I see a lot of posts on social media or on the Internet telling that I am going to be disgusted or shocked at the latest outrageous act or statement of some politician or celebrity. I don’t much like reading them. For one thing, I think that I am able to decide for myself what I find to be disgusting or shocking and I really don’t need someone else telling me how I should react to someone’s actions or even whether I should care. For another, I am actually starting to be a little disgusted at this point of view in which people are always finding reasons to hate or distrust one another and always assuming the worst possible motives for their political opponents’ actions. Maybe we would all get along better if we stopped trying to find reasons to be outraged. Besides, most of the time, the alleged outrages are so minor or petty, I can’t imagine wasting the time or effort to have any emotion at all about them.
So, when I read this column at the Daily Wire about the latest outrage from Chelsea Clinton, I did not feel ill, as the headline suggested I should.
Sunday, Chelsea Clinton, stumping for her pro-abortion mother, showed she has learned her lessons well from her parents, as she offered a Byzantine defense of Hillary Clinton’s supposed faith.
Chelsea Clinton, in an attempt to limn her mother as a religious person, told an audience at a fundraiser that the reason she left the Baptist Church as a child stemmed from the church’s discussion of abortion when she was six years old. She wheedled, “I find it quite insulting sometimes when people say to my mom, my dad or me . . . that they question our faith. I was raised in a Methodist church and I left the Baptist church before my dad did, because I didn’t know why they were talking to me about abortion when I was 6 in Sunday school — that’s a true story.”
Uh-oh. When a Clinton claims something is true, watch out for what else is in the bag.
I see no particular reason to doubt her story, though it does seem unlikely that a six year old girl would be mature enough to decide to leave her parents’s church over the question of abortion. I doubt many six year olds have much of an understanding of the issue, though perhaps Chelsea Clinton was precocious. She is, after all, the daughter of the smartest woman in the world.
But I don’t really care about her religious or political views, and I wouldn’t bother writing this post except for the next section in the article.
Sure enough: “My mother is very deeply a person of faith. It is deeply authentic and real for my mother, and it guides so much of her moral compass, but also her life’s work.”
And: ‘I recognized that there were many expressions of faith that I don’t agree with and feel [are] quite antithetical to how I read the Bible. But I find it really challenging when people who are self-professed liberals kind of look askance at my family’s history.”
Now, if the child of a Republican presidential candidate had said that her parent was very deeply a person of faith who was guided by her faith, the progressive left would have a fit. The candidate would be denounced as a card carrying member of the Religious Right in all the usual media. There would be accusations that the candidate was planning to overthrow the sacred constitutional doctrine of absolute separation between church and state (found nowhere in the actual words of the first amendment, but in one of the penumbras that only left wing jurists can see) and institute a Christian theocracy. Editorials would be written which explain that in the secular government that our founding fathers created, no office holder should permit his private religious views to have influence over his actions and decisions because that would be the worst sort of religious discrimination against those who do not share his views. If the candidate’s religion has negative views on leftist hobby horses such as abortion or gay “marriage”, he would be called to repudiate the beliefs held by his more unenlightened co-religionists.
Hilary and Chelsea Clinton can say that Hilary’s faith motivates her and provides guidance, yet somehow this isn’t an offense against decency and democracy. If the progressives didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Related articles
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- Internet comments are where too many bullies come to play. Isn’t there a better way? (bridgemi.com)
- President Obama Removes ‘God’ from Pledge of Allegiance? (snopes.com)
- Obama Snubs Scalia, Jets Off to See Fidel (radio.foxnews.com)
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