{"id":4972,"date":"2017-12-07T11:25:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T11:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/12\/07\/religious-liberty-and-david-brooks-3\/"},"modified":"2017-12-07T11:25:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-07T11:25:23","slug":"religious-liberty-and-david-brooks-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/12\/07\/religious-liberty-and-david-brooks-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Liberty and David Brooks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">This is a slightly redacted re-post from before the Trump victory, from 29 October 2016, to be exact. The cause of religious liberty has been substantially advanced by President Trump. Yet another reason&#0160; for patriots and true conservatives to be grateful this Holiday season.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">The Op-Ed pages of&#0160;<em>The New York Times<\/em>&#0160;are plenty poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading. &#0160;But&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/28\/opinion\/the-conservative-intellectual-crisis.html?ref=opinion&amp;_r=0\">the following<\/a>&#0160;from Brooks (28 October 2016) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are pre\u00adpolitical: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Come on, man. &#0160;Don&#39;t be stupid. &#0160;The Left is out to suppress religious liberty. &#0160;This didn&#39;t start yesterday. &#0160;You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual &#39;marriage&#39; ceremonies. &#0160;Is that a legitimate use of state power? &#0160;And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration&#39;s assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue &#0160;Hillary will do when she gets power. It is not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it. &#0160;They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump&#39;s opponent is even worse on the character plane. &#0160;What&#39;s worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion. &#0160;Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftists&#0160; like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians. &#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">The threat from the Left is very real indeed. &#0160;See&#0160;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.crisismagazine.com\/2016\/us-civil-rights-commission-targets-religious-liberty\">here<\/a>&#0160;and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. &#0160;Given Castro&#39;s comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian.<\/span><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<fieldset class=\"zemanta-related\">\n<legend class=\"zemanta-related-title\">Related articles<\/legend>\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\" style=\"margin: 0; padding: 0; overflow: hidden;\">\n<div class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"padding: 0; background: none; list-style: none; display: block; float: left; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; width: 84px; font-size: 11px; margin: 2px 10px 10px 2px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/firstamendmentwatch.org\/2017\/12\/06\/discrimination-free-speech-supreme-court-decide-cake-means\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" style=\"box-shadow: 0px 0px 4px #999; padding: 2px; display: block; border-radius: 2px; text-decoration: none;\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/AWArwC_thrquzSebxwqW_80_80.jpg\" style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; border: 0; display: block; width: 80px; max-width: 100%;\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/firstamendmentwatch.org\/2017\/12\/06\/discrimination-free-speech-supreme-court-decide-cake-means\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" style=\"display: block; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 12pt; height: 80px; padding: 5px 2px 0 2px;\" target=\"_blank\">Discrimination or Free Speech? What&#39;s At Stake in the Wedding Cake Conflict &#8211; First Amendment Watch<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a slightly redacted re-post from before the Trump victory, from 29 October 2016, to be exact. The cause of religious liberty has been substantially advanced by President Trump. Yet another reason&#0160; for patriots and true conservatives to be grateful this Holiday season. &#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.. The Op-Ed pages of&#0160;The New York Times&#0160;are plenty poor to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2017\/12\/07\/religious-liberty-and-david-brooks-3\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Religious Liberty and David Brooks&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-liberty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}