Here is the second installment in a series. The first was this => PRESIDENTIAL PROS AND CONS: IDENTITY POLITICS
The subject here is freedom of religion.
Hillary Clinton
Some people have taken an extract of the video above to demonstrate that H. Clinton is an enemy of religious freedom. Here is an example.
The video clip raised the ire of Snopes.com, of course. So their post, Twist of Faith, rated clips of this sort as “False”, claiming they were taken out of context. Is Snopes.com correct? No. TheDailyCaller.com provides a counterpoint here, Hillary Lets The Veil Slip: Religion Is A Problem To Be Disposed Of.
Think about H. Clinton means when she says this.
And deep seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.
Doesn’t H. Clinton mean she is going to use the force of government to shove her beliefs upon the rest of us? Where is there any indication in H. Clinton’s career that she would let the Constitution stand in her way?
- Watch the top video carefully. What H. Clinton preaches to her fellow women is that government is their messiah. Instead of asking women to put their faith in God, she offers herself as the deliverer of government handouts. Of course, she makes it sounds like the ladies deserve all the goodies she offers, but they don’t. Nobody does. Besides being too costly, H. Clinton’s Utopia just won’t work. What has proven to work perfectly? Nothing in this life. However, where people honor a Christian code of ethics — revere their relationships with God, their spouses, their children, and their friends and neighbors — they live blessed communities. It is much more efficient for us to rely on each other than it is to rely on government handouts.
- The first video includes a reference by H. Clinton to the Hobby Lobby case. H. Clinton stated she did not like the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case. The judges decided that Hobby Lobby did not have to provide a health insurance plan for its employees that included four potentially life-terminating drugs and devices. Since the law violated the religious convictions of the owners of Hobby Lobby, the judges decided the government had no right to force them to pay severe fines.
- H. Clinton is a huge advocate for so-called homosexual rights. See her own web page => LGBT rights and equality. When there were none to be found, judges found homosexual rights in our Federal and in many state constitutions. Is there any doubt H. Clinton would appoint more such judges? Do we really want H. Clinton, a so-called women’s rights advocate, to force us to allow transgender men into the ladies room? What kind of government would even want to do that?
- H. Clinton is The Teacher’s Candidate (Slate), that is, teachers unions. School choice is a religious issue, and the teachers unions hate it. Many parents see what is happening in the public schools, and they do not want to expose their children to the values being taught there. Check out Hillary Clinton’s web site. She will enlarge the role of the Federal Government in education, from early childhood through K-12 and college. If you think the indoctrination is bad now…..
Donald Trump
What pops up when we search the Internet on “Donald Trump” and “religious freedom”? One of the search engines will spew out a series of articles from National Review. That’s a Conservative publication that does not much like Trump. Therefore, we see articles like these.
- Trump Will Not Protect You from the Democrats on Gay Rights
- For Traditionalists, a Dark Night of the Soul
Did this article, Senator Lee Introduces a Bill to Protect Religious Liberty, represent a change of heart National Review? Whose got time to figure that out?
On his website Trump does not feature religious freedom as a big issue. Instead, he has Constitution and Second Amendment web page. Here is how that begins.
DONALD J. TRUMP’S VISION
Constitution
Appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court who will uphold our laws and our Constitution. The replacement for Justice Scalia will be a person of similar views and principles who will uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.
- Defend the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States. Nobody is above the law.
- Uphold our freedoms, constitutional values and principles that our country was founded on.
- Protect our Constitutional liberties.
- Protect and defend the bill of rights, including the freedom of religion, speech, press and right to bear arms.
View Donald J. Trump’s list of Supreme Court Justice Picks, here
(continued here)
Trump rightly views his judicial picks as a freedom of religion issue, and that is most certainly true. He has given us a list of judges. He has offered us a bargain. We vote for him we get his judges. We vote for H. Clinton we get her judges, and we don’t have to be told what that means.
Here are a couple other interesting items from Trump’s website.
