. “To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up.”
Santorum’s claim that separation of church and state means that people of faith are not allowed in the public square is false, and certainly is not what John Kennedy had said.
John Kennedy’s view on the separation of church and state corresponds with the view of the Founding Fathers who created a secular republic, realizing that this is the best way to protect freedom of religion. Santorum’s views are also counter to the views expressed by Ronald Reagan in a speech at Temple Hillel on October 24, 1984 (emphasis mine):
We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief.
This is just one example of why Ronald Reagan would no longer be welcome in a Republican Party which has moved to the extreme right. Maureen Dowd wrote about the GOP–Ghastly Outdated Party in yesterday’s column, quoting one of many Republican strategists who fear that the Republicans are becoming out of touch: “Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.”
War on Religion
February 15, 2012 — Ron Chusid
Plus to the religious right, freedom of religion means the freedom to impose their religious views upon others.
Rick Santorum Has Become Obsessed With The Guillotine
February 9, 2012 — Ron ChusidWith the GOP primary battle changing, instead of the insanity of Newt Gingrich, we now get to hear more of the insane views of Rick Santorum. We already knew about his desire to use government to regulate the sex lives of Americans and nationalize each woman’s womb, but it goes much further than this. Santorum now has a thing for guillotines–which should be very scary to those who realize how often conservative attacks on liberals are actually cases of conservatives projecting their own faults on liberals, such as the conservative propensity for big government and irresponsible government spending when in power.
Another important distinction between Obama and his Republican opponents is that Obama supports separation of church and state and freedom of religion (the two are inseparable) while the Republicans do not. (So much for their false claims from conservatives of supporting the views of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.) Sticking with the generally valid premise that conservatives generally attack liberals over matters that conservatives are actually guilty of, the Republicans have fabricated an imaginary war on religious freedom. Santorum has even tied this into health care reform. I guess he thinks that God wants insurance companies to be allowed to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions and terminate coverage for the sick.
First there was this statement from Santorum yesterday:
They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.
Today Santorum suggested that the left wants public decapitations and that the Affordable Care Act is the first step:
It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.
Beyond all the obvious insanity in Santorum’s statements, he ignores the fact that the Founding Fathers created the United States as the world’s first secular state. We have far too many examples of how the religious fanaticism of people like Rick Santorum leads to the destruction of liberty.
