Posted by
voice_of_reason on Thursday, March 15, 2007 9:16:59 PM
In a previous post, I posed the following question:
If "Jesus was no leftist" why are so many of his followers seduced by Socialism?
An interesting question, isn't it? In this article, I attempt some analysis. Feel free to agree or disagree - I invite your comments!
Is the question based on fact? Consider that America is 80% Christian but a 50/50 country based on political affiliation. Even assuming that the entire 20% of America that is non-Christian leans leftwards (a questionable assumption) that means that 30% of those who lean to the left are likely to be Christians. Another way of stating this is "At least 30% of our voters are religious-leftists".
Of course, a good follow-on question would be "But are they leftists because of their
social or
economic views?"
An analogous question may be asked of secular conservatives - "Are they conservative because of their
social or
economic views?"
For the purposes of this discussion, I identify Leftist or Conservative
social and
economic positions based on definitions in a previous post titled:
What kind of FOUR LETTER conservative are you? Since Christian principles are usually at odds with the Leftist social viewpoint, does this mean that religious leftists lead with their
redistributionist economic views?
Since religion is likely to drive social rather than economic views, it seems intuitive that social conservatives lead with their
laissez-faire economic views.
Unless there is a flaw in the above reasoning, conservative economists (e.g. Dr. Thomas Sowell) should be given a lot more air time by Republicans seeking to 'convert' religious leftists to the conservative cause. It would seem that conservative economists would have a much larger 'addressable market' for new voters than conservative spokesmen of the Jerry Falwell variety?
I mean, with 30% of the electorate up-for-grabs, talk about a vote rich environment! Also, from a sheer entertainment point-of-view, wouldn't you like to see Dr. Sowell wipe the floor with Paul Krugman in a debate on economics?