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!
Zactly...
I think you beat us to the personal by telling me I should go ahead and not get married. It’s too late for me. I’ve been married for half a century and will be married to my wife until the day I die. However, if some monetary circumstance - such as health care premiums - were to become financially crippling because we are legally married, it would be worth the hassle for us to obtain a (meaningless to us) civil divorce. The government’s view of our marriage does not change its sacramental nature.
The problem is these things are already happening whether we agree with them or not. Two men live together as husband and wife all the time. I have one of those households in my own neighborhood. We can't change that. What we can change is the government telling us that their unnatural relationship is equal to the sacramental one that my wife and I have.
“The Oklahoma Democratic Party released a statement Monday opposing a Republican representative’s bill about marriage. The statement said the bill promotes “hatred, bigotry and discrimination.”
From here:
Freegards
“That capitulation on moral issues is not a good thing.”
It’s not a “capitulation.” It’s a victory for religious conservatives.
By having no civil marriage in Israel, we have avoided having gay marriage in Israel.
“Are you living in Israel?”
I do live in Israel, yes. Born and raised there.
At this moment, however, I am training US pilots how to use certain targeting equipment at a US Airbase in the lower 48.
Excellent. Thanks.
” Maybe this is an issue that Israel needs to learn from us on.”
Why on Earth would Israel want gay marriage?
We don’t and won’t have gay marriage (despite a large queer Left probably more radical than in the USA) due to the removal of the secular state from the religious rite.
I did not ignore their statements. I pointed out that in spite of their statements that our country would not survive without Christianity, the founders chose not to legislate it into the Constitution. Their writings tell me that they were keenly aware of the dangers of immorality but still chose not to enshrine Christianity into law. Why would they do that unless they feared government power more than immorality?
“So we should just finish the job?”
I think we all agree that gay “marriage” should not be recognized.
We are disagreeing on how to not permit such an abomination.
Me, I see modern Western government as inherently liberal and, if allowed to progress and englarge, evil.
The solution to prevent government’s invasive tentacles is not to try to harness it for good, but rather limit it such that it cannot do evil.
Exactly!
Don't make things up, I didn't suggest people not marry, I only informed that they have always been able to call themselves married without complying with the law, if you want to do that then do it.
You describe two men living together, well they could do that in 1776 and 1976 and the year 1000 and call themselves married if they wanted to, they couldn't comply with law though, it wouldn't be legal.
This is what he said.
“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.”
Not in any state that I’m aware of.
As I posted. “”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.””
“Not in any state that I’m aware of.”
I think you’re either having a great deal of difficulty understanding this concept or are intentionally being obtuse. I’m tending towards the latter. But on the off chance that you’re simply not understanding, I’ll try to explain it one more time.
There are really two forms of marriage. The first type is sacramental marriage is performed in a church or temple. It is a religious ceremony. For those of us who are religious, it is the important marriage. IT DOES NOT REQUIRE A MARRIAGE LICENSE. It is a religious ceremony, hard stop. You can get married in a church WITHOUT a license. With Sacramental marriage you are married in the eyes of God and that church, but it is not a state sanctioned marriage. From the point of view of the state, you are not married.
There is also civil marriage that is licensed by the state. This is the secular marriage that has become so popular with homosexuals. It is not sacramental marriage and need not be performed in a church. A judge can do it. You have to get a license to get a civil marriage. Civil marriage is also required for you to be considered married when dealing with taxes, inheritances, etc. From the point of view of a CHURCH you are not married if you have the civil marriage but not the religious marriage ceremony.
Most people are BOTH sacramentally AND civilly married. That is they get a marriage license to get state recognition and then they have their marriage performed in a church to do the sacramental marriage ceremony. Ministers can and usually do obtain authorization from the state to solemnize state marriages. So in effect they’re doing BOTH types of marriage at the same time. That’s the tradition in the US. It is NOT required to do both at the same time and some people choose do either SACRAMENTAL or CIVIL marriage but not both.
There is no legal requirement whatsoever to do a SACRAMENTAL marriage if you are civilly married, and conversely there is no legal requirement whatsoever to obtain a CIVIL marriage license if you are SACRAMENTALLY married.
In other countries you must do the civil and religious ceremony separately. The US merely simplifies the process for most people who want to do both.
The point that this article seeks to make is that the state should get out of the marriage business entirely, and I agree with that. There is nothing much to be gained by civil marriage at this point which cannot be obtained by carefully structuring your affairs. For those who are religious, the SACRAMENTAL marriage is what matters anyway.
Wow! I had no idea that our federal tax laws were retroactive to the beginning of time.
I seldom comment on ignorant statements by others but yours have to be at the all time top of the list.
A stable family is important to a stable society. Governments for thousands of years kept track of who married who and not just for tax reasons.
If you accept the idea a family of one man and one woman raising children is good, then it is a minor thing to give that family a tax break.
But governments has long been in the “marriage business” certainly longer then there were federal taxes.
Why not just tell me of a state where the clergy can marry two single people without the paper work, so that I can look it up?
I told you that I am not aware of any.
Exactly, societies do not exist without marriage law, whether it is tribal law, or a state religion's law, or government law, or whatever, the society has to have marriage laws.
Why we are wasting time pretending that we are going to get the GOP to start campaigning (and winning) on erasing marriage and divorce law in America, removing marriage from the public space entirely, is ridiculous.
Saying it's ridiculous doesn't make it so. The state already deals with what was formerly the domain of marriage and divorce laws (i.e. custody and property distribution) without a marriage or divorce ever having taken place.
i support getting the state out of marriage as a nuclear option. sadly we may be at that point already.
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