Posted on 08/02/2012 1:42:10 PM PDT by Sark
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In the first place, that's quite simply wrong. The economy remains the dominant issue and the economy is the major issue in this election. But in the second place, conservatives are smart enough to multitask.
Social conservatism is what makes us conservatives because through that grounding, we learn the difference between right and wrong and that the rights of the people do not come from government, but from God. Without a social underpinning, our conservatism becomes one of mere convenience, to be turned on and off like the light switch in your living room.
Gay 'marriage' is now a major wedge issue that conservatives can and must use to differentiate themselves from liberals. We are the majority in this issue and even though the presumptive Republican nominee is pathetically weak on social issues, contrasting the left's beliefs with those of mainstream America is an election-winning combination.
This info is open source. You do as you please. May I suggest posting to many other sites.
Well stated.
It may well be the equivalent of the ‘Arab Spring’ flash point, the Tunisian fruit seller who immolated himself in frustration and despair over government controls.(IIRC)
Meet S. Truett Cathy, The 91-Year-Old Billionaire Behind Chick-Fil-A
13 posted on Thu Aug 02 2012 15:55:54 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by Night Hides Not: “Just what we need, advice from a wet-behind-the-ears 21 year old. Come back sonny, when you've been out of school a few years.”
The problem is it's not just one 21-year-old.
There is a growing movement in evangelical circles arguing that evangelicals ought not to be involved in politics, or that if we are involved, we should do so based on secular conservative lines of argumentation only without bringing the Bible into the debate. That argument is increasingly heard, unfortunately, even in my own Reformed or Calvinist church world, which ought to know better considering their centuries of political engagement including recent leaders like Dr. D. James Kennedy and Francis Schaeffer. It is even more of a problem in large megachurches with many young members who have never known the battles older conservatives had to fight to kick the true liberals out of the Republican Party, and who just take for granted that we have a party which has to at least politely listen to us, even when it chooses to do something we hate.
Claims vary, but the basic line of reasoning is that because non-Christians are non-Christians, we can't use the Bible to persuade and need to focus on natural revelation (what we can learn from observing the world) rather than Scripture. Practically speaking, at best that turns into a type of libertarianism which advocates conservative principles of economics and foreign policy, plus a minimalist form of ethics derived from “what works according to the world.”
Unfortunately, that kind of argument is no different from what was advocated by Unitarians two centuries ago back when they were still supporters of business, education, thrift, and cultural morality.
We need to push back — hard and furiously — against those who argue we can have a values-free type of conservatism.
All that does is return to an older form of liberalism, and it was the older liberalism that developed into the modern menace of radical leftism we face today.
The Democratic Party has pretty much taken a jackhammer to its own Christian segment of voters, rooted in what was once the “solid South” of evangelicalism and in its immigrant blue-collar workers who once included many conservative Catholics. We can't let the Republican Party do the same to its Christian contingent.
26 posted on Thu Aug 02 2012 16:09:39 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time) by precisionshootist: “This article could not be more dead wrong. This has NOTHING to do with gay marriage and everything to do with the radical left forcing us to conform to their dreams of totalitarian rule. F them! This was a show of force and we need to do more of it.”
Except that I'm not going to endorse the F-word in public debate, I agree totally. The radical left lives in a world where moral values were cast off long ago. Because they don't realize how far they've fallen, their radical behavior can antagonize normal Americans and wake them up.
“Culture war” issues are not a sideline. For Christian conservatives, they **ARE** the main issue. Even for people who don't place moral issues front-and-center, they are a very effective tactic to wake up lots of sleepy-eyed moderates to how wacked out the leftists really are.
Let's remember that even for non-Christian conservatives who have no use for government promoting moral values, this is a clear-cut case of two big-city mayors saying the owners of a privately owned company don't have the right to promote their own moral values. Would they try to say that to Ben and Jerry's ice cream? I have zero problem with companies promoting ideology -- this is America, and outside the mayoral residences in Chicago and Boston, I think most Americans still understand that.
Culture wars are winning wars. Don't let the radical leftists try to tell you otherwise.
The author is the one who needs to just move on. The CFA Appreciation Day was the most effortless counterprotest ever, and I speak as one with counterprotest street cred.
As for the government backing out of marriage altogether, that would work — for the couple. Like Christianity, which is always one generation from extinction, a lack of government involvement in marriage is one generation from pure anarchy. You have only to look around you to see the results of non-marriage on the collapsing cities, and American society as a whole.
Marriage exists for the protection of children and for their moral development. In the absence of that voluntary commitment by grownups who wish to have sex, children fall to the state to be looked after. What a miserable job the state has been doing. As George W. Bush once said, “Government can’t love a child.”
