General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPretty horrifying - from Slate "The God Doctrine - How Evangelical Christians are Guiding Trump's
Foreign Policy"
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/06/trump-evangelical-foreign-policy-pence-pompeo.html
by Joshua Keating
The Trump administrations foreign policy really isnt consistent enough to be placed into any single ideological camp. The president is an isolationist critic of military engagement who has repeatedly let hawks like John Bolton and Marco Rubio drive policies that depend on the threat of military force. Administration surrogates use human rights rhetoric to criticize the governments of Venezuela, Iran, and China (including an unexpectedly strong statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre this week) while the president defends and praises the most brutal dictator in the world. The Pentagon warns of a world defined by great power competition, while the president seems convinced that Russia has nothing but good intentions. The administration hates multilateral security alliances except when its trying to create new ones. Its Mideast strategy is guided by a single-minded focus on countering Iran, except when its not.
This incoherence makes it hard for foreign governments to make sense of the administrations intentions, and it means that almost none of Washingtons foreign policy camps feel very happy right now. I say almost because there is one group thats consistently and effectivelyif quietlypushing its foreign policy agenda in Donald Trumps Washington: evangelical Christians.
Its not great for the long-term stability of the world to have U.S. foreign policy become an extension of Americas culture wars.
Politico reported late last month that the State Department is launching a new Commission on Unalienable Rights to advise Pompeo and provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nations founding principles of natural law and natural rights. Details about the panel are still sketchyand theres certainly room for fresh thinking about human rights discoursebut human rights activists fear that in this context, natural means God-given and could entail providing less support for programs promoting reproductive rights and protections for LGBTQ people. The concept note outlining the commission was written by Robert George, a Princeton professor and co-founder of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage.
The influence of evangelical priorities is already spreading through the Trump administrations diplomacy. In April, the U.S. threatened to veto a U.N. resolution condemning the use of rape as a weapon of war because of its language on reproductive and sexual health, which Trump officials felt normalized sexual activity and condoned abortion. The administration succeeded in moving Germany, the resolutions sponsor, to water down that language. According to reporting by Foreign Policy, American instruction to push back on the resolution came via a cable from Pompeos office.
snip
good, sobering read. Separation of church and state - where did it go?
And....these fucking crazies scare the shit out of me....
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)The Evangelicals are a cancer on every place they go. They are the reason why Cuba's new constitution does not have equal rights for gays.
keithbvadu2
(36,804 posts)czarjak
(11,274 posts)Folly!
Initech
(100,075 posts)They have overstayed their welcome. Fuck evangelicals.