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The Spectacle Blog
In my book The End of Secularism, I have a chapter which is a case study demonstrating that the high-minded adherence to secularism is easily discarded by leftists whenever they find religion convenient to their agenda. Were I to rewrite the book today, I would include the ad being run against Rand Paul by his opponent in the Kentucky senate race.
Here’s the text of the ad:
“Why was Rand Paul a member of a secret society that called the Holy Bible ‘a hoax’ – that was banned for mocking Christianity and Christ?” asks a voice in Conway’s ad. “Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up? Tell her to bow down before a false idol and say his God was ‘Aqua Buddha?’ “
Now, first off, I have to say that the claim against Rand Paul has to do with a stunt from his college years at Baylor. Having read the original story about Rand’s classmate’s claim, it was clear that he and a friend engaged in a fairly typical fraternity-style prank. I am familiar with the “secret society” he belonged to at Baylor. It is a humorous part of campus-life. A little edgy, but viewed as a real part of the Baylor tradition.
More important, though, the text of the ad shows that liberals are more than ready to use religion as a political issue when it suits their purposes. If the shoe were on the other foot and a conservative were running an ad of this nature, many gray eminences of church-state separation would come forth from the Ivy Leagues, Washington, D.C., and New York City to explain to us how scurrilous and unprincipled it is.
I have yet to hear from Barry Lynn or any of the other great separators of church and state about the Conway ad being run against Rand Paul. And we won’t hear from them. Because this story doesn’t fit their template of conservatives using religion to engage in holy war.
View all comments (14) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Hunter Baker
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/10/20/the-hypocrisy-of-the-champions
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Seek| 10.20.10 @ 6:01PM
Actually, Americans United has gone after Jesse Jackson on church-state separation issues. That's a documentable fact. But most overblown proclamations of "religious persecution" comes from the Right. That, too, is a documentable fact.
Conway took a cheap shot, but that doesn't take away the fact that it's not the job of government to promote, any more than to suppress, religious belief and worship.
Ken (Old Texican)| 10.20.10 @ 6:19PM
Seek,
Please use more than one sheet of toilet paper when you have the runs.
See, you get your fingers toxic otherwise. Also, please wash your hands thoroughly after a post like that.
e-coli involved.
Alan Brooks| 10.20.10 @ 9:32PM
AS leaves out how intolerant Sobran was, and Pat Buchanan STILL is, towards Judaic traditions.
Now, you can be as one-sided as you want, however so can your opponents-- you can't seem to grasp this entirely.
Kenneth E. MacAlister Jr.| 10.21.10 @ 10:33AM
Mr. Brooks, I rarely agree with you, but you have described Pat Buchanan to a tee. I cringe when I hear his intolerance of the Jewish people & do not take him seriously. He is an embarassment to conservatism. Take care & GOD bless!
David Calvani| 10.22.10 @ 6:56AM
That is isn't the job of government to promote or suppress religion has nothing to do with Baker's essay.
As for Americans United, I look forward to them publicly condemning Paul's opponent for his unscrupulous use of religion in a campaign.
Dan| 10.20.10 @ 8:57PM
Why was Jack Conway a member of a secret society that raped women? That same secret society (SAE at Duke) was banned from campus for multitudes of offenses ranging from rape and sexual assault to dangerous hazing.
Julian Sanchez| 10.20.10 @ 9:28PM
Did you look? Because I saw plenty of liberals expressing revulsion at the ad. Jon Chait, off the top of my head, but he was hardly alone.
Alan Brooks| 10.20.10 @ 9:30PM
You leave out how intolerant Sobran was, and Pat Buchanan STILL is, towards Judaic traditions. now you can be as one-sided as you want, however so can your opponents-- you can't seem to grasp this entirely.
David Calvani| 10.22.10 @ 6:59AM
What you can't seem to grasp, Alan, is that Baker wasn't discussing either Sobran or Buchanan. He was discussing a Democrat's use of religion against a Republican and the Left's silence about the matter.
If you're going to post comments to an op-ed you really should stick to topic of the piece.
Simeon Cana| 10.21.10 @ 4:57AM
While I dont seek to defend the wild-left here, I think Baker's blog post falls down on basic logic. Sorry.
