Bill Maher, on America's self-styled "values voters:"
.. If you could look at the war in Iraq, the melting environment and the descent of America into idiocracy and still think our biggest problems are "boobies" during the Super Bowl and the "war on Christmas," than you don't have values, you have issues.
If you had values, you'd draw the line at torture, but a startling number of people who call themselves Christian don't. And I'm pretty sure if you asked, "what would Jesus veto?" it wouldn't be health care for sick kids.
Why, it's almost like values voters don't believe Jesus was right about anything - "Jesus Christ- wrong on gays, wrong on taxes, wrong on torture and wrong for America."
Maher was commenting on the weekend's Values Voter Summit, a Washington conference of far-right activists, which included courting exercises with many Republican presidential hopefuls.
The organizers of the Summit described it as:
... A rallying event for patriotic Americans who want to transform the political landscape on issues such as the sanctity of life and marriage, immigration reform, religious freedom, health care, radical Islam, judicial activism, geopolitics, the media and much more. All 2008 presidential hopefuls and a number of noteworthy conservative leaders have been invited to speak.
From my vantage point, everyone is a values voter. These people have no monopoly on that.
Conservative columnist George F. Will, got it right in a May, 2006 commentary:
An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.
This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
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