It’s not that I don’t talk about politics. I frequently do as a matter of course. The thing is, I don’t post about it, usually. The politics I spend my time with involve local affairs - mayor, local representative to Congress, state senator, M.U.D. board, etc. These thing affect me most and are pretty much worthy of my attention. National politics, on the other hand, affect society, but not me as much. My sporadic attempts to talk about national politics betray my ignorance.
What is different this time is that a book is saying something that I have believed in part for a long time. I believe the Religious Right has come to believe that real Christians support the Republican party. I’ve had experience with the implied threat to be like other real Christians. The only difference was party affiliation. The Religious Right wants us all to be Republicans of the most conservative sort. The ICoC wanted us to all be disciples(htdm) of the most radical sort.
No thanks, I’ve starred in that movie with editorial control over the script.
The book, Thy Kingdom Come, is written by one of the editors of Christianity Today. He talks about the origins of both the Religious Right and of Evangelical Christianity. I look forward to reading it at some point.
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8 Responses to “Interesting Book”
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- pinakidion: what rock said
- Rock: “Is Pinakidion ever going to post again?”
- salguod: Is that an answer to a question that I missed?
- xray342: How’s this for cryptic? $ echo ‘pinakidion’ | md5 16da6556b9ba8a411a6f4251591eae2b
- Velocio: “Despite my best efforts, you have learned about evil from me, in part, because you have seen it in me.” Wow, tears....
That’s old news, as you know. That attitude is nothing new. The religious right/republican link dates at least back to the 1980s. Ballmer wrote about the same topic in a book I read in religious history class. His point then was that the evangelicals (for want of a better word) most recently became involved in politics in the late 1970s and first supported Jimmy Carter. They turned away from Carter because of some controversy involving Bob Jones University, and threw their support to Reagan. It was around this time that they made a conscious decision to make abortion a political issue.
Of course, there are sources that disagree with Ballmer in the timing. In “Selling of the President” by Joe McGinnis, he says religious elements strongly pushed for Nixon in 1968.
I vote for a person not a party. I think spiritually Carter was the best I know of and I liked him way back when people didn’t like him. Since then it’s been pick the lesser evil.
Heard about that book this morning on NPR adn thought it sounded good. He pointed out the inconsistancy in the position. Pro-life if it’s abortion, but not if it’s on the death penalty or torture of prisoners. He said he contacted 10, I think, eveangelical groups about their position on torture. Only 2 bothered to reply and they didn’t have a problem with it.
“Voting for the man rather than the party” is a popular but flawed principle. In the American political system, a vote for a particular candidate is not a vote for one individual.
1. It is a vote for a cabinet made up of virtually all members of the president’s party. Therefore, it is a vote to give that party control of the executive branch of the government.
2. It is a vote that determines the political affiliation, and often ideological persuasion, of hundreds of appointments in the judicial branch, from lesser courts up to the Supreme Court.
3. It is a vote to determine the tie-breaking vote in the Senate as well as which party has veto power over the legislative branch. The president is overwhelmingly more likely to cooperate with members of his own party in policy matters.
4. The party in the White House gains significant advantages in patrongage, fund-raising, and other things that it virtually always uses to benefit other party members in their own elections.
To summarize, the party and the man are inextricably connected in modern politics. A vote for the man is also a vote for the party.
I’ve never had the experience where the dude stunk more than the other guy but his cabinent and party were better. I suppose it could happen.
Anyway, I think the whole system needs a work over. I think another legitimate party may help. I always think about the Simpson’s eppisode where the two aliens run against each other for president. The people discover their aliens before the vote and threaten to vote independent. The aliens laugh and say “go ahead throw away your vote you know it’s a two party system.” Or something like that. Anyway, again it seems to be a choice of the lesser of two evils many times. And, I’m not smart enough to guess peoples cabinent so I vote for the person.
You don’t have to guess the cabinet, you can be assured that it will consist of nearly all members of the president’s party, along with hundreds of other important positions. A vote for a president is more than merely a vote for an individual, it it a vote to hand the keys of the executive branch, especially the most important policy making positions, to that man’s political party.
You can be guaranteed, that whoever the candidate, they will very often follow the established pattern of their party. Bush does typically Republican things, Clinton did typical Democratic things. I’m not talking about superficialities, but real policy. It is not only presidents. In congress, Republicans typically vote with other Republicans and vice versa.
A maverick who does not go along with their party will never even be in a position to be nominated, much less win the White House. Anyone who disgrees in significant ways with the established party positions, will not rise to that level. The party defines the man in many ways. It is perhaps the most important factor when one tries to predict the policy of a modern administration. So much of the election process is meaningless PR or fluff. Look back and compare the election-time rhetoric with what actually occured later and you will see a big disconnect. This is the reality we all have to deal with.
At least that is my view. Like the aliens said, this is the system we have, certainly not the ideal one.
I generally try to stay out of political discussions. I just wanted to piggyback a comment on what Rock just said. In our political system you really are just voting for one of two packages of policies. Voters don’t have a line-item veto! And many of us don’t like everything in either package.
Thinking introspectively for a moment, I think that I make my choices based on a prioritization of my objections. I choose the package that is the least repulsive to me. One of my priorities is my freedom to practice my religion personally and in my family without interference from the government. That includes freedom from interference by anti-Christian policies and teachings in public schools, and from anti-Christian court rulings that erode my freedom of religion. I find one party to be an advocate of my freedom of religion, and the other to be an adversary.
Another priority is that I should not offer my support (and therefore my vote) to sin. There is plenty to which I object in both parties on this count. So I am in the unpleasant position of having to choose which sins are more tolerable. I am forced to choose between supporting 1.37 million abortions annually in the US, or supporting thousands of deaths due to wars and hundreds of cases of torture or mistreatment of prisoners. I don’t like either choice, not even a little bit. But on one side the sheer number of evils is overwhelming.
Alan, that is the point I was trying to make about the established positions of the two parties, each of the two parties has positions which they support, regardless of the candidate.
I disagree with your interpretation of those positions, specifically with the question of rhetoric versus actual policy, but that is another debate for another day. It is an important topic in its own right.