- ONE JUDGE AWAY FROM LOSING RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: HOBBY LOBBY CEO
- Issues of Importance to Catholics
- Trump Campaign Announces Evangelical Executive Advisory Board
Trump has made no secret of the fact he wants the vote of Conservative Christians. He has asked for it, and has offered us a prized plum, Conservative judges on the Supreme Court.
Furthermore, Trump will work to repeal the Johnson amendment, Donald Trump’s push to repeal Johnson Amendment buoys religious freedom advocates. That is, Trump will fight to revoke legislation that prevents churches from participating in the political process.
LifeNews.com seems relatively happy with Trump.
- Hobby Lobby CEO: Christians Will Lose Their Religious Freedom if Donald Trump Isn’t Elected
- Donald Trump: “I Will Protect Religious Freedom and I Don’t Care If That’s Politically Incorrect”
The basic trouble with Trump is that he is hardly what anyone would call a model Christian. However, as some have observed he seems to realize that.
Mr. Trump frequently touts his support from evangelicals but jokes that he might not be the ideal model of piety. In his RNC speech, he said he is not sure he totally deserves the support he has received from the community. (from here)
Who would have thought that running for president just might — might — teach Donald Trump a little humility?
With respect to freedom of religion, what is the biggest complaint about Donald Trump? Here is an example: Trump’s Attack on Freedom of Religion. Trump is suspicious of radical Islamic terrorists. The obvious fact that they kill people bothers him. So he does not want to allow immigrants into our country from nations with lots of Islamic terrorists.
Look into our history. When we established freedom of religion in the United States, what were people worried about? They did not want the national government to establish an official church of the United States, like England had done. The framers of the Constitution were worried about rivalry between different Christian denominations. They had no notion whatsoever of inviting hundreds of thousands of Muslims into our country, and they gave Congress the power to absolutely control who is allowed to immigrate to this country. If Congress wants to prohibit the immigration of Muslims, the Constitution says they can.
The Democrats invented the crazy notion of open borders so they could get more cheap labor for their rich donors and register more reliably Democrat voters. What the Democrats are doing is an attack on religious freedom. What about the Americans already here? How does it benefit us to invites hordes of people into our country who don’t want to assimilate our culture? Why would we risk the chaos of bringing terrorists of any kind into our country, particularly terrorists who kill Christians? If we know that the majority of terrorists these days claim to be followers of Islam, that just makes it a little easier to identify them. Only dummies throw away clues like that.
Citizen Tom 
Stephen – I agree that nothing in the Constitution precludes third parties. (For that matter nothing in the Constitution prohibits only one party such as in China). Unlike parliamentary systems, all the mechanics of our Constitution inevitably just trend toward two parties.
There is nothing the Consitituion that requires political parties at all, and by some reports, as you say, the Founders really may not have wanted them. The two party system probably was an unpredicted (although it was probably quite predictable), unintended natural consequence of not just how the president is chosen, but of the creation of our squabbling separate coequal branches of government with a bicameral legislature. The Founder’s purposeful systemic fragmentation of power naturally coalesces organizing power in the two major opposing political parties rather than in one branch. Competitive forces require at least two parties whereas the organizing power required to control one or more of the three branches (or even one house of the legislature) in order to get anything done forces the number down to the banners of just two actual political combatants.
By contrast, in a parliamentary system such as Great Britain has, all three branches of government are essentially controlled by the House of Commons. A coalition of parties compromises to form a majority under the banner of one main party and that coalition within the House of Commons chooses the executive branch. Even Britain’s Supreme Court is just a part of parliament. Any parties not within the coalition are simply and completely out of power and out in the cold as long as there is confidence in the government or elections of MP’s do not turn the tables again.
It is all the multifarious constitutional process systemics that inherently drives toward two parties, not any particular consitutional mandate. As such no one thing would allow a multiparty system. You would have to change the whole structure. Because of two party gridlock, I read an article in Foriegn Affairs magazine some time ago where the famed socialiogist and political scientist, Francis Fukuyama actually proposed we go to a parliamentary system. Don’t think that is going to happen any time soon.
