In the debate over the role of religion in politics, it is useful to remember that the founding fathers (and presumably mothers too) of this country were deists. They believed in God, but not necessarily religion. Religion as a force to be reckoned with in politics is particularly acute this election season, mostly due to a life-and-death struggle we productive and live-and-let-live people find ourselves in with the religion of Islam.
Make no mistake: we cannot stick our heads in the sand this time and wait for the problem to go away. We can’t make nice with the zealots who want to destroy our way of life and not expect them to stab us in the back.
That said, I agree with Laura that our leaders should not be the kind of people who genuflect in front of an altar (whichever one it may be) before making decisions. They – and especially the person, regardless of gender or race – must ALREADY HAVE a strong moral compass that helps them to BE decisive. I agree with Laura that this moral compass does not have to be tied to an organized religion.
Personally, I am suspicious of ALL organized religions, because they prey on people’s insecurities and seek to control them. Religion, as politics, is really all about POWER AND CONTROL. I do believe in God, but I don’t believe I find Him in a church or on a carpet with hundreds of other people chanting anything. When I want to find God, I go to nature – forests, oceans, deserts – and places where there is no sound, or only the sounds of nature. There I feel the insignificance of my own life, and believe it or not, take comfort in that. It puts things in perspective for me.
Here is my beef with the current journalistic approach toward politics. 1) It is clearly biased, one way or ‘tother. 2) We dwell WAY too much on people’s foibles, and not enough on their principals. 3) And the most important thing of all to my way of thinking: WE NEED TO KNOW WHO THE PEOPLE ARE THAT THE CANDIDATES TURN TO FOR ADVICE AND COUNSEL. Presidents do not make decisions in a vacuum. They get to choose their advisors and those people have an enormous impact on decision-making. I have not heard the mainstream media discussing this at all, though it will be a very important factor in my choice for President, otherwise known as Leader of the Free World, the most powerful position on the planet. This is a momentous decision, and I don’t wish to make it in a vacuum.
Can the media please help us out and quit worrying about whether Hillary was in a firefight in
Tell the American People who the advisors are, and then we’ll get somewhere.
2 comments:
It's an awkward position to be in but I pretty much agree with you, Michele. (Except maybe the part about God in a tree...:)
I do think the media (of which I know I am a part) is extremely biased in this election - canonizing Obama while vilifying Clinto and as much as possible ignoring McCain. And the focus is wrong. I do not care about their compassion quotient or their religious affiliations.
But I do care - and again, i think you're right - about the people each will surround themselves with. This is why i find the Rev. Wright situation most disturbing. I do not for one second believe Obama never heard this kind of thing before - either in public or private - from his spiritual counselor. And it's not only what he hears/says in public that matters, but the quality of advice, information, experience, etc., he will get in private.
Obama has fascinated the young voter and given them something they can latch onto. But that doesn't mean that all facts should go flying out the window.
Thomas Jefferson said we get the government we deserve. So far this has proved unfortunately true. When we don't demand substance, when we abbrogate our right to accountability, when we LET things happen to us (like the Patriot Act) because we are too lazy to read a newspaper or inform ourselves, then we allow our rights to be diminished - and our country to be diminished.
Will we get the government we deserve in 2008? Or the government the media chooses for us?
That is the true test of our democracy -- or democratic republic, as it truly is. Will the people be able to elect representatives at every level who understand their values or will people be bamboozled by a lot of eyewash from politicians that basically amounts to telling people what they want to hear? Will individual voters be intellectually honest enough to go beyond the rhetoric and make informed decisions? Our founding fathers believed we would have that capability.
They also warned against big government and predicted downfall of liberty when people began to demand too much from government. (I don't remember which one of the famous members of our history said something very pointed about that -- Benjamin Franklin? Thomas Jefferson?)
We are at the point where the people depend on the government for so much, they look to the government to solve problems it was never designed to solve. Personal responsibility has given way to gimme, gimme, gimme. And the result is disastrous for our way of life. A famous quote from a worthwhile democrat -- John F. Kennedy -- illustrated this and gets zero play in the media: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
(The rest of the quote, which is less well-known, is apropos of our position in the world, especially today: "My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.")
He also said this: "Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain."
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