THOUSANDS OF FREE BLOGGER TEMPLATES »

Friday, November 16, 2012

Religious Right comes to grips with rejection?

In response to this article:
Religious right comes to grips with rejection - by Steve Benen

I'm not much of a Maddow fan.

She's better than, say, her idiot colleague Olbermann, but she's still far too obviously, unapologetically, unflinchingly biased for me to take her seriously as a reporter. The MSNBC crowd is just as guilty as the Fox crowd in my mind. So when I saw this article appear on her blog, I flinched a little.

The author of this article hedges his bets here, though in the end he's still a little more optimistic than I think is justified.

Ultimately, we all want to believe we are on the winning side of history, that we are part of something important or that will be remembered well. You don't see people preparing for their life as a zombie in the zombie apocalypse; the last few centuries have been riddled with warnings that we live in the "end times" because it's just not exciting or compelling to be living somewhere in "the middle".

Nonetheless, I am inclined to be optimistic with him. The last several years have seen a progressive rejection of religious influence in our government; by the courts, the congress, the presidency, and the electorate.

This is indeed a good thing: the hallmarks of religious thought are anathema to progress, whether they manifest as religion, superstition, or conspiracy theorism. If the religious right is truly preparing to give up the fight then we will be at the end of one dark age in American politics and, potentially, at the dawn of a renaissance. The Republican Party has many things to offer America, and without the baggage of fundamentalist Christianity it is possible that we could once again reap the benefits that conservatism has to offer.