* Christian Coalition's 10 point plan.
Topics: Elections
17 May 1995
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
The Christian Coalition introduced their own 10 point plan today. It is:
1) - Allow voluntary prayer in public schools and elsewhere.
2) - Limit abortions after the 26th week of pregnancy. End
taxpayer funding of groups advocating or performing abortions.
3) - Close the Education Department.
4) - Establish school voucher programs letting parents choose
between private and public schools.
5) - Give families a $500 per child tax credit, abolish tax
rules that penalize married couples.
6) - Restrict pornography on cable TV and the Internet.
7) - End federal funding of culture and public broadcasting.
8) - Increase tax breaks for charitable contributions.
9) - Pass parental rights laws regarding child-raising.
10) - Require criminals to compensate their victims.
Now, they never claimed to be libertarian, nor anything of the sort.
However, they do often claim to be anti-Washington, and the fundies that I
personally know sound quasi-libertarian so long as they hold to purely
economic discussions. The above lays lie to this though and shows the right
to be no different than the left, merely looking to grab the reins of power
for their own mad schemes instead of really advocating freedom.
(6) and (7) are the clearest example of this. (7) says stop using tax money
to pay for liberal culture (which is how the CC (correctly) perceives the
NEA). Well, that sounds okay, but then (6) says use the force of law to
impose conservative culture instead. That is step backward. The NEA only
partially crowds out of the market what people really want. It leaves
choices, just with a certain economic penalty. And, that penalty is mostly
exposed (we know what this foolishness costs). The CC, on the other hand,
would completely ban what they don't like and bury the cost dishonestly.
(8) is a very pro-Washington statement too, despite its innocuous language.
It says raise taxes on people who don't contribute to their church. In
other words, subsidize churches out of the federal coffers using the
enforcement power of the IRS. Great, now the baptist church gets funded,
indirectly, instead of the NEA, directly. Not progress.
(5) contradicts itself. On one hand, it says stop having government
penalize people for their personal life (by getting married) but then turns
around and says let's make childless people pay for other people's kids.
It's also compounded by the fact that parts of the tax code subsidize
marriage. Getting rid of just the parts that penalize marriage (as the
proposal reads), is a subsidy for marriage, kids or not. Forget it all.
Live how you want, pay for your own kids, and get Uncle Sam out of the
business of paying or punishing different life styles.
Finally, (1) and (4) also contradict each other. (4) says turns choices
over to parents. That's okay, but (1) shows that is not really what they
want. Rather, in the current environment the hope is that (4) is an ends to
a mean. Let me briefly discuss (1), though I think the analysis should be
obvious to this group. "Voluntary prayer" is a ridiculous misnomer. It, of
course, means local government option to force kids to pray, which would be
most local governments not otherwise restricted by state constitutions. I
have written at length about this before, but the short synopsis is that
children are forced to go to school and then forced to surrender their civil
liberties when there. (1) is an attempt at straight imposition of religion.
I wager that if fundies got everything they wanted along the lines of (1),
they would be horrified at the thought of (4) which would let parents escape
their 'benevolent instruction'. I'm sure that many will say, and even
believe, that's not what they want. I'm not calling anyone a liar, rather
I'm predicting how opinions would change in that environment.
The current apparent libertarian streak in the right is as Liberty magazine
said "a mile wide and a millimeter deep."
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