SMorg

First – the biggest victim in all of this is Bristol Palin. A relatively normal kid who does what teenage kids inevitably and biologically do – and now she is going to end up paying the price on the national (and world) scene. This kids life is ruined – and not by having a baby, but by the TMZish media blitz she is going to encounter for the rest of her troubled life.

Questions:

What would possess Sarah Palin (who voted against birth control, sex education and womens reproductive rights) to hide the fact that their teen daughter is pregnant and not married?

What would possess the McCain camp to not thoroughly check out this family before putting them in this position?

What does it say to ‘conservative’ values that something like this – which happens to thousands and thousands of families very day, I’m sure – is now going to allow the Right to demonize the Palins and their daughter?

Religion needs to stay out of politics – period.

This is my problem with the new conservative movement – it’s all about religious and unrealistic moral views. Everything is black and white and rigid. There’s no room for being human. They eschew these Christian values while being hypocritical to the extreme. Old Conservatism wasn’t like this – it was about having values and trying to live up to them. Now it’s ‘do as I say, not as I do’.

None of this is about taxes, or oil or war – it’s about what they think is right and what they think is wrong. But the problem is that while they have their Bibles out, they only have the Old Testament open. They are no better than the religions that don’t allow women to go out in public without covering themselves or stone women to death for being raped.

This crap is the reason why I was a registered Republican until this year. Conservatives used to be for doing the right thing and not forcing others to conform to their structure by governing their actions – now it’s do it our way or else.

I know a little something about being on the downside. I’ve been dirt poor, have had to beg for help from friends and family and strangers – and yes, I’ve had to depend on government sponsored programs in my younger days. Maybe that’s why I don’t see it as a hand-out, but as a hand up. there is absolutely not a single person in this world that hasn’t had to rely on someone else to move forward.

Oh, and I’ve got news for you: if you’ve ever been on WIC, gotten the Earned Income Credit on your taxes, gotten a student loan, gotten food stamps or been to a public health department (for birth control or a vaccine or a flu shot even) – you too have gotten a ‘handout’ – how exactly are you better than anyone else?

This whole election process has been a struggle – personal freedoms versus jingoism (stay in Iraq or let them govern themselves). Morals against personal responsibility (gay marriage, abortion). Beliefs versus associations (Hagee, Wright, Ayers). What would have been viewed as conservative views in the past are now liberal and what is now conservative used to be fundamentalism.

There is such a bizarre dichotomy in what people think. They don’t want gun control, but they want less crime. They want to pay less taxes but want schools to be better. They want freedom of speech but call the ACLU ‘commies’. They want fewer teen pregnancies but won’t teach sex-ed. They want monogamy but can’t stay faithful. They want the truth but only if it is accompanied by a tiny American flag.

It’s time to realize that the world isn’t black and white and it’s time to take back our freedoms without being subjected to the mores of people who can’t even keep their own houses in order.