A New Dextrospheric Blog Poll with Some Thoughts
John Hawkins has another blogger poll up at Right Wing News for which I was one of the respondents. Normally, John keeps his questions tightly focused around a particular topic or upcoming event (an election, a Congressional vote, etc) but this bunch of questions was kind of all over the place. I wonder where he’s headed with a couple of them, or if they were just things that were on his mind.
I’d like to expand on my answer to a couple of the questions. Here’s the first one:
4) What grade would you give Barack Obama on his handling of the crisis in Iran?
A-B: 3.2% (2 votes)
C: 16.1% (10 votes)
D-F: 80.6% (50 votes)
The only thing that saved him from an “F” in my book was that he eventually gave a kinda sorta condemnation of the Iranian government’s slaughter. That said, I think he could have easily earned a “B” (there’s no chance he would have given the sort of quick and ringing condemnation that would have gotten him an “A”). Given that there were only a few things he could have done, knocking down a couple of them — say a harsh condemnation of the government crackdown and a hint or two that he might not treat the Iranian’s as a legitimate government if they didn’t back down and treat the protesters with respect — would have more than satisfied me.
6) Would you vote for an atheist for President?
Yes: 67.2% (41 votes)
No: 32.8% (20 votes)
I have to admit, I don’t really know where this question comes from. I wouldn’t have a problem voting for an atheist so long as they honored the First Amendment and the important part religion has always placed in civic life. I suspect that many of those who voted “no” were concerned that an atheist President wouldn’t do either of those things much at all.
7) Do you believe, as a general rule, that conservatives are more moral than liberals?
Yes: 77% (47 votes)
No: 23% (14 votes)
It took me as long to answer this one question as it did all the rest combined. On the surface, it seems pretty easy. My kneejerk response was “Well, of course we are!” but then I thought about Mark Sanford and the various scandas in the Republican Party, many of which involve members of Congress who call themselves conservative and I had to stop. Maybe we really aren’t any more moral than progressives.
On the other hand, progressives have political beliefs that are, I believe, immoral from the ground up. I think it’s immoral to take someone’s money because you believe you can spend it better than they. I think it’s immoral to hold an entire group of people in poverty to prop up your own electoral power base. I think it’s immoral to use accusations of racism, misogyny, and hatred as your first weapon against a political opponent. These are all undeniable hallmarks of left-wing politics going back a very long way.
And I came back to the scandals, especially the sex scandals. It’s impossible to consider someone a hypocrite if they’ve never taken a moral stand on anything. That’s why John Edwards, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, James McGreevy, and Kwame Kilpatrick, just to name a few Democratic adulterers, were unscathed by the “H” word. It’s why Barney Frank continues to be a leader of the Democratic Congress despite being deeply involved in a gay prostitution ring some years ago.
You can’t be accused of immorality if you don’t have morals to begin with. No one expects that out of left-wing politicians but they do out of those on the right. That point certainly helped my decision.
Other Posts of Interest:
- John Hawkins’ List Would Make an A-List Blogroll
- So There I Was, Like a Good Conservative, Standing Athwart Jonathan Chait yelling “Stop”!
- This, Folks, is What Blog-Fu is All About
Category: Blogs and Blogging, Conservatism
It has been said that "it takes a great saint to make a great sinner"…
Jesus said something to the effect that his followers should be hot or cold, but the lukewarm he would vomit out of his mouth.
Morality is indeed a question. If you have no standards of right and wrong, how can you be moral? Your actions may cause things to happen that people like or don't like, but you aren't moral. You are _a_moral.
The fact that you sin – which I define as acting in a way you know to be morally wrong – doesn't make you immoral – it makes you a sinner. Since none of us is perfect, we are all sinners – some moreso than others. The question then is do we repent and reform or do we just admit and continue our actions. If the first, then we're still moral. If the second, then we're not moral. We're immoral.
Immoral and amoral are also different. Immoral is doing what you know is wrong with no intention of changing your ways. Amoral is having no standards of right and wrong.
So…actually, I think progressives _do_ have a moral standard, but I think their standard is as wrong as that of the Aztecs when they sacrificed virgins. That's where the conflict is, I think. We are judging each other's morals on different standards and attempting to equate them. Even the progressive's use of the various things you mention in order to defeat conservatives is moral by their standards, because their standard is that anything goes in order to advance their agenda. To a progressive, sex of any kind is incidental…amoral. To a conservative, sex outside of marriage is immoral. To a progressive, any sin is proof of hypocrisy – not just a fall from grace. I'm not sure a progressive can "sin". If you can never sin…can you ever be a saint?
Progressives interpretation of moral standards requires conservatives to be perfect or stand accused of hypocrisy. That's unrealistic – and they know it – which is why they use it. Nobody's perfect – there's always some dirt they can use to discredit an opponent. And if they can, they will.
They really are despicable.