Saturday, March 10, 2007

Understanding the Dark Side

Most of you probably know that I don't really consider Republicans, as a whole, evil people (I date one, I worked with them extensively, I am suspected to be one, etc). However I did find this LA Times editorial to be extremely entertaining and interesting: McCain goes over to the Dark Side. Any summary from me couldn't do it justice, just read. I mean politics and Star Wars analogies, what more could this nerd ask for?

Now as much as I can respect people are actually politically active, one group of people I will never understand is the Christian Right (McCain used to cite a bumper sticker that read "The Christian Right Is Neither.") I mean, I know how they wield so much influence in their party- they're organized and they vote. Nonetheless, it's still amazing how they use their force (Star Wars pun intended) to get politicians like McCain and Romney to shift their views to align with the beliefs of the Christian Right. When Democrats shift views, it's call flipflopping. When Republicans do this, it's apparently "conversion" or "seeing the light."

Though I understand their power, I will not understand their priorities. In another interesting article, Evangelicals battle over agenda, environment, the article pointed out that the new and old leaders of the evangelical movement were fighting over issues. While a new wave of evangelicals want to fight global warming, AIDS/HIV in Africa, and citizenship for illegal immigrants, "[Old] leaders of the religious right warned that. . . 'great moral issues of our time' [abortion, gay marriage] were being displaced by a "divisive and dangerous" alignment with the left on global warming."

Really? Are we really calling the environment a "divisive and dangerous" issue? How backwards does this seem? There's a reason why gay marriage initiatives are called "wedge issues." Especially after learning all the legal ramifications of banning gay marriage in law school, I just don't understand. But I guess that's why I don't vote for the dark side.

On a final nerdy Star Wars note, did you know that the ewoks spoke in Tagalog, the language spoken in the Phillipines? Yes, I am cool.

3 comments:

Kristina said...

I was debating whether or not to keep the "anonymous" comment. I think I will, because it's so unintelligible it's funny.

Are people so bored nowadays that they post random mean things on other people's blogs?

Shons said...

Why would write something so mean? Maybe your camp name could be Ewok...hmmm. Yeah you like it

Unknown said...

I really think "anonymous" might have been just leaving a heavily sarcastic comment. I hope so, anyway. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, cause that totally sounds like something I'd leave in a friend's journal (though I'd do it with my name, so they'd know I was joking).

As regards McCain, I used to really respect him as a conservative who didn't obsessively toe the party line. I respect politicians on both sides of the spectrum who can keep from becoming their party's puppet. Lately, though, McCain has been disappointing me on a pretty regular basis. Strike one from the list of okay conservatives =/l