There are many positions that you can adopt as an American, but cannot hold to as a Christian.
One such position is "free speech" that includes pornography, sedition (e.g., what's his name out in Nevada), racial bigotry (e.g., what's his name in LA NBA) and campaign finance (e.g., corporations/unions-as-people).
Another position is the freedom to consume at whim, to pollute (or contribute to pollution in the process), and to insist on radical de-regulation.
Another is the freedom to engage in pleasure as a goal-in-and-of-itself -- especially sexual pleasure outside the traditional standards.
Another is the libertine recourse to violence -- whether for real, or within the precincts of virtual reality (interpret that as you will).
Another is the engagement in modern anti-civilian warfare -- especially warfare-as-politics (a la von Clausewitz).
And, obviously, the use of torture ... at all. There is no warrant whatsoever in authentic Christianity -- even in heterodox Christianity -- for the use of torture. Those who engage in it have essentially excommunicated themselves from the Body of Christ, whether or not their judicatories notice or do their jobs.
Perhaps as a modernist one may commend himself for water boarding, but never as a Christian. I would argue, too, that classical conservatism gives no support for torture or any of the above positions -- this is so mainly because classical conservatism is a derivative of Christianity. This is why some positions of classical conservatism are reviled by the rightwing and mistakenly labeled as "liberal" because concern for the poor, the frail and marginalized is an essentially Christian, and therefore conservative, position.
Not everything the State does is "statist" -- and not everything the corporation or market does is "free."
Christians really do not understand ethics and morality in terms of "rights." There is no such thing as self-promotion in Christian language. Not when you have to submit to the structuralism of the Cross.
Thus, Ms Sarah Palin (as reported here) can recommend water boarding all she wants. And she may have the freedom to do so as an American (unfortunately).
But not as a Christian.
Let alone the fact that her associating water boarding with baptism reveals a complete ignorance of the latter term's sacramental meaning, and the former term's essential demonism.
It also reveals something else -- an abysmal ignorance of history, and a frightening loss of orthodox theology. And that something else is getting more common, concomitant with the bestial rise of banal libertinism -- the new gnosticism of our day.
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