I'm not quite certain where this discussion belongs, since it does pertain to social values and personal philosophy(which is why it belongs here) but it also addresses the political. I'll blend the two together for now and hope the moderators take pity and PM me should any changes need to occur. In the meantime......

Still bleary-eyed and sipping my starbucks coffee, I visited the Washington POst website and discovered that Rush Limbaugh is getting divorced:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2004Jun12.html

All too often in politics, generalizations are made. A woman of three on welfare is a promiscuous "welfare queen" who lacks values. An environmentalist is a birkenstock wearing, granola munching, VW van driving, tree-hugger. Someone against war is a long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking, hippy. At the same time, conservatives would be upset if I were to call Rush a profligate matrimonial trivializer who abuses drugs.

Social conservatives bemoan the decline of "values" in America. I've heard many of them find fault with divorce, and in particular, "no-fault" divorce. They want religious programs put in place to combat divorce(i.e.-in particular in the south)

Questions for debate:

1.)Is Rush Limbaugh a legitimate social conservative in light of his drug problem and third divorce?

2.)Should "no-fault" divorces be banned? Are they to blame for the rise in divorces?

3.)Can one be divorced and still be a good social conservative?

Before I turn the tables on your debate questions I will answer them..

1. Rush is, in my eyes an entertainer(he even states this himself). And his will was weak when it came to drug addiction. But that does not change his beliefs.

2. People fall out of love as easily as they fall in love. If you were to ban 'no-fault' divorces then you would have to put a limit on people entering marriage just to be sure they were in love..

3. And this last one just cracks me up... What if I asked, " If somebody loves god and has a strong faith in their religion can they be a good Liberal", I think people would blast me on that one, wouldn't they? I think you know what my answer is here.

Nobody is perfect and nobody ever will be. All a conservative wants is for people to strive to be good to one another, to take responsibility for your own actions, and to try and do right.

No offence Nebraska but your post almost border lines on inflammatory because you target conservatives? Do social liberals never err?

1> Rush may talk-the-talk but he'll never walk-the-walk. I believe that he should still be considered a social conservative. After all if he's not willing to live up to his beliefs that doesn't invalidate them... it just means he is a hypocrit.

2> No. No-fault divorces are not the cause of today's higher divorce rates. Don't get me wrong, but the ability of the modern woman to support herself is one of the biggest reasons for the high divorce rate: no longer is a women forced to rely on a horrible husband to support her. Nowadays if she has a husband that beats her or sleeps around, she can just leave him with fewer of the devasting financial consequences of the past.
I have this feeling that "traditional" marriages are over romanticized and aren't all that they're cracked up
to be.

3> Yes.

Would you happen to have an example of where a "social liberal" (some would also call it a liberatarian, because that's essentially the same position) would want to write a law to FORCE you to either do or not do something in your personal life that affects no one but yourself? Social liberals tend to want to let you do whatever you want in your personal life.

Before you condemn Nebraska for his questions, let me try to clarify what he was trying to say.

The conservatives are the ones that always preach about moral and family values. That is not something that liberals try to force into someones lives.

For instances, Bush says that God has placed him in the office of the president. I haven't noticed any liberals saying this even though they may or may not be a Christian.

Being a Christian or a moral person doesn't require that you tell everyone how good you are. It requires that you live the life and people will notice.

Back to the questions of Nebraska:

1. Rush is only a entertainer, so that is enough said.

2. 'no-fault' divorces probably let more divorces occur. since it makes it so easy to get a divorce instead of people taking the hard road and trying to see it things can be worked out.

3. Yes someone can be divorced and be socially conservative. They probably have learned by experience and a lot can be learned from them.

I don't want to ban "no-fault" divorce, the folks on the social conservative side of things do! Consider: No fault-fallout by Glenn T. Stewart--Focus on the Family website



I have no idea where you are going with that. Since this topic deals with one's ideals and whether or not they actually follow those ideals, a more realistic set of questions towards liberals would be:
-Can you make over a million dollars a year and still be a progressive?

-Can you be for women's rights and still support former President Clinton?




Okay, but when you castigate others for divorcing(which is what Focus on the family, the American Family Association love to do) and you take on welfare mothers, then your own shortcomings in regards to your ideals must take center stage as well.



What's a social liberal?? Reference my idea for questions pertaining to the topic towards liberals. I'm sorry that you feel this to be an inflammatory issue-check out my Raph Nader thread under the election 2004 table to see a topic related to perceived values versus actions in real life. I dish it both ways my friend.

1.)Is Rush Limbaugh a legitimate social conservative in light of his drug problem and third divorce? I think most people would be hard pressed to call Limbaugh a legitimate anything that wouldn't be blocked by this board's profanity filter.

2.)Should "no-fault" divorces be banned? Are they to blame for the rise in divorces? My personal belief is that marriage should be much harder to get into than it is, not harder to get out of. If you want stable marriages, don't force people to stay in bad marriages, make sure that they will be good marriages in the first place.

3.)Can one be divorced and still be a good social conservative? considering the divorce rate among conservative Christians you would think it was required.
It is, of course, the vilest sort of hypocrisy.

Well, it depends how Rush deals with his situation. If he presses a 'do as I say, not as I do' philosophy on his listeners, then he's no 'social conservative', he's just a hypocrite. On the other hand, if he continues to speak out against drug use, and encourages those who do abuse to seek help, then he can still be a 'social conservative' who can speak from experience.

As for 'no-fault' or as I like to call them 'easy-way-out' divorces, I don't think that they should be banned. The government has no right to infringe on what two grown adults decide to do in a relationship. Although I laugh my butt off when I hear people (especially those on the right) preach against gay marriage, how the 'sanctity' of marriage is being threatend, and yet seem to ignore the fact that 1 of every 2 marriages in the US end in divorce.

