As a Christian, I am met with frequent queries as to the peculiar nature of my political ideology: am I just trying to be different for the sake of being different? Am I just young and naïve? Did I dab LSD on my tongue one too many times before watching “An Inconvenient Truth”? Am I really a Christian at all? I have decided to build this blog to 1. Explain/define my beliefs/dispel myths to my friends, 2. Be a voice to other “closet” liberal Christians, 3. Develop my opinions by getting feedback from you guys.
Let me clearly proclaim my thesis here: The ideology of the Democratic Party in 2008 more closely suits my faith.
The financial crisis of late embodies the reason why I believe this. In a nutshell, Greed powers free market capitalism-->Republicans champion free market capitalism (Christian Republicans too, oh my)-->I don’t like greed (neither does Jesus)-->the democratic party more closely embodies my faith-->I am a democrat-->Period. Argh, and I find myself watering down the above statement by inserting “free-market” above where I feel like myself (and Jesus) think that Capitalism on a whole is silly, but alas, I digress.
The bank bailout of late is designed to address precisely what happened in the 30s before the great depression and avoid it; kind of like a “learn from our mistakes” type of deal. What the government has done is, among many other things, buy chunks of the leading banks because they are “too big to fail*” (see note below on this one). When banks resisted this move, the fed wouldn’t have it, and forced the banks to comply in order to save them. Now, the banks have been partially “nationalized” (although I may argue that they have been “socialized” [gasp]), and all this was done because the federal government was forced to do so... In case italics are inadequate in expressing accented written words, I shall reattempt using caps. The federal government, Pioneered by Reagan into Free-Market-Regulation-Free Capitalism, Captianed by our very own George Dubya, bought huge portions of unable-to-regulate-themselves-banks because it WAS FORCED TO DO SO!
*Don’t we have anti-trust laws to prevent this?
I’ll skip the commentary about Bush’s embarrassingly failed presidency-which-will-go-down-in-history-as-the-presidency-of-the-twin-towers-and-of-the-twin-trillions (the trillion lost in Iraq and the other trillion on the banks due to his failed and inept policy) save this hyphenated parenthetical sentence that I simply could not bear to contain, for now. Sigh, I’ll stick to the title of this blog: why I’m a democrat.
I currently live in Los Angeles county, which is running a deficit of nearly $1 billion, within the great state of California running a deficit of roughly $14 billion, looking for assistance from the federal government, which has a massive (understatement)… deficit of approx. $438 billion (just for this year); and they are looking for help from (irony here, pay attention) CHINA. If you’re not laughing here, you’re a republican. Here is my Mini sub-thesis: American Culture as a whole is deeply rooted in a pandemic, over arching, all encompassing “buy now pay later” mentality. That is, it is the way of the United States of America to consume as much as possible without facing the consequences until we are forced to do so (FORCED TO DO SO). You see it in our health care, how it’s focused on treatment rather than prevention, you see it in our governmental debt on every single level, and now, you see it in the bail out!! Government, to a large extent, sets an example to its people, and this republican led administration is setting a (understatement #2) bad example.
Republicans are doing this, somehow they feel like fighting for lower taxes and lower regulation is somehow Christian, but it's contrary to scripture and, regardless, it has all throughout history caused catastrophic social and civil problems! It boils my blood that Christians, CHRISTIANS, God’s people, followers of Christ, put Republicans into power (off of non-political moral issues like abortion and gay rights: more on this later); and these republicans champion this credit-card-governing mentality. This anger and disappointment in my brothers and sisters keeps me awake at night. We should be the first ones volunteering our wealth, our comfort, our time… for the sake of others! The Republican Party is founded on the principle of allowing people and governments to consume and consume until they are sick and vomiting and they have to binge on the medication they should have been taking gradually to prevent this! If you want to argue this, look at Wall Street and read a transcript of Greenspan’s confessional. We need a government that will regulate us, and prevent this disaster, like my God regulates me, and prevents me from disaster.
However, when I meet disaster in my spiritual life, there is grace, there is correction, and there is renewed strength. When our country meets disaster, there is Obama. After years of enduring inept leadership by way of botched and dishonest voting booths, party line supreme court rulings, vote persuasion via fear mongering, and a re-election via an opaque and dismal war, the American people will do the ultimate “bail out” using the constitution, we will vote democratic.
