{"id":6092,"date":"2016-10-29T15:57:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-29T15:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/29\/a-brooks-boner\/"},"modified":"2016-10-29T15:57:44","modified_gmt":"2016-10-29T15:57:44","slug":"a-brooks-boner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/10\/29\/a-brooks-boner\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Liberty and a Brooks Boner"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times<\/em> are piss-poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading.  But the following<\/a> from Brooks (28 October) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

Come on, man.  Don't be stupid.  The Left is out to suppress religious liberty.  This didn't start yesterday.  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 'marriage' ceremonies.  Is that a legitimate use of state power?  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's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue  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.  They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane.  What'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

The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion.  Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftist scum like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The threat from the Left is very real indeed.  See here<\/a> and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights.  Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
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\"\"<\/a>Ross Douthat<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Democrats Have Moved Farther to the Left than the Republicans to the Right<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are piss-poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading.  But the following from Brooks (28 October) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right: The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and … Continue reading “Religious Liberty and a Brooks Boner”<\/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":[58,56,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6092","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=6092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}