Morality in American Politics: Part Deux

I was researching materials for my paper when I found this interesting opinion piece in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's archive. The opinion piece was written before the presidential election but the issue that it raised is all the more relevant today.

Bush's faith message: More moral than thou
October 16, 2004
by Gregory Stanford

President George W. Bush wears his religion like a badge. He avowed anew last week in the debate that God is a big part of his life.

He champions the cause of the religious right, which argues that morality should figure into the public arena and which criticizes the so-called secular humanists for shoo-shooing it away.

In truth, all this talk of religion and morality does make me a bit uncomfortable, but not for reasons the religious right may assume. I believe religion is just too sacred and too personal a notion to be casually tossed around.

Remember when football players fell into the habit of showboating after big plays — a practice not so evident any more, due to a crackdown. Anyhow, the practice made me cringe. I was brought up not to swagger on the playing field.

Well, the frequent invocation of God or Jesus or faith or religion brings to mind such showboating.

This column itself is making me a trifle uncomfortable in that it dwells on personal religion and morality. One risk of such a discussion is that you set yourself up as morally superior.

The truth is I don’t walk in the shoes of the Christian right, so I really can’t judge. Hence, I would prefer to not even broach the topic. But the religious right has forced the issue by so aggressively pushing its version of morality into the public sphere and attacking those with a different vision.

Yes, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential hopeful, acknowledges faith plays a role in his life, too. But he doesn’t wear his religion on his sleeve.

The religious right asserts a monopoly on morality. What it favors is moral; what it opposes is immoral. But some of us of more liberal mindsets can’t help but notice inconsistencies. The most classic example is a tag Bush applies to himself: pro-life. He will protect the life of fetuses and even of embryos.

Yet, he supports capital punishment, and he unnecessarily rushed to war in Iraq, where thousands of humans have died along with, doubtless (given mathematical probability), fetuses and embryos still in wombs. Should he amend his tag to pro-some-life?

And if he is truly so pro-life, why does the president seem so callous to the fate of poor children, whose quality of life is bleak and whose ranks have grown under his watch? Why doesn’t he become more aggressive in improving their lot?

The president’s economic policies — which favor the rich at the expense of the working class and which the religious right supports — also give off the odor of immorality.

Ditto, the deceptive Swift boat ads. Yes, he kept his distance, but only to keep the smear from rubbing off on him, too. Wouldn’t a more moral president have intervened to keep the ads from running?

The right’s comeback is that the left has appealed to God and morality, too. That’s true.

After all, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the Almighty in leading the civil rights movement. And the Berrigan brothers — Catholic priests Dan Berrigan, a Jesuit and poet, and Phil Berrigan, a Josephite — invoked the pacifist Christ to explain their opposition to the Vietnam War.

But these leftists seem more morally consistent and their cause more just.

Yes, I know, my myopia just may be showing. But somehow the equality of human beings seems a more noble cause than does the condemnation of homosexuality and being anti-Vietnam War seems more Christ-like than being pro-Iraq War.

King exhorted his followers to act non-violently and to love their enemies — in the spirit of the Gospels.

The Berrigan brothers also found the exhortation to non-violence in the Gospels. And the brothers, who opposed abortion, were consistent in their pro-life beliefs.

In contrast, intolerance and inconsistency seem to characterize the right. And to judge from its ready support of the Iraq war, the right is too quick to embrace violence as a solution to the world’s ills.

“Prayer and religion sustain me,” the president said last week. “I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency.”

But I fear he believes God is actually on his side in Iraq — the mirror of the belief held by the jihadists who support suicide bombs.

I fear he believes we are indeed picking up where the old Crusades left off — converting the heathens to the American way of doing things.

I fear faith and patriotism may be getting all dangerously ajumble.