Religion Dispatches
…would challenge us to do the same), I believe King would view reproductive rights as women’s moral right, not a political pact through which civil patriarchy can be enacted. Overall, I think King would be a supporter of women’s right to choose. Choice understood in light of the preference of the choosing subject is a basic condition of freedom. King saw freedom as a moral right. Thus, King was on the side of freedom. However, freedom can be comple…
Read More…o create such a protected class — but that’s not for lack of trying by the right. The right has been building this argument, first through advocacy for a Human Life Amendment, which Smith supports, which would declare “the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being, and is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.” Through proposed “personhood” amendments at the state level, the right has argued that fet…
Read More…, the New York Times coverage of the event notes the sale of “kosher” smartphones that limit Internet use. This is funny stuff. But on second thought, aren’t the ultra-Orthodox right? This is an insular community that has built real and virtual walls to shield itself from secular influences. Aren’t they correct to worry that if their adherents surf the Internet, the community will suffer? I think they are. One reason I write for publications like…
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…r question, scenario than that, because America is existentially at crisis right now. We’ve left God. We’ve become part of this licentious decrepit, degraded immoral culture. You know we have, we have strayed from God’s principles, defending liberty, being accountable and having responsibility, and into a culture that seeks just pleasure and just emotion and good feeling and licentiousness and hedonism. That will bring the country to destruction….
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…about throwing out the “establishment,” it would be tossing its religious right allies right along with those “tyrannical” Democrats it so despises. The religious right, along with business interests, is one of the most entrenched and politically organized forces radiating from inside the beltway. The new Tea Partiers set to come to Washington aren’t avoiding challenging the religious right just because they need it to form a coalition—they are i…
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…atholic personalist intellectuals and on the spread of “human dignity” in Western European constitutions, beginning with the 1937 Christian Democratic constitution of Ireland, Moyn concludes that “through this lost and misremembered transwar era, it is best to see human rights as a project of the Christian right for the most part, not the secular left.” Is the advancement of human rights in the 1940s best seen as a project of the Christian right?…
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…had better fasten his seat belt tight. If he doesn’t straighten up and fly right he could end up looking like Slim Pickens at the end of Doctor Strangelove. Guess who’ll be looking up at the mushroom cloud? Lucia Hulsether: What Are You Doing Right Now? The social networking site Facebook enables its members (the vast majority of whom are students) to post a “status” describing what they are doing and thinking at any given point. This morning I lo…
Read More…ors to put abortion restrictions at the top of their agenda. The religious right has periodically threatened to abandon the GOP over its supposedly inadequate dedication to its issues, an effort to push candidates further right. In this case, it’s difficult to overstate the level of actual anger the base will bring as a result of the withdrawal of a signature bill on their most politically resonant day of the year: the anniversary of Roe v. Wade….
Read More…s.” As the New York Times noted, Adelson’s charges are “staples of the far right” and “deeply offensive to Palestinians.” They ought to be offensive to Israelis as well, but Adelson is doing his best to spread the message through Israel HaYom (Israel Today), a free tabloid that is the country’s must-read news outlet. Adelson told reporters at the Jerusalem gathering that he does not dictate the newspaper’s coverage or editorials, but that both ref…
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…. I have never been an antisemite, I have never been a misanthrope. I was frightened by the accusations.” That the accusations—not their content—frightened Aiwanger, was telling, and a foreshadowing of the victim narrative he would pivot to only moments later. Aiwanger admits to nothing—a classic non-apology: “I can’t remember showing a Hitler salute, rehearsing Hitler speeches in front of the mirror.” One would think that someone who had never re…
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