The US-moral and traditional?

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Asuncion David Maramba

HEADLINE: "Moral values won the vote."

Knee-jerk reaction: Huh, the US, moral? Where but through American TV and movies have we and great parts of the world learned to embrace, to kiss, to shed clothes, to go to bed so easily and torridly as soon as chemistry simmers? And what about the morality of its war policy and the Iraq war-pre-emptive, unilateral, aggressive? And what about its leaders' deception, the covert business with Osama bin Laden and family, the greedy eye for oil, the false claims about weapons of mass destruction? And what about the human rights violations as long as they are outside the United States? Whatever happened to those photos showing inhuman treatment of prisoners?

Cool down. At least three parallels with our country emerge.

First, it seems that the moral, conservative, religious "droves" that voted for Bush have as narrow a definition of morality as our moralistic and religious conservatives. It's largely a personal and domestic morality that has shrunk to sex-love-marriage concretizing these days to gay rights, same-sex marriage, family planning and the like.

But that is just part of the whole. Morality is nothing less than the entire spectrum of good and evil, right and wrong. Morality extends from the personal to social morality, like a probably unjust war in the case of Bush, like corruption in the case of our public officials, like abortion, all of which sweep entire societies. We cannot just pry into domestic infidelities of our officials and allow them their humongous corruption. Who else besides Marcos and Estrada have been driven out for social immorality?