Some leftists may claim to be secular, though certainly by no means do all or even the majority do so (flaw 1). Secondly, if a hypothetical leftist WERE secular, or even athiest, how does that disqualify them from ever referring to or talking about religion? That doesnt even make sense (Flaw 2). In this specific case, the anti-Rand Paul ad is trying to point out the hypocricy of someone who claims to be religious, and yet has been irriligious in the past. There is no minimum religious requirement to point out hypocricy.
You claim by attacking Paul's religion, the 'leftsits' have 'discarded their adherence to secularism' (A false adherence you just asserted). That is simply false, there is no need for them to abandon their hypothetical secularism to point out how hypocritical Paul might have been in his past actions.
Now, the ad is pointless and stupid, but thats because it tries to imply a decades old college prank somehow influences Paul's current politics. THAT is silly. But thats all.
What Baker has tried to do here is the classic straw man argument: assert something false about a group and then proceed to ridicule it. But he did it very badly, as even his assertions about his assertions are false. Sorry.
David Calvani| 10.22.10 @ 6:52AM
I'm afraid, Simeon, that it is your reply that falls down on basic logic, not Hunter Baker's op-ed.
"the 'leftsits' have 'discarded their adherence to secularism' (A false adherence you just asserted)."
The Left is indeed very committed to secularism. It is from the Left that the unending attacks on Christmas displays on public property comes. It is the Left that demands (as in Massachussets) that school children be taught that man can marry men while refusing to listen to any objection from parents. No thought to separating secular humanism from state is given in such instances. Yet it is also the Left that that loves to teach materialist Darwinist dogma in schools but screams 'separation of church and state' when folks complain.
It is simply absurd for you to insist that the Left doesn't adhere to secularism. (Except when discarding secularism serves Democrats, which is the topic of Hunter Baker's piece.)
"You claim by attacking Paul's religion..."
Baker made no such claim. Any reader will search the piece in vain looking for it. All Baker is saying about the ad is this:
"the text of the ad shows that liberals are more than ready to use religion as a political issue when it suits their purposes."
And he is absolutely right. The ad not only calls the Bible "the Holy Bible" in a clear play to believers, it refers to bowing before "a false idol." That phrase speaks to a particular religious outlook and is meant to imply that Paul is an idolator. That is not pointing out possible past hypocrisy. Not by a long shot.
Vasu Murti | 10.21.10 @ 4:06PM
I'm a pro-life Democrat. Without commenting on the Republican Party treating non-Christians as second-class citizens, I will say this:
The pro-life movement desperately needs religious diversity. Pro-lifers should welcome people of other faiths and those of no faith. Not everyone in the United States is a Christian.
This country wasn’t founded by Christians; many of America’s founding fathers were Deists. There are other faiths, besides the Abrahamic faiths. There are other holy books out there besides the Bible or the Koran, like the Bhagavad-gita, which also claim to be the word of God.
And I really have a problem with pro-life Christians who adhere to a double-standard: i.e., they insist their stand against abortion be applied to everyone, including others who may not share their faith, but then they embrace moral relativism when it suits them, e.g., “Your religion says it’s wrong to kill animals for food, clothing or sport; mine doesn’t.”
There ARE Christian vegetarians and vegans, of whom I have the deepest respect. I don't take it seriously when meat-eaters say, "The Bible permits us to eat meat," because the Bible was used to uphold human slavery.
The Bible can also be used to justify abortion:
Genesis 38:24 says Tamar’s pregnancy was discovered three months after conception, presumably because it was visible at the time. This was positive proof that she was sexually active. Because she was a widow, without a husband, she was assumed to be a prostitute. Her father-in-law, Judah, ordered that she be burned alive for her crime.
If Tamar’s fetuses had been considered to have any value whatsoever, her execution would have been delayed until after their birth. There was no condemnation on Judah for deciding to take this action.
Similarly, Exodus 21:22-24 says if two men are fighting and one injures a pregnant woman and the fetus is killed, he shall repay her according to the degree of injury inflicted upon her, and not the fetus.
Author Brian McKinley, a born-again Christian, sums up the passage as: “Thus we can see that if the baby is lost, it does not require a death sentence—it is not considered murder. But if the woman is lost, it is considered murder and is punished by death.”
Can you imagine 18th century Christians telling abolitionists, "We don't need to free our slaves...That’s 'good works’…we don’t have to ‘work’ for our salvation...All we have to do is accept Jesus...Paul said Jesus told him three times, ‘my grace is sufficient for thee,’ ...we don't need to free our slaves..." ?
