Jackson Free Press

I used to assume that the religious right was only concerned about abortion and gay marriage, but one of the things that has crossed my mind over the past few months is that they are, by and large, very concerned about poverty, and more concerned than the norm about racism. You can see that in local groups like Voice of Calvary and Mission Mississippi, but maybe the best example is what evangelical churches did in response to Hurricane Katrina.

And witness Pat Robertson and Ellen DeGeneres finishing the same paragraph in that ONE.org TV spot; he and a lot of other people on the far right stood up for the Millennium Development Goals, even though the Republican Party as a whole did not. And then the president they voted for stepped on them, and is now trying to get all mention of the MDGs removed from future U.S.-U.N. documents. And now he appoints an unknown quantity to the Supreme Court, after appointing a guy who sounds more like a moderate conservative than a right-winger. And this is with a 55-45 Senate majority. I can see real right-wingers asking themselves: "He has the biggest majority of any Republican president since Eisenhower, it may be the biggest majority we ever have, and he's putting up people who don't have an opinion about abortion?!"

I really feel bad for all those sincere, non-misogynistic pro-lifers who voted for Bush because they thought he'd put an end to the practice. They must realize by now that he's no more likely to do that than Kerry would have been.

I used to think of the Republican constituency as a more-or-less cohesive group of people who are both socially and fiscally conservative, but it isn't really like that at all. The social conservatives are not always fiscally conservative, and the fiscal conservatives are not always socially conservative. Politicians have to be both, some other public figures (including some religious leaders) try to be both, but the truth is that this is a pretty diverse and precarious coalition. It was hard to notice that before the Republican Party started fragmenting, but now...

The truth is that I can relate to Cato Institute fiscal conservatives who oppose theocracy but think trickle-down economics really does work; that's an intellectually honest position. And I can relate to religious conservatives who also take seriously Jesus' mandates regarding the rich and the poor; that's also an intellectually honest position. What I can't relate to is the very hypocritical caricature of mutant Republicanism that public figures like Bush represent--where they're all about Jesus when it's sex because they need the right-wing vote, but they're all about Adam Smith when it's money because they need the corporate vote. As Bush's "favorite philosopher" once said, you can't choose both God and Mammon.

Which is why I think the future of the Democratic Party rests with people like Barack Obama. The Democratic Party can't be the party of the Christian right, but it can be the give-a-damn party--and I think many people on the Christian right would enthusiastically favor that over phony Republicanism if it were not for the issue of abortion.

In order to deal with this, the Democratic Party has to be about getting rid of abortion--not banning it, but mothballing it by providing better alternatives. And I don't mean in a phony, halfhearted DLC-ish way. I mean in a sincere, bleeding-heart way. It's time we turned the pro-life/pro-choice spectrum into a triangle. There is a superior third way that acknowledges the barbarism and moral ambiguity of abortion without threatening a woman's right to choose. It is the way of unapologetic birth control and unapologetic sex education (including abstinence education, provided that it is not taught to the exclusion of safe sex practices). It is the way of using these approaches to actually reduce the number of abortions, as Clinton did--instead of campaigning on abortion and then sitting idly by as the number of abortions increases, as Reagan did. It is the way of, well, giving a damn.

Previous Comments

ID

103064

Comment

See, that's what I was saying. Republicans care about the Religious Right (RR) as long as they vote for them. Repubs won't actually _do_ anything they want (abortion) mind you.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2005-10-04T20:27:33-06:00