Morals, Values and the Voting Booth
Almost immediately after the exit polling for the 2004 election showed moral values as the most prominent reason voters gave for their choice, the MSM started attempting to debunk their own polls. USA Today reported...
According to Election Day exit polls, white religious conservatives, who comprised 17% of the electorate in 1996 but fell to only 14% in 2000, surged to 23% of all voters — and 78% of them voted for Bush. Catholic voters supported Bush over the first Catholic nominee in 44 years by a margin of 52% to 47%, a net gain of 8 points for the president over 2000.
(Note that in spite of Black religious conservatives being a sizable enough voting block that the Left is using Al Sharpton to attempt to silence them, they are conspicuously omitted from the demographic description of "Values Voters", as if for some reason, even though they hold the same values, the MSM sees the color of their skin as a factor that neutralizes all other considerations)
The MSMs token "Conservative" George Will cried, "It is odd that some conservatives are eager to promote the semantic vanity of the phrase 'values voters.' And it is odder still that the media are cooperating with those conservatives." The Liberal and misnamed, "People for the American Way" took two years before finally being able to figure out how to rig a survey enough to "debunk" the exit polling. As late as 2006 Newsweek's Jonathan Alter was still whining, "...the term is loaded and unfair, and was popularized by lazy-minded journalists. It implies that people on the other side—those who, in the smug cliché of the day, 'do not share our values'—aren't just wrong but morally inferior." In other words, attack the term used in order to avoid the truth and implications of the exit polls.
Traditional Values have always been a major factor, but in it's arrogance, the MSM forgot to bash it as much as it usually does, allowing voters to feel more free about their opinions. I'm sure they won't make that mistake again. It is amusing to watch Liberals froth against teaching values in government schools, only to whine when those that supported values, are referred to as having values. They haven't yet figured out that relativism isn't a value, it's the lack of values.
Why are Traditional Values important and why is relativism dangerous?
How many times have you heard someone say that we should leave our religion out of the voting booth; that religion and politics shouldn't be mixed? The Founding Fathers believed just the opposite. They prevented the government from dictating a religion, but saw the faith of the people as a necessary ingredient in good government. Most Americans derive their morals from the faith, so when they are asked to leave their faith outside the voting booth or out of politics, they see that as a demand to divorce ethics and morality from government. That's a recipe for disaster.
What are the Values Issues? Abortion: which pits the relativists saying killing a human is acceptable if enough people decide to pretend they aren't human, against those that say life is sacred and we have no right to end it simply for someone's convenience. Homosexual Marriage: which pits the relativists who say that marriage should be whatever the individual defines it as, against the rest of us who say God defined marriage, and we have no right to redefine it. Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Which pits the relativists that says murdering the individual for the benefit of the group is fine, if the group decides it is, against the rest of us who still see life as sacred. Education: Which pits the relativists who say the state should shape the minds of the young to best suit the needs of the state, against the rest of us that say ach individual deserves the best education possible and the parents are the best arbiters of that choice.
Relativists justify co-opting the terminology and even, occasionally the arguments, of Traditional Values, to rationalized their ends. So it's important that we pay close attention to who is saying what, and what they really mean. Abortion supporters are fond of claiming the "Pro-Choice is Pro-Family" using Orwellian doublespeak to define the murder of unborn children as some how "pro-family". You can't even trust those that will use the phrase Traditional Values. You must look at how they stand on the individual issues that display whether they are relativists or Traditionalists. Do they oppose Abortion? Do they support traditional marriage? Do they oppose Embryonic Stem Cell research? Do they support choice in Education? Do they make their positions solid and clear?
Posted by Danny Carlton at April 28, 2008 10:21 AM