Or how about an 18th century Christian who tells his followers, “You don’t have to free your slaves…All you have to do is accept Jesus.” ?
None of the religious arguments pro-life Christians make to justify the status quo with regards to animals would make any sense if this were 300 years ago, and we were discussing the abolition of human slavery instead of animal slavery, and I think the same holds true with regards to abortion.
I'm surprised pro-choice Christians haven't tried to deny rights to the unborn using the same religious arguments pro-life Christians use to deny rights to animals!
We really live in a secular society. Secular arguments are religiously neutral and are thus applicable to everyone, including atheists and agnostics.
The pro-life movement ALREADY HAS the support of organized religion. Instead of preaching to the choir, i.e., wasting time with religion, pro-lifers should focus on prenatal development, genetics, DNA, RNA, etc. to make their case to mainstream secular society.
Again, the pro-life movement desperately needs religious diversity. It's already stereotyped as being predominantly Christian (Catholic, fundamentalist, born again, etc.) and will need to become completely secular as it attempts to convince the courts, legislatures, universities, philosophers, ethicists, etc. that human zygotes and embryos should be regarded as legal persons.
An earlier piece of mine, discussing parallels between the pro-life and animal rights movements and why they should join forces, appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of Studies in Pro-Life Feminism. It can also be viewed online at the Feminism and Nonviolence Studies Association website (www.fnsa.org), along with a Fall 1998 piece I co-wrote with pro-life feminist Mary Krane Derr discussing Hindu perspectives on abortion. Mary credits me with having caused her to become a vegetarian.
Time magazine reported back in the late 1980s, that school prayer is next on the agenda for those on the right opposed to abortion, whereas for those on the Left, abolishing capital punishment is next. Neither side appears to be thinking in terms of animal rights, which is one of the reasons I devote an entire chapter on animal rights (and its relevance to abortion) towards the end of my 2006 book, The Liberal Case Against Abortion.
I believe abortion is the karmic reaction for killing animals. And therefore, pro-lifers should learn that it's in their best interest to include the animals in their ethics. I've tried to make the case in secular, political language, because I'm not trying to "convert" them to another religion.
In contemporary American society, animal rights and vegetarianism are a secular trend which could use the inspiration, blessings and support of organized religion. The record of organized religion with regards to animals is mixed: stronger in some religions than in others.
I'm not singling out pro-lifers for special criticism here, either. War, like abortion, is also the karmic reaction for killing animals. Many in the peace movement are unaware of this.
In the April 1995 issue of Harmony: Voices for a Just Future, a “consistent-ethic” periodical on the religious Left, Catholic civil rights activist Bernard Broussard concludes:
“…our definition of war is much too limited and narrow. Wars and conflicts in the human kingdom will never be abolished or diminished until, as a pure matter of logic, it includes the cessation of war between the human and animal kingdoms. For, if we be eaters of flesh, or wearers of fur, or participants in hunting animals, or in any way use our might against weakness, we are promoting, in no matter how seemingly insignificant a fashion, the spirit of war. All are manifestations of a ‘survival of the fittest philosophy.’”
I read somewhere that one of the leaders of Operation Rescue came to oppose abortion in the 1970s, upon seeing a bumper sticker which read: “Abortion? Pick on someone your own size!” Yes. That’s precisely my point. The “might makes right” mentality that makes abortion possible begins with what we humans do to other animals.
Pythagoras warned:
“Those who kill animals for food will be more prone than vegetarians to torture and kill their fellow men.”
Domestication of other animals is artificial. Our relationship with other animals on this planet, wild and domesticated, is, therefore, partly an environmental ethics issue:
According to the editors of World Watch, July/August 2004:
“The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestization, topsoil erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities and the spread of disease.”
Brother David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, similarly says:
“…the survival of our planet depends on our sense of belonging—to all other humans, to dolphins caught in dragnets to pigs and chickens and calves raised in animal concentration camps, to redwoods and rainforests, to kelp beds in our oceans, and to the ozone layer.”
The threat of “overpopulation” is frequently used to justify abortion as birth control. On a vegetarian diet, however, the world could easily support a population several times its present size. The world’s cattle alone consume enough to feed 8.7 billion humans.
America’s largest animal rights organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), over 1.6 million strong, is challenging those who think they can still be “meat-eating environmentalists” to go veg, if they really care about the planet. If it could be shown that meat-eating leads to abortion and war, would this be enough to cause our friends in the pro-life and peace movements to go veg as well?