One, I haven’t been able to figure out how to replicate the formatting/hyperlinks.
Not really interested in your blog or discourse with HG but to post the code is very simple.
Go to the page on your blog that contains the article, ie: http://principlesandpolicy.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/a-plea-to-my-fellow-conservatives-forget-about-chick-fil-a/ .., right click and select ‘view source’. That page will give you the entire code for that page. Scroll down to the part you want to copy for posting purposes, highlight and copy. Then go to FR and paste that into the posting section.
In the case of this article it would begin at line #111 and end with line #127.
Good luck.
Deb is right. He apparently attends Hillsdale College. He's not a leftist loony wacko. He may well be a libertarian or have strong leanings in that direction. This is an opportunity to help him learn that being a consistent conservative is about **MUCH** more than economics.
I'm glad the internet wasn't around when I was 21. Some of the things I would have said would have been a lot worse than what Sark said here. Fortunately I've forgotten most of them and so has everyone else since they're not preserved online for everyone to read forever via web archives.
I was there, too, a decade or so ago. I thought that perhaps churches should handle their own marriages without governments issuing licenses. There were problems with that.
First, that doesn't prevent lawsuits from cropping up between people who are married. It would then be left up to courts to decide marriages, anyway. They would have to establish that there was an in fact marriage that had taken place, and then they'd have to settle property, money, and children issues. We might like to say, "Let churches do that, too.", but saying that doesn't prevent someone from going to civil courts, because there would be no way a church tribunal would have to be taken by any individual as binding.
Second, the government really does have an interest in children and their care. Wandering children eventually come to the attention of the community, and the community then has to take action in determining responsibility, assessing blame, and instituting corrective measures. There is also the entire issue of preparing children to be productive citizens. So, procreation truly is a huge reason that forces government to be involved in marriage.
Third, there is the possibility of harmful unions of people with which the government will eventually have to deal. One man and 20 women with a 100 kids or a communal arrangement with 100's of kids is not far-fetched, and that would all fall on government to sort out. I think gay relationships are naturally unhealthy and lead to disease and unwanted recruitment. There is the problem of bestiality which also is a health concern. There could be issues of violence, abuse, slavery, and the like that will all seek governmental intervention.
These are all situations that affect a community and require the community to create processes for handling them. That will involve law, anyway.
Just a few thoughts, and I'm sure others can think of more concerns than I've mentioned.
I don’t care where he went to school. His statement was not needed nor will I ever agree with his stupid statement. The event on Wednesday was excellent and completed its task. The trouble with the Conservatives is we have too many second guessers giving their ego filled opinion. The event Wednesday was good. The left wins so many times because they know when to keep their ideas to themselves. I did not want or desire your opinion either. It is time we still up an told the straight hard truth. If not we will be all like John McCain running for President losing to evil. If you have not notice, this is a WAR and it is not for the weak.
So, the FACT is that some form of a marriage license has been in use in western culture for eight centuries.
The libertarian tactic of "privatizing" marriage is nothing more than an implicit endorsement of same-sex "marriage" without appearing to support it.
We both agree that this was a very effective “silent majority” backlash to the gay agenda. I totally disagree with the original poster’s idea that we need to focus on the economy to the exclusion of the culture war, and have told him so in a separate post.
My point was that this guy doesn’t sound like a liberal. He sounds like someone who is 80 percent with us and 20 percent needing to be brought on board. Wrong is still wrong, but I’ll deal with a confirmed leftist very differently from how I’ll deal with a guy who focuses on individual freedom and is more of a libertarian mindset.
Just clarifying my comments in context.
You're right, in the current context. Privatizing marriage will lead places we do not want to go.
Historically, Reformed churches regarded marriage as a proper function of the state, not of the church. (I don't want to get into details of Lutheranism or other forms of historic Protestantism at the time of the Reformation without researching them to be sure I'm right.) But regardless of whether marriage is a function of the church, of the state, or both, marriage most emphatically is not a private contract between two people.
You are correct.
When the Catholic Church first required banns much of Europe small city-states with different laws between very small geographic areas, so it made sense for the Church to institute rules for all Christians. As nations began to form, it became easier for the state to have marriage laws. By the time of the Reformation, most states had licensing, though Catholics, Lutherans and Anglicans (I'm not as sure about Calvinists) still required banns for several centuries.
But regardless of whether marriage is a function of the church, of the state, or both, marriage most emphatically is not a private contract between two people.
And to that end, in the history of mankind (until very recently), NO CULTURE has ever defined marriage as anything other than a union between ONE MAN and ONE (or possibly more) WOMAN. Even polygamist cultures have ALWAYS required ONE MAN to be a part of a marriage, never no men and never multiple men.
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