Conservatidiots of the Day: Liberty University's department of student affairs

Ben Smith, a blogger from Politico, is reporting that Liberty University's department of student affairs has revoked recognition of the Democratic Party club on campus. The reason being is because the administration feels that the Democratic Party does not represent the overall mission of the university and to the Christian doctrine because it "supports abortion, federal funding of abortion, advocates repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, promotes the “LGBT” agenda, hate crimes, which include sexual orientation and gender identity, socialism, etc."

Of course, Liberty University is an evangelical college which has a long history of implementing draconian rules (such as no-hand holding in public), and this should not come as a surprise to those familiar with its long, sordid history. Founded by evangelical demagogue Jerry Falwell, Liberty University is one of the foremost evangelically conservative universities in the nation. Despite these facts, this action is still disturbing in a number of ways. First, the campus is promoting a radical political agenda by telling its students that they either have to adhere to conservative principles, or else they are not good little Christian warriors. Never mind, of course, that the Bible doesn't offer an opinion on abortion, gay marriage, or socialism, since these political issues did not exist when the omnipotent, ever-present Sky Being wrote the Bible. But worse yet, Liberty University fails to acknowledge that Christians-- no matter how conservative they are in their practices-- do not fundamentally identify with one party over the other. There are evangelical Democrats, much as there are atheistic Republicans. This action marks the end of free speech at Liberty University-- not that political independence was encouraged in the first place-- and is yet another example of an extremist conservative organization irrationally flipping out because the Democratic Party won an election and is viewed favorably by the majority of Americans.

The original post by Ben Smith can be found here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Liberty_U_bans_Democrats.html