Penni, I think most politicians are really pretty unethical, probably because by definition they need to get votes to get elected and stay in office. I must have written a thousand posts already about my negative opinions of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and only one or two about Dan Quayle, so I certainly don't think I am very one sided. I agree with you completely about his wife, Marilyn, and always wondered why she was not as subject to abuse as Hillary is for wearing the pants in the family, though.
I do think you might have missed what I was saying, however. I was specifically saying that while the religious right may believe that forcing Republican politicians to advocate their platform is positive, they are only words. The actions of those politicians will not change simply because they are spouting conservative Christian phrases during the campaign. On the other hand, the liberal Democrats advocate social tolerance publicly. So it would be more difficult for them to be as hyprocritical--they seem to be living less rigidly moral lives already. It is hard to imagine Bill Clinton or Al Gore advocating abortion rights publicly and then locking their daughters up, for example. But I am not saying they are not hypocritical in other ways.
As far as parental rights go, I think parents have plenty of rights already. I think abusive and neglectful parents should have fewer, not more. I think you and I are both caring about children in the views we take, but look at it in different ways. While I would hope and expect to be consulted if my daughter got pregnant, I have spent fourteen years now building trust with her, loving her, and not punishing her capriciously. So she knows that I am someone she can come to if she is in trouble. Parents who do not accept responsibility for the kinds of relationships they create with their children are a group whose interests I have no interest in protecting. A teenaged girl who is pregnant is already in the middle of a trauma, and to subject her to further hurt from a dysfunctional family is not something I would want to legislate. The fact that she would not instinctively go to her parents is significant, and in my opinion needs to be respected.
What special interest groups do you think I support, that are way out of line, incidentally? How do they infringe on your rights? |
