Religious Right Rebuffed

When I wrote yesterday about the reaction of the American voter to efforts by the Republican Party to legislate religion, I wasn't whistling Dixie.

From the country's heartland, voters sent messages that altered America's culture wars and dismayed the religious right -- defending abortion rights in South Dakota, endorsing stem cell research in Missouri, and, in a national first, rejecting a same-sex marriage ban in Arizona.

Conservative leaders were jolted by the setbacks and looked for an explanation Wednesday. Gay-rights and abortion-rights activists celebrated.

The verdict on abortion rights was particularly clear. Oregon and California voters defeated measures that would have required parents to be notified before a girl under 18 could get an abortion, and South Dakotans -- by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent -- rejected a new state law that would have banned all abortions except to save a pregnant woman's life.

I still hate the Dhimmocratic Party, whose acquisition of power came only as a result of its opponent's choice to use the Islamofascists as cover for its own jihad against America. But I am not too worried. This election shows that America retains a healthy desire to live free. If the Dhimmocrats dare forget that, they, too, will be tossed out onto their kiesters.

Of course, the very reporting in the article shows that -- even if for no other reason than the fact that the traditional political classifications of "liberal and "conservative" are haphazard and inconsistent -- liberals (such as journalists) are already misinterpreting the results.

The article goes on to speak of an affirmative action ban that passed in Michigan as if it somehow was not part of an overall trend of rejecting "conservatism". In fact, respect for individual rights is the uniting principle behind separation of church and state and color-blindness, meaning that it is these two positions that are consistent and that both liberalism (a package-deal of personal freedom with economic bondage) and conservatism (one of religious control of one's personal life with economic freedom) that are inconsistent.

Also, measures on immigration and same-sex marriage (about which I have already spoken) threaten to muddy the picture because neither of these issues are being debated in essential terms.

The big story remains that the religious right had its head handed to it on a platter yesterday. This is very good news.

-- CAV

Updates

11-10-06: Fixed broken link.