Or maybe it’s the economic polarization of America that’s got your undies all in a bundle. What’s the difference if the top one percent of the country grows fantastically rich while the rest are stagnant or sinking? That just shows your failure to understand the beauty of our capitalist free market system!
What next? You’re bothered that the Mid-East is in flames? That North Korea has gone nuclear, and that Iran is doing the same while growing in power because we destroyed its rival, Iraq? Typical liberal appeasement naiveté about tough foreign policy questions. Stop talking French, wouldya?
Don’t tell me you’re ashamed that genocide is occurring again while we stand by and do nothing? So what if the same government that moved heaven and earth to "bring democracy to Iraq" can’t be bothered to lift its little finger for Darfur after 400,000 people have been slaughtered? Enough with the bleeding-heart routine already.
Okay, so it must be global warming, then, right? Ozone Man gets an Oscar and you think that saving the entire planet from vast, lethal and massively expensive environmental destruction is one of the great moral issues of our time, eh? Well, that’s where you’re especially wrong.
See, if you really want to know what matters in the moral universe, you should take your cues from us conservatives, especially those of us from the religious right. We can tell you.
And what we say is that the great moral issues of our time are not war, peace, protecting our children, fiscal responsibility, caring for our soldiers or defending the constitution. And especially not pulling the Earth off the planetary grill.
No, the great moral issues of our time are: Your genitals. Yeah, you heard me right. Your genitals.
Surprised? You wouldn’t be if you’d been following the news during your lifetime. And especially if you heard what happened just last week.
Seems that one of our own by the name of Reverend Richard Cizik strayed off the reservation and got himself in some unexpected trouble. Unexpected because he is a longtime advocate for the Christian right, now serving as Vice-President for Government Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.
But when the good reverend made the mistake of fretting in public about your so-called global warming, well, we came down on him hard. No less than those great moral arbiters of our time, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins and Paul Weyrich called for Reverend Cizik to resign if he "cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals".
What are those views? What did they identify as the "great moral issues of our time"? I thought you’d never ask. Opposition to abortion and gay marriage, of course. And "the teaching of sexual abstinence to our children". In short, everything to do with your genitals.
And I do mean, of course, YOUR genitals. Not ours.
Reverend Cizik was actually supported during this controversy by Reverend Leith Anderson, the new president of the association. Why new? Seems the old one – a certain Ted Haggard – loved to preach about your sexual morality but had a slightly different agenda when he found himself inside hotel rooms snorting drugs with gay prostitutes.
Kinda like Newt Gingrich, Robert Livingston, Henry Hyde and the others who chased Bill Clinton down for chasing down Monica Lewinsky, while they themselves were fathering children outside their marriages, having serial affairs, and dumping their wives for new ones, as the old ones lay in the hospital, post-cancer surgery. Kinda like the Catholic dioceses across America that are declaring bankruptcy so they can avoid paying legal claims for all the damage caused by the sexual predators they hired, ignored and protected for decades.
Dummies! Don’t they know you’re not supposed to get caught?
Listen, you get a sixer or two of Coors in me and even I’d admit it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone who is publicly obsessed with your sexuality is actually totally freaked out (at least) about their own. But, hey, what’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t be a hypocrite?! Y’know?
