John Mark Reynolds*, the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute, and Associate Professor of Philosophy, at Biola University, has an open letter for “libertine Republicans”:
For years we have suffered from having you say that the "religious right" costs the GOP votes. Turns of that the religious right controls several hundred electoral votes. Secularists, libertarians, and others make up about ten percent of the population. You cannot win an election with Western Washington, Western Oregon, and a few other areas. Your organizations have little money and no "moms in sneakers" doing the hard work of campaigns. What you have had is a smarmy sense of academic superiority unjustified by actual arguments.
We are now about to win an election without you. You have turned on Bush, worried about him. We love him and are about to turn out eighty percent of our millions for him. When Bush wins, it will be the cultural issues which have pulled him through in places like West Virginia and Ohio. If we had listened to you, then Bush would have lost, big time. In fact, your sensible economic views are only heard, because the academic portion of the religious right takes you seriously.
…
God gave you the right to sin. He is the judge. We won't take that away from the Andrew Sullivans of the world. That is where American Christians differ from the Bin Ladens. We are happy to work with you, but you have to realize that we are on to you. Best reason and best experience are on our side. We are glad you are in our party, but it will always be pro-life, pro-family, and for God and country. That turns out to be the majority position. We are happy to help you with your economic goals.
Read the whole thing. And if you’re a liberal Republican or Karl Rove, you might want to pay attention.
[Note: One small quibble I have is with the idea that there are Republicans in Western Washington. I lived there for three years while on recruiting duty and can’t recall ever meeting another Republican, much less a conservative. The place is so cluelessly-leftist that when I wore my dress blue uniform for a visit to Evergreen State College I was mistaken for a Canadian Mountie.]
*Dr. Reynolds will soon be profiled in the “Know Your Evangelicals" series.
As a pseudo-member of the more "libertarian" (as opposed to libertine) right, I am a bit baffled. There are some nuts on the libertine side, granted, but there are a lot of religious folks who think that some of these cultural issues--abortion excluded (among other things)--that should be kept secular. First, just because something is politically expedient, doesn't make it right.
Of all groups, Christians should know this. The economics of the libertine right (which Mr. Reynolds seems to treat with a note of disdain) is not simply getting its voice because of the underdog sympathies of Reynolds' Christian flock, it has its voice because it is right.
Libertarian economists toppled the idea that socialism can lead to utopia. They have created better living conditions across the globe--prosperity that not only buys T.V.s for Americans, but feeds people in developing nations. Ask the Pope, some of these economic propositions are pretty cool; and to Mr. Reynolds I say that the libertarian economists don't need his pity vote. We have enough Nobel Prizes and saved lives to let our arguments stand alone (for an elegant Christian defense of these principles, read Doug Bandow and David Schindler's Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny).
Second, those of us who have not favored every cultural issue adopted by the mainstream religious right are not necessarily irreligious or anti-religious (i.e., libertine). Many Christians would have increased censorship on television, and social regulations that restrict the very choices granted us by God. I think abortion is just as bad as the next guy, but I have a legitimate concern that things like increased FCC involvement in television standards--necessitating the expansion of federal powers in the realm of free speech--could one day threaten Christians as much as it helps them now. Personal responsibility--parents watching their kids, teaching them right and wrong, loving them--should never be subsumed by the "benevolence" of the state.
I, too, feel some of the frustration of Mr. Reynolds; but I am surprised by his hostile response. In a world in which we are commanded to "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" there is room for thoughtful dissent on the acceptable level of involvement by the Church in the state--particularly in a country in whish we have all agreed, implicitly, to live within the bounds of a religion-friendly secular document.
Joe,
No quibbles with your actual post, which I agree with wholeheartedly. It's somewhat ironic that I do, given the fact that I, um, live in western Washington.
If you lived here for three years, you ought to know that there are plenty of conservatives in western Washington and western Oregon, if you get away from the liberal enclaves in Seattle, Olympia, Portland and Eugene. And being mistaken for a Canadian Mountie on the campus of Evergreen State College isn't surprising at all, as I'm sure you know, since it's one of the most liberal college campuses anywhere, ranking right up (down?) there with Berkeley for loonie leftism. For crying out loud, it's where Rachel Corrie went to school!
If you're ever in the area again, Joe, come visit me in Puyallup. I'll introduce you to lots of religious right Republicans. So, you might want to watch smearing the entire region with the "cluelessly-leftist" tar. I somewhat resent it, since it's a completely unfair characterization, and I think you're smarter than that. (Just a note: both Dino Rossi and George Nethercutt, Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator, respectively, have a decent shot at winning here in Washington this year. I'll be voting for both of them, and so will lots of folks I know).
Hey Pete,
So, you might want to watch smearing the entire region with the "cluelessly-leftist" tar. I somewhat resent it, since it's a completely unfair characterization, and I think you're smarter than that.
I only meant it to be tongue-in-cheek. I apologize if I offended anyone.
