Can’t keep my eyes off the incoming numbers
I’m adding articles and replies while I am watching the incoming real numbers on several other websites. I meant to go and watch the returns on TV, but having the instant data is hard to break away from. I’ve always loved election night, although four years ago was the first time I went to bed without knowing the winner. Turned out to be the right decision.
So far returns are coming in for Bush stronger than I expected. All sorts of amateur experts fill these sites, but their results are faster, and sometimes more insightful, than the pro’s on the news shows. I was at the hospital all day today so was not able to log on or listen to the latest news at all.
Several important social issue referendums are on the ballots. Gay marriage bans are on about ten state ballots I think. Those results will also be important.
I’ll let you know tomorrow if my prediction was correct. Two other people know what it was so I won’t fudge it!
32 comments Tuesday 02 Nov 2004 | Jacobse | Politics |
Just broke out the Talisker to toast the victory (called by ABC, anyway) in Florida.
You missed nothing today except the Drudge-caused panic bubble among some Republicans based on a badly-modeled exit poll. That and Tom Daschle’s lawsuit claiming Republican intimidation at SD polls. They took the case to a judge recommended for approval by Daschle himself. The lengths to which people will go…
Hugh’s keeping everyone calm and focused on his all-night coverage. It’s always fun on Election Night!
Polling places were packed in Florida today. I waited forty minutes to vote. At my parish (St. Katherine in Naples) we were swamped all day with voters. One of the attendants said it was the busiest he had ever seen. Bush voters really came out.
All the results aren’t in yet but if Bush does win I will take consolation in the fact that W will be made to clean up his own mess, and the Republicans won’t be able to shift the blame for that mess to anyone else, not the Democrats, Clinton or Kerry, but will finally be forced to take responsibility for their own mistakes.
The Iraq mess, the deficit and expoding national debt, job losses, wage stagnation, the slow-motion collapse of our health care system, America’s loss of international respect and standing on the world stage, the loss of our civil liberties, the spoiling of our nation’s natural beauty and the ruining of our environment – all of these will be unmistakeably tied to the policies of George W. Bush, the Republicans and the Americans who chose to vote for them. My hands will be clean because I voted for Kerry.
It’s always hard to be the person with the shovel who cleans up after the elephant – if John Kerry loses at least he won’t have to worry about that.
Spoken like a gentleman, Dean.
Note 3. Not true. Placing blame and cleaning up messes are two different things. We will be cleaning up Clinton’s mess in Kosovo for years, for example. Decisions made in the next four years will extend farther than Bush’s term — or Kerry’s had he won.
In the spirit of today’s losses which occurred as I predicted, I will be dressing entirely in black to work today. I thought of wearing a funeral shroud but decided against it merely for practical reasons!
Well, yesterday I predicted a slim Kerry victory. I guess I shouldn’t quit my day job and go into political punditry.
The interesting question now is who will be the new enemies. Right-wing politics and conservative Christianity both require enemies. As of today, the French-looking, traitorous Kerry, who voted to raise your taxes 46,298 times, is vanquished. The ambulance-chasing liberal trial lawyer Edwards is likewise vanquished. The culture of death liberals are so weak that their best efforts can’t even unseat an obviously dishonest and imcompetent administration that acts against the economic interest of its own followers. In the name of marriage the gays who want to marry have been slapped down authoritatively, thus ensuring that drug addicts and serial killers can marry but gays cannot.
So who will be the new enemy? I suppose the victors will first walk around the battlefield and spear the wounded enemies, but there’s little sport in that. And maybe even drag the bodies of the fallen liberals around the city a couple of times, but what then? Whom will the Saved and the Culture of Life now oppose?
Remember the 80s when heavy metal bands and their listeners were the enemy? They were on every Oprah and Donahue episode! I wonder what happened to all of them … I think most of them grew up, moved to the burbs and had kids despite the dire predictions of nervous evangelicals.
