What former Representative Foley did is indefensible. As is the left's reaction,
says NRO's Jonah Goldberg:
The Democrats prayed for an October surprise and, like manna from heaven, a hypocritical, sexually disturbed Florida Republican dropped into their laps. They looked at the cyber-stalking ephebophile and said, "Behold, this is good." . . .
[I]t is fair to say liberals aren't thinking things through. Democratic strategist Bob Beckel suggested this week that the mere fact Foley is gay should have "raised questions" about his friendships with pages. If Foley were a Democrat and GOP spinners suggested gays are automatically suspect as predators, the now-silent Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights groups would go ballistic.
What liberals don't understand is that social conservatives actually believe their moral rhetoric, even when it's politically inconvenient. That's why GOP Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana had to resign when his marital infidelities became public during the Clinton impeachment, much to the chagrin of Democrats who wanted to advance the "everybody does it" defense of President Clinton. And that's why vast numbers of social conservatives now want Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's head on a pike.
Meanwhile, the only moral lapse that reliably and consistently offends all liberals collectively is hypocrisy. As Howard Dean declared on Meet the Press last year: "Everybody has ethical shortcomings. We ought not to lecture each other about our ethical shortcomings." But he continued: "I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy." This is a remarkably convenient principle insofar as it can indict only people with actual principles.
Fanning the flames of righteous fervor over Foley will probably reap electoral benefits for Democrats. But the time will come when some fiasco like the "Foley standard" will be inconvenient to Democrats. In response, liberals will hold another fire sale. And yet, they will be stunned again when people claim the Democrats don't stand for anything.
Actually, today's lefties have two unbending principles: narcissistic indifference to ordinary Americans and paternalistic distain for their opinions. Too harsh, you say? Well only a week ago,
WaPo movie critic Ann Hornaday interpreted "
Jesus Camp," a documentary about religious education among young charismatic Pentecostalists, for the inside-the-beltway crowd. Halfway down, she frets that American evangelicals "have emerged as a powerful political force," numbering "around 52 million adults." But,
faster than a Stalin purge,
Hornaday's first two paragraphs go from 52 million to zero:
One of the most moving documentaries to arrive in Washington theaters this year was "The Boys of Baraka," an intimate account of several African American middle-school students who left their inner-city Baltimore neighborhood to spend a life-changing year at a boarding school in rural Kenya.
"Baraka" co-directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have once again turned their lens on young people. This time, though, even if their subjects are geographically closer to home, culturally they are worlds away. In "Jesus Camp," Ewing and Grady enter the lives of America's evangelical Christians and the churches, revival meetings, antiabortion demonstrations and summer camps where they educate their children. With extraordinary access to a community that is largely unknown to outsiders, the filmmakers have once again created a candid and compelling portrait of young people forging their identities at the physical and psychic extremes.
Allow me to translate:
I'm not religious, much less Christian, much less evangelical. I don't know anyone who is. And, like me, Washington Post readers consider evangelicals "outsiders," "a world away."
How was such ignorant and arrogant prejudice OKed by any editor? Oh yeah: because today's left -- especially the mainstream media -- is ignorant, arrogant, prejudiced . . . and hypocritical.
5 comments:
Hello Carl,
If Christian political leaders are going to go around attacking others for not living up to their professed values, it's a damn good idea to be truthful and actually walk the walk. Logs and motes in the eye, camels through the eye of a needle, glass houses, kettles and pots, and what goes around comes around, et al. Karma's a bitch when She finally decides enough is enough! This wouldn't have been so bad on Republicans if they hadn't been such arrogant hypocrites in order to corner the so-called values voters! Now the Two Candlesticks and Two Witnesses (Truth and Justice) are "breathing fire" and "raining hailstones!"
Christian Political Leadership, Hypocrisy, Duplicity, and Purposeful Evil
The current scandal involving Congressman Foley is merely the latest in an amazingly long list of blatant deception and duplicity by Republicans and the Christian Right in recent years. While bedeviling us all with their holier-than-thou pretenses, they consistently support and/or perform blatant greed and abominable evil. Never forget the extent of their arrogance over the last two decades and especially the last 6 years. It is beyond amazing that Christians continue to blindly support such obviously blatant scoundrels, even as they are repeatedly exposed going against the most basic of human values. The level of hypocrisy and duplicity boggles the mind. There is no longer any doubt, whatsoever, that Christianity is little more than a purposeful deception used by political and religious leaders to dupe, manipulate, and coerce entire populations into giving them wealth and power, which they always use for greed, injustice, and abominable evils.
