Freedom and Liberty

My favorite blog site, The Belmont Club, by Wretchard has, as always, an interesting entry on Republican's usurping Jeffersonian freedom from the idealistic Democrats. He references an article by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times .

Although Ignatieff plainly wants to see freedom spread, one of the sources of his unease is the role of God, or something like it, in the missionary endeavor. How much better it would be, he seems to ask, if any claims to universality or transcendence could be kept out it. Then we could bring the Europeans and the Canadians in on it.

This is where I personally have a problem with the Conservative wing of the Republican party. I'm not religious by any means, in fact I would describe myself (as in previous posts) as more of a spiritual philosopher attuned to Zen Buddhism. So when I hear the politicos talking about religion, I'm VERY concerned. Don't get me wrong. I don't give a sh*t about the Ten Commandments or even pray. Hell, I send my children to parochial school for goodness sakes!! But I do balk at the Righteousness of the Evangelical Right. I've known too many hypocritical pious jerks to swallow their crap without at first fighting my gag reflex.