Re: Grownup Republican Watch

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Recently on Child of Rothbard—oops, I mean Child of Reagan (Marc and Jeff’s posts threw me off)—Marc Gersen found some merit in John Danforth’s New York Times essay slighting moral conservatives who identify with a certain deity. Since Danforth is a former public official, we must allow him some lack of mental depth. Even so granted, he disappoints.

Danforth begins by saying that because many Republicans object to the murder by starvation of Terri Schiavo, seek to ban gay marriage, and oppose embryonic stem cell research, they “have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians.” That’s a wide enough knot of silliness to disentangle already. For one, if Danforth is a conservative and a Christian (as he affirms), and he holds no brief for these initiatives, how are the Republicans acting on the behalf of conservative Christians? If they reversed themselves on these issues, would they not be doing the bidding of the conservative Christian John Danforth?

Moreover, why merely conservative Christians? Indeed, why merely Christians? These Republicans are also doing the bidding (on one or several of these issues) of liberal Christian Jesse Jackson, Jewish conservative David Klinghoffer, and atheist liberal Nat Hentoff.

And Danforth keeps piling it on. He assures readers of his pro-life credentials but insists that while opposition to legal abortion doesn’t constitute “the extension of religious doctrine into statutory law,” opposition to embryonic stem cell research does. His attempt to elucidate the matter is weak. “It is not evident to many of us,” he writes, “that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases.” It is also not evident to many of us that a fetus in the womb is equivalent to an identifiable parent ill-prepared to care for it. Does that render Senator Danforth’s position wrong? By his standards, it does.

“The problem is not,” Danforth tells us, “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.” (That must be why one of Bush’s most morally conservative judicial nominees, William Pryor, denounced Roy Moore for his actions as Alabama Supreme Court Justice.) The former senator is silent on the problem with another party going so far in adopting a secular agenda that it becomes the political extension of a secularist movement.

The anti-religious bigotry of such folks as Nadine Strossen and Barry Lynn has caused enough dejection on my part and on others’. Danforth’s indulging it should cause us even more.

And by the way, Marc, since you think Danforth a man “interested in good policy”, did he act according to that interest when he downplayed Janet Reno’s slaughter of women and children at Waco? His response to the Clinton administrations actions, I should think, wouldn’t warm your libertarian heart to him. It certainly didn’t warm my conservative one.