The actions of Foley and those who covered up for him directly parallel the actions of scores of priests that have raped innocent children, preyed upon others for centuries, and had their actions hidden and abetted by the Vatican. Now, in eerie repetition of Vatican history, we have a power hungry Christian Emperor (GW) working closely with the Vatican and Judeo-Christian aristocrats to lead crusades in the so-called Holy Land. Furthermore, to leave little doubt about the reality of this assessment, the USA, as the new Holy Roman Empire, is about to legalize the torture it has perpetrated in recent years while steadily reversing many of the democratic and civil freedoms that people gained when the Vatican and royalty lost control of their European empire at the turn of the nineteenth century. Now we see them following the same old path of evil as they strive to cement the status of the USA as the latest proxy Vatican empire. Make no mistake about it, the new dark ages are looming on the horizon unless we do something proactive to prevent it.
Remember that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it!
Read More:
Here is Wisdom !!
Peace...
Great post above. Might not agree on everything, but that poster is spot on.
As for you, the typical apologist: get real.
7 star:
I disagree.
1) Yes, social conservatives have a moral agenda. And you disapprove. But how can you they're guilty of "blatant deception and duplicity"? Have they hid their legislative goals? Given your opposition, they plainly didn't fool you.
2) Secular leftists also have a moral agenda--the latter opposes considering morals as a basis for legislation. But that to is a moral stance--that no fundamental and shared values exists, so policy should not draw from morality. Indeed, the secular left says so when promoting "tolerance" as the proper founding of law. The winner us up to the voters, not bloggers or hysterical commenters.
3) Perhaps you consider yourself a proponent of "tolerance." If so, classing Christians as motivated by "blatant greed and abominable evil" is hardly tolerant. Like you, the "Christian Right" enjoys the liberty to promote its views in both pulpit and political process, subject only to the Constitution. By contrast, the secular left seems to tolerate only those with whom they already agree.
4) You say Christians "go around attacking others for not living up to their professed values, [so are not] truthful and [don't] actually walk the walk." But how can that be true? Congressman Foley resigned!, unlike Democratic Congressman Gerry Studds, who slept with an underage male page but retained his post in the Dem Congressional leadership and was re-elected to serve 13 more years. As Orrin Judd says, "Once again we see that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the GOP guys who get caught are forced out by the party." What didn't you understand about Jonah's point:
"What liberals don’t understand is that social conservatives actually believe their moral rhetoric, even when it’s politically inconvenient. That’s why GOP Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana had to resign when his marital infidelities became public during the Clinton impeachment, much to the chagrin of Democrats who wanted to advance the “everybody does it” defense of President Clinton. And that’s why vast numbers of social conservatives now want Speaker J. Dennis Hastert’s head on a pike."
5) Regarding your apparent assumption that some treaty or Constitutional protection applies to non-citizen/non-residents unlawful combatants captured in Iraq or Afghanistan, try reading the law, then considering three questions:
A) Germany bans depictions of the Nazi swastika. Does that mean Germany violates the First Amendment?
B) If torture is employed to learn of plans for future terror attacks in America, is that "punishment" under the Eighth Amendment (even were the Constitution to apply)?
C) Did Col. Hogan get a free lawyer to challenge his Stalag 13 detention in Nazi courts?
6) As for your ravings about Bush, Rome, the Crusades and empire, well, you've supplied no evidence, nor could you. Suggestion: read and think before you write. It's more persuasive.
The whole "outsiders" thing is pretty tiresome. I'm not exactly an outsider: Princeton, Harvard Law School, partner in a well known regional firm, listed in Best Lawyers in America, &c. I'm also an evangelical.
I'd certainly be happy to translate for anyone in Hornaday's situation. But I don't think she's interested in writing the story from any perspective other than one of deliberate ignorance.
SO:
Agreed. I'm not an evangelical (actually don't know how to define what I am), but more and more see the issue as follows: The ship has sunk, and you and ten others are in a lifeboat with provisions for five. With whom would you prefer to share the boat, secular progressives or evangelicals?
Liberals would eat your liver on day two.
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