(The gays are still not where they “ought” to be, of course. The hard right will work for a re-criminalization and even execution of gays, no doubt (see Judge Roy Moore’s comments)).
No … I think we will become an increasingly paranoid and apocalyptic culture that is assured of its own moral superiority and standing in the world. We will close in on ourselves with increasing delusions of grandeur until our self-fulfilling prophecies of doom are met and we blow up the world in an effort to “protect” our freedoms. Anyone who criticizes us is doing so out of evil motives and intent cannot be trusted.
The enemy is simply anyone who is … not us!
On the upside, we can expect four more years of delicious satire at http://www.whitehouse.org!
Note 8
We are a thoroughly human, and thusly flawed, collection of people in America. But somehow we have produced genuine heroes who have left their families, left their peaceful and safe homes and traveled across the world to fight the worst fascists in history. It was those heroes, our American and coalition soldiers who opened the doors of Saddam’s prisons and released the prisoners. I am so proud of them. They are real men and real women worthy of the world’s highest respect. The moment was comparable to the liberation of Auschwitz.
Why is it that you are more concerned about the fine point of the legal rights of sodomites. Most Americans are perfectly willing to adopt a “live and let live” attitude about gays. There is no real call for the institution of a moral police. We just don’t want to be forced to honor homosexuality in the same fashion that true marriage should be honored.
With innocents being beheaded by the most heinous and vicious collection of thugs and murderers, you seem concerned with the fine points of the legal rights of a tiny minority of people who want to practice non-conventional sex. Our civilization is as stake. A film-maker who criticized Islam lies murdered in the streets and all you care about is the recreational sex opportunity for people with minority sexual tastes.
Perhaps you should review your priorities.
Better to analyze why the Democrats failed, than to try and resucitate the now discredited ideas like conservatives are fearful and reactionary bigots. Ask yourself why Republicans are increasingly middle class, black, or female. Ask yourself why Democratics have increasingly lost statehouses and governorship during the last twenty years. Ask yourself why, in one of the most brutal national campaigns in election history, the Republicans actually increased their support. Ask yourself why you didn’t see this Republican rout coming.
As long as the Democrats continue believing fictions like conservatives are fearful reactionary bigots, they will continue to keep losing.
Note 11
Some statistics:
The winning candidate earned clear and simply majority of the popular vote along with a majority of the electoral college votes, for the first time in 16 years.
The Republicans now hold 55 senatorial seats out of 100
The Republicans now hol 230 house seats out of 435
The Republicans hold majorities in the majorities of state legislatures.
I believe, but, I am not certain that Republicans hold a majority of the state governorships.
In order for this to occur, thousands of candiates must win elections over many election cycles all over the country. This cannot be engineered in a single national election or a single election cycle.
Yes, the Democrats need to examine what it is about their party that leaves most Americans cold. I would suggest that their activists core promote ideas and policies that are distinctly outside the mainstream of American life and American culture. One of their major problems, not the only problem, but one of the leading problems is their condescension towards Christian religious faith of all kinds.
For the record, I have a very long list of issues upon which I differ with George Bush and I reserve my right to offer reasoned and factually based critiques of his policies. There is a real difference between reasoned debate and simple bashing of your opponent. I consider the audio tape clip from Phonono to be nothing more than a taunt at Bush’s lack of fluency.
Note to Phonono. Just as good looks do not guarantee intelligence or talent, neither does glibness or fluency of speech guarantee intelligence, character, principles or resolve.
I was wrong with my lawyers comment if Bush won (though it seems in some Senate races the Dems have not given up on the “win by lawsuit” option).
I’m trying to imagine how I would be reacting today if Kerry had won. Would I wear black to work? Would I be predicting the execution of conservatives? Would I be looking forward to blaming Iraq on Kerry (Ok, I might look forward to that
)?
I would certainly be sorely disappointed (I did pray that Pres. Bush would win this election, just as I imagine Dean & James prayed that he lose). But I would hope that if I had to live under a Kerry presidency for the next 4 years I could put the political loss behind me, and move on with whatever it is that God would have me do with my life.
