Do we really want to do things the American way on moral issues?
Most people would agree that the United States has a toxic political culture. Bernie Sanders, who is in the UK this week, points out that both blue and red are eyeing big money. The information space is completely dominated by echo chambers, making reasoned political debate more unlikely than ever. Political institutions are in what appears to be permanent partisan control.
All this catches up with the binary nature of the political system. Most of the problems given are win-lose scenarios, with extreme politics taking over. Whether it’s healthcare, gun ownership, or the debt ceiling, depolarizing approaches lack incentives and are not perceived as victories. Rarely is this more true than in so-called “moral” issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and transgender issues (I say so-called moral because all important political issues are moral).Michael Wear, a former adviser to the Obama administration, written Ironically how the power of both Republican and Democratic movements worked to undermine the bipartisan work to reduce the number of abortions. What both sides could agree on was that they didn’t want to work together.
Who wants British politics to look like this? Well, like the British public.
When Kate Forbes threw her hat in the ring for her leadership of SNP and her position as Prime Minister of Scotland, questions were raised about her support for progressive positions on same-sex marriage, gender self-awareness and having children in wedlock. The issue of women as church leaders.
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Forbes, a member of the socially conservative Free Church of Scotland, takes a conservative stance on these issues. Several of her MSPs withdrew their support, and her outgoing leader Nicola Sturgeon clarified her own views. Majority opinion… People look to the Prime Minister to see someone who will stand up for them and their rights. A prime minister’s day-to-day work includes responding to matters based on his position, values, and outlook. ”
In recent years, SNP has been trying to build a twin-engine aircraft. These engines are the cause of Scottish independence on the one hand and socially progressive policies on the other (but they fail to provide a coherent answer to Scottish independence). nevertheless). Difficult questions about gender identity contribute to general malaise. So you can say, “Hard cheese, Kate,” and many people do.
The position of prime minister is one of national leadership, and the national leadership that the SNP seeks to provide was full support for the LGBT+ community. The proposal, with competent leadership, Tory-dominated Westminster and growing public confidence, has won every Scottish parliamentary election since 2007.
Based on a long-standing Christian perception that loyal morality doesn’t necessarily need to be enacted into law, Forbes’ willingness to say she doesn’t act on these principles is, at least in Twitter circles, a sign of her It seemed to come to nothing. Liberalism has its limits, and for someone with a conservative religious sensibility, it would be difficult for him to lead one of the major parties, certainly the Left. .
In response to the campaign, Theos, a religious and social think tank, asked YouGov to share the beliefs and views of adults in the UK that, in principle, they should be barred from holding senior public office. The results were informative.
More than one in ten of us (11%) believe that being Catholic should not be allowed to hold public office. Perhaps strangely, given the historical anti-Catholicism in British culture, this position had the lowest level of opposition.
Additionally, 13% feel the same about Orthodox Jews, 16% about Muslims and 19% about evangelical Christians. In other words, nearly one-fifth of people believe that, in principle, evangelicals should not be allowed to hold high government offices. Ten years ago, the results would have been very different. It is now evangelical Christians, not Muslims, who are considered the Other. Amazing in itself.
The poll also highlighted some interesting differences in how voters of different political parties answered the question.
Labor voters are much more likely than Tory or Liberal Democrat voters to oppose figures of religious conviction in the top government offices (1 in 4 Labor voters surveyed). would disagree, compared with 17% of Tory and Liberal Democrat voters). They are also more likely to believe that evangelical Christians should not be allowed to hold important government jobs (26% said they felt so). The Labor Party – the party of Keir Hardy, Blair and Brown – has bigger and bigger problems with religion. Thanks to Methodists over Marx? Do you have an active Christian movement as an affiliation? These things seem to be less and less important to the constituency of the government’s likely next party. Having fought hard to banish one form of religious prejudice, it’s entirely possible that Starmer’s Labor will embrace another.
As with SNP, so with Labor. Many would argue that it is just the price to pay for maintaining a socially conservative view. I think Labor would be a stronger party if it remained what GDH Cole called “a broader movement to replace the dogs at the bottom”. Another way is that we do things the American way, mapping social conservatism to economic liberalism, or worse, suggesting people find a home in a movement beyond the political mainstream. That’s it.
Obama was able to find the words to reach out to his pro-democracy-leaning supporters (probably 3 in 10 Democrats) with empathy. In other words, he was much better at engaging the moderate portion of the evangelical, socially conservative Catholic vote. Why did so many people (some of whom were Obama supporters) overwhelmingly vote for Trump? There’s the fact that I asked you to vote and Hillary Clinton didn’t.
Given Forbes’ struggle for SNP leadership, we should ask ourselves what kind of politics we prefer. Obama-style politics of consensus and movement building, or Trump-style politics of polarizing using wedges of social problems. , involves customerist submission to some groups and atavistic otherization to others.
i know what my answer is
these are, YouGov
https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2023/03/03/on-moral-issues-do-we-really-want-to-take-the-american-way/ Do we really want to do things the American way on moral issues?
