No, TBBT, attitudes like that by secular conservatives risk provoking us into taking our eyes off the real enemy, thus creating a circular firing squad in which different types of conservatives fight each other instead of fighting liberals.
As Sola Veritas posted in #10 on Thursday, December 29, 2011 8:37:37 PM: “That is entirely uncalled for and you need to retract it.”
RecoveringPaulisto, Timber Rattler, and txhurl also challenged you on your bigoted anti-Christian comment. You refused to do so at Post #15. I expect that sort of thing from leftists. It should not be happening on a conservative site.
Unfortunately, it does happen, and happens far too often. I'm going to call you out and hope you think really hard about how your attitudes damage the broader conservative movement by causing unnecessary fights.
TXHurl correctly pointed out that fiscal conservatives, military conservatives and social conservatives are the three-legged stool of the modern American conservative movement. Apparently TBBT wants to kick out the social conservatives. That warrants a response. I wrote much of this on another thread but I'm going to repeat it here.
You and some others on this thread may wish that evangelical Republicans weren't a factor in our party, but we are. Get used to it. Reagan wouldn't have won without us and without conservative blue-collar Catholics, and both of these conservative Christian groups are a major part of the modern Republican coalition whether you like it or not.
I was a Republican and a conservative before I was converted, I know the vicious animosity that sometimes exists in secular conservative circles toward evangelicals, and I'm going to tell you, point blank: attitudes like that lose elections.
I have to put up with secular Republican conservatives and others whose views I don't like because the goal is to win in November, and in American politics with a winner-take-all system, we can't win as evangelicals or conservative Catholics without the help of other conservatives who don't share our emphasis on moral values. You and others who don't like us need to pay attention to the fact that you need us to win against President Obama just as much as we need you for that same goal.
You may not like that. Fine. Go figure out how to win an election without most of the South, and without the ethnic Roman Catholic voters in key swing states. Figure out how to win Florida without Cuban voters, who are mostly Roman Catholic.
As evangelicals, apart from the Bible Belt and certain parts of the rural North, we can't win elections without you secular conservatives. Most of us know that. Likewise, conservative Roman Catholics can't win without evangelical and secular conservative support outside of Florida, some parts of Texas, and some other parts of the Southwest.
Put bluntly, TBBT, if we conservative evangelicals and conservative Catholics can learn how to get along in the right-to-life movement for the purpose of saving babies, despite hundreds of years of fighting since the Reformation, what's your excuse?
Modern anti-religious conservatism is a Johnny-Come-Lately with seeds in followup response to the French Revolution. It grew into some very bad forms of robber-baron capitalism which eschewed the Christian imperative for employers to treat their workers as they would want to be treated, and the loss of Christian values among economic conservatives in the 1800s was a major factor in the rise of Communism.
I happen to have major problems with anti-religious immoral conservatives whose sole goal is making money, but you won't hear me making broad-brush accusations like that on Free Republic or anywhere else against economic conservatives as a group. I won't be making those accusations against individuals, either, unless I'm absolutely certain the accusation fits the specific person.
My religion says I need to treat you fairly. Be glad. In my pre-conversion days, the language out of my mouth would have been filthy and I would have accused you of things that probably aren't true merely to discredit your person as well as your views.
As a Christian I know you are entitled to fair treatment and to have your views rebutted with logic and not personal attacks. Remember, the goal is to defeat President Obama, not to attack each other.
“and I’m going to tell you, point blank: attitudes like that lose elections.”
Indeed they do. Nice post.
I have enjoyed reading your comments here at the end of this thread!