Views » July 18, 2005

The Immoral Majority

By Susan J. Douglas

Back in the late ’70s, the Republicans learned that if you hailed people as “taxpayers” rather than citizens, and appealed to their meaner instincts, you could convince many that they were downright righteous to withhold their money from supporting the common good.

Why should hard-working, responsible people who never themselves got a “hand-out”—as the line went—see their hard-earned dollars spent on child welfare, public schools or, worst of all, abortions for women who could not afford them? With this last gambit, the Republicans launched on their long and successful campaign to insist that the spending of Americans’ tax dollars pass a morality litmus test.

So it is hardly surprising that Congress’s avatar of virtue, Tom DeLay, was adamant that Americans consider embryonic stem cell research “immoral,” and therefore feel that it is “morally indefensible” to use their tax dollars to support this research. The usual phalanx of smooth-faced, Ken-doll-coiffed evangelicals blanketed the airwaves with this same mantra: Taxpayers would be morally outraged to have their money spent to “destroy life.”

They are, well, dead wrong. Polls vary, but approval for stem cell research has actually increased over the past five years, and approval goes up the more poll respondents know about the issue. Last summer, a Harris poll showed 73 percent of Americans supporting stem cell research, and a Pew Center poll in May showed 65 percent support among those who had “heard a lot” about the issue. Even 45 percent of Republicans support the research.

But I find myself warming up to this taxes and morality equation; the Democrats should steal it immediately. And the savings would be enormous: If those of us in the true moral majority withheld our tax dollars from spending that we find immoral, the deficit would shrivel up.

For example, a recent CNN poll found that 57 percent of Americans said it had not been worth going to war in Iraq, an increase since January. Many of us feel that it is highly immoral to have spent at least $180 billion to terminate the lives of 1,700 U.S. soldiers and probably more than 100,000 Iraqis, and to further destroy the lives of thousands of our soldiers who have returned home horribly maimed and injured. Carrie Gordon Earll of the right-wing Focus on the Family asserted in her opposition to stem cell research, “Federal dollars should not be used to destroy young humans. “

Hey Carrie, Amen. It is morally indefensible that our tax dollars have supported the elimination of electricity, water, jobs, health care and basic safety of thousands of Iraqis. This moral outrage must stop.

Millions of us—at least twice as many more than the “culture of life” zealots who are against stem cell research—oppose the death penalty. Again, various polls show support declining—46 percent favor life without parole versus execution. And talk about squandering our tax dollars immorally: One estimate put the cost of New York’s death penalty (reinstated in 1995) at $160 million, or $23 million per person sentenced to death. A Tennessee study estimated that death penalty trials cost 48 percent more than trials seeking life imprisonment. In other words, the death penalty is a wasteful government program.

How about the morality of giving tax cuts to millionaires while 11 million kids have no health insurance? While the Democrats have been terrified to take on the Bush tax cuts, polls show that 54 percent of Americans feel the federal tax cuts have not been worth it because they have increased the deficit and caused cuts in federal programs. Your and my taxes go to paying a whopping $317 billion in interest on the national debt. Note to Democrats: These tax cuts are morally indefensible. Say so.

Do the “culture of life” people feel it is moral to despoil the land and then make taxpayers clean it up? Team Bush is now allowing mining companies to dump toxic waste on public lands without liability. According to The Progress Report, “More toxic waste is produced by hard rock mining than any other industry in America.” Who pays for clean up? You and I—our tax dollars at work.

And finally, while Donald “I-know-no-shame” Rumsfeld called the Amnesty International report condemning conditions at Guantánamo “reprehensible,” what is truly reprehensible is that our tax dollars support the ongoing incarceration, humiliation and torture of detainees there. The usually spineless Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) has belatedly called for Gitmo to be shut down, but not on moral grounds. Yet millions of us are sickened and mortified that these practices are conducted in our name.

The religious right wants to talk moral values and taxes? Let’s bring it on. Every time Team Bush and their flock want to fund more wars, torture, economic inequality and environmental ruin—all of which terminate life—they should hear one phrase back right away: morally indefensible.