"Western" WA is a bit too generic to be truly descriptive anyway. Some people use it to mean anything west of the mountains but that is a bit broad.
I used to cover Thurston, Lewis, Gray’s Harbor, and Pacific Counties. Though Puyallup is technically on the western side of the state, I was thinking more of the area from Olympia to Aberdeen.
Excellent letter.
Good question not only to libertine Republicans, but to liberals: Millions of studets are home schooled--how many do you know? For that matter, how many true, bona-fide liberals, can be found in Kansas, in Alabama, in Tennessee--all these places that the hard left and the squishy country-club Republicans only fly over?
There are two America's. One needs to only look at the current electoral maps to figure that out. There are the coasts, and everywhere in between. Ironically, religious conservatives hold the entire middle.
Joe,
Living in Olympia, and having lived between Olympia and Aberdeen for the previous ten years, I have to quibble as well. Olympia is western WA's liberal enclave, even more than Seattle; it's also the seat of government, which is why under every administration, quietly, liberals run the show.
The woods and the coast west of Olympia are a mix, but also strongly Republican--small (former) logging towns like Elma and Montesano and Porter and McCleary and Raymond.
My grandfather once swore that if I ever went to TESC, he'd disown me. I did, and he didn't. I got a master's degree in teaching, after getting a bachelor's from a small Christian college. I ended up somewhere in the middle: an agnostic political moderate. But I still shave and wear deodorant.
I've been watching the GOP far-right succubus gnaw into the vitals of mainstream conservatism for some time, wondering when the party would finally cannibalize itself past the point of viability. Looks like that time is here! I only wish he'd written this letter 6 months ago - soon enough to drive the rational economic conservatives away from the holy-war berserkers and into the party of balanced budgets and honest accounting.
This letter reads like a self-parody. Putting aside the defensively self-righteous tone, the rampant misspellings, and the apparently dim grasp of the difference between "libertine" and "libertarian", the writer seems to have a deep confusion about both simple demographic facts and how political power is wielded.
For one thing, if it were really true that "the religious right controls several hundred electoral votes", the letter wouldn't have to be written at all, and the election wouldn't be anywhere near close. (It only takes 270 electoral votes to win.) Self-described "conservative" or "born-again" Christians, by raw numbers, do appear at first glance to constitute a large enough population to control the election (if they vote as a bloc, and depending on how they are distributed throughout the various states). This is what the writer appears to have in mind when he makes his claim. But that has been true for a long time, and they never have delivered the votes they claim. This year, with a fundamentalist candidate, there will probably be a higher-than-normal religious conservative turnout - which will likely set the historical high water mark for the religious right electorate for the foreseeable future. (After the Bush fiasco, we'll never elect a fundamentalist again.) And yet, even with one of their own as a candidate and predictions of record-high religious-conservative voting, their candidate holds a sub-50% approval rating and polls barely 50% two weeks before the election. If religious conservatives, ordinary conservatives, the pro-war faction, and any dedicated Republicans not among those groups, collectively, can't put Bush over 50%, it is patently obvious that the religious right does not "control several hundred electoral votes". That's idiotic - and it's not a question of prediction or opinion, it's simple math that Reynolds seems not to comprehend.
Beyond this, the insistence that "[w]hen Bush wins, it will be the cultural issues which have pulled him through" seems to be the most obvious wishful thinking. In the entire letter (linked above), there is not a single reference to 9/11 or Bush's wars - yet that is the only issue that's keeping Bush (barely) afloat. If Bush's support came only from his natural GOP and religious base, he would be losing in a landslide. It is the significant crossover support from the Christopher Hitchens/Zell Miller crowd who've bought Bush's line on the "war on terrorism" that is keeping Bush even near a possible victory. To say with a straight face that religious conservatives are putting Bush over the top on cultural issues - to the extent that even conservative non-cultural issues (i.e., the economy) are irrelevant - when (a) he's not over the top, (b) non-cultural issues are, by every analysis, dominant in this campaign, and (c) a measurable fraction of his support comes from pro-war voters violently opposed to the religious right cultural agenda, is self-delusion of world-class proportions.
Finally, the writer's extended rambling (in the full text of the letter) about demographic trends (liberals and secular conservatives have fewer children - religious conservatives are going to take over the country by breeding themselves into power) is rather simplistic. Every generation is more liberal than its parents; even the homeschooled, Bible-college troglodyte hordes the writer extolls as the wave of the soon-to-be-Christian future will have to bump into the real world when they finally emerge from their shelters, and they're going to dig it just like every previous generation did. They're going to discover that making their own decisions, having a little fun, and living without that gnawing desperation of anxious apocalypticism in their guts every minute is actually not such a bad thing. And their parents are going to shake their heads, wonder where they went wrong, and watch moderate secular governments elected again and again in a nation that slowly drifts further and further toward open-mindedness.