However you felt about the presidential election, I would think that the overwhelming repudiation of same-sex “marriage” in 11 states was something that faithful Orthodox Christians could applaud. Instead I seem to be seing “the world will come to end because Kerry didn’t win.”
I was criticized for highlighting the moral dimension of politics in my pre-election piece “Christianity and the Presidential Election.” I think the election, including the overwhelming rejection of homosexual marriage in eleven states (votes crossed party lines,) proves that the morally conservative view is more mainstream than Democratic strategists realize. The Democratic party leadership is captive to the moral vision of the cultural left. Their embrace of moral relativism (not for themselves and their families necessarily but certainly for everyone else) is one important reason the Democrats are in decline.
At this point the enemy is anyone who doesn’t have the right social or political beliefs. I’m wondering if the new enemy will simply be anyone who does not have the right religious beliefs. A good label would be “humanism.” It already has negative resonance among fundamentalists, and is vague enough so that anyone could be called a humanist.
The reason I say that is because, as the Republican party drifts ever rightward, groups that were once considered on the fringe now begin to be seen as more mainstream. In particular, I’m thinking of the Christian Reconstructionists. Bush already hangs out with these folks.
Many people have not heard of reconstructionists, but they are influential within the Republican Party and in the Bush administration. Here’s a little snapshot of what goes on:
“Christian Reconstruction and Dominionist strategists make clear in their writings that homeschooling and Christian academies have been and continue to create the Rightist Christian cadres of the future, enabling them to place ever-increasing numbers of believers in positions of governmental influence. The training of Christian cadres is far more sophisticated than the average liberal realizes. There now stretches a network of dozens of campuses across the nation, each with its strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people, most of them clones of Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. But how many outsiders know the depth and specificity of political indoctrination in these schools? For example, Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia, a college exclusively for Christian homeschoolers, offers programs in strategic government intelligence, legal training and foreign policy, all with a strict, Bible-based ‘Christian worldview.’ Patrick Henry is so heavily funded by the Christian right it can offer classes below cost. In the Bush administration, seven percent of all internships are handed out to Patrick Henry students, along with many others distributed among similar religious rightist colleges. The Bush administration also recruits from the faculties of these schools, i.e. the appointments of right-wing Christian activist Kay Coles James, former dean of the Pat Robertson School of government, as director of the U.S. office of personnel. What better position than the personnel office from which to recruit more fundamentalists? Scratch any of these supposed academics and you will find a Christian zealot. I know because I have made the mistake of inviting a few of these folks to cocktail parties. One university department head told me he is moving to rural Mississippi where he can better recreate the lifestyle of the antebellum South, and its ‘Confederate Christian values.’ It gets real strange real quick.”
— Joe Bageant, from “The Covert Kingdom”
http://www.counterpunch.org/bageant05252004.html
“Reconstructionists would be of less concern if it were not so widely influential in American political circles. Rep. Tom DeLay, Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, Rep. Ron Young, Sen. Sam Brownback, and others are all supporters of the Reconstructionist agenda. Pres. Bush’s policies are more often than not in total synchrony with Reconstructionist desires, and he has been energetically embraced by them. Most of the current administration’s policies can be tied together under a common thread when looked at as an execution of Reconstructionist thought, and this is truly frightening for Americans of all religious traditions.”
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/5/21/13392/6893
In the search for the religious right’s new enemies, I think the Christian Reconstructionists may lead the way. Biblical slavery anyone?
As I said before religion really has become the opiate of the masses. Karl Rove used it to successfully anesthesize our sensibility to the economic pain George W. Bush’s policies are causing. Ohio lost nearly a quarter million jobs! Shrinking rural communities are losing their most precious asset, their men and women who enlisted in the military, to the senseless meatgrinder in Iraq. What’s wrong with those people? How bad does Bush have to hurt them?
