Moral values and the economy, Iraq and Terrorism were the top issues persuading people to vote this election. Apparently “Moral Values” was more important than the economy, the war in Iraq and Terrorism to most people. People who chose moral values and Terrorism as the critical issues chose Bush, and people who chose the economy and Iraq chose Kerry.
What I find curious is which Moral Values people actually consider meaningful and vital. Apparently misguiding a country into war using lies and with intentionally inaccurate information, killing over 100,000 innocent Civilians in Iraq, Increasing disparity between the rich and the poor and Human Equality are not a an important indicator of moral values to a majority of Americans.
Traditional Christian morals and tendencies were apparently far more important. The effort to Prohibit Gay marriage, stop Stem cell research, eliminate a women
I think Kerry just failed to mobilize the true believers. Bush is much better in using Christianity in his language.
So the question is, how secular the US actually still is.
The question didn’t ask respondents to identify their moral values. For all we know, Democrats considered their stand on Iraq as morally superior and thus stated that they voted as they did because of their consideration of moral values.
yes, i think americans voted because we wanted to kill more non-christians. brilliant analysis, swingking. hell, i’m agnostic, but even i was swept up in the “kill non-christians” fervor. that’s why i voted for bush, of course.
Not to mention that Bush doesn’t want to block all stem-cell research. In fact, he is the first president to FUND stem-cell research. There is no ban on research using, shall we say, Mengelian methods, just a ban on federal funding of such activities.
All of the advances so far have been in autotransplanted stem cells, which means the donor is also the recipient. They extract bone marrow or fatty tissue from person X, spin out the stem cells, goad the stem cells in various ways, and then inject person X’s stem cells back into person X.
Voila. No transplant-rejection problems.
In contrast, there hasn’t been much, if any, success with the material “harvested” from aborted fetuses. Maybe in pure research, but not in transplants or making Christopher Reeve walk again. If anything, Bush is merely forcing companies to waste their own money on useless research instead of wasting taxpayer dollars on it.
Swingkings kill non Christians comment may have been a little over kill, but he did have some good points regarding, same sex marriage, stem cell research, and a womens right to abortion.
It is truly a terrifying idea to think that religious zealots, through their political marionettes, are directly affecting an entire nation.
Political decisions should be fully and completely unaffected by any religious beliefs.
You should for vote for a President, not a religion.
In my mind, there is not great degree of separation between the Evangelical fundamentalist abortion doctor killer, supporting Bush, and the Islamic fundamentalist car bomber, supporting Bin Laden.
As soon as one becomes too polarized in there beliefs they become closed~minded, ignorant, and are therefore apt to commit immoral atrocities in the false belief of their moral superiority.
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
~Aldous Huxley
By the way, Flipper
I have heard two different points of view regarding this ideology, and I am curious as to which one you would deem as being true.
Agnostics subscribe to a philosophy of doubt, and to have doubt as the basis of your ideological views in life is akin to choosing immobility as a method of transportation.
Being an agnostic is not a decision to sit on the proverbial fence, but it is not pretending to know something of which so many are ignorantly sure.
[quote=“Canucklehead”]Swingkings kill non Christians comment may have been a little over kill, but he did have some good points regarding, same sex marriage, stem cell research, and a womens right to abortion.
It is truly a terrifying idea to think that religious zealots, through their political marionettes, are directly affecting an entire nation.
Political decisions should be fully and completely unaffected by any religious beliefs.
[/quote]
wait, so if i support all of those, then it’s ok. but if i oppose all of those because my moral values are different, then it’s somehow less legitimate because it’s influenced by religion?
what about people who oppose the death penalty on religious grounds? what about pacifists who refuse to fight for religious reasons?
you can’t pick and choose. some of the most powerful movements in us history were presented in religious terms. abolitionists, civil rights advocates, even the early environmental movement used religious arguments to great effect. i wouldn’t necessarily call martin luther king, jr. a religious fanatic though his speeches were full of vivid religious language.
[quote]
By the way, Flipper
I have heard two different points of view regarding this ideology, and I am curious as to which one you would deem as being true.
Agnostics subscribe to a philosophy of doubt, and to have doubt as the basis of your ideological views in life is akin to choosing immobility as a method of transportation.
Being an agnostic is not a decision to sit on the proverbial fence, but it is not pretending to know something of which so many are ignorantly sure.[/quote]
i don’t believe there’s a god/gods, but i could be wrong.
Bush (and his speechwriters) are better at slipping in subtle phrases into his speeches that echo other phrases in the Bible familiar to many of the evangelicals. This isn’t particularly rare – most southern politicians grow up with it, and certainly my non-politician relatives speak it. They all do it, and Bush’s writers are simply better at it.
I think he’s just using the evangelicals to reach political ends, which is fair enough. Does Bush really give a crap about stem-cells, abortion, or many of the 10 Commandments? I don’t really think so. He’s spent far too much time trying to appeal the baser nature of humanity and, along the way, he’s succeeded in clothing a bunch of un-Christian nonsense in biblical phrasing, just as the Patriot Act is probably the most un-American law we’ve passed in recent memory. Bush’s the president of smite and spite, and he’s certainly not the sort whom you want doing anything unto you.
I think the thing that won the election for Bush were the hurricanes in Florida. Well managed emergency relief and an opportunity for Bush to do absolutley all he could for the people of Florida leading up to the election would have influenced sentiment greatly.
Read a good editorial in the Boston Globe the other day that points out how ironic it is that Bush supporters and the religious right lay a claim to superior moral values and family values when Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, about half that of Texas, all of New England (Kerry regions) has the lowest divorce rates in the nation and the born-again Christians and those who live in the “bible belt” have the highest rates of divorce. Not just an opinion, but facts. So apparently all that “family value” talk from the right doesn’t really amount to much.
