Monday, June 06, 2005
Ganja & God: Southern Baptist Glaucoma Sufferers Support Medical Marijuana
The right wing can't trust its own judges. Are Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas "activist" or "non-activist" when they dissent in the 6-3 Supreme Court ruling that the federal government has the power to prevent sick patients in California from smoking home-grown marijuana that a doctor recommended to relieve their chronic pain? Justice O'Connor writes: "Relying on Congress' abstract assertions, the court has endorsed making it a federal crime to grow small amounts of marijuana in one's own home for one's own medicinal use. This overreaching stifles an express choice by some states ... to regulate medical marijuana differently." Even so, just because a government has the power to do something doesn't mean it must exercise that power.
As Bernard Berenson wrote, "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." The religious right doesn't want consistent constitutionalists, it wants consistent ultra-conservative Biblical moralists.
Catholics, along with many millions of other "religious" Americans, have good reason to be suspicious of politicized evangelical & fundamentalist protestants, whose attitudes about America's spirituality are at the core narrowly sectarian even when they masquerade as ecumenicists. Which is, I suppose, why 64% of those polled answered that religious leaders "should not try to influence government decisions." Most I am certain don't believe this in any doctrinaire way; these people are just reacting against those highly visible "prophets" who claim their divinely-annointed "moral clarity" entitles them to influence government decisions way out of proportion to their actual number of followers.
As Bernard Berenson wrote, "Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." The religious right doesn't want consistent constitutionalists, it wants consistent ultra-conservative Biblical moralists.
Catholics, along with many millions of other "religious" Americans, have good reason to be suspicious of politicized evangelical & fundamentalist protestants, whose attitudes about America's spirituality are at the core narrowly sectarian even when they masquerade as ecumenicists. Which is, I suppose, why 64% of those polled answered that religious leaders "should not try to influence government decisions." Most I am certain don't believe this in any doctrinaire way; these people are just reacting against those highly visible "prophets" who claim their divinely-annointed "moral clarity" entitles them to influence government decisions way out of proportion to their actual number of followers.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Right wing Christian "leaders" have a talent for mirroring what many people already generally believe - that's what makes them good preachers - then focusing these beliefs on specifics - think James Dobson's "Focus on Family." They always have an eye on the competition. If the Democrats ever find a candidate of unchallenged & active religious faith, an upbeat personality, & a pro-family agenda, he or she would be difficult to beat. The last one was a guy named Bill Clinton, & it didn't even matter that he struggled with "sin." He still carried Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Florida & West Virginia in 1996. We tend to forget how close Dubya came to losing in 2004.
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