Posted on 01/27/2014 3:28:50 PM PST by Kaslin
It is Super Bowl week; Time for a football analogy to politics: The best defense is a good offense. Yep. Perhaps the most successful head-fake tactic of the left has been political correctness and I think that it is high time that we got our defense off the field and start throwing some play-action post routes of our own.
The leftist playbook includes instructions to accuse the right of being cruelly unfair in response to every assertion of a conservative standard. Reducing taxes is to “fund the government on the backs of the poor.” Opposing Obama’s takeover of health care is to “reveal racist contempt towards a black president.” Contending for the right to life is to “wage war on women.”
Democrats win many elections by painting Republican candidates as insensitive puritans who are absent one heart and the right side of their brain. What the Republican candidates are actually missing is a GOP playbook with instructions to avoid trying to be loved by everybody. Democrats have become experts at tapping Republicans with a small rubber hammer just below the knee. Watching the Republican kick his own legs out from under himself has become so predictable that it is not even humerus (rim shot, please).
You may have heard of one of my fellow Townhall.com contributors, an up-and-comer named Dennis Prager. Dennis effectively explores the tension between standards and compassion on his radio broadcast (see http://townhall.com/talkradio/dennisprager/438233). “The liberal tendency is to apply compassion to social policy when standards should prevail and conservatives’ tendency … is to place standards over compassion in personal life and they end up looking cold…”
Playing defense most of the time scores zero points. And decades of compromise just moves you closer to the opposition’s end zone. But we are beginning to see some bold maneuvers by the Republicans recently that have me very encouraged; Two examples:
Across Colorado, conservative communities have begun to take control of their local school boards. In 2013, Douglas County residents fended off a $1MM+ campaign by the union to re-take control of their school board. The first resolution passed after conservatives were elected in 2009 was to declare that the Boy Scouts were welcome on campus, reversing the prevailing attitude. This was followed by instituting merit pay for teachers, implementing a real voucher system, and disengaging the teachers union. The courage began to spread last year as inspired neighboring communities sought coaching from the battle-hardened Douglas County school board members and began replacing their liberal boards with conservative parents.
Now is the time for the Douglas County School Board to drive the conservative stratagem even further. By privatizing a high school, wholesale replacing the curricula with patriotic, anti-common-core syllabi, and banning radical environmentalism as a state sponsored religion, the board could keep the liberals playing prevent-defense. A good measure of success would be when liberal complaining turns into a thousand screams.
In Oklahoma this past Friday, State Representative Mike Turner boldly challenged, “whether marriage needs to be regulated by the state at all.” He floated a bill that would remove the state’s role of licensing matrimony. This was in response to a recent court order that strikes down Oklahoma’s definition of marriage as traditional one-man-one-woman.
Getting the state out of marriage is certainly not a new idea. But now that a state legislator has actually taken the first tangible step in that direction, the left finds itself backpedalling fast. Who would ever have thought that we would see the ACLU coming to the defense of marriage? But that is exactly the awkward role that the ACLU of Oklahoma has stepped up to. Now that they have marriage defined the way they like it, they are on their heels in a panic to keep the state involved.
America’s first Vice President and second President, John Adams, wrote in one of his many intellectual exchanges with his wife, Abigail: “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics andphilosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture,navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their childrena right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,tapestry and porcelain."
I have long been intrigued by Adams’ sociopolitical graduation, captured 163 years later in Abraham Maslow's model, the Hierarchy of Needs. Through sacrifice, hard work, intelligence and war, conservatives build the foundations on which liberty can flourish. Subsequently, the compromises of majority rule naturally tend toward losses in that liberty. And when their sons’ sons focus all their attentions on self-actualizing, conservatives come to realize that the foundations need adjusting.
So back to my football analogy; I hope to see conservatives rain aggressive plays all over the field like a million short passes from Peyton Manning. We have surrendered far too much ground. It is time that Americans remember the basics and become champions once again.
Go Broncos!
“A question. Is it sin in the eyes of God to be ‘married’ in the realm of the church without the legality of the state or is ‘state’ approval necessary for ‘righteousness’? Just a question....”
The marriage sacrament performed by a Priest or minister is all that is necessary. Render unto caesar and all.
The Catholic church (what I’m familiar with) can and does perform the marriage ceremony without state licenses in certain circumstances. Other churches do it as well. In the 20th century some states prohibited issuance of state licenses to mixed race couples, while the churches would marry the couples anyway. It wouldn’t be state sanctioned, but had the blessings of the church.
“Your religion or lack of it has nothing to do with being legally married in America.”
And conversely, failure to obtain a marriage license from the state has nothing to do with marriage in the religious sense. Your church may or may not require you to get the license. It’s up to them. They can perform a religious marriage ceremony with or without it. At their discretion.
The solemnization of marriage that you’re talking about has to do with the state licensing procedure. A judge can perform it, no religious involvement is necessary.
