Perhaps you are from one of the countries that U.S. presidential candidate John McCain criticized yesterday in his Vision for Defending the Freedom and Dignity of the World's Vulnerable. Despite his Straight-Talking Express view of the world, Senator John McCain has this to say about the countless differences in today's world:
"There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man's inhumanity to man"
The first part of that sentence must be the most obscure language used to date in the presidential campaign. According to Senator McCain, there are countries in the world that are "protecting traditions that should have been ended long ago." If he were referring to genocide or torture, this blog entry might have had a slightly different tone. Although we may all agree that forced marriage and FGM is beyond our comprehension in the U.S., the language in his speech reflected more the typical paradigm we have known for too many years now: Good versus Evil.
He summed up his vision of the world as such:
"No society that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way."
But to what extent must a society limit religious freedom before every other positive aspect of its government is erased from popular imagination and U.S. rhetoric becomes uncompromising? If a Central Asian country, for example, insists on excessively tough registration procedures for one or two Christian sects, how do we grade their level of religious freedom , and do all state initiatives to provide welfare and security to their people then become meaningless?
The presidential candidate is, at the least, being direct with voters about his agenda: “I will make respect for the basic principle of religious freedom a priority in international relations.” Prediction: If Senator McCain wins the general election, he will “confront this evil” by challenging Iran (and only Iran?) to accept this most “fundamental” of rights.
