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>here are actually themes in the Bible that talk about a "worker deserving his wage", and "if a man doesn't work he doesn't eat".

wow some fantastic turns of logic you are using.

Christian means Christ-like. did Christ preach social darwinism, or did he spend his time with prostitutes and lepers?

Did Christ preach having the poor fend for themselves, or did he feed the hungry?

Did Christ praise the wealthy, or does he say "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

You can of course interpret your religion as you see fit, but in my eyes, right wing politics is incompatible with being Christ-like.

There is a lot more to Christianity than being "Christ-like". The parent's point is there exists a healthy serving of many unChrist-like, by your definition, ideas in the Bible. And even then, there is much more to a religion than its holy texts or doctrine.

I'd leave it to the practitioners to exhibit what it means to be one of their followers, and it seems the American practitioners haven't noticed this incompatibility you're concerned about.

Those were actual quotes from the bible. I'm not sure how that's a u turn in logic?

Well, the entire first half of the Bible is before the birth of Christ, and when Christ arrived the religion began whats called the New Covenant with God, replacing the old covenant which bound followers to the old laws of the old testament.

something being "in the bible" is meaningless without its context. Theres quite a breadth on the capturing, keeping and treatment of slaves - would you argue that these verses are the same as Christs teachings?

>As for the male and female slaves whom you may have, it is from the nations around you that you may acquire male and female slaves.

> You may also acquire them from among the aliens residing with you, and from their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property.

>You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.

But hey, if you think being a Christian means following any phrase you happen to pick out of the Bible, go for it.

FYI: This reply is exactly one of the "smug styles" that the original article highlights:

> Christianity, as many hastened to point out, is about love. Christ commands us to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. If the Bible took any position on the issue at all, it was that divorce, beloved by Davis, was a sin, and that she was a hypocrite masquerading among the faithful.

> How many of these critiques were issued by atheists?

> This, more than anything I can recall in recent American life, is an example of the smug style.

This is one of the things I don't understand about modern politics, morally conservative always seem to go towards extreme capitalism and morally progressives tend to go towards socialism.

A cynical and maybe excessively nasty answer is that people that just care about lower taxes have pandered to moral conservatives in order to get tax cutting representatives elected.

The more nuanced answer is probably that there has been a coalition for 30-40 years along those lines. I think over the next several elections, those alignments are going to shift in a big way. Trump doesn't come from the historic coalition, Sanders almost won as an outsider in the Democratic primary. The parties are not well aligned with the electorate.

The simple explanation is that the left won't touch socially conservative ideas, leaving the right free to pander to that base. Combine this with policies that look like tax cuts to the casual observer and you've got a winning formula, despite that fact that the socially conservative electorate isn't interested in libertarian capitalism at all.

Just look at how Trump changed his views on abortion to pander to the social conservatives, and as a consequence won huge evangelical support.

So the right has taken the attitude that they don't care about morals, they'll adopt any policy which allows them to win so they can go about pushing the agenda of liberal capitalism for the benefit of themselves. Sure, there are some genuine moralists on the right too - but none of those just won an election.