{"id":483,"date":"2004-01-15T01:58:24","date_gmt":"2004-01-15T06:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/01\/the_convoluted_philosophy_of_t\/"},"modified":"2004-01-15T01:58:24","modified_gmt":"2004-01-15T06:58:24","slug":"the_convoluted_philosophy_of_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/01\/the_convoluted_philosophy_of_t\/","title":{"rendered":"The Convoluted Philosophy of the “Conservative” Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Throwing another bone to the religious right, the Bush administration is reportedly planning a $1.5 billion program to promote marriage<\/a>. I not sure exactly what this initiative will do. Apparently, it will involve promotional campaigns and educational programs in “problem-solving, negotiation and listening skills.”
\nSome of these things may be useful, some may not. I’m not up on the research. What’s striking to me, however, is how this idea is being pushed by ideologues who claim they believe in a smaller, less intrusive federal government.
\nThink about it. Here we have a contingent who, on one hand, argue the government is incapable of doing so much ensure people get basic medical checkups. Yet on the other hand, it’s appropriate to dump a billion on a government social engineering effort to get couples to love each other. Quite a disconnect.
\nAcross the seas, the contrast is even more mind boggling. At home, so-called conservatives contend the federal government can’t efficiently accomplish even the most basic of tasks. Yet most of them have marched lock-step behind President Bush’s nation-building experiment–at gunpoint no less–in a non-democratic society half way around the globe. If the government can’t get things right here, why in the world should the administration be trusted to reconstruct a completely different culture?
\nThe logic is difficult to square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throwing another bone to the religious right, the Bush administration is reportedly planning a $1.5 billion program to promote marriage. I not sure exactly what this initiative will do. Apparently, it will involve promotional campaigns and educational programs in “problem-solving, negotiation and listening skills.” Some of these things may be useful, some may not. I’m […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}