The other day I mentioned the “Religious Right”, and figured it deserved some clarification. As it is entirely possible that I am using this term differently than the rest of the planet, please allow me to explain my usage.
I don’t have any problem with either the Religious or the Right, the problem lies in the 2 distinct — yet similar — groups of people who use one of those adjectives to further the agendas of the other.
Example one: the Republican Party falls firmly within the Right group. They play up the Religious side to get people who fall in the Religious group to vote for them. This is clearly evidenced by the huge amount of focus given to the topic of abortion — a topic that really should have nothing to do with a presidency — by the Republicans, thus ensuring that everyone against abortion know who they have to vote for. They have just used religion to further their political ideals.
Example two: James Dobson falls firmly within the Religious category. He routinely uses politics as the basis of his speaking out, thereby telling the Religious voters which Right candidates to vote for, thus “getting his way.” He doesn’t like something, so he does something about it by getting all the other people who don’t like it — in many cases because he himself said they shouldn’t — to vote for the guy who doesn’t like whatever that thing is — whether or not he has anything to do with that thing. He has now used politics to further his religious ideals.
It now occurs to me that this process is actually circular; if there were only one of these groups, very little would ever get done. Boy wouldn’t that be nice.
Which one of these groups should we be working to get rid of in order to bring about the utopia I accidentally thought of?
