Someone Actually Reads This Stuff !?! Response to a Comment

Anonymous writes:

“Just one comment on your response to some conservatives wanting more gov't intervention in their lives. In regard to the Ten Commandments issue type things, the only reason some of us feel the need for the gov't to intervene is that it ALREADY has intervened and threatens to intervene even more in preventing God/Christianity from being referred to etc. I would just as soon the gov't got its nose out of our business to, but it's too late, it's already in too far, and some of us are fighting back.”

I think I can understand your perspective in feeling that the government has been steadily encroaching upon the religious rights guaranteed under the constitution. Perhaps I am as sensitive as anyone to being told what I can and can not do (check with my wife for confirmation.)

What I am still confused about is what has caused some to feel it is necessary to go so far in the other direction to correct the situation. In doing so they further disillusion and distant themselves from those who disagree with them as well alienate those who could be somewhat sympathetic.

Politics is a gradual process and to me (pardon the poor analogy with baseball) politics has always been about advancing the runner, a single and a double at a time. I am concerned about the folks swinging wildly for the fences, and when they are called out on a play, seem to be going after the other team, umpires, even the spectators, not to mention their own team members with a baseball bat.

In other words, I see the “Moralists” (my term - see my Mis-diagnosis essay below) are over reaching. They appear to want it all and beware if you don’t agree with them. I encourage them to reassess, identify their priorities, work to correct what is wrong, and then move onto other challenges. If not, they risk losing what they have gained because the pendulum will eventually swing back. It always does.

As the good book says, “You reap what you sow,” and for my secular friends, as the Beatles were heard to sing on the last track of their last recorded album Abbey Road, “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”