Meeting on politician's religious believes

We had our meeting last night on how a politician's religion may affect his ability to represent his constituents.

I introduced the topic and laid out the conflict of moral values between the religious and the atheists. One believes moral values are from god while the other does not.  The difference in moral values may put the politician in conflict with his constituents.

Mano and Shula both said that politicians should be chosen based on competency and they should be able to compartmentalize their personal lives from their professional lives.  They can live by the moral code they believe in but in their profession as a politician, they need to be able to accommodate the diverse view of their constituents.

They further consider religious believes as a form of bias, no different than ethnic origin or skin colour. 

Political parties go after the ethnic votes, and they are now smart enough to put forward political candidates in ethnic ridings that are not only representative of the ethnic mix there but also a capable person as well.

Voters tend to vote for candidates with similar ethnic background to themselves thinking that there is a better understanding of their issues and perspectives and that there is a better chance that their voice would be heard if needed.

In representative democracies systems like Canada, the political parties need enough elected seats to form the government.  Therefore, it is crucial to them to get enough members elected and if ethnic, religious, or other common causes will appeal to the electorate in that riding,  that is the candidate the party will put forward.

Once elected,  it is the politicians chosen to be in the ruling cabinet that really runs the government. The rest of the elected members follow to support the cabinet.

There was then a lively discussion as to whether a "good" and honest person can really compartmentalize the way he handle the different parts of his life.  Is this not what we consider as "two faced"?

The realist side said politicians have to make tough choices and we need a person that can compromise and make the best decision under the circumstances.  There is never the perfect answer and secrets is part of running a government.

The other side have trouble trusting a representative that is ready to change any time without fully explaining their rationale.

To Jerry's view that a person cannot change their character, Rafi mentioned the example of how we take one perspective as a driver, how the pedestrians seems to walk where ever they please. As soon as we park our cars and walk out the parking lot, we start to think that drivers are reckless in not watching where the pedestrians are going.  We change without even knowing that we have changed.

The significant thing for me from the discussion is that no one objected to the religious moral code being referred to as "a bias" equivalent to former attitudes towards skin colour, gender, and ethnic origin.  It is likely that the discussion group is not representative of our society in general, but we have certainly gone a long way towards a secular society when the religious can see the foundation of their value system as a possible bias to be put aside to accommodate other value systems.

A big part of this is we no longer want to be told what we should do, whether it is our government or religious authority and we want to figure out for ourselves.  

As to those of you who wonder whether we ever discuss sex in order to complete the triple taboo topics of sex, politics, and religion so avoided in "polite" social circles, we did refer to Bill Clinton's issue with his private sex life. Shula thought that it was the US public that had the problem of obsessing over scandals and the president's private matter has nothing to do with his competence and suitability as president.

The ending time for the discussion came all too quickly and I never got to raise the question of "if religion is considered a bias that a politician should set aside, is his political believes also a bias he should set aside?"

Topic for another meeting.