Little Red Blog

Yesterday I read and then responded to former Senator Danforth's criticism of the religious right within the Republican Party. Hugh Hewitt's blog entry pointed out the Danforth essay, and after reading so many other criticisms of the Republican take on stem cell research, same-sex marriage and the Terri Schiavo case, I was frustrated and vented in this space. Hugh’s Weekly Standard column notes with much more significant clarity that it is "wrong and demagogic to attempt to question the right of people of faith to participate in politics."

From my position, I am not a Republican by way of my faith or affiliation with a particular religious movement. I am a Republican because the party, to a larger degree than the alternative, supports and defends the values that I hold near and dear. It is easy to ignore the elitist take of those on the left who believe that people of faith are somehow not worthy of political participation. Their irrational fear that faith will determine the law, that men who aspire to serve and please God in their personal lives cannot hold reasoned and logical positions based on principles with merit of their own accord, and that our government will somehow better serve its purposes by freeing the nation of religious influence is just about too much to believe. Yet we must accept that for many, including some who espouse faith more openly than I in their personal lives, there is a sincere desire to remove any influence of either our moral foundations or our religious beliefs.

Our nations greatest leaders have always been men and women of faith. Like them, I would never bind another to a particular belief system. Instead, I would simply, tirelessly and persistently pursue the principles of our nation’s founding. The nannies that seek to remove the religious from the political active would be so much better served if they too would choose to those founding ideals over their inane attempts to shun and shudder those who find a light external to man’s law.