The question is why are you so all fired up to have your spousal relationship sanctioned by the state? Don’t you see that by doing so you’ll be allowing it to be equated to a relationship between Bob and Tom or Jane and Lucy.
Your information isn’t accurate.
I’m not aware of a state that allows clergy to perform “legal” marriages without a marriage license (or marriage certificate, or formal notice, to be recorded by the govt.) required.
As far as that quote about North Carolina law, it wasn’t about state licensing procedure, it was about the freedom of choosing who could marry you, it did not have to be an Anglican priest, or any religious leader.
“”After the American Revolution, couples could choose a clergyman or a Justice of the Peace to solemnize their marriage. The laws of 1778 provided that, in addition to the Anglican clergy, “all regular ministers of the Gospel of every Denomination,” as well as Justices of the Peace were “empowered to celebrate Matrimony””
Why would they want to be involved in a filthy government marriage the could include queers or who knows what else, in fact they should refuse to perform marriages for couples that have obtained a license. The churches should take back that power.
Registration by the state invites in all kinds of state meddling including the DHHS.
None of their freakin' business.
No the question is, when we are in the very midst of a national political struggle of trying to stop the gay agenda and gay marriage, you guys are playing the most silly and childish games of wanting to talk about some ridiculous fantasy.
If you are so all fired up to not have a marriage recognized by law, then you can do that already, what is stopping you?
Seriously, if you don’t care if your marriage complies with law, then don’t go through the steps to get government recognition of it.
I have said this for awhile. Marriage is a religious rite, not a civil right. Even if the state invalidated my marriage, Mr R and I would still be married - because our marriage is a covenant between us and God, not us and the State and no matter what the state says - that won’t change.
I saw that happen to several homosexual ‘couples’ in California. The fight was all they cared about.
Government role in marriage existed long before that, for the protection of children and women.
IF?? Sadly we did that a long time ago in this country. Yes there are still Christians but most of the country has gone far from God.
//Like, who is responsible for the care and support of the children who re the result of this union? If one or both parents abandon the duties, at what point does the greater community step in?
All these disputes, and other matters like inheritance, or property ownership, or even separation of parties with irreconcilable differences that may very well lead to mayhem or murder, //
We have DNA now, paternity can be proven outside of marriage (which wasn’t always the case)
Same with other disputes. All can be handled legally without a marriage license. The queers can legally set up everything that state marriage provides already through various contracts and things like medical directives and power of attorney. For them, it is forcing acceptance of their behavior and forcing themselves into our religion and violating our religious freedoms. Time to take that power away.
That was my point, not necessarily to you but to others posting. What is sacred; established by God, doesn’t change. That which is secular; government, social protocol,’religion’, can/does change on whims. My marriage legality is not dependent upon what some state nitwit thinks or says because that opinion/laws can and do change with ‘pressures’. I don’t need the title of Marriage from the state to make my marriage real and ‘legal’ for me and mine. Nearly all of the social/economic benefits from a ‘state’ sanctioned marriage can be had via civil law contracts. Considering that state definition of marriage is changing to a point where it is losing significant meaning, really what is the point to having ‘state approval’?? Do people actually think that the foundations of society will crumble because relationships don’t have that ‘state seal of approval’? Hint: despite the sordid history of humanity’s best endeavors at destroying itself, we are still here. There is NOTHING new under the sun when it comes to the human condition. Unless we become a Theocracy, I agree with you that the state should be out of the marriage business.
There are plenty of women who would agree to it.
Yet our government punishes those who are married. Obamacare is a great example of that and just the latest one.
It doesn’t need to be moral capitulation, in fact it would take power away from the gay agenda. I would still be the same moral person with or without the government giving me a license to enter into an agreement that I made with my husband and GOD.
It is not about marriage but about control for them. After this will come polygamy (I had a gay professor of mine tell me this long before prop 8) and Utah just overturned a good part of its anti-polygamy law (which they don’t really enforce anyway). It is all about them forcing Christians to do what they want, take away the means of control (state sponsored marriage) and you take away a good part of their fight.
Well said and agreed.
Back then there was no paternity or DNA testing and women had no real legal rights, so state sanctioned marriage was for the benefit of women and children. That is no longer needed legally - like it or not.
If marriage is properly put back into the church as a covenant agreement, they would not need to marry. Why would non-religious people enter into a covenant with God?
//Is it sin in the eyes of God to be ‘married’ in the realm of the church without the legality of the state or is ‘state’ approval necessary for ‘righteousness’? //
Absolutely not. There were marriages long before the government got involved (as in the Bible). Marriage is a commitment to each other and to God, a covenant. That has nothing to do with state approval or disapproval. Gays can for states to allow their sham ‘marriages’ but they will never be married in the eyes of God simply because that is not God’s standard for what marriage is.
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