Let me clearly proclaim my thesis here: The ideology of the Democratic Party in 2008 more closely suits my faith.
The financial crisis of late embodies the reason why I believe this. In a nutshell, Greed powers free market capitalism-->Republicans champion free market capitalism (Christian Republicans too, oh my)-->I don’t like greed (neither does Jesus)-->the democratic party more closely embodies my faith-->I am a democrat-->Period. Argh, and I find myself watering down the above statement by inserting “free-market” above where I feel like myself (and Jesus) think that Capitalism on a whole is silly, but alas, I digress.
The bank bailout of late is designed to address precisely what happened in the 30s before the great depression and avoid it; kind of like a “learn from our mistakes” type of deal. What the government has done is, among many other things, buy chunks of the leading banks because they are “too big to fail*” (see note below on this one). When banks resisted this move, the fed wouldn’t have it, and forced the banks to comply in order to save them. Now, the banks have been partially “nationalized” (although I may argue that they have been “socialized” [gasp]), and all this was done because the federal government was forced to do so... In case italics are inadequate in expressing accented written words, I shall reattempt using caps. The federal government, Pioneered by Reagan into Free-Market-Regulation-Free Capitalism, Captianed by our very own George Dubya, bought huge portions of unable-to-regulate-themselves-banks because it WAS FORCED TO DO SO!
*Don’t we have anti-trust laws to prevent this?
I’ll skip the commentary about Bush’s embarrassingly failed presidency-which-will-go-down-in-history-as-the-presidency-of-the-twin-towers-and-of-the-twin-trillions (the trillion lost in Iraq and the other trillion on the banks due to his failed and inept policy) save this hyphenated parenthetical sentence that I simply could not bear to contain, for now. Sigh, I’ll stick to the title of this blog: why I’m a democrat.
I currently live in Los Angeles county, which is running a deficit of nearly $1 billion, within the great state of California running a deficit of roughly $14 billion, looking for assistance from the federal government, which has a massive (understatement)… deficit of approx. $438 billion (just for this year); and they are looking for help from (irony here, pay attention) CHINA. If you’re not laughing here, you’re a republican. Here is my Mini sub-thesis: American Culture as a whole is deeply rooted in a pandemic, over arching, all encompassing “buy now pay later” mentality. That is, it is the way of the United States of America to consume as much as possible without facing the consequences until we are forced to do so (FORCED TO DO SO). You see it in our health care, how it’s focused on treatment rather than prevention, you see it in our governmental debt on every single level, and now, you see it in the bail out!! Government, to a large extent, sets an example to its people, and this republican led administration is setting a (understatement #2) bad example.
Republicans are doing this, somehow they feel like fighting for lower taxes and lower regulation is somehow Christian, but it's contrary to scripture and, regardless, it has all throughout history caused catastrophic social and civil problems! It boils my blood that Christians, CHRISTIANS, God’s people, followers of Christ, put Republicans into power (off of non-political moral issues like abortion and gay rights: more on this later); and these republicans champion this credit-card-governing mentality. This anger and disappointment in my brothers and sisters keeps me awake at night. We should be the first ones volunteering our wealth, our comfort, our time… for the sake of others! The Republican Party is founded on the principle of allowing people and governments to consume and consume until they are sick and vomiting and they have to binge on the medication they should have been taking gradually to prevent this! If you want to argue this, look at Wall Street and read a transcript of Greenspan’s confessional. We need a government that will regulate us, and prevent this disaster, like my God regulates me, and prevents me from disaster.
However, when I meet disaster in my spiritual life, there is grace, there is correction, and there is renewed strength. When our country meets disaster, there is Obama. After years of enduring inept leadership by way of botched and dishonest voting booths, party line supreme court rulings, vote persuasion via fear mongering, and a re-election via an opaque and dismal war, the American people will do the ultimate “bail out” using the constitution, we will vote democratic.