Health care insurance is becoming more expensive or disappearing gasoline prices are rising with no end in sight. The surplus has been replaced by half trillion dollar annual deficits accumulating for our children to pay off. We’ve lost a million jobs and wages are stagnating.
Bush lied. He LIED! He lied about the reasons for going to war and yet we return him to office? Thousands of people are dead, DEAD, because of his failure to plan for the post war Iraq, and we reward that failure with another 4 years?
Arnold Schwarzenger appeared on California television commercials funded by his own money to promote a proposition funding stem cell research – a position directly contary to the teachings of the Cathoplic Church – and not a single Catholic prelate issured a protest. Why? Because the pro-Bush clergy are the modern day Pharisees and hypocrites, who want to play partisan politics, disguising their true intentions under the banner of Christ.
I’m a religious person too but I don’t think God wanted me to vote against my own economic well being or reward lies and incomeptency. That anyone could vote for Bush remains incomprehensible and unfathomable to me.
Note 13. If Kerry had won, the cultural left would have gained institutional dominance for the next thirty years. He would have nominated Supreme Court justices, foreign policy would have become radically pro-abortion, equivocation (“nuanced thinking” among supporters) would dominate decision making — in short another Clinton but with a bit more polish.
Republicans have some serious problems of their own. Nevetheless there is a world of difference between Bush and Kerry, and Americans on both sides understood this I think.
So if Kerry had won, you would keep working, although some of the successes you might have hoped for in your lifetime would not have come to pass.
One final point. I doubt if Osama is a happy camper today. The decisive Bush win is a signal that Osama’s days are numbered. This is conclusive. It will happen. Under Kerry the operative assumption was that some kind of political negotiation was always a possibility. Kerry is Cateresque toward tyranny — he thinks tyrants can be bought. They can’t, not in the long term anyway. Bush knows this.
Note 16. If the reasons why “anyone could vote for Bush remains incomprehensible and unfathomable” to you, then maybe you have to think a little harder. People are not idiots. Ask yourself why so many people are not convinced by the arguments you repeat over and over again. Maybe it has something to do with the arguments and not the people who reject them.
The point you raise about Schwarzenegger’s support of stem cell research is correct, but your crack about the Catholic Church ought to be overlooked. This will be fought too. Most politicians are not moralists but they are pragmatic. If the political wind changes, they will change with it. I have no problem with this as long as the wind blows in the right direction.
“… strange cultish atmosphere of smiling Christian pod people …”
“Scratch any of these supposed academics [graduates from Patrick Henry College and Liberty University] and you will find a Christian zealot.”
“Biblical slavery anyone?”
This is exactly what I thought would come from those who so deeply desired the defeat of President George W. Bush. A hatred so irrational that Evangelical Christians are viewed as “Christian pod people” and “Christian zealots” looking to establish “Biblical slavery.”
And this is the voice of one who supposedly represents rational argument and reason.
It’s no wonder that unborn children are being sacrificed on the altar of “a woman’s right to choose” when this is what passes for reasoned argument.
Jim, people who don’t agree with your political views are not your enemy. The Islamofascists strapping bombs to themselves & flying planes into buildings are.
I actually could very easily live with a Dick Cheney presidency and John Edwards VP if I had to choose among the four candidates.
And my prayer was not for the defeat of George Bush. He’s a person who’s made some decisions I don’t agree with. I’m hoping he’s learned from the mistakes of the past four years and that he’s sufficiently humbled so that he will avoid making WMD jokes at fundraising dinners while kids are dying in Iraq looking to find them.
I’m praying that he’s able to maintain the national security he’s promised us. I actually appreciate that he refused to demonize all Muslims despite the clamor of the religious right to do just that. I’m hoping also that as a “born-again evangelical” he does not see his victory as an omen of God’s favor on him and as a means of bringing about the Second Coming of Christ through some military conflagration in the Holy Land if the matter can be solved through diplomacy.
