Bob McDonnell, GOP Gubernatorial Candidate in the OD: Thesis of a Crackpot
Wow, we really do grow 'em crazy 'round these parts. (We are the state that came within a hair's breadth of electing Ollie "I Am A Batshit Crazy Person" North to the U. S. Senate... Top that, Alabama!)
As you've probably heard already, McDonnell wrote an M.A. thesis in evangelical somethingorother at Regent "University" back in '89. In it, he:
Comes out against feminists (natch)
Comes out against working women
Comes out against legal birth control for unmarried couples
He wrote, inter alia:
More from the Post:
Creigh Deeds, on the other hand, is a sane, centrist fellow and, I might add, a staunch defender of the Second Amendment.
Dang. I was hoping this was going to be a race I didn't have to care about.
Obviously I have once again over-estimated the GOP...
Wow, we really do grow 'em crazy 'round these parts. (We are the state that came within a hair's breadth of electing Ollie "I Am A Batshit Crazy Person" North to the U. S. Senate... Top that, Alabama!)
As you've probably heard already, McDonnell wrote an M.A. thesis in evangelical somethingorother at Regent "University" back in '89. In it, he:
Comes out against feminists (natch)
Comes out against working women
Comes out against legal birth control for unmarried couples
He wrote, inter alia:
"Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state," he wrote. "Historically, the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment were intended to prevent government encroachment upon the free church, not eliminate the impact of religion on society."Yeah, I actually do think that it's time to get rid of the myth of the separation of church and state alright. Nothing more un-American than that old saw. State-sponsored Buddhism, I say!
More from the Post:
He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach "traditional Judeo-Christian values" and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. ... And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.
"Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of nonparental primary nurture of children," he wrote.
He went on to say feminism is among the "real enemies of the traditional family."
At one point McDonnell was "widely quoted" as saying that "homosexual activity raised questions about a person's qualifications to be a judge"...
He called for the repeal of the estate tax and for the adoption of a modified flat tax to replace the graduated income tax. Awarding deductions and distributions based on need "is socialist," McDonnell wrote.
Creigh Deeds, on the other hand, is a sane, centrist fellow and, I might add, a staunch defender of the Second Amendment.
Dang. I was hoping this was going to be a race I didn't have to care about.
Obviously I have once again over-estimated the GOP...
posted by Winston Smith at
7:41 PM
4 Comments:
"Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state," he wrote. "Historically, the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment were intended to prevent government encroachment upon the free church, not eliminate the impact of religion on society."
Yeah, I actually do think that it's time to get rid of the myth of the separation of church and state alright.
Actually, he's right about that one. There's a difference between "church" and state [as in sectarianism], and "the impact of religion on society."
But I meself would vote for an alternative if I had one, even if he said that stuff 20 years ago.
Agree with TVD on both counts (!)--the church and state paragraph, standing alone, can reasonably be parsed in an un-radical way. However, I'm not convinced that the government is a significant cause in "eliminating the impact of religion on society." I can list several other influences well before the government.
That said, the other quotes from McDonnell's master's thesis demonstrate some astonishingly bad rationalization.
-mac
Update:
to be fair, I've now read the WaPo article, and it mentions that one of McDonnell's daughters served in Iraq, and that both are independent-minded. It's evidence that he's done some hard thinking on this topic since he wrote his nutty thesis.
This doesn't mean I'd vote for him over the Democrat--on the contrary!--but I wouldn't necessarily hold a 25-year-old masters thesis from Regent's against him. He said his thesis was punching a ticket--an "academic exercise"--and later evidence indicates its at least largely true.
-mac
"eliminate the impact of religion on society" is a straw man. Those of us who want to keep church and state separated (most of us, anyway) want to keep religious and government institutions separate. It would be impossible to keep religious people out of government roles, and they inevitably bring their beliefs to the job with them, just as non-believers do. (And separation does not privilege secular beliefs over religious ones, not at all.)
Believers who work in government should keep in mind what their jobs are empowered to further. Evangelism while working? Easy to say no to. Deep values questions such as religious prohibitions on abortion are harder. But "God says" is not a good secular reason to make a law.
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