Faith-Based Pandering

[kliljedahl]

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, April 19, 2005; Page A19

Totally by mistake, I was summoned to meet Sen. Bill Frist shortly after he first arrived in Washington. This happened because someone in Frist's office confused me with the congressional affairs correspondent of the National Journal, Richard E. Cohen, but I stayed to meet Frist anyway and found him impressive. Time and tide have changed my view. He is now the Senate majority leader and an undeclared but neon-lit presidential candidate who is getting into shape for the long run to the White House by shedding anything that weighs him down. In his case it's principles.

Frist initially led the Senate's effort to keep poor Terri Schiavo alive even though every court that had heard her case had concluded she was, technically and sadly, dead. Now Frist will be joining a telecast that will attack Democrats as being hostile to "people of faith." It will focus on the filibuster, which the Democrats have used to block 10 of George W. Bush's 229 judicial appointments. Some of the nominees are quaintly anachronistic in their views but to a person I assume they believe in God and therefore cannot be opposed no matter what else they think or do.

<snip>
I am pausing now to wonder if the phrase "people of faith" is meant to include Muslims with several wives, Hindus with several deities or even the odd person here and there who believes, as I am sometimes tempted to, that God can be found in a pint of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch. But I think somehow that "people of faith" is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews, who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64467-2005Apr18.html


http://www.kliljedahl.net

[rodeodance]

1. yes, he is right-there will be excusionary practice

...But I think somehow that "people of faith" is meant to embrace only conservative Christians and maybe Orthodox Jews, who are sometimes lumped together as Judeo-Christians. People of faith, you may rest assured, are people of their faith. All others need not apply.