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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Its kinda sick and they seem prone to do bad things.
Do you ever personally look at pornography?
Yes.
Would you look down on someone who had an affair while married?
In most circumstances. Do you believe sex before marriage is morally wrong?
No.
The fifth question was whether religion was very important in the voter's life.
Not organized religion per se.
My dubious response if premised rather on the fact that I see Republican clumsiness, rather than the moral issues, per se, as a major factor in these reactions. Had we had more skilled spokesmen, who understood what is really essential and what is not, in terms of traditional sexual values, and discussed the underlying issues from that vantage point, many who reacted negatively to what they saw as a repressive attitude, would not have done so.
It is too late to go into this at great length at this time. My own views on sex and sexual conduct are reflected in my writing; and while on the surface may seem too liberal for some of my fellow Conservatives; properly understood, are really more Conservative than almost anyone else's. (See, for example, The Feminist Absurdity, for example.)
Let me, however, for the sake of brevity, simply suggest what the Republican response to the five inquiries should have been:
Do you believe homosexuality is morally wrong?
Most certainly. However, I do not believe it to be the function of Government to go out of its way to harass people suspected of certain private practices with other adults. On the other hand, we cannot accept the studied campaign in the media and entertainment industry, to make us accept homosexuality as normal. [Put the emphasis where it should be, on who is actually picking on whom there.]
Do you ever personally look at pornography?
My viewing habits, as yours, are no one's business but my own. However, I think Society does need to act to protect children obtaining distorted images, at ages when they have no basis on which to judge or really understand what they are seeing. Society has always acted to protect the innocent, and that means some strictures on what may be shown where and to whom.
Would you look down on someone who had an affair while married?
I ascribe to the policy of trying not to judge the personal lives of other people, where their actions do not involve me. As a gentleman, I really do not want to know anything which could compromise the reputation of any woman (whether wife or mistress). That does not mean that I approve of particular conduct. It does mean that I believe in a non-judgmental privacy. What the media appear to be promoting, of course, is a whole other subject.
Do you believe sex before marriage is morally wrong?
I am not a hypocrite. Nor have I ever judged the girls who accommodate bachelors by a harsher judgment than those bachelors. On the other hand, there are valid moral reasons for a double standard, which reflect both natural and moral concerns--both as to the birth of children and the strength of the marital institution--which is vital to a healthy society. It is just not for me to be judgmental of any individual. (On the other hand, I take a very negative view of people having children out of wedlock, and expecting others to support them.)
The fifth question was whether religion was very important in the voter's life.
Yes. But I do not judge those, who feel that they cannot believe strongly in anything they cannot see.
I realize that my answers will seem a gross "cop out" to some. But they reflect not only my personal tolerance, but an understanding of where Government in a free society can and cannot go. I can assure you, also, because they are indeed my responses, that I have no problem with expressing them and explaining them to those whom the writer suggests would otherwise reject the more Conservative candidate.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I seriously question that. If it's so, why is sexual experience among teens being curtailed? Why is the number of abortions on the decline? And why is popular enthuasiasm for abortion so obviously on the downside? I know that my wife and I vote Republican because we were so repulsed by the excesses in which our generation indulged. I can't help but think that some of those "experienced" folk whom the author cites may likewise question the wisdom of what they did when they were less mature.
"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." -John Adams
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." -Thomas Jefferson
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." -James Madison
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." -Samuel Adams
"Your supposed right to destroy yourself infringes on my right to pursue happiness, being sad at having to sit by and watch people needlessly suffer and die. When you abrogate the unalienable right to life, doing so abrogates my unalienble right to pursue happiness, being sad at watching people needlessly suffer and die." -The Forecastle
"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man." -Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom...go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -Samuel Adams
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." -William Penn
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." -Patrick Henry
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined," -Patrick Henry
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." -Thomas Paine; 1776
"[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." -Daniel Webster
"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain blessings. Much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to, so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass. The Great Governor of the Universe has led us too long and too far to forsake us in the midst of it. We may, now and then, get bewildered; but I hope and trust that there is good sense and virtue enough left to recover the right path. " -George Washington
"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for these are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history." -- Will and Ariel Durant
"It felt like I was in the Roman Colosseum."- Patricia Heaton
Just what kind of restrictions against Americans' sexual automony are Republicans going to persue at the national level?
Even some of the most hard-core social conservatives on this site don't support sex laws on the national level, wanting them instead on a state level. You could arguably point to Federal anti-abortion laws, but those only concern sex in a very indirect way, and opinions are still split pretty evenly in this country on that matter.
. . . because the Republican Party is the party not of the rich but of the middle class.