M
Maranatha
Guest
The Wilberforce Republican
THESE days the closest thing that liberal America has to a civic religion is “tolerance”. Emit the merest whiff of prejudice against Welsh-Americans or “the transgendered community” and you risk committing social suicide. Deliver a succession of windy speeches on the wonders of “diversity” and you are likely to end up as the president of an Ivy League university. However, as conservatives always point out, one group of people has been conspicuously exempted from this cult of tolerance: heart-on-the-sleeve Christians. In many of the more politically correct parts of America you can say anything you like about the God squad—dismiss them as poor, uneducated and easily led; ridicule their leaders as money-grubbing Neanderthals; hint that they spend most of their spare time dressed in white sheets—and you will still be welcomed in polite society.
Any liberal American who believes these stereotypes should spend some time studying an outside bet for the Republican nomination in 2008. Sam Brownback, the senior senator from Kansas, ticks all the right Christian-conservative boxes. He is strongly opposed to both gay marriage and abortion. He won his Senate seat back in 1996 by campaigning on the “three Rs”—reduce (the size of government), reform (Congress) and return (to traditional values). He hails from a state that liberals regard as embodying everything that has gone wrong with America. To cap it all, Pat Robertson regards him as “outstanding”.
Yet the more you study Mr Brownback the more surprising he becomes. He may represent a landlocked state in the Midwest, but his biggest interest lies in foreign policy—and in particular in fusing diplomacy and humanitarianism. He is second-to-none in Congress in campaigning against the horrors that have been unfolding in Darfur in western Sudan, and in pleading the case for addressing HIV and malaria; he has been a relentless critic of the North Korean regime (“if hell is the absence of God,” he once said, “I think you can see North Korea is the closest place to that on earth”); and he has sponsored legislation against sex trafficking. And these sermons are based on experience: he is a frequent visitor to some of the world’s most troubled places, urging people to take their holidays (or “impact trips”, as he calls them) in Rwanda rather than Europe.
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THESE days the closest thing that liberal America has to a civic religion is “tolerance”. Emit the merest whiff of prejudice against Welsh-Americans or “the transgendered community” and you risk committing social suicide. Deliver a succession of windy speeches on the wonders of “diversity” and you are likely to end up as the president of an Ivy League university. However, as conservatives always point out, one group of people has been conspicuously exempted from this cult of tolerance: heart-on-the-sleeve Christians. In many of the more politically correct parts of America you can say anything you like about the God squad—dismiss them as poor, uneducated and easily led; ridicule their leaders as money-grubbing Neanderthals; hint that they spend most of their spare time dressed in white sheets—and you will still be welcomed in polite society.
Any liberal American who believes these stereotypes should spend some time studying an outside bet for the Republican nomination in 2008. Sam Brownback, the senior senator from Kansas, ticks all the right Christian-conservative boxes. He is strongly opposed to both gay marriage and abortion. He won his Senate seat back in 1996 by campaigning on the “three Rs”—reduce (the size of government), reform (Congress) and return (to traditional values). He hails from a state that liberals regard as embodying everything that has gone wrong with America. To cap it all, Pat Robertson regards him as “outstanding”.
Yet the more you study Mr Brownback the more surprising he becomes. He may represent a landlocked state in the Midwest, but his biggest interest lies in foreign policy—and in particular in fusing diplomacy and humanitarianism. He is second-to-none in Congress in campaigning against the horrors that have been unfolding in Darfur in western Sudan, and in pleading the case for addressing HIV and malaria; he has been a relentless critic of the North Korean regime (“if hell is the absence of God,” he once said, “I think you can see North Korea is the closest place to that on earth”); and he has sponsored legislation against sex trafficking. And these sermons are based on experience: he is a frequent visitor to some of the world’s most troubled places, urging people to take their holidays (or “impact trips”, as he calls them) in Rwanda rather than Europe.
more