Friday, April 12, 2013

conservatism vs. the "Religious Right"



I don't know if it would be accurate to call it a "pet peeve" of mine but ... I recently visited a Faceblücher page for conservative atheists. It may not seem like it but I am sympathetic with the problems many atheists have with religion and various religious ideas. What I found was a place for libertarians to mock religion. Big turnoff. It's also disappointing to me that some religious conservatives can't find some common ground beyond "this country was founded on religion" and seem to go out of their way to unnecessarily alienate agnostics and many 2nd generation Americans of other cultures. I personally might feel that my common sense ideas is rooted in the religious traditions in which I was raised, but the appeal to common sense is the broadest appeal. So I simultaneously want to explore the ability of religious people to not have their religious culture squelched in the name of "freedom" but I also want them to realize that there is a larger world. And I would like to explore how libertarians and secular conservatives can choose community-imposed values over federally-imposed values. There is a lot of room for Big Tent thinking without rejecting social conservatism for "Big Government libertarianism."


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