Monday, August 02, 2004

Religion and the left

Today I wandered over to Washington Monthly to see if the quality of their blog has increased at all since I stopped reading it last year. It hasn't. Kevin Drum hasn't got anything surprising to say anymore, and additionally today they're running Amy Sullivan's analysis of Kerry's convention speech, wherein she describes Kerry's references to religion as:

...a rebuke both to those on the right who would claim religion only for themselves and to those on the left who see evidence of faith as enough to disqualify individuals from participating in the political sphere.

Aaaaarrrrrgggghhh. Who on the left, beyond a few far-fringe extremists, believes that "evidence of faith" should "disqualify individuals from participating in the political sphere"? This is a straw man so ludicrous as to defy belief.

Let's look at the past three Democratic Presidential candidates: Clinton, Gore, Kerry, obvious Christians all. And then there was Vice Presidential candidate "Holy Joe" Lieberman --- whose religiosity, to be sure, was grating to most progressives, but we didn't object to his faith; we hated his showy, pompous sanctimoniousness. Has there been a major Democratic or Republican politician in the past, oh, hundred years who has shrunk from saying "God Bless America" in a speech? Please.

The truth is, American politics, on both sides of the aisle, is deeply hostile above all to secularism, not to religion. America will elect a Jewish black lesbian President before it elects an atheist President.

Sullivan's statement is so stupid, so incredibly, unbelievably stupid, that it makes my eyeballs do the quivering can't-see-straight angry thing that they do when I get so mad I can't see straight.

In any case, looks like it will be another six months before I bother checking out the Washington Monthly again.

p.s. Kerry's line about not wearing religion on your sleeve did, indeed, make a good point, but not because it admonished Sullivan's imaginary religion-abolishing leftists.

No comments:

Post a Comment