Proud to be a "Secular Progressive"

Today Bill O'Reilly was on the Oprah show. This is the second time I have seen him talking about his new book, "The Culture Warrior". According to his theory, there are two types of people in America; traditionalist and secular progressives. Traditionalist believe that America is a noble country, that should follow traditional judeo-christian values. Secular Progressives are people who believe America is a deeply flawed country that needs change.

With-in the first few minutes of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Opera, he brings up the issue of abortion and parental notification laws. He asks the audience, would they like their 13 year old daughter to get an abortion and come home to dinner and for the parents to never even know their daughter got an abortion? I guess most people are supposed to think, no that's horrible. But all I could think was YES YES a thousand times YES. He then asked the audience if they want to be Denmark or Holland...once again I think YES YES YES!

As he started to talk about the war, the dangers of rap music and how Martin Luther King was a traditionalist, what alarmed me was not what he was saying. What alarmed me were that people stood up, agreed with him and even asked how they can push the traditionalist agenda. It was clear some members of the audience were looking for real answers, truths, news. All Bill O'Reilly gave them was typical spin. One man asked why the ACLU was defending terrorist prisoners against torture. The man asked why do these people deserve any rights after they killed Americans? Bill O'Reilly of course says these men don't have rights, in fact in order for us to get information from the terrorist we have to torture these men. Bill O'Reilly didn't say, that all human beings have rights, all human beings deserve to be treated with respect and all human beings are innocent until proven guilty. To me, that would have been a "traditionalist", American, noble, response.

What bothers me is not that Bill O'Reilly is saying what he is saying. What bothers me is that he labels it as news, concrete truth, as American. It admit, under his definition I am a "secular progressive". I want unlimited abortion, I want a more socialist country, I think torturing assumed terrorists is wrong. I even think in many ways this nation is seriously flawed and always has been (I mean seriously, what was right about slavery and hundreds of years of laws that allowed people to be treated differently completely based on race?) Where Bill O'Reilly is wrong, is not that he labels a certain group of people as secular progressives. Where he is wrong is where he labels himself a traditionalist. Our founding fathers didn't all believe in judeo-christian values. They weren't always on the same side. They didn't think we should ban certain types of media just because they disagreed with it. The founding fathers were men who disagreed on several issues, but came together to build a country where disagreements in values would be tolerated and even protected by our government. The founding fathers believed in compromise, not division in politics.

The truth is that when you really look at this country, yes there are secular progressives, but they are the real "traditionalist" standing up for what the founding fathers wanted. The truth is that a culture war is not going on in America. The culture war is something people have made up as a way to get votes, attention or a book deal. The truth is, people like Bill O'Reilly aren't presenting news, they are presenting propaganda with a clear agenda: say whatever sells.