My take on all the emerging contradictions in the Sunday Times.
THE CONSERVATIVE CRACK-UP II: It’s been a fascinating few days, watching today’s Republicans grapple with their own internal contradictions. It’s been clear now for a while that the religious right controls the base of the Republican party, and that fiscal left-liberals control its spending policy. That’s how you develop a platform that supports massive increases in debt and amending the Constitution for religious right social policy objectives. But the Schiavo case is breaking new ground. For the religious right, states’ rights are only valid if they do not contradict religious teaching. So a state court’s ruling on, say, marriage rights or the right to die, or medical marijuana, must be over-ruled – either by the intervention of the federal Congress or by removing the authority of judges to rule in such cases, or by a Constitutional amendment. Fred Barnes, a born-again Christian conservative makes the point succinctly here:
True, there is an arguable federalism issue: whether taking the issue out of a state’s jurisdiction is constitutional. But it pales in comparison with the moral issue.
You can’t have a clearer statement of the fact that religious right morality trumps constitutional due process. Of course it does. The religious right recognizes one ultimate authority: their view of God. The constitution is only valid in so far as it reflects His holy law. Robert George, the recent recipient of $250,000 from the Bradley Foundation, makes the point more subtly here:
I am not impressed by appeals to “federalism” to protect the decisions of state court judges who usurp the authority of democratically constituted state legislative bodies by interpreting statutes beyond recognition or by invalidating state laws or the actions of state officials in the absence of any remotely plausible argument rooted in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the state or federal constitution. The fact is that, under color of law, Michael Schiavo is seeking to deprive Terri of sustenance because of her disability. Under federal civil-rights statutes, this raises a substantial issue. It cannot be waved away by invoking states’ rights.
The first point seems to me to be blather. The Florida courts have clearly wrestled with this issue many, many times. I haven’t seen an argument that they are behaving outrageously beyond the bounds of their legitimate authority in a very complex case. And George’s appeal to “civil rights” depends, of course, on what you mean by “civil rights.” Where gays are concerned, George’s belief is that gays have no fundamental civil rights with respect to marriage or even private consensual sex. George even believes that the government has a legitimate interest in passing laws that affect masturbation. But when he can purloin the rhetoric of “civil rights” to advance his own big government moralism, he will. The case also highlights – in another wonderful irony – how religious right morality even trumps civil marriage. It is simply amazing to hear the advocates of the inviolability of the heterosexual civil marital bond deny Terri Schiavo’s legal husband the right to decide his wife’s fate, when she cannot decide it for herself. Again, the demands of the religious right pre-empt constitutionalism, federalism, and even the integrity of the family. When conservatism means breaking up the civil bond between a man and his wife, you know it has ceased to be conservative. But we have known that for a long time now. Conservatism is a philosophy without a party in America any more. It has been hijacked by zealots and statists.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: “We like to think faith is the Viagra of the people,” – British Baptist minister, Steve Chalk.
The Dish 