Bush and Ralph Reed court Southern Baptist "I Vote Values" campaign

[solarbird]

The Southern Baptist Convention seems to be trying to rally the troops towards more than just the amendment. (Which should surprise no one.) Stolen from Andrew Sullivan's website:

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PARTY OF GOD, CTD: The fusion of the Republican party with evangelical Christian churches is now well-entrenched, as this latest NYT story reveals. Ralph Reed, of course, was unrepentant in his courting of the Southern Baptists for the Republican party last month. And the president addressed the SBC conference by satellite, while Richard Land launched the voter registration drive called "I Vote Values." "I, for one, believe people of faith have the same rights to participate in the political process as any other citizens," Reed said. "Christians should not be treated as second-class citizens." Of course they shouldn't. Still, it's worth checking out the IVoteValues.com website to see exactly which values the president is endorsing. In the section on homosexuality, the Southern Baptists remind us of what the founding fathers thought of gays:

During the American Revolution, when the Continental Army Lieutenant Enslin was found "attempting to commit sodomy," Commander George Washington issued an order "with abhorrence and detestation." Enslin was to be "drummed out of the camp ... never to return." Thomas Jefferson authorized legislation to penalize sodomy with castration. At the time the Constitution was ratified, the states of New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Connecticut, Virginia, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Jersey each implemented the death penalty for those who committed sodomy."

Why is the SBC reporting this? There are other sections on the dreaded homos, entitled: "Targeting You ... And Your Children." And: 'Homosexuality Costs You Plenty!" This is what Bush Republicanism is now about - beneath the surface. Worth considering in this campaign. (Hat tip: Roger Abramson).

Comments

[banner.livejournal.com]

This is why Bush is not a conservative. Because he doesn't embrace Conservative values. Outlawing homosexuality or sodomy is just another aspect of 'Statism', the State telling you what you can and cannot do in your own life and beliefs. Definitely something that all of the founders of the Conservative movement were against in this country, and which most members are still against.

I wish there were some real conservatives in Office, and a real conservative in the White House. But there isn't and if there wasn't a war on I probably wouldn't be voting for Bush. But there is, and Kerry and the Democrats have shown they intend to lose it as quickly as possible if Kerry gets elected. I'd rather win the war and still have a country, and fight this amendment, then lose the war, and not have anything at all.

[avram]

Banner, I agree with you that Bush is not a true conservative (he’s a right-winger, which isn’t the same thing), but you seem to be confusing conservatism with libertarianism. Libertarianism is by no means conservative — taken seriously, it’s a deeply radical idea.

To be a conservative is to support existing traditions and institutions. If the existing traditions and institutions are statist (which they are, to varying degrees, in every nation in the world, including the US), then conservatism will involve being statist.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Umm, no. Conservatism in the United States is not what you are saying, remember it's a name of a political movement that is made up of several different schools of thought, key among them is libertarianism. Remember that when the Conservative movement started it was also commonly refered to as 'Classic Liberalism' because of the anti-Statist issues and the pro individualism goals.

A lot of people get tagged with the 'Conservative' label even though they are not. I think it's an intentional attack to blur the Conservative message, the biggest parts of which are private propery, individualism, and free market. Too many people these days want Statism (the Supreme Court has been all for it), and want the state to step in every time anything happens. Even though that leads to us all being serfs, dictatorship, and failure.

Also I don't think I'd call Bush a rightist. He's pretty close to the center of the road with right leanings. Just because so many big people on the left these days are so FAR on the left (Dean, Moore, Hillary, etc), doesn't redefine the center.

[avram]

Dude, seriously, you’re writing from another damn planet. Again, the anti-statist idiology that sometimes calls itself “classic liberalism” (it wasn’t called that when it started; the “classic” is a reference to the past, the implication is that it was called “liberalism” way back when) is libertarianism.

The conservative movement got started in the 18th century with Edmund Burke, a monarchist and anti-democrat. Modern American conservatism is generally traced to the works of Russell Kirk (see his short essay “The Essence of Conservatism” for a synopsis). You might have something with Barry Goldwater, whose failed candidacy is considered a milestone in the American conservative movement, but you’re ignoring a whole lot of stuff.

And you’re nuts if you think Howard Dean or either of the Clintons is very far left. Not one of them seriously advocates a revolutionary restructuring of society or the abolition of capitalism. Yeah, they’re friendly to unions (though not too friendly), and they talk about expanding government health care (though not too much), but only an American could think of those as “far left” ideas. (Jeez, if I was going to talk about leftists in American government, I’d at least mentioned Vermont’s Bernie Saunders, the only Socialist in the US Congress!)

