No one would ever mistake John Danforth for a bleeding heart liberal.
Like many old time conservative Republicans, he decries what the party
under Bush is turning into.
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In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
St. Louis BY a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have
transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians.
The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a
constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell
research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes,
and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a
feeding tube.
Standing alone, each of these initiatives has its advocates, within the
Republican Party and beyond. But the distinct elements do not stand
alone. Rather they are parts of a larger package, an agenda of positions
common to conservative Christians and the dominant wing of the
Republican Party.
Christian activists, eager to take credit for recent electoral
successes, would not be likely to concede that Republican adoption of
their political agenda is merely the natural convergence of conservative
religious and political values. Correctly, they would see a causal
relationship between the activism of the churches and the responsiveness
of Republican politicians. In turn, pragmatic Republicans would agree
that motivating Christian conservatives has contributed to their
successes.
High-profile Republican efforts to prolong the life of Ms. Schiavo,
including departures from Republican principles like approving
Congressional involvement in private decisions and empowering a federal
court to overrule a state court, can rightfully be interpreted as
yielding to the pressure of religious power blocs.
In my state, Missouri, Republicans in the General Assembly have advanced
legislation to criminalize even stem cell research in which the cells
are artificially produced in petri dishes and will never be transplanted
into the human uterus. They argue that such cells are human life that
must be protected, by threat of criminal prosecution, from promising
research on diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and juvenile diabetes.
It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are
equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases. I am
and have always been pro-life. But the only explanation for legislators
comparing cells in a petri dish to babies in the womb is the extension
of religious doctrine into statutory law.
I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses
confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to
political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to
conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active
in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death
penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence
political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.
The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active.
It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda
that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program,
it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the
absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist
identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to
advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and
those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse
country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in
practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause
of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another.
Take stem cell research. Criminalizing the work of scientists doing such
research would give strong support to one religious doctrine, and it
would punish people who believe it is their religious duty to use
science to heal the sick.
During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed
with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed
in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and
regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy
might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not
legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign
policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles
shared by virtually all Republicans.
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to
become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator,
I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not
spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the
institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best
hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a
religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for
Republicans to rediscover our roots.
John C. Danforth, a former United States senator from Missouri, resigned
in January as United States ambassador to the United Nations. He is an
Episcopal minister.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html?incamp=article_
popular_5
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John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
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