What then?

How does that help us with the Iraq mess? How does that help our growing deficit and burden we continue to build for our children and grand children to pay? How does that help the folks still reeling from Katrina? How does that solve global warming? How does that solve our addiction to fossil fuels? How does it stop the shrinking middle class? How does it address terrorism, nuclear proliferation, genocide in Africa? Where is there any discussion of AIDS? What about the trade deficit, bird flu, outsourcing of jobs?

And what about the accountability of our legislators to be honest, forthright and transparent? After all, they are the ones creating the laws the activist judges overturn.

Well, when you have Tom Delay as a keynote speaker at Pastor Rick Scarborough’s 'The War Against Christians and the Values Voter 2006' Conference in Washington D.C. late March 2006, it is really hard to take this seriously. Oh that’s right, Tom Delay didn’t do anything wrong, he is just one of those Christians under attack. By the way, Rick Scarborough, for those who don’t know, is founder of the religious activist group Vision America, contributor to the Values Voter’s Contract With Congress, and author of the book, “Liberalism Kills Kids”.

And he thinks he is under attack!

I worry about people who can take a belief system based on an unyielding faith and twist it and turn it until they can justify an ideology that spews purposeful fear like liberalism kills children. It is the same machinery that fifty years ago clamored against desegregation and inter-racial marriages in the name of Christ. Before that the scourge was women voting. These were all a by-product of the same traditions they so eagerly want to return this country to; when women and coloreds knew their places and Jews lived quietly in the shadows.

Now it will be homosexuals, activist judges and apparently liberals who will find themselves on the outside of “traditional values”. And if I were black or female, I’d be a little wary about jumping on the Value Voters bandwagon.

It’s one of the reasons I’m no longer religious.

In a world where the wheels seem to be coming off right now, it just strikes me that the focus of this contract is all about reclaiming the good old days, when white male privilege was in full stride.

It has little to do with fixing anything.