A Secular Liberal Thinks the "Secular Right" Is All Wet

At least on this war against "religious conservatives" .

I think this was a very insightful entry by the other side of the political fence. See Secular Right , Now this is referencing one particular web site but the arguments are the same we are hearing from the usuaul suspects.

This very well written post she states the obvious:

Let me say, as a secular leftist who is in the habit of arguing with conservatives on almost all fronts, the number of conservatives who actually make arguments of the type "God says..." are vanishingly small, at least in any sort of prominent or mainstream position. I'm sure if you dig around on Redstate or similarly movement-y websites, you can find people willing to argue from such a position. But I see hardly any arguments of pure religiosity on mainstream conservative websites or magazines. Dedicated conservatives, like any politically saavy and educated people, want to win arguments, and even the most devout among them tend to understand that no one, even other Christians, tend to be moved by "for the Bible tells me so" political arguments

However I thought this was a very interesting observation

But my suspicion is that there is something else afoot here. There is, of course, a vibrant contrarian streak within conservatism. I've said before that I think many young people become college Republicans not just because they encounter new ideas, writers and influences, but because they look around them in the college world and, seeing nothing but liberals, are energized by the opportunity to tweak the noses of the masses. This tends to result in more extreme, more militant thinkers, and thus College Republican syndrome.

What I suspect happens, though, is that even within an affinity group like conservatism, some want to further divide the world between worthy and unworthy camps. The intelligent atheists/religious rubes division is a particularly attractive one to those with this attitude, as there is considerable grist for the mill of self-aggrandizement and adversary philosophy. This isn't a critique of sincerity of belief. I'm not saying many secular conservatives don't "really believe" in an atheist worldview. I'm simply speculating on the motivations behind what they consider the emphasized parts of their worldview should be. If tweaking the nose of liberals is fun, tweaking the nose of religious conservatives might be more fun, and that desire to elevate through separation might compel someone to endorse a more actively anti-religious "project" of atheism.

Now of course I can see this attitude and have seen it in organizations like the College Democrats for instance. I am not sure the above is some fault of conservatives only. However there is truth there. Plus I think the age of Pundits 24/7 on cable news and the rise of the internet and blogs makes this situation worse.

I also think in this age of 24 hour news cycles the media has helped make this a bigger issue than it really was and is. I mean before Palin came on the scene was what Kathleen Parker saying on everyone lips? Now she is some self proclaimed spokesperson of some alleged movement. I mean if former Governor Whitman , is one of the prime ex elected spokespeople does that not tell us this might be all some paper tiger.