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• Reader Comments

  Amen!! An excellent repudiation of the right-wing’s “moral” rhetoric. This article shows that morality for the right-wing is constrained to two issues: gay marriage and abortion, which are hardly the most pressing issues facing this country today. To the right-wing, values and morals are constrained to private life, such as a women’s personal reproductive choice and what two consenting adults choose to do in their own bedroom. Liberals must show that they too have values and morals, just in a different set of society: that of the public sector. Liberals must shift the values debate to the public arena and assail the Republicans for their clear deficit of those values. Susan Douglas does an excellent job of pointing out where those deficits reside.

  Posted by Bud on Jul 18, 2005 at 3:20 PM

  good to see there are some people here who share my hatred for the christian nazi media. anyway, i’d like to spread the good news about something from the dark arts that has blown my shit for the past ten days. my stepmom reads tarot in san jose and one of her friends who is wrapped up in the dark arts recently sent me two authentic wanga dolls - an exorcist wanga and a controlling wanga. i’ve been tripping power ever since, man.

  i muled meth for two years before i said fuck it and lifted a load from boss and went on the lam. it’s been pretty hot since and when i got these wanga dolls the first thing i done was to exorcise that motherfucker whose been on my tail. sure enough he got pumped with a nine outside of a club in fresno that very night. now i’m sitting on enough meth to ski down.

  as to the other wanga doll, i met this dancer at high heels in burbank and i’ll be damned if i didn’t cast a love spell on her with that doll. she’s got some sort of magical pussy cause she came five times in a night and i don’t even have but a regular size cock. that pussy’s like a waterfall it’s so wet all the time. and now she won’t touch nobody but me.

  anyway, i seen where some folks are trading parts on this site and if anybody’s got a whole F kit ...i know somebody who’d pay top dollar. 831.277.9873

  keep carrying the banner for doom metal and check out my list of favorite black metal albums below. they’re all stripped down wicked, diabolical, and totally blasphemous.

  borknager - blood on ice
  dark throne - olden domain
  mayhem - pure fucking armaggedon
  thokk - of rape and vampyrism
  twin obscenity - where light touches none
  ogarth - rape, kill, pillage, and burn
  blind death - pulverize
  thorr’s hammer - velvet darkness they fear

  “i live at right angles to the people i meet”
  - blaze

  Posted by Lefty on Jul 18, 2005 at 4:34 PM

  go ahead you silly liitle liberals compare Christians and conservatives to nazis like the five year old morons you are. America is absolving and cleaensing itself of the sill socialistleft. What you awnt more taxes for abortions and gay indoctrination? go to hell- you will never steal my money for your socilaist crap. i have not paid taxes in years It is your patriotic duty to avoid and lie about taxes. Taxation is theft plain and simple. The less money the government gets the less the liberals get to use against Ameerica and decent Ameericans. You left wingnuts are in your own little world aren’t you?? liberal scum. no more taxes- less government, no friggin asshole liberals. get used to it.

  Posted by anti-liberal on Jul 18, 2005 at 4:41 PM

  The second post was not Lefty at all. Rather, it was a posting by a sick, twisted, and perverted miscreant who has NO BUSINESS writing that kind of filth on this website!!!!
  Anti-liberal, therefore you must conclude that progressives do not compare conservatives to Christian-nazis.
  Taxation is not theft because it is not illegal. Taxation is legalized in a minor document called the CONSTITUTION! If you think taxation is theft, then what are roads, schools, police and fire departments, public parks, and national defense? Giveaways from GOD? Give me a break! Society cannot function without a government subsidized by the people. It is not socialism to believe that. Tax money does not promote a “gay agenda, ” whatever that is. You may disagree with public funds being used for abortion, but then you must be opposed to far greater public funds being used to kill innocent Iraqi children. Right?

  Posted by Bud on Jul 18, 2005 at 6:14 PM

  The last time I checked, anti-liberal, liberals have not crafted a federal budget since the year 2000, over five years ago. Why then would you not want to pay taxes if a right-wing social conservative is in the White House? Most of your tax dollars are going to defense, do you disagree with the President on that? I do, but I still pay taxes anyway, because it is the obligation of those who benefit from a civilized society to contribute towards it maintenance.
  You prove my conception of conservatives/libertarians everywhere- anti-intellectual, mentally devoid polemicists who despise rational discourse because they are incapable of partaking in it!!

  Posted by Bud on Jul 18, 2005 at 6:20 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 42 posts.

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