Dump the Religious Right

A letter from one Jay Palmer to the editor of TIA Daily raises an interesting point.

The action of the conservatives in passing the legislation in Congress is a wake-up call that shows how dangerous the religious right is. And it has gotten me to consider: just what is the motivation behind the conservatives' call for "states' rights" over the past years?

This reminds me of a related point I've made here before a couple of times on the subjects of legalization of marijuana and banning abortion. In the former post, I said the following.

The phrase "States Rights" comes to mind. And a big Libertarian fave also comes to mind: legalization of marijuana, which would certainly be easier in some states if this matter were left to them to decide. But what might the religious right get out of it? A chance to ban abortion, as I blogged about long ago. "But doesn't that mean some states would become able to tell a woman what to do with her own body?" you might ask. "And doesn't this contradict the very idea of individual rights, and thus of freedom?" Yousefzadeh will cut you off at this point, yelling, "Extremist."

And this is precisely the point. The religious right don't give a damn about states' rights (or individual rights for that matter). Interestingly, the fact that they so quickly jettisoned their enthusiasm for the concept in the Schiavo case reveals why they were so enthusiastic about it in the first place!

Note that in the link on "banning abortion" above, that David Limbaugh is using a states' rights argument as a way to permit some states to ban abortion. To that, I said:

Most revealingly, the above states' rights argument comes from an advocate of a federal amendment defining marriage! Why not also an amendment banning abortion? I think the answer to this question might explain the inconsistent approach: what's the easiest way to have Christian values codified into law? I suspect that a slim majority of Americans would not favor a constitutional ban on abortion while a marriage amendment would enjoy popular support.

So the inconsistent stand is a tactical approach to getting religion codified into law, which is what the religious right wanted to achieve at the federal level in the Schiavo case. But is there even more to it than that. Yes. As I pointed out in my hypothetical question to "Simplicissimus" Yousefzadeh above, "[D]oesn't [telling a woman what to do with her own body] contradict the very idea of individual rights, and thus of freedom?" In other words, the concept of states' rights has been subverted to imply that states can somehow pass laws that fail to respect individual rights. This is preposterous. Here is what the text of the tenth amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And what sorts of things might be prohibited to the states? The Preamble might give us a hint.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Certainly, a state establishing laws that endanger the general welfare (which would be more properly rendered as "individual rights" than the modern meaning of "government handouts") is beyond its rights. Let's momentarily consider both sides of the abortion coin. If a fetus is a human being, abortion is murder. If it is not, a ban on abortion is essentially slavery. Since murder and slavery both violate individual rights abortion is a federal issue either way.

If, as David Limbaugh wants, individual states can make their own decisions on this one way or the other, some states will almost certainly end up infringing upon individual rights. Either some states would be permitting murder or some slavery. (Didn't we go to war with ourselves over that already?) And so we see that the religious right is wrong no matter how you cut it. Is abortion murder? Then outlaw it everywhere, if you mean what you say. Is banning it slavery? Then the religionists are simply wrong to attempt to ban abortion anywhere. (And this is where I stand, holding that a fetus is only potentially a human being.) The religious right does not care about individual rights as much as they do their theocratic agenda, which involves the imposition of a form of slavery: that of a woman to a potential human.

The only valid application of the notion of states' rights is to permit states to handle relatively unimportant matters as they see fit. This allows, for example, a thinly-populated state like Nebraska to have a unicameral legislature, or a state originally settled by the French, like Louisiana, to base its legal system on Napoleonic Code rather than English Common Law. In neither case are individual rights being violated.

I say it's time for an end to the Republican coalition between small government conservatives and the religious right. Sure. They might win an election with their brothers-in-spirit, the Democrats. We may well have to suffer through a Jimmy Carter. But one taste of that will straighten out a lot of people. And if they lose, our country will become much better much faster. If they dump the religious conservatives, it will not be a question of if, but of when our country improves. And so, the question of getting the religious right out of government is also not a matter of if, but of when.

-- CAV