Maggie's Farm

It is not a case of compromise. It is a case of incrementalism. The social conservatives have in many ways become social liberals and cause a huge problem for the fiscal conservatives. The party is tearing itself asunder.

Below is a long comment I made elsewhere that addresses this issue: Evangelicals are basically lazy.
------------

I am of the opinion that the vast majority of "evangelicals" are lazy.

The movement behind Huckabee frightens me. The stated goal of Constitutional Amendments to ban Abortion and define marriage as only hetero/monogamous are abhorrent.

First, on the Constitution. These Amendments (like Prohibition) are essentially religious in nature - given that they are being driven by the aforementioned evangelicals. This, in my mind, leads to a constitutional crisis, because it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Further, the Constitution is a document which defines the structure/form/interaction of the national government and constrains or limits its power. Amendments such as the above serve to constrain or limit the freedom/behavior of the people. It is the people who own the Constitution, they cannot be owned by it.

Secondly and to my point about laziness on the part of the evangelicals. These amendments proposed are merely the latest in a shift of responsibilities of Christians to the government. Christians should be directly involved in feeding, clothing, housing the poor - aiding the unwed mother, the addicted, the troubled. In abandoning responsibilities spelled out more clearly in scripture than "the right of privacy" (Roe v. Wade) is in the Constitution, Christians have abandoned their faith in favor of becoming a social club. In point of fact social clubs do more apparent good for society than churches do.

I am not an advocate for churches to be activist. Activism almost always devolves to "somebody (else) ought to do something." It is the action of the individual in individual cases which matter in my view. Any abstraction away from direct involvement misses the point of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

So, IMHO, the majority of Christians are lazy, when they ask the government (yet again!) to do what they should be doing. They want the world to be a particular way (we all modify our environment to our liking), but they want somebody else to do it for them. This is laziness. Instead of dealing with these questions head-on and personally, they seek to delegate the responsibility to what is possibly the least responsible organization - the government.

“Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
- Ronald Reagan

I am a Christian. This is not meant to slam Christ or His people. It is that very large group which pretends to be His and yet does not act that way which I addressed here.

It is not the proper job of the national government to establish behavioral norms/rules for the nation. This, via the 10th Amendment, is reserved for the states and the people - who formed and own the federal government.