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Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Politics, religion and Roberts

E.J. Dionne makes an interesting point in a column on the John Roberts nomination: Dragging religion into politics WorkingforChange.com 08/02/05.

Noting that raising issue about Roberts' religion - Catholic Christian - could easily descend into a kind of bigotry, he writes:

But why are we so afraid of acknowledging the obvious? At this moment in our history, religion is playing an important part in our public debates. If Roberts' religious views are important to him, why should they be off-limits to honest discussion?

It's also disingenuous for Republicans who have profited from the rise of issues related to religion and "moral values" to discover a sudden squeamishness about even mentioning them. Recall John Kerry's battle during the 2004 campaign with conservative bishops who proposed denying him communion because of his stand on abortion rights. If there was a mass movement of Republican politicians insisting that Kerry's religion should not be part of the public debate, I must have missed it.

It's a good point, and a reminder of the degree to which the Christian Right have succeeded in making a political issue of the religious view of public figures. And it's true. You can't have it both ways.

But Dionne argues that everyone tries to. His opening paragraphs suggest that both sides are equally guilty:

Few topics arouse more hypocrisy and inconsistency than the relationship between religion and politics. Standard practice is to welcome religion into politics when it helps your side and to denounce religious voices when they help the other side.

Conservatives typically praise religious activism on abortion and homosexuality but dismiss liberal clerics who offer theological insights on economics or social spending. Liberals love preachers to speak out for civil rights and economic justice. But they see "a church-state problem" the instant anyone in the clergy speaks out for vouchers or against abortion and stem-cell research.

In the case of Roberts, Republicans appreciate the intense lobbying on his behalf by conservative Christian groups and see the nominee's religious faith as part of his appealing personality package. But when Sen. Richard Durbin took Roberts' religious commitments seriously enough to ask him how they might affect the judge's court rulings, the Illinois Democrat was accused of ... dragging religion into politics.

Big Pundits love those both-sides-do-it comparisons. But if you use a high enough level of abstraction, you can make almost anything sound equivalent. The Republicans are a political party; but the Democrats are, too! So that shows you they're basically the same thing.

The government of Uzbekistan and the government of France are both governments. So you can't really make any distinctions between them.

It's a silly game. Dionne's comment just quoted isn't quite that far off. But it's close.

Yes, both parties find religious spokesmpeople that tend to agree with them more highly than those who don't. Doh!

But the Christian Right is a major part of today's Republican Party. In terms of popular movements, it's the most significant for the Party. And they aim to use the government to enforce conduct and laws that are essentially founded on purely religious belief: criminalizing abortions; having Christian prayers and religious observances in public schools; banning stem-cell research and any other scientific endeavors that happen to contradict their flat-earth views; outlawing gays and lesbians; getting rid of anti-discrimination laws; restricting women's participation in the workplace; banning the teaching of evolution in the schools; and much more. And in foreign policy, their apocalyptic viewpoint in practice encourages a "clash of civilizations" foreign policy that makes Islam a permanent enemy of the US and backs the most aggressive policy moves by Israel in order, in their view, to bring the day nearer when most Jews of the world will be slaughtered in a huge war.

The Democrats, on the other hand, defend freedom of religion and a secular government with no established religion. It's not "hypocrisy and inconsistency" to recognize that difference in public policy orientations.

posted at 2:28:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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