When I call Bush a right-winger I mean that he’s authoritarian (his administration has claimed the power to imprison American citizens without charges or access to courts for unlimited amounts of time), and pro-aristocracy (hence his attacks on inheritance taxes), that he appeals to religious traditionalism (do you need examples given the post that started this thread?), and that he supports management and capital over labor.

[wrog]

Again, the anti-statist ideology that sometimes calls itself “classic liberalism” (it wasn’t called that when it started; the “classic” is a reference to the past, the implication is that it was called “liberalism” way back when) is libertarianism.

hm. I would say modern libertarianism, at least if we're talking about the 'capital-L' version espoused by the US Libertarian Party in which, it seems, property rights and contract law are the only things that really matter, large corporations should otherwise be free to do whatever they want, and any other expression of government power, no matter how well-intentioned, is just evil-evil-evil,

is at best something of a bastard stepchild of classical liberalism, whose theories date from before it was decided that limited-liability corporations, no matter how large, were deemed to be "persons" entitled to all associated rights and privileges. Keep in mind that the framers of the US Constitution and other thinkers of the (neo)classical period (late 1700s) had fairly direct experience with large entities like the Hudson's Bay and East India companies and their corruptive influence on British politics, arguing long and hard about e.g., whether such concentrations of economic power as the Bank of the United States should even be allowed to exist.

So I wouldn't want to make too many assumptions about what the (neo)classical folks would make of modern Libertarianism.

Never mind that the small-l "libertarian" is used by people to mean lots of different things.

E.g., Noam Chomsky calls himself a libertarian. And if your focus is on individual rights, I'd even argue he might have a better claim to the label than the capital-L folks (who, e.g., tend to completely shrug off scenarios in which individual rights are sacrificed as conditions of employment or by pervasive private real-estate covenants). To be sure, his priorities are completely different --- figure property rights are somewhere down near the bottom of his list of what's important.

[banner.livejournal.com]

The founding book of libertarianism and Conservatism in this country is 'The Road to Serfdom'. I'm not really ignoring anything, there is a tremendous amount of things out there. The American Conservative movement started in '45, right after the war.

And I wasn't talking about the Clinton's, I was talking specifically about Hillary Clinton. I point to her recent statement in SF about 'taking money away from you for your own good' (paraphrased).

[avram]

The Road to Surfdom by Friedrich Hayek? If you want to say that it's the founding document for American libertarianism I won't argue, but Hayek himself denied being a conservative.

Hillary said "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good", and conservatives do exactly the same, but with a different notion of what the common good consists of.

[solarbird]

The centre has drifted far to the right. In the last round of Democratic primaries, the most left-leaning Democrat economically was Dennis Knucinich, and his policies were very similar to Richard Nixon's. A little to the left, but not all that much. And Nixon was considered very conservative. So there you go.

[solarbird]

Of course, I'm speaking economically. Bush considers himself a conservative, as do most people in his party, and he's less conservative economically than, say, Bill Clinton was, in actual policy. ("Deficits don't matter" - really quite Keyesnian in many ways; huge new entitlements (where Clinton cut them); etc.)

Socially, the centre has moved to the left in that queers aren't universally hated and nearly-universally illegal anymore - though the modern Christian right is doing its damnest to change that.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Clinton didn't cut anything. Newt Gingrich did. Remember that Congress spends the money, not the President. Clinton just tried to take credit for what he had no control over.

[avram]

If you really believe this, you ought to be voting for Democratic presidential candidates. After all, by your own belief, it's the party controlling Congress that really determines what goes on with taxes and government spending. And having the White House and Congress controlled by opposing parties will slow down the passage of liberty-eroding legislation. You should be hoping for a Republican Congress and a Democratic President.

[solarbird]

Kerry and the Democrats have shown they intend to lose it as quickly as possible if Kerry gets elected.
Kerry has made a long and big point about how we need to stay the course in Iraq. He's said that we shouldn't have gotten into it - quite a lot - but also has been, to his credit, consistant on the point that dropping and running is not the right answer. Many of his supporters on the left go LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU on that one when reminded that Kerry is, functionally, pro-Iraq-war.

