Richard Bennett

Breaking news from hippie Guardian election blog:

Just announced by the BBC: Labour is expected to win tonight, but with a greatly reduced majority of 66 seats. It’ll be a good night for the Conservatives, who should gain 44 seats, but the Liberal Democrats will be disappointed if they only gain the predicted two seats.

An excellent outcome, if you can believe these pesky exit polls. Since both Tories and Blair were pro-liberation of Iraq, this election was not the endorsement of fascism the Liberal Democrats were hoping to achieve.

UPDATE: Iain Murray is following the results closely, Samizdata not so much.

Murray says a margin of less than 80 seats is trouble for Blair (he would have to step down before the next election), and less than 50 is pretty much the immediate end of his leadership. Blair’s heir apparent, Gordon Brown, strikes me as weak.

I’m Richard Bennett and I approve this message:

At least two important conservative thinkers, Ayn Rand and Leo Strauss, were unbelievers or nonbelievers and in any case contemptuous of Christianity. I have my own differences with both of these savants, but is the Republican Party really prepared to disown such modern intellectuals as it can claim, in favor of a shallow, demagogic and above all sectarian religiosity?

Perhaps one could phrase the same question in two further ways. At the last election, the GOP succeeded in increasing its vote among American Jews by an estimated five percentage points. Does it propose to welcome these new adherents or sympathizers by yelling in the tones of that great Democrat bigmouth William Jennings Bryan? By insisting that evolution is “only a theory”? By demanding biblical literalism and by proclaiming that the Messiah has already shown himself? If so, it will deserve the punishment for hubris that is already coming its way. (The punishment, in other words, that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson believed had struck America on Sept. 11, 2001. How can it be that such grotesque characters, calling down divine revenge on the workers in the World Trade Center, are allowed a respectful hearing, or a hearing at all, among patriotic Republicans?)

Then again, hundreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state? How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home? It’s hardly too much to say that the servicemen and -women, of all faiths and of none, who fight so bravely against jihad, are being stabbed in the back by the sunshine soldiers of the “crusading” right. What is one to feel but rage and contempt when one reads of Arabic-language translators, and even Purple Heart-winning frontline fighters, being dismissed from the service because their homosexuality is accounted a sin?

Thus far, the clericalist bigots have been probing and finding only mush. A large tranche of the once-secular liberal left has disqualified itself by making excuses for jihad and treating Osama bin Laden as if he were advocating liberation theology. The need of the hour is for some senior members of the party of Lincoln to disown and condemn the creeping and creepy movement to impose orthodoxy on a free and pluralist and secular Republic.

No more mixing religion and politics, please. Voting your moral values is fine, but following the literal text of the Bible is delusional.

H/T Pajama Media czar Roger Simon.

UPDATE: See also James Taranto’s defense of the Religious Right, in many ways a better-reasoned piece than Hitchen’s amusing broadside. Taranto argues that the courts have imposed specific policies on the country, such as legalizing abortion, that are actually the province of the legislative branch. Like good citizens are supposed to do, the Religious Right has organized and elected politicians who represent their values, with a long-term goal of removing “activist” judges and returning policy prerogatives to the branch of government that actually owns them under our system.

It’s hard to argue with that.

Get out there and cast your ballot for Labour if you haven’t already. See results starting at 11:00 PM GMT on the hippie Guardian web site.

Once again, Washington’s state legislature has declined to extend their employment rights law to the categories of sexual orientation and sexual identity. This is apparently a legislative ritual – every year the bill is introduced, and every year it’s defeated. This time, the AFL-CIO blames Microsoft:

Last month, Microsoft Corporation secretly revoked its support for the Washington State non-discrimination bill. This Senate bill, H.B. 1515, would have barred discrimination on based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Defeated by one vote in the state Senate on April 21st, undoubtedly, Microsoft’s actions doomed the bill. Redmond, Washington based state senator Bill Finkbeiner voted against the bill; Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond. Pandering to anti-gay sentiment and the corporate bottom line, Microsoft betrayed their workers and worldwide customers.

Note that this is the official statement of “Pride at Work” an AFL-CIO affiliate. Note also the multiple factual errors: “HB” means House Bill, not Senate Bill; the bill’s ancestors have been defeated for several years running, with and without Microsoft support; Microsoft never supported this year’s bill, so there was nothing to withdraw; support and opposition are public, so there’s no such thing as “secretly withdrawing support”; the Gates lobbying firm testified in support of the bill.

The real beef is Microsoft support for free trade:

Also last month, Microsoft began lobbying for CAFTA – an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement to six countries in Central America. Like NAFTA, CAFTA would eliminate thousands of US jobs. “The actions of Microsoft are further eroding the rights of its employees in the name of increased profit,” said Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech/CWA Local 37083. WashTech has been engaged in a multi-year campaign to organize workers at Microsoft.

…and this whole gay rights thing is a smokescreen.

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