"Respect is earned." It's supposed to be a conservative mantra. And Obama is supposed to be trying to reach out to conservatives. So, why does he insist we must bestow respect on Rick Warren that Warren clearly has not earned?
The fact is, there are a lot of "conservative" principles that I respect. Except they're not really conservative. And they're also not exclusive of other principles that might seemingly conflict with them. For example, I think that everyone is worthy of a basic level of respect. Being treated with a fundamental level of dignity is, to my mind, a human right. But I also think that there are higher levels of respect that must be earned, just as one must earn trust. And giving the invocation at a presidential inaguration certainly counts as a position of respect that must be earned.
So, like I already asked, whatever happened to the conservative principle that "Respect is earned"?
