Stop Believing in Stuff!

I hate the idea of moderates. Not moderates, but the idea of being a moderate. I hate having to listen to how wonderfully learned they are, how they have weigh both sides and have come up with a third way, how it would all be so easy if people would just compromise their principled views. They need to listen to people who totally disagree with them and just want them to give enough ground so that their stance becomes hollow and meaningless. I love Mort. I watch his shows on FOX News. I love how he rattles off a list of "extremist" views that the messianic Moderates should save us from ourselves on in this article, and while I might not agree with each of these positions allow me to defend the evil goose-stepping "extremists." Mort believes political moderates predominate in the U.S. electorate, and must rise up and assert themselves. Mort suggests:

1. In the Republican Party, they ought to defend Frist over embryonic stem-cell research. Even though the research's promising promise of promisingness can never justify murdering what could easily be a life form according to the pro-lifers.

2. Republican moderates also ought to start speaking up for "emergency contraception" before the right makes banning it a litmus test of party loyalty. Yes, because there are no pro-choice Republicans out there, and, of course, that whole life begins at conception thing is just a silly superstition that can be easily side-stepped. Let's not forget that the GOP should be for contraception because the other side has been sooo understanding of the abstinence push.

3. Someone in the GOP ought to tell Bush that "intelligent design" is not a true scientific theory on a par with evolution. And moderates need to fight at the state level to prevent "ID" from being required teaching in biology classes. Bush didn't say that really, and ID is a theory only because it cannot be proved affirmatively--but regardless of what class its in evolution and scientific thinking is not endangered by giving evolution political context. Besides should we be crossing the scientific line when we ask questions like where did this world come from?

4. Except for Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Unity Coalition, does anyone in the GOP dare to come out for civil unions for homosexuals and to resist the party's reliance on gay-bashing to win elections? There's still no difference between civil unions and marriages in the sense of endorsement, and once you create a "marriage-lite" that is less in line with traditional values you're undermining marriage and encouraging the Mormons.

5. It's almost impossible for a pro-choice candidate to get the GOP presidential nomination, but anti-abortion mania could be the undoing of the party in the long run if Bush installs a U.S. Supreme Court that actually overturns the Roe v. Wade decision, as the religious right expects him to do. If current nominee John Roberts proves to be a vote against Roe, it will take only one more rightist appointee to ignite struggles in every state to ban abortion. Polls show that two-thirds of the electorate wants Roe to remain the law of the land. 1) They still think it's murder, Mort. 2) Bush, if you hold him to his word, will install a Justice that sticks to the Constitution and stifles the "whiffs and smells" method of finding fundamental rights--so, if the Justice says abortion isn't a right, it isn't because Bush told him or her to do it. Hell, we should all hope that the Justice goes in their and looks at abortion, Justices are suppose to tell us what the law is, not pussy-foot around a tough issue like some wimpy Moderate!