Do not be naive, however, regarding the designs of many, many conservative factions in America. My biggest fear is that he ends up listening to the voices of the many he considers to be within his ideology that say things like the following:
“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.”
–Randall Terry, The News Sentinel, (Ft. Wayne, IN.),
“With all due respect to those dear people, my friend, God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew.”
–Bailey Smith, a founding father of Robertson’s Christian Coalition, once told 15,000 people at a Religious Roundtable briefing in Dallas
“Those who practice homosexuality should swiftly be put to death by the government. God emphatically condemns the practice of exchanging proper gender characteristics among men and women. God justly calls for the death-penalty for anyone who practices homosexuality.”
–Citizens for the Ten Commandments
“My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns.
–James Watt, The Washington Post
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”
–Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
“No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.”
–George Bush Sr. to a reporter August 27, 1988, while serving as vice-president and running for President
The country is more divided now than ever. I’m hoping in the end that it is not worse in four years than it is even now.
Daniel writes: “This is exactly what I thought would come from those who so deeply desired the defeat of President George W. Bush. A hatred so irrational that Evangelical Christians are viewed as ‘Christian pod people’ and ‘Christian zealots’ looking to establish ‘Biblical slavery.’”
Having been a fundmentalist myself for ten years I know exactly what the author is talking about when he refers to “pod people.” Maybe you have to be one to know one, but I was one. It’s not an irrational hatred but a reasonable concern based on what I personally know about these people.
As far as biblical slavery, this is one piece of the Reconstructionist agenda — the implementation of the non-ceremonial aspects of Mosaic law. But don’t believe me; research it for yourself.
Daniel: “Jim, people who don’t agree with your political views are not your enemy.”
In the Reconstructionist view I would be the enemy of God; thus their enemy as well. It’s not clear whether under a Reconstructionist government I would be executed outright, or whether I would be allowed to live as long as I did not spread any heretical “teachings.” Reconstructionists are smart; they’re not going to say stuff like this in public. That’s all part of the “stealth” strategy. But it’s what they believe, and what they write about:
“So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” — Gary North, “The Intellectual Schizophrenia of the New Christian Right” in Christianity and Civilization: The Failure of the American Baptist Culture, No. 1 (Spring, 1982), p. 25.
Reconstructionist and Dominionist thinking has spread to many churches and Christians. So you’ll hear a lot of these ideas from people who are not reconstructionists, strictly speaking, and who do not hold some of the more bizarre beliefs of hard core reconstructionists.
RE: Number 18: Why do you think middle-class Christians voted against their own economic self-interest?
Clearly the American middle-class is under siege and it going to get worse, with jobs becoming harder to find, wages stagnating, health care benefits harder to get, and Bush shifting the tax burden from the rich and corporations on to the backs of middle-class wage-earners.
Maybe this is a repeat of Herbert Hoover’s 1928 victory over New York Governor Al Smith. Smith, the first Catholic to run for President, was made the object of scorn and derision as a North-eastern liberal elitist by the great mass of narrow-minded provincials in the South and Midwest. It took a cataclysmic event, the Great Depression to push Hoover and the Republicans out in 1932. I fear Bush’s extremist policies, fully unleashed by this election, will produce a similar disaster, and will take such a disaster for people to see Mr. Bush and the Republicans for the dangerous radicals that they are.
Item22
Dean
How is the middle class “under siege.” We have higher employment figures than in the second half of the Clinton administration. Somehow the Left always keeps moving the ball. If we had low employment figures it would all be “BUSH’s FAULT.” Now suddenly, high employment figures is irrelevant and the middle class is “under siege.” Productivity is up, employment is up, the stock market is up. Yes, we have a deficit to wrestle with, that is no small problem, we all have to face it, but to claim that the “middle class is under siege” is simply not supportable by economic data.