But, by all means, I hope he keeps writing these agitated screeds against moderate conservatives. The turning point will come when the social moderates realize the religious conservatives really are as crazy as they sound, and that fighting over a 5% differential in the upper income-tax bracket is less important than the risk of getting arrested for enjoying the "wrong" sex act or refusing to pray to the "right" god.
I'm sorry. I got to the part about the Dems being the party of balanced budgets and honest accounting, and passed out.
If the Democratic Party is now the party of balanced budgets, and JFK2 is running like hell away from the "Liberal" label, and he is saying that he would have invaded Iraq, but invaded Iraq differently, and he says that he will keep in place tax cuts for those making $199,999 per year, and supports the morality behind questions regarding abortion and stem cell research, the Democratic Party needs to realize that either (1) Kerry is lying out his ass, and/or (2) he MUST say those things in order to get elected.
OK. Just finished reading the other Kevin's missive above, and have one question: why are the Zell Miller democrats crossing over? If the Dems are the party of fiscal restraint and social policy moderation, why are they leaving?
It is because the Left is openly hostile toward people of faith, and true "moderates" of any stripe. Only a die-hard liberal will do in today's Democratic Party. Name me one prominent nationally recognized democrat who is a true moderate, let alone a fiscal or social conservative, besides Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller, and you see the problem with today's Democrats.
It's probably more of an urban/rural split that just simple geography.
I would also argue with the description in another post of home-schooled kids as troglodytes. I think thats based on the assumption that they do not interact with other children and so live in a cave. In truth I think what happens is that families that are home-schooling their children tend to band together and teach them as a group, rather than purely individual instruction. And the children also have the opportunity to interact with other home-schooled children.
It remains to be seen how well they cope with dealing with people who are different from themselves. Will they make accommodation for people with opposing views or will they just poke at them with a stick?
Incidentally, the full letter is a good example of the "kinder, gentler" form of bigotry popular today. Namely that it's OK to be prejudiced so long as you base it on what you think the Bible says.
Patrick,
Incidentally, the full letter is a good example of the "kinder, gentler" form
of bigotry popular today. Namely that it's OK to be prejudiced so long as you base it on what you think the Bible says.
I'm a bit confused on where you get the idea that it's an example of bigotry. Could you elaborate on that?
Joe,
No offense taken - as I said, I was pretty certain that you understood the real situation here in the great Pacific Northleft - I mean Northwest ;-)
BTW: I just read your story about your visit to Evergreen. Funny, but kind of sad. I think I'd be more of the same mind as your fellow Marine that day. How can someone actually be in college, yet have such a poor education as to not know anything at all about the Marines? Astounding. In any case, thanks for your service to our country. The Geoducks (the Evergreen College mascot is a clam that spends essentially its whole life with not just its head, but its whole body, buried in the sand. Make of it what you will.) may not get it, but I'm grateful that you and so many others (including my father, a former Navy corpsman during the Korean conflict) have sacrificed so much so that people like me never had to.
"This year, with a fundamentalist candidate, there will probably be a higher-than-normal religious conservative turnout"
Bush isn't a fundamentalist. You do realize that word means something more than 'Christian I don't like', right?
"Every generation is more liberal than its parents;"
And you call _his_ analysis simplistic? _Every_ generation is more liberal than its parents? Whatever makes you feel better, KTK (other than replies that are four times as long as the original posts, o' course).
Anyway, though this reads a but too much like a sermon, its pretty interesting politically-I myself wonder how long the people who set policy can continue to kowtow to unpopular causes that make the elite happy.
Joe,
Great post. Glad I lit here for a while and got up to speed re: what you are doing. I am going to link you on my site under "Forward Observers".
As a former Marine and a fellow Evangelical Christian, let me give you a hearty "ooh-rah!" and Amen.
Quote from Kevin T. the Drooling Retard: Putting aside the defensively self-righteous tone, the rampant misspellings, and the apparently dim grasp of the difference between "libertine" and "libertarian", the writer seems to have a deep confusion about both simple demographic facts and how political power is wielded.
Please cite a single example of misspelling. Oh and you misspelled the word "when" and wrote [w]hen. You shouldn't critize other's people's spelling when you own is questionable.
Quote from Kevin T. the Drooling Retard: And yet, even with one of their own as a candidate and predictions of record-high religious-conservative voting, their candidate holds a sub-50% approval rating and polls barely 50% two weeks before the election. If religious conservatives, ordinary conservatives, the pro-war faction, and any dedicated Republicans not among those groups, collectively, can't put Bush over 50%, it is patently obvious that the religious right does not "control several hundred electoral votes".
You mean like this http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/bush_ja.html.
Bush has over 50% approval according to Time, Rasmussen, and ABC/Washshington Post. You might want to actually check the polls before before you write about them. However, I know you are currently living in an alternate reality so finding out real data on Earth is very hard for you.
Kevin please visit nicedoggie.net where nice secularists ( like Bill Whittle) and Christian conservatives (like Misha) happily reside. We will happily welcome your input in the comments section as our newest sacrfice -err source of contrarian opinion.