CALLS AGAINST THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT!

Funny coincidence today. George Will in The Washington Post and Vanity Fair's Christopher Hitchens, in today's The Wall Street Journal, both state warnings in op-ed pieces for Republicans against the power of the religious right and its affect on the party. Typically, these aligned stars happen at least once a year between movie studios, such as when "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" both came out during the same summer or "Absolute Power" and "Murder at 1600". Obviously, you can assume script ideas are stolen or general ideas passed around so much this commonly happens in Hollywood, but between media outlets is just odd timing.

The Christian Complex

The Washington Post
By George F. Will
Thursday, May 5, 2005

The state of America's political discourse is such that the president has felt it necessary to declare that unbelievers can be good Americans. In last week's prime-time news conference, he said: "If you choose not to worship, you're equally as patriotic as somebody who does worship."

So Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes and a long, luminous list of other skeptics can be spared the posthumous ignominy of being stricken from the rolls of exemplary Americans. And almost 30 million living Americans welcomed that presidential benediction.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Americans who answer "none" when asked to identify their religion numbered 29.4 million in 2001, more than double the 14.3 million in 1990. (full article)

Why I'm Rooting Against the Religious Right
Save the Republic from shallow, demagogic sectarians.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Thursday, May 5, 2005

I hope and believe that, by identifying itself with "faith" in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, a runaway element in the Republican leadership has made a career-ending mistake. In support of this, let me quote two authorities:

* The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100%. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. . . . Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some god-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." (full article)