RSSDo Evangelical Voters Care About Federalism?
W.H. Chellis
Or subsidarity? If Janet Folger is any indication- not so much.
I am as committed to the pro-life and as traditonal marriage causes as much as the next red blood conservative Calvinist but what ever happened to federalism, states rights, and localism?
This is exactly the kind of thinking that causes evangelicals to be rabid supporters of leftish causes for the last two decades. It is also why evangelicals are lurching left even as we speak.
Thoughts?
Travis Prinzi
November 13th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
I’m completely with you on this one, Bill. Social conservatives are trying to implement their beliefs with liberal (big government) methods, and it’s ugly. There’s nothing “conservative,” politically speaking, about a Federal Marriage Amendment.
This is why “conservative” evangelicals are rejecting out-of-hand the most consistent conservative on the Republican ticket (Ron Paul).
W.H. Chellis
November 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Exactly
Andrew Matthews
November 13th, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Bill and Travis, how can there be concord in a nation such as ours if fundamental truths of natural law are subject to legislative debate? Human life is sacred and marriage was instituted for one man and one woman. These laws are universally valid and intrinsic to the tradition in which our political union was formed. Don’t they belong to a sort of “unwritten constitution” that, if challenged, should be formally codified?
If a state government is incompetent enough to attempt to re-write the moral laws of the universe (an adventure that can only lead to chaos), shouldn’t the next highest competent authority restore order by rendering explicit what had always been implicit?
Don’t forget, it was the social radicals who started this whole thing going in the first place. No one would be promoting a Marriage Protection Amendment if the pro-gay lobby wasn’t trying to redefine the traditional understanding of marriage. Similarly, without Roe there would be no pro-life movement.
W.H. Chellis
November 14th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Andrew, I have sympathy with the problem but am enough of a states rights/localism man to think that the unwritten constitution belongs to the states and the counties. I am fearful of placing an unwritten “higher law” in the hands of the Federal Supreme Court. This has been tried and found wanting.
If states become so absured as to demand a division of the union… then may it be so. Better to divide the union in freedom then to unite it under centralized tyranny.
sixteenninety
November 14th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
I am sympathetic to Andrew’s point, while still loving the right’s of the States. Federalism, it seems to me, would dictate that we the people should demand our States AND Federal (not necessarily in that order)legislatures enact what is biblical and right.
On points so clear and scripturally enumerated as marraige and the sanctity of human life, I am persuaded that the Constitution of our Union should include such amendments. Yet, without explicitly naming our Lord in the Constitution, I see little hope of those other amendments arriving.
Andrew rightly notes that were these fundamental truths not left to be understood as implicit, or as “unwritten ‘higher law’”, we’d be in a much different place than we are now.
D Hart
November 18th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Bill, I’m with you on fedealism and localism. But I’m not sure how you reconcile that with the Lordship of Christ or the classic Covenanter view of Christ’s rule over the nations. In my experience, people who appeal to Christ’s rule often skip right over the formal arrangements of political power.
MarkPele
November 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
“This is why “conservative†evangelicals are rejecting out-of-hand the most consistent conservative on the Republican ticket (Ron Paul).”
Conservative evangelicals are rejecting Ron Paul for two reasons. The first reason is that he is not conservative. Conservatives tend to want to use the government to impose moral order. Drug laws are a great example of this. The conservatives want tough anti-drug laws and enforcement, but Paul thinks that recreational drug use should be legalized. Where Paul tends to fall into the conservative camp is on economic policy, where he tends to favor less government intervention.
As far as I can tell, the evangelical rejection comes from two issues, the first I mentioned above, but the second is a shift from classical conservatism to “neo-conservatism” or what Olasky trumpets as “Compassionate Conservatism” which is traditional moral and economic conservatism, except combined with an emphasis on socialistic programs like welfare, social security and medicare/medicaid.
MarkPele
November 19th, 2007 at 9:24 am
sixteenninety, Hamilton actually argued against the Bill of Rights, stating that actually enumerating a freedom of the press would make the federal government think that it had the right to regulate the freedom of the press (that the freedoms came from the government). I believe that we would be in a worse place without such enumerated freedoms. The courts already act as if these freedoms come from a benevolent government, so much so that Supreme Court cases (barring the new inroads of international law) are decided solely on Constitutionality and not on concepts like natural law.
When the federal government is single-mindedly trying to enforce its will on the population, from a Constitution that places the government as the supreme lawgiver, it doesn’t really matter what rights are and aren’t enumerated. Seriously, in a tyrannical government, who is going to bear arms on your behalf? The U.S. Army? The state militia? The state police?
W.H. Chellis
November 19th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
True enough, Ron Paul is a libertarian and not a conservative. Russell Kirk refered to the libertarian breed as “chirping sectaries.” I respect the concern. I doubt it is the reason that evangelicals are staying away.
It is interesting that Paul is pro-life and Rudy is not… yet evangelicals are flocking to his standard. What gives? Maybe evangelicals are closet authoritarians after all… Covenanter family camps do make me wonder.
I wonder what Machen would think?
Anthony Cowley
November 19th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Okay - I’ll bite, Bill - what about Covenanter Family Camps make you think that RP “Evangelicals” are closet authoritarians after all?
Wondering in Pittsburgh,
Tony
W.H. Chellis
November 20th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Don’t get me wrong… I love the family camps… but would not want to live under such oppressive spiritual/temporal rules the rest of the year.
MarkPele
November 20th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I think it’s the same thing that happens in government. Some person abuses some privilege and then that is seen as a reason to ban that privilege for all participants, instead of dealing with the breach itself. The abuses of Enron and MCI gave us Sarbanes-Oxley, just as the first kid with an obnoxious boom box got all radios expelled from family camps. Most of the rest is just inherent to the difficulties of scheduling - that rec time can only be scheduled during a few hours of the afternoon, etc. and is not inherently authoritative or pharisaical.
rej
November 28th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
“I am as committed to the pro-life and as traditonal marriage causes as much as the next red blood conservative Calvinist but what ever happened to federalism, states rights, and localism?”
To the Calvinists, states rights got sucked up in the federal-headship of the President allowing him to be a tyrant and damn us all like Adam.