Secular Right

Given the Godspeak into which Obama so often descends, we should not, I suppose, be surprised that he is now trying to bring the big fellow upstairs into the fight over healthcare. It’s no surprise, but it’s still annoying. Writing for Reason David Harsanyi pushes back. Here’s an extract:

As CBS News recently reported, Obama has thrown around the name of God even more often than George W. Bush. Then again, no group couches policy as a moral obligation more than the left. On nearly every question of legislation, there is a pious straw man tugging at the sleeves of the wicked.

What isn’t a moral imperative these days? As if they were chiseling commandments into stone tablets, Democrats refer to budgets as “moral documents.” Thou shalt compost, or climate change will descend upon the lands and smite the wicked and innocent alike. Extend alms to the downtrodden moneylenders and carmakers, for it is just, and the president commandeth thee.

If the apostate argues that dependency programs keep poor people poor or that progressive environmental policies are ineffective and create poverty or that free will is more important than free stuff, they will be dealt with like the Amorites. And you know what happened to those swine.

Morality—whether derived from religion or a Starbucks coffee cup—is only one of the many considerations Americans take into account when thinking about policy. As an atheist, for instance, my core moral concern is that elected officials stop telling me what my core moral concerns should be.

For good measure, Harsanyi throws in a timely quote by C.S. Lewis (“a man who knew a thing or two about religion”):

“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

May?