Wednesday, January 19, 2011

About That Alabama Governor

I get that the new governor of Alabama is a Christian.  I get that he sees only Christians as his brothers and sisters.  That is his belief, and he has all of the right in the world to express it.  I don't get how a politician could be that tone deaf, unless he meant to implicitly indict everyone who is not a Christian of his variety.  And I think that for people to understand how unnecessary Bentley's comment really was, I say imagine if Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota became governor there, and said the same thing about his Muslim brothers and sisters.  What would that reaction have been?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well Said!!

Micheal Sisco said...

Such is the problem with the various strains of the god virus. Some clarity is needed. The notion that we can find universal morality and ethics in the various "scriptures" is a delusion that simply cannot afford to go unmedicated.
Love thy neighbor? In the scriptures, that applies only to members of your particular confession.
Thou shalt not murder? Again, this applies only to members of one's own confessional tribe.
Any notion of universal truths when applied to ethics and morality are due to secularism and have grown despite fierce opposition from the faithful.
This is why religion should not, ever, be mixed with public policy.
I know, Free, that you are probably tired of the god virus shtick, but the sad truth of the matter is that the fate of our civilization will most likely depend upon whether or not we can outgrow this dependence on the metaphysical in our political and public policy discourse.
And I am not very optimistic.