Of course, the difference between me and most of the modern Conservative movement is that I do not think that the Other Party is a collection of traitors who want to destroy the country and are working to do so the best they can. So my view of the current situation on this kind of issue is:

1) I've got someone trying to punch me me in the face right now, and who has friends with him who very specifically want to kill me. I know this because some of them say it outright, and others, while not quite saying that, like to spend a lot of time talking wistfully and fondly about the days when they could kill me, and pointing out law examples. This would be Bush and his social/religious conservative allies.

2) On the next block over, there's a gang of people who also want to kill me. Very much want to kill me. They want to kill other people, too - everybody in the building I live in, in fact. They're quite evil.

They're both bad. But I'm more concerned with Nr. 1 right now, because he's the one with the fist in my face right now, and he wants to do a lot more. And so do his friends. Nr. 1 is the more immediate threat, and has the same long-term goal for me personally. So there you go.

[wrog]

I may be wrong in terms of the practical consequences, but I like to think there's a difference between

• being pro-Iraq-war in the sense of believing in the PNAC fantasies of an American empire in the Middle East to the point where one needs to disregard any intelligence to the contrary, and believing in GWBush's doctrine of pre-emptive/our-allies-can-go-fuck-themselves war, and
• being pro-Iraq-war in the sense of "We broke it; we bought it."

if for no other reason than those of the latter view, being less wedded to a particular ideology, are likely to be more flexible and realistic in how they respond to shit continuing to get blown up,
and, perhaps equally importantly, somewhat less likely to commit us to other such messes in the future.

[wrog]

(2) On the next block over, there's a gang of people who also want to kill me. Very much want to kill me. They want to kill other people, too - everybody in the building I live in, in fact. They're quite evil.

is it really that they want to kill you or is it just that they're afraid that if they don't make sufficiently aggressive noises in your direction that their own house is going to get blown up.

Which I'll agree isn't the most morally defensible position....

... but it's still a rather important distinction, especially if de-clawing the (1) crowd makes the (2) crowd less threaten(ed/ing).

[banner.livejournal.com]

Excuse me, but when has Bush or any of his friends killed American's?

While the guys on the 'Next Block' just killed 3000 of us. (And are trying to get all sorts of interesting chemicals and nuclear materials to kill more).

Sorry, I'm more worried about number 2 right now. Number 1 still has to get past a very liberal Supreme Court to do anything, and I doubt they ever will.

[solarbird]

Excuse me, but when has Bush or any of his friends killed Americans?
You'll note I said "punched in the face." They're only talking about having the state kill me. And to be fair, most are only talking about the state punishing me.

I have been handed a copy of "The Death Penalty for Homosexuality." I've read - hell, at one point, I collected the blood libel they put out. You don't shout "these people want to KILL YOUR CHILDREN" about a group you intend to exist peacefully with! I have listened to fundamentalist religious leaders argue for the death penalty - or often, to be fair, just for recriminalisation. Half the point of this so-called Marriage Amendment is to provide a legal basis for government-mandated discrimination against GBLT people - not just on marriage and domestic partnerships, but on other levels as well, like in employment (I helped fight two ballot initiatives that would have severely restricted the fields in which I could work in the 90s), child custody, and more.

So yeah. I didn't say killed. I said punched in the face. And I stand by that allegory. I think it's more than warranted.

[avram]

Bush presided over the execution of 152 Americans while governor of Texas, and he's the first US president in about 40 years to preside over federal executions. Yeah, I know, this isn't what you meant, but you did ask.

And if I lived in Baghdad I'd probably be just as pissed at Bush as I really am at bin Laden. As it is, Bush has made it more likely, not less, that those "guys on the next block" will get their hands on nukes or radioactive material.

[elthar.livejournal.com]

Homosexuality has never cost me a dime, because I've never taken a guy out on a date.

[avram]

And of course they neglect to point out that Lt Enslin was charged not only with attempted sodomy, but also with perjury. (An Ensign Maxwell had reported Enslin for the attempted sodomy, and Enslin had claimed Maxwell was lying.) According to the General Orders for that day, Enslin was “found guilty of the charges exhibited against him, being breaches of 5th. Article 18th. Section of the Articles of War”, but I haven’t been able to find out exactly what that was. It’s possible that he was drummed out for the perjury, and the sodomy charge wouldn’t have mattered much without it.

[banner.livejournal.com]

You should check out how they used to treat homosexuals in Portland Oregon, and Oregon in general. Not very pretty for a state that has (supposedly) considered itself 'liberal' for a great many years. :-P
No wonder the skin heads used to call it home.

[avram]

Erm, what? I wasn’t aware that Washington fought the British in Oregon.