<<hoping that we don't get a President that caters to extremists from either side. And, I don't want to see abortion as the main focus of this country for years to come.>>
I agree.
I think the far left can be ignored. This country has seemingly stopped flirting with that end of the spectrum.
It is the Christian Right (or for that matter any religious extremists) that scares the hell out of me. I grew up in South Africa and aparthiet was an invention of the right wing church (Dutch Reformed) out there. I have no need for a rerun of that show or anything like it. I remember one wedding that started out ... in Afrikaans ... "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to marry Johann and Fia in holy matrimony, but before we proceed, let us pray that in Tuesdays election all of their friends present will have the god given good sense to vote for ....." Phew!
What I can not figure our is why Republicans have abandoned the big middle part of the body politic to cater to the religious right. If the Republican party threw them out:
a. they (the RR) would have no where to go, and
b. the Party would gain 2+ voters for every one lost.
It would be simple to do, too. Read the book "The Godless Constitution" by two history professors, one I believe from Colgate or Cornell. It details why it took twenty years between the Revolution and the adoption of the Constitution. It took that long for the parties to agree to get religion out of the Constitution. Remember, in colonial Mass. you had to be a puritan to hold office. Maryland was run by Catholics. Virginia was Anglican, Connecticut was Congregationalist ... in short, they realized that to run a country over time, all faiths, and those of no faith, would all have to be included and, therefore, they agreed to exclude all religions. Thanks to that wisdom, we have not had any problems like Ireland, Israel, Afganistan, and South Africa.
Adopting this view would put the religious right out of the arena and back where all the other religions are on our political landscape. |
