Are You a Groupie, or an Adult?
The last week has demonstrated how easy it is for someone to gain notoriety with a credulous public. And I was just starting to warm up to Trump. Dang.
In Kentucky, an elected official decides unilaterally to stop issuing licenses to gay couples wishing to marry. Sounds awfully Obama-esque. And the woman uses Christianity as her excuse for doing so. Not only does half of all cyberspace dive in and say she’s right (the same people should and do go batshit when Valerie Jarrett orders her lap dog, Barry, to ignore the law) but they automatically believe everything Kim Davis says because she invokes religion for having done it.
Last time I checked, the applicable admonition here was “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”, or was that a line from War and Peace?
If this woman was a woman of principle, she should have resigned her post rather than take a paycheck for not being able to do her job. She knows that. She also knows that her post is one that represents all the people in her jurisdiction – even the gay ones. She knows all this if she is not irretrievably stupid.
I am guessing she is not stupid. So that leaves her groping for her 15 minutes of fame and/or setting up her reelection among voters she considers religious rubes. And why not? She is a Democrat. But all that is just a guess. She may indeed be stupid.
I am not saying this because she is opposed to gay marriage. I am criticizing her approach to her job and her dilemma. Instead of employing reason and ethics, she instead uses petulant emotionalism and extreme shortsightedness.
But to a greater extent, I criticize my fellow conservatives. Will we never evaluate and analyze an emerging figure before rushing out to lionize that figure on Twitter and Facebook? We immediately become groupies of those who we think are the least like us. We see it as validation. It is in these moments, those who observe us, considering whether to join us, must wonder how easily distracted we are from the greater causes at hand. And further how blind we must be to the possible consequences.
If today, it is right that a clerk not issue something as banal as a marriage license, as an act of faith, why not tomorrow deny a Jew a building permit. After all, in the heavily edited European version of the bible, the Jews did say that the blood of the Christ was forever upon their heads and the heads of their children. Cannot a devout Baptist claim the mantel of god and be right in making a Jew’s life difficult? How could we dare question an act of faith? It’s of no importance who signs the official’s paycheck if he is only acting to please his god.
Cannot a devout Christian county supervisor ban my books in public libraries? I live in a conservative county and there is little light between me and my neighbors on most issues. But I am a blasted Atheist. I can only poison the minds of the god-fearing. Wouldn’t it only be right for the county official to declare his office a minor Christian principality and ban my work? It is against the law to do so, but isn’t he just expressing himself religiously?
Think! No more Ready, Fire, Aim!
Finally, this. Two politicians, in my opinion have disqualified themselves from race for the White House. Cruz and Huckabee, pandering to the FB crowd, pretending not to know and intellectually agree with the paragraphs above, made a spectacle of themselves today. You can know with total confidence two things about these men. They will not be the type who will set right the skewed responsibilities inside the Beltway. They will not reduce the size of the presidency. If they do anything in that regard it will be to expand it. Also, they are far too happy to play one religious sect against another, or the religious against the secular. This, at a time when we need steely-eyed reason and courage to carry the day and the next 4 – 8 years.
They join Santorum as people who would engage in theocratic nonsense if the political winds encouraged it.
Today we protest a correct sequence of events. An elected official refuses to do her assigned task. A judge orders her to do so. She refuses again. For refusing, she is found in contempt of the order. How many of you wailed, as loudly as I did, at Eric Holder’s disrespect toward his contempt charge? What of the endless string of imperial fiats from the regime? (Hey, they just couldn’t wait for Congress!) If what Davis did is okay, then all Obama’s pronouncements are okay. Or they are both not.
Matt Jordan is a travel writer, political commentator and author of 16 20 24. Get your SIGNED copy here! A book on his travels in Mexico and Belize will be released in the Fall of 2015.
16 20 24: A Path to Consistent Conservative Victory
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