Dear Cindy, Laura, Lanny, et al.,
Thanks for initiating what looks like another good discussion. Allow me
to toss in a few points that pertain here and there...
How can one be "pro-life" and anti-environment? SOME (but not all)
evangelicals with eschatological (millenialist) and dispensationalist
views split the two easily. Dispensationalism (which began in the late
1860s as a fringe movement in the American South and Midwest) theorizes
that God periodically releases true believers from the prevailing
"dispensation" (e.g. the Abrahamic Dispensation/Covenant, the Mosaic
Dispensation, and so on.) Tightly woven into the dispensationalist
doctrine is the "Hidden Revelation of the Apocalypse," which very
selectively picks out recondite phrases in the Book of Revelation and
other prophetic texts to claim that the end times (rapture, armageddon,
etc.) are at hand. (Tim LaHaye and the "Left Behind" crowd are "hidden
apocalypticists.") The twain meet in the claims that (1) the "signs of
the times" prove that Armageddon is rapidly approaching, (2) that
true-believing christians are now released from the dispensation and
covenant of Jesus, and are called to the "final dispensation" and (3)
empty the Holy Land of all unbelievers, and indeed to subdue the Earth and
"make the rough places plain," etc., to prepare for the rapture,
Armageddon, and the Millenial Reign of the Messiah. To sum up, this is
where James Watt came up with his remarkable insight that "When the last
tree is gone, Jesus will come." Thus, in this logically twisted and
scripturally spurious way, to be pro-(eternal)life, a true believer must
be anti-environmental.
Whew. With me so far? (If you want to learn much, much more, Google
"dispensationalism.")
This also takes us to the doorstep of Constitutional Reconstructionism,
another brainchild of the dogmatically fertile 1870s. J.R. Rushdoony, a
fundamentalist Presbyterian, is the paterfamilias of this brood. JRR and
his followers believe that the US Constitution must be "reconstructed"
along the lines of Plato's Academy. Basically, they would preserve
democracy and the Godly Way of American Life by seeing to it that only
those men who have been raised in approved faith traditions and educated
in approved educational institutions could stand for election to public
office. Any public office.
And what is the goal here? Why, to make the USofA the Instrument of the
Lord's Will in preparing the earth and its peoples for... You guessed it:
the rapture, armageddon, etc.!!!
The evidence is becoming disturbingly clear that these groups, under the
general rubric of "Christian Zionists" have more-or-less taken control of
the White House and the US Senate, plus a good part of the US House. Now,
they're aiming to put a stranglehold on the courts.
But bizarre theories of governance and the coming of the Eschaton (last
days) won't get you far without money. Which of course is where the
Corporadoes come in. Some predatory corporate bigwigs are
evangelical-rapturist nabobs, but mostly what we're seeing here is Secular
Triumphalist Greed in action. ("It's there. I want it. Get out of my
way. Now." Or as Ivan Boesky so succinctly put it, "Greed is good.")
"Oh, so you believe that cutting down the last tree and polluting the last
river will hurry Jesus along? No problem. Glad to help out. By the way,
you don't mind if I make some money while we're waiting for Jesus, do
you?" We'll do the media buys, you bring the voter-believers.
"Reverence for Life" is convenient camouflage for the corporadoes.
We are at a truly appalling convergence all right: of public credulity,
cynicism, and professional competence. Democracy demands moral and
intellectual rigor, and we are not getting much of anymore. Our free
press simpers and fawns, and our people glut themselves on fast food and
crass entertainment. Democracy? Yawn.
When Ben Franklin was leaving Independence Hall following the
Constitutional Convention, he was asked, "Mr. Franklin, what have you
given us?"
And he answered famously, and darkly, "A democracy, ma'am, if you can keep
it." He knew, as stoics do, that history, in the long run, is never on
democracy's side.
This could lead me into how Dubya and his speech writers have been
perversely comparing what's happening in Iraq with our own struggles under
the Articles of Confederation... But I think I've gone far enough for one
rant.
--Bill Witt
don't think this is just your impression.
> Very few Republican members of Congress have a good
> voting record on the environment, as measured by
> League of Conservation Voters ratings.
>
> One of the Republicans in Congress with the best
> environmental record, Jim Leach, is also pro-choice. I
> imagine that most of the other relatively "green"
> Republicans are as well, because they tend to
> represent moderate, suburban districts in the
> northeast.
>
> My Rockefeller Republican father was puzzled and
> dismayed by the GOP's radical anti-environmental turn
> in the 1980s and 1990s. As he said, true conservatives
> should be concerned with conserving natural resources.
> Unfortunately, it seems like today's GOP leadership
> goes out of its way to do harm to the environment on
> many fronts.
>
> This is as offensive to my moral standards as abortion
> is to Peggy Murdock's. Many thousands of American
> lives end prematurely every year because of
> environmental contaminants. Others live with
> diminished quality of life (e.g. skyrocketing rates of
> asthma in children). Not to mention the harm done to
> children by mercury pollution. For reasons
> unfathomable to me, GOP leaders who claim to care for
> the lives of unborn children resist basic,
> common-sense policies that would reduce the number of
> miscarriages, birth defects, and neurodevelopmental
> disorders caused by mercury alone.
>
> I don't have an answer regarding how to appeal to
> voters who are against abortion but for the
> environment. It's up to inidividuals to decide which
> issues are deal-breakers for them.
>
> Some Catholics will be unable to vote for a pro-choice
> Democrat. Other Catholics will be unable to vote for a
> Republican who supports the war in Iraq and capital
> punishment while opposing an increase in the minimum
> wage (those are all issues on which the Catholic
> Church's official position contradicts the GOP's).
>
> Yours,
>
> Laura Belin
>
> --- Cindy Hildebrand <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps another question that could be asked, if
>> we're discussing this topic,
>> is why there are so few candidates (at least I've
>> heard of few in this part
>> of the country) who say they are pro-life and who
>> also consistently vote in
>> favor of protecting the environment. Theoretically,
>> one could have
>> pro-environment candidates who are on both sides of
>> the abortion issue. In practice, I
>> seldom see it, but maybe I'm not paying attention to
>> enough political races
>> outside my immediate area.
>>
>> Cindy Hildebrand
>> [log in to unmask]
>> Ames, IA 50010
>>
>> "Strawbury in the praries ripe and abundant."
>> (Meriwether Lewis)
>>
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