I’m suspect you are right that plenty of Bush voters would claim to have superior moral values to Kerry voters, just as I suspect that
plenty of Kerry voters would claim to have superior moral values to Bush voters. Certainly in debates on this board each side seems to feel that they are more “moral” and that the other side is either (a) immoral, or (b) moral but confused about which parties policies get us to the right place. So if that was the point of the article, then it seems reasonable, if a little obvious.
But perhaps the author is suggesting more than that. Maybe the author is saying that only Bush voters claim to be more moral, and that Kerry voters think that everyone is equally moral. I guess one can make that argument, but hopefully they author is not trying to base his argument on exit polls indicating that voters who said morals/values were critical issues supported Bush.
After all, saying “We think issue X is very important” is not the same as saying “Our communities/states are superior when it comes to issue X.”
In fact, it could just as easily be the opposite, could it not?
[color=darkblue]Imagine that I live in a high crime area. Every day I see my neighbors shooting eachother. I am painfully aware that my community is below average when it comes to crime. Consequently, crime is a HUGE issue for me when I go to the voting booth, and I often vote for the candidate that I see as being stronger when it comes to crime.[/color]
[color=blue]Does this mean that I think I am somehow more law abiding that people who live in low-crime areas?[/color] No.
[color=blue]Would I be surprised to hear that my community does worse in the crime indices than some wealthy area in New England?[/color] No.
[color=blue]Is there anything inconsistent with me living in a high-crime area and telling an exit pollster that I voted for the guy who I think is better when it comes to dealing with crime?[/color] No.
[quote]wait, so if i support all of those, then it’s ok. but if i oppose all of those because my moral values are different, then it’s somehow less legitimate because it’s influenced by religion?
what about people who oppose the death penalty on religious grounds? what about pacifists who refuse to fight for religious reasons?
you can’t pick and choose.[/quote]
I am not picking and choosing. All…
I believe that ones political decisions should be the result of open~minded, objective, and an intrinsic goal of humanitarianism.
We should make our political decisions based on our individual capacity for self~realization through reason, and not the mores of the supernatural.
I hope moral values regain a foothold in America especially. For years, America has produced movies, music, pornography, etc that has been spread all over the world poisoning listerners and viewers. Inciting violence, encourageing fornication, destroying the values that create a stable society. That must be one of the most important reasons why New York was singled out for a terrorist attack. America has been taking part in a different kind of terrorism. Dumping a lot of filth on the world. If liberalism istaken too far, as in the case of America, it becomes a kind of dictatorship to all those who believe it is wrong for a man to have sex with a man, too kill the unborn.
Now, for something else. If it were possible to save a billion people from dying from a disease by killing or jailing a thousand. Would liberals say yes to freedom, or say yes to survival?
Well, they should have hit LA instead of NYC if their goal is to destroy America’s source of movies. In fact, I believe that a valley just inland of LA (San Fernando?) is like the center of the porn universe. If the terrorists wanted to destroy the porn factories, then they should have plunged their hijacked airplanes into that valley, again and again, in order to spill the seed of Islamic justice into the very loins of America’s porn industry.
Which thousand? Just kidding. Liberals may not be as stupid as you think - try to keep an open mind.
If it were possible to save a billion people from dying by taxing a thousand. Would conservatives say yes to life, or say yes to money?
“Moral values” is ambiguous. There are liberal and conservative variants, for example. Most Quakers take it for granted that the death penalty is evil, as much as most Baptists would say the same about gay marriage (or gay anything).
City people, Europeans, and blue-staters–in a word, liberals–often look down on religious beliefs and think them uncivilized, kind of like trailer homes. If one must have a religion, better make it an undemanding one that has little effect on one’s life.
To many conservative religious people, however, it is the militant secularists who are uncivilized. Not only do they turn their backs on tradition and community, but they live wanton lives of wickedness like on “Sex in the City.” The conservative “Marlboro Country” states are colored red because they are red-blooded Americans!
[quote=“Canucklehead”]
I believe that ones political decisions should be the result of open~minded, objective, and an intrinsic goal of humanitarianism.
We should make our political decisions based on our individual capacity for self~realization through reason, and not the mores of the supernatural.[/quote]
to put it simply, that just won’t work in the us.
you’re looking for a secular electorate and that is not reflective at all of the us. there are lots of countries where the citizens are, by and large, secular. the us is not one of them.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]Read a good editorial in the Boston Globe the other day that points out how ironic it is that Bush supporters and the religious right lay a claim to superior moral values and family values when Kerry’s home state of Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, about half that of Texas, all of New England (Kerry regions) has the lowest divorce rates in the nation and the born-again Christians and those who live in the “bible belt” have the highest rates of divorce. Not just an opinion, but facts. So apparently all that “family value” talk from the right doesn’t really amount to much.
wanna know why kerry never talked about divorce rates? because he had his first marriage anulled so teresa would not have to marry a divorcee. talk about disrespecting the institution of marriage.
I guess it is really about identifying with a single religious identity these “moral values” are suppose to reflect. Which is really scary in my opinion. Since it seems more people are concerned about impeding the rights of gays to get married and the rights of women to get an abortion than anything else.
I just don’t see why any politician would waste their time on putting up an admendment to define what a marriage is in the first place? Because then every state is going to have to redefine it anyways for gay couples.
The same is true if Roe v Wade is overturned. It state will have their own laws to cover the abortion issue.
It’s like USA society is going backwards on certain issues.
It’s like USA society is going backwards on certain issues.[/quote]
Going backwards? I think it is more like the Dark Ages.[/quote]
in every single city and town in the us, homosexuality is more accepted than at any time in us history. abortion is more accepted than at any time in us history.
