Coyote Blog on how "Politics Negates Belief"

There's always a risk of it. Partisan politics demands allegiance. Elections are the ultimate numbers game after all. If a candidate for public office can't count on the support of fellow party members, who can he count on?

However, when does allegiance trump integrity?

Warren Meyer of Coyote Blog considers the question:

I have always felt that it is really, really difficult and rare to become actively political without sacrificing consistency in your deeply held beliefs, particularly since both parties represent such an inconsistent hodge-podge of positions. The irony of this has been, at least until the advent of blogging, that I could be smug about maintaining my philosophic virginity but I left myself no avenue to make any impact with my strongly held beliefs.

Given this, I was therefore struck by this, from Cathy Young at Reason, writing about Yale's future Taliban student:

One striking aspect of this controversy is the reaction from Yale's liberal community. Della Sentilles, a Yale senior, recently wrote a piece for the Yale Herald denouncing such manifestations of rampant misogyny at Yale as the shortage of tenured female professors and poor childcare options. On her blog, a reader asked Sentilles about the presence at Yale of a former spokesman for one of the world's most misogynistic regimes. Her reply: "As a white American feminist, I do not feel comfortable making statements or judgments about other cultures, especially statements that suggest one culture is more sexist and repressive than another. American feminism is often linked to and manipulated by the state in order to further its own imperialist ends."

It appears Ms. Sentilles, beyond having a lot of multi-cultural baggage, is terrified that if she actually criticizes Afghanistan in any way, she is somehow giving aid and comfort to the Bush administration, which feminists have declared enemy #1. The politics of US presidential elections, in this case, trump criticizing a regime that treated women worse (by far) than the US has at any time in its history. Which of course is one of the reasons* that women's groups in this country are sliding into irrelevance, putting their support of a broad range of leftish causes above speaking out on what is essentially apartheid-for-women in the Middle East (I say essentially, because women are actually far worse off in much of the Middle East than blacks ever were in South Africa). Whereas a decade ago the left was marching in the street to better the lot of blacks in South Africa, they are strangely mum on women in the Middle East.

Ms. Young's devotion to the politically correct canons of multiculturalism cost her dearly. Instead of bearing witness to the aspirations of her philosophy, she comes off as the pathetic apologist for Yale's indefensible admission of an unrepentant ex-Taliban student.

Don't laugh too hard. We do it all the time. It's far too easy for us Fools to elevate our political commitments to the throne reserved for Christ alone. The temptation to Foolableness lurks around the corner of every political position we take. I've witnessed it from Fools that hail from either side of the aisle.

Let our faith influence of politics. Not vice versa. For what does it matter if we gain the whole world but lose our souls?