Middle class Americans provide the bulk of the tax revenues in the country, always have, they see themselves as the tax donors not the tax consumers. Kerry has a long history of promoting the primary goals of his party. The Democratic Party has become little more than an aglomeration of people who want to use the political power of their vote to tap the treasury. There is corporate welfare, which is wrong, and there is ethnic welfare, which is wrong. Blacks in America if treated as a country do better than the citizens of Sweden.
We really forget how wonderfully well off we are. There are a 2 billion people in this world who get by on less than the equivalent of $2 aday. There are $1 billion people who get by on less than $1 a day. You can go all the way to the bottom of our income distribution and people in America still live far better than the rest of the world. The condition that Dean describes as the “middle class under siege” would be gratefully embraced by 96% of the population of the world. We need to get some perspective here. The press is found of interviewing a young family who plaintively state that they cannot afford health insurance. However, the press does not photograph the Winnebago in the driveway or the VCR in the house with 3 TVs. Standard health insurance from Blue Cross Blue Shield for two middle aged adults in average health costs $250/month for major medical coverage. The average car payment in the United States in $370/month.
Note 22
Dean
You have to explain not only why Bush got re-elected by why a majority of State governors are Republican. You also have to explsain why are a majority of State legislatures are held by Republican majorities. Why is the House Republican? Why is the Senate Republican? This kind of majority dominance did not happen over night. This is a perfect “hat-trck” Presidency, House and Senate. Not easy to do. This trend has been steadily progressing since 1980. In 1980 the South had 4 Republican Senators and 26 Democrat Senators. Now those figures are reversed. This is a 40 year phenomena.
Dean, the Dems need to ask why America is disserting them, slowly but surely. A partial answer is that the top Party officials embrace people like Michael Moore and bizarro LBTG types who live in some small enclave in a loft in San Francisco. People who marry the opposite sex and want to raise healthy kids have a hard time relating to the idea that the circus types from the sexual fringes (who have their rights to reasonable freedom) have been embraced as the norm and the wave of the future.
Do you know that Terayza stated that as First Lady she should make “Gay Awareness” her pet project? Transvestites in the Lincoln bedroom. Shudder. Americans are very live and let live, however, most do not want to honor homosexuality nor be forced to teach their kids to honor homosexuality.. The proof of their tolerant attitude is the state legislatures, even though dominated by Republicans were quietly repealing the laws against sodomy. The Dems just moved too far away from mainstream America. They have expressed too much contempt for people who take their faith seriously unless those poepl are Muslim.
Dean, another question. All of the big city school systems have been run by Democratic machines since the 1060’s and they are a shambles. The simple schools of the 1930 could educate waves of non-English speaking immigrants from multiple countries, however, today’s school’s can’t teach English as a first language. The Democrats are fully responsible for the failure of the nation’s schools. It is their union mentality that puts the interests of the teachers in full employment and security above the mission of the school and the welfare of the children. Unions always operate that way. Security for union members, fewer jobs and poorer service to the consumer.
To all those who find the re-election of President Bush incomprehensible, are in deep mourning and fear for you futures and your lives because the United States is now going to become some sort of “Biblical Stepford”:
In my experience, those that reject the traditional principals of revealed Christian truth find those who attempt to live their lives in accord with that revealed truth incomprehensible. Any attempt to discipline one’s self in accord with Christian belief and doctrine is believed to be a form of slavery. It is even worse when such self-discipline is recommended to others out of a genuine care for those others–that is “attempting to force their faith down others throats.” Unfortunately, such people do not see the manacles of sin and passion that encircle their own souls. Let me say it once and for all, I do not want a theocracy, I want a culture and therefore a politics that is informed by the revealed truth of Christ. You do not have to change at all if you do not want to.
True freedom is obedience to God’s loving will–allowing the Holy Spirit to renew our minds, our hearts, and even our bodies. We are not autonomous beings. We are completely dependent on God (another reason for us to come together in our temples to worship Him who created us).
Personally, I think George W. Bush has a genuine understanding of both the nature and source of true freedom, and he is a warrior.
