Saturday, May 21, 2005

IT WAS JUST LAST WINTER THAT Power Line and many other blogs helped James Watt defend himself against an unsolicited attack by Bill Moyers, who fabricated a Watt quote in order to paint him as uncaring of the environment, given the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

Watt has responded to Moyers today with a column in the WaPo, entitled "The Religious Left's Lies," which is worth a read. Along the way, Watt notes that the left took advantage of the fact that Evangelical Christians accounted for a third of the ballots cast for Bush in the last election.

The religious left took note. Political opportunists in its ranks sought a wedge issue to weaken the GOP's coalition of Jews, Catholics and evangelicals and shatter its electoral majority. They passed over obvious headliners and landed on a curious but cunning choice: the environment.

Watt goes on to explain how environmentalists have cruelly and unjustly paint the "religious right" as in favor of environmental destruction as they believe it will lead to the rapture. The fact that it is a ridiculous charge, utterly devoid of common sense, hasn't stopped the religious left from using to drive people of religion away from the Republican Party.

I highlight the column here though, not to draw attention to the lies of the left, but to rather make a point regarding the other two-thirds of Republican voters. For the most part, religious and non-religious Republican voters (I fit into the latter category) share many of the same concerns and champion the same issues.

One need not be a religious person to note how the ACLU has systematically eliminated religion from the public forum. In fact, I daresay that the devout among us were perhaps the last to notice. For years many of us wondered when Christians would wake up and realize that they were under assualt. Although I'm still not convinced entirely, the signs indicate that they no longer sleep.

One need not be religious to see the erosion that abortion, especially late-term abortion, causes to our moral fabric. One need not be religious to be skeptical of gay marriage and aware of the dangers of creating special classes in our society. One need not be religious to see that freedom of association is under attack, most notable in the Boy Scouts, which are gleefully punished time and time again by the left for not allowing gay men to be scout leaders.

One need not be religious to be concerned over America's high courts, which have become increasingly in the business of writing law, not interpreting law. Furthermore, the high courts have done so increasingly based on European law rather than American law; an affront to American jurisprudence. The ninth circuit has been overturned so many time that it is clearly in violation of the "good behavior" test of the constitution.

The miscalculation that the left makes is that the concerns of the right are based in religion. They are not. They are rather based on the protection of our sovereignty and the preservation of our institutions in the face of a vast effort to create a new America; one that is merely a vassal to the United Nations and subject to the laws and whims of other nations.

Rather than take note, the left has chosen to demonize religion, all the while not capable of realizing that the tactic is what got them in so much trouble in the first place. Saying that the left needs to "moderate" or "come back to the middle" is not empty rhetoric or politics. It is the expression of people who understand the constitution and see that modern liberalism has become an affront to it.

The longer the Democratic Party fails to recognize that it is they, not the right, that has been hijacked by extremists, the longer it will be before they are once again considered a viable American political party.

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