US Diary: war, torture, whatever - the big moral issue of our time is your genitals

Your Genitals: The Great Moral Issue of our Time -- by David Michael Green/ CommonDreams.org

You liberals are such losers.

Like His Holiness Reagan used to say, “There you go again!” Even after a quarter-century of us regressives running the country, you still don’t get it.

You can’t tell the difference between what is truly important for this country and what is not. You still can’t distinguish the great moral issues of our time from your petty bleeding-heart concerns.

Oh, I know how you guys think.

You’re probably sitting there right now whining about how the massive carnage that is consuming citizens and soldiers in Iraq by the hundreds of thousands is a big deal. Wrong.

You probably think that the ongoing failure of the president to provide adequate armor for the troops he sent to fight in this four year-old war is important. Wrong again.

Or maybe you got yourself all worked up when the horrific treatment our wounded soldiers are receiving at Walter Reed Hospital and elsewhere proved that Bush couldn’t care less about the troops. Still wrong.

I bet you think it’s a big deal that al Qaeda and the Taliban – you know, the folks we said did 9/11 – are regrouping in Afghanistan, and that Osama bin Laden remains a free man five years later. So?

Are you upset again about the loss of jobs in America and the growing pressures on the struggling middle class? We’re not.

How about all the corruption scandals and gross incompetence of George Bush’s crony government? Get over it.

I’ve heard you guys ranting on and on about the mountain of debt we’re leaving for your children to pay off, plus interest, in order to finance our twin extravaganzas of huge tax cuts for the wealthy and a useless war costing $1-2 trillion. What’s wrong that?

Ah, then there’s healthcare! All you whack-job lefty clones seem to think its important to provide decent healthcare for our country, especially the 50 million people who have no coverage whatsoever, a large bunch of whom are children. No doubt Hillary told you to think that, so you did. We say, “Let them eat Band-Aids!”

And don’t go getting a bee in your bonnet just because so many people are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases that could be prevented and treated if only stem cell research was permitted. Do you really think the health of millions is such a big deal?

Please don’t go off again about the destruction of American civil liberties. Man, I hate that. You’re always spouting all those goofy ideas from the Bill of Rights – habeas corpus, right to trial, right to an attorney, protection against torture, search warrant requirements, and everything else you learned about in your fifth grade civics class. Who cares?

And then there’s the Constitution itself – all that stuff about separation of powers, checks and balances, and so on. So you’re all in a lather because the president has secretly appended close to a thousand “signing statements” to congressional bills, declaring all by himself how he interprets those laws, and which parts of them he intends to ignore. But what country can’t benefit from a good stiff shot of monarchism every now and then?

Oh, and please don’t play that tired Katrina card again. You think that the failure to protect, save and restore one of America’s great cities from the ravages of a hurricane is a pretty big deal, don’t you? Christ, you liberals are so sanctimonious! Yadda, yadda, New Orleans. Yadda, yadda, Schmew Orleans.

Or maybe it’s the economic polarization of America that’s got your undies all in a bundle. What’s the difference if the top one percent of the country grows fantastically rich while the rest are stagnant or sinking? That just shows your failure to understand the beauty of our capitalist free market system!

What next? You’re bothered that the Mid-East is in flames? That North Korea has gone nuclear, and that Iran is doing the same while growing in power because we destroyed its rival, Iraq? Typical liberal appeasement naiveté about tough foreign policy questions. Stop talking French, wouldya?

Don’t tell me you’re ashamed that genocide is occurring again while we stand by and do nothing? So what if the same government that moved heaven and earth to “bring democracy to Iraq” can’t be bothered to lift its little finger for Darfur after 400,000 people have been slaughtered? Enough with the bleeding-heart routine already.

Okay, so it must be global warming, then, right? Ozone Man gets an Oscar and you think that saving the entire planet from vast, lethal and massively expensive environmental destruction is one of the great moral issues of our time, eh? Well, that’s where you’re especially wrong.

See, if you really want to know what matters in the moral universe, you should take your cues from us conservatives, especially those of us from the religious right. We can tell you.

And what we say is that the great moral issues of our time are not war, peace, protecting our children, fiscal responsibility, caring for our soldiers or defending the constitution. And especially not pulling the Earth off the planetary grill.

No, the great moral issues of our time are: Your genitals. Yeah, you heard me right. Your genitals.

Surprised? You wouldn’t be if you’d been following the news during your lifetime. And especially if you heard what happened just last week.

Seems that one of our own by the name of Reverend Richard Cizik strayed off the reservation and got himself in some unexpected trouble. Unexpected because he is a longtime advocate for the Christian right, now serving as Vice-President for Government Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals.

But when the good reverend made the mistake of fretting in public about your so-called global warming, well, we came down on him hard. No less than those great moral arbiters of our time, James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Tony Perkins and Paul Weyrich called for Reverend Cizik to resign if he “cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals”.

What are those views? What did they identify as the “great moral issues of our time”? I thought you’d never ask. Opposition to abortion and gay marriage, of course. And “the teaching of sexual abstinence to our children”. In short, everything to do with your genitals.

And I do mean, of course, YOUR genitals. Not ours.

Reverend Cizik was actually supported during this controversy by Reverend Leith Anderson, the new president of the association. Why new? Seems the old one – a certain Ted Haggard – loved to preach about your sexual morality but had a slightly different agenda when he found himself inside hotel rooms snorting drugs with gay prostitutes.

Kinda like Newt Gingrich, Robert Livingston, Henry Hyde and the others who chased Bill Clinton down for chasing down Monica Lewinsky, while they themselves were fathering children outside their marriages, having serial affairs, and dumping their wives for new ones, as the old ones lay in the hospital, post-cancer surgery. Kinda like the Catholic dioceses across America that are declaring bankruptcy so they can avoid paying legal claims for all the damage caused by the sexual predators they hired, ignored and protected for decades.

Dummies! Don’t they know you’re not supposed to get caught?

Listen, you get a sixer or two of Coors in me and even I’d admit it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that anyone who is publicly obsessed with your sexuality is actually totally freaked out (at least) about their own. But, hey, what’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t be a hypocrite?! Y’know?

You liberals, though – you’re hopeless. You keep thinking that hundreds of thousands of deaths from war and genocide are more important than dudes marrying other dudes. You keep thinking that preserving democracy is more important than preventing premarital sex. You keep thinking that saving the planet is more crucial than discouraging masturbation.

You keep thinking there are greater and weightier moral issues than what you do with your genitals.

But you’re wrong, and our country is falling apart because of all those misplaced priorities Satan got you to believe in. And Hillary.

It’s time to restore the moral greatness of America again. We need a new campaign of sexual authoritarianism to purge this country of our evil influences. We need to purify our precious bodily fluids and refocus our priorities.

Only then can we safely turn to lesser national priorities. Only then can we plot for our next invasion, our next raid upon the treasury, our next abandoned city, our next ignored genocide, our next assault upon the ecosphere.

Sure, all that stuff’s important. But none of it can happen until we first get our moral house in order.

(David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles, but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website .)