Meditation 1253
No - these are not Judeo-Christian values
by: John Tyrrell
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This week, former Ohio Governor, John Kasich, thought to be one of the more moderate Republicans seeking to run for US President, proposed to create a new government agency to promote "core Judeo-Christian Western values."
"U.S. public diplomacy and international broadcasting have lost their focus on the case for Western values and ideals and effectively countering our opponents' propaganda and disinformation. I will consolidate them into a new agency that has a clear mandate to promote the core, Judeo-Christian Western values that we and our friends and allies share: the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association."
What kind of nonsense is this? The reality of scriptural Judeo-Christian values is that they are essentially the same vengeful values that are promoted by ISIS and its so-called caliphate.
The specific values mentioned by Kasich ("the values of human rights, the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association") arose, not out of the traditional values of Christianity and Judaism, but out of rejection of those traditional values.
Many Christians and Jews (though certainly not all of them) have come to embrace human rights, democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association because it provides them with freedom to practice their many forms of their religion in society containing multiple religions. But the cannot claim ownership of those values any more than can the followers of other religions and of a-religion.
I have no problem with the USA continuing to promote the benefits of a free society - that's nothing new, Governor Kasich - but to deliberately misidentify those values as somehow Judeo-Christian in order to pander to the American religious right, who actually want overthrow those secular values, is thoroughly pathetic.
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