Thursday, May 10, 2007

A Wall Of Separation Between Church And Mexico

On May 3rd, Lou Dobbs interviewed Christopher Hitchens, who has a new, anti-religion book out called God is not Great. The whole exchange, which you can watch here, was very friendly. I was kind of surprised, in fact, just how friendly it was. Since when did Dobbs, I wondered, become such a critic and opponent of religion?

Apparently, since religious people started favoring immigration.

Actually, to be fair, when you go back through Dobbs's writing on the subject of religion, he seems to take a fairly consistent position that there ought to be a fairly strong wall between church and state. You also notice one, um, peculiar element of his opposition to the role of religion in politics: it seems to have no basis in specifics beyond the tendency of religious groups to support immigration. That commentary above is from 5/9/07. On 9/28/06, he wrote a long, stirring piece about the unacceptability of politically active churches, but the only examples of impropriety he saw fit to mention were friendly overtures toward foreigners generally and Mexicans in particular:
The mixture of religion and politics is on public display throughout the country. The Mormon Church rolled out the red carpet for Mexican President Vicente Fox, embraces illegal immigrants in the state of Utah and helped pro-amnesty incumbent Congressman Chris Cannon with a get out the vote campaign.

Apparently nobody in the federal government is too concerned that the Catholic Church has repeatedly lobbied on behalf of millions of illegal aliens and their supporters for wholesale amnesty and open borders. Until the Supreme Court ordered him to, the head of the Los Angeles Archdiocese, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, didn't think he should cooperate with the law when it came to divulging information on priests accused of pedophilia, and he believes it is entirely correct to encourage his parishioners to civil disobedience in the case of legislation that secures our borders and punishes those who cross them illegally.
No mention of stem cell research, or Terri Schiavo, or young-earth creationism in the classroom. The real problem is being too friendly with the president of Mexico.

Classy.

3 comments:

Birney said...

Hmm. . . I hate to defend Lou Dobbs, but perhaps he only brings up immigration because that is all he knows? Let us suppose he has a strong belief in the seperation of Church and State but as he is only an "expert" on immigration can only think to back up his argument with what he knows. When all one has is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails.

Rebecca C. Brown said...

I don't think I can muster sympathy for a well-paid cable news anchor because he has a limited scope of political comphrehension. Isn't his JOB to be well-versed in lots of topics?

Paul said...

What Rebecca said.

Plus, I think it's fair to ask why he's so obsessed with immigration. Given the tone of his pieces, and his fixation on trivialities like hosting Vicente Fox, I think there's at least a whiff of xenophobia coming from the guy.

But yes, I think the single hammer analogy is apt. I just think it's suspicious that he's fixated so completely on that particular hammer.

(And when you think about it, it's not even entirely clear that he cares about church/politics separation per se. After all, why does it matter that Chris Cannon was "pro-amnesty"? Either Dobbs is shoehorning immigration into the discussion - which would make him creepily obsessive - or the church/politics thing is just a pretense.)