Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Day 8: 15 Day Atheist Challenge
What's your political alignment? Does your atheism influence influence how you vote and how you feel on issues? I'm a Democrat. Big surprise, eh? I've always considered myself to fall in the moderate-to-liberal range, and my general political philosophy hasn't changed much since my first election in 1980, when I cast my first presidential ballot for John Anderson. Since then, the Overton Window shifted so far to the right that I look like a raving Trotskyite. Back when the Republican party contained actual moderates, I voted for a few, such as Pennsylvania senator John Heinz. The Republican party as it is now is far too lunatic to even consider supporting one of their candidates. Maybe they'll surprise me in the future. Atheism is nothing more than the belief that there are no gods. I generally do not decide how I feel about a candidate based on my atheism, and I generally don't care what a particular candidate's faith is. However, when I see a politician who wears his faith on his sleeve, or makes statements about the United States being a "Christian Nation," the alarm bells start ringing. UPDATE: Via gyma at Spork's place, this is what I'm talking about: (alarm bells and such) Huckabee has just been caught on video, at a Christian supremacist conference, stating that Americans should be forcibly indoctrinated at gunpoint. The organization which hosted the “Rediscover God In America” conference, United in Purpose, has edited Huckabee’s comment from footage of his speech, but not before People For The American Way’s Kyle Mantyla captured the unedited footage, in which Mike Huckabee states, “I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced–forced at gunpoint no less–to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it.”
Labels: atheism
