WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Family Research Council Action today released the results of a commissioned survey conducted by WPA Opinion Research showing that 66 percent of Republican voters agree that the party should keep (32%) or strengthen (34%) the platform position protecting unborn human life. Only 19 percent say the party should "talk about the issue less."
As Republicans converge upon Milwaukee, Wisconsin next week to work out their party platform as part of the lead-up to the GOP's national convention, it's clear that the big question for delegates will be the issues. In recent days, some party officials have hinted at "paring down" the GOP platform, causing many to wonder which issues will be left on the table.
Ronald Reagan was wrong. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" are not the nine most terrifying words in the English language. That dubious distinction goes to these nine words: "We're from the FBI. We know what you believe." These words cast a pallor over a previously cheery day. It can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time, for one primary reason: threatening progressive orthodoxy on abortion and trans ideology. Or so they want you to think.
Nearly 20 years ago, during the advent of the mobile phone's adoption of Bluetooth, a strange phenomenon began to happen. You'd begin to see people walking by themselves on the street talking, having animated conversations. In the years before, such behavior was attributed to mental illness. A person just didn't have an out-loud conversation with no one in their vicinity. It took a few years of getting used to, but now it's commonplace. People talked into the air daily, but they were talking to another real person somewhere on the other end of the relays of bits of radio and telephone data. We weren't talking to ourselves, and we certainly weren't answering ourselves. These days, I'm not so sure.
Over the last few years, the term "Christian nationalism" has received outsized attention in American political discourse. Although the phrase was bandied about before the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol back in 2021, the last few years have witnessed a torrent of opinion pieces, books, round table discussions, and even professionally produced documentaries about the topic. Though the debate now seems to be tapering off, recent developments in Oklahoma and Louisiana have triggered a new round of opinion pieces about the dangers of theocracy.
August 23 is a kind of Independence Day for my family and me. That date in 2022 is something like the 4th of July for the American nation. It does not have the same implications, I know, for a country to sign its Declaration of Independence from the British Empire, as it does for a couple and their child to disembark on a Havana-Miami flight to request political asylum. But after almost a decade doing journalism inside the totalitarian Cuban State where I experienced arrests and threats of jail and death, it felt like fresh air on my face, like Washington crossing the Delaware River.
