When Academics Attack
The first of what is likely to be countless academic papers comparing and contrasting the role of Mormonism in the Romney campaign and the Prop 8 campaign has appeared. (HT:PrawfsBlawg) From the abstract:
I will argue that in contemporary electoral politics, attacks on the truth of a religion make little sense in light of the pluralism and postmodernism that now characterize the contemporary United States, but are a likely consequence when the religion itself introduces such truth-claims into electoral politics.
Wow – so many words, so little said. Reading this thing was like scrubbing your eyeballs with steel wool. It is basically a liberal diatribe saying “Romney deserved it because Mormons insisted on inserting ‘religious truth’ about homosexuality into electoral politics.” Not sure whether that is argument or just sticking out your tongue and and whining. Dressing an idea up in academy-speak makes it sound serious, but sour grapes is sour grapes no matter how it is expressed.
Romney was about religion – Prop 8 was about a prevailing social ethos supported by religion, but not religious of itself. Ethics and religion are related but not the same thing. That seems to be something the left just cannot figure out. Multiple religions and even the areligious can share ethical standards. And they do.
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Jerald on 12 Mar 2009 at 2:57 pm #
Well, that is the Liberal attack line.
“There is no God, or at least no communication with ‘it’, so there can be no claim to absolute truth, so any smack of religious conviction behind any public policy issue is forcing your beliefs on others, which means all you religious people forcing your beliefs on us are nothing more than backwards bigots like those who have been suppressing the freedom of humanity for eons and, therefore, you have no right to weigh in on public policy. Especially when how you live doesn’t jive with what you preach. You are just a bunch of bigoted hypocritical loonies.”
That’s a powerful argument to many people and it gets “validated” when the religious at petty toward each other.
Like you have been saying, the attacks by the religious on other religious is one of the most power tools the Liberals use against the social conservatives. But how many social conservatives get it?