Even MSNBC commentators realized that John Kerry lost the election because of his position on cultural issues. There is beginning to dawn on some that the enslavement of the left to abortion, gay “rights”, government as nanny, etc., costs them just as many votes as it gains them, maybe more. With Kerry’s defeat, the chance of dame Hillary even getting the nomination next time around is greatly reduced although it is probably too early for Barak Obama in 08, certainly soon. He could become the Democratic Reagan if, IF, the hard left cultural positions are jettisoned. He is genuinely charismatic, intelligent, and articulate, although handicapped by being a Senator.
Michael: I accept the argument in your final paragraph – see my posting under “When Catholics vote.”
Michael writes: “In my experience, those that reject the traditional principals of revealed Christian truth find those who attempt to live their lives in accord with that revealed truth incomprehensible. . . . . I want a culture and therefore a politics that is informed by the revealed truth of Christ.”
You move here from the personal to the social. There is a great difference between the first and second statements. There is a great difference between personally living so as to embody various Christian virtues vs. voting so that those same virtues become somehow instantiated in the culture. For example, it is the difference between saying “I don’t swear” vs. “you are not allowed to swear.” Or do you mean something different by a culture that is “informed” by the revealed truth? Perhaps you could spell out what that means.
Michael: ” . . . I do not want a theocracy . . .”
You don’t, but many supporters of the administration feel differently about that.
Note 27
I am confident that even if some of the supporters of the Administration would actually want a theocracy ( an overblown fear, I think) that the Federal Bench is united in preventing that in any serious manner. I understand the concern but as a practical matter, Bush would be check-mated by the Courts rather briskly if he took serious steps in that direction. As a country we have much bigger issues to tackle than this
Jim, wanting a culture and politics informed by Christian values, ethics, and standards, is a far cry from legislating Christian praxis. The legislation of Christian praxis is neither practical nor desirable. Christian praxis (Orthodox praxis anyway) is based on the free choice to love God, worship Him, and commune with Him in order to realize the theanthropic unity He has in mind for us.
I am confident that on an even, competitive playing field, most people will willingly choose a culture consciously permeated with Christian values since they will have a more fulfilling, happier, productive life. However, the secular liberals seem to be so horrified by the very idea of people who actually inculcate their faith into their daily life that many now face insuperable and unconstitutional barriers to public service.
I am baffled by the seeming inability of many liberals to understand that for traditional Christians there is no difference between the personal and the social–not in a theocratic sense, but just in everyday living, God is the focal point, our inter-communion with Him cannot be put on the shelf. Especially for the Orthodox since it is our goal to live a sacramental life, allowing the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and those around us, our community, our culture, and our world. Christianity is a social religion, not a personal one. We are commanded to express our faith in the world. Secularists have a choice, try to suppress the expression of Christianity or learn to live with it. Since we only become stronger the more we are persecuted, I really do advise the second choice.
If you learn to live with us, Dean and I will still be arguing with each other about the proper way to apply Christian values. The freedom inherent in Christianity ought to be apparent in our disagreements. I respect Dean, I like Dean, I honor him for his commitment to the Church and our Lord Jesus Christ. If we ever meet, we might even be friends. He is, in fact, my blood brother. We are united, and always will be by the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ which we share each time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy–we just don’t agree on a lot of secondary points. Lately, I’ve even begun to feel the joy of the Lord in that fact. Jesus really wants us to contend with the world, to battle it, to dress and keep the earth, to rejoice in each other as we rejoice in Him.
I’ll even grant you the possibility that there are some theocratic supporters of Bush, but so what. Theocracy is the last form of government the United States will ever have. Even so, don’t those who honestly favor such a form of government have the right to enter the public debate and attempt to influence the minds and hearts of their fellow citizens? For goodness sakes, in the midst of the Cold War, the communist party was running Gus Hall for President every four years. Until Pearl Harbor, fascism was a strong political ideology here. Islam is a growing influence in American life now as we face the battle with the fascist side of that faith. Why fear the public influence of Christianity?