Becoming a vegetarian or a vegan is not merely helping the pro-life movement, it is *literally* pro-life!
Keep the debate completely secular! The pro-choice position is entrenched in the political Left. The religious right is not going to win over the secular Left on the issue of abortion by quoting Scripture or turning to unprovable religious beliefs to back up their position. Doing so will only reinforce the stereotype that pro-lifers are all religious fanatics who aren’t grounded in secular reality.
In Guerilla Apologetics for Life Issues, author Paul Nowak also says, "You should try as much as possible to keep religion out of the discussion."
This is significant. Only in the secular arena can we promote our ideals without imposing our religious beliefs on others. And persons using the secular arena to defend the unborn must not turn to unprovable religious beliefs to deny rights to animals. In the secular arena, one’s religious identity must be completely irrelevant.
Point out the scientific fact that individual human life is a continuum from fertilization until natural death. Religion did not discover when life begins, the biologists did. Zygote, embryo, fetus, infant, toddler, adolescent, etc. are all stages of human development. To destroy that life at any stage of development is to destroy that individual.
Animal rights activists insist, “A dog is a rat is a pig is a boy,” i.e., there are no morally relevant differences between humans and other animals as far as everyday ethics are concerned. Pro-lifers must similarly insist, “A zygote is an embryo is a fetus is an infant is a toddler is an adolescent is an adult,” and back it up with science.
Paul Nowak asks his readers to try and get pro-choicers to determine when they think human rights should begin; implying that since life begins at fertilization, all other criteria (viability, birth, etc.) are arbitrary.
The real question in the abortion debate is not the seemingly absurd scenario of giving full human rights to human zygotes, but rather the thorny question of how to protect those rights without violating a new mother’s privacy and civil liberties.
Keep the debate rational. This isn’t a shouting match. Pro-lifers and pro-choicers agree on everything except the timing; i.e., the time to decide when to have a child is before fertilization, not after.
The abortion issue is not a confrontation between misogynistic oppressors of women and cold-blooded “baby-killers,” rather it is a rational, secular debate on when human rights should begin.
Avoid propagandistic euphemisms. I only use the terms “pro-choice” and “pro-life,” because these are the political labels by which the pro-abortion and anti-abortion sides identify themselves. But they are both misleading.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson (cofounder of NARAL; a physician who presided over some 60,000 abortions before changing sides on the issue), wrote in his 1979 book, Aborting America:
“…the Right-to-Lifers are not in favor of all ‘life’ under all circumstances. They are not in the forefront of the save-the-seals crusade. They are not devotees of Albert Schweitzer’s ‘reverence for life,’ or its equivalent in Eastern religions, in which the extinction of cows or flies somehow violates the sanctity of the cosmos.
“Turning to the human species, they do not necessarily oppose the taking of life via capital punishment. Where were they when Caryl Chessman was executed for a crime he did not likely commit—and a rape at that, not a murder?
“They were likely not notably in the opposition while the United States was sacrificing lives on both sides of a questionable war in Viet Nam.
“They are not ‘pro-life’; they are simply anti-abortion.”
However, Dr. Nathanson goes on to say about those who prefer to be called “pro-choice” instead of “pro-abortion”:
“This is the Madison Avenue euphemism of the other side. Who could possibly be opposed to something so benign as ‘choice’? The answer is: Almost anyone—depending.
"The diehard opposition to civil rights and public accommodations for black Americans in the ‘50s and ’60s was ‘pro-choice’ with a vengeance. Some whites wanted the ‘right’ to...rent hotel rooms to whomever they wished.
“Most of us now oppose the concept of choice in such ugly claims. The true question is, ‘What choice is being offered, and should society sanction that choice?’ In any honest discussion we must focus upon what is being chosen, without hiding behind the slogan.”
Democrats For Life of America, 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, South Building, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20004 (202) 220 - 3066
David Calvnni| 10.22.10 @ 7:04AM
Vasu,
Your comment suffers from the same problem as Alan Brooks' above: It isn't on the topic of Baker's essay.
The difference between Deism and orthodox Christianity, the existence of non-Abrahamic religions, the pro-life movement, and about everything else you discuss have nothing to do with Baker's topic.
Patriot| 10.24.10 @ 8:26PM
You're deluding yourself if you consider yourself a pro-life democrat--there is no such thing.
The democrat party is the party of death.