4 comments:
hahaha.. i love that you sent this blog info to your conservative midwestern friend in kansas. i haven't read it, but am excited to read your liberal views. hahaha... diana
Well, there's so much in here it's hard to find a place to start. I'll just point out two things that might raise an eyebrow for those with whom you disagree: 1) In what way is lower taxes and regulation contrary to scripture? Is it contrary to your interpretation, or theirs, or both? If it's based on your interpretation, then this seems to be a matter of biblical interpretation, rather than a political issue. So, suppose that a "Republican's" interpretation (I don't think that there's just one) happens to be the correct one. Would you say that it must be wrong because it goes against the ideas you already have? Or would you give into what seems to be the seemingly "correct" interpretation? This of course quickly turns into an interpretative issue because we then need to figure out just how to read the scriptures. I just wasn't sure what you meant.
2) I'm sure alot of this is emotive exaggeration meant for shock value, but I think you mischaracterize those that endorse lower taxes and regulation. First, it doesn't make one a Republican, even though many Republicans are in favor of them. Second, alot of those who endorse lower taxes don't do so merely because they want to horde their money. Some think that it's actually better to have less taxes, so that the individual can freely give to charitable organizations themselves, instead of it going to the government and being inefficiently used (i.e., wasted). It's no secret that the givings from charities grossly outweigh the givings of any government around the world.
But, people in Washington have no clue as to how to help the neighbor down the street or the person in your local county or in your local public school. Who has a better idea? Me, you, anyone near the thing in question. My donation of $50 to one of these people/causes would be so much more of an efficient use of money And it's not just about money. It's about helping these people so that they can stand up on their own two feet. So to think that people who want lower taxes don't want to help, say, the poor, is to misunderstand the intentions of alot of these people. It is unfair to everyone in this category. I want to give to the charities and causes that I care about, whether it's to the poor, the sick, education, the elderly, the orphan, etc.
Now, admittedly, not everyone does this, even those who intend to help (and maybe those that do give, don't give enough, whatever that would be). But the idea is that at least in this way they have a *genuine* responsibility, instead of just having alot of their money taken away so that some of it goes to a good cause. That, to some, is not genuine responsibility, which is what many Christians, Jews think they should have. It's something that they think their God has given to them. They might say that there isn't much honor in being forced to help the poor. Now, I'm not saying that dissenters don't give or aren't charitable. It just makes more sense of (and gives more meaning to) the virtue of charity that it should be voluntary, which I think you would agree with. Some make the case that charity isn't charity if it's something that people can't be given the choice to do or not do. It seems that it is better to allow for the possibility that people waste their money (sin?), than to never let them have a choice. How can people be good stewards of their money, if they don't have the possibility of wasting it? This is similar to how alot of people view the nature of sin, freedom, etc. Ok, I've said too much. Procrastinating....
Kai, this posting has a refreshing (and rare) combination of brevity, passion, and truth. The point a lot of people miss (even though it's there, in black and white) is that it was a republican, and a not-particularly-religious one at that, Ronald Reagan, who really got the ball rolling--the ball, that is, that is now crashing into all of our front doors with this massive global financial crisis.
As to david's comments about taxation and government spending, theoretical talk of individual=good and government=bad is a marginally interesting intellectual exercise, but it has no basis in reality. Republicans reduce taxes and spend more. That's what they've always done. Ronald Reagan did it and both Bushes did it, and the result, at the end of the day, in both cases, was recession. So, if you are against massive government spending, vote Democratic! And as for charity, we're not really talking about charity here. The Bible may talk about charity, but that's not what's on the table now. What's on the table is necessity. Thanks to republicans, we're running a $500,000,000,000 deficit, 7,000,000 more Americans lost their health insurance, those that have health care have seen their pemiums double, and 5,000,000 Americans have fallen into poverty. Meanwhile, Bush tax cuts have put an average of $1,000 per week into the pockets of the wealthiest 1% of Americans and only $1.50 a week into the pockets of the poorest 20%. This is not a problem that charitable giving can solve.
And one last thing: I always get irked when someone refers to "people in Washington" as if they're some disconnected cadre of evildoers over there in that strange and sinister place. (Yes, it even irks me when Barack Obama does this.) But we should always remember that those people got there because we put them there, and in our democracy, we are all responsible for their actions.
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