The Internet just collapsed. It could be the first shot in the second Korean War, but I doubt it. In fact, CNN is still running repeats of Piers Morgan’s conversation with one of the Reagan kids. I think the interview might be the most telling symbol of American culture I’ve encountered all day. See, Reagan is a representative of a dying breed of American. The old boy GOP is littered with close-minded individuals who wish to push forward their own biblical sense of morality and law as governmental policy.
The term we use these days is conservative, but I think even that belies a truth we are unwilling to face. In fact this country was founded by people who wanted to be progressive (for the wealthy at least to remain wealthy) and conservatism was about sticking to the language of that close to the vest political policy. Today’s conservatives are more concerned about defending their own perceptions than anything else. The gay marriage debate is a wonderful example of this. The line most conservatives are towing is. “this ought to be called something other than marriage, because it demeans the name of what we have proclaimed under God.”
It is easy to rip into that argument. Lets begin with marriage being a legal construct. If the laws of the nation are to be secular, we must not make them with ‘what God intended’ in mind. Secularism is a way of determining law in the absence of religion as opposed to a tool to reinforce it.