To a fault, the extreme conservatives and liberals think they can have everything even though the nation is more or less centrist. For a Creationist to insist that Earth is but 6,000 years old is in clear defiance of anthropology, geology and physics observations and is as bad as saying the world is flat — Thomas Friedman notwithstanding. Nonetheless, liberals should not denigrate but calmly resist any legislation that tries to incorporate such thinking into public school curricula. Moreover, the left should lobby local schools to offer comparative religions and philosophies in high school.
Liberals maintaining that Roe v. Wade is sacrosanct and the sole criterion for choosing nominees to the Supreme Court is self-defeating: they play into the hands of the right by agreeing that this single issue is the only one worthy of consideration and as bad as guns and God determining election results. Liberals should prepare for the worst that a woman’s right to choose is doomed, and if so, pressure for state legislation that a woman’s right to privacy is no less than a man’s and state abortion laws for or against, be stricken from the books.
The controversial national motto of “In God We Trust” should not be allowed to be treated lightly by conservatives attempting to cheapen it by commercially billing it across the land. At the same time liberals should not protest its appearance on currency and learn to live with it as historical existence. Nor should liberals permit the label that atheists are all left wingers, which is simply not the case. Liberals do not care that “under God” is an existential fact of the Pledge even though they would blandly prefer “under egalitarian principles.”
Conservatives’ trumpeting to be against the war in Iraq is to be against supporting our troops is an extremist view devoutly to be quashed; however, it is their right and should be countered with “to support the troops is to save their lives by bringing them home and that the 2,000 plus did not die in vain, but died nobly during the commitment of defending their country, regardless of the politics.” Moreover, “bringing home the troops” is not cut and run but rather a new strategy of cautious withdrawal.
If we continue to let prevail the fringe groups as though representing the majority, we shall lose our democracy. Further, this is also a lesson for moderate Iraqis to take charge of their own destiny.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: November 18, 2005.
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