I can’t recall the context exactly, but former President Clinton was interviewed last week, and he said that he thought the Democrats could do a better job of promoting “moral values,” or “connecting with values voters”…something like that. I first thought he could have done more of that himself when in office, but then I recalled the inquisition led by Ken Starr, Richard Mellon Scaife, etc. after Bill finally admitted to getting “The Big Lewinsky” and realized that Clinton had effectively ceded that issue.
As far as I’m concerned, these are the only issues that are important to these so-called “values voters”: 1) Doing anything to fight abortion (and many of them use both carrot and stick on that issue, I’ll give them that, but too many more are just plain nuts); 2) Not letting the gays marry; and 3) Bombing the crap out of both innocent and guilty dark-skinned people half a world away.
The whole “values voters” myth took on a life of its own after the election last year, covering up Dubya’s fear and smear show (aided ably by the Swift Boat Liars), the fits-and-starts campaign of John Kerry (not helped much by the Clintonistas, as it turned out), and voting impropriety, shall we say, and undiscovered fraud in Florida and Ohio (see recent articles by Jim Lampley at The Huffington Post for more on that).
With this in mind, I went searching for a legitimate analysis of the whole “moral values” angle, and I found this column written last year by Jim Wallis of USA Today (in block quotes). As I share excerpts of his thoughtful words, I want to mix in some current context:
In the 2004 campaign, the religious right and the Republican Party chose a “moral values” strategy. While it might have helped them win (that) election, a serious focus on moral values in American politics could turn out to be a big mistake for the right — especially for its economic and foreign-policy agenda.
According to Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan,
"We back a dictator in Central Asia (President Islam Abduganievich Karimov of Uzbekistan) to get access to oil and gas, and we remove a dictator in Iraq to get access to oil and gas. Explain American policy in terms of freedom and democracy and you get a contradiction. Explain it in terms of oil and gas and it's completely consistent."
Its efforts to reduce the values discussion to one or two controversial social issues — gay marriage and abortion — is unlikely to be successful over the long run. The conservative political agenda could come under great scrutiny when religious and moral values are applied to policies that favor the wealthy and choose war as the first, not the last, resort to threats of terrorism and tyranny.
From David Sirota’s blog dated today:
This is truly unbelievable. Public Citizen has discovered a provision buried in President Bush's energy bill "that provides hundreds of millions of dollars worth of federal loan guarantees for a power project apparently to be built by four former Enron executives." In fact, "one of the former executives is Thomas White, former head of Enron’s retail and energy trading in California during the energy crisis who later served as President Bush’s Secretary of the Army." See the full report here.
Who put this provision in there? Was it the White House? Or was it one of the White House's allies in Congress? The American people deserve to know before this bill is passed.
Polls taken since the election have consistently shown that Americans care about moral values — and don't restrict them to one or two issues. For instance, a Zogby International poll found that, when asked to choose the “most urgent moral problem in American culture,” 64% of respondents selected either “greed and materialism” or “poverty and economic justice,” while 28% chose abortion or gay marriage. Voters don't want to ignore these broader issues.
From the Al Franken Show blog today on the Air America web site:
On New Years of 1997, Tom DeLay visited the Marianas Islands, where he praised the work environment and vowed to stop Washington efforts to change their immigration and labor laws.
In the process, DeLay ended up providing de facto aid to Saipan’s sweatshops, as they continue force a sizeable number of the workforce of Chinese women, numbering about 11,000, into illegal abortions so they could continue to work.
Neither do our religious traditions. Thousands of verses in the Bible make poverty a moral and religious issue. The environment — protecting God's creation — is a religious matter and moral concern. Important issues of war and peace are deeply theological and just as much a “life issue” as is abortion. And human rights are rooted in the religious concept of the image of God in every person.
Former EPA Administrator Russell Train, a Republican who served in this role under presidents Nixon and Ford, accused President Bush of weakening the Clean Air Act in July 2004. Bush’s record, which Train found to be “very, very appalling,” falls short of those set by former Republican presidents ranging from Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated creating national parks and forests, to George H.W. Bush, who supported new anti-air-pollution standards.
Aimee Christensen, executive director of Environment 2004, described Bush’s record as "the worst…in modern history, unfortunately. They (the administration) are systematically weakening our keystone public health protections and undermining decades of bipartisan leadership on the environment."
Also, the G-8 leaders today criticized inaction by Bush on global warming, with Lord May, president of Britain’s Royal Society, calling Bush’s policy “misguided.”
"The Bush administration has consistently refused to accept the advice of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The NAS concluded in 1992 that, 'Despite the great uncertainties, greenhouse warming is a potential threat sufficient to justify action now,' by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
Right now, neither party gets the values question right. The Democrats seem uncomfortable with the language of faith and values, preferring in recent decades the secular approach of restricting such matters to the private sphere.
But where would we be if Martin Luther King Jr. had kept his faith to himself? The separation of church and state does not require the segregation of moral language and values from public life. The Republicans are comfortable with the language of religion and values. But the GOP wants to narrow the focus to hot-button social issues it then uses as wedges in political campaigns, while ignoring or obstructing the application of such values where they would threaten its agenda.
So, yes, let's discuss moral values. It might be the best way for people in the red and blue states to start talking to each other. Religion and moral values don't fall neatly into right and left political categories. Personal and social responsibility are both at the heart of religion and define what we call “the common good.” The two together could make a very powerful and compelling political vision for the future of our nation.
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