Maureen Dowd Gets Red

It turns out the left-wing dishrag's favorite female columnist, Maureen Dowd, has a family that not only lives in the red states, they thrive in the red states. Here's an excerpt from a letter from her brother Kevin that appeared in her column...

We do not live in a secular country. There are all sorts of people of faith that place moral values over personal freedoms. They are not all 'wacky evangelicals.' They are people who don't like Howard Stern piping a hard porn show over the airwaves and wrapping himself in the freedom of the First Amendment. They don't like being told that a young girl does not have to seek her mother's counsel about an abortion. They don't like seeing an eight-month-old fetus having his head punctured and his brains sucked out. They don't like being told the Pledge of Allegiance, a moment of silent prayer and the words 'under God' are offensive to an enlightened few so nobody should be allowed to use them. ... My wife and I picked our sons' schools based on three criteria: 1) moral values 2) discipline 3) religious maintenance - in that order. We have spent an obscene amount of money doing this and never regretted a penny. Last week on the news, I heard that the Montgomery County school board voted to include a class with a 10th-grade girl demonstrating how to put a condom on a cucumber and a study of the homosexual lifestyle. The vote was 6-0. I feel better about the money all the time.

(hat tip: Best of the Web) See, what's funny to people in red states is that blue staters don't understand this sentiment. Heck, I grew up in a relatively blue state, went to college in the blue part of that state, attended law school in John Kerry's home state and now live in the bluest part of a red state while working in a city where Republicans get elected to local government out of pity. I know plenty of people who would find the above statement as foreign as an extra-terrestrial.

I'm reasonably certain that most friends of mine don't understand the last sentiment for sure -- I mean, what's wrong with public schools discussing sex education and homosexuality with students? I don't know that I share the same views as Kevin Dowd, but I fully understand the sentiment. I don't have kids, but whenever I do, I think I might not be entirely comfortable with everything that passes for sex education in public schools today. I'd start by pointing out something they forget -- our public schools have trouble teaching math, science, history and English to students right now, so why should we have faith in their ability to teach sex education properly?

In the end, let me point out one great thing about this country -- even an unabashed liberal like Dowd has conservative family members who she loves dearly, and vice versa. In other nations, such families tend to break heads instead of breaking bread.