Beware the Ides (and All the Rest Of) March

Prominent Evangelical Pastor: Demand Decency in a Presidential Candidate

Max Lucado is a best selling author and the pastor of a highly successful megachurch in San Antonio. He usually avoids politics, beyond calling on his congregation to pray for the nation’s leaders and urging them to vote. But the Donald Trump candidacy has provoked him to issue the following statement:

DECENCY FOR PRESIDENT - February 24, 2016

As the father of three daughters, I reserved the right to interview their dates. Seemed only fair to me. After all, my wife and I’d spent 16 or 17 years feeding them, dressing them, funding braces, and driving them to volleyball tournaments and piano recitals. A five-minute face-to-face with the guy was a fair expectation. I was entrusting the love of my life to him. For the next few hours, she would be dependent upon his ability to drive a car, avoid the bad crowds, and stay sober. I wanted to know if he could do it. I wanted to know if he was decent.

This was my word: “decent.” Did he behave in a decent manner? Would he treat my daughter with kindness and respect? Could he be trusted to bring her home on time? In his language, actions, and decisions, would he be a decent guy?

Decency mattered to me as a dad.

Decency matters to you. We take note of the person who pays their debts. We appreciate the physician who takes time to listen. When the husband honors his wedding vows, when the teacher makes time for the struggling student, when the employee refuses to gossip about her co-worker, when the losing team congratulates the winning team, we can characterize their behavior with the word decent.

We appreciate decency. We applaud decency. We teach decency. We seek to develop decency. Decency matters, right?

Then why isn’t decency doing better in the presidential race?

The leading candidate to be the next leader of the free world would not pass my decency interview. I’d send him away. I’d tell my daughter to stay home. I wouldn’t entrust her to his care.

I don’t know Mr. Trump. But I’ve been chagrined at his antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made mockery of a reporter’s menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as “mommy,” and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people “stupid,” “loser,” and “dummy.” These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented.

Such insensitivities wouldn’t even be acceptable even for a middle school student body election. But for the Oval Office? And to do so while brandishing a Bible and boasting of his Christian faith? I’m bewildered, both by his behavior and the public’s support of it.

The stock explanation for his success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, “We are voting with our middle finger.” Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel.

We can only hope, and pray, for a return to decency. Perhaps Mr. Trump will better manage his antics. (Worthy of a prayer, for sure.) Or, perhaps the American public will remember the key role of the president is to be the face of America. When he/she speaks, he/she speaks for us. Whether we agree or disagree with the policies of the president, do we not hope that they behave in a way that is consistent with the status of the office?

As far as I remember, I never turned away one of my daughter’s dates. They weren’t perfect, but they were decent fellows. That was all I could ask.

It seems that we should ask the same.

More on Lucado’s decision to “dis-endorse” Trump can be found in an interview with Christianity Today.

Learning from His Elders

Scott Walker Interview

A rather friendly interview, and not some liberal reporter trying to trip him up. That kind will come later. But since Walker has a good ability to stay on message, this is a good example of what he’ll be saying regularly during the campaign season ahead.

"I'd be a candidate who's done both. I've fought the good fights and won those fights consistently for hardworking taxpayers. We've consistently taken on the big challenges...right to work, lowered taxes by $2 billion, property taxes are lower today than when we first started, we passed voter ID...regulatory reform, lawsuit reform, education reform, our school are better today than they were four years ago."

Posted by Scott Walker on Saturday, June 6, 2015

Religion, Polling and the Presidential Primaries

From Christianity Today:

This was supposed to be the year the Democrats got religion. Too bad somebody forgot to tell the pollsters. One of the big untold stories of the Iowa caucus is that only Republicans were asked about their religious affiliation.

The problem isn’t just that we don’t know how many Iowan evangelicals voted for the various Democrats (it would be interesting to see, for example, if Edwards scored as well among evangelicals as he did among conservatives). The problem is that we don’t know whether Democrats as a whole have succeeded in attracting more evangelical voters. (Usually somewhere between one quarter and one third of evangelicals vote Democratic.) I’m told we’ll see some Iowa caucus poll results soon (not from Edison Media Research, the company that does most of these entrance and exit polls) that may shine some light on the religion questions.

The good news is that Edison Media Research has repented, and today’s New Hampshire exit polls (via CNN [Rep Dem] and MSNBC [Rep Dem] )had many religion questions for both Republicans and Democrats.

Clinton, it seems, took the moderately religious (those who attend church monthly or a few times a year), while Obama took the devout (weekly attenders) and the nonreligious (those who never attend church). Roman Catholics (the largest religious group among New Hampshire Democrats, with 36% of voters in that primary), overwhelmingly chose Clinton (43%) over Obama (28%). Those who said they had no religion supported Obama (47%) over Clinton (28%), and that formed a remarkable 22 percent of Democratic voters.

