It's All About The Issues

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October 26, 2004
It's All About The Issuesby tgirsch
According to Jeff over at the Dawn Treader, this election isn't about the issues, it's about the worldview:
What is at stake? Winning the war on terror? Friends, Bush is not going to win the war on terror, although he cannot say that. Kerry is not going to win the war on terror either. To win a war against individuals (versus a nation), you will have to kill or imprison every terrorist on the planet. This will not happen in our lifetime.
The issue is not about health insurance. No one's health insurance proposal stands a chance of getting passed in a congress so evenly divided. Things will get so compromised that the candidate's original ideas won't even be recognizable.
The issue is not about the war in Iraq. Our troops are in Iraq, and both candidates know we need to get them out of Iraq somehow. In four years, my prediction is that our troop levels are going to be much, much lower than they are now: regardless of who is president.I like Jeff, but his take here is very misguided, and dangerously so, for a number of reasons. First, it takes the Green/Libertarian B.S. view that there are no significant differences between the two candidates on the substantive issues. As 2000 should have taught us, nothing could be further from the truth.
No one can, with a straight face, argue that Kerry would take a similar course in the war on terror as Bush would take -- to do so would take away one of the primary reasons conservatives keep telling us we shouldn't vote for Kerry. And despite the fact that neither candidate's health care package is likely to survive the legislature without substantial compromise, that does not make the two plans -- even post-compromise -- equivalent, or trivial, as Jeff seems to imply. Further, though I agree with Jeff that there will be substantially fewer troops in Iraq in four years regardless of who is president, this greatly oversimplifies the situation in Iraq, which will be handled very differently by Kerry than it would be by Bush. Among other things, our international reputation is at stake here, as well as the future of the Middle East. (For an outstanding piece on why continuing Bush's Middle-East policy would be a big mistake, see publius.)
Jeff continues:
Friends, you are not going to agree with every choice that either candidate makes while in office. I don't align with every decision "W" has made.
So how should you decide to vote?
Let me make this as simple as possible. The only issue that matters is worldview.
What is the worldview of each major candidate? Which worldview best corresponds with the way the world really is?
Now let us take Kerry at his word. He is a Roman Catholic. He is a theist. "W" is an evangelical. He is a theist too. Both believe in God. Both claim to be Christians. I know some of you are howling out there. Just stick with me on this one. Let's call the "God" question a draw.
Here is where the water divides.
When it comes to ethical and moral truth, which candidate is closer to relativistic thinking, and which is closer to absolutist thinking?
Don't forget, the truth question is a worldview question too.
Moral relativism asserts that nothing can be truly wrong (in every circumstance, in every culture); the answer to the "is it wrong?" question is always, "it depends." Moral relativism cringes at the word "evil", because in a world without true right and wrong, evil is too strong a term. For example, a terrorist to one person, is a freedom fighter to another: so says the relativist. This line of thinking diminishes terrorism.
In case you have not figured it out, even though both are allegedly Christians, Kerry is not very absolutist in his worldview. Bush is.I'll let the Kevins address the moral relativism allegation. For now, I'll just state that the allegation that Kerry's answer to "is X wrong" is always "it depends" is patently false.
Let's take a look at what Jeff is suggesting here: that someone whose worldview is absolute is automatically superior to one who leaves room for play in his worldview. (What happens when the absolutist has an absolutist worldview that's absolutely wrong? That's left to our imagination.) But there's a deeper, darker implication to Jeff's line of reasoning, particularly with respect to abortion: he faults Kerry not for his position on abortion (he is personally opposed, in accordance with his religious faith), but because Kerry is unwilling to make a tenet of his religious faith into official policy.
What Jeff is calling for here, whether he realizes it or not, is a Christian Theocracy. And without saying so directly, he tells us that we ought to vote for Bush because a vote for Bush moves us closer to that goal.
It gets even worse:
Because of the imperfections in the way our democracy works, the judicial branch wields too much power. The legislative branch is supposed to have the power to correct this but is unwilling to exercise this power and reign in the courts.
Up to four of your Supreme Court justices for the next several decades will be picked by a Christian president during the next administration. One who leans toward relativism, and one who leans toward absolutism. Again, both are ostensibly Christians, so the religious part of the equation is a draw. This puts the focus squarely on the philosophical difference in the grounding of their worldviews: relativism –vs- absolutism.Jeff basically states, without substantiation, that the judicial branch "wields too much power," and that the legislative branch is supposed to have the power to prevent this. The former is just another iteration of the conservative view that courts that make rulings they don't like (e.g., MA gay marriage ruling, for example) have somehow "overstepped their bounds," whereas courts that make bad rulings with which they agree (e.g., Bush v. Gore 2000) are well within their rights. And the latter claim about the legislature's ability to limit the power of the courts is discussed in detail in the comments here, so I won't rehash it here.
We can spend all day finding faults in either candidate. I know the last of you "undecideds" out there are struggling because you really do not like either man. I am sympathetic to that.
However, my point is this. Forget the issues, forget the personalities, and focus on difference in their worldviews.
Vote worldview.In a nutshell, Jeff says that we should vote for Bush because Bush will take us closer to a Christian theocracy (as he thinks it ought to be, and right or wrong he's got resolve!), and will appoint justices that will eschew the long-held doctrine of church/state separation and uphold that theocracy.
I shouldn't have to explain why this is dangerous. There's a reason people came here in the first place: to escape the sort of religious oppression that Bush and his ilk would codify. Remember that old saying about those who forget history being doomed to repeat it? It's imperative that you not forget that history.
All that said, there's one more important point to address: Bush's policies, as far as I can tell, are not terribly Christian. He talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. As with so many religious conservative politicians, he invokes God as often as possible, reducing the divine to a cheap political prop, and hammers at two issues -- abortion and homosexuality -- that are so crucial to Christianity that Jesus never bothered to address either one. And as long as he continues to beat those drums, he can do whatever else he wants, and Christian conservatives don't seem to care.
Hypocrisy? Jesus hated it, but it doesn't faze the administration. Deception? There may be a commandment against it, but this administration has turned it into an art form (as Spinanity.com puts it, "Perhaps the most troubling -- and most effective -- tactic has been President Bush's strategic use of language to imply controversial conclusions or outright untruths he wouldn't dare state publicly."). Concern for the poor? Only in election years, and only in ways that advance an overtly religious agenda. Respect for life? Only that of the unborn. Once they're here, it's perfectly acceptable to kill them and call them "collateral damage."
In recent memory, we've only had one president who's talked the talk and walked the walk, and it wasn't George W. Bush. It was Jimmy Carter. And look where it got him.
To sum up, the idea that our religion should not just influence but dictate whom we vote for, and that policy doesn't matter, is a dangerous, dangerous idea, for a myriad of reasons. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you should vote for Kerry no matter what. What I will say is that policy is about the only thing that matters. If you feel that George W. Bush's policies are truly what's best for America, both near-term and long-term, then by all means, vote for him. But if you're ignoring his ineffectual, counterproductive policies because his nebulous, intangible "worldview" is similar to yours, then America is clearly moving in the wrong direction.
(In all quotes from Jeff's site, the emphasis was in the original).TrackBack Other weblogs commenting on this post