“However, the secular liberals seem to be so horrified by the very idea of people who actually inculcate their faith into their daily life that many now face insuperable and unconstitutional barriers to public service. ”
Actually, Michael, not true. The truest Christians I know and have known are in fact also the most wonderful people I know. Most of my more “secular” friends agree with this as well. They make a most convincing witness through their words and example, through their charity, honesty, discipline and humility.
Unfortunately, Christianity has received a black eye from the unfortunate example of some of very powerful and vocal members who have under the guise of morality done and said vicious and downright wicked things. It is terrible thing to have to watch a loved one wasting away and suffering a painful death from AIDS and have to hear someone like Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson smugly proclaim that they “deserve” it every chance they get. It is easy to condemn the “secularists” until one realizes that very often these secularists are rebelling not out of bad intentions but simply because they have been violated physically or emotionally in some way, consciously or not, by someone acting under the authority of the Church.
Christianity has become, for many, merely a convenient vehicle for political power and profit in this country. As with any group, it doesn’t take more than a few bad apples to give the rest of the group a bad name, and unfortunately, these bad apples are getting much of the press (often because they so wish it to be).
I’m not making excuses for the errors of the left, just trying to explain why they so often fear the right.
Don’t laugh at this example, but I recall watching a show called “The Surreal Life”. The premise is that they have six or seven celebrities live in a house for several weeks together. Tammy Faye (yes, that one) was living with, among other people, Ron Jeremy, a man who has a history in pornography. TF never compromised her own values but embraced even this man who most would spurn. She had an ability to see the best in her housemates and accept them without conditions. When TF was diagnosed with cancer, Ron sent a note to her saying, “I’m not sure how much my prayers are worth, but I am praying for you anyhow.” People can spot when a person is sincere, and a true Christian witness will elevate the minds and hearts of those they come in contact with naturally.
The face of Christianity has unfortunately become, in essence, one of hostility and punishment. It is no wonder that many fear that this influence will spread.
Michael: “I am confident that on an even, competitive playing field, most people will willingly choose a culture consciously permeated with Christian values since they will have a more fulfilling, happier, productive life. However, the secular liberals seem to be so horrified by the very idea of people who actually inculcate their faith into their daily life that many now face insuperable and unconstitutional barriers to public service.”
Michael, in your view, what would a culture permeated with Christian values look like? In other words, how would such a culture differ from what we have now? I’m not trying to pick a fight here, just trying to understand your position.
It seems to me that to the extent that we can be called a Christian nation, it is because of how we treat the “least among us.” Granted, large-scale social programs can be wasteful and ineffective (just like the military or any other large program). So we have waste in the food stamp program, but we don’t have people starving in the street. We have waste in public medical programs, but we don’t have people dying in the street. And so on.
But it seems to me that social programs tend to be the programs most targeted by conservative Christians. Generalizing here, but I think in the conservative Christian community there is serious doubt as to whether the government should even be involved in these things. But to me it is programs such as these, born out of a sense of the public good, that are really the way that Christianity is most clearly and importantly instantiated in society.
Beyond this, I’m not quite sure what a Christian culture looks like.
OBL wanted Kerry
Putin believed that OBL was trying to influence the election in favor of Kerry.
From Putin:
“I am convinced that international terrorism gave itself the goal of not allowing the re-election of Bush. The statement by bin Laden in the final stages of the pre-election campaign is the best confirmation of this… If Bush wins, then I can only feel joy that the American people did not allow itself to be intimidated, and made the most sensible decision…
“Relations will not be easy. Between such countries as the United States and Russia with such a scale of mutual obligations, there are always some problems… Our relations in the last four years have undergone a big change, for the good of our peoples, of our countries, and for the good of our security… [Bush is] a reliable and predictable partner… [he] has proved to be a firm man, with a strong character, and a coherent policy.”