Unfortunately, voters in the Democratic primary were not asked if they consider themselves evangelical or born again.

Republicans were, and 22 percent said they were evangelical or born again. One third voted for Huckabee, 30 percent voted for McCain, and 24 percent supported Romney. But McCain had a very strong showing among among those who said they were not evangelical: 38 percent. (Romney had 32 percent, Huckabee 7 percent).

That pollsters fail to ask Democrats questions about religion that they ask Republicans reflects an important reality of American politics -- the Democratic Party is the party of secular people.

But if Democrats did make progress among those calling themselves evangelical or born again, it would be good to know. Church attendance is well worth asking, but there are Unitarians who go to church quite regularly.

Does Giuliani’s “Pro Choice” Position Make Any Sense?

Liberal Catholic politicians, not wanting to admit that they simply reject inconvenient or culturally out-of-fashion positions of the Church, often claim to be “pro-choice” on abortion.

But does this really make any sense? Via Shack Sounds Off, a recent column in the Washington Post takes issue with that.

There is, however, a question that comes before politics: Does Giuliani’s position on abortion actually make sense?

In early debates and statements, he has set out his views on this topic with all the order and symmetry of a freeway pileup. His argument comes down to this: “I hate abortion,” which is “morally wrong.” But “people ultimately have to make that choice. If a woman chooses that, that’s her choice, not mine. That’s her morality, not mine.”

But the question naturally arises: Why does Giuliani “hate” abortion? No one feels moral outrage about an appendectomy. Clearly he is implying his support for the Catholic belief that an innocent life is being taken. And here the problems begin.

How can the violation of a fundamental human right be viewed as a private matter? Not everything that is viewed as immoral should be illegal; there are no compelling public reasons to restrict adultery, for example, or to outlaw sodomy. But when morality demands respect for the rights of a human being, those protections become a matter of social justice, not just personal or religious preference.

American history has tested these arguments. In debating the Missouri Compromise, Sen. Stephen Douglas said of slavery: “I am now speaking of rights under the Constitution and not of moral or religious rights. I do not discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let them settle that matter for themselves.” Abraham Lincoln differed: If faith and conscience tell us that enslaved Americans are men and brothers, then slavery must eventually be ended. Passing the 13th Amendment was not “imposing” our moral views on slaveholders; it was upholding the meaning of law and justice.

Giuliani’s doctrine of individual sovereignty goes much further than did Douglas, logically preventing even states from restricting abortion. And this raises a question about Giuliani’s view of the law itself: Can it be a right to violate the basic rights of others? . . .

Of course, one can be a thoroughgoing libertarian and believe that the “basic rights of others” is a controversial matter, not to be decided by government.

The problem is: even the “right to life” of people who have already been born is often a controversial matter. Historically, plenty of people have rejected the “right to life” of certain kinds of people -- Hitler with the Jews, Stalin with the kulaks, The Ku Klux Klan with any “uppity” black person.

Government should have taken the “controversial” position that all of these group have a right to life.

The difference between a libertarian and an anarchist is that a libertarian wants to define “basic rights” narrowly, and have government enforce as few as possible. An anarchist wants the government to enforce none -- indeed, doesn’t even want a government.

So the question is: is there any principled libertarian position that says that the right to life isn’t a basic right that government should enforce? It’s hard to see what that would be, unless one wants to claim -- against all evidence and common sense -- that a fetus isn’t a human being. But some people do claim that.

A number of pro-choice positions can be held consistently. It is possible to believe that human worth develops gradually and that the early fetus is merely a clump of cells. It is possible to accept professor Peter Singer’s teaching that human worth arrives only with self-conscious rationality, opening up disturbing new possibilities of infanticide.

But Giuliani has chosen an option that is not an option -- a belief that unborn life deserves our sympathy but does not deserve rights or justice. This view is likely to dog him in the primary process, not only because it is pro-choice but because it is incoherent.

The entire “pro-choice” view is incoherent in a larger sense.

The “pro-choice” crowd is chronically anti-choice when it comes to any behavior of which they disapprove. Like smoking. Or owning a gun. Or owning an SUV.

And they not only reject the idea that whites should be free to choose to discriminate against blacks, they want government for force whites to discriminate in favor of blacks.

Indeed, they would force anti-abortion taxpayers to pay for abortions.

When one is “pro-choice” only when one approves of the choice in question, one is not pro-choice at all.

Cutthroat Competition

It’s Only Going to Get Better

The Sooner the Better