Moral obligations are not the same thing as national obligations. And fulfilling one's moral obligations by invading other countries can lead to unintended consequences. What's that? You don't know what "unintended consequences" are? Okay, here you go.
Unintended consequences are outcomes that are not (or not limited to) what the actor intended in a particular situation. The unintended results may be foreseen or unforeseen, but they should be the logical or likely results of the action. For example, students of history often conjecture that if the Treaty of Versailles had not imposed such harsh conditions on Germany, World War II would not have occurred. From this perspective, one might consider the war an unintended consequence of the treaty.
You see, when you campaign for ideas like "taxes are bad" or "poor people are too fat anyway," sometimes there are consequences, like people suffering or infrastructure crumbling. Or you vote for Bush and our country is at war, in debt, and--now this is the important part--considered immoral for creating so much death and destruction.
We can also see the basis for Megan's moral foundation; God tells you what's right or wrong, because nobody could actually figure out what is good and what isn't without His Glorious Morality.
I can't see how you can have any sort of meaningful faith and divorce it from
your voting decisions. Religious faith is supposed to tell you, among
other things, what is right and wrong. How are you supposed to vote
without reference to your notions of goodness?
Well, let's think. Stealing and murder and lying hurt people, so they're wrong. Wow, that was easy! And I didn't need to drag a single archaic deity into it.
[Heavily edited after posting.]
3 comments:
Wow. "Not very bright" is an understatement. Megs doesn't understand how someone can separate their politics from their faith? Here's an example to start with: I personally think abortion is wrong and wouldn't have one. I do, however, think other people are entitled to draw different conclusions based on their own circumstances and therefore think the procedure should be legal.
Is that so hard to understand? Sigh. At least she spelled "skeptical" right in this post, instead of using the British spelling like in the last post you quoted.
I can't believe it's this hard to understand. And why would a person need to vague up "agnostic"? And how can someone who's obviously never spent five minutes thinking about theology have the gall to discuss it in a public forum?
So many questions, so little to work with.
Writing about things when she doesn't have a clue seems to be Megan's adopted niche, even if she doesn't know it herself.
As you've pointed out before, why wouldn't Megan -as a paid journalist - possibly approach the issue by interviewing religious leaders for their thoughts on the subject or what not? Hell, at least e-mail one of those nuts at the National Review or World Net Daily for a comment or something.
Not only are matters of faith and governance two totally separate issues for me, it's actually pretty damn important that they remain that way in a country that's supposed to be religiously pluralistic.
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