Conservative used to mean

There was a time when the Republican party bragged about getting government off your back. Regulations and regulation were the purview of the Democratic party which was assailed as the party of big government. Ronald Reagan once said, “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.“ But those words could not be further from the Republican Party of today which seeks not to free the people but to shackle them with unnecessary regulation. The Republican party has become the party of theocrats who want to impose their particular morality on the rest of us.

They want to turn back the clock on women’s rights and in particular on the ability of women to choose whether to have an abortion or not. These malevolent theocrats want to impose their narrow interpretation of Christianity on a country that is increasingly diverse. The founding fathers made their first amendment to the United States Constitution “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

We the people are one union comprised on many diverse elements. E pluribus unum. In that plurality we have those who oppose abortion on religious grounds and those who don’t. The freedom of choice should not infringed. The religious views of certain Christians should not become the law of the land. Ironically it was many of these same people who feared the imposition of sharia law. The idea that life begins at conception is a narrow view. Some religious people believe that while others do not.

We have a long history of respecting religious liberty. This is no time to change. The views of certain evangelical Protestants and Catholics should not be imposed on the rest of us.

Weeping Jesus

Here’s a well written piece that echoes some of what I’ve been thinking lately. Cultural conservative is really polite speak for bigot and hate monger.

an irrational hatred of gays, a suppression of women’s rights, the assertion that only they are going to heaven and that all those that don’t embrace their particular permutation of Christianity will burn (among other things) in Hell!

Read the whole article on Huffington Post here.