Stephen – I apologize if I appear to be casting as systemically quixotic what, given what I know about the ASP, seems like principled alternative to the somewhat corrupted twin party machines. I admire the effort, but systemically it is what it is, and, if you intend to roll back the advancing tide, you should at least understand all the tidal forces and currents that you are working against.
Tom- how many deals with the Devil would evangelical Christians be willing to make to get a few Supreme Court appointments?
Trump said he would appoint nominees who would overturn Rowe vs. Wade so as to return regulation of abortion to the states. However, it is already difficult to get a D and C abortion in most deep red states, and abortion on demand will still be widely available in most highly populated blue states. And what about abortifacients such as pills – don’t you think they will easily cross state lines? Without wading in to the absolutist moral morass that is the abortion debate, don’t you think that you give up much and gain little in this bargain with Trump?
Don’t you also find it interesting that the evangelical students at places like Liberty University are rebelling against their leadership for striking such a sick compromise with someone as blatantly abhorrent to every other Christian principle as Trump is?
Clinton is above God in her elitist secular mindset, in my opinion.
Regards and goodwill blogging.
“Elitist secular mindset”? Is that another way of saying Methodist? 😉
No, it another way of saying Progressive Far Left Democrat, with an desensitized amygdala, in my opinion.
https://rudymartinka.com/2016/10/27/king-solomon-scientific-proof-why-politicians-lie/
Regards and goodwill blogging.
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.” G.K. Chesterton
I’m a big fan of G.K. Chesterton. Whenever I read him, I wonder how he would react to the political circus we have today.
Something like this:
https://aspva.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/seeking-solidarity-solidarity-in-the-days-when-conservatives-left-conservatism/
This is a little off topic for this post, but because you mentioned it in your link here, the real logic against having a third party is not fallaciously circular, as your meme implies, it is almost entirely systemic. It’s kind of like asking a quarter to land on something other than heads or tails. It might happen, but systemically, it is exceedingly unlikely.
Unlike parliamentary systems, our constitutional systemics do not incline toward a multiparty system. Everything about the constitutional process and the way our government is actually set up trends inevitably towards the binary.
There ultimately are inexorable constitutional systemic reasons why Lincoln’s Republican Party replaced the Wigs rather just going on with three parties. The establishment inertia against it happening is tremendous, however, out of some big enough crisis, your American Solidarity Party possibly could someday rise to replace one of the two parties just as the Republicans once replaced the Wigs during a crisis, but until then, it will be a useless protest vote that in reality just helps elect one of the two candidates that you obviously don’t favor more than it helps the other.
The unfortunate side effect of our two Party sytem is that it also sometimes tends toward polarization, such as we are seeing now, that makes working compromise difficult. (Your ASP reflects just such a difficult principled but difficult compromise). If Judge Posner is to be believed, however, compromise inevitably comes as middle voters punish at the polls the one of the two Parties that swings too far toward any extreme. And then the pendulum swings back the other way for a while. Sometimes the two parties even flip positions.
I guess we’ll see if Donald Trump represents something dangerously new in this system, or if perhaps there is something about modernity that has made this political polarization permanent. Lately, I’m finding hope that Posner continues to be correct in his model of how our democracy actually works when it works best. A massive defeat of Donald Trump will give me some faith that our wonderful, but far from perfect, constitutional system is chugging along just as it should.
“Unlike parliamentary systems, our constitutional systemics do not incline toward a multiparty system.” Constitutionally, there is nothing that prevents a third party. Statutorily, third parties are specifically gutted. It is no wonder that nearly every third party has as one of its planks election reform. You will recall that the constitution originally stated that the vice president would be selected from the runner up in the election but it was changed because Adams would not have Jefferson as his vice president. Observe:
“The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representatives from each State having one Vote; a quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.”
The framers had originally designed a system that allowed a plurality but because of partisanship, eventually was discarded. Restoring that system would greatly improve the chances of a third party win and force the parties to work together.
The states have specifically passed laws so that it favors the two main parties. In Virginia, they only officially recognize two political parties; all others must register as PACs.