Values Voters

This man-on-the-street looked into the camera certain his next pronouncement would silence his detractors... “I’m a values voter,” he said. I imagine he felt like one of Constantine’s soldiers marching into battle wielding his shiny, new shield with the Christian cross of his master embossed on its face. He’s doing God’s work, he thinks. An ancient, illiterate soldier following his general into battle can be forgiven his blind devotion, if not to the Christian ethic, certainly to his general. A 21st Century American should not be so readily forgiven.

A 21st Century American should know better. He has had every opportunity to assess the militant history of the purveyors of his moral code, to vet out Gospel inconsistencies and contradictions, to recognize how incompatible his ancient thinking is with life in the first free society in the history of the world. He’s had every opportunity to choose better values. He is a blind witness to the corruption his moral code [altruism] has wrought on this Earth, the ceaseless bloodletting for God; televangelists and mega church icons arrested for drugs, male prostitution, child pornography, and embezzlement; pedophile priests and a corrupt church hierarchy at work to cover up their atrocities. He has witnessed the wonders created by free, rational men of science since the separation of church and state, from the life-saving prescription drugs he ingests every morning, to computers, cell phones, and the Internet he uses to propagate his irrational dogma. An honest 21st Century American acknowledges what free men have achieved in the last two hundred years. He knows these achievements have nothing to do with Christian values and everything to do with Renaissance Humanism, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and the birth of these great United States.

The values voter believes ridiculous, little children’s stories about the creation of time and space, Earth and humanity, utterly ignoring a wealth of old and new science to the contrary, and he wants his Bunk! taught in biology class as a “competing theory.” He has no data whatever to support his feelings on the subject: he does not know that without data no hypothesis can be elevated to theory status.

The “values voter” prides himself on the fact that despite the corruption of his church on Earth, his religion is pure and perfect. He prides himself on his faith in this fantasy despite its compounding demonstrable failure in reality. And he wants our government to force his faith on the rest of us. He thinks the Constitution of the United States should be re-written to better reflect Neolithic, biblical thinking. He claims to be a proponent of “traditional American values.” He has far more in common with the Taliban, than the Framers of the Constitution. He thinks he has a right to force a woman to have a baby, even if that baby is the product of incest or rape. He claims to value the “sanctity of human life,” but utterly fails to properly define what a human life is. He has no respect for the rights of individuals to choose their life-style. If your chosen life-style conflicts with his narrow, ancient teachings, you are immoral and your right to marry, to spend your life with the person you love, can be denied. If he were true to his own values and lived according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, he would be a pacifist who turns the other cheek; the values voter supports the Bush doctrine of preemption, hardy a view Jesus would endorse. If he were true to the teachings of Jesus, he would be a socialist. He’s not. In fact, his voice is loudest when he denounces the welfare state and the progressive tax code.

He is a mass of contradictions, a fascist, and a bully. He is a fearful follower who pretends to lead. He projects moral certainty and righteousness while clinging to irrational doctrine he has never once scrutinized. He would be a joke if he weren’t so dangerous.