closetpuritan

10:46 pm: OK, Hillary Clinton, that's it...
Hillary Clinton has ties to a sketchy, creepy, cult-like group called The Family. Perhaps you've heard of it; I had read this article earlier. Basically, its main goal is power. It wants to use that power to destroy the separation of church and state. It considers Hitler and the Mafia role models (purely in terms of power acquisition, of course).

I only heard about her "Family Ties" in the last few days, in this article by Barbara Ehrenreich, but it was first reported in a Mother Jones article from September.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

You'd think that as a Republican, Specter would be more conservative than a Democrat like Hillary Clinton--even if he's a "maverick" Republican. Well, on the other hand, as a Republican, maybe Specter felt he had to be more careful to show that he wasn't soft on terrorism. Because in my opinion, if you're a cop who's refusing to guard an abortion clinic because of your religious beliefs, you might as well just come out and say, "I support terrorism as long as it's in line with MY religion." And if you're supporting a bill that makes exemptions for people who support terrorism as long as they feel it benefits the goals of their religion, that implies that you support terrorism too, as long as it's in pursuit of the "right" goals.


The Mother Jones article also had a couple of interesting quotes that reminded me of some of the things I find most infuriating about Hillary Clinton:

Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose "politics of meaning" Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator's ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. "There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there's no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay."

Of course, no matter how much Clinton speaks of common ground, she doesn't stand a chance of winning votes among pro-lifers. As Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council, command central for Washington's Christian right, told us, movement conservatives consider legislation like Clinton's Putting Prevention First Act, which supports greater access to birth control and sex ed, "just another condom giveaway."

But the senator's project isn't the conversion of her adversaries; it's tempering their opposition so she can court a new generation of Clinton Republicans, values voters who have grown estranged from the Christian right. And while such crossover conservatives may never agree with her on the old litmus-test issues, there is an important, and broader, common ground—the kind of faith-based politics that, under the right circumstances, will permit majority morality to trump individual rights. The libertarian Cato Institute recently observed that Clinton is "adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism." Clinton suggests as much herself in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, where she writes approvingly of religious groups' access to schools, lessons in Scripture, and "virtue" making a return to the classroom.

Personally, I'd consider the Cato Institute right-wing/libertarian rather than purely libertarian--it usually speaks out for libertarian causes that align with right-wing causes, but not ones that align with left-wing causes--but I think they hit the nail on the head with that quote. If Clinton is the nominee, her authoritarianism and her creepy association with The Family means I probably will be voting for McCain. Not that McCain doesn't have his own wacky spiritual connections, but at least--so far as I've heard--he's not fraternizing with The Family...

Oh, and by the way, Maine governor John Baldacci also has Family connections.