I was watching Joe Scarborough on MSNBC the day after the elections and he said some things about election media coverage that got me thinking. Specifically, he said that he was offended at the notion that this was the first time that Americans had “gotten excited and engaged” about a presidential election.
Scarborough implored viewers to attempt to understand the excitement that those with opposing viewpoints feel when their candidate wins, such as Evangelical Christians did in 2000 and 2004.
He explained that Americans should not consider it “worthy and noble” only when their own side gets excited about a candidate, while thinking it “evil” when those holding opposing viewpoints get excited.
He told of how Florida evangelicals had lined up in great numbers to vote for George W. Bush in 2004. Lines at polling places wound around the block, while voters sang hymns in line to pass the time. Well-wishers even distributed water to voters. The enthusiasm of this year’s election was, therefore, nothing new to Scarborough.
Scarborough also expressed outrage at The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who had written in 2004 that Evangelical Christians wanted to return America to the Dark Ages. Gary Wills of The New York Times had likewise written that evangelicals wanted to make America more like Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.
Granted, Wills’ comparison of Evangelical Christians to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda was a ridiculous exaggeration. As to Scarborough’s other points, I both agree and disagree, in part.
In my view, there is a crucial distinction between the evangelical vision of America and the liberal vision. Much of the evangelical movement centers around abortion and gay marriage issues, and that speaks volumes about the sort of America evangelicals and other social conservatives envision.
Social liberals, like me, seek to carry to its logical conclusion the tenet that government should stay out of peoples’ lives unless there is some compelling public-safety reason to intervene. The beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that it rejects a religious-sectarian view of government and human destiny; instead leaving individuals to pursue their own destiny as they define it.
By contrast, evangelists seem to want a sectarian view of law, as seen in their approaches to the abortion issue. It is a contradiction in the Reagan philosophy to say that government should get out of peoples’ way, while then saying that government should be able to regulate peoples’ reproductive processes.
The evangelical vision of America is reactionary and nostalgic in nature. By emphasizing the anti-abortion and anti-gay issues, evangelists seem to be fighting a losing battle for an America that no longer exists.
Gays, for example, are now too far integrated into our communities and wield too much economic and political power to be permanently marginalized.
In regards to the abortion issue, if a person has a moral problem with abortion, then they shouldn’t get one. It is contradictory and hypocritical for the Republican Party to market itself as the party of less government and to then attempt extending government’s reach into peoples’ private lives in such an aggressive manner.
It may be that we have come full circle in our national political life, in that social liberals are now the true old-fashioned conservatives, seeking a truly limited government. This is the Reagan philosophy shorn of its contradictions.
Christopher Herrin is a graduate Religious Studies major and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.