Shaping the Debate

I love the fact that Juan Williams works for Fox News. His commentary and input gives Fox News programs a balance of viewpoints lacking on other news networks. Juan has always been one of the few liberals in the mainstream media that actually attempts to explain liberal ideology. One cannot fault Juan when his attempted explanations usually come across as rationally weak. Modern liberalism has little basis in reason or logic which makes it very difficult to make a coherent argument in favor of your position, but he does at least make the attempt. His approach of true and open dialog is somewhat rare for pundits on the left. Most on his side of the debate resort to leveling unfounded allegations and ugly smears at those who disagree with them because it is easier to demonize a political opponent than it is to convince others of the superiority of your own ideas.

Thursday night during the Republican presidential nominee debate, however, Juan resorted to a tried and true tactic often employed by the left. That is: posing cliché, personal faith questions to conservatives and Republicans that are rarely asked of candidates of the other side.

This is something you can expect to see a lot more of as the debates move on to other, more “mainstream” settings. “Do you believe in God” or “Do you believe in evolution” or some other question of personal faith. The unasked, but blatantly implied question being “are you one of those ignorant, extremist, conservative Christians who want to ban abortions and don’t believe in evolution?”

I eagerly anticipate the day when a candidate does not attempt to dodge the question. I believe they would garner a great deal of respect and support from the American people if they attacked the question head-on and with complete honesty.

First, they should reject the premise of the question.

You are asking if I am a Christian? I say without any hesitation and with pride that, yes, I am a devout Christian who believes in the salvation offered by Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection. If you wish to know that, just ask it. The sneaky, insinuating manner in which so many ask that question belies the true intentions behind it. You believe the American people will immediately draw the conclusion that I am an ignorant person who does not believe in evolution, same sex marriage or that I believe that a woman should not have the “right to choose”.

Well, I reject the premise of your question. For decades now, liberals and the left leaning mainstream media has been allowed to frame the debates surrounding these questions.

For instance, they've shaped the abortion debate into a debate about a woman's right to choose what she does with her body. That's not what it is about for myself and millions of other religious people in this country. It was never about women's rights. The debate should have been wether abortion was murder or not. After all, I don't think any person, liberal or conservative, atheist or religious would say that murder is not wrong.

Think about it, even Mr. Obama said in a 2008 debate that “no one is pro-abortion”. He said that abortion should be the last resort and that it was a “deeply moral choice” for individuals to make. If a fetus is simply a soulless lump of tissue and flesh, why would it be a moral choice? Why should it be the last resort if the debate is only about a woman's right to choose? Religious people have problems with murder... not woman's rights, as the left has been allowed to frame the debate.

The debate over evolution and the public school's teaching of alternative scientific explanations for the origins of life has suffered a similar fate. Many claim that conservatives just want to turn schools into religious recruitment centers by introducing the theory of intelligent design into the school's curriculum. This notion is absurd. In fact, the debate over intelligent design has been shaped by those who have taken up an almost religious devotion to the theory of evolution.

Questions about the differences in macro evolution and micro evolution aside, asking if one “believes in evolution” or if one “believes in evolution as the origin of life” are two very different questions. Even the most ardent atheists should admit that despite the title of Darwin's book, evolution doesn't address the questions about the ultimate origin of all life.

Even the world's most learned men are seemingly reduced to far-fetched speculation when asked where the very first organism at the very base of the evolutionary tree came from, given the astronomical odds against a perfect mix of chemicals and conditions in the primordial ooze. Scientists haven’t been able to replicate this in well-equipped labs with the perfect conditions carefully constructed and the exact chemicals placed in the manufactured “primordial ooze”. Such an organism would have also had to have popped into existence immediately with the ability to reproduce, further reducing the odds of coincidental creation. As seen in Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled”, even renowned atheist and scientist Richard Dawkins could come up with no better explanation than “alien seeding”. Alien seeding would constitute “intelligent design”, by the way.

Of course, I would have only gotten to the end of my first paragraph before the harsh buzz of the moderator's bell reminded me that I only had 90 seconds to answer... but, hopefully, my point is made.

I didn't really get to same-sex marriage, but that deserves a blog all on it's own. My position on that may surprise some and merits some exposition.

For too long, we conservatives have allowed liberals to shape the debate in their terms. We cannot afford to do this any longer. We must remember that the large majority of Americans share our principals and sensibilities. Poll after poll has shown this to be true. We truly are the silent majority and as long as we coherently articulate our positions, the only way we can lose is if we allow others to define our policies and core beliefs, as they will surely try to do. That is the only way they can win and they know it.