I mean, if a spouse is abusive or engages in self abusive behavior that strains the marriage and the family, then if one feels so inclined to make that choice, fine. But I have always found 'irreconcilable differences' to be bull. Be that as it may, the government should have no decision on what two people in a relationship decide to do.

As for being divorced and still remaining a social conservative, sure. But it goes back to how you approach others. Do you try to actually help and seek solutions to people's struggles, or do you condemn them for what they've done.

Well, no... He may like to extoll the virtue of social conservatism - but he obviously doesn't like to live like a social conservative. It kind of makes me mad that he can be such a hypocrite - but since he doesn't see it himself, he will continue to talk about social conservatism, so its pretty irrelevant whether he lives like one or not.



I know a lot of statisticians might be able to show a correlation between the increase in no-fault divorce availability and the increase in the general divorce rate. However, its rather irrelevant... The only place to put the blame for a rise in divorce rates is the people themselves. Thats social conservative - take responsibility for yourself. So, if you want to decrease the divorce rate - tell people to go to counseling... tell people it doesn't matter if you're "in love" with the person, you are married to them - so work it out! There should only be a few reasons to get divorced - abuse is obviously a major one, and adultery is possibly another (once you lose the trust, its hard to ever regain it - and adultery even gets mentioned in the Bible - though it also says a remarriage is committing adultery...) Otherwise, banning no-fault divorce is not fixing the problem or forcing people to take responsibility for themselves - its blaming a legal procedure for the failure of a marriage brought about by two people. Blaming no-fault divorce and trying to ban it is probably the ultimate hypocrisy by any social conservative - whether they themselves are divorced or not.



No - one can be divorced and still be a social conservative - but your not a good one... well, at least not if your one of the no-excuses type of person who likes to say anyone who gets divorced is a miserable failure. If you are the type of social conservative who at the same time takes a libertarian view (this is possible folks) that the government and other people don't belong in your own (or other people's) person business, and you realize we are each human with flaws to overcome - then being divorced and being as good a social conservative as is possible for any human is entirely feasible.

I'm even ok with it if one is a divorced social conservative... but they need to just shut up about being a social conservative with all their stupid rules and put-downs of people who don't follow their rules and instead live their own life the way that suits them best and stop trying to tell the rest of us how to live ours.

Ok, I'm done ranting.

But the very definition of a social conservative is those who want the law to enforce their values on everyone.
If a libertarian can be a social conservative the phrase has no meaning, we all try to live as moral a life as we can by whatever standards of morality we hold.

Surely there are some social conservatives who would look down their noses at him for his excesses and failure to see this most recent marriage through. As popeye47 said, Limbaugh is only an entertainer. Conservative demagoguery is his schtick, and it resonates well enough with his listeners that he makes a good living doing it. "Walking the walk" is sooooo irrelevant to celebrities these days, isn't it?

There aren't quite as many reasons for the rise in the divorce rate as there are divorces, but the facility with which a person may obtain a divorce may, in some cases, prompt a person to call it quits earlier than in the "good old days" when the Mrs. would regularly show up in the grocery store with a black eye or the Mr. would have to hide the Mrs.'s empty booze bottles when company came.

I don't see how no-fault divorces could effectively be banned now that they have been around for so many years (and so many people consider it their safety net should they find that they screwed up big time marrying that man/woman). That is, unless the country is taken over by the Taliban or some comparable organization. And in that case, the divorce would still be easy to get if you happen to be a man.


That all depends on the social circles in which you travel. Being divorced didn't seem to pose a political obstacle for Ronald Reagan's, even though he got Nancy Davis pregnant before they married. (Remember the old saying, "...made an honest woman of her"? ) But in Hollywood, far more blatant and licentious things took place and still do.

Now religious conservatism--that's an entirely different story!

People run into problems when they make themselves out to be better than others, only to have others find out that they too have been in similar situations and did not demonstrate superior judgement or character.

Yes, a person can be divorced and still be a good social conservative (or, an "okay" socially-conservative, religious liberal! ).

I have no love for Rush Limbaugh or his rhetoric. Again, as popeye47 said, he is "only an entertainer." And if he's smart enough not to try to run for office, he probably won't receive a lot of condemnation that he'd get otherwise.

1 - Have to agree with Grendel72 here, he's not a legit thing at all, except an entertainer.

2 - There is no rise in the divorce rate. In 2001, it was down to 40% vs. 47% in 1991.
rates 1990-2001. On a per-capita basis, the rate has been declining since 1976, probably because more people are co-habitating. rates 1950 - 2001

I think that making it harder for people to get divorced MIGHT be a good idea, not sure of the specifics of no-fault. People should have to pay consequences, and we should try to encourage families to stay together IMHO.


3 - I'm not qualified to make this judgement and will resist pointing out hypocrisy I can find elsewhere among those professing a set of beliefs and acting otherwise.

Can one be divorced and still be a good social conservative? Just as one can have an abortion but consider themselves to be a social conservative, one could have a divorce and be a social conservative. It does make them the epitome of a hypocrite if they preach about family values after three divorces...just as it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to preach against abortion but still get one.

You have a great point here, and it's where I feel a lot of social conservatives have dropped the ball. If you espouse certain things and tell others that they should live them as well, when you can't do it yourself-you can still be a social conservative! I think that all Rush or someone else has to do is say: "Look, this is the ideal thing, I've tried and thus far, I've screwed up. That doesn't mean that I won't try again and that doesn't mean that it's still something that no matter how flawed I may be, isn't worth going after." The problem with this though is that: a.-you have to state that you screwed up(and no one likes to do that; b.-You have to put yourself down the totem pole and play the role of Don Quixote at times.