Today’s Reading List – September 21, 2007
It was everywhere…
James Dobson announced that he won't be supporting Thompson. David Brody tells it as does Marc Ambinder. Here's the original AP story and some interesting comments from EFM. Our friends at EFM seem to think this will land Dobson in the Romney camp, which makes sense except that prior comments on his part have painted him into a bit of a corner on The Question front – Brody more or less agrees with that analysis, and contends, as does Ambinder, that this puts Dobson in the Huckabee camp. I agree.
And that is just sad because it essentially takes a large portion of the Evangelical vote out of the primary. Huckabee simply lacks the horses to carry the day. VP, perhaps, and that may be Dobson's play, just making sure there is an Evangelical on the ticket, but in the end it is not helpful.
We constantly talk about "litmus tests" when it comes to the left and judges and abortion. Well, if we don't like it for them, we shouldn't do it ourselves. A religious litmus test, even in the guise of an issue litmus test, limits our power, it does not enhance it. I have heard leadership described as "seeing a parade and jumping in front of it." A Huckabee move by Dobson strikes me as begging to add a float. Not smart political leadership.
LOWELL: What's truly offensive about Dobson's approach is its underlying principle: "Vote only for your co-religionist." It's that kind of clannish thinking that has caused strife, sorrow, and bloodshed down through the centuries. (For a recent example, think Northern Ireland.) No, Dobson is not leading us down the road to sectarian warfare– not even close– but his worldview is very un-American.
How so, you ask? Last summer I spent a week in Philadelphia with my family. As the descendant of Quakers myself, I was fascinated to learn more about William Penn, whom my forebears followed to the New World in the late 1600's. Penn and his fellow Quakers had suffered greatly for their faith in England, and so he had a particular goal in mind when he established the City of Philadelphia:
The meaning, City of Brotherly Love, represents the religious tolerance for all faiths that the colony stood for. Other groups came to America to seek religious freedom and then discriminated against other religions. Penn insisted that all religions were welcome in Pennsylvania. Now Penn could practice his "holy experiment" – not a sanctuary for Quakers, but a place where any religion was accepted.
According to the information posted at Pennsylvania's historical sites I visited, there were more churches, of all different kinds, in Penn's special city than anywhere else in the world. How American!
Now, I wonder how comfortable James Dobson would have been in early Philadelphia?
Don't know what to think about this…
Yesterday's Times of London piece was insulting, and yet the follow-up, intended I think to be a counterpoint, managed to support Romney and REMAIN insulting.
All faith is weird. So leave it out of politics.
Somehow, I think there is a nicer way to have said that.
Or this either…
From The New Statesman comes an opening paragraph that is really interesting:
But if there's one thing that unites the Christian right with the liberal left it's discomfort over Mitt Romney's membership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I would modify that to "the Christian far right" but that is an interesting thesis to begin an article with on our subject. But the piece soon tries way too hard to connect Warren Jeffs and the CJCLDS then, of all things, tries to justify polygamy.
"Stunned at the stupidity" is about all I can say.
LOWELL: It is instructive to bear in mind what The New Statesman is all about:
The New Statesman was created in 1913 with the aim of permeating the educated and influential classes with socialist ideas.
No, the magazine hasn't changed its mission. So it's, well, a magazine with a point of view that's not particularly religion-friendly.
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