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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (20228)	5/31/2007 6:22:31 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

There used to be an axiom in American politics: Don't mix religion and politics. Many of the ideas the religious right fights for now, where just accepted, or where pushed by people without such a strong and obvious religious connection. Now that they are pushed more by very religious people (and often people who go beyond "very religious" to "aggressively religious"), and less by more secular minded people, and mildly religious people, the ideas become to be seen as "mixing religion and politics", but the ideas are often not inherently religious. Or alternatively if you consider religiously inspired beliefs about what is just in a certain situations to be "religion", and pushing them in the political sphere to be "mixing religion and politics", then "mixing religion and politics" isn't all that bad, and may even be good. Religions shouldn't be "established". There should be no official, or otherwise tax financed religion. Also there should be free exercise of religion (within reason, if your religion requires human sacrifice, its reasonable to prohibit such exercise). Also laws shouldn't be directly religious, they shouldn't define or enforce religious ideas or observances, they shouldn't declare beliefs about God or any supernatural being or force to be true or false. OTOH people's religious beliefs informing their political opinions isn't against the letter or even the spirit of the constitution, it isn't against generally accepted American principles, and it isn't anything new in the US. But then there used to be an axiom: Politics stops at the water's edge. Where'd it go? There's also "war is politics by other means", but the two statements refer to different types of politics. Whether to go to war, or even whether to continue to wage war, is an inherently political issue. OTOH it doesn't have to be, and really should not be, an issue of partisan political advantage. (Which doesn't mean that supporting or opposing a war can not or should not give any partisan advantage, but ideally